Did 18th-century artists "struggle"?

This week, a lot of my music friends have been sharing links to the “about” page on pianist Khatia Buniatishvili’s website. It’s one of the purplest things I’ve ever read, and since I research 19th-century writing about music, that’s saying a lot. If you need a laugh, go read it right now. If you’d prefer an audio version, check out Matt Marks’s dramatic reading (which adds a suitable soundtrack).

Make no mistake, this is atrociously bad writing. My favorite sentence features one hell of a mixed metaphor:

For fun, her mother would leave a new musical score each day on her piano and, hungry, Khatia’s long, octopus-like arms would devour them.

OM NOM NOM!
Image by Reddit user NeokratosRed

What an image! This biography, written by French music journalist Olivier Bellamy, probably suffers from translation issues, but even that doesn’t account for the complete lack of meaning in sentences like,

By lifting one’s eyes skywards one might notice her playing hide-and-seek with either Venus or Mercury. 

Okay, okay, okay. Enough! So, as much as I relish the absurdity of it all, I didn’t think there was any reason to put it on my blog. Then my friend Temmo posted a link to the dramatic reading on his Facebook page, and we had the following conversation:

That got me thinking. Yes, presenting Buniatishvili as a superhuman Artist plays to 19th-century tropes, but what strikes me is how often Bellamy invokes the 18th century.