History of creation
When creating “Woe from Wit,” Griboyedov was guided by Moliere’s play “The Misanthrope,” the main character of which also belongs to the type of “evil wise guy”—an accuser.
Literary direction: combines elements of classicism, romanticism and realism.
Literary genre: satirical comedy in verse.
Genre features: the comedy “Woe from Wit” is a satire on the aristocratic Moscow society of the first half of the 19th century. - one of the peaks of Russian drama and poetry; actually completed “comedy in verse” as a genre. The aphoristic style contributed to the fact that she “went into quotations.”
The action takes place in Moscow in Famusov’s house over the course of 24 hours. Thus, two classical unities are observed - place and time. There is no unity of action (two storylines: Chatsky’s love and Chatsky’s opposition to Moscow society).
Features of classicism in the comedy Woe from Wit by Griboyedov
The literary style in the form of classicism is an image of ideally beautiful events that contribute to the improvement of human spiritual life, and adheres to certain rules in the form of trinity (place, action, time), harmony and proportionality of chapters, logical harmony, clarity and precision of linguistic description, constancy of characteristics characters.
When creating the play, the writer only partially uses the traditional canons of classicism, changing its basic principles according to his own author's intention.
Firstly, when constructing a compositional structure, the rule of three unities is observed only in relation to place and time, that is, events unfold in the same place and at the same time. Whereas the unity of action is transformed by the author by using two plot conflicts in the comedy in the form of a love line and a social one. In addition, in the finale of the play, in contrast to the established rules of classicism, vice turns out to be undefeated by virtue.
Secondly, the writer partially changes the classic rule of dividing the characters of a work into negative and positive, endowing the heroes of the play with both negative and good qualities. An example of this is the image of Famusov, who represents not only a swaggering and deceitful official, but also a loving parent, a caring father.
Thirdly, according to the established law of classicism, the content of a work is determined in accordance with its genre, that is, if a play is created in the form of a comedy, the work must have a humorous, satirical, or farcical character. However, Griboyedov's comedy changes this principle, since the author introduces dramatic plot elements into the content of the play, in addition to comic motives.
Fourthly, the writer departs from the traditional compositional structure of the works of classicism, creating a play not of three or five parts, but by writing a comedy consisting of four acts. Thus, the author makes an innovation in modern fiction, since, taking the classic principles of writing works as a formal basis, he introduces numerous updates into his own play, which not only do not spoil the work, but also fill its narrative with socio-psychological shades in combination with irony and humor .
Summary
The maid Liza knocks on Sofya Famusova’s bedroom in the morning, but she does not answer: she spent the whole night talking with Molchalin, her father’s secretary. Famusov appears and flirts with Lisa. Molchalin comes out of Sophia’s bedroom. Pavel Afanasyevich Famusov asks about the reasons for such an early visit to his daughter. They calm him down.
Alone with Lisa, Sophia recalls how she and Molchalin listened to music. The maid reminds the young lady of her former gentleman - Alexander Andreevich Chatsky. Sophia says that Molchalin has much more virtues (modesty, altruism, spiritual subtlety).
Chatsky appears. He asks Sophia about Moscow life, about acquaintances who seem stupid and absurd to Chatsky. He also asks about Molchalin, suggesting that he will achieve a lot (“after all, nowadays they love the dumb”). Sophia is offended.
Famusov arrives and reluctantly takes an interest in Chatsky’s affairs. He promises to answer later, since he has not yet had time to visit home.
In the afternoon, Chatsky appears again at Famusov’s house. Famusov is wary: does Chatsky want to become Sophia’s fiancé? Famusov recommends that Chatsky first achieve success in the service. “I’d be glad to serve, but it’s sickening to be served,” Chatsky replies. Famusov reproaches Chatsky, talking about his uncle, who achieved great success thanks to obsequiousness and obedience. Chatsky insists that the “age of obedience and fear” is long gone.
Colonel Skalozub arrives (according to Famusov, an interesting suitor for Sophia). Skalozub boasts of his military deeds, Famusov shamelessly flatters, Chatsky endures for some time, and then bursts into a monologue against the flatterers, branding their “poverty of reason.” Skalozub does not understand anything and agrees with Chatsky.
Sophia runs in. She is horrified: Molchalin fell from his horse. Chatsky begins to suspect something. He starts a conversation with Molchalin, but comes to the conclusion that it is impossible to love a person who does not have his own opinion.
Guests continue to come to Famusov. They carry on empty and idle conversations. Chatsky mocks everyone (in particular, he makes fun of Molchalin). Sophia is angry, so she begins an intrigue: she tells Mr. N about Chatsky’s madness, knowing that he will spread the rumor in society. Passing from one person to another, this rumor acquires unimaginable details (“They grabbed me, took me to the yellow house, and put me on a chain”). As a result, Chatsky is considered not only to be crazy, but also to Basurmans, Voltaireans and who knows who else. The final verdict is pronounced by the countess-grandmother, deaf and almost out of her mind: Chatsky is an infidel and a Voltairian.
Confused Chatsky runs into Sophia and scolds the Moscow nobility for admiring the French: after all, a Russian person, in his opinion, is much more worthy than any other. Nobody listens to Chatsky: everyone is dancing.
Repetilov appears. He noisily invites Chatsky to visit the “most secret union” and meet “decisive people.” Chatsky knows Repetilov’s value, so he refuses, and Repetilov immediately turns his attention to Skalozub.
Repetilov discusses Chatsky's alleged madness with Zagoretsky. Repetilov doesn’t want to believe, but everyone around him convinces him. Chatsky accidentally overhears this conversation. He's angry. Chatsky is only interested in whether such rumors have reached Sophia (he cannot even imagine that it was she who spread this slander).
Liza and Molchalin are talking in the lobby. Molchalin admits that he is not interested in Sophia, but in her maid: he really only likes Lisa. Both Sophia and Chatsky, who was hiding behind the column, hear this. Sophia is furious. She drives Molchalin out. Chatsky also gives vent to his feelings and exposes Sophia’s treachery. The servants and Famusov come running. Pavel Afanasyevich threatens to give Liza to a poultry house and send Sophia to her aunt in Saratov.
Chatsky laughs bitterly at his own blindness and leaves the house with which he wanted to connect his life. Famusov is worried about “what / Princess Marya Aleksevna will say!”
Text of the book “From Sentimentalism to Romanticism and Realism”
5
After a rather productive creative period, cut short in mid-1818 by the writer’s departure from St. Petersburg, a protracted—at first glance—time of creative inaction began: Griboyedov began directly to work on “Woe from Wit” (originally “Woe to Wit”) only in Tiflis , in 1822. In fact, it was a time of intense ideological and creative quest. It was at this time that the worldview of the mature Griboyedov took shape, it was at this time that the plan of his immortal comedy was finally determined, written and finished - given the scale and artistic perfection of the work - in a remarkably short time: in October 1824, the author considered the play ready for publication, and with This time she found her way to the reader - reproduced in a huge number of lists. Having become the most popular work on the eve of the Decembrist uprising, Griboyedov's comedy prophetically foreshadowed it.
Griboedov's membership in a secret society remained unproven, although he was under investigation. However, the playwright’s close friendly relationship with leading figures of Decembrist societies for many years is an undoubted fact. For a long time cut off from the centers of Decembrism, Griboedov remained closely connected with it by a common search for ways to revive Russian society, which carried within itself the curse of autocratic despotism and serfdom. Griboyedov's views were based on the ideas of the Enlightenment, reinterpreted partly in the spirit of romantic ideals. At the same time, the feat of the people in the Patriotic War was deeply experienced by the writer and determined the direction of his political, ethical and aesthetic quests. The omnipotence of the world “Reason”, which the enlighteners proclaimed, seems to him a speculative and arbitrary construction. In search of solid foundations, the writer’s gaze turns to the nation, to the people; Griboedov’s broad linguistic, ethnographic and historical interests were inspired by his search for the “national mind,” which, in his opinion, can be understood by comprehending the originality of the language, customs, beliefs, and morals of the people who have preserved the “living soul.” Griboyedov, of course, is clearly aware that the people are not “loyal to themselves” - they are burdened by the bonds of slavery, but the very tenacity of the people in observing their native customs and, if necessary, in the fight for them serves for the writer as a convincing guarantee of the future greatness of Russia. These inner forces can be awakened - this conviction feeds Griboedov's work - with an inspired, truthful word, in which the end. At the same time, poetry could not help but be interpreted by Griboyedov as a means of transforming the world - poetry that resonates in the hearts of people, awakens in them noble feelings and high aspirations, expresses and strengthens the “national spirit” hidden in people’s hearts. This was Griboyedov’s aesthetic program, as it is reconstructed from his individual comments, reasoning, and literary works. The romantic pathos of this program is obvious, but Griboyedov’s mind was not only inquisitive, but also highly analytical, involving specific social phenomena and contradictions of reality in the sphere of artistic depiction. This is what determines the undoubted realistic quality of Griboyedov’s comedy “Woe from Wit.”
At the time of its appearance, Griboyedov's comedy was closely fused with the topic of the day. Of course, it was precisely this open journalistic nature of the play that brought it such instant and mass recognition, accompanied by indignant cries of political routinists. In the monologues and remarks of the characters in the comedy, Griboedov’s contemporary constantly caught hints of the characteristic phenomena of the reaction (“Arakcheevism”), which “in recent years” replaced the social upsurge of the post-war years and crossed out the youthful dreams of the freedom lover Chatsky. Generally speaking, the high comedy of Griboyedov’s era did not shy away from topical responses, and the “caustic” (according to Pushkin’s definition) Shakhovskoy, thanks to them, often achieved resounding success for his plays. However, in Griboyedov’s comedy for the first time we discover not only the extraordinary richness of the text with life material, but also its fundamental assessment from the standpoint of advanced, essentially Decembrist ideals. In everyday, familiar incidents, the writer’s gaze revealed their epoch-making essence. The precise details scattered throughout the comedy formed an image of enormous generalizing power. Suffice it to recall, for example, the constant curse words in the mouths of the Famus society (farmazon, carbonari, Jacobin, Voltairian), which are reminiscent of the ideological atmosphere of the 1820s.
At the same time, the author of “Woe from Wit” is attentive to everyday life. A large, complex life is constantly decomposed by Griboyedov into a series of simple, expressive details, which provided various cross-sections of Russian life in its everyday concreteness:
When will the creator deliver us from their hats!
caps! and stilettos! and pins! And book and biscuit shops! (p. 14)
And there are differences in uniforms: Uniforms have piping, shoulder straps, buttonholes...
(p. 80)
And you will really go crazy from these, from some boarding schools, schools, lyceums, you name it;
Yes, from lancard mutual training... (p. 90)
Already in these enumerations, common for comedy, one can discern the accompanying technique of generalization, the most important in Griboyedov’s poetics, allowing him to typify life phenomena.
This technique is clearly visible at the level of the characters in the comedy. “Off-stage characters” deserve special attention, the active introduction of which into the plot of the comedy is an innovative achievement of the Griboyedov Theater, although already in the pre-Griboyedov comedy, of course, one can find references to persons who do not appear on the stage. However, only Griboyedov introduced them in such a multitude, creating an unrelenting impression throughout the play of the presence of “darkness and darkness” of familiar strangers somewhere nearby, and thus seemed to push the walls of Famus’s mansion, brought the action to the square, thereby immeasurably enlarging the main the conflict of the play: the clash of an ardent lover of truth with an inert social environment. In comedy, there is actually no sharp boundary separating stage persons from off-stage ones - both because the characters, starting with Sofia, Famusov, Molchalin, first appear as off-stage persons, and because a number of persons named in the poster do not utter a word (and vice versa - say the unnamed gentlemen N. and D.), and therefore, finally, because among the ball guests there are undoubtedly present, the famous Foma Fomich, and Monsieur Kok, and the Dryanskys, Khvorovs, Varlyanskys, Skachkovs and others are clearly presented to the audience on the stage. This is how comedy overcomes the boundary between stage and life. But this is not just an endless series of colorful figures.
The comedy gives a detailed picture of not only everyday life, but also the social life of Russia, in its entire hierarchy - from serfs to the tsar. Each character, stage and off-stage, is assigned an exact place on the social ladder:
Isn’t it the one to whom I was taken from the shrouds, for some incomprehensible plans, like a child, taken to bow?
That Nestor of noble scoundrels, surrounded by a crowd of servants; Zealous, they, in the hours of wine and fights, saved his honor and life more than once: suddenly he exchanged three greyhounds for them!!! (p. 42)
A person here is defined through his place in the structure of serfdom relations in Russian reality. Sliding his gaze from the named character to his immediate environment and further, the writer again and again turns his thoughts to the people, who are equal in “rights” to animals. And so in each figurative cell of “Woe from Wit” Russian life is captured in its socio-historical specificity. Consider, for example, Chatsky’s two rivals – the frunt philosopher Skalozub and Molchalin, who does not dare to “have his own opinion,” representing two faces of Arakcheevism.
All this makes comedy “the key to understanding an entire historical period,” according to Pisarev’s extremely successful expression.[272]
“The very oddities of Griboyedov’s comedy,” P. A. Vyazemsky astutely noted, “are worthy of attention: by expanding the stage, populating it with a people of characters, he, without a doubt, expanded the boundaries of art itself.”[273]
Closely related to the crowdedness of the play is its spatial and temporal perspective. Most of the “actors” enter the consciousness of readers in their local and chronological “halo”: Maxim Petrovich - on the kurtag at Catherine’s court, Skalozub - “hunkered down in a trench” on August 3, 1813, Repetilov - with his house on the Fontanka, a certain “book enemy" - an activist of the Scientific Committee formed in 1817, etc. The entire action of the play takes place in Famusov's house during one day, but this day appears in the work as a moment of an era at the intersection of the "present century" and the "past century", an era reactionary "transformations". While respecting the formal classicist unities of time and place, the playwright freely and creatively masters them, achieving the utmost concentration of action. It is important to emphasize that the conflict itself chosen by the author of “Woe from Wit” required a strict limitation of stage space and time. It took only one day for Chatsky, who returned to his home, to his beloved girl, to sober up “completely from his blindness, from the vaguest dream.”
Chatsky appears in Famusov’s house, “in his home and in his fatherland” after a three-year absence. The ideals of his youth, which coincided with the era of national triumph of victory over foreign invasion, once aroused in him a passionate desire to honestly serve his fatherland. Since then, he has experienced a lot of disappointments: “The uniform ... - now I can’t fall into this childishness” (p. 46); “I would be glad to serve, but being served is sickening” (p. 33); “Where is better? – Where we are not” (p. 24); etc. And this is not the hero’s fault, but his grief, the cause of which is “transformations” that are opposite to his youthful aspirations. He rushed to Moscow in a desperate attempt to find his elusive faith. In the memory of the heart - “There are walls, air, everything is pleasant! They will warm you up, revive you..." (p. 63). These memories are sanctified by first love, and it is, perhaps, now almost the only thing that Chatsky is firmly confident in - all the same memory of the heart. “Every step of Chatsky, almost every word in the play,” noted I. A. Goncharov, “is closely connected with the play of his feelings for Sophia.”[274] But it is important to remember what this feeling meant for the hero, and then it will become clear why the experience of life’s trials is constantly mixed with this feeling, why Chatsky behaves so impractically, why his final disappointment is so crushing. In the clash of the ardent lover of truth with the Famus world (and Sophia turns out to be flesh of the flesh of this world), an abyss was exposed that separated the freedom-loving noble intelligentsia from the bulk of the feudal nobility. The hero’s personal drama emphasized the uncompromising principle of the conflict: the renunciation of an honest man not only from the conventional “truths” and hypocritical “morality” of society, but also from the most blood-borne, intimate ties with this society.
The duality of dramatic action in Griboyedov’s comedy was first deeply analyzed by I. A. Goncharov in his etude “A Million Torments”: “Two comedies seem to be embedded in one another: one, so to speak, private, petty, domestic, between Chatsky, Sofia, Molchalin and Lisa; This is the intrigue of love, the everyday motive of all comedies. When the first one is interrupted, another unexpectedly appears in the interval, and the action begins again, the private comedy plays out into a general battle and is tied into one knot.”[275] Starting from this classical interpretation of the dramatic collision of Griboyedov’s work, the modern researcher discovers a clear two-part division of each of the four acts of the comedy, giving harmony to its plan. In the first act, the boundary between the two “pictures” is the seventh phenomenon, when, with the appearance of Chatsky, the comedy is saturated with social themes. In the second act, at the beginning of which the theme of lordly Moscow deepens in the dispute between Chatsky and Famusov, a turn in the action also occurs in the seventh scene, when Sophia arouses the jealous suspicions of the hero with her fainting. In the third act, the chamber scenes of the first three apparitions are replaced by a picture of a Moscow ball. Finally, in the fourth act, after the departure of the guests, whose gossip convinces Chatsky of the irreversibility of his break with Famus society, the last five phenomena clarify their “love delusions” for Chatsky and Sophia. “Thus, the general plan of the play is classically structured; it is based on a comparison of Chatsky’s love drama and social tragedy, which, of course, interact and interpenetrate, but at the same time alternate rhythmically, like rhymes in a ring rhyme in two quatrains.”[276]
The epic diversity of life material in the play is constrained by the dramatic conflict that dominates it, leading to the inevitable confrontation between Famus society and the freedom-loving hero. This was quite consistent with the Enlightenment idea of the crowd as an inert force opposed to the voice of reason. “A smart person,” Helvetius noted, “is often considered crazy by the one who listens to him, because the one who listens has the alternative of considering either himself a fool or an intelligent person crazy - it is much easier to decide on the latter.” And again: “...almost everyone calls common sense agreement with what is recognized by fools, and a person who seeks only the truth and therefore usually deviates from accepted truths is considered crazy.”[277]
So the comedic action in Griboyedov’s play results in a slanderous judgment of a self-interested society over a genuine mind. Least of all, of course, this dispute and trial appears in an abstract form: the characters of the comedy constantly appeal to everyday facts, which again and again turns the comedy to modern times. At the same time, the “highest meaning” of the work (remember Griboyedov’s confession: “The first outline of this stage poem... was much more magnificent and of higher significance than now...") is preserved in it, giving it philosophical depth and broad generalizing meaning.
Themes of “mind” (learning, knowledge, education, etc.) are touched upon by all the characters. The high philosophical note in the work is set by Chatsky, it is clearly not in the voice of the other characters, and therefore their reasoning about “important mothers” is comical: praising “mind” as good morals, as “the ability to live,” everyone constantly blurts out, ultimately reducing it to purely mercantile concepts: “I ate on silver, I ate on gold” (pp. 33–34); “I just wish I could become a general” (p. 42); “Baron von Klotz aimed to be a minister, And I was his son-in-law” (p. 105). But be that as it may, Griboyedov’s work, deeply immersed in everyday life, turns out to be a kind of philosophical treatise, inquisitively exploring what the mind is, what is reasonable, what is true. In the traditions of enlightenment, in this dispute, the playwright notices two polar points of view: for Chatsky, the highest value is “a mind hungry for knowledge”; for Famusov, “Learning is the plague, learning is the reason, What is worse now than when the mad people, and deeds, and opinions were divorced” (p. 90). However, the trend of “enlightenment” at the beginning of the 19th century. so immutable that both Famusov and his like-minded people are already ready in words to recognize “intelligence” as a real value, albeit with the necessary reservations. Thus, praising Madame Rosier, Famusov considers it necessary to emphasize that she “was smart, had a quiet disposition, and rarely had rules” (p. 15); Gradually recommending her chosen one to her father, Sophia notes that he is “both insinuating and smart” (p. 17); and for Natalya Dmitrievna her husband is good “in character, in intelligence” (p. 70); indignant at Chatsky, Princess Tugoukhovskaya is indignant: “Listen, his little finger is Smarter than everyone else and even Prince Peter” (p. 108). It is not without reason that, noting the undoubted achievements of the “present century,” Chatsky understands: “Even though there are hunters of indecency everywhere, Nowadays laughter frightens and keeps shame in check.” But the Famus society one way or another strives to contrast other values with the true mind. Famusov himself is the foundation of the feudal nobility:
Be inferior, but if there are two thousand family souls, He will be the groom.
(p. 42)
Sophia – sentimental sensitivity:
Oh, if someone loves someone, Why search for the mind and travel so far?
(p. 21)
Molchalin - covenants of the service hierarchy:
After all, you need to depend on others...
(p. 68)
Skalozub – iron discipline of the front:
I'll give the sergeant major to Voltaire.
(p. 105)
Contrasted with such “mores,” Chatsky’s striving for “truth in itself” acquires destructive force, encroaching on the foundations of the autocratic-serf system. But at the same time, the hero himself begins to feel a strange, disturbing abstractness of the laws of “pure reason”, which leads him along the path of alienation from the people of his circle, which at other moments seems to him a harbinger of absolute loneliness. He feels that in himself “the mind and the heart are not in harmony”; he still hopes for earthly, human happiness; he is sad to feel every day how “the smoke of hopes that... filled the soul” is melting away. It is characteristic that in the finale he goes “to search the world, Where there is a corner for an offended feeling” (namely an offended feeling, not a mind).
The “millions of torments” experienced by Chatsky, as we will see below, are his approach to the final, fatal point to which his honest and consistent service to the truth, the laws of reason, as they were recognized by the Enlightenment doctrine, led him. But - this is the deepest revelation of the author of “Woe from Wit” - beyond this line the playwright already senses access to new horizons.
Constructed as an evil trial of the freedom-loving Chatsky, the comedic action in “Woe from Wit,” however, has the highest meaning of a just trial of unjust judges, which is especially clearly revealed in the central monologue of the play “Who are the judges!”
Chatsky here responds to Famusov, who exclaimed: “I’m not the only one, everyone also condemns” (p. 44); one can imagine how impressively this is said, - after all, “what Princess Marya Aleksevna will say” is sacred and immutable for Famusov. Not so for Chatsky. But he does not justify himself before “public opinion”, he is independent of it and administers his own judgment. The ornate rhetoric of the poetic periods of the monologue seems to remove the dullness of everyday pain, exposing the tragedy of everyday Russian life, revealing the terrible price that is paid for the well-fed well-being of Famus society. The pathos of the monologue (and the entire comedy) is in defense of free life; spiritual slavery here is felt as a consequence of political slavery. The inert power of the “noble scoundrels” is equally directed both against the hero and against the enslaved people. The themes of a suffering people and a persecuted son of the fatherland, which are not connected by plot in the play, merge in its overall tragic sound. In this regard, the hero’s positive program is
He will focus his mind, hungry for knowledge, on science, Or God himself will awaken in his soul a gift for creative, high and beautiful arts
(p. 45)
- the program, only outlined, but not revealed, is filled with greater content (as a counteraction to the dominance of social evil depicted in the monologue, throughout the comedy), and the theme of the hero’s romantic loneliness (“one of us is one”), outlined here, turns out to be muted.
Despite the “millions of torments” that befell the hero in Griboyedov’s play, she is not at all hopeless in her final decisions.
Griboyedov leaves his hero at a crossroads. Dostoevsky remarked on this matter: “Griboedov’s comedy is brilliant, but confusing: “I’ll go look around the world...” that is, where? After all, he has only the light that is in his window, in the Moscow good circle - he will not go to the people...”[278]
This accusation is essentially unfair.
Yes, Chatsky is indeed presented in the play as a prophet, whose voice cries out in the desert, for for Famus society there is no prophet in his own fatherland. This is acutely felt by the hero of the play and even more acutely by its author (see, for example, the ending of the third act of the comedy). However, there is no doubt that for Chatsky the fatherland is not limited to Famus’s circle.
The content of Griboedov's play is deeper than its dramatic conflict. “Woe from Wit” is indeed not just a drama, but a stage poem in which the traditional structural “parameters” of high comedy are largely rethought. It was already shown above how conventional, for example, in Griboyedov’s work the “unity” of place and time is. The traditions of educational social comedy in “Woe from Wit” also appear partly in “filmed form.”
The educational satire of morals in Russian literature was addressed to the educated strata of society, possessing civil rights and responsibilities, and was intended to educate the nobility, exposing the neglect of these responsibilities and abuse of rights. Hence the normativity of such satire. Thus, in the best Russian pre-Griboedov comedy, “The Minor,” Pravdin and Milon are presented as the ideal norm, and especially Starodum, the true father of the fatherland, who embodied the example of a citizen, a moral standard for the people of the later “evil” century. In Griboyedov’s comedy, Chatsky does not just exclaim rhetorically:
Where, tell us, are the fathers of the fatherland, Whom we should take as models?
(p. 45)
– he really doesn’t find such “samples”.
The address of Griboyedov's satire is the same, but it is more merciless and consistent than Fonvizin's. Griboyedov still needs a hero who serves as a mouthpiece for the author’s ideas; he needs an open, oratorical denunciation of an inert society. And yet, the effect of accusatory laughter, which “keeps shame in check” (p. 35), as the author of “Woe from Wit” understands, is not so effective. “Rein” is an attribute of coercion, but nothing more. It is for the dumb (in Griboyedov’s time this word was used in the meaning of “creature, unreasonable animal”). A person must be guided by reason.
The “highest significance” of Griboyedov’s social comedy should obviously be sought in its dominant theme, in the theme of “mind,” which is the most important moral and political category for the playwright. It is noteworthy that “mind” in the play is equated with an inspired, heartfelt word:
He is enlivened by his meeting with you, and talkative, but isn’t there a time when I think Molchalin is stupider, where is he by the way?
Have you not yet broken the silence of the seal? ……………… But by the way, he will reach the known degrees, After all, nowadays they love the dumb. (pp. 26–27)
This tirade also exposes the special quality of Griboyedov’s “meaningful surnames.” It turns out that they are all connected with the concepts of “speaking” and “listening.”[279] In turn, this allows us to notice the main comic (in origin – folk, farcical) device of Griboyedov’s play. “And they hear, they don’t want to understand,” Liza exclaims at the beginning of the comedy (p. 9). In the end, Famusov is perplexed: “Crazy! What kind of nonsense is he talking about here! The sycophant! father-in-law! and about Moscow so menacingly!” (p. 120). The scenes with the participation of the “father of the fatherland,” the truly dumb Prince Tugoukhovsky, reach true grotesqueness. However, no less significant is the second phenomenon of the second act of the play, where Famusov, covering his ears, does not hear Chatsky, “does not want to understand” him; Here, two different languages, two opposing worldviews are especially clearly demonstrated. That is why the Famusovs are not able to understand Chatsky, because they are deaf to reason. They remain “Germans” (that is, alien, dumb and deaf) for the people, while Chatsky not only deeply sympathizes with them, but nourishes in his soul the hope of someday being understood by the “smart, vigorous people.”
Readers of the comedy cannot help but notice that the hero and the people are called smart in it.
Nationality as the most important quality of Russian critical realism matured in the dramaturgy of the first quarter of the 19th century. difficult, but insurmountable. From the first timid attempts of sentimental drama to draw its plots from peasant life, through the painful crisis of Ozerovo’s dramaturgy, which was partly overcome in the post-war civil tragedy of the Decembrists with its educational aspirations towards national ideals - such in its main tendencies is the historical path to “Woe from Wit” and to "To Boris Godunov."
The people are behind the scenes of Griboyedov’s comedy. In Pushkin’s tragedy, the people are silent, but they are silent threateningly, because the power of the mighty of this world is maintained by the opinion of the people, and it is also by them that it is overthrown. The romantic quality of Pushkin’s historical thought, rethinking the Enlightenment “opinions rule the world,” is quite obvious. The same quality is undoubtedly in the ideology of Griboedov, who strives to comprehend the national (popular) mind. But it is precisely the awareness that true values are in this mind that determines a new “perspective” of the aesthetic perception of life - from the standpoint of the people, which allows both Griboedov and Pushkin to open a realistic era in Russian literature.
In the 1820s. Griboyedov conceived and only partially executed about a dozen works, large and small - lyric poems, poems, tragedies. Behind all the diversity of these plans, reflecting the intensity of creative quests, there is no doubt the main theme of Griboyedov’s creativity: the fate of the Russian nation, its past, present and future. Tragedies are being conceived from the life of epic Rus' during the struggle against the Polovtsians and the Mongol-Tatar invasion. The Russian national character is tested - in confrontation with harsh nature (“Prophetic Youth”), against the backdrop of exotic reality shading its peculiarity (the wanderer in “Kalyanchi”, the Russian officer in “Georgian Night”), even through the hostile eyes of the highlander and Polovtsian (“Predators on the Chegeme", dialogue of the Polovtsians). The concept of the drama about the war of 1812 is especially significant, where Napoleon’s thoughts about “this young, primitive people, about the peculiarities of their clothing, buildings, faith, and morals are outlined. Devoted to himself, what could he produce?[280] and the prophecies of the “shadows of the great giants” “about the time of redemption for Russia”; and the opposition between the two main characters of the work, which passes from act to act: “full of life, glory and brilliant hopes,” a French officer who dies on the battlefield, and his winner, the serf M., powerless, however, before the arbitrariness of the landowner.
Intense creative searches were cut short by the absurd death of Griboedov at the beginning of 1829. In the minds of readers, he remained the author of one work - the comedy “Woe from Wit,” which placed the playwright among the greatest Russian writers and had a huge influence on the further development of Russian literature.
