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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”

#181

Post by vatotemking »

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...

No man is perfect, even Checkhov. From the article: "These eight conditions are not a checklist, but a guideline—a “true north” of sorts that reveals to us the direction we must go…"

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

#182

Post by atmosx »

siberianbear wrote: post #20
danielhooper wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 the…

Out of curiosity, can you read Dostoevsky and Tolstoy in Russian too? Does that feel different than reading them in English?

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

#183

Post by solipsism »

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…

you should do all you can to appear clean and groomed

Ah yes, unlike that Einstein. That disheveled example of a someone who could have been so much more, had he just reached for a comb. /s

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

#184

Post by hackuser »

thrwy109 wrote: post #101

The bit about lying really struck a chord with me. I have been a compulsive liar for most of my life (25 now). Just this past Friday I lied to my skip level manager about the progress of a project. I've lied about the most mundane things to even lying to my family and friends about graduating college. At this point I feel as if I've been struck by a disease. Worst of all is that I lie to myself the most with respect…

First, sorry it took so long to respond. The way HN works (if you don't know) is that messages from new accounts sometimes are automatically killed and therefore nobody can respond (or even let you know there's a problem). I actually asked support to unkill this one, and they were all for it.

...

That must be very hard to carry around with you, 24/7/365. Obviously you don't want to be a liar, but behavior is not so easy as people seem to imagine. They think, 'if you don't want to do it, just choose not to do it'; but they aren't looking at reality, or even in the mirror. If you look around, human beings don't work like that - or we'd all be happily married, well-adjusted millionaires, in happy workplaces, with no drugs, no hate, no crime, no politics, etc. You are not alone in carrying this human burden.

Get some professional help; you are hardly the only person with this problem and many problems like it. A good therapist has heard it all before (and much worse) and can help you; get some recommendations if you can, and try a few to find one you feel personally comfortable with (from what I understand, rapport with the therapist is the most important factor) and otherwise meets your needs. You wouldn't trust your business to an amateur, and this is far more important - find a professional and hire the best person for the job.

Maybe you've reached the point with your problems that I think most people encounter as they mature (if they are honest with themselves). I once heard a songwriter put it his way (paraphrased): 'When I wrote songs at 20 years old, I was the hero in all the stories; I was learning and growing so rapidly that I never considered that I wouldn't outgrow all my problems. But now I'm older and some of these problems haven't gone away; the easy ones are all solved but some others have been very hard to move past. And I find that, in real life, sometimes I'm the villain.' I know I reached that point, too.

I wrote the following in response to someone else and at least a few people found it encouraging; maybe it will be encouraging to you too, but I'm not a professional. Find one! Take care of yourself!

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13870928

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

#185

Post by pasquinelli »

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 think of it like this: I want to lay on the couch, not go to the gym, but I want to want to go to the gym, or I want to have gone to the gym. I want to have gone to the gym because I hate to be at the gym. Realizing that, I have a choice: is going to the gym a chore, like flossing my teeth to avoid tooth pain or taking out the garbage so I'm not living in garbage? that is, is going to the gym something I do even though I don't want to, and which I needn't pretend to like? or should I just admit that i hate the gym and find something else to do?

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

#186

Post by coldtea »

ptaipale wrote: post #155
coldtea wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Probably that people had a much harder time surviving to read as much...

I don't think so. I'm sure reading was encouraged in USSR. Just not reading the wrong books. But overall, people got good education to culture there. It was one of the ideals of the soviet state that actually worked. Only in the later stages of decline, when economy was tanking and people spent half their time queuing for things, they probably had less time to read...

>Only in the later stages of decline, when economy was tanking and people spent half their time queuing for things, they probably had less time to read...

That's what I meant: in the turmoil of 1991 and beyond, people would have less time to read...

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

#187

Post by pvg »

caf wrote: post #159
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.

Perhaps "superlative".

Yep, that's (roughly) in the same vein as 'first-rate'. What makes the translation tricky (if you speak Russian, apologies for explaining the obvious) is that while the word has uses other than literal 'beautiful' it is composed of a superlative prefix and the root for 'beauty'. The line itself is spoken by character in a play, a high-minded, provincial county doctor as Chekhov himself once was. 'must be excellent¹' is strained and clunky in English to begin with and none of the more natural-sounding replacements evoke the connotations of the original.

¹ Moreover, nobody ever translated the name of the Russian fairy tale Василиса Прекрасная as Vasilisa the Excellent.

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

#188

Post by concerned_user »

atmosx wrote: post #182
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…

Out of curiosity, can you read Dostoevsky and Tolstoy in Russian too? Does that feel different than reading them in English?

Do sentences last for 1/3 of a page in English version as well? Such as when you get to the end of the sentence you have already forgotten what was at the beginning? If it is like that then English version is similar to Russian.

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

#189

Post by GarvielLoken »

pasquinelli wrote: post #185
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 think of it like this: I want to lay on the couch, not go to the gym, but I want to want to go to the gym, or I want to have gone to the gym. I want to have gone to the gym because I hate to be at the gym. Realizing that, I have a choice: is going to the gym a chore, like flossing my teeth to avoid tooth pain or taking out the garbage so I'm not living in garbage? that is, is going to the gym something I do even th…

But you don't need the gym, for losing weight or getting healthier. The only thing you need the gym for is getting big muscles, now you can reframe the question. Is my goal to be more healthy or getting ripped?

If the goal is health then you can stop going to the gym. Start running, start swimming, try bicycle, outdoor gyms, join a hike group, join a martial art club. Start doing excersices at home with your body weight. If you are so weak or big that you can't do many bodyweight drills, then you don't need a gym anyway. Better served with a small 10$ dumbar package at home.

The only thing that can be good with a gym is a Personal Trainer that can give you a good plan. It will be hard to replace that service to the same level.

If your goal truly is to be more muscular, then and only then does it really become a question of motivation. Do i want this enough do go to the gym, even on the days that i don't feel for it?

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

#190

Post by ptaipale »

coldtea wrote: post #186
ptaipale wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think so. I'm sure reading was encouraged in USSR. Just not reading the wrong books. But overall, people got good education to culture there. It was one of the ideals of the soviet state that actually worked. Only in the later stages of decline, when economy was tanking and people spent half their time queuing for things, they probably had less time to read...

> Only in the later stages of decline, when economy was tanking and people spent half their time queuing for things, they probably had less time to read... That's what I meant: in the turmoil of 1991 and beyond, people would have less time to read...

Or you could say that post-1991 they had other things to do (to survive, or to entertain themselves: Western movies etc became available.)

However I was thinking already 1980's: probably the dysfunction of the economy had an impact on people people's reading (like, do you typically read a book while you are at the meat shop queue or shoe shop queue?)

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