Does it resonate today? How do the Twitter and Facebook trolls rate?
Anton
Chekhov on the 8 Qualities of Cultured People
"In order to feel comfortable among educated people, to be at home
and happy with them, one must be cultured to a certain extent."
You have often complained to me that people "don't understand
you"! Goethe and Newton did not complain of that…. Only Christ complained
of it, but He was speaking of His doctrine and not of Himself…. People
understand you perfectly well. And if you do not understand yourself, it is not
their fault.
I assure you as a brother and as a friend I understand you and
feel for you with all my heart. I know your good qualities as I know my five
fingers; I value and deeply respect them. If you like, to prove that I understand
you, I can enumerate those qualities. I think you are kind to the point of
softness, magnanimous, unselfish, ready to share your last farthing; you have
no envy nor hatred; you are simple-hearted, you pity men and beasts; you are
trustful, without spite or guile, and do not remember evil…. You have a gift
from above such as other people have not: you have talent. This talent places
you above millions of men, for on earth only one out of two millions is an
artist. Your talent sets you apart: if you were a toad or a tarantula, even
then, people would respect you, for to talent all things are forgiven.
You have only one failing, and the falseness of your position, and
your unhappiness and your catarrh of the bowels are all due to it. That is your
utter lack of culture. Forgive me, please, but veritas magis amicitiae….
You see, life has its conditions. In order to feel comfortable among educated
people, to be at home and happy with them, one must be cultured to a certain
extent. Talent has brought you into such a circle, you belong to it, but … you
are drawn away from it, and you vacillate between cultured people and the
lodgers vis-a-vis.
Cultured people must, in my opinion, satisfy the following
conditions:
- They
respect human personality, and therefore they are always kind, gentle,
polite, and ready to give in to others. They do not make a row because of
a hammer or a lost piece of india-rubber; if they live with anyone they do
not regard it as a favour and, going away, they do not say "nobody
can live with you." They forgive noise and cold and dried-up meat and
witticisms and the presence of strangers in their homes.
- They
have sympathy not for beggars and cats alone. Their heart aches for what
the eye does not see…. They sit up at night in order to help P…., to pay
for brothers at the University, and to buy clothes for their mother.
- They
respect the property of others, and therefor pay their debts.
- They
are sincere, and dread lying like fire. They don't lie even in small
things. A lie is insulting to the listener and puts him in a lower
position in the eyes of the speaker. They do not pose, they behave in the
street as they do at home, they do not show off before their humbler
comrades. They are not given to babbling and forcing their uninvited
confidences on others. Out of respect for other people's ears they more often
keep silent than talk.
- They
do not disparage themselves to rouse compassion. They do not play on the
strings of other people's hearts so that they may sigh and make much of
them. They do not say "I am misunderstood," or "I have
become second-rate," because all this is striving after cheap effect,
is vulgar, stale, false….
- They
have no shallow vanity. They do not care for such false diamonds as
knowing celebrities, shaking hands with the drunken P., [Translator's
Note: Probably Palmin, a minor poet.] listening to the raptures of a stray
spectator in a picture show, being renowned in the taverns…. If they do a
pennyworth they do not strut about as though they had done a hundred
roubles' worth, and do not brag of having the entry where others are not
admitted…. The truly talented always keep in obscurity among the crowd, as
far as possible from advertisement…. Even Krylov has said that an empty
barrel echoes more loudly than a full one.
- If
they have a talent they respect it. They sacrifice to it rest, women, wine,
vanity…. They are proud of their talent…. Besides, they are fastidious.
- They
develop the aesthetic feeling in themselves. They cannot go to sleep in
their clothes, see cracks full of bugs on the walls, breathe bad air, walk
on a floor that has been spat upon, cook their meals over an oil stove.
They seek as far as possible to restrain and ennoble the sexual instinct….
What they want in a woman is not a bed-fellow … They do not ask for the
cleverness which shows itself in continual lying. They want especially, if
they are artists, freshness, elegance, humanity, the capacity for
motherhood…. They do not swill vodka at all hours of the day and night, do
not sniff at cupboards, for they are not pigs and know they are not. They
drink only when they are free, on occasion…. For they want mens sana
in corpore sano [a healthy mind in a healthy body].
And so on. This is what cultured people are like. In order to be
cultured and not to stand below the level of your surroundings it is not enough
to have read "The Pickwick Papers" and learnt a monologue from
"Faust." …
What is needed is constant work, day and night, constant reading,
study, will…. Every hour is precious for it…. Come to us, smash the vodka
bottle, lie down and read…. Turgenev, if you like, whom you have not read.
You must drop your vanity, you are not a child … you will soon be
thirty. It is time! I expect you…. We all expect you.
A. P. Chekhov
(left) with Nikolai Chekhov (right), 1882
For more epistolary notes on
the building of character, complement with history's finest
letters of fatherly advice.
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