Eight
Qualities of Cultured People
by
Anton Chekhov *
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1. 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.
2. 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.
3. They respect the property of others, and therefore pay their debts.
4. 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.
5. 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….
6. 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.
7. 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.
8. 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].
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* Source: "Letters of Anton Chekhov to His Family and Friends" - www.brainpickings.org
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