
Chekhov: “Cultured people must, in my opinion, satisfy the following conditions” - _chu
https://medium.com/the-polymath-project/anton-chekhov-how-to-become-a-cultured-person-f4bf9e8889f3#.otca76tbz
======
siberianbear
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 believe that
"face" in this context meant that you should do all you can to appear clean
and groomed, not necessarily that you need to be beautiful. I liked this quote
and it can be a starting point of interesting discussion when I talk to
Russians about Chekhov.

There's a funny story about when Chekhov went to Tomsk (now a town of about
500,000 people in Siberia.) In a letter, he wrote "Tomsk is a very dull town.
To judge from the drunkards whose acquaintance I have made, and from the
intellectual people who have come to the hotel to pay their respects to me,
the inhabitants are very dull, too." In recent history, the inhabitants of
Tomsk erected a bronze caricature statute [1] of Chekhov which makes him look
funny. The local residents consider that touching his nose is good luck, so
the statue has a really shiny bronze nose. I personally saw it and even
touched his nose.

[1]
[https://www.tripadvisor.com/Attraction_Review-g665310-d35959...](https://www.tripadvisor.com/Attraction_Review-g665310-d3595947-Reviews-
Chekhov_Monument-Tomsk_Tomsk_Oblast_Siberian_District.html)

~~~
geoka9
> Everything in a person should be excellent

Probably nitpicking, but I'd translate "прекрасно" as "beautiful" here.

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

~~~
pvg
"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.

~~~
hanoz
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.

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

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

~~~
acabal
Shameless plug, Chekhov's complete short fiction for free, at Standard Ebooks:
[https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/anton-chekhov/short-
fictio...](https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/anton-chekhov/short-
fiction/constance-garnett/)

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://github.com/standardebooks/anton-chekhov_short-
fictio...](https://github.com/standardebooks/anton-chekhov_short-
fiction_constance-garnett)

While I don't speak Russian, I've found Garnett's translations to be extremely
readable. A lot of her contemporaries seem to have agreed.

~~~
e15ctr0n
Standard Ebooks looks to be a very interesting project. Is there a story
behind the project that details how you got started and who are the main
contributors?

A 'Show HN' [0] or a write-up on indiehackers.com [1] would be awesome and
could you more contributors.

I subscribed to your RSS feed [2] that announces your new publications but it
lacks a URL for me to download the Ebook right away.

Also, is there a way for omnivoracious readers like me to download all your
Ebooks in a mega .zip file at one go?

[0] [https://news.ycombinator.com/show](https://news.ycombinator.com/show)

[1] [https://www.indiehackers.com/](https://www.indiehackers.com/)

[2] [https://standardebooks.org/opds/all](https://standardebooks.org/opds/all)

~~~
acabal
Thanks for the suggestions! The project is very small, not for profit so
indiehackers.com would probably not be interested. It's all volunteer-based so
if you're interested in contributing work somehow then drop me a line.

The OPDS feed is mainly for reading systems and libraries, not for human
consumption. However it does actually include direct links to epub files, but
you typically have to view the feed source--i.e. the raw XML--to see them.
Humans should subscribe to our mailing list,[0] where we do actual release
announcements as they occur.

[0]
[https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/standardebooks](https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/standardebooks)

~~~
e15ctr0n
> _The OPDS feed is mainly for reading systems and libraries, not for human
> consumption._

Understood. I was using a standard RSS reader to parse the feed.

I added the OPDS feed to my FBReader app on Android [0] via its Network
Catalog feature [1]. Et voila, I have your entire catalog at my fingertips.
Thanks. :-)

> _It 's all volunteer-based so if you're interested in contributing work
> somehow then drop me a line._

I can definitely see myself volunteering. Thanks for the invite. :-)

[0]
[https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.geometerpl...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.geometerplus.zlibrary.ui.android)

[1] [https://fbreader.org/content/documentation/own-
opds](https://fbreader.org/content/documentation/own-opds)

------
komali2
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 watching another lecture in the MOOC you're
taking.

You'd think it'd be easier to control ourselves. I have trouble understanding
how we can _want_ something, but some other part of us can seem to _not want_
that thing, or just be extremely short sighted to the point of being an
obstacle to our "long-sighted self."

~~~
simonh
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.

~~~
SamBoogieNYC
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?

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

------
johan_larson
I suspect a subtle mistranslation here. Chekhov seems to be talking about
decent people, or maybe good people, not cultured ones.

In English, it is quite possible to be cultured but bad. You know all kinds of
stuff about literature, music, art, history and science (and therefore you are
cultured) but you cheat on your wife and your taxes (and are therefore bad).

~~~
nybblet
Agreed with treve, what does culture really mean? If you read ALL the
literature, listen to ALL the music, view ALL the art, can recite ALL the
history and do ALL the science... and still conclude it's OK to cheat on your
wife and taxes, the argument can be made that none of this culture was
internalized, and hence you are not cultured.

Of course things are rarely so black-and-white, but that's the gist of it.

~~~
ameister14
You can understand something and possess the qualities of it and still choose
to ignore them

------
anonymfus
This translation is great but I think it's still interesting to read into the
connotations of Chekhov's original words:

[http://www.anton-chehov.info/754-n-p-chexovu.html](http://www.anton-
chehov.info/754-n-p-chexovu.html)

 _> you are drawn away from it, and you vacillate between cultured people and
the lodgers vis-a-vis_

 _> тебя тянет от нее, и тебе приходится балансировать между культурной
публикой и жильцами vis-а-vis._

Here "cultured people" are originally "культурная публика", literally
"cultured public".

 _> Cultured people must, in my opinion, satisfy the following conditions:_

 _> Воспитанные люди, по моему мнению, должны удовлетворять след<ующим>
условиям:_

Here "Cultured people" are originally "Воспитанные люди". More like well-
brought-up.

~~~
dang
In English people used to say 'well-bred' but I can't quite squeeze that into
the title above.

~~~
smsm42
IMHO well-bred has a meaning of specific ancestry, of aristocracy of one sort
or another, of which the Russian "воспитанный" has none - it's rather well
brought-up, well-behaved, conforming to the norms and customs of the polite
society.

------
dang
Here's a lovely little article about Chekhov that has been languishing on my
"post this someday when HN is slow" list.

[http://lithub.com/anton-chekhov-a-post-modernist-way-
ahead-o...](http://lithub.com/anton-chekhov-a-post-modernist-way-ahead-of-his-
time/)

------
nybblet
I'm struck by how much this echoes Confucius and the Analects and how they
define the so-called gentleman or noble man (not to be confused with nobleman,
and translation is hard). Given how unlikely it is that Chekhov had exposure
to either, it's incredible to observe the universality of these qualities
considered admirable.

If people haven't, do recommend checking out The Analects! Caveat: there are
quite a few excerpts that need to be taken in historical perspective, or can
be easily misinterpreted (e.g. advice to be slow to embrace new that was in
context of centuries of chaos and warring, or statements on women that
interpreted naïvely clearly contradict other statements on mothers).

~~~
sudosteph
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 a good guest in a
foreign country, and I did think that part was useful.

I don't really recall reading stuff about women though. I wouldn't expect an
enlightened perspective from a man in that time period though, no matter how
kind the interpretation. It wouldn't invalidate the whole work, it would just
show that the author was wrong about at least one thing, which is not an issue
(unless we're talking about holy books where it's not acceptable to
acknowledge mistakes).

~~~
nybblet
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 to
misrepresent them or else everyone suffers. This can be generously
reinterpreted to general use ("don't toy around with people and treat them
straightforwardly"). Realistically... I'm happy to take it as a mistake on his
part and just extract something worthwhile from it even if it's not what he
meant.

With regard to enlightened perspective or lack thereof, there's an interesting
question. I'm no expert on Confucius himself and how he regarded women, but
his filial piety towards his mother is widely lauded (as was Mencius').

Hope that helps!

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

~~~
nybblet
You're quite welcome, glad it was interesting!

------
kleiba
_They do not use their smart phones in the presence of others._

~~~
stevecalifornia
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 completely free of digital
interruption. Go to a coffee shop or restaurant near a high school around the
lunch hour...

~~~
kbenson
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 and much less invasive, as it will
likely be fully integrated. You can use it to enhance your conversation by
adding context, distract from your conversation by utilizing it for something
unrelated, or ignore it entirely. Sort of like your memory and imagination now
(because that's what it will be at that point, a slower but much fuller
extension to your current mind).

~~~
stevecalifornia
Thats an intriguing prediction of the future.

~~~
prodmerc
Why intriguing? That's the only way I see it going, as well.

The Internet is already an extended memory. Other people's minds are an
extended processing power, as well.

It can only get closer and more tightly integrated to our brains, unless
society as a whole chooses to get away from that.

This is why privacy concerns are real - what we do today about them will
impact the future massively. Will there be a central database of people's
private thoughts and memories or will they remain private?

------
gmarx
This letter appears to be a drawn out detailed set of insults to his older
brother. Maybe cultured isn't the best translation. Is this what we in the US
would have called "classy" back then?

~~~
jerf
Classiness does not preclude being insulting. It simply calls for a higher
degree of skill in the insulting. History is full of classy insults. Diplomacy
is nearly made of them.

[http://allowe.com/laughs/book/When%20Insults%20Had%20Class.h...](http://allowe.com/laughs/book/When%20Insults%20Had%20Class.htm)
\- just a quick hit on "classy insults" that seems to fit what I'm saying
here.

~~~
jdmichal
There's also something to be said for long-form writing with snail mail
enabling this. A very quick wit is required to make such insults in real time,
as opposed to behind a pen with a day or two of thought.

------
maldusiecle
> no great writer has not been touched in some way by his stories.

Don't trust people who say things like this, btw.

------
Nekorosu
Dunno. I'm reading Chekhov's letters and it doesn't look to me he was up to
his own standards.

~~~
hackuser
> it doesn't look to me he was up to his own standards

Would anyone pass your test?

~~~
Nekorosu
I haven't made any test. What do you mean by it?

------
legohead
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, stealing in its basic
meaning.

~~~
pitt1980
I've noticed that younger kids seems to take events extremely seriously

One thing that helped me keep this in perspective, is that every event makes
up a significantly larger fraction of their existence than that event makes up
of my existence

I'm 36, my oldest daughter is 6

occasionally she'll get really upset when seemingly minor setbacks happen (a
craft she's working on doesn't turn out the way she wants it too seems
typical), while we do try to work on her handling her frustration better

its helpful for us, to remember that 1 messed up craft out of 6 years of life
experience, is 6 times a bigger deal than 1 messed up craft out of 36 years

------
jackskell
I used to be cultured, at home, at work, and in public.

But, as I hit my late 20s (circa 1998),I became the opposite at work, and that
approach has gotten me much farther ever since.

Play the game.

------
bch
Reminds me a lot of Desiderata.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desiderata](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desiderata)

------
shmerl
My favorite, is his point about "squeezing out the slave". He foresaw well how
society can be highly tolerable of being subservient to dictatorship.

------
wersplectior
Seems more like a description of middle-class virtues.

------
bottled_poe
Yawn, in addition to becoming cultured, I fear this advice will also make you
incredibly boring.

------
ghostly_s
Oh, how I laughed, to finish this ode to humility and there at the bottom,
this little blurb which seems to be working overtime in demonstrating as many
of the just-disparaged traits as possible.

>Want more? Join over 15,000 readers getting The Open Circle, a weekly dose of
my best ideas. I’ll also send you 200+ pages from my private notebooks and 24
of my favorite books. Get it here.

~~~
dang
Yes, but please don't post snarky dismissals anyhow. How often do we get to
discuss Chekhov?

~~~
kerbalspacepro
I've never heard of him and probably won't hear of him again, so I guess
somewhere less than once a decade.

------
Boothroid
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.

~~~
kordless
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.

~~~
andrewmcwatters
Your comment is barely comprehensible to me. Can you condense this to simple
English? What are you even saying in half of your post?

> It allows one to achieve a view where they don't judge others

So you're telling me that being cultured allows one to not judge others, but
while clearly having the effect of outwardly being smug to others?

That's basically what I got out of your comment and the parent post.

Your aside also implies that his comment basically shouldn't be allowed
despite your explicit comment that it's "not to say."

This seems all rather smug and rude.

~~~
kordless
One side-effect of stating one's internal truth is that others may take it how
they like. If you decide to take what I'm saying as smug and rude, then that's
your prerogative to speak for me in an internal frame, inside your mind. Out
here in the external frame, what appears to be a deterministic reality by all
accounts, I'm telling you directly that I am not smug about this and I do not
consider my actions rude given I'm not blaming you, personally, in my original
comment. (The state of rudeness can only be evaluated by the entity which
receives the comment, not someone who speaks for them out of turn.) In fact,
it is my intent to help others achieve a state of understanding that allows
their own assertion of my claims here. If Boothroid has something to say about
me or my comments here, then that is their prerogative. I would encourage them
to keep speaking for my internal frame to a minimum, however, and make
observations instead of judgement. Only each of us may speak for our own
internal frames.

I will note that there is blame in my comments here now, which is being
directed toward someone who is clearly speaking for another's thought
processes - that would be you speaking for me being smug and Boothrid in my
"being rude" to them, when I'm saying otherwise here publicly. This behavior
_can_ contribute to a cyclic behavior of increasing blame (from the
irrationality spreading) if one decides to ignore what another is saying and
continue speaking for their internal frame.

Tending toward the aesthetic encourages letting go of personal judgement
because once you stop judging yourself, you stop judging others. There's also
a deeper cause for letting go of judgement, which involves understanding what
all of _this_ really is. You may think you are are separate entity and
definitely have a right to claim separation from the whole, if that's what you
want. OTOH, I think you are one part of a larger unidentified, unified entity:
a global consciousness frequently mistaken for "God" by religions.

However, me stating that internal thought to you here is direct blame if you
don't believe that, given I (would and am) pointing out publicly that you are
part of a global entity (which itself is an irrational thought). Again,
spreading irrationality by broadcasting irrational logic is not ideal, so I
really shouldn't do it. However, I did it here to prove a point. ;)

------
thrwy109
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 to how
much it is affecting my life, and how dangerous it is for me to continue on
this path. I've personally ran out of ideas for how to internally fix this.

~~~
hackuser
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](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13870928)

