George Bridgetower dear fellow!"). Beethoven also presented Bridgetower with his tuning fork, now held by the British Library. The pair fell out soon afterwards, Bridgetower having insulted a woman who turned out to be Beethoven's friend; Beethoven broke off all relations with Bridgetower and changed the dedication of the new violin sonata to the violin virtuoso Rudolphe Kreutzer, who never played it, saying that it had already been performed once and was too difficult — the piece is now known as the "Kreutzer Sonata". The Pulitzer Prize–winning poet Rita Dove dramatized the relationship between Beethoven and Bridgetower in the book-length lyric narrative
The Kreutzer Sonata After the work had been forbidden in Russia by the censors, a mimeographed version was widely circulated. In 1890, the United States Post Office Department prohibited the mailing of newspapers containing serialized installments of "The Kreutzer Sonata". This was confirmed by the U.S. Attorney General in the same year. Theodore Roosevelt called Tolstoy a "sexual moral pervert." The ban on its sale was struck down in New York and Pennsylvania courts in 1890. In the Epilogue To The Kreutzer Sonata, published in 1890, Tolstoy clarifies the intended message of the novella, writing: Countering the argument that widespread abstinence would lead