And all this striving towards Chekhov's idea of cultured allows one to achieve what? I'd venture that for most it would amount to smugly patting themselves on the back for having achieved such a fine state of serenity. If this version of cultured means just another way to feel superior to others, I'm happy to be uncultured.
Chekhov: “Cultured people must, in my opinion, satisfy the following conditions”
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Re: Chekhov: “Cultured people must, in my opinion, satisfy the following conditions”
#12I am an American living in Russia. When I was studying Russian I read a number of Chekhov's short stories and got a feel for who he was. I later came across one of his quotes: "В человеке должно быть все прекрасно: и лицо, и одежда, и душа, и мысли" (Everything in a person should be excellent: his face, his clothes, his soul and his ideas). I sometimes discussed this phrase with Russians, eventually coming to be beli…
> I personally saw it and even touched his nose.
Did it work?
Re: Chekhov: “Cultured people must, in my opinion, satisfy the following conditions”
#13I am an American living in Russia. When I was studying Russian I read a number of Chekhov's short stories and got a feel for who he was. I later came across one of his quotes: "В человеке должно быть все прекрасно: и лицо, и одежда, и душа, и мысли" (Everything in a person should be excellent: his face, his clothes, his soul and his ideas). I sometimes discussed this phrase with Russians, eventually coming to be beli…
Out of curiosity, how long did you have to study Russian before you could enjoy Chekhov's stories?
Re: Chekhov: “Cultured people must, in my opinion, satisfy the following conditions”
#14I am an American living in Russia. When I was studying Russian I read a number of Chekhov's short stories and got a feel for who he was. I later came across one of his quotes: "В человеке должно быть все прекрасно: и лицо, и одежда, и душа, и мысли" (Everything in a person should be excellent: his face, his clothes, his soul and his ideas). I sometimes discussed this phrase with Russians, eventually coming to be beli…
What's the thing about russians and noses? The naval academy also has a statute with a lucky nose. In other cultures people want to touch the hands or feet of statues, but in russia it seems to be the nose.
Re: Chekhov: “Cultured people must, in my opinion, satisfy the following conditions”
#15And all this striving towards Chekhov's idea of cultured allows one to achieve what? I'd venture that for most it would amount to smugly patting themselves on the back for having achieved such a fine state of serenity. If this version of cultured means just another way to feel superior to others, I'm happy to be uncultured.
It allows one to achieve a view where they don't judge others in an attempt to speak for them as you have done here. While you can imagine someone patting themselves on the back for being aesthetic, the reality is that is only occurring vividly in your own mind, and not out here. If someone was indeed patting themselves on the back out here for these things, that is a separate problem created of their own judgement. Speaking for other's actions leading to judgement is itself viral irrationality, as doing so only spreads the behavior and irrationality further into the aggregate.
For the nerds here, I present this as a recursive pattern which spreads by being computationally inefficient. Software bloat, maybe?
As an aside, when I talk about a "dissonance" button for social media sites, your comment would be a perfect example of when to push it. That's not to say your leading question and comment on others future irrational actions shouldn't be allowed, but I think that it's important to call out content that is potentially "messy" in nature due to it's own innate ability to spread to others without your intervention (after saying it, of course). Maybe limiting replies to such "comments" would be one way to increase the overall aesthetic.
Re: Chekhov: “Cultured people must, in my opinion, satisfy the following conditions”
#16And all this striving towards Chekhov's idea of cultured allows one to achieve what? I'd venture that for most it would amount to smugly patting themselves on the back for having achieved such a fine state of serenity. If this version of cultured means just another way to feel superior to others, I'm happy to be uncultured.
The items on that list would be natural byproducts of simple humility, serenity of the mind, and the pursuit of excellence. These things are their own reward.
Re: Chekhov: “Cultured people must, in my opinion, satisfy the following conditions”
#17Dunno. I'm reading Chekhov's letters and it doesn't look to me he was up to his own standards.
Re: Chekhov: “Cultured people must, in my opinion, satisfy the following conditions”
#18I am an American living in Russia. When I was studying Russian I read a number of Chekhov's short stories and got a feel for who he was. I later came across one of his quotes: "В человеке должно быть все прекрасно: и лицо, и одежда, и душа, и мысли" (Everything in a person should be excellent: his face, his clothes, his soul and his ideas). I sometimes discussed this phrase with Russians, eventually coming to be beli…
What's the thing about russians and noses? The naval academy also has a statute with a lucky nose. In other cultures people want to touch the hands or feet of statues, but in russia it seems to be the nose.
I don't think it's a uniquely Russian thing. I think it has more to do with the scale of bronze statuary. Busts have accessible noses, but feet are easier to reach on full figures. My university in the United States had a bust of Abraham Lincoln with a lucky nose.
Re: Chekhov: “Cultured people must, in my opinion, satisfy the following conditions”
#19I am an American living in Russia. When I was studying Russian I read a number of Chekhov's short stories and got a feel for who he was. I later came across one of his quotes: "В человеке должно быть все прекрасно: и лицо, и одежда, и душа, и мысли" (Everything in a person should be excellent: his face, his clothes, his soul and his ideas). I sometimes discussed this phrase with Russians, eventually coming to be beli…
> Everything in a person should be excellent Probably nitpicking, but I'd translate "прекрасно" as "beautiful" here.
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Re: Chekhov: “Cultured people must, in my opinion, satisfy the following conditions”
#20I am an American living in Russia. When I was studying Russian I read a number of Chekhov's short stories and got a feel for who he was. I later came across one of his quotes: "В человеке должно быть все прекрасно: и лицо, и одежда, и душа, и мысли" (Everything in a person should be excellent: his face, his clothes, his soul and his ideas). I sometimes discussed this phrase with Russians, eventually coming to be beli…
Out of curiosity, how long did you have to study Russian before you could enjoy Chekhov's stories?
I read a bunch of them (in English) when I was a university student: that's where my first exposure came from.
When I started to study Russian, I read one or two of his stories in this book [1], which was great because it has English and Russian versions on opposite pages. I got to enjoy reading in Russian because I didn't constantly have to look up every tenth word in a dictionary.
Russian is a hard language but there are some still harder. To understand magazine articles and carry on simple conversations on arbitrary topics is a time investment of about 600 hours. To read Chekhov and speak really well on advanced topics is about double that, or 1200 hours. Chekhov's style is close to modern Russian and his style of writing is more straightforward than earlier writers. To read Dostoyevsky... well, hell if I know, I can barely make it through the first page of Crime and Punishment even with a dictionary even after all this time investment and living in Russia for a few years! It's like a different language.
[1] https://www.amazon.com/Russian-Stories-Dual-Language-Book-En...