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The statue's proportions are somewhat like what you would see if you look at a person from below. As actual drunkard lying on the floor could see Chechov. Source: indigenous Tomsker. We like to joke about Checkov's words about Tomsk.

That's a beautiful idea—like you must view Chekhov from the perspective of a drunk person (a near substitution for 'you are a drunk person') even when you're sober and standing up rather than lying down, because of his strange proportioning, therefore he is the 'cause of seeing his peers as like drunkards.

Characterizing a town's inhabitants as being "drunkards" and "dull" doesn't really sound much in keeping with his own first rule...

In Russia, that's not considered as an insult.

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…"

Also:

  What is needed is constant work, day and night,
  constant reading, study, will ... Every hour
  is precious for it …

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 there are some still harder. To understand magazine articles and carry on simple conversations on arbitrary topics is a time investment of about 600 hours. To read Chekhov and speak really well on advanced topics is about double that, or 1200 hours. Chekhov's style is close to modern Russian and his style of writing is more straightforward than earlier writers. To read Dostoyevsky... well, hell if I know, I can barely make it through the first page of Crime and Punishment even with a dictionary even after all this time investment and living in Russia for a few years! It's like a different language.

[1] https://www.amazon.com/Russian-Stories-Dual-Language-Book-En...

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.

Chekhov was very popular in Russian schools up until early 90s because of his writing style. You're absolutely spot on that he writes in very plain Russian. Dostoevsky has some mindfuck-inducing way or getting across to the reader. His writing is difficult even for a lot of native Russian speakers. L.N. Tolstoy also has some easy reading ( Детство. Отрочество. Юность / Childhood, Boyhood, and Youth is my favorite)

What happened after the early 90s?

The Soviet Union fell, among other things.

Presumably, in this context meaning that there was much more literature available for reading?

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...

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?)

After 1991 they have a lot of other entertainments to spend a time on - pirated videos, more than 3 state-approved TV channels, spread of BBS, FIDO and Internet...

All readers of the site have graduated secondary schools.

Chekhov is still tout in Russian school : https://ru.wikisource.org/wiki/%D0%92%D0%B8%D0%BA%D0%B8%D1%8...

I can only comment about the years I spent in school there. I think Soviet era of education pretty much ended with my generation when the old school staff reached retirement years. I have no idea where Russian schools rank nowadays. I heard pretty low.

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.

Yeah, at least the versions in English that I've read had sentences that last at least a third of the page.

> Everything in a person should be excellent

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

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

Agreed, the English "beautiful" often doesn't seem to capture прекрасно. I always took them to have some overlapping meaning, rather than being a direct translation.

> the English "beautiful" often doesn't seem to capture прекрасно

I agree, but I'd say "excellent" is even further away in meaning. Translating between such distant languages is always an exercise in compromise, unless you're willing to take great liberties at interpretation (when translating poetry, for example).

Being Russian I suggest "прекрасно" means "perfect" or "excellent" in this context.

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.

I often translate "красивый" as "nice" or "pretty" or something similar, depending on the context.

I think "beautiful" is more subtle (less banal, if you will) than "красивый". And so is "прекрасный".

"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.

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.

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

Not really.

Excellent is closer to идеально. Both imply relative comparison (to others). Beautiful is an absolute characteristic, same as красиво, so it's a better fit here.

'идеально' suggests perfection, 'excellent' just quality.

As our workshop teacher in USSR's school said once to us: "всё что технически-совершенно то прекрасно" - "everything that is technically perfect / harmonious is beautiful".

I would say that "прекрасно" is "harmonious and so beautiful" in this context.

I'd translate it as "wonderful".

I second this translation.

Russian here. "Excellent" is better.

"Прекрасно" is "good in every way", "perfect", it is something that cause wonder and delight or feeling of exaltation. So it's not about beauty. It's about what beauty of something do to you.

I thought excellent was a strange choice as well

Idyllic.

At least in Soviet times this quote was taught and discussed in schools and I'd dare to argue that for some it is the only quote by Chekhov's they remember.

Modern Russian [street] variation of "Everything in a person ..." sounds as : "В человеке всё должно быть прекрасно - и душа и джинсы" - "Everything in a human should be perfect, as his soul as his jeans".

That's why Russians are paying so much attention to their education/reading and what they wear :) This stuff is taught in school.

> I personally saw it and even touched his nose.

Did it work?

Well, there's no possiblity of doing A/B testing. I can't go back and live an alternate life where I didn't touch his nose. So there's no way to know. But I'm enjoying my life, and I'm happy with the life in which I did touch his nose.

Your alternative life's imago invented a multiverse wormhole machine and freakily landed up in my backyard and told me that their life had gone pretty badly wormhole machine notwithstanding. So now you know.

There definitely is a way, that's how all research is done. You send three groups there, one that doesn't touch anything, one that touches his nose, and another one that touches nose of the fake statue, without knowing that it is fake. If second group appears to have more luck than the other two over time, then it works.

This unfortunately does not account for different groups having different starting luck. I suppose you can in part handle that by having very large groups but since luck is luck simply the process of selection, even if random, is biased which gives you another problem.

Which is why units should be randomly selected into each groups to avoid confounding factors like the one you mention.

Ah, but a person with preëxisting good luck might be preferentially randomly selected into the nose-touching group, amplifying the effect and making it hard to measure its size.

You throw out min/max results anyway before analyzis.

I agree. A single person -- and who better than siberianbear? -- can experiment with taking risks and carefully noting if he touched Chekov's nose or not that day.

What's the thing about russians and noses? The naval academy also has a statute with a lucky nose. In other cultures people want to touch the hands or feet of statues, but in russia it seems to be the nose.

I don't think it's a uniquely Russian thing. I think it has more to do with the scale of bronze statuary. Busts have accessible noses, but feet are easier to reach on full figures. My university in the United States had a bust of Abraham Lincoln with a lucky nose.

There may also be a bias tied to medicine. Noses are paticular indicators of some diseases (smallpox and syphalis) that may have created an association with luck.

I think you'd be hard pressed to find any bronze statues of Abraham Lincoln without a shiny lucky nose, at least in Illinois. The state capitol of Springfield has several.

It probably doesn't help that he's on the penny as well, which is considered lucky if you find one and pick it up.

> What's the thing about russians and noses?

Well. https://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/g/gogol/nikolai/g61n/

I'd always had an impression of classical Russian writing as being impenetrable, but this was delightful. Thank you!

Check out Daniil Kharms too - http://www.sevaj.dk/kharms/stories/noteb10.htm

Gogol, Kharms and Bulgakov (The Master and Margarita, Heart of a Dog) are my three defaults for Russian literature. There’s that feeling of teetering on the edge of chaos that I love.

I wonder how much of that has to do with it having been translated by people of that period into a classical style of that period. For recent history, maybe that yields "official" translations that are into an older English form that is harder for modern people to read.

For example, is a 19th century translation of an ancient Greek text also somewhat impenetrable compared to a more contemporary translation? How much of the problem is that the translation may not target English as we expect it in its current common form?

Is it common (possible?) to find "from scratch" translations from the last 30-40 years of classical Russian literature?

Well, there for sure are rows over the best translation of, say, the Meditations of Marcus Aurelius. Hays for the enthusiasts, Long for the classicists.

Apparently https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Pevear_and_Larissa_Vol... have made translations of Dostoyevsky which are eminently more readable than the rest. I've started reading their translation of The Master and Margarita and I'm enjoying it a lot.

> I've started reading their translation of The Master and Margarita and I'm enjoying it a lot.

I'll have to check that out - I enjoyed their War & Peace. I found Ginsburg's translation of The Master and Margarita to be unreadably bad. There was just no joy in it whatsoever, to the point where I was wondering why it was such a famous book. It's been a while, but I recall the adjective use being terribly wooden. So many sentences with the basic structure "X walked down the long broad beautiful street. He spoke with the tall bespectacled bearded man" etc. It was quite tiresome.

It has a ton of footnotes explaining the background and in-jokes on the specific names and characters invoked. They really enrich the novel in ways that a non-religiously educated person like me would miss. The preface is really excellent too.

There are different ones, and Gogol is IMHO one of the best ones and probably easiest ones too. His works are still widely enjoyed and quoted, which is not exactly the case with many other "classical" works, which are studied in schools but often fail to connect with a modern reader. His humor and satire is arguably as relevant now as it was back when it was written. I have no idea how it translates (it'd be a hard work indeed to properly represent his style, no idea whether even possible) but if there's a good translation that's the one I'd recommend to somebody who finds other classics impenetrable.

Edinburgh's Greyfriars Bobby (a dog) has a nose people touch for luck. Nearby John Hume has an enlightened toe: http://www.scotsman.com/news/hume-giant-of-the-enligh-toe-nm...

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

Was Einstein actually considered and describes by his peers/comrades as disheveled? Or is that just a cultural archetype we tell ourselves?

You're joking right? Are you asking if everyone looked like that back then?

>I personally saw it and even touched his nose.

And? Any luck?