Genius of tact article author. Extraordinary musical abilities
Phraseological dictionary of the Russian literary language. - M.: Astrel, AST. A. I. Fedorov. 2008.
See what “Give tribute” is in other dictionaries:
give credit where credit is due- to have a high opinion, to attach great importance, to be valued, to give justice, to recognize merit, to attach importance, to recognize, to value, to give due, to appreciate, to pay tribute, to recognize merit, to appreciate Dictionary ... ... Synonym dictionary
To whom. GIVE CREDIT TO SOMEONE. Same as Pay tribute to someone (in 1st value). We must pay tribute to my mother: until the guests left... she didn’t even let me know with a glance that she was dissatisfied with me (V, Aksyonov. Comments on childhood). And we must pay tribute to Varvara: ... ...
give away- voice give action duty give existence / creation, interruption, decision, compensation life give use give tribute action give life use give account action give preference action... ...
tribute- take tribute action, causation tribute give action give tribute action give tribute action ... Verbal compatibility of non-objective names
tribute- and, f. 1. source A tax from the population in ancient Rus' and some other countries, levied by a prince, military leader or winner from a defeated tribe or people. From the east, from across the Volga, a foreign, foreign-speaking people came, and their khans imposed heavy... ... Small academic dictionary
TRIBUTE- Take / take (collect / collect) tribute from whom, from what. Razg. Joking. iron. Engage in bribery, extortion from anyone. Mokienko 2003, 22. Give (pay) tribute. Razg. 1. to whom, to what. To give due credit, to fully appreciate someone, something... ...
Give (pay) tribute- Razg. 1. to whom, to what. To give due credit, to fully appreciate someone or something. FSRY, 321; F 2, 23; AOC, 261. 2. what. Follow something, act in accordance with something. FSRY, 322. 3. to whom, to what. Pay attention to who or what. FSRY, 322 ... Large dictionary of Russian sayings
TO GIVE TRIBUTE to someone, what. TO GIVE TRIBUTE to someone, what. Book 1. Evaluate someone or something fully, at its true worth. As in ancient times, writers are drawn to the archaic, to ancient words, primarily out of creative need, paying tribute... ... Phraseological Dictionary of the Russian Literary Language
GIVE CREDIT TO SOMEONE. GIVE CREDIT TO SOMEONE. Same as Pay tribute to someone (in 1st value). We must pay tribute to my mother: until the guests left... she didn’t even let me know with a glance that she was dissatisfied with me (V, Aksyonov. Comments on childhood). And we must give... Phraseological Dictionary of the Russian Literary Language
action- take action action action ended action, subject, ending action direct action action begins action, subject, beginning action based touching action produce action action occurs ... ... Verbal compatibility of non-objective names
Genius and villainy are two incompatible things.
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Alexander Sergeevich Pushkin
The only limitation that is placed on our abilities is our inability to recognize our own unlimited capabilities. We need to make an effort to understand that our capabilities are enormous and limitless. We need enthusiasm for our business or our activity. We need effort to continue even when the results of our efforts and our friends tell us that we should give up. We need efforts to feel right about everything that happens, both joy and sorrow in our Life. And it takes effort to learn to love ourselves more than everyone else, especially when we realize that we are failing, that we are haunted by doubts and tragedies.
However, it doesn't take any effort to accept defeat. And it doesn’t take much effort to lazily contemplate the process of defeat, defeat in relation to the future, defeat in relation to one’s own personality, defeat in relation to the present.
The irony is that the only thing we really have control over is our relationships and feelings. And at the same time, most of us live our entire lives without using the opportunity to fully control our own feelings and attitudes towards events and things. But it is our relationships that determine our decisions: to read or not to read, to try to fight or to give up. And it is through our attitude that we either blame ourselves for our failures or blame others for our own failures.
Our attitudes determine whether we love or hate, whether we tell the truth or tell a lie, act or doubt, move forward or move backward, and by our own attitude we and only we truly decide whether to win or fail.0 0
Jim Rohn
No one burned as brightly as the geniuses of the Renaissance!
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Leonid S. Sukhorukov
Each of us is a genius, but not each of us is a genius in his own era.
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Leonid S. Sukhorukov
A genius can breathe freely only in an atmosphere of freedom.
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John Stuart Mill
Genius lies in the ability to express banal things in an original way and give a complete form to current life.
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Unknown author ()
Genius has its limits; stupidity is free from such restrictions.
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Elbert Green Hubbard
The beautiful thing about a genius is that he is like everyone else, but no one is like him.
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Honore de Balzac
Competition produces geniuses, and the desire to become famous produces talent.
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Claude Adrian Helvetius
A person who is a genius, but does not know it, most likely is not a genius.
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Stanislav Jerzy Lec
What writer would voluntarily give up becoming a genius? Only I decided to do this almost from the very beginning. I realized that I was missing the nerdy element.
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Stanislav Jerzy Lec
GENIUS - patience of thought concentrated in a certain direction.
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Isaac Newton
I don't believe in failed geniuses. If you are talented, you will definitely achieve success.
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Renata Litvinova
There has never been a single great mind without an admixture of madness.
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Aristotle
In order to judge the real importance of a person, one must assume that he died, and imagine what emptiness he would leave behind: not many would withstand such a test.
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Pierre Buast
Common sense and hard work compensate for your lack of talent, while you can be the most brilliant of geniuses, but through stupidity you will ruin your life.
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George Bernard Shaw
Everyone is a genius, judging by their funeral speeches.
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Yuri Bazylev
Taste is the common sense of genius.
And here they are - 150 years since the birth of Chekhov, and there is some strange modesty in celebrating this holiday. Chekhov loved to look into the future, confident that someday, and quite soon, everything would be completely different. There will be a different, meaningful, wonderful life. Everyone will work. Everyone will grow their own garden. How exactly this will happen is not clear, but Chekhov lives in anticipation of the end of a century, an era, Russia, his own life - everything has degenerated so much that the world simply has no other choice but to start over. That’s why all his characters’ conversations about the future are unusually optimistic, vague and evasive.
And here they are - 150 years since the birth of Chekhov, and there is some strange modesty in celebrating this holiday. Everything happens quietly, in full accordance with the labels pasted on Chekhov - “genius of tact”, “master of halftones” (which, of course, is not true - halftones are present in all major artists, but everything is complicated about tact in the cruel and cold Chekhov). This quietness and modesty is caused by the fact that in front of Chekhov, in front of his iron self-discipline, continuous self-restraint and the titanic tasks that he set for himself, you always experience a certain awkwardness, especially when you live as relaxed and vicious, meaningless and ugly as Russia in its current state . And this shame is aggravated by the fact that he really relied on us. I think there would be no greater joy for him than to find out: “Uncle Vanya” is outdated after a hundred years, what “Three Sisters” no longer understands, and “The Cherry Orchard” has mainly historical value for the viewer. I think that Chekhov, who never attached exaggerated importance to himself, and who was sincerely devoid of vanity, would be happy to hear that his texts are irrelevant; you can and should read them for aesthetic pleasure, but what kind of people, feelings and circumstances they are, you have to explain to yourself with the help of historians or sources.
It would be sad for Chekhov to read the press on the days of his anniversary. The Patriarch of Moscow and All Rus' blesses the team of Russian athletes before the latter’s departure to Vancouver - here’s “Bishop”. In the village of "Rechnik", despite the frost, four more houses were demolished, and next in line is the village of "Fantasy Island" - "Cherry Orchard", only there was an ax, and here a bulldozer... In the St. Petersburg metro, Chekhov quotes read by an official are heard as announcements Ministry of Culture - this is, of course, pure Chekhonte. Tatyana Yumasheva in her blog accuses Alexander Korzhakov of vile slander against his family - “Duel”, and even crueler than that of von Koren and Laevsky. At the Theater. Stanislavsky split due to a reprimand given to an actor who, while rushing to catch a plane, arbitrarily shortened the play by 40 minutes - either “Swan Song” or a scene from “The Seagull”... Life is even more grotesque, stupid, vulgar, funnier, more tragic than under Chekhov, and the only possible reaction to it is the cry of the “Teacher of Literature”: “There is nothing more terrible, more offensive, more depressing than vulgarity!” But this vulgarity is all around, it has become the normal background and condition of life, its air. And in the midst of all this, let’s talk about the future, about the wonderful people who will grow their gardens, because the main sign of the end of the 2000s, a sign that was hushed up, but therefore even more painful, was the sober and universal realization: there will be no future. At least here. Any attempts to break this life, to break its code are as suicidal as the passing of Tolstoy, whose centenary will be celebrated in October this year.
There was a great project - bloody, inhuman, but starting from scratch, indicating a fantastic, but tangible, reliable perspective. This project destroyed almost all the advantages of the previous one, and its disadvantages - such as the eternal Russian general lawlessness - were strengthened many times over. Then they abandoned it too, but not because they came up with something better, but because they couldn’t pull it off; and the minuses again increased many times over, and the last pluses were destroyed. And we have no faith left in the possibility of another life - faith, without which there is no Chekhov, and this is the main result of the revolution of 1917 and the counter-revolution of 1991. It will never be otherwise. Everyone remember this and pray for the success of the team.
Any science about man, one way or another, faces the eternal debate - what is more important in the development of personality: natural qualities or upbringing? Proponents of both opinions tend to reduce this debate to clear-cut answers, but, fortunately, recent research has shown that the situation is a little different. It turns out that we are quite capable of influencing who we become. T&P translated an excerpt from the new book by famous business coach Miles Downey, “The Genius in Each of Us,” about the history of these points of view, the secrets of Mozart’s genius, and how a person’s genes react to their external environment.
Francis Galton (1822–1911) - English explorer, geographer, anthropologist and psychologist, founder of differential psychology and psychometrics, statistician.
Disputes about the priority of one over the other, the interconnections and mutual influences of nature and nurture on each other began in the middle of the 19th century with the works of Francis Galton. In a simplified form, nature is all the innate qualities of a person, its genetic heritage, and education is external elements, social and cultural, that influence what a person will become: how his parents treat him, what and how he is taught at school and university, what he encounters in life and how his relationships with others develop.
Radicals who stand on the side of nature and are passionate about biopsychology argue, for example, that all features of human behavior, down to the smallest character traits, are nothing more than the result of evolution. There is nothing strange about this view, especially considering that one of its earliest and most ardent proponents, Francis Galton, was a cousin of Charles Darwin. On the other side of the barricades are behaviorists, convinced that all human actions are determined primarily by his existence in the social environment. One of the most prominent and famous supporters of this idea is the English educator and philosopher John Locke (1632–1704). Studying the personality from its very birth, he came to the conclusion that the consciousness of the child in the womb is a tabula rasa, that is, a blank slate, something virgin and untouched, filled with time by experience. This idea is directly opposite to the idea that some knowledge is inherent in us from birth - and by nature itself.
The behaviorist carrot-and-stick method and the desire to please superiors still remain the main driving forces of management
The idea of the priority of nature dominated society until the middle of the 20th century. To understand why, it is enough to imagine the cultural and social atmosphere of that era. The idea that man himself could influence who he would become in the future was too revolutionary to be accepted lightly. People had to know their place in society, otherwise hard workers would refuse to work in the fields and factories, soldiers would refuse to die on the battlefield, servants would refuse to respect the rich and powerful. Even in the second half of the century, the behaviorist carrot-and-stick approach and the desire to please superiors remained - and still remain - the main driving forces of management. Few people seriously care about creating intrinsic motivation among employees and providing them with opportunities for growth.
Ten year rule
The real breakthrough that broke the impasse came with the publication of a paper by Swedish psychologist Anders Ericsson and his colleagues entitled “The Role of Deliberate Practice in Achieving Outstanding Results.” The study was based on the experience gained by the scientist while working on a project at the American University of Carnegie Mellon, dedicated to studying the characteristics of memory. With the help of William Chase and an anonymous ordinary student, Ericsson conducted an experiment to significantly improve memory skills. The results showed that with the right choice of methodology and sufficient intensity of training, the test subject is able to remember and reproduce up to 80 numbers from memory. Biological characteristics were unrelated to this ability. This discovery was the beginning of a long 30-year journey for Ericsson to promote the concept of talent and convince many doubters of it.
Those who were previously considered gifted turned out to be hard workers, whose main advantage was the ability to persistently and methodically study
Later - in 1991, already at Florida State University - he conducted perhaps his most famous research. The experimental group consisted of students from the violin department of the Berlin Academy of Music. Together with two colleagues, Ericsson tried to determine what factors cause the highest achievements in art. That's what the experiment was about. The students were divided into three groups according to their qualifications. The first group included the best of the best - violinists who were destined for a unique solo career and worldwide recognition. In the second - students whose abilities allowed them to count on places in the most famous orchestras. The third group includes potential practicing teachers. After lengthy and insightful interviews, the researchers found what they were looking for: it turned out that the most extraordinary talents, by the time they turned 20, had more than ten years of playing experience under their belts - an average of about 10 thousand hours of exercises and rehearsals. All without exception. The second group could boast 8 thousand hours, the third - only 4 thousand (again on average). Those who were previously considered gifted turned out to be hard workers, whose main advantage was the ability to study persistently and methodically.
Similar studies were subsequently undertaken more than once: experimental groups were made up of representatives from various spheres of human activity. But the results were unchanged. Thanks to Ericsson's work, the ten-year rule, or the 10,000-hour rule, has reliably come into use among psychologists. As British track and field athlete Mohammed Farah, who won two gold medals at the 2012 Olympic Games in London (including the 10,000 meter race), said in an interview with the BBC, “the secret of success is hard work and determination.”
Musical genius
As an example of a person who is brilliant and gifted (that is, one who demonstrates his talent from early childhood, becoming more and more virtuoso without any special training), they love to cite Mozart. He didn't leave the piano until he was three, wrote his first piece at age five, and toured Europe when he was six.
But look how many interesting things you can learn by looking at his biography a little more closely. Let's take, for starters, his older sister Maria Anna, who played the harpsichord superbly thanks to constant lessons with her father. That is, Mozart heard music from early childhood and saw people constantly practicing a musical instrument. It is not surprising that one day he began to repeat after his sister. Wolfgang Amadeus's father, Leopold, was a prominent musician, composer and teacher, and a very progressive teacher: his methods are very reminiscent of the Suzuki method (it seems so not only to me, but to everyone who is interested in issues of education). He took up his son's musical education the minute he saw his interest, and devoted most of his life to it - with amazing results. There is nothing surprising, however, in this result: with such a foundation, Mozart simply had no choice but to become a genius. And one more thing: some critics argue that Mozart's early works are not that good compared to the more mature ones, which he began writing at the age of 17, a little more than ten years after his debut.
Ping pong champion
Matthew Seed tells a similar story in his bestselling book, The Jump. He became Britain's top ping pong player in 1995, when he was 24. The story is remarkable for at least two things: thousands of hours of practice and a lot of luck. Matthew says that when he was eight years old (the family then lived in Reading), his parents bought a ping-pong table and set it up in the garage. They themselves never played this game, so there is no need to talk about any family tradition. They just had a very large garage - compared to their neighbors, at least. Matthew's first partner was his older brother Andrew. They were so carried away by the game that they did not leave the table for hours, testing each other, training their skills and coming up with new techniques. All these factors, converging at one time in one place, gave Matthew the opportunity to train.
“Even without realizing it, we spent thousands and thousands of endlessly happy hours at the table,” he writes. Luck came in the form of a local school teacher, Mr. Charters, who was responsible for extracurricular activities, including - incredibly, but true - table tennis. He was also one of the best, if not the best, English coach and in this capacity he was in charge of the local ping-pong club, where he invited the Sid brothers to play and train after school, on holidays and weekends. The guys were lucky to be born in a land rich in talent, so they had the opportunity to train not only with local champions, but also with national and even world champions. Andrew managed to win three national junior titles. For Matthew, fate had something special in store for him. It so happened that it was at this very time that the legendary Chen Xinhua - perhaps the best player in the history of ping pong - married a woman from Yorkshire and moved to these parts. He had already finished his career, but when he saw Matthew, he agreed to train him. After this meeting, the young man remained number one in England for many years, becoming Commonwealth champion three times and Olympic champion twice. By his own admission, if he had just been born on another street, none of this would have happened. We are, however, not so much interested in luck as in long years of hard training - as the main component of future success.
Genes and environment
However, you probably already guessed that in the confrontation between nature and nurture, not everything is so simple. The first cloud that eclipsed the rising sun of education supporters was doubts about the fairness of the ten-year rule. It turned out that 4 thousand hours was enough for some, while 22 thousand was not enough for others. More and more such examples were collected, and eventually exceptions began to disprove the rule. It turned out that if you take two people, one of whom has obvious abilities for a particular type of activity, and the other does not, and train them according to the same program, the first will progress much faster than the second. So, it's not just a matter of practice.
Then everything becomes even more confusing - to the point that, at first glance, some theses even contradict each other. Stefan Holm - a Swedish athlete, high jumper - spent many years on grueling training, wanting to bring his technique to perfection. Despite his large physique for his chosen sport, Stefan is a shining example of the ten-year rule: in 2004 he became an Olympic gold medalist. So, education is the key to success? Yes, but not so. How, say, can we explain the phenomenon of Donald Thomas, a player on the basketball team at Lindenwood University, who, without the proper equipment or any significant training, easily cleared the bar of 2 meters 21 centimeters, and completely unexpectedly for himself? That same year he was invited to the Bahamas national team, and in 2007 at the World Championships he beat Stefan Holm in the battle for first place. The secret of Donald's success was the abnormal length of the Achilles tendons, thanks to which he jumped as if on springs: the ligaments themselves pushed the body upward. His story is a clear argument for the superiority of nature. Both athletes were the brightest figures of their time, reaching the top of the sports Olympus. But they got there by different paths.
Reading this, you might think that these two fates are a clear example of the age-old “nature versus nurture” opposition, even in some sense its culmination. But it's not quite like that. The conjunction “or” means that we must choose one thing; we have no right to leave both options. Those who believe in nature consider genes as a kind of blueprint on which personality is then built. Proponents of education, on the contrary, deny the existence of any genetic predisposition. But for some reason neither one nor the other takes into account the fact that genes themselves are able to respond to their environment.
This is what Lino Paso Pampillon and Tamara Cutrin Miljan write in one of the articles of the Enabling Genius project:
Since the end of the Human Genome Project in 2003, scientists have realized that humans have about 20,500 genes (about the same as a mouse) and that the genome is only a small part of the evolving personality. Secondary, epigenetic factors play a much more important role. Epigenetics refers to chemical changes that directly affect the sequence of DNA. Essentially, it determines how genes respond to a particular environment. Researchers often compare genetics to a piano keyboard: the resulting melody depends on which keys we press and how we press them. Some will hear a Mozart concerto, others will hear the discordant scales of a neighbor who has recently started learning to play.
Flow
I cannot end this chapter without telling you about one more aspect of higher achievement that is currently being researched very actively - the so-called flow. Flow is a special state of mind that differs from a fixed genetic set in that it can be turned on and off. Many years ago, my wife Jo paid for me to take a glider course as a birthday gift. I was somewhat familiar with flying machines because as a child I often flew with my father: he was a licensed pilot and belonged to a small amateur club located on the outskirts of Dublin airport. He first took to the skies in his early 20s: during the Second World War, he had the opportunity to pilot Spitfires and Hurricanes - legendary and extraordinary machines in all respects.
Once he was shot down in the sky over Normandy, and he was saved only by a miracle, getting out of the burning plane literally at the last moment. The sky was in his blood, and he perceived every flight as a special and extremely important event. I think it was inherited, so Joe's gift caused a whole storm of emotions in me. Flying on gliders is very different from flying on airplanes - if only in that in case of an error the pilot does not have an engine with which this error could be corrected. Relax your attention a little - and now the device has already deviated from the desired course and is rapidly losing altitude. Get more distracted and you won’t be able to do without a parachute. The instructor taught me on the fly - right during training flights, opening his mouth only when it was really necessary, because thanks to my father, I already had piloting experience. And yet, every time I heard the instructor’s voice, I was distracted. And then one fine day - we were just practicing a turn and approach - he suddenly realized this and threw out a phrase in the middle: “Yes, *** [damn], just fly!” And I flew. He freed me. Gave me complete control. I was extremely concentrated and at the same time relaxed, I became one with my glider. And entering the turn, I practically did not lose any altitude. This is the state of flow. The moment when genius reaches its peak.
The term “flow” was first coined by the American scientist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi in his book Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience, published in 1990, when he was head of the psychology department at the University of Chicago. This is how he describes flow: “Being fully involved in an activity for its own sake. The ego drops away. Time flies. Every action, movement, thought follows from the previous one, as if you were playing jazz. Your whole being is involved, and you use your skills to the limit.” It is the use of all your skills to the limit that makes the state of flow so important in achieving the highest results.”
We have the power to influence who we become. Every moment of our life, every action is controlled to one degree or another by consciousness - and flow has nothing to do with it, because everyone can turn on this mode. There are at least three variables in the “genius equation”: our genetic heritage, our environment and our mental state. We can easily determine two of them ourselves, so an excuse like “I am who I am” is nothing more than vulgar sophism.
From the editor. We received this material by mail with the following cover letter: “Dear editors! On the website of the Scientific Center for Psychological Sciences of the Russian Academy of Medical Sciences there is an illiterate article by Bologov, “The Psychasthenic World of Chekhov,” which casts the Russian genius as a psychopath. I criticized the pseudo-psychiatric fabrications and sent them to the editorial office of the National Center for Mental Health of the Russian Academy of Medical Sciences. Nobody argues with me, because there are well-known psychiatric truths, criteria that the author of the article violated, but the psychiatric slander against Chekhov is not removed. I believe that this is one of the ways to denigrate the Russian world and its geniuses. I am sending my article. Written in language that is understandable to non-professionals.”
It is difficult to say who was superior in Chekhov: the man or the artist. His bright personality represented the most perfect harmonious whole, in which a person cannot be separated from an artist, and an artist from a person.
Plotov M.E. A big heart
On the website of the Scientific Center for Mental Health of the Russian Academy of Medical Sciences (NCPH RAMS) in the section “Illness and Creativity”, among the works of Sikorsky, Lombroso, Jaspers, Freud, as equal, there is an article by P. Bologov “The Psychasthenic World of Chekhov” (http://www .psychiatry.ru/stat/152). I read it, and at the second paragraph - I can’t believe my eyes!
The author writes that in the early 1890s, Chekhov “met and became close to the outstanding Russian psychiatrist V.I. Yakovenko" and that "fellow doctors shocked the humanitarian community by diagnosing Chekhov the man himself... as a psychasthenic psychopath." The author does not say who these “fellow doctors” are, but by placing two sentences side by side, he gives the reader the impression that Yakovenko “participated.”
This somersault attracted my attention, and I read Chekhov’s letters to Yakovenko. Melikhovo is located 18 km from the village of Pokrovskoye-Meshcherskoye, where the zemstvo psychiatric institution was located, the director of which was Yakovenko. Chekhov wrote 7 business letters to Yakovenko with requests for hospitalization of patients, for employment of a medical student who had chosen psychiatry, and asked Yakovenko for advice on outpatient treatment of his former patient. That's all!
Considering Chekhov to be the most harmonious personality among the great Russian writers, I began to look for the criteria on the basis of which the anonymous Cain brothers diagnosed Brother Abel. Alas, P. Bologov does not mention any criteria! Neither about those that were in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, nor about the Gannushkin-Kerbikov criteria, nor about the diagnostic guidelines of ICD-10! He writes that Chekhov himself “clearly defined his mental state as “transitional,” which in modern clinical understanding corresponds to “borderline personality disorder.” Where Chekhov wrote about this, and what criteria he was guided by when doing self-esteem, is unknown. If Bologov believes that Chekhov had a “borderline personality disorder” in the modern psychoanalytic understanding, then he should have indicated what primitive defenses Chekhov used, how his diffuse personality identity manifested itself, and what difficulties he experienced with reality testing (1). But Bologov doesn’t even mention such terms! A conversation about the peculiarities of Chekhov’s personal organization without reference to structural criteria is devoid of psychoanalytic content!
The generally accepted requirements for making a diagnosis of “personality disorder or psychopathy” have been ignored, but fellow doctors, it turns out, “have an opinion”! The damage that anonymous “fellow doctors” cause to the authority of psychiatry and science with pseudoscientific opinions is enormous. It’s one thing to turn post-mortem forensic psychiatric examinations (FPE) from a tool for searching for truth into a tool for class income and selling “expert opinions” to the population, without allowing criticism from colleagues to come within reach of them. It’s another matter to hang an article about Chekhov the psychopath under the roof of the Russian Academy of Medical Sciences! In the first case, only a few are outraged by posthumous psychiatric slander; in the second, millions are outraged. In the first case, forensic psychiatrists, declaring general psychiatrists incompetent, stick their tongues out at them from behind the backs of the judges; in the second, you cannot hide behind the backs of the judges, because “Chekhov’s posthumous PPE” is assessed by colleagues who remember the presumption of mental health and know the generally accepted diagnostic criteria psychopathy and judge competence not on formal grounds, like judges.
Let's look for Chekhov's “psychasthenic psychopath” for “extreme indecisiveness, timidity, a constant tendency to doubt,” difficulty in choosing and “inability to do without outside help.” “Eternal doubts and self-control make the work of a psychasthenic slow and painful,” writes Gannushkin and adds, “A psychasthenic is always not energetic, not active, inactive, he is not a man of action, but a dreamer and dreamer” (2). Lichko believes that demands for a sense of responsibility (first grades of school, exams) represent one of the most sensitive blows to the psychasthenic character. He writes that psychasthenics are prone to developing obsessive-compulsive neurosis and, citing (Janet, 1903), states that “psychasthenia reaches its greatest flowering at the age of 20-40 years” (3).
Let's try to find in Chekhov the features of psychasthenia indicated by the classics of psychiatry. Did she leave “her imperious imprint” on his personality? Did these traits remain stable throughout his life? And the most important thing! - were they expressed to a degree that disrupted adaptation? Totality, stability and maladjustment are the “composition of psychopathy”, Gannushkin’s triad. Without any named criterion, the “composition of psychopathy” disintegrates.
I do not deny the presence of psychasthenic traits in Chekhov to the extent that they are inherent in a mentally healthy person, but I am outraged by the empty posthumous chatter about psychopathy (and, therefore, maladaptation!) of one of the most successful, world-famous Russian writers!
I am not putting an end to it only because I want to show the absurdity and professional illiteracy of the psychiatric slander leveled against Chekhov. Who and why needs to dress up as a psychopath the Russian genius, about whom his contemporaries said: “A normal person and a normal, wonderful writer”? Further, Bunin quotes the words of Zinaida Gippius: “the word “normal” was definitely invented for Chekhov. He also had a “normal” appearance (...) A normal provincial doctor (...) He had subtle powers of observation at his limit - and rude manners, which was also normal. Even his illness was somehow “normal”... and no one would imagine that Chekhov, like Dostoevsky or Prince Myshkin, collapsed in front of his bride in a fit of “sacred” epilepsy, knocking over an expensive vase.” And further Gippius: “Chekhov, by his very integrity, is a wonderful person. It is, of course, close to and necessary for souls who gravitate toward the “norm” and toward the static, but wordless” (4).
For Gippius, the word “normal” was synonymous with “mediocre,” and Chekhov, with his undeniable talent and equally indisputable normality for his contemporaries, destroyed her spontaneous Lombrosianism. She would be glad to find something “painful” in Chekhov, but, alas.
I do not have information about Anton’s behavior in the first grades, but I have extensive, documented data about Anton’s behavior as a teenager.
Alexander Chekhov in 1875 was offended by his father for reading his letters to other relatives, and decided to stop corresponding with him, but then changed his mind: “Anton’s warm and sincere letter made me change my word and decision and write to you (.. .) thank you very much Anton. His letters delight us” (5).
Kurt Schneider called psychopaths people “who themselves suffer from their own abnormality or from whose abnormality society suffers” (6).
From a fifteen-year-old teenager, who with one letter reconciled his twenty-year-old brother with his fifty-year-old father, Schneider would have instantly removed the suspicion of psychopathy: the authority that a fifteen-year-old boy enjoys in the family rules out the inconsistency of his psyche!
At the age of sixteen, Chekhov, along with his fifteen-year-old brother Ivan, remained in Taganrog, and his parents and younger brothers moved to Moscow. Let's see how young Chekhov, remaining the eldest, coped with the “requirements for a sense of responsibility.” These moments, according to Lichko, decompensate psychasthenics.
At the beginning of May 1876, the father writes to his son: “Thank you, Antosha, for... being in charge of the house and going out to collect debts... and for selling half the nest. I’m pleased that you found a third lesson” (5).
Next month: “Your reasoning greatly consoles me. If only all your brothers had such considerations regarding our present situation...” (5).
And here is what parents write to their underage sons in August 1876: “You write that you have no money, but we wrote to send us money to Moscow, until I decide on a place (...) try to sell us something too money is out” (5).
In November 1876, a mother writes to her son: “We received 2 letters from you filled with jokes, and at that time we only had 4 kopecks. both for bread and for light. We were waiting from you, would you send money (...) you haven’t written yet, will you send our property soon, the problem is that and only... Antosha, don’t quarrel with the cook, they are all the same, you respect her and she will good" (5).
Mikhail Chekhov (Anton’s younger brother) recalled: “He sold the few things that remained in Taganrog after his mother’s departure - various jars and saucepans - and sent some crumbs for them, and corresponded with his mother about this. Not recognizing any punctuation marks, his mother wrote letters to him that began like this: “Antosha is on the shelf in the pantry...”, etc., and he joked with her that according to the search there was no Antosha in the pantry on the shelf” (5) .
I’ll finish the story about Chekhov as a teenager with a letter from his parents in January 1877: “We received money from you, twelve rubles in silver, very little (...) Mother expected 20 rubles from you. When I heard that 12 rubles had been sent, I burst into bitter tears” (5).
I can imagine how Lichko would look at a student who mentioned psychopathy in a person who has been supporting his parents since the age of 16! And he collected debts from debtors, and sold the “nest,” and gave lessons, and joked about the unfair reproaches of his parents!
Until his death, Chekhov supported his family, paid off his brothers’ debts and worked, worked, worked, despite tuberculosis of the lungs and intestines, from which he died at forty-four, having written 30 volumes of essays and letters. Bunin writes: “...Chekhov’s favorite themes were touched upon - that one must work “tirelessly” and be truthful and simple in work to the point of asceticism...” (4).
Even Winnie the Pooh would say: “This is some kind of wrong psychopath!”
But let’s assume that Chekhov’s “psychasthenia” did not “bloom” in adolescence. Let's look at him at the age of 23.
In 1883, 5th year students of the Faculty of Medicine at Moscow University took again all the exams and tests that they had already passed earlier in the 1st-5th years. All over again! The number reached 75. Chekhov passed his last exam on December 20 (5)!
In addition, Chekhov in 1883 published (from those that have come down to us) 107 stories and humoresques. This is page 301 of volume 2 of his PSS! Among them are “Death of an Official”, “Albion’s Daughter”, “Swedish Match”, “Thick and Thin”, etc. I’m not talking about quality - although much of what was written in 1883 was translated into foreign languages during Chekhov’s lifetime and to this day day is considered world masterpieces - I'm talking about quantity!
Total: in 1883, Chekhov passed 75 exams and tests, wrote 107 stories and humorous jokes (8-10 per month), made decisions about which newspaper or magazine to send them to (he worked in 7 editions!), ran around editorial offices and to trains, sending stories, went to the post office, receiving fees, gave advice to brothers, was the breadwinner in the family, an arbitrator and a peacemaker.
If this is a manifestation of “inactivity”, “indecisiveness”, then what then are “activity” and “decisiveness”?
The ability to work or sthenicity, the determination of Chekhov, already suffering from tuberculosis, is surprising. Bunin was amazed “how he could write “A Boring Story”, “The Princess”, “On the Road”, “Cold Blood”, “Tina”, “Chorus Girl”, “Typhus” before the age of thirty... In addition to his artistic talent, he was amazed by in all these stories there is a knowledge of life, a deep penetration into the human soul at such a young age” (4). The psychiatrist must see behind the variety of painted life pictures the variety of behavior scenarios that are understandable to Chekhov and available in his potential. How different this is from the narrow-mindedness, narrow-mindedness, and inflexibility of a psychopath who has been making the same mistake all his life!
In preparation for his trip to Sakhalin, Chekhov went to St. Petersburg to study literature about Sakhalin and “did as much in one month as my young friends could not do in a whole year” (7). Thanks to his trip, several orphanages were opened on Sakhalin. Chekhov was cold, wet and “starving like a dog” during the trip. I filled my belly with bread so as not to dream of turbot, asparagus, etc. I even dreamed about buckwheat porridge. I dreamed for hours at a time” (7). This is from a letter to A.S. Suvorin dated May 20, 1890, and he wrote to his brother Alexander on June 5, 1890: “I fought with river floods, with cold, with incessant mud, with hunger, with the desire to sleep... Such sensations that in Moscow are not possible in a million you will experience. You should go to Siberia! Ask the prosecutors to send you here” (7). I explain to non-psychiatrists that hunger, cold, insomnia, hard physical work are asthenic factors that psychasthenics avoid and do not joke about. And Chekhov, sick with tuberculosis, is freezing, hungry, joking, enjoying nature and writing “I am pleased and thank God that he gave me the strength and opportunity to embark on this journey” (letter to N.A. Leikin dated June 5, 1890) (7) .
Perhaps Dr. Chekhov, who never took bribes, seems like a “psychopath” to a mercantile-oriented psychiatrist. Such a psychiatrist reads Chekhov’s letter to A.S. with surprise. Suvorin dated December 23, 1888 about how Chekhov, who lived from his literary earnings, sat down to write a fairy tale, but “a woman appeared and dragged me... to the poet Palmin, who in a drunken state fell and broke his forehead to the bone. I fiddled with him, drunk, for an hour and a half or two, got tired, stank of iodoform, got angry and returned home tired” (8). Which means I didn’t write anything and didn’t earn anything! In the same letter, Chekhov writes that he spends money on cab drivers for the sake of the sick, who do not give him a penny! The return of two thousand rubles (a large sum), which, at Levitan’s request, was sent to Chekhov (donated) by millionaire S.T. without a bill of exchange. Morozov, in our age seems to be the height of madness (9). Not everyone understood Chekhov’s trip to Sakhalin (and not to Paris!) at his own expense and free work there even then.
Chekhov in a letter to A.S. Suvorin on March 9, 1890 explained the reason as follows: “Besides, I believe that a trip is continuous six-month work, physical and mental, and for me this is necessary, since I am a crest and have already become lazy. You need to train yourself. Let my trip be a trifle, stubbornness, a whim, but think and tell me, what will I lose if I go? Time? Money? Will I experience hardship? My time is worth nothing, I never have money anyway, as for hardships, I will ride horses for 25-30 days, no more, but the rest of the time I will sit on the deck of a ship or in a room and will continuously bombard you letters. Let the trip give me absolutely nothing, but is it really possible that during the whole trip such 2-3 days will not happen that I will remember with delight or with bitterness all my life? Etc., etc. That’s it, my sir. All this is unconvincing, but you write just as unconvincingly” (7).
I emphasize: neither society nor Chekhov himself suffered from his “abnormality.” Like all geniuses, Chekhov gave to those around him more than he received, “but no one ever heard him complain about fate...” (4).
From Chekhov's letters we move on to the memories of his contemporaries about him. None of them describes Chekhov as an anomalous personality (10)!
Teacher Plotov M.E., Chekhov’s neighbor in Melikhov, considers him a bright, harmonious person and substantiates his opinion with examples (10).
Professor G.I. Rossolimo, a classmate and friend of Chekhov, one of the organizers of the Society of Neuropathologists and Psychiatrists, founder and editor of the journal “Neurology and Psychiatry”, who knew Chekhov for twenty years, writes: “He had a highly sympathetic attitude towards his comrades, extreme goodwill towards his course comrades: Once he got together and became friends, he became closer and closer and was invariably strong in his feelings, and his friends answered him in the same way... his sense of comradeship spread far beyond the circle of fellow countrymen and friends.” Rossolimo confirms his opinion about Chekhov with a story about how, sixteen years after finishing the course, a classmate of Chekhov’s, whom he did not even know, fell ill with mental illness. Having learned that the family of a classmate was left without funds, Chekhov sent them money. “Needless to say that for many years, in all his meetings with his gymnasium comrades, I only saw the most touching attention and love for him on their part,” writes Grigory Ivanovich (10).
I note that on July 21, 1910, Rossolimo diagnosed Sofya Andreevna Tolstoy: “Degenerate double constitution: paranoid and hysterical, with a predominance of the first. Currently there is an episodic exacerbation” (11). That is, Rossolimo assessed the personal characteristics of patients, even illustrious ones. Therefore, his memories of Chekhov can also be read as a diagnostic conclusion.
Bunin became close to Chekhov and his family in 1899. He lived in a Yalta house with Chekhov's mother and sister, even in the absence of the owner. Chekhov's mother told Bunin a lot about Antosha. He writes: “For this complex and deep soul to become clear, it is necessary for some very great and very versatile person to write a book of the life and work of this “incomparable,” as Tolstoy put it, artist. For now, I testify with all my soul to one thing: he was a man of rare spiritual nobility, good manners and grace in the best sense of these words, gentleness and delicacy with extraordinary sincerity and simplicity, sensitivity and tenderness with rare truthfulness.
To be truthful and natural, while remaining captivating at the same time, means to be of extraordinary beauty, integrity and strength. And I have often spoken here about Chekhov’s calmness precisely because his calmness seems to me to indicate the rare strength of his nature” (4).
Alas, when a small and not versatile person, bruised by psychiatric knowledge, writes an article about Chekhov, the image of a blind man holding an elephant by the tail arises involuntarily.
Bunin, who remembered Chekhov for almost fifty years, gave many details about him, but never finished his memories. Gorky, “in contrast to the vulgarity of graveside tongue-lashers,” tried to “show Chekhov without foil - pure, clear, sweet, smart” (4).
Grigorovich said about the writer of little talent, who was compared to Chekhov:
Yes, he is not worthy to kiss the mark of that flea that bites Chekhov (10).
He would have said something harsher and stronger about Bologov and the Research Center for Medical Sciences of the Russian Academy of Medical Sciences, who published an article about Chekhov with diagnostic conclusions that do not meet the requirements for a student’s medical history. There are scientific and moral grounds for this.
The lack of understanding of Chekhov’s personality and the lack of understanding of the realities of the late 19th century in Bologov’s article is blatant. Matching the ridiculous diagnosis! I would call the “life of Chekhov in a few words” that he described: “The life of Chekhov through the eyes of a depressive patient.” Whether it happened by chance or intentionally, Bologov’s article is a vivid example of “selective attention to negative information and screening out positive information” (12).
If you compare the paragraph below with Chekhov’s real life, then Beck’s cognitive distortions - dramatization, discrediting positive aspects, emotional argumentation, labeling, mental filter, tunnel vision (12) - will be noticed even by a non-psychiatrist.
Bologov writes about Chekhov’s life: “the wilderness of southern Russia, the city of Taganrog, the father is the owner of a shop, convinced of several simple things: one must fear God, keep the family in strictness, flog children; brothers (two would later become chronic alcoholics), sister, mother, squalor of provincial philistinism, secondary school, high school lessons, departure to Moscow, university, poverty, short humorous stories in bad magazines, doctoral diploma, then literary fame and material security , short heyday, trip to Sakhalin, then the onset of illness, Melikhovo, Yalta, slow dying, marriage to O.L. Knipper four years before his death, Germany, Badenweiler, “Ich Sterbe”, death.”
In reality, Chekhov's life was brighter, more successful, more enviable than many! Almost 20 years (half of my adult life) of fame. Already at the age of twenty-three, Leskov “anointed him like Samuel David” (4), and at twenty-six, Grigorovich, a classmate and friend of Dostoevsky, wrote: “... you have real talent, a talent that pushes you far from the circle of writers new generation" (9). Next: the Pushkin Prize, election to honorary academicians, respect and love of masters of Russian and world culture. Putting Tchaikovsky in second place after Tolstoy, Chekhov received from him at the age of twenty-nine a photograph with the inscription: “A.P. Chekhov from an ardent admirer" (13). In response he writes: “I am sending you a photograph and books, and I would even send you the sun if it belonged to me” (13). Loving and respecting Tolstoy, placing him at an unattainable height, on March 30, 1899, he received a letter from Tolstoy’s daughter, Countess Tatyana Lvovna with the words: “Your “Darling” is lovely! My father read it aloud four evenings in a row and says that he became wiser from this thing.” Neither from mine, nor from yours, dear reader, “fruits of the mind” did the genius of world literature, Lev Nikolaevich Tolstoy, grow wiser. Few of Chekhov's contemporaries could boast of such a letter. Tolstoy - “Chekhov is Pushkin in prose” - even schoolchildren know.
"My God! A whole minute of bliss! But is this not enough even for the rest of a person’s life?..,” another graphomaniac and plagiarist will exclaim, looking at Chekhov’s glory.
“The wilderness of southern Russia is some kind of wrong wilderness!” - the naive and disinterested Winnie the Pooh will say.
Taganrog tradesman Anton Chekhov was deciding which university he should attend - Zurich or Moscow. Brother Alexander recommended to Moskovsky because lectures there are given in Russian, and not in German (5). In 1879, the Taganrog City Duma: “... established 10 scholarships for the education of young people in higher educational institutions. By decision of a special commission, Moscow University student Anton Chekhov was selected as a scholarship recipient for one of these scholarships. Conveying at the same time one hundred rubles, following the third from August 1 to December 1, the City Council has the honor to humbly ask you, dear sir, to give them to the student Anton Chekhov” (5). This is a letter to the rector's office. The cook at that time received 5 rubles a month, and the student Chekhov received 25, like a policeman.
Bologov presented Chekhov’s family as a bunch of provincial degenerates: primitiveness, “flogging,” “alcoholism,” “squalor.”
Chekhov had four brothers and a sister. Alexander, Mikhail and Maria received higher education in Moscow. Nikolai did not graduate from the School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture, but worked as an artist, Ivan - as a teacher. Mikhail Chekhov, the son of his brother Alexander (“a chronic alcoholic”), became “a Russian and American dramatic actor, a talented director and teacher” (Wikipedia).
Bologov’s phrase - “short humorous stories in bad magazines” - again distorts reality! Yes, Chekhov wrote short stories, but in metropolitan magazines! You can call “Fragments” and “Alarm Clock” bad, but from these “bad Russian magazines” Chekhov’s stories were instantly fished out, translated and reprinted in “good European” ones! Yes, Chekhov was advised to sit down to a story or novel, but he brought a short story, a “hundred-line trifle” to the level of world masterpieces!
Bologov's article is a distorting mirror that reflects fragments of Chekhov's life. For example, the lie about “Chekhov’s frequent mentions in letters about his health, or rather, ill health,” which, according to Bologov, “turn out to be evidence of hypochondriacal and somatovegetative disorders typical of psychasthenia, which appeared in Chekhov long before consumption.”
Bunin, who knew Chekhov, asks: “Who, for example, heard complaints from him?” Hypochondriacs constantly complain and are examined. Rossolimo wrote about Chekhov’s attitude towards his illness: “... treated it extremely frivolously, to say the least, and tried to explain its various manifestations in his own way” (10). Chekhov's internal picture of the disease was harmonious with elements of denial of the disease and escape to work. He confirmed this with a trip to Sakhalin, and not to clinics in Europe! Echoing Rossolimo’s words, Bunin gives Chekhov’s “mental status” (as psychiatry requires!) descriptively: “Patients love their privileged position: often the strongest of them, almost with pleasure, torment those around them with angry, bitter, incessant conversations about their illness; but truly the courage with which Chekhov suffered and died was amazing! Even in the days of his heaviest suffering, often no one suspected it.
Are you feeling unwell, Antosha? - his mother or sister will ask, seeing that he is sitting in a chair with his eyes closed.
To me? - he will calmly answer, opening his eyes, so clear and meek without pince-nez. - There is nothing. My head hurts a little” (4).
Also Bunin: “...there is a lot, a lot of pitiful, petty, neurasthenic sensitivity in writers. But how far all this is from such a big and strong man as Chekhov!” (4).
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