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"Кто жил и мыслил, тот не может в душе не презирать людей!"
I don't understand the meaning of this expression from a poem of Pushkin.
Based on what I know is translated:
The person who was living and thinking, he cannot in soul no despise people.
Does this means that: People you are thinking (i.e. intellectuals) despise other people?
Who lived and thought can't help but have contempt for people hidden deeply in their souls.
Something like that.
That phrase actually means that humanity is not so innocent and pure and everyone who experienced life learns the hard way that people are not so good ;)
iCake я знаю все слова и еще не могу понять значение.
The problem I think is that I don't understand the role of "тот" in this sentence and also because my dictionary says: презирать = despise (= underestimates).
I've just written what it means, haven't I?Quote:
Originally Posted by Antonio1986
As for the word тот, it's just a determiner there, in other words it's a demonstrative pronoun.
despise doesn't mean to underestimate, so doesn't the Russian word презирать.
презирать (despise) - to have strong hatred to someone or something or to dislike something very much ;)
"Кто жил и мыслил" is not about intellectuals specifically but about any sane person.
Its a grammar point, as iCake said, demonstrative pronoun: "a common use of тот to refer to a recently mentioned noun". Example from book I'm studying now:
Она проводила Анну Вениаминовну до дому, та пригласила зайти. So та is referring Анна Вениаминовна. (From story by Людмила Улицкая. Явление Природы.) examples everywhere.
"не всё то золото, что блестит" they say (Russian saying).
Or, to make it simpler: "Не всё то, что блестит - золото" which can be reduced further:
"Не всё, что блестит - золото",
"Не всё блестящее - золото",
"Не только золото блестит"
Презирать не значит ненавидеть, скорее именно противно, крайняя степень пренебрежения, на мой взгляд.