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._
And so on. This is what cultured people are like. In order to be cultured
and not to stand below the level of your surroundings it is not enough to
have read “The Pickwick Papers” and learnt a monologue from “Faust.” ...
What is needed is constant work, day and night, constant reading, study,
will.... Every hour is precious for it.... Come to us, smash the vodka
bottle, lie down and read.... Turgenev, if you like, whom you have not
read.
You must drop your vanity, you are not a child ... you will soon be thirty.
It is time!