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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”

#171

Post by c-smile »

uzoodoo wrote: post #136
vmarovic wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know russian, but in croatian which is somewhat similar adding pre to infront of the word makes it stronger, does not change meaning. Like too beautiful or as beautiful as it could get. Though in russian it could be different. (edit or even more beautiful than it is allowed/expected/needed)

Well, if you remove "pre" from "прекрасно", you get "red-colored", so it doesn't quite work here. (Actually, it would make the first part of the sentence a bit too literal.)

"прекрасно" consists of two parts : "пре" ("very" here) and "краса" ("beauty") in Russian so it is pretty close etymologically to English beautiful. Slightly different connotation in this particular case but still close enough.

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

#172

Post by xherberta »

zaccus wrote: post #97
Boothroid wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You misrepresent me by saying I fetishised poverty. I did nothing of the sort. I merely said that a state of smug complacency is risible. Or are the 'cultured' so full of pomposity that mockery is considered threatening? That seems like narcissism to me.

>spending your time pondering how to make yourself 'cultured' is a nauseatingly bourgeois activity, ripe for satire when compared with the harder realities of life for the less well privileged. I haven't misrepresented you. You literally said that a 'bourgeois' activity has less value compared to "harder realities of life for the less well privileged". That's putting poverty on a pedestal. That's fetishizing it. No.…

Agreeing with zaccus here, but from a different angle:

"Striving to be cultured" is not the same as "social climbing" and ultimately is not an end in itself.

Cultivating oneself is a way of using one's limited lifetime well and wisely. Ultimately, this offers the best shot at a satisfying life, and the most chance to benefit others.

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

#173

Post by xherberta »

sudosteph wrote: post #135
idiot_stick wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> TFW you're voted down immediately for calling out sexism which, though very explicit, has so far gone uncommented upon What reaction were you hoping for? That we'd refuse to read the thoughts of someone who lived 150 years ago because you deem one line sexist? It's more shocking to me that someone could read a letter like this and get only "author is sexist" as the message. By the way, "freshness, elegance, humanit…

It may not have been the most elegant invitation to discourse, but CaptainSwing is right that Chekhov was conveying a very sexist attitude there. The problem isn't so much that his favorite traits in a partner coincide with stereotypes of an idealized woman, it's that he goes out of his way to say that clever women aren't worthy partners because they're liars. The rest of his letter shows that he clearly values intel…

I read it a little differently. He cites "THE cleverness which...", implying that there's a particular form of cleverness that manifests in "continual lying."

I wonder whether the Russian word translated "cleverness" means straight intelligence as you are reading, or whether it might connote a sense of guile.

I'm also a little perplexed that people are taking the "motherhood" part as sexist.

What's wrong with aspiring to be a great mother? What's wrong with motherhood as a part of what strong and awesome women do, and a quality that you obviously would look for in a mate? Is there some kind of anti-mother backlash? If you're a mother, you're obviously in cahoots with the patriarchy? Is being a mother too embarrassing and lowly in today's culture? Why should it be that way? Let's take back motherhood as a noble and respectable thing!

While I'm at it, I'll put in a word for "freshness, elegance, and humanity." I wouldn't mind seeing these qualities held more in honor - in contrast to today's vapid culture that seems to encourage obsession with body shape while normalizing extreme inelegance (athleisure + tackiness) and inhumanity (permanently glued to phones, unable to converse.)

Note that even without any reference to men, the body-obsessed, tacky phone-addict is enjoying life less and attaining less satisfaction than if she were shooting for "freshness, elegance, and humanity." Would the female programmer or professor get less respect by having these qualities? If so, that IS a problem.

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

#174

Post by aisofteng »

samat wrote: post #41
siberianbear wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 the…

Thanks for sharing, never realised that Dostoyevskiy is so hard, being kind-of-native-speaker.

He's not, it's just that the average reading comprehension level is low.

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

#175

Post by aisofteng »

geoka9 wrote: post #3
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…

> Everything in a person should be excellent Probably nitpicking, but I'd translate "прекрасно" as "beautiful" here.

Idyllic.

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

#176

Post by mistermann »

SamBoogieNYC wrote: post #94
simonh wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The more I think about it and learn about the functioning of the brain, the less I believe in the unitary 'self'. I once read the suggestion that what we think of as the 'self' is really just the brain's public relations department.

You might enjoy a book called Quantum Psychology (Robert Anton Wilson). He lays out some interesting concepts about the way we think and one thought experiment in particular, observing all the 'thinkers' within and how they can multiply at will i.e consider the following innocuous statement: "I observe that I am happy" Who is happy and who is the observer?

Eckhart Tolle may say the observer is your conscience and who is happy is your mind. That's a guess though. :)

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

#177

Post by robotresearcher »

kbenson wrote: post #60
stevecalifornia wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the timeline of humanity, our pocket computers are brand-new. It will likely be a couple of decades before we sort out the social norms of using them. However, I think that we will fall towards using these devices constantly in all social settings because the young people growing up won't have the nostalgia of time before smartphones-- there was never a time where you and your friends sat at a table and talked com…

It's also possible the current physical manifestations of these devices will change quite a bit in the near future. I imagine in 20 years of less we'll mostly be using some eye based (glasses, lenses, whatever) display with AR and gesture control.(likely with a gesture "shorthand" for AR control with limited movement for when you don't want to wave your hand in front of you). At that point, it will be both much more…

I bet that the current small tablet format will dominate for a very long time. It has few drawbacks and is very simple to implement.

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

#178

Post by matt4077 »

legohead wrote: post #56

I have a set of rules I give my children. I started with them as kind of a joke because they would always flip out about stuff, so naturally, rule #1 is: 1) Be calm 2) Be kind 3) Don't steal 4) Always attempt your best I've always liked the thought that "don't steal" is the ultimate morality lesson. Killing someone is stealing their life away. Adultering is stealing someone else's love or relationship. And of course,…

There's much more to morality than "don't steal". Firstly, it elevates property rights to a position they don't deserve – making life or dignity second-class rights. "Don't steal" isn't even universal: there's nothing wrong with a starving child stealing bread.

If you want something memorable, the golden rule ("Do unto others as you would have them [...] do unto you") is much better, even if it requires more thinking.

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

#179

Post by sho »

acabal wrote: post #46
sevensor wrote: post #6

One needn't click on affiliate links to buy Chekhov's works. Project Gutenberg has them: http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/search/?query=chekhov

Shameless plug, Chekhov's complete short fiction for free, at Standard Ebooks: https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/anton-chekhov/short-fictio... We took the Gutenberg transcriptions, compiled them into one ebook, ordered by publication date, lightly modernized, edited, corrected, and completely proofread them. Check out the Github repo to see the changes (which are a lot, since it's a huge amount of writing): https://g…

Great project! I grabbed the book; look forward to reading it.

A small tip - I note the files don't automatically trigger a file download in my browser (Chrome), instead trying to display inline in the browser. Look into the following headers you need to send to force a download:

  Content-Type: application/octet-stream
  Content-Disposition: attachment; filename="thebook.epub"

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

#180

Post by sssilver »

baursak wrote: post #120
geoka9 wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Everything in a person should be excellent Probably nitpicking, but I'd translate "прекрасно" as "beautiful" here.

I'd translate it as "wonderful".

I second this translation.
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