On The Ills Of Smoking by Daniil Kharms

You should quit smoking in order to boast of your will power.

It would be nice, not having smoked for a week and having acquired confidence in yourself that you will be able to hold back from smoking, to come into the company of Lipavsky, Oleinikov, and Zabolotsky, so that they would notice on their own that all evening you haven’t been smoking.

And when they ask, “Why aren’t you smoking?” you would answer, concealing the frightful boasting inside you, “I quit smoking.”

A great man must not smoke.

It is good and useful to employ the fault of boastfulness to rid yourself of the fault of smoking.

The love of wine, gluttony, and boastfulness are lesser faults than smoking.

A man who smokes is never at the height of his circumstance, and a smoking woman is capable of just about anything. And so, comrades, let us quit smoking.

 

by Даниил Иванович Хармс (Daniil Ivanovich Kharms)

a.k.a. Даниил Иванович Ювачёв (Daniil Ivanovich Yuvachov)

(1933)

translated by Matvei Yankelevich

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Fun facts: Lipavsky refers to Leonid Lipavsky, Oleinikov to Nikolay Oleynikov, and Zabolotsky to Nikolay Zabolotsky.

Zabolotsky was part of OBERIU (ОБэРИу) a short-lived avant-garde collective of Russian Futurist writers, musicians, and artists in the 1920s and 1930s. The group coalesced in the context of the “intense centralization of Soviet Culture” and the decline of the avant garde culture of Leningrad, as “leftist” groups were becoming increasingly marginalized.

Lipavsky and Oleynikov belonged to a later grouping, which had no public outlet, is generally called the “chinari” (i.e. “the titled ones”) group in Russian literary scholarship, though it is uncertain that they ever formalized a name for the group, nor that they called themselves “chinari” with any consistency. Thus, the names “OBERIU” and “chinari” are somewhat interchangeable in the scholarship. The borders between the two groups are (and were) permeable, and the only basic continuity is the presence of Kharms and Alexander Vvedensky.

Pity The Nation by Kahlil Gibran

My friends and my road-fellows, pity the nation

that is full of beliefs and empty of religion.

“Pity the nation that wears a cloth it does not weave…

eats bread it does not harvest…

and drinks a wine that flows not from its own winepress.

 

“Pity the nation that acclaims the bully as a hero,

and that deems the glittering conqueror bountiful.

 

“Pity the nation that raises not its voice save when it

walks in a funeral, boasts not except among its ruins,

and will rebel not save when its neck is laid between

the sword and the block.

 

“Pity the nation whose statesman is a fox, whose

philosopher is a juggler, and whose art is the art of

patching and mimicking.

 

“Pity the nation that welcomes its new ruler with

trumpetings, and farewells him with hooting, only to

welcome another with trumpeting again.

 

“Pity the nation divided into fragments, each fragment

deeming itself a nation.”

 

by Kahlil Gibran

(1883-1931), Lebanon

Why People ‘+1’ Your Achievements During Conversations

You know the type. You are having a conversation and they come along with the express intent of one upping anyone else in the conversation.

They’ve been there and done more than you. No matter how much you did they had done that little bit extra which was beyond you or you had been ignorant of at the time. Been there, done that, got the t-shirt is their mantra. They thought nothing of it, as if it were a stroll in the park, and had totally forgotten about it until you mentioned it just now. It was that mundane an event to them though it was something you had felt achievement in until a moment ago.

But why do they do this? Where did this habit come from?

At least in Britain, and places later influenced by it, we have the traditions of the Celtic culture to blame. Warriors would take part in boasting contests while sharing a drink. You would make as big a boast as you could with the aim of outdoing all the others’ claims in order to gain prestige. Much of the entertainment came from how ridiculous and unachievable some of these claimed would get. But you could never call someone a liar as that was completely inappropriate during this communal event. As long as you could back up your boast e.g. I killed 20 Romans then it was okay and if you died in the effort of doing this then it was considered an honourable death and no one would dare call such a brave man a liar or fool as he had led, what for them, was a good warrior life (plus you were going to Annwn/the otherworld which was like the Norse Valhalla but more peaceful). If however you lived and were proven wrong in your claims then you were ripe to be humiliated. Admittedly there is more to it but that is the basic origin of it and it should be remembered that this was part of the traditions and culture of the Celts and though not as easily recognised as things like ‘the green man’ or the Eisteddfod it is part of the heritage of Celtic life which remained ingrained in the later Christianised Britons.

So how does this tradition of boasting continued into modern life? The most obvious example can be seen in the ‘Four Yorkshire Men’ sketch by Monty Python showing how this tradition of boasting parties where you one up your contemporaries is still well and alive in the modern era.

So when you encounter someone ‘+1ing’ your conversation just remember it might be part of their cultural heritage!
(They are still being incredibly rude though…)