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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”

#161

Post by sudosteph »

nybblet wrote: post #156
sudosteph wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you give some examples of those "statements on women that interpreted naïvely clearly contradict other statements on mothers?" I've read bits and pieces of Analects, thought it was ok, but felt that is was very much reflective of the perspectives of the time. Most of it felt like stuff that was obvious and other stuff felt not applicable to the world today. IIRC there was some stuff about traveling abroad / being…

Agreed on all counts! "The Master said: 'Girls and inferior men are hard to get along with. If you get familiar with them, they lose their humility; if you are distant, they resent it.'" (Chapter 17) This sounds pretty bad. My reading of it is that he meant that relationships between men and women are particularly tricky (bearing in mind heteronormative standards at the time, etc. etc.), so one has to be careful not…

Thank you for giving that additional context! Certainly good food for thought.

Re: Chekhov: “Cultured people must, in my opinion, satisfy the following conditions”

#163

Post by nybblet »

sudosteph wrote: post #161
nybblet wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed on all counts! "The Master said: 'Girls and inferior men are hard to get along with. If you get familiar with them, they lose their humility; if you are distant, they resent it.'" (Chapter 17) This sounds pretty bad. My reading of it is that he meant that relationships between men and women are particularly tricky (bearing in mind heteronormative standards at the time, etc. etc.), so one has to be careful not…

Thank you for giving that additional context! Certainly good food for thought.

You're quite welcome, glad it was interesting!

Re: Chekhov: “Cultured people must, in my opinion, satisfy the following conditions”

#164

Post by avenoir »

hackuser wrote: post #105
avenoir wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Chekhov was very popular in Russian schools up until early 90s because of his writing style. You're absolutely spot on that he writes in very plain Russian. Dostoevsky has some mindfuck-inducing way or getting across to the reader. His writing is difficult even for a lot of native Russian speakers. L.N. Tolstoy also has some easy reading ( Детство. Отрочество. Юность / Childhood, Boyhood, and Youth is my favorite)

What happened after the early 90s?

I can only comment about the years I spent in school there. I think Soviet era of education pretty much ended with my generation when the old school staff reached retirement years. I have no idea where Russian schools rank nowadays. I heard pretty low.

Re: Chekhov: “Cultured people must, in my opinion, satisfy the following conditions”

#165

Post by hanoz »

pvg wrote: post #70
bushin wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think "exellent" is an excellent choice of the word (beautiful ≈ красиво).

"excellent" makes it sound like Bill & Ted doing the translation, though. 'first-rate' is a common choice for that quote which is also unsatisfying - without the unwanted English connotations but also without any of the desirable Russian ones.

It must be a very small subset of English speakers for whom the word "excellent" can only be read in a Bill & Ted accent, so I suggest this is bogus argument.

Re: Chekhov: “Cultured people must, in my opinion, satisfy the following conditions”

#166

Post by plainOldText »

komali2 wrote: post #59

I notice this theme again and again in every "change yourself" book, show, class, lecture. Be it weight loss, improving mental health, curing addiction, becoming a better writer/photographer/programmer, the theme all comes down to a battle against yourself. Fighting the desire to snack, fighting the desire to lay on the couch instead of going to the gym, fighting the desire to veg and watch netflix instead of watchin…

Speaking about battling ourselves: I recently started questioning whether we're truly free – as in, do we have complete control over the decisions we're making.

There are certain things about ourselves we simply can't control, such as our parents, where we were born/raised, our genetic makeup, the structure of our brains, etc, and these things highly influence our decision making.

So it looks like there is constant battle between who we want to be and who we truly are.

Re: Chekhov: “Cultured people must, in my opinion, satisfy the following conditions”

#167

Post by pvg »

hanoz wrote: post #165
pvg wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"excellent" makes it sound like Bill & Ted doing the translation, though. 'first-rate' is a common choice for that quote which is also unsatisfying - without the unwanted English connotations but also without any of the desirable Russian ones.

It must be a very small subset of English speakers for whom the word "excellent" can only be read in a Bill & Ted accent, so I suggest this is bogus argument.

Yes, it must be and yet 'excellent' is a really poor translation for this.

Re: Chekhov: “Cultured people must, in my opinion, satisfy the following conditions”

#168

Post by dsbmac »

plainOldText wrote: post #166
komali2 wrote: post #59

I notice this theme again and again in every "change yourself" book, show, class, lecture. Be it weight loss, improving mental health, curing addiction, becoming a better writer/photographer/programmer, the theme all comes down to a battle against yourself. Fighting the desire to snack, fighting the desire to lay on the couch instead of going to the gym, fighting the desire to veg and watch netflix instead of watchin…

Speaking about battling ourselves: I recently started questioning whether we're truly free – as in, do we have complete control over the decisions we're making. There are certain things about ourselves we simply can't control, such as our parents, where we were born/raised, our genetic makeup, the structure of our brains, etc, and these things highly influence our decision making. So it looks like there is constant b…

There's a whole eastern philosophy around this sort of sentiment. The idea being that things aren't inherently 'anything' but we do attach emotions or ideas to those things. You can take a 'meta' step back and notice this.

Re: Chekhov: “Cultured people must, in my opinion, satisfy the following conditions”

#169

Post by ClassyJacket »

komali2 wrote: post #59

I notice this theme again and again in every "change yourself" book, show, class, lecture. Be it weight loss, improving mental health, curing addiction, becoming a better writer/photographer/programmer, the theme all comes down to a battle against yourself. Fighting the desire to snack, fighting the desire to lay on the couch instead of going to the gym, fighting the desire to veg and watch netflix instead of watchin…

I agree. I find it amazing how unfocused the human mind can be, but at the same time am not really surprised given how we evolved.

I also have somewhat of a pragmatic view of solving this problem.

Anecdotal, but since I started taking the antidepressant Valdoxan (aka Agolmelatine, sadly illegal in the US) I've found that I feel it's easier to win that battle. When I say I'm going to do or not do something, I'm more likely to stick to that.

I've finally, for example, gone to my parent's house and not binge eaten on my mum's generous cooking. I went to the bar and actually had two drinks instead of six.

I haven't taken them, but I also understand that there may be some other medications such as AHDH or concentration drugs that have a similar effect, possibly with different time scales and mechanisms.

I'm still a total coffee addict - haven't kicked that one yet - and I'm by no means perfect. But my self control was pretty much non existent before, and in the last two months I've made alot of progress.

I hope that we continue to find better ways of managing the brain's chemistry (and the side effects of doing so), but just as much that the methods we have now become more widely available, and less illegal and stigmatized.

Re: Chekhov: “Cultured people must, in my opinion, satisfy the following conditions”

#170

Post by gluggymug »

whack wrote: post #103
siberianbear wrote: post #2

I 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…

Characterizing a town's inhabitants as being "drunkards" and "dull" doesn't really sound much in keeping with his own first rule...

In Russia, that's not considered as an insult.
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