Letter Eleven
About careerism
"Letters about the good and the beautiful"
A person develops from the first day of his birth. He is looking to the future. He learns, learns to set new tasks for himself, without even realizing it. And how quickly he masters his position in life. He already knows how to hold a spoon and pronounce the first words.
Then he also studies as a boy and a young man.
And the time has come to apply your knowledge, to achieve what you aspired to. Maturity. We have to live in reality...
But the acceleration persists, and now, instead of teaching, the time comes for many to master the position in life. The movement goes by inertia. A person is constantly striving towards the future, and the future is no longer in real knowledge, not in mastering the skill, but in arranging oneself in an advantageous position. The content, the original content, is lost. The present time does not come, there is still an empty aspiration to the future. This is careerism. Inner restlessness that makes a person unhappy personally and unbearable for others.
Letter 12
The person must be intelligent
A person must be intelligent! And if his profession does not require intelligence? And if he could not get an education: so there were circumstances? And if environment does not allow? And if intelligence makes him a "black sheep" among his colleagues, friends, relatives, will it simply interfere with his rapprochement with other people?
No, no and NO! Intelligence is needed under all circumstances. It is necessary both for others and for the person himself.
This is very, very important, and above all, in order to live happily and for a long time - yes, for a long time! For intelligence is equal to moral health, and health is necessary in order to live long - not only physically, but also mentally. In one old book it says: "Honor your father and your mother, and you will live long on earth." This applies both to the whole people and to the individual. This is wise.
But first of all, let's define what intelligence is, and then why it is connected with the commandment of longevity.
Many people think: an intelligent person is one who has read a lot, received a good education(and even predominantly humanitarian), traveled a lot, knows several languages.
Meanwhile, you can have all this and be unintelligent, and you can not possess any of this to a large extent, but still be an internally intelligent person.
Education should not be confused with intelligence. Education lives on the old content, intelligence lives on the creation of the new and the awareness of the old as new.
More than that ... Deprive a truly intelligent person of all his knowledge, education, deprive him of his very memory. Let him forget everything in the world, he will not know the classics of literature, he will not remember the greatest works of art, he will forget the most important historical events, but if with all this he retains a susceptibility to intellectual values, a love of acquiring knowledge, an interest in history, an aesthetic flair, he can distinguish a real work of art from a crude "thing" made only to surprise, if he can admire the beauty of nature, understand the character and individuality of another person, to enter into his position, and having understood another person, to help him, will not show rudeness, indifference, gloating, envy, but will appreciate the other if he shows respect for the culture of the past, skills well-mannered person, responsibility in solving moral issues, the richness and accuracy of his language - spoken and written - this is what an intelligent person will be.
Intelligence is not only in knowledge, but in the ability to understand another. It manifests itself in a thousand and a thousand little things: in the ability to argue respectfully, to behave modestly at the table, in the ability to imperceptibly (precisely imperceptibly) help another, to protect nature, not to litter around oneself - not to litter with cigarette butts or swearing, bad ideas (this is also garbage, and what else!)
The Likhachev family, Dmitry - in the center, 1929. © D. Baltermants
I knew peasants in the Russian North who were truly intelligent. They observed amazing cleanliness in their homes, knew how to appreciate good songs, knew how to tell “by-life” (that is, what happened to them or others), lived an orderly life, were hospitable and friendly, treated with understanding both other people’s grief and someone else's joy.
Intelligence is the ability to understand, to perceive, it is a tolerant attitude towards the world and towards people.
Intelligence must be developed in oneself, trained - mental strength is trained, as physical ones are also trained. And training is possible and necessary in any conditions.
That the training of physical strength contributes to longevity - this is understandable. Much less people understand that for longevity, the training of spiritual and spiritual forces is also necessary.
The fact is that a vicious and evil reaction to the environment, rudeness and misunderstanding of others is a sign of mental and spiritual weakness, human inability to live ... Pushing in a crowded bus - a weak and nervous person, exhausted, reacting incorrectly to everything. Quarrels with neighbors - also a person who does not know how to live, deaf mentally. Aesthetically unreceptive is also an unhappy person. He who does not know how to understand another person, attributing only evil intentions to him, always taking offense at others - this is also a person who impoverishes his life and interferes with the lives of others. Mental weakness leads to physical weakness. I am not a doctor, but I am convinced of this. Years of experience convinced me of this.
Friendliness and kindness make a person not only physically healthy, but also beautiful. Yes, it's beautiful.
The face of a person, distorted by anger, becomes ugly, and the movements of an evil person are devoid of grace - not deliberate grace, but natural, which is much more expensive.
The social duty of a person is to be intelligent. This is a duty to yourself as well. This is the guarantee of his personal happiness and the "aura of goodwill" around him and towards him (that is, addressed to him).
Everything I talk about with young readers in this book is a call to intelligence, to physical and moral health, to the beauty of health. Let us be long-lived, as people and as a people! And the veneration of the father and mother should be understood broadly - as the veneration of all our best in the past, in the past, which is the father and mother of our modernity, the great modernity, to belong to which is great happiness.
Dmitry Likhachev, 1989, © D. Baltermants
letter twenty two
Love to read!
Each person is obliged (I emphasize - is obliged) to take care of his intellectual development. This is his duty to the society in which he lives and to himself.
The main (but, of course, not the only) way of one's intellectual development is reading.
Reading should not be random. This is a huge waste of time, and time is the greatest value that cannot be wasted on trifles. You should read according to the program, of course, not strictly following it, moving away from it where there are additional interests for the reader. However, with all the deviations from the original program, it is necessary to draw up a new one for yourself, taking into account the new interests that have appeared.
Reading, in order to be effective, must interest the reader. Interest in reading in general or in certain branches of culture must be developed in oneself. Interest can be largely the result of self-education.
It is not so easy to compose reading programs for yourself, and this must be done with the advice of knowledgeable people, with the existing reference books of various types.
The danger of reading is the development (conscious or unconscious) in oneself of a tendency to "diagonal" viewing of texts or to various types of high-speed reading methods.
Speed reading creates the appearance of knowledge. It can be allowed only in certain types of professions, being careful not to create in oneself the habit of speed reading, it leads to a disease of attention.
Have you noticed what a great impression those works of literature that are read in a calm, unhurried and unhurried environment, for example, on vacation or in case of some not very complicated and not distracting illness, make?
“Teaching is difficult when we do not know how to find joy in it. It is necessary to choose forms of recreation and entertainment that are smart, able to teach something.
"Disinterested", but interesting reading - that's what makes you love literature and what broadens a person's horizons.
Why is TV now partially replacing the book? Yes, because the TV makes you slowly watch some kind of program, sit back comfortably so that nothing bothers you, it distracts you from worries, it dictates to you how to watch and what to watch. But try to choose a book to your liking, take a break from everything in the world for a while, sit comfortably with a book, and you will understand that there are many books that you cannot live without, which are more important and interesting than many programs. I'm not saying stop watching TV. But I say: look with a choice. Spend your time on something that is worthy of this waste. Read more and read with the greatest choice. Decide for yourself your choice, in accordance with the role that your chosen book has acquired in the history of human culture in order to become a classic. This means that there is something significant in it. Or maybe this essential for the culture of mankind will be essential for you?
A classic is one that has stood the test of time. You won't waste your time with it. But the classics cannot answer all the questions of today. Therefore, one must read contemporary literature. Don't just jump on every trendy book. Don't be fussy. Vanity causes a person to recklessly spend the largest and most precious capital that he possesses - his time.
letter twenty-six
Learn to learn!
We are entering an age in which education, knowledge, professional skills will play a decisive role in the fate of a person. Without knowledge, by the way, which is becoming more and more complicated, it will simply be impossible to work, to be useful. For physical labor will be taken over by machines, robots. Even calculations will be done by computers, as well as drawings, calculations, reports, planning, etc. Man will bring in new ideas, think about things that a machine cannot think of. And for this, the general intelligence of a person, his ability to create something new and, of course, moral responsibility, which a machine cannot bear in any way, will be needed more and more. Ethics, simple in previous ages, will become infinitely more complex in the age of science. It is clear. This means that a person will face the hardest and most difficult task of being not just a person, but a man of science, a person morally responsible for everything that happens in the age of machines and robots. General education can create a man of the future, a creative man, the creator of everything new and morally responsible for everything that will be created.
Teaching is what a young person needs now from a very young age. You must always learn. Until the end of his life, not only taught, but also studied all the major scientists. If you stop learning, you won't be able to teach. For knowledge is growing and becoming more complex. At the same time, it must be remembered that the most favorable time for learning is youth. It is in youth, in childhood, in adolescence, in youth, that the human mind is most receptive. Receptive to the study of languages (which is extremely important), to mathematics, to the assimilation of simple knowledge and aesthetic development, standing next to moral development and partly stimulating it.
Know how not to waste time on trifles, on "rest", which sometimes tires more than the hardest work, do not fill your bright mind with muddy streams of stupid and aimless "information". Take care of yourself for learning, for acquiring knowledge and skills that you will master easily and quickly only in your youth.
And here I hear a heavy sigh young man: what a boring life you offer our youth! Only study. And where is the rest, entertainment? What are we not to rejoice at?
No. The acquisition of skills and knowledge is the same sport. Teaching is difficult when we do not know how to find joy in it. We must love to study and choose smart forms of recreation and entertainment that can also teach something, develop in us some abilities that will be needed in life.
What if you don't like studying? That cannot be. This means that you simply did not discover the joy that the acquisition of knowledge and skills brings to a child, a young man, a girl.
Look at a small child - with what pleasure he begins to learn to walk, talk, delve into various mechanisms (for boys), nurse dolls (for girls). Try to continue this joy of learning new things. This largely depends on you. Don't promise: I don't like to study! And you try to love all the subjects that you study at school. If other people liked them, then why might you not like them! Read standing books and not just fluff. Study history and literature. An intelligent person should know both well. They give a person a moral and aesthetic outlook, make the world around us big, interesting, radiating experience and joy. If you don’t like something in any subject, strain and try to find in it a source of joy - the joy of acquiring a new one.
Learn to love learning!
Show full text
Dmitry Sergeevich Likhachev in the text I read makes me think about such an urgent problem in our world as reading. This topic worries many, because in our age of developed information technologies modern man allocates less and less time to a paper book. Now, as the author rightly notes, people read more "for show": what needs to be read "(whether according to the school curriculum or at the behest of fashion and vanity)", and not for their own pleasure.
According to the author, read literary works it is necessary "in a calm, unhurried and unfussy atmosphere" in order to reveal the most important thing: what the writer wanted to convey to the heart, to the soul of the reader who took the book. "Uninterested", but interesting reading - that's what makes you love literature and what broadens your horizons man," says Likhachev. Literature, according to Dmitry Sergeevich, with "full immersion" can do amazing things with a person: make him intelligent, develop "not only a sense of beauty, but also an understanding of life, all its complexities" and much, much more.
The position of the author is that you need to read more and read "with the greatest choice." Likhachev urges us not to waste the biggest and most precious capital that we have - our time on "vanity",
Criteria
- 1 of 1 K1 Statement of source text problems
- 3 of 3 K2
(D. Likhachev)
Composition
What is the place of literature in people's lives? What does reading give us? How to choose the right books? How important is it to read a book “disinterestedly”, with something interesting? Academician Dmitry Likhachev invites us to reflect on the problem correct reading.
The text says that books and reading can become a way of life for every person, one has only to choose the right book, because, according to Likhachev, it serves as “a guide to other eras and to other peoples, opens the hearts of people before us.” Literature is of great importance in people's lives, it gives us "a colossal, vast and deepest experience of life", brings wisdom, enriches the inner world of a person, educating him.
D. S. Likhachev encourages us to read books meaningfully, thoughtfully, delving into every little thing, because it is in the little things that the most interesting and mysterious lies. You need to dive into reading not for someone else, but for yourself. The author believes that the most important is classical literature, which has stood the test of time, but he does not reject modern literature either, because only it can answer many questions of our time. And in order to truly understand and love a book, you need to re-read it repeatedly.
Tatiana Larina, the protagonist of A. S. Pushkin's novel in verse "Eugene Onegin", had the same strong love for books that I have. “Now with what attention she / Reads a sweet novel, / With what lively charm / Drinks seductive deceit!” Tatyana read books, imagining herself in the place of the main characters of the novels: immersed in reading with her head, she shared with them the feelings that own them.
I spent unforgettable moments with Leo Tolstoy's epic novel War and Peace. Worried about Andrei Bolkonsky, worried about the fate of Marya Bolkonskaya, surprised at the actions of Pierre Bezukhov, I read page after page. Princess Mary immediately fell in love with me, and I could not leave the book closed: my worries about the princess forced me to rediscover the novel I loved again and again. And what joy I experienced when I found out that Marya finally found happiness with Nikolai Rostov cannot be expressed in words.
How more books I read, the more often I find "my" books, the more I understand Likhachev's words: "there are many books, without which one cannot live."
In contact with
LOVE READING!
Each person is obliged (I emphasize - obliged) to take care of their intellectual development. This is his duty to the society in which he lives and to himself.
The main (but, of course, not the only) way of one's intellectual development is reading.
Reading should not be random. This is a huge waste of time, and time is the greatest value that cannot be wasted on trifles. You should read according to the program, of course, without strictly following it, moving away from it where additional interests for the reader appear. However, with all the deviations from the original program, it is necessary to draw up a new one for yourself, taking into account the new interests that have appeared.
Reading, in order to be effective, must interest the reader. Interest in reading in general or in certain branches of culture must be developed in oneself. Interest can be largely the result of self-education.
It is not so easy to compose reading programs for yourself, and this must be done with the advice of knowledgeable people, with the existing reference books of various types.
The danger of reading is the development (conscious or unconscious) in oneself of a tendency to "diagonally" view texts or to different kind speed reading methods.
"Speed reading" creates the appearance of knowledge. It can only be allowed in certain types of professions, being careful not to create in oneself the habit of speed reading - it leads to a disease of attention.
Have you noticed what a great impression those works of literature that are read in a calm, unhurried and unhurried environment, for example, on vacation or in case of some not very complex and not distracting illness, make?
"Disinterested", but interesting reading - that's what makes you love literature and what broadens a person's horizons.
Why is TV now partially replacing the book? Yes, because the TV makes you slowly watch some kind of program, sit back comfortably so that nothing bothers you, it distracts you from worries, it dictates to you how to watch and what to watch. But try to choose a book to your liking, take a break from everything in the world for a while, sit comfortably with a book, and you will understand that there are many books that you cannot live without, which are more important and more interesting than many programs. I'm not saying stop watching TV. But I say: look with a choice. Spend your time on something that is worthy of this waste. Read more and read with the greatest choice. Decide for yourself your choice, in accordance with the role that your chosen book has acquired in the history of human culture in order to become a classic. This means that there is something significant in it. Or maybe this essential for the culture of mankind will be essential for you?
A classic is one that has stood the test of time. You won't waste your time with it. But the classics cannot answer all the questions of today. Therefore, it is necessary to read modern literature. Don't just jump on every trendy book. Don't be fussy. Vanity causes a person to recklessly spend the largest and most precious capital that he possesses - his time.
Remember - what Pushkin wrote from Chisinau to his brother and sister Olga on July 31, 1822: "Reading is the best teaching." Look in Pushkin's Dictionary of Language (Moscow, 1957) for the words "book" and "reading." How much Pushkin writes about reading, about the communication of his favorite characters with the book.
LETTER TWENTY-THREE
ABOUT PERSONAL LIBRARIES
It may be said that books do not get to those who need them. Sometimes they serve as decoration; are acquired because of beautiful bindings, etc. But it's not so scary either. The book will always find someone who needs it. For example, a person who decorates his dining room buys a book. But he may have a son and nephews. We remember how people began to be interested in literature - through the libraries that they found with their father or with their relatives. So the book will someday find its reader. It can be sold, and this is also not bad, there will be some stock of books, then it will again find its reader.
As for the personal library, I think this issue should be approached very responsibly. Not only because the personal library is considered calling card owner, but because it sometimes becomes a prestigious moment. If a person buys books only for prestige, then he does it in vain. In the first conversation, he will give himself away. It will become clear that he himself did not read the books, and if he did, he did not understand.
Don't make your library too big, don't fill it with "one-time reading" books. Such books should be borrowed from the library. There should be re-reading books at home, classics (and favorites at that), and most of all reference books, dictionaries, bibliography. They can sometimes replace an entire library. Be sure to keep a bibliography in your specialty and note on the cards of this bibliography what seems important and necessary to you in this book.
I repeat. If you need a book for a one-time reading, you should not purchase it. And the art of building personal libraries is to refrain from acquiring such books.
LETTER TWENTY-FOUR
LET'S BE HAPPY
(Answer to a student's letter)
Dear Seryozha! You are absolutely right in loving old buildings, old things - everything that accompanied a person in the past and accompanies him in his present life. All this not only entered the consciousness of a person, but itself, as it were, perceived something from people. It would seem that things are material, but they have become part of our spiritual culture, merged with our inner world, which could conditionally be called our "soul". After all, we say “with all our hearts”, or “I need this for the soul”, or “made with the soul”. That's how! Everything that is done with the soul comes from the soul, we need it for the soul - this is "spiritual culture". The more a person is surrounded by this spiritual culture, immersed in it, the happier he is, the more interesting it is to live, life becomes meaningful for him. But in a purely formal relationship to work, to teaching, to comrades and acquaintances, to music, to art, there is no such "spiritual culture." This is “lack of spirituality” - the life of a mechanism that feels nothing, unable to love, sacrifice itself, have moral and aesthetic ideals.
Let's be happy people, that is, those who have attachments, who love deeply and seriously something significant, who know how to sacrifice themselves for the sake of their favorite work and loved ones. People who do not have all this are unhappy, living a boring life, dissolving themselves in empty acquisitiveness or petty, base "perishable" pleasures.
Quoted from:
D.S. Likhachev. Good Letters. St. Petersburg: "Russian-Baltic information Center BLITZ, 1999.
The composition of the exam in the text:"Have you noticed what a great impression those works of literature that are read in a calm, unhurried and unhurried atmosphere, for example, on vacation..."(according to D.S. Likhachev).
(I.P. Tsybulko, option 7, task 25)
Full text
A book is such an object without which a person cannot exist for many years. What is the role of books in people's lives? How to choose the right book to read? Russian philologist, art critic D.S. Likhachev invites us to reflect on the problem of correct reading. He writes that books and reading can become a way of life for every person, one has only to choose the right book, because it serves as a "guide to other eras and to other peoples." Literature is of great importance in people's lives, it gives us "a colossal, vast and profound experience of life."
The position of the author is clearly seen throughout the article. Likhachev urges us to read books meaningfully, thoughtfully, "going into every little detail", because it is in the little things that the most interesting and mysterious lies. The author believes that classical literature is the most important, but he does not reject modern literature either, because only it can answer many questions of our time.
I am very fond of reading and therefore fully support Likhachev's point of view: literature develops in us "a sense of beauty and an understanding of life." For me there is no greater happiness than to take good book and immerse yourself in the world of heroes.
Each person, I think, has his favorite writer or poet. I like the works of M.Yu. Lermontov, especially his poem "Mtsyri". When my heart is heavy, this is the piece I turn to. I admire the fortitude of this hero, his thirst for will and freedom. Despite the fact that Mtsyri spent a long time in captivity, and then in the service in the monastery, far from home, he still dreamed of his native village. The blood of his fathers called him to his homeland. Three days of freedom - it was worth living for.
I spent unforgettable moments with Kuprin's story "Garnet Bracelet". Such an attitude towards a woman, such love as that of Zheltkov, is now impossible to meet. I admire this man. Not everyone is able to show such a sincere feeling.
The more books I read, the more often I find "my" books, the more I understand Likhachev's words "... there are many books you cannot live without."
(285 words, not counting quotes)
