Griboyédoff

GRIBOYÉDOFF (1795–1829) died very young, and all that he left was one comedy, Misfortune from Intelligence (Góre ot Umá), and a couple of scenes from an unfinished tragedy in the Shakespearean style. However, the comedy is a work of genius, and owing to it alone, Griboyédoff may be described as having done for the Russian stage what Púshkin has done for Russian poetry.

Griboyédoff was born at Moscow, and received a good education at home before he entered the Moscow University, at the age of fifteen. Here he was fortunate enough to fall under the influence of the historian Schlötzer and Professor Buhle, who developed in him the desire for a thorough acquaintance with the world-literature, together with habits of serious work. It was consequently during his stay at the University (1810–1812) that Griboyédoff wrote the first sketch of his comedy, at which he worked for the next twelve years.

In 1812, during the invasion of Napoleon, he entered the military service, and for four years remained an officer of the hussars, chiefly in Western Russia. The spirit of the army was quite different then from what it became later on, under Nicholas I.: it was in the army that the “Decembrists” made their chief propaganda, and Griboyédoff met among his comrades men of high humanitarian tendencies. In 1816 he left the military service, and, obeying the desire of his mother, entered the diplomatic service at St. Petersburg, where he became friendly with the “Decembrists” Tchaadáeff (see Ch. VIII.), Ryléeff, and Odóevskiy (see Ch. I. and II.).

A duel, in which Griboyédoff took part as a second, was the cause of the future dramatist’s removal from St. Petersburg. His mother insisted upon his being sent as far as possible from the capital, and he was accordingly despatched to Teheran. He travelled a good deal in Persia, and, with his wonderful activity and liveliness, took a prominent part in the diplomatic work of the Russian Embassy. Later on, staying at Tiflís, and acting as a secretary to the Lieutenant of the Caucasus, he worked hard in the same diplomatic domain; but he worked also all the time at his comedy, and in 1824 he finished it, while he was for a few months in Central Russia. Owing to a mere accident the manuscript of Misfortune from Intelligence became known to a few friends, and the comedy produced a tremendous sensation among them. In a few months it was being widely read in manuscript copies, raising storms of indignation amongst the old generation, and provoking the greatest admiration among the young. All efforts, however, to obtain its production on the stage, or even to have it represented once in private, were thwarted by the censorship, and Griboyédoff returned to the Caucasus without having seen his comedy played at a theatre.

There, at Tiflís, he was arrested a few days after the 14th of December, 1825 (see Ch. I.), and taken in all speed to the St. Petersburg fortress, where his best friends were already imprisoned. It is said in the Memoirs of one of the Decembrists that even in the gloomy surroundings of the fortress the habitual brightness of Griboyédoff did not leave him. He used to tell his unfortunate friends such amusing stories by means of taps on the walls that they rolled on their beds, laughing like children.

In June, 1826, he was set free, and sent back to Tiflís. But after the execution of some of his friends — Ryléeff was among them — and the harsh sentence to hard labour for life in Siberian mines, which was passed upon all the others, his old gaiety was gone forever.

At Tiflís he worked harder than ever at spreading seeds of a better civilisation in the newly conquered territory; but next year he had to take part in the war of 1827–1828 against Persia, accompanying the army as a diplomatic agent, and after a crushing defeat of the Shah, Abbas-mirza, it was he who concluded the well-known Turkmanchái treaty, by which Russia obtained rich provinces from Persia and gained such an influence over her inner affairs. After a flying visit to St. Petersburg, Griboyédoff was sent once more to Teheran — this time as an ambassador. Before leaving, he married at Tiflís a Georgian princess of remarkable beauty, but he felt, as he left the Caucasus for Persia, that his chances of returning alive were few: “Abbas, Miraz,” he wrote, “will never pardon me the Turkmanchái treaty” — and so it happened. A few months after his arrival at Teheran a crowd of Persians fell upon the Russian embassy, and Griboyédoff was killed.

For the last few years of his life, Griboyédoff had not much time nor taste for literary work. He knew that nothing he desired to write could ever see the light. Even Misfortune from Intelligence had been so mutilated by censorship that many of its best passages had lost all sense. He wrote, however, a tragedy in the romantic style, A Georgian Night, and those of his friends who had read it in full rated extremely high its poetic and dramatic qualities; but only two scenes from this tragedy and the outline of its contents have reached us. The manuscript was lost — perhaps at Teheran.

Misfortune from Intelligence is a most powerful satire, directed against the high society of Moscow in the years 1820–1830. Griboyédoff knew this society from the inside, and his types are not invented. Real men gave him the foundations for such immortal types as Fámusoff, the aged nobleman, and Skalozúb, the fanatic of militarism, as well as for all the secondary personages. As to the language in which Griboyédoff’s personages speak, it has often been remarked that up to his time only three writers had been such great masters of the truly Russian spoken language: Púlshkin, Krylóff, and Griboyédoff. Later on, Ostróvskiy could be added to these three. It is the true language of Moscow. Besides, the comedy is full of verses so strikingly satirical and so well said, that scores of them became proverbs known all over Russia.

The idea of the comedy must have been suggested by Molière’s Misanthrope, and the hero, Tchátskiy, has certainly much in common with Alceste. But Tchátskiy is, at the same time, so much Griboyédoff himself, and his cutting sarcasms are so much the sarcasms which Griboyédoff must have launched against his Moscow acquaintances, while all the other persons of the comedy are so truly Moscow people — so exclusively Moscow nobles — that apart from its leading motive, the comedy is entirely original and most thoroughly Russian.

Tchátskiy is a young man who returns from a long journey abroad, and hastens to the house of an old gentleman, Fámusoff, whose daughter, Sophie, was his playmate in childhood, and is loved by him now. However, the object of his vows has meanwhile made the acquaintance of her father’s secretary — a most insignificant and repulsive young man, Moltchálin, whose rules of life are: First, “moderation and punctuality,” and next, to please everyone in the house of his superiors, down to the gatekeeper and his dog, “that even the dog may be kind to me.” Following his rules, Moltchálin courts at the same time the daughter of his principal and her maid: the former, to make himself agreeable in his master’s house, and the latter, because she pleases him. Tchátskiy is received in a very cold way. Sophie is afraid of his intelligence and his sarcasm, and her father has already found a partner for her in Colonel Skalozúb — a military man full six feet high in his socks, who speaks in a deep bass voice, exclusively about military matters, but has a fortune and will soon be a general.

Tchátskiy behaves just as an enamoured young man would do. He sees nothing but Sophie, whom he pursues with his adoration, making in her presence stinging remarks about Moltchálin, and bringing her father to despair by his free criticism of Moscow manners — the cruelty of the old serfowners, the platitudes of the old courtiers, and so on; and as a climax, at a ball, which Fámusoff gives that night, he indulges in long monologues against the adoration of the Moscow ladies for everything French. Sophie, in the meantime, offended by his remarks about Moltchálin, retaliates by setting afloat the rumour that Tchátskiy is not quite right in his mind, a rumour which is taken up with delight by Society at the ball, and spreads like wildfire.

It has often been said in Russia that the satirical remarks of Tchátskiy at the ball, being directed against such a trifling matter as the adoration of foreigners, are rather superficial and irrelevant. But it is more than probable that Griboyédoff limited himself to such innocent remarks because he knew that no others would be tolerated by the censorship; he must have hoped that these, at least, would not be wiped out by the censor’s red ink. From what Tchátskiy says during his morning call in Fámusoff’s study, and from what is dropped by other personages, it is evident that Griboyédoff had far more serious criticisms to put into his hero’s mouth.

Altogther, a Russian satirical writer is necessarily placed under a serious disadvantage with foreigners. When Molière gives a satirical description of Parisian society this satire is not strange to the readers of other nations: we all know something about life in Paris; but when Griboyèdoff describes Moscow society in the same satirical vein, and reproduces in such an admirable way purely Moscow types — not even typical Russians, but Moscow types (“On all the Moscow people,” he says, “there is a special stamp”) — they are so strange to the Western mind that the translator ought to be half-Russian himself, and a poet, in Order to render Griboyédoff’s comedy in another language. If such a translation were made, I am sure that this comedy would become a favourite on the stages of Western Europe. In Russia it has been played over and over again up to the present time, and although it is now seventy years old, it has lost nothing of its interest and attractiveness.