BOOKS

Griboyedov’s Woe to Wit

By Victor Sonkin

Special to The St. Petersburg Times

President Vladimir Putin’s surprise visit to see “Gore ot Uma” at the Sovremennik Theater and his criticism of the rendering of the principal role has sparked interest in the play itself, long considered a classic work of Russian literature.

The comedy is usually (and rather unfortunately) called “Woe from Wit” in English; it has also been translated Oscar Wilde-style as “The Misfortune of Being Clever;” another suggestion is that the title was actually taken from the English poet Thomas Gray, whose phrase “folly to be wise” was well-known at the time.

Alexander Griboyedov, the play’s author, was an aristocrat and career diplomat, and a lover of literature and the arts who composed poetry and music (one of his waltzes is still very popular in Russia), always as an amateur. Having left the manuscript of the comedy in St. Petersburg for publication, he departed for Tehran as Russian ambassador, where he was killed in 1829 at the age of 34 by a crowd of religious fanatics.

In the play, Alexander Chatsky, a young man who has grown up in the Moscow house of his relative Pavel Famusov, a high-ranking courtier, returns to Moscow after a long stay abroad. He is eager to rekindle his puppy love with Sofia, Famusov’s daughter, who is by then deeply in love with the young upstart Aleksei Molchalin. Disgruntled, Chatsky disrupts the household, scandalizes the guests at Famusov’s party, mocks the old-fashioned Moscow mores in long soliloquies, and finally leaves, ostracized as a madman.

Griboyedov’s play inspired at least two opposing interpretations. One, favored by the Soviet secondary education system and apparently supported by Putin, presents Chatsky as the democratic hero, who boldly criticizes the tsarist way of life represented by Famusov. Indeed, Chatsky’s bitingly satirical and funny remarks make “Woe from Wit” one of the most-quoted literary works in Russian culture.

Another interpretation dates back at least to the great national poet Alexander Pushkin, who remarked that the only smart person in the whole play was the author, and that “the first quality of a smart man is to see who he’s dealing with and not cast pearls before swine.”

The theatrical tradition of presenting Chatsky as a simpleton who does not have a clue about human emotion and bumps into awkward social situations also has a long history.

Readers can decide for themselves (it should be noted, though, that the play’s wonderful poetic language does not lend itself easily to translation). One good thing about events such as Putin’s comments is that they bring classical literature into the spotlight.

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