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How Chekhov invented the modern short story

newstatesman.com

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Re: How Chekhov invented the modern short story

#11

Post by Cyph0n »

yesenadam wrote: post #6
libraryofbabel wrote: post #4

I do love Chekhov’s stories, but many years of humanities education has left me pretty jaded about “X invented the modern Y” claims. It’s a lazy formula and relies on the complete slipperiness of the term “modern” (oh and “invented” is kinda vague too). Examples, based on ones I’ve heard: “Shakespeare invented the modern self” “Napoleon invented the modern state” “Newton invented modern science” (Or was it Galileo?)…

They are fun to argue about however! e.g. Montaigne invented the modern self. (Shakespeare was a student of Montaigne.) Bacon invented modern science – the huge enterprise of science and scientific research as we know it today is his program.

And I would argue that Muslim scientists such as Ibn al-Haytham employed the scientific method before Bacon.

Re: How Chekhov invented the modern short story

#13

Post by localhost8000 »

mikekhusid wrote: post #12

Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky are fucking terrible. Read any other translation

That’s surprising to hear. I’ve found P&V’s Dostoevsky translations very readable, and my understanding from reading reviews online was that P&V’s translations are well regarded in general.

Which translation did you read/would you recommend?

Edit: I did some reading online and found some criticism of P&V, such as:

https://www.commentarymagazine.com/articles/gary-morson/the-...

https://www.firstthings.com/blogs/firstthoughts/2013/01/the-...

Interesting to see the comparisons!

Re: How Chekhov invented the modern short story

#14

Post by yesenadam »

Cyph0n wrote: post #11
yesenadam wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are fun to argue about however! e.g. Montaigne invented the modern self. (Shakespeare was a student of Montaigne.) Bacon invented modern science – the huge enterprise of science and scientific research as we know it today is his program.

And I would argue that Muslim scientists such as Ibn al-Haytham employed the scientific method before Bacon.

That seems irrelevant - I wasn't at all talking about which individuals were recognizably doing science, but where (the program of) modern science came from. Bacon didn't do science, didn't 'employ the scientific method', just wrote about and promoted a huge program of scientific investigation, which is what we call 'modern science'. From The Oxford Francis Bacon:

Before Bacon where else does one find a meticulously articulated view of [science] as an enterprise of instruments and experiment, an enterprise designed to restrain discursive reason and make good the defects of the senses? Where else in the literature before Bacon does one come across a stripped-down natural-historical programme of such enormous scope and scrupulous precision, and designed to serve as the basis for a complete reconstruction of human knowledge which would generate new, vastly productive sciences through a form of eliminative induction supported by various other procedures including deduction? Where else does one find a concept of scientific research which implies an institutional framework of such proportions that it required generations of permanent state funding to sustain it? And all this accompanied by a thorough, searching, and devastating attack on ancient and not-so-ancient philosophies, and by a provisional [science] anticipating the results of the new [science]?

But thanks, I didn't know anything about Ibn al-Haytham, e.g. that his Book of Optics (written 1011-1021) "was read by and greatly influenced a number of scholars in Christian Europe including: Roger Bacon, Robert Grosseteste, Witelo, Giambattista della Porta, Leonardo Da Vinci, Galileo Galilei, Christiaan Huygens, René Descartes, and Johannes Kepler"!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ibn_al-Haytham

Re: How Chekhov invented the modern short story

#15

Post by Cyph0n »

yesenadam wrote: post #14
Cyph0n wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And I would argue that Muslim scientists such as Ibn al-Haytham employed the scientific method before Bacon.

That seems irrelevant - I wasn't at all talking about which individuals were recognizably doing science, but where (the program of) modern science came from. Bacon didn't do science, didn't 'employ the scientific method', just wrote about and promoted a huge program of scientific investigation, which is what we call 'modern science'. From The Oxford Francis Bacon : Before Bacon where else does one find a meticulously…

Ah, I have always associated Bacon with the scientific method and was not aware of the wider program he developed.

But I still do not see my comment as irrelevant. Would Bacon have been able to develop his program without learning from the efforts of scientists who worked to apply the scientific method in the real world?

Re: How Chekhov invented the modern short story

#16

Post by pvg »

localhost8000 wrote: post #13
mikekhusid wrote: post #12

Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky are fucking terrible. Read any other translation

That’s surprising to hear. I’ve found P&V’s Dostoevsky translations very readable, and my understanding from reading reviews online was that P&V’s translations are well regarded in general. Which translation did you read/would you recommend? Edit: I did some reading online and found some criticism of P&V, such as: https://www.commentarymagazine.com/articles/gary-morson/the-... https://www.firstthings.com/blogs/firstt…

They are not without their detractors - part of it is they take on difficult work, some of which hasn't seen serious translator attention for a while. Personally, I find the results poor but obviously lots of people like them.

Chekhov's short stories are an English translator's nightmare though - there's a reason he's much more famous as a playwright in the English-speaking world.

Re: How Chekhov invented the modern short story

#17

Post by LanceH »

Cyph0n wrote: post #11
yesenadam wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are fun to argue about however! e.g. Montaigne invented the modern self. (Shakespeare was a student of Montaigne.) Bacon invented modern science – the huge enterprise of science and scientific research as we know it today is his program.

And I would argue that Muslim scientists such as Ibn al-Haytham employed the scientific method before Bacon.

Then you also get into the problems of multiple independent discoveries, or convergent research. Or whether someone's discovery is relevant at all if nobody learns from it -- that is, what is the value of popularizing a method over its mere discovery?

Re: How Chekhov invented the modern short story

#18

Post by azundo »

I've been reading some Chekov via https://www.ibiblio.org/eldritch/ac/jr/ recently. I also enjoyed George Saunders commentary on Gooseberries to be a good intro if you haven't read much Chekov before: https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2017/02/ge...

I've been thinking a lot about that man with the hammer from Gooseberries lately given the state of the world and my privileged position to ignore much of it when I choose to.

Re: How Chekhov invented the modern short story

#20

Post by Cyph0n »

LanceH wrote: post #17
Cyph0n wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And I would argue that Muslim scientists such as Ibn al-Haytham employed the scientific method before Bacon.

Then you also get into the problems of multiple independent discoveries, or convergent research. Or whether someone's discovery is relevant at all if nobody learns from it -- that is, what is the value of popularizing a method over its mere discovery?

Right, but that goes back to the original point, which I am in agreement with: it is usually tough to pinpoint a single, specific person who was responsible for a discovery or invention. And as you noted, it can also depend on how you frame the discovery and its impact.
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