Alexander Griboyedov

• Born: January 4, 1795
• Birthplace: Moscow, Russia
• Died: February 11, 1829
• Place of death: Teheran, Persia

Other Literary Forms

In addition to his masterpiece The Mischief of Being Clever and a few early comedies and dramatic fragments of which he was sole or, more often, partial author, Alexander Griboyedov wrote a few lyrics, including a translation of Psalm 151, some epigrams, and a short poem addressed to the Decembrist poet Alexander Ivanovich Odoevsky. Although Griboyedov’s first comedies and poems showed promise, a number of them are incomplete or appear as parts of works written jointly with other Russian playwrights. It was only with The Mischief of Being Clever, his sole significant work, that he achieved the status of a major writer.

Achievements

Along with such famous authors as Nikolai Gogol, Alexander Ostrovsky, and Alexander Sukhovo-Kobylin, Alexander Griboyedov is regarded as one of the great Russian playwrights of the nineteenth century. He is usually remembered as the author of a single comedy, The Mischief of Being Clever; his other works are generally considered to be too fragmentary and undeveloped to be regarded as masterpieces. Like his eighteenth century predecessor Denis Ivanovich Fonvizin, Griboyedov was an assimilator of Western European forms; he was able to adapt French comedy to a Russian setting. Molière’s famous play Le Misanthrope (pr. 1666; The Misanthrope, 1709) served as a model for The Mischief of Being Clever. Both comedies are distinguished for their witty style, the tightness of their plots, and their vivid characters. Griboyedov’s use of rhymed iambic lines in varying lengths probably demonstrates the impact of the famous Russian fabulist Ivan Krylov, who wrote at the end of the eighteenth and beginning of the nineteenth centuries. Like Krylov and Fonvizin, Griboyedov made extensive use of colloquial language in The Mischief of Being Clever, and this combination of idiomatic language with taut, tightly constructed iambs made the play memorable to readers of his time. As a result, a great number of the lines have become proverbs, especially those from the speeches of the protagonist Chatsky and of Khlyostova, a pillar of Moscow society and the aunt of Chatsky’s love interest, Sofia.

Like Fonvizin, Griboyedov combined stylistic brilliance with an accurate picture of contemporary Russia. Early nineteenth century Moscow was a society in transition, based on a solidly Russian foundation, essentially rural and conservative, yet with a patina of foreign, particularly French, culture. It is because of his brilliant depiction of this conflict between the old and new in Russian life, combined with his implied criticism of the limitations of the Russian milieu and his memorable style, that Griboyedov has come to be so highly regarded by modern critics.

Biography

Alexander Sergeyevich Griboyedov was born in Moscow on January 15, 1795. His father, Sergey Ivanovich, was a retired captain of the dragoons. His mother, Nastasya Fyodorovna (née Griboyedova), was from a more prominent branch of the same family. Although not wealthy, the Griboyedovs were comfortable. They belonged to high society, and Alexander received a good education.

In accordance with the custom of the time, Griboyedov was taught at home by German tutors. His first tutor, Johann Petrosilius, was later the librarian at Moscow University, while a subsequent tutor, Johann Ion, had been a student at Göttingen University. Griboyedov spent several years in the University School in Moscow before entering Moscow University in 1806, when he was only eleven. He completed courses in literature and in law, studied physics and mathematics, and was ready to embark on a doctorate in 1812 when the Napoleonic invasion interrupted his studies. By this time, he was fluent in French, German, English, and Italian and was also a fine pianist.

Following limited service in the Napoleonic Wars, Griboyedov moved to St. Petersburg and entered the College of Foreign Affairs. A talented musician and a dandy, he spent considerable time with actors and playwrights, and it was at this time that he wrote, either alone or in collaboration with friends, the short comedies that were the precursors of The Mischief of Being Clever. He joined the same Masonic lodge, Des Amis Réunis (the assembled friends), to which the philosopher Peter Chaadayev and the future Decembrist Pavel Pestel belonged.

Griboyedov’s connections with the theatrical world and his involvement with the ballerina Istomina led to a quarrel and later a duel in which Griboyedov and Count Zavadovsky were paired against A. I. Yakubovich and A. I. Sheremetev. Zavadovsky killed Sheremetev, and the encounter between Griboyedov and Yakubovich was delayed. The surviving principals were punished; Zavadovsky was exiled, and Yakubovich was sent to the Caucasus with the Nizhny-Novgorod Dragoons. Yakubovich and Griboyedov subsequently fought in the Caucasus, and Griboyedov was wounded in the hand.

Griboyedov’s facility with languages having enabled him to acquire knowledge of Persian, he was given the post of secretary in the Russian Legation in Teheran. Griboyedov spent nearly two years, from early 1819 until the end of 1821, in Persia. He intensely disliked his situation and was able to obtain the post of diplomatic secretary to the proconsul of the Caucasus, General A. P. Yermolov, serving in Tiflis, Georgia, through 1822 and the beginning of 1823. He subsequently spent most of 1823 and part of 1824 in Moscow on extended leave, followed by a stay in St. Petersburg. Because of his friendships with a number of the Decembrists, Griboyedov was suspected of complicity in the Decembrist Revolt of 1825. Lack of evidence led to his release after a four-month imprisonment, and he returned to the Caucasus in 1826.

Russia’s military successes against Persia resulted in the treaty of Turkmanchai (drafted by Griboyedov), in consequence of which the province of Erivan (later the Republic of Armenia) was ceded to Russia. Griboyedov returned to Teheran to take charge of executing the treaty. Having left his Georgian bride in Tabriz, he arrived in the capital early in January, 1829.

Three Armenians—a eunuch who was comptroller of the imperial household, and two women from the harem of the shah’s son-in-law—asked for asylum at the Russian legation under terms of the new treaty. The outraged Persians, whose religious and social customs had been disregarded and whose national dignity had been insulted, stormed the legation on February 11, 1829, to kill the eunuch and bring back the women. The fury of the mob was so great that everyone in the building, including Griboyedov, was slaughtered. His body was dragged through the streets and was so terribly mutilated that it could only be identified by the deformity resulting from his duel with Yakubovich. Any manuscript that he may have had in his possession perished with him. He was thirty-four.

Analysis

Alexander Griboyedov’s early comedies demonstrate in embryonic form the same facility with colloquial Russian, mastery of plot, and ability to create interesting characters that are a hallmark of his masterpiece, The Mischief of Being Clever. With the exception of the fragmentary tragedy Gruzinskaya noch (1859; Georgian night), his initial efforts generally involve love intrigues in which jealousy is used to arouse an insufficiently responsive spouse or suitor, as occurs in Molodye suprugi (young spouses) and Pritvornaya nevernost (feigned infidelity). These first plays are quite successful attempts to superimpose French works on a Russian setting: Molodye suprugi is an adaptation of Secret de ménage (1809; the secret of the household), by Creuze de Lesser. It is only with the appearance of The Mischief of Being Clever itself that Griboyedov can be considered to have written an entirely original play. The love conspiracies central to the earlier works are here employed primarily to illuminate character or to provide a means of criticizing society. Like Alexander Pushkin, Griboyedov managed to combine a ready understanding of human behavior with a witty, colloquial style to produce the sort of social analysis that would later be the hallmark of Russian literature.

The Mischief of Being Clever

Although completed in 1824, Griboyedov’s The Mischief of Being Clever was prohibited by the censor. It circulated in manuscript and was printed with large cuts in 1833. It was not published in full until 1861, the year in which the serfs were liberated.

In The Mischief of Being Clever, Griboyedov observes the classical unities of time, place, and action. The play takes place within a twenty-four-hour period, is set in the Famusovs’ house in Moscow, and revolves around Chatsky’s attempt to rekindle the love of Sofia, only to find that, in his absence, she has bestowed her affections on someone else. The curtain rises on the Famusov household early in the morning. Sofia Famusova has spent the night playing duets with her beloved, Alexey Molchalin (“Aleksis the Reticent”), her father’s secretary and a resident in the house. The anxious maid, Liza, is afraid that Sofia’s father, Pavel Afanasevich, a director of a government office, will be furious when he discovers that his seventeen-year-old daughter has spent the night, however chastely, with a man. When Sofia does not heed her warning calls, Liza makes the clock strike and is apprehended by the already suspicious father. He decides that what he had assumed to be music was actually the chimes of the striking clock, and he chides Liza for making so much noise while simultaneously fondling her. Pavel Famusov’s surreptitious displays of affection are discouraged only when Sofia summons Liza and finally appears with a candle in her hand, followed by Molchalin.

Scene 4 opens with Famusov and Molchalin colliding in a doorway, the sort of chance encounter that was a main component of the early comedies that Griboyedov produced. Molchalin’s servility before Famusov (underscored in Russian by the suffix s, an abbreviation of “your excellency”) stresses the awkwardness of their meeting. Famusov assumes that Sofia and Molchalin have met early that morning, never suspecting that they have spent the night together. Famusov bemoans the lot of the widowed father attempting to rear a young daughter alone, and the reader is reminded that the arrangement of an offspring’s suitable marriage was of cardinal importance for the Russian nobility. An employee and a flunky, Molchalin would not be considered a proper match for Sofia. Liza confides to Sofia when they are alone in the following scene that Famusov, like all Muscovites, wants a son-in-law with medals, rank, and money, such as Colonel Skalozub (“grinner”). Sofia’s scornful rejection of Skalozub prompts Liza to reminisce about the wit and charm of Alexander Sergeevich Chatsky, but Sofia, having fallen in love with Molchalin, is critical of Chatsky’s rapier-sharp wit, and she is apparently hurt by his having left three years earlier. With this introduction, Chatsky makes an appearance at the beginning of the next scene.

As in Griboyedov’s other comedic efforts, the arrival of Chatsky presages romantic complications, for he is Molchalin’s rival for Sofia’s affections. In The Mischief of Being Clever, however, the emphasis is on Chatsky’s critique of Moscow society, not on the love intrigue. Puzzled by the cool reception from his childhood friend Sofia yet dazzled by her beauty, Chatsky launches into a critique of the superficialities and failings of people they both know. His attack seems to be twofold: He is not only trying to elicit a response from her but also delivering a stinging commentary on the aristocracy. He sarcastically comments, “What new thing will Moscow show me? Yesterday there was a ball, tomorrow there will be two . . . the same verses in albums.” He mentions, in passing, Sofia’s own relative who was “an enemy of books” and was against education. When Chatsky criticizes Molchalin, Sofia makes a stinging reply, and he in turn is hurt by her treatment. He declares his love. Famusov reappears, happy to see Chatsky but shocked and frightened by Chatsky’s ridicule of the pretensions and inequities of contemporary Russia. Famusov considers him a carbonari (revolutionary) and calls him a “dangerous man.” Hearing of the imminent entrance of Skalozub, a possible suitor and a powerful careerist, Famusov cautions Chatsky to watch his tongue. Famusov and Skalozub preen themselves about the glories of modern Moscow, particularly the young women who love military men because of “patriotism.” After both have gloated over the new houses built since the fire of 1812, Chatsky’s acid rejoinder that the “homes are new, but the prejudices are old” emphasizes the inanity of the conversation. Thereupon Famusov introduces Chatsky to Skalozub, remarking on Chatsky’s inexplicable aversion to serving in a governmental agency. Clearly the mouthpiece for the playwright’s views, Chatsky excoriates the excesses of the upper classes and recounts a horrible tale of a brutish aristocrat who exchanged his faithful servants for three greyhounds. (The refusal of the censors to pass the play in full until 1861, the year in which the serfs were liberated, surely stems from lines such as these.) The dense Skalozub, having missed the point, once again launches into a discussion of uniforms and of the Russian officers who speak French.

Griboyedov then abruptly shifts his emphasis back to the love interest. Molchalin’s fall from a horse has left him uninjured but has terrified Sofia; her anxious reaction to his accident reveals to all her concern and arouses Chatsky’s suspicions. Molchalin is anxious about the impressions others may receive and is afraid that Sofia’s obvious concern will be a source of gossip. With encouragement from Liza, Sofia goes to visit Skalozub, Chatsky, and her father. Molchalin takes advantage of her absence to attempt to bestow his affections on Liza in a scene that stresses once more the vulnerability of women in the lower classes in prerevolutionary Russia and the inequities of serfdom.

Chatsky’s declaration early in act 3 that he would not lose his mind if Sofia could prove Molchalin deserving of her love is Griboyedov’s first mention of insanity in the play, a motif that is repeated with Chatsky later. The Russian word for madness, sumasshestvie (going out of one’s mind), recalls the title, which translates literally as woe from the mind. It is precisely this, Chatsky’s intelligence, that has caused Sofia’s love for him to cool and has made him the outsider in his society. Chatsky’s ensuing conversation with Molchalin stresses yet again that the mind of the former is contrasted to the mindlessness of the latter.

Chatsky’s alienation from Moscow life is underscored when he meets two old friends, modeled on friends of Griboyedov, and finds that they have been married in his absence. The wife’s fondness for society life and her protectiveness of her husband have caused strains in the marriage, and Chatsky deeply regrets the changes in his former companion. When an intelligent man marries and becomes part of the Muscovite milieu, is he then automatically emasculated?

The arrival of other guests at the Famusovs’ ball provides Griboyedov with an opportunity to introduce typical Muscovite characters, such as the prince and princess who want to marry off their six daughters to appropriate young men. Sofia’s aunt Khlyostova has also come to the party; her marvelous use of colloquial Russian (set in iambs) is the antithesis of the Frenchified jargon, typical of much of the aristocracy, that Chatsky (along with Griboyedov) criticizes.

Molchalin’s ability to smooth over an awkward moment leads Chatsky to make a pointed observation about him, and Sofia angrily comments that Chatsky is not himself (literally, “not in his mind”). This remark is interpreted as “has gone out of his mind,” a misunderstanding that Sofia does not attempt to correct. From this point on, Chatsky’s separation from his fellows is absolute and permanent; even Sofia’s chance discovery of Molchalin’s true feelings at the end of the play (in typical vaudeville style) does not cause a renewal of her love for Chatsky. He calls for his carriage and flees Moscow even as he had done three years earlier, yet now without the comfort of Sofia’s affection and without hope. The play ends with Famusov worrying about what “Princess Marja Aleksevna is going to say,” Griboyedov thereby stressing once again the shallowness of contemporary Russian life.

Composed in iambs, with a good percentage of the lines in Alexandrines, The Mischief of Being Clever continues the poetic tradition of eighteenth and early nineteenth century Russian literature, for it was only in the 1830’s and 1840’s that prose became the accepted medium for drama. Although Griboyedov’s early comedic efforts are also in verse, his employment of a stilted rhyme scheme (aabbcc) in these plays makes the lines flow much less smoothly than they do in The Mischief of Being Clever. The colloquial language and the poetic structure combine so well that the lines of the play are easy to memorize; Pushkin predicted that half the lines were bound to become proverbs, and time has indeed proven this to be true. Sixty-one phrases from the play are proverbial; it is the most quoted book in Russian.

The Mischief of Being Clever is admired as much for its keen analysis of society as for its remarkable style. In Chatsky, the outsider who has left Moscow only to return three years later, Griboyedov has the perfect social critic. Chatsky’s keen sense of observation penetrates all corners. He mocks the toadying and careerism of Molchalin, blasts the Frenchified Russian adopted by the upper classes, despises the endless, meaningless socializing characteristic of life in Moscow and St. Petersburg, the “two capitals.” Chatsky is particularly critical of his countrymen’s attempts to acquire the veneer of Western European culture while leaving the substance untouched. Griboyedov bravely used his comedy as a vehicle to condemn some of the worst excesses of his society. The play touches now and again on the inescapable fact that all the wealth and glitter, the luxurious life of the aristocracy of his time, rested on the backs of the serfs, who could be disposed of (“traded for greyhounds”) at a whim. It is a note also sounded in his potentially brilliant fragment Gruzinskaya noch, in which a Georgian nobleman precipitates a tragedy by trading his old nurse’s son for a prized horse.

The characters in The Mischief of Being Clever can generally be considered as types. Famusov is the proper father who is not above squeezing Liza on the sly, a kind man who nevertheless sends two servants to Siberia at the end of the last act for not having noticed Chatsky lingering in the house. Like his sister-in-law Khlyostova, he is a decent and engaging individual who is nevertheless limited; both are very much at one with their conservative, pretentious society. Molchalin is the opportunist willing to prostitute himself to further his career, while Skalozub is the military man opposed to education and societal change.

Sofia and Chatsky are clearly the most interesting individuals in The Mischief of Being Clever. An intelligent, attractive young woman, one of the only people whom Chatsky admires, Sofia is enigmatic. She reacts very strongly against Chatsky’s acid criticisms of Moscow society, yet she is too intelligent to be unaware of her society’s flaws. Her preference for Molchalin seems to depend more on what he is not than on what he is. Molchalin never exhibits ambition, cunning, or sarcasm. He is always agreeable and silent, a cog in the workings of the state bureaucracy, while Chatsky refuses to be part of that system, preferring instead to “escape” abroad.

The obvious focal point of the play, Chatsky deserves special attention. He rails against the inanity of Moscow life and censures especially the backwardness of social institutions and customs. Chatsky is a patriot, however, or he would never have braved a trip in winter to return to a home he had previously found disagreeable (although his love for Sofia surely is an important factor in his return). His attachment to Sofia may actually be considered emblematic of the depth of his feeling for Russia, for Sofia’s rejection at the end of the play is identified by him as and coincides with the ultimate rejection by his society.

The combination of Sofia-Molchalin and Chatsky-Sofia is one that recurs in nineteenth and twentieth century Russian literature, from Pushkin’s Evgeny Onegin (1825-1833; Eugene Onegin, 1881) through such prose works as Ivan Turgenev’s novellas and Ivan Goncharov’s Oblomov (1859; English translation, 1915) to such Soviet masterpieces as Yury Olesha’s Zavist (1927; Envy, 1936). The strong woman is unable to form a relationship with the protagonist, who is always on the edge of society, and instead she becomes involved successfully with an uninteresting, nonindividualized man who fits in much more effectively with his fellows. While the unfortunate loser in these situations has generally and mistakenly been deemed “weak” and “superfluous,” this designation is not necessarily correct. It is actually society that is flawed. So rigid are the rules, so narrow the limits within which one is permitted to function, that the thinking individual is doomed to ineffectiveness. A woman could be strong because she was not expected to take an active role, but a man had to conform or be ostracized.

It is no accident that Chatsky is rejected by his milieu. Unable to function within a system he despises, he is considered “mad” and is expelled. His fictitious “madness” symbolizes his distance from the “norm.” The recurrence both of the “superfluous man” and of “madness” in Soviet literature and society is a reminder that Russian institutions are still bedeviled by the same suspicious mistrust of the new and the same superficial acquisition of Western culture that inspired the critical thrust of Griboyedov’s great comedy, written nearly one hundred years before the Russian Revolution.

Bibliography

Harden, Evelyn. J. The Murder of Griboedov: New Materials. Birmingham, Ala.: University of Birmingham, 1979. This examination of the death of Griboyedov examines his personal and literary life. Bibliography.

Karlinsky, Simon. Russian Drama from Its Beginnings to the Age of Pushkin. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985. This historical overview of Russian drama provides the background in which to place Griboyedov’s work. Bibliography and index.

Mirsky, D. S. A History of Russian Literature from Its Beginnings to 1900. 1958. Reprint. Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern University Press, 1999. This history covers Russian literature before and during the time in which Griboyedov was active.

Zinik, Zinovy. “Failing Triumphantly.” Review of The Mischief of Being Clever, by Griboyedov. Times Literary Supplement, April 2, 1993, p. 18. Reviews a production of Griboyedov’s most famous work.