alt.hn

8/14/2026 at 11:53:43 PM

Anton Chekhov played at love most of his life

 https://commonreader.wustl.edu/winning-and-losing-at-the-great-game-of-intimacy/

by lermontov

8/16/2026 at 7:23:53 PM

Chekhov had such an influence on me as a young, hyper-insecure teen. Chekhov's craft is powerful and widely taught but it's his thematic elements that I really loved. he made a habit of setting up a deeply unlikeable character in the first act, slowly revealing their tragedies and traumas that led them to their insecurity, and the selective love they put into the world so by the final act you're weeping for someone who you scoffed at at first impression. for someone who was so convinced that people disliked or hated him, it was a real balm to know that there were those advocating for the strongest form of compassion as the default mode and not just an occasional, extraordinary act

by paimapi

8/16/2026 at 5:16:47 PM

Well, I can only quote Pushkin's letter to Vyazemsky (used Google AI to translate; in the letter Pushkin wrote about Lord Byron's lost personal memoirs):

"The crowd greedily reads confessions, memoirs, etc., because in its baseness it rejoices at the humiliation of the high, the weaknesses of the mighty. At the discovery of every vice it is in raptures: 'He is small like us, he is vile like us!' You lie, you scoundrels! He may be small and vile—but not like you—differently!"

by Mikhail_Edoshin

8/16/2026 at 6:22:25 PM

It is a funny quote, and probably true. But I imagine that few people who are willing to read a serious article about Anton Chekhov these days actually have much interest in rejoicing in seeing his weaknesses.

by hax0ron3

8/16/2026 at 8:20:13 PM

I think it is important to separate the artist's life from their works of art.Their lives are in some way immaterial to the enjoyment of their work, which even they themselves may not fully comprehend.

Also life is messy:

“You know how you’re always trying to get things to come out perfect in art because it’s real difficult in life"

Woody Allen in Annie Hall

by grokcodec

8/16/2026 at 9:57:30 PM

Unfortunately, a lot of people don't seem to think that way. Which is made more unfortunate by targeted character assassination attempts intended to discredit everything a person has said. Not saying that is what's going on here at all, but it's always at the top of my mind when I see something that looks like a hit piece: "What's the intent of the authors?"

by aliasxneo

8/17/2026 at 5:00:52 AM

A lot of self described artists seem to believe that the artist is the entire value of works of art. At least, that’s what they’ve claimed since AI hit the scene. I can’t tell if they’ve always felt that way or if they adopted it in order to discredit the use of AI - “if it has no artist then it has no value.”

by Gagarin1917

8/17/2026 at 6:56:45 AM

>if it has no artist then it has no value.

It is more like, "If no human before me has encountered it and thought it worth writing down, I, another human, don't want to take chances with reading it".

by qsera

8/17/2026 at 4:54:21 AM

Marshall McLuhan: I heard what you were saying! You know nothing of my work! You mean my whole fallacy is wrong. How you got to teach a course in anything is totally amazing!

Alvy Singer: Boy, if life were only like this!

by m463

8/16/2026 at 7:20:38 PM

Do watch Romance with a double bass (1975) [0]. Wonderful, not very well-known short film adaptation of a Chekhov story featuring John Cleese.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t1U42izMOjs

by markvdb

8/17/2026 at 6:10:57 AM

Thanks for sharing! Will definitely watch.

by jvican

8/16/2026 at 10:47:13 PM

I am the webmaster for WASHU (rebranding from WUSTL). Happy to see one of those sites on the front page of HN without getting as much as an alert!

(Hosting hundreds of WordPress sites at scale has its challenges).

by blakeashleyjr

8/17/2026 at 12:19:45 AM

go bears!

by jason_zig

8/17/2026 at 12:22:51 AM

Chekhov's plays more than his stories are instructive here. His masterwork, The Cherry Orchard turns in large part on the intentions of Lophahkin the merchant upstart and whether he loves Varya who is attached to a higher social eshelon. In the scene where Lopahkin, is supposed to propose to Varya, he stalls until he is called away, a reflection of the playwright's and the character's ambivalence towards romantic love. In the early one act The Bear, the Widow claims to be "in morning for my life" and has vowed never again to marry. Within the span of 45 minutes she has surrendered to the Bear who has come to her door.

by Arturo525

8/16/2026 at 10:29:46 PM

As a person, unfortunately accursed with an ability to read Chekhov in original, I just say that you should take Chekhov and Gogol and leave tolstoevsky at it's honorary doorstop place.

Also, communist-era science fiction in the accursed language reads much better than anything written in English in the same period (and beyond), if only for the fact that it doesn't suffer from the apocalyptic framing and general doom and gloom. Also, whoever posted the starfish here a few weeks ago, thanks, I wish I could unread it.

by Muromec

8/17/2026 at 7:40:56 AM

>As a person, unfortunately accursed with an ability to read Chekhov in original

I'd argue that this is one of the better gifts life has given me, don't be too harsh on yourself.

by vovavili

8/17/2026 at 4:59:35 AM

You liked “Roadside Picnic” by the Strugatsky brothers, I take it…

by shrubble

8/17/2026 at 2:53:57 AM

Which accursed language? Didn’t you just write that you can’t read them in the originals?

by dron57

8/17/2026 at 3:46:36 AM

They are someone who lets present day politics dictate their whole life. They probably don't think German is an accursed language and wouldn't despair at reading Faust in the original. Neither would they think twice about reading Hemingway in the original - despite Hiroshima and Nagasaki. They only get outraged by $latest_conflict.

by RussianBot9580

8/18/2026 at 2:30:24 AM

Sounds like Russian humor. Family calls it the black speech of Mordor because of the looks you get speaking it in public here.

by callistocodes

8/17/2026 at 3:20:56 AM

I can read originals too. And I did. And I think I liked Chekhov at some point in my life. But now seeing what people who grew up on this literature are up to, what their morals really sums up to leaves me no desire to ever touch it again

by txzl

8/17/2026 at 4:45:58 AM

Thank you so much for this comment. I’m a part of the nation who suffers a lot from this, and never thought it would be happening in 21st century

by mehal

8/17/2026 at 4:44:02 PM

Why "accursed"? Because of the special military operation?

by stasomatic

8/17/2026 at 4:52:54 AM

Reading Chekhov's 'Ionych' really feels like it strikes something hard, his ability to find these feelings in words and put them in the "Russian pragma[tism]" is a just so.

by class-ab

8/16/2026 at 8:50:24 PM

Now I'm just wondering if wustl is still running any excellent FTP servers.

by drummojg

8/16/2026 at 6:22:35 PM

[flagged]

by ekjhgkejhgk

8/17/2026 at 12:40:39 AM

I thought this was about Anton Yelchin. RIP.

by brcmthrowaway