No writer understood loneliness better than Chekhov

Re:No writer understood loneliness better than Chekhov by olah_1 on Thursday October 22, 2020 @09:26AM (#24857741)

I don’t remember the exact quote, but I think it was Fr Seraphim Rose that said Russian people don’t know what the word “fun” is. They don’t understand “fun” as a general sense or feeling of ease / levity.

I don’t know if this is accurate but I asked some Russians what they like to do for fun and they didn’t actually understand. They asked if I meant hobbies and said they only have fun when they go out to a club or something.

The upshot is that hard people have the best dry humor.

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Re:No writer understood loneliness better than Chekhov by suryabeep on Thursday October 22, 2020 @10:43AM (#24858513)

There is a section in 'In the First Circle' by Solzhenitsyn where two prisoners argue about the etymology of 'fun' in Russian. I don't remember the quote off the top of my head right now, but one prisoner posed that'fun is derived from the word for "temporary lack of worry"'. Of course, the other prisoner disagreed with him so I don't know if that etymology is actually correct.

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Re:No writer understood loneliness better than Chekhov by orthoxerox on Thursday October 22, 2020 @10:56AM (#24858677)

Yes, we have "pleasure", "revelry", but not "fun".

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Re:No writer understood loneliness better than Chekhov by drran on Thursday October 22, 2020 @11:02AM (#24858755)

«Хорошее настроение»

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Re:No writer understood loneliness better than Chekhov by jepcommenter on Thursday October 22, 2020 @05:25PM (#24863460)

Делу-время, потехе-час

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Re:No writer understood loneliness better than Chekhov by JAlexoid on Thursday October 22, 2020 @12:59PM (#24860225)

Fun as verb, or noun... or adjective?

In english one word means 500 things. So don't project English language's narrow vocabulary.

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