… sau cum nici dracu nu o sa citeasca acest post care pare elitisto-culturalo-inchipuit.

dar nu e:)

*
in biografia lui Raymond Carver ( A writer’s life) am gasit urmatorul motto:

It is not necessary to portray many characters. The center of gravity should be in two persons: him and her.

Anton Cehov catre Alexander Cehov, 10 mai 1886

am gugalit cehov letters si am ajuns la ceva tres tres simpa: corespondenta cu fratii, unchiul si alti prieteni.
*

iata 2 fragmente dintr-o scrisoare catre fratele lui, Nicolai:

MOSCOW, 1886.

… 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.

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

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 therefor pay their debts.

sunt 8 puncte pe ordinea explicativa, iar scrisoarea se incheie cu “You must drop your vanity, you are not a child … you will soon be thirty. It is time!”

Letters of Anton Chekhov to his family and friends poate fi citita integral aici

later edit: (dupa ce am parcurs toate scrisorile) fragmentul meu preferat

Her eldest daughter, a woman doctor—the pride of the whole family and “a saint” as the peasants call her—really is remarkable. She has a tumour on the brain, and in consequence of it she is totally blind, has epileptic fits and constant headaches. She knows what awaits her, and stoically with amazing coolness speaks of her approaching death. In the course of my medical practice I have grown used to seeing people who were soon going to die, and I have always felt strange when people whose death was at hand talked, smiled, or wept in my presence; but here, when I see on the verandah this blind woman who laughs, jokes, or hears my stories read to her, what begins to seem strange to me is not that she is dying, but that we do not feel our own death, and write stories as though we were never going to die.