Woe from Wit

Reading notes

• Swan Song (Calchas) §102 Out of Moscow

  The play's final recitation, and its closing words before the curtain falls, are Chatsky's famous parting speech from Alexander Griboyedov's verse comedy "Woe from Wit" (1823/1825) -- the disillusioned hero's furious renunciation of Moscow society as he leaves it forever ("Carriage for me, carriage!"). Ending the monologue on Chatsky rather than returning to Godunov, Lear, Hamlet, or Othello is a deliberate escalation: Chatsky's exile is self-willed and final, and Svetlovidov's own exit with Nikita Ivanych immediately afterward -- to get dressed and go, presumably, nowhere in particular -- gives the borrowed Russian line an ending the Shakespeare and Pushkin quotations alone could not supply.

• The Liberal Sweetheart §68 the last monologue from 'Woe from Wit'

  Chatsky's climactic monologue of disillusioned farewell in Alexander Griboyedov's verse comedy "Woe from Wit" (1823/1825) -- so often recited at amateur evenings by 1884 that Kaskadov dismisses it here as "shabloshno, заезжено" (hackneyed, worn threadbare).

• O Women, Women! §35 I go now to seek, throughout the world, some corner where an insulted heart may feel

  The closing line of Chatsky's final monologue in Griboyedov's comedy \emph{Woe from Wit} (1823/1825) — a famous quotation the exhausted editor half-mangles as he stalks off to drink.

• One of Many §19 Princess Marya Alexevna

  "Что скажет княгиня Марья Алексевна?!" quotes, almost verbatim, the anxious closing line of Griboyedov's verse comedy Woe from Wit (1823/1825), spoken by the status-obsessed Famusov, which had become a stock Russian catchphrase for dread of what society will say; Chekhov puts it in the mouth of Ivan Ivanych's wife (via his own mimicry) as a stock joke instantly recognizable to a literate 1887 reader.

• To A. N. Pleshcheyev, 6 March 1888. Moscow. §3 with feeling, with judgment, with due deliberation

  A quotation from Griboyedov's verse comedy "Woe from Wit" (Famusov's advice to Sofia in Act II), used proverbially in Russian for doing something with careful method.

• To I. P. Chekhov, 16 July 1889. Parokhod "Olga". §11 "Woe from Wit" went badly, "Don Juan" and "Hamlet" went well. Poor houses.

  Griboyedov's classic verse comedy is named as having fared badly with the Odessa troupe's audiences, despite "Don Juan" and "Hamlet" (author/production unspecified in the letter) going well; "poor houses" (сборы плохие) refers to weak box-office takings generally, undercutting even the successes.

• To V. O. Kononovich, 19 February 1891. Moscow. §117 грибоедовского францу из Бордо

  \"The Frenchman from Bordeaux\" is the figure in Chatsky's Act III monologue in Griboyedov's \emph{Woe from Wit} -- a minor Frenchman newly arrived in Moscow who is astonished to find society there speaking French and aping French manners so thoroughly that he might as well never have left home. Chekhov's comparison is self-deprecating rather than literal: he means he was so besieged with visitors and social demands in Petersburg, forced to \"perform\" and talk incessantly about Sakhalin on demand, that he felt like a curiosity on display -- the same over-solicited, slightly absurd position Griboyedov's Frenchman occupies in the play. See also for the character who delivers the original speech.