Woe from Wit

Title page of Griboyedov's manuscript

Woe from Wit (Russian: Горе от ума, also translated as "The Woes of Wit", "Wit Works Woe", and so forth) is Alexander Griboyedov's comedy in verse, satirizing the society of post-Napoleonic Moscow, or, as a high official in the play styled it, "a pasquinade on Moscow."

The play, written in 1823 in the countryside and in Tiflis, was not passed by the censorship for the stage, and only portions of it were allowed to appear in an almanac for 1825. But it was read out by the author to "all Moscow" and to "all Petersburg" and circulated in innumerable copies, so it was as good as published in 1825; it was not, however, actually published until 1833, after the author's death, with significant cuts, and was not published in full until 1861.[1]

The play was a compulsory work in Russian literature lessons in Soviet schools, and is still considered a golden classic in modern Russia and other Russian-speaking countries.

The play gave rise to numerous catchphrases in the Russian language, including the title itself.

Language

The play belongs to the classical school of comedy, with principal antecedents in Molière. Like Denis Fonvizin before him and like the founders of the Russian realistic tradition after him, Griboyedov lays far greater stress on the characters and their dialogue than on his plot. The comedy is loosely constructed, but in the dialogue and in the character drawing Griboyedov is supreme and unique.

The dialogue is in rhymed verse, in iambic lines of variable length, a meter that was introduced into Russia by the fabulists as the equivalent of La Fontaine's vers libre and that had reached a high degree of perfection in the hands of Ivan Krylov. Griboyedov's dialogue is a continuous tour de force. It always attempts and achieves the impossible: the squeezing of everyday conversation into a rebellious metrical form.

Griboyedov seemed to multiply his difficulties on purpose. He was, for instance, alone in his age to use unexpected, sonorous, punning rhymes. There is just enough toughness and angularity in his verse to constantly remind the reader of the pains undergone and the difficulties triumphantly overcome by the poet. Despite the fetters of the metrical form, Griboyedov's dialogue has the natural rhythm of conversation and is more easily colloquial than any prose. It is full of wit, variety, and character, and is a veritable store book of the best spoken Russian of a period. Almost every other line of the comedy has become part of the language, and proverbs from Griboyedov are as numerous as proverbs from Krylov. For epigram, repartee, terse and concise wit, Griboyedov has no rivals in Russian.

Characters

Griboyedov's characters, while typical of the period, are stamped in the really common clay of humanity. They all, down to the most episodic characters, have the same perfection of finish and clearness of outline.

A number of the characters have names that go a long way toward describing their personality.

Mentions elsewhere

From Anton Chekhov's http://www.gutenberg.org/1/8/8/1883 A Dreary Story from the notebook of an old man

'If no progress can be seen in trifles, I should look for it in vain

in what is more important. When an actor wrapped from head to foot in stage traditions and conventions tries to recite a simple ordinary speech, "To be or not to be," not simply, but invariably with the accompaniment of hissing and convulsive movements all over his body, or when he tries to convince me at all costs that Tchatsky, who talks so much with fools and is so fond of folly, is a very clever man, and that "Woe from Wit" is not a dull play, the stage gives me the same feeling of conventionality which bored me so much forty years ago when I was regaled with the classical howling and beating on the breast.'

References

  1. ↑ Monika Greenleaf and Stephen Moeller-Sally (eds.), Russian Subjects: Empire, Nation, and the Culture of the Golden Age (Northwestern University Press, 1998: ISBN 0-8101-1525-5), p. 406.
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