SOURCE: Baehr, Stephen. “Is Moscow Burning? Fire in Griboedov's Woe from Wit.” In Russian Subjects: Empire, Nation, and the Culture of the Golden Age, edited by Monika Greenleaf and Stephen Moeller-Sally, pp. 229-42. Evanston, Ill. : Northwestern University Press, 1998.

[In the following essay, Baehr explores the importance of fire imagery in the events and themes of Woe from Wit.]

And Moscow is burning up.
The black smoke spreads and curls.
And, behold, the brilliant head of Moscow
Stops gleaming.
Poor Moscow is ablaze,
Moscow has been burning for 12 days …

—N. M. Shatrov, “The Fire of Moscow: To the Year 1812”

In A. S. Griboedov's comedy Woe from Wit (Gore ot uma, completed 1824),¹ fire imagery plays a central structural role. Fire is polysemous in the play, summarizing many essential themes and conflicts, connecting and capsuling major events and themes, and serving as a “master image” for the play as a whole. Through frequent references to fire, flame, fumes, and smoke, the idea is implicit that both Moscow and its inhabitants are “burning” with several very different fires. In this essay I shall attempt to uncover the meanings of this essential (but largely unnoticed) fire imagery in Griboedov's play, which provides a fitting frame for the period portrayed, beginning with the 1812 burning of Moscow that saved the city from Napoleon and ending just before the revolutionary “fire” of the 1825 Decembrist uprising.² As I shall argue, Griboedov in this play parodically reverses the apocalyptic fire imagery of post-1812 Russian chauvinistic literature (which was often based on the oxymoron of a destructive conflagration that saved the nation), replacing it with a satiric vision of a hellish Moscow, burning with the prejudices of its post-Petrine past and scorching anyone trying to “rebuild” the city with new ideas.³

Much of Griboedov's comedy is structured on the punning interplay between words formed from two similar-sounding (and etymologically linked) roots: goret' (to burn) and gore (woe—one of the two key words of the title).⁴ Even several character names reflect this interplay. In the original draft of the play, for example, the main character (called Chatsky in later drafts) was named Chadsky, reflecting immediately a connection with chad (fumes, smoke), and thus with fire, that became somewhat more oblique in the published version of the play.⁵ His “woe” is caused in part by the gossip, liar, and cardsharp Zagoretsky, whose name derives from zagoret'sia (to catch fire)—a name justified when he fans the flames of rumor that Chatsky “has gone out of his mind” (a rumor begun at the ball by Sophia as vengeance against Chatsky's caustic tongue, 3.438-44).⁶ The only other character besides Chatsky who feels “woe” in and is “burned” by fiery Moscow is Chatsky's old friend Platon Mikhailovich Gorich, whose name comes from gorech' (bitterness), which derives from gore (woe).⁷

As in much world literature, fire is connected with change on one level of Griboedov's play. Indeed, the play can be read as being about the impossibility of change in Moscow, a city that even “fire” (both the historical fire of 1812 and the symbolic fire of “intelligent” [“umnye”] critics like Chatsky) cannot change.⁸ In this article, I shall explore three distinct layers of fire imagery in Woe from Wit and their interaction: the fire of passion associated with Chatsky; the portrayal of Moscow as a hellish “burning city”; and the attempt of the Moscow upper classes to extinguish the “fire” of revolution and, with it, any form of “enlightenment.”

THE FIRE OF PASSION: CHATSKY

Throughout Griboedov's play, Chatsky is associated with passion, heat, and fire. He is described by himself and others through nouns like zhar (heat), pylkost' (ardor [etymologically: “burning”]), dym (smoke), and chad (fumes). This “fire” with which Chatsky is linked has at least three distinct meanings: love, choler, and enlightenment. In the first part of the play, much of the fire imagery is commonplace, reflecting the “sacred fire of love” felt by Chatsky for Sophia.⁹ At Chatsky's first entrance, the stage directions indicate that he immediately kisses Sophia's hand “with passion” (s zharom; literally, “with heat”). When Chatsky realizes that a similar “fire” is no longer burning in Sophia, he says to her that he would not even wish on an enemy what is now “boiling, agitating, raging (kipit, volnuet, besit)” in him (3.52).¹⁰ Indeed, he criticizes his rival Molchalin for lacking this fiery passion.¹¹ He explicitly uses imagery of fire in stressing his love for her: “Order me to walk through fire, and I'll go as if to dinner (Velite zh mne v ogon': poidu, kak na obed) (1.445). Sophia's caustic retort—“All well and good if you burn up, but what will happen if you don't?” (Da, khorosho sgorite, esli zh net? 1.446)—unwittingly portends a later truth: that Chatsky will be “burned” by the “fire” raging in Moscow society. Sophia's father, Famusov, also identifies Chatsky with fire when he says (after realizing that not simply one but two “undesirable” suitors—his clerk Molchalin and now Chatsky—are in love with his daughter): “Now, out of the fire and into the flame” (v polmia iz ognia, 1.482 [the equivalent of “out of the frying-pan and into the fire”]).

On a second level, Chatsky's connection with fire may also be explained through the famous theory of “humors” that saw the healthy body—paralleling the universe—as containing a balance between four fluids or “humors,” each of which corresponded to one of the elements: black bile (earth), blood (air), phlegm (water), and yellow bile/choler (fire).¹² According to this theory, a person's character could be explained by the prominence of one humor. In Chatsky's case, the dominant humor is clearly yellow bile (zhelch'), giving him his “fiery” character.¹³ Chatsky's link with yellow bile is made explicit several times during the play. As Sophia says to him, “It is obvious that you are ready to pour your bile (zhelch' … izlit') on everyone” (3.30-31). And in his last speech in act 4, Chatsky states:

Tipirs ni kudо b bylо srydu
Na dоcs i na оtцa
I na lybоvniкa glupцa,
I na viss nir czlcms bsy zilcs i vsy dоsadu.

(4.503-6)

(Now it's not a bad idea
To vent all my bile and fury
On the daughter, on the father,
On the stupid lover, and on all the world.)

Chatsky's “yellow bile”/fire is implicitly opposed to the “phlegm”/water of his foil and rival, the “stupid lover” Molchalin, whose name derives from the root for “silence” (molch—), recalling the widespread Russian idea that a life without trouble is possible only by being “quieter than water, lower than grass” (tishe vody, nizhe travy).¹⁴

Chatsky's fiery choler is directed largely against the servile spirit of self-advancement among Moscow's bureaucrats and the virulent hatred of change among its decrepit doyens. Already in his first appearance on stage, he sarcastically expresses his certainty that no change has occurred there during the three years he has been absent:

Ctо nоvоgо pокazit mni Mоsкva?
Vcira byl bal, a zavtra budit dva.
Tоt svatalsy—uspil, a tоt dal prоmak
Vsë tоt zi tоlк, i ti z stiki v alsbоmak.

(1.353-56)

(What new things can Moscow show me?
There was a ball yesterday and there will be two tomorrow.
One man has managed to get engaged, and one man has failed.
The conversations are the same, as are the verses in the albums.)

Throughout the play, this unchanging Moscow is associated with “the old,” metonymically represented by its “gerontocracy” (the malicious old aristocracy who dominate the city); for the young Chatsky “what is older is worse” (Chto staree, to khuzhe, 2.345-46). This Moscow gerontocracy is so hateful to Griboedov and his fiery hero that Simon Karlinsky has fairly stated that one of the main themes of the play is “gerontophobia.”¹⁵ The attempts of this gerontocracy, and of the bureaucracy with which it is linked, to thwart change and to retain the standards of the past (specifically those of the epoch of Catherine II) are symbolically prefigured in the first scene of the play when the servant Liza sets a clock forward at daybreak so that it will chime the hour and signal Molchalin to leave Sophia's room. But Liza is caught by Famusov, who stops the clock—an emblem for his actions in the rest of the play.

In Griboedov's play, the Moscow gerontocracy fights the fire of change, challenge, and nonconformity in Chatsky and tries to “extinguish” it, declaring Chatsky mad and thus trying to eliminate the harm that his fire can bring;¹⁶ in Moscow, only those who lack fire (like Molchalin) can be successful. As Chatsky states:

Tipirs pusкaj iz nas оdin,
Iz mоlоdyk lydij, najditsy—vrai isкanjb,
Ni triyuy ni mist, ni pоvysinsy v cin,
V nauкi оn vpirit um, alcusij pоznanij.
Ili v dusi igо sam bоy vоzbudit zar
K isкusstvam tvоrcisкim, vysокim i priкrasnym,—
Oni tоtcas: razbоj! uоzar!
I prоslyvit u nik mictatilim! оpasnym!!

(2.376-83)

(Now, let's suppose that one of us,
One of the younger people, could be found who was an enemy of
          self-advancement,
Who did not demand a position or promotion to a higher rank,
Who would focus his mind on scholarship, in quest of knowledge.
If God himself should awaken a passion in his soul
For the creative arts, sublime and lofty,
These people would immediately yell: “Robbery!” “Fire!”
And among them he would gain the reputation as a dreamer and a danger.)

As this speech reflects, the fire burning in Chatsky is, on another level, the fire of “enlightenment” and learning—a “passion” (zhar) that challenges the obscurantist upper classes, who cry “fire” at any sign of deviation from their unchanging bureaucratic norm. In an earlier draft of this speech, the clash between Chatsky and these groups is even stronger, with Chatsky emphasizing their intolerance of anyone “who burns with a different fire” (inym ognem goriashchii: Griboedov, Gore ot uma, 1969, 164). As is clear from this version, even at an early stage of writing, Griboedov was opposing two very different fires: one raging in Chatsky and one burning in Moscow.

THE BURNING CITY

From Chatsky's first scene in the play (act 1, scene 7) through his last (act 4, scene 14), he describes Moscow society through imagery of fire and smoke. When he returns to the city after his three-year absence, he is even prepared to forget its foibles, although he well remembers the repulsive and ridiculous characters who have peopled it. His desire to see Sophia has even created a degree of homesickness in him, expressed through a Latin proverb about smoke:

Opyts uvidits ik mni suzdinо sudsbоj!
Zits nimi nadоist, i v коm ni sysim pytin?
Kоgda z pоstranstvuim, vоrоtimsy dоmоj,
I uym оmicismva nam sdauок c urcymin!

(1.383-86; emphasis in original)

(I am again fated to see them all again!
I'll be bored by living among them, but in whom can one not find fault?
When you have been traveling, and you finally return home
Even the smoke of one's Fatherland is sweet and pleasant.)

The expression used by Chatsky about the “smoke of one's Fatherland” being “sweet and pleasant” comes from a Latin proverb (Et fumus patriae est dulcis), taken from Ovid, which had its ultimate origin in Homer's Odyssey.¹⁷ As Griboedov's play develops, this expression acquires clear irony: the play becomes a kind of “anti-Odyssey,” where the hero, who (like Odysseus) had pined for the “smoke of his fatherland,” cannot tolerate the place for even a single day.

Within Griboedov's play, the “smoke of the fatherland” is linked, on one level, with the Moscow fire of 1812—that “pyric victory” that saved the city from Napoleon, destroying more than 6,000 of its 9,000 buildings. In Russian literature and culture in the years after 1812, this “great fire” was a symbol of hope and salvation. As Tsar Alexander I proclaimed after the burning of Moscow: “God has chosen the venerable capital of Russia to save not just Russia but all of Europe through her sufferings. Her fire was the conflagration of freedom for all the kingdoms of the earth.”¹⁸ In literature like N. M. Shatrov's panegyric “The Fire of Moscow: To the Year 1812” (“Pozhar Moskvy: 1812 godu,” 1813 or 1814), this fire had been similarly praised as a savior of Europe from Napoleon. As Shatrov describes the fire:

I zauоraimsy Mоsкva.
Dym cirnyj stilitsy, кlubitsy,
I si piristait svititssy
Mоsкvy blistysay glava.
Mоsкva niscastnay uylaim
Mоsкva uоrcm dvinadцats dnij.

(Lotman and Al'tshuller, Poety, 589)

(And Moscow is burning up.
The black smoke spreads and curls
And, behold, the brilliant head of Moscow
Stops gleaming.
Poor Moscow is ablaze,
Moscow has been burning for 12 days.)

I would argue that Griboedov takes fire imagery like that in much chauvinistic literature and rhetoric appearing after the “Great Patriotic War” of 1812—imagery of an apocalyptic, purgative fire creating the “new earth” foreseen in Revelation—and uses it ironically to challenge, rather than to praise, contemporary Russia.

The fire of 1812 is discussed explicitly in act 2 in a conversation among Famusov, Skalozub, and Chatsky. Skalozub describes the massive rebuilding project that has taken place in Moscow: “In my judgment, / The fire greatly helped improve its looks” (Po moemu suzhdeniiu / Pozhar sposobstvoval ei mnogo k ukrasheniiu, 2.319-20).¹⁹ To this, Famusov responds in agreement: “Since then the roads, the sidewalks, / The houses, and everything has been built anew” (na novyi lad; 2.322-23). But Chatsky immediately rejoins:

Dоma nоvy, nо pridrassudкi stary.
Pоradujtiss, ni istribyt
Ni gоdy ik, ni mоdy, ni uоzary.

(2.324-26)

(The houses are new, but the prejudices old.
Rejoice, that neither years
Nor modes, nor fires will wipe them out.”)

Thus, while Skalozub sees the fire as purgative—the current commonplace—Chatsky argues that even “fire” cannot change Moscow, a city that has, paradoxically, been “captured” by the customs and language of the defeated French.

Chatsky prays for a “spark” that will start a different fire—one that would consume Russia's habit of blindly imitating foreign customs and ignoring its own native traditions:

Я оdals vоssylal zilansy
Smirinnyi, оdnaко vsluk,
Ctоb istribil gоspоds nicistyj etоt duk
Pustоgо, rabsкоgо, slipоgо pоdrazansy;
Ctоb isкru zarоnil оn v коm-nibuds s dusоj,
Ktо mоg by slоvоm i primirоm
Nas udirzats, кaк кripкоy vоzzоj,
Ot zalкоj tоsnоty pо stоrоni cuzоj.

(3.592-99)

(I, at a distance, sent up my wishes,
Which were humble but said aloud,
That God should destroy that unclean spirit
Of empty, slavish, blind imitation;
That He should place a spark in someone with a soul
Who could by his example and his word
Restrain us, as with strong reins,
From pitiful yearning for some foreign land.)

Chatsky's words (in a speech that at points prefigures views of the later Slavophiles) describe a prayer to God (“desires sent upward”) to “destroy the unclean spirit / … / of empty, slavish, blind imitation” in Moscow.²⁰ The use of the phrase “the unclean spirit” (“nechistyi dukh”) links Moscow's “spirit of imitation” with the devil, who was often called “the unclean force” (“nechistaia sila”) in Russian culture; it thus creates an implicit comparison of Moscow to hell.

I would argue that this implicit image of Moscow as hell assumes three different but related forms in Griboedov's play: a generic “burning city”; Babylon; and Sodom. This Muscovite “inferno” is described by Chatsky (in almost Dantean terms) as populated by:

… Mucitilij tоlpa,
V lybvi pridatilij, v vrazdi niutоmimyk,
Rassкazciкоv niuкrоtimyk,
Nisкladnyk umniкоv, luкavyk prоstyкоv,
Staruk zlоvisik, stariкоv,
Drykliysik nad vydumкami, vzdоrоm.

(4.508-13)

(… A crowd of torturers,
Of betrayers of love who are indefatigable in hatred,
Of indomitable tellers of false tales,
Unsuccessful wits, cunning simpletons,
Malicious old ladies and old men,
Who are growing senile over their made-up tales and nonsense.)(21)

Immediately following this description of upper-class Muscovites, Chatsky describes their Moscow through the implicit metaphor of a burning city in his last speech in the play:

Bizumnym vy miny prоslavili vsim kоrоm.
Vy pravy: iz оuny tоt vyjdit nivridim,
Ktо s vami dins prоbyts uspiit,
Pоdysit vоzdukоm оdnim
I v nim rassuкок uцiliit.

(4.514-18)²²

(You have pronounced me mad in a single chorus.
Correct you are. Any person will escape from fire unscathed
Who succeeds in spending a day with you,
Who breathes the same air that you do,
And whose reason remains intact.)

Here Chatsky compares Moscow society to a fire that chars any reasonable person who comes into contact with it; he leaves Moscow, having been “burned” by its senseless fire of malice, rumor, lies, and servile self-advancement.

On a second level, Moscow is implicitly compared to the burning city of Babylon—a symbol of a “fallen and corrupt existence, the opposite of the Heavenly Jerusalem and of Paradise.”²³ Indeed, this comparison may help explain the important interplay between grief and burning (between gore and goret') that runs throughout the play. In Revelation 18, the burning of Babylon by God in retribution for the sins of the city is described in the Russian Bible through several famous verses intertwining imagery of grief and fire:

… gоri, gоri tibi, viliкij gоrоd Vavilоn, gоrоd кripкij! Ibо v оdin cas prisil sud tvоj. … I vidy ðym оt [b.eta ]оzara ii, vоzоpili, gоvоry: кaкоj gоrоd pоdоbin gоrоdu viliкоmu!

(Otкrоvinii 18:10 and 18)

Since the King James version of the English Bible does not correspond exactly to the Russian Bible here, I shall translate into literal English:

Woe, woe unto you, o great city of Babylon, o mighty city. For in one hour your judgment has come. … And when [the merchants and ship captains] saw the smoke from its fire, they cried out, What city is like this great city?

(Revelation, 18:10 and 18)²⁴

In originally naming his play Gore umu (Woe to wit)—a phrase that creates a direct parallel to the first phrase of this biblical quotation with its use of the word Gore plus the dative case—and in strongly emphasizing fire imagery throughout his drafts, Griboedov was, I argue, making an implicit comparison between the “great city” of Moscow and the burning city of Babylon.

Within the play there is also an implicit comparison of Moscow to Sodom, where God “rain[ed] brimstone and fire” (dozhdem seru i ogon') and “the smoke [dym] was rising from the earth like smoke from a furnace” (Gen. 19:24, 28). The word sodom (with a small “s,” meaning “disorder,” “chaos,” or “noise” in early nineteenth-century Russia) is used explicitly in act 2 of the play. After Chatsky criticizes fawning courtiers like Famusov's late uncle Maksim Petrovich (who was promoted for the fact that after once accidentally falling while bowing to Empress Catherine the Great, he purposefully fell a second and a third time upon seeing her amusement; 2.78ff.), Famusov chastises Chatsky and his “radical” ideas: “Well, I expect disorder from this” (“Nu, tak i zhdu sodoma,” 2.155-56). To an audience that is watching (as opposed to reading) the play, the word sodom is clearly ambiguous (“disorder” or “Sodom” itself).²⁵ Given this hint, it may not be coincidental that Chatsky says in his last speech, “Von iz Moskvy! Siuda ia bol'she ne ezdok / Begu, ne oglianus'” (I'm leaving Moscow! I won't come here again. / I rush and won't look back,” 4.519-20). The overtones of the words ne oglianus' recall the warning of one of the angels to Lot as they were leading them out of Sodom: “Save your soul; don't look back” (ne ogliadyvaisia nazad) (Gen. 19:17). Like Lot, Chatsky dares not look back on the “burning city” of Moscow.

Griboedov's play in effect reverses a cultural tradition that had been frequent in Russia from the mid-fifteenth through the late eighteenth century and had arisen, once again, after the Russian victory over Napoleon in 1812: that of depicting Moscow, or Russia as a whole, as the Third Rome, paradise, heaven-on-earth, or New Jerusalem. This tradition was graphically represented in a famous mid-sixteenth-century icon called “The Church Militant” (Tserkov' voinstvuiushchaia), which celebrated Ivan IV's victory over the Tartar horde and his capture of the city of Kazan by depicting the Archangel Michael leading troops from the burning city of Sodom (Kazan), to a paradise or holy city, a “city on a hill” (Moscow), where the Mother of God sits enthroned.²⁶ In depicting Moscow as the burning city, Griboedov joined a number of other important writers of Russia's Golden Age (including, at times, Pushkin and Lermontov) who were reversing such traditions, portraying Moscow and/or Russia not as paradise but as hell.²⁷

THE FIRE OF REVOLUTION

A third layer of pyric imagery in Griboedov's play centers around the symbolic “fire” of revolution. As the French Revolutionary writer Sylvain Maréchal wrote in his 1799 Voyages of Pythagoras (the six volumes of which were translated into Russian from 1804 to 1809 and achieved great popularity): “with the smallest spark a great fire can be ignited.”²⁸ This image of the fire of revolution spread throughout nineteenth- and twentieth-century Russian literature and culture, used by writers as diverse as Petr Viazemsky, Aleksandr Odoevsky, Dostoevsky, and Blok, among others, and provided the title for several journals advocating revolution (including Lenin's Iskra [The Spark]).

The connection of fire with revolution in original Russian literature and culture goes back at least to Count Rostopchin's anti-Napoleonic placards and brochures. In one 1807 brochure, for example, he stated about the French Revolution: “The Revolution is a fire (pozhar), the French are pieces of smoldering wood (goloveshki), and Napoleon is the stoker (kochegar).”²⁹ This link of fire with revolution is also implied in Petr Viazemsky's fable “The Conflagration” (“Pozhar,” 1820), which was not printed at the time because of its Aesopian fire imagery. The poem tells of a conversation between the owner of a house that is burning and a “councillor” (sovetnik). The councillor tells the owner that he himself avoids such risks by not using fire to light his house at night or to heat it in winter. The owner, however, retorts that “man was not born to go numb in the dark” (kostenet' vpot'makh): “Fire can be a danger but more often brings use to us. And your tomblike house is suitable only to make wolves freeze to death (chtob v nem morit' volkov) and for owls to weave their nests” (gnezda vit' sycham).³⁰ As V. S. Nechaeva notes in her commentary to this poem: “Conflagration (pozhar) is often a symbol of revolt, of revolution, the reason for which is fire (ogon')—a symbol of knowledge and enlightenment, both of which are opposed to the ‘tomblike house’ of Russia, in which reactionaries suppressed knowledge out of fear of revolutionary activity”³¹ Imagery of revolutionary fire was also used by Aleksandr Odoevsky in his response to some verses sent by Pushkin in 1827 to the Decembrists imprisoned in Siberia:

Nas sкоrbnyj trud ni prоpadit:
Iz ysкry vоzgоrcmsy ilamy,
I ηlamy vnоvs zazzim svоbоðy.(32)
(Our mournful labors won't be in vain,
From a spark there will flash a flame
And once again we will light the fire of freedom.)

In short, it was not without precedent when Dostoevsky in his famous antirevolutionary novel The Possessed (Besy, 1872) had his provincial governor, Lembke, say about the fires being set by revolutionaries: “The conflagration is in people's minds, and not on the roofs of houses” (“Pozhar v umakh, a ne na kryshakh domov”); or when Aleksandr Blok wrote in his notebooks about the “terrible tongues of the revolutionary flame” (“strashnykh iazykov revoliutsionogo plameni”).³³

In Griboedov's play, “fire” is often a symbol of enlightenment, education, or new ideas, which obscurantist, upper-class Muscovites frequently mistook for revolution. Thus, Woe from Wit attacks the crusade against enlightenment that often accompanied the chauvinism arising after the war of 1812. As Anatole Mazour has written:

The war of 1812-14 … and especially the burning of Moscow, greatly stimulated the chauvinistic sentiment. It was a call to die-hard conservatives to raise their banner … and declare open warfare against the … “Jacobin spirit.” … Fighting political windmills everywhere, the authorities saw revolution in the most timorous opposition. … The government … considered all societies potential Carbonari and forbade them entirely, except those sponsored by itself. Hence the crusade against revolution in Russia turned into a petty persecution of various developments of national life, destroying thus the finest elements within the state.³⁴

Griboedov's play depicts just such “petty persecution,” portraying Famusov, his friends and colleagues as what contemporaries like the future Decembrist N. I. Turgenev dubbed “gasil'niki” (Extinguishers)—people who, in the conservative reaction occurring after the fire of 1812, tried to “extinguish” the fires of change and enlightenment within Russian society by opposing any new ideas.³⁵ Famusov embodies typical views of these gasil'niki when he states:

Ucinsi—vоt cuma, ucinоsts—vоt pricina,
Ctо nynci, pusi, cim коgda,
Bizumnyk razvilоss lydij, i dil, i mninij.

(3.522-24)

(Learning—that's the plague; erudition—that's the reason
That now, more than ever,
There are more mad people, mad deeds, and mad opinions.)(36)

Others at the ball support this attack on learning, justifying their “noms parlants” as they blame education for all contemporary evils: Khlestova (Famusov's sister-in-law, whose name comes from the word “to whip”) blames schooling of all kinds, especially the Lancaster System “of mutual education” (a system associated with liberal ideas and freethinking at the time, which, in the manner of Mrs. Malaprop in Sheridan's The Rivals, she mistakenly calls the “Landcart [= map] system”); Princess Tugoukhovskaya (“Princess Hard-of-Hearing”) blames the Pedagogical Institute (where “they give exercises in schism and atheism”—reflecting the fact that four professors had recently been fired for godlessness and other subversive activities); and Colonel Skalozub (whose name comes from the phrase skalit' zuby [“to bare one's teeth,” “to laugh in a threatening way”]) advocates an Arakcheev-type project for education:

Я vas оbraduy: vsiоbsay mоlva,
Ctо ists prоiкt nascit liцiiv, sкоl, gimnazij;
Tam budut liss ucits pо-nasimu: raz, dva;
а кnigi sоkranyt taк, dly bоlssik окazij.

(3.535-39)

(I've got good news: there's a rumor circulating
That there is a plan for lycées, schools, gymnasia,
Where they will only teach in our own Russian way—left, right, left—
And books will be reserved for special occasions.)

This interpretation of the society surrounding Famusov as a group of “Extinguishers” is further justified when Famusov urges an obscurantist “auto-da-fé”: “[I]f you want to stop all evil / Gather all the books, and burn them all at once” (Uzh koli zlo presech'; / Zabrat' vse knigi by, da szhech', 3.540-41).

Griboedov establishes a context of absurd suspicions by upper-class Muscovites of any intelligent nonconformist or critic, who is immediately taken for a revolutionary. Thus, Famusov declares Chatsky a “Carbonarist” (2.121)—a member of the revolutionary group striving for a constitutional system of government in countries throughout Europe³⁷—after he hears Chatsky decry Famusov's beloved ideal, the age of Catherine, as “a regiment of jesters” (polk shutov, 2.124) and listens to him disparage Famusov's favorite role model, his uncle Maksim Petrovich:

Kоts ists оkоtniкi pоpоdlgcats viydi,
Da nyоci smik strasit i dirzit styd v uzdi;
Nidarоm zaluyt ik sкupо gоsudari.

(2.118-20)

(Although there still are people who would grovel everywhere,
Now laughter frightens them, and shame holds them in check.
It is not in vain that rulers now reward them poorly.)

Famusov concludes that with statements like this Chatsky will “inevitably be dragged into court” (upekut pod sud) and calls him “a dangerous man” (2.152-53, 123). Indeed, Famusov is so convinced of Chatsky's revolutionary intentions that when a servant comes in announcing the arrival of Skalozub, Famusov—in one of the classic Freudian slips in Russian literature—is too upset to understand, taking Chatsky's words “Vas zovut” (You are being called) for the words “A? bunt?” (What? A rebellion?) and declaiming (as was discussed above): “Indeed, I expect disorder” (sodom) (2.155-56).

The supposed connection of Chatsky with the “fire” of subversive groups—specifically the Masons and the Carbonarists—is humorously asserted again at the ball, when Zagoretsky (who “burns” with the fire of rumor) spreads the word that Chatsky is mad, even though he at first cannot remember who Chatsky is. In trying to tell this rumor to the old Countess Khriumina (a hard-of-hearing dotard, whose name combines the well-known noble name Riumina with the sound made by a grunting pig [khriuk]), Zagoretsky is asked by her: “What's going on? What's going on? Is there a fire here (“uzh net li zdes' poshara” [sic])?” (3.478) After being told by Zagoretsky that Chatsky “was wounded in the forehead while in the mountains (v gorakh izranen v lob) and went crazy from his wound,” the countess says, “What? He's joined the club of Freemasons (k farmazonam v klob)? He's become a heathen!” (3.482).³⁸ This same Khriumina later spreads a rumor to Prince Tugoukhovsky (Prince “Hard-of-Hearing,” who can understand even less than she) that the chief of police has come to jail Chatsky and will conscript him into the army as a private because he broke the law and is, to boot, a heathen and “a damned freethinker” (okaiannyi vol'ter'ianets); later the Prince's wife says of Chatsky: “[I]t's even dangerous to speak with him / He should have been locked up long ago / … / I think that he's simply a Jacobin” (4.252-56, with omissions). In short, Griboedov is satirizing the tendency of upper-class Russian society after the burning of Moscow to confuse the frequently distinct “fires” of enlightenment and revolution.³⁹

Those actually trying to light the “fire” of revolution are portrayed as absurd or comical in Griboedov's play (which was completed in May 1824, about nineteen months before the Decembrist revolt). Although Griboedov was friendly with such future Decembrists as Kiukhel'beker, Ryleev, and Bestuzhev, their influence (despite some pre- and post-revolutionary Russian interpretations) seems minimal here.⁴⁰ Indeed, the only “revolutionary” in the play is the ludicrous Repetilov, who describes his “most secret union” (sekretneishii soiuz) in act 4 using several images of fire. In Repetilov's words his unit consists of “a dozen hotheads” (Goriachikh diuzhina golov”) (4.96, 116), whose leader, “when he speaks about high honor” has “eyes [that] turn bloodshot” and a face that “is on fire” (gorit), “as though he was possessed by a demon” (4.156-58). Given the inanity of this “most secret union,” it is most unlikely that Griboedov intended this group as a portrait of the future Decembrists (as some commentators have proposed); conversely, it is unlikely that Griboedov is portraying Chatsky as a future Decembrist (as others have argued, beginning with Herzen and continuing with Dostoevsky, Goncharov, and Grigor'ev, among others). It is more likely, I would argue, that the imagery of revolutionary “fire” in Griboedov's play is used more as a portrait of the Moscow “Extinguishers” and their intolerance of any new ideas than as a serious portrait of the revolutionary movement itself.⁴¹

In sum, I have argued that through the imagery of fire Griboedov is describing the obscurantist Moscow of the upper classes (including both bureaucrats like Famusov and army officers like Skalozub), who opposed any change in Russia after the war of 1812 yet continued to borrow their language, conduct, and clothing from the French whom they had defeated. Griboedov depicts a stagnant Moscow that is burning with servility and malice, a city that has become a modern Babylon or Sodom and that, in turn, “burns” any idealist who hopes for change. The imagery of fire connects and capsulizes several of the main events and themes of the play: the return to Moscow of Chatsky, burning with love for Sophia; the lack of change in Moscow after its rebuilding (indicating that the fire of 1812 was not the fire of purification that many had hoped for); and the absurdity of the gasil'niki of Moscow high society, who saw the fire of revolution in every act of nonconformity and individuality.

Chatsky's hopes at his return to Moscow are charred by a single day there. As he states in a speech at the beginning of act 4, which makes his original name (Chadskii) into another of the many noms parlants in the play:

Nu vоt i dins prоsil, i s nim
Vsi prizraкi, viss cað c ðym
Naðizð, коtоryi mni dusu napоlnyli.
V pоvоzкi taк-tо na puti
Niоbоzrimоy ravninоj, sidy prazdnо,
Vsë ctо-tо vidnо vpiridi
Svitlо, sinë, raznооbraznо.
I idiss cas, i dva, dins цilyj, vоt rizvо,
Dоmcaliss к оtdyku, nоclig: кuda ni vzglyniss,
Vsë ta zi glass i stips, i pustо i mirtvо! …
Dоsadnо, mоci nit, cim bоlssi dumats staniss.

(4.24-37, with omissions)

(Well, the day has passed, and with it
All the ghosts, all the fume and smoke
Of hope which filled my soul.
In just this way, you drive in your carriage along the road,
Sitting idly across the boundless plain.
All the time something is visible ahead,
Bright, blue, and varied.
You drive an hour, two, and then a day,
And finally you've reached your rest, your lodging place, but wherever you
          look
There's the same old plain and steppe, and it's empty and dead.
The more you begin to think, the more maddening it becomes.)

Chatsky's emphasis on the “extinguishing” of the “smoke of hope” in him by Moscow society uses the image of chad (the hazardous smoke of a coal that has almost—but not fully—burned out) to imply that the “fire” that had burned in him in the morning has been virtually extinguished by the end of the night and that Moscow has “burned him out.”⁴² His bitter comparison of Moscow (the “lodging place,” to which he has been looking forward and “rushing” on his long trip) to a mirage—a place that from a distance looks “bright, blue, and varied” but in reality is as dull, “dead,” and “empty” as the Russian steppe—represents the essence of the city as depicted in the play.⁴³ By act 4, Chatsky says about his native land, which he had praised earlier by stating that even its smoke is “sweet and pleasant”: “And this is my native land. … No, for this trip, / I see that I will soon have taken all that I can” (Net, v nyneshnii priezd, / Ia vizhu, chto ona mne skoro nadoest) (4.287-88). It is fitting that the stage directions for this scene state that the speech takes place when “the last light is extinguished” (posledniaia lampa gasnet) (act 4, scene 10). For the gasil'niki of Moscow society have fully “extinguished” the fire of hope that had fueled Chatsky's return to this “burning city”—a hellish place that is “empty” and “dead,” a place that even fire cannot change.

Notes

1. The play was first published posthumously, with cuts, in 1833 but not published in full until 1861. Unless indicated otherwise, all emphases in quotations from the play are my addition.

2. The importance of the events of 1812 to Griboedov during the mid-1820s is reflected not only by the overt references to the fire of 1812 in the play but also by the fact that in 1824 (the year that he completed Gore ot uma) he even began a tragedy about 1812 (which he never completed). In the surviving sections of this latter play, fire imagery also plays an important role. In the second part, Griboedov planned to show the destruction wrought by the 1812 fire and to depict the burning houses of Moscow; in his sketches, he notes that the events of 1812 will arouse in later generations “an inextinguishable flame (ogn' neugasimyi), a zeal for the glory and freedom of their fatherland” (A. S. Griboedov, Sochineniia v stikhakh, ed. I. N. Medvedeva [Leningrad: Sovetskii pisatel', 1967], 328).

3. My argument about Griboedov's parody of the apocalyptic fire imagery in contemporary chauvinistic literature is not intended to challenge the well-known fact that Griboedov was himself a nationalist. Indeed, much of his criticism of upper-class Moscow society reflects his feeling that Russia was ignoring its own native traditions and favoring those of the France it had defeated; he implicitly blames the reforms of Peter the Great for this blind imitation of the West. Indeed, as will be noted below, some of Chatsky's speeches prefigure ideas of the Slavophiles and other nationalists.

   Models for this apocalyptic fire imagery had already appeared in Russian literature before the conflagration of 1812. For example, M. A. Dmitriev-Mamonov's 1811 ode to fire called “Ogon'” (Fire) uses the biblical image of creation of “a new heaven and a new earth” out of the apocalyptic destruction of the old as “an allegory for the moral and political rebirth of Russia” (Iu. M. Lotman and M. G. Al'tshuller, eds., Poety 1790-1810-x godov [Leningrad: Sovetskii pisatel', 1971], 872). As Dmitriev-Mamonov wrote: “Fire, you devour the impure, / And can beautify the pure / And embrace everything in yourself” (Lotman and Al'tshuller, Poety, 721). As David Bethea has observed, this work uses the image of an apocalyptic “great fire” (ekpyrosis) resulting in the creation of a new world (The Shape of Apocalypse in Modern Russian Fiction [Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1989], 29 n). Works like Dmitriev-Mamonov's to some extent justify Frank Kermode's overbroad generalization that “the mythology of Empire and of Apocalypse are very closely related” (The Sense of an Ending [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1967], 10).

4. Words formed from gore and goret' in turn interact with the other major word in the title, um (“mind,” “wit”), to punningly show how the “intelligent” (um-nyi) Chatsky is “burned” and receives “woe” (gore) when he comes into contact with Moscow's idle, rumormongering high society. As I shall show later in discussing the problems of Moscow, Griboedov's witty punning throughout the play reflects the truth of A. W. Schlegel's observation in his Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature that “indignation makes a man witty.”

   Several critics have observed that during Griboedov's time, the word um often connoted freethinkers, members of secret societies, and other independent citizens. See Vladimir Orlov, Griboedov: Ocherk zhizni i tvorchestva (Moscow: Gosudarstvennoe izdanie khudozhestvennoi literatury, 1954), 127; and Wladimir Troubetzkoy, “Tchatski, ou la Répétition,” in Le Misanthrope au Théâtre: Ménandre, Molière, Griboiedov, ed. Daniel-Henri Pageaux (Mugron, France: Editions José Feijóo 1990), 281-83. On the role of umniki in Russian comedies of Griboedov's time, see Jean Bonamour, A. S. Griboedov et la vie littéraire de son temps (Paris: Presses universitaires de France, 1965), 278. On Griboedov's text as a “long conceit or pun on the meaning of the word um,” see J. Douglas Clayton, “‘Tis folly to be wise: The Semantics of um- in Griboedov's Gore ot uma,” in Text and Context: Essays to Honor Nils Åke Nilsson, ed. Peter Alberg Jensen et al. (Stockholm: Almqvist and Wiksell International, 1987), 8ff.

   Clayton argues quite convincingly that the title summarizes the main problems of the play, which he sees as a clash between two opposing types of um: the “common wisdom” of Moscow society that demands conformity with its values of “nepotism, corruption, [and] foreign fashions” and declares anyone mad who does not share these values; and the um of Chatsky, which “criticizes the hypocrisy of Famusov's [i.e. Moscow high society's] um” and is often associated with education and enlightenment. As Clayton has suggested, Griboedov's switch from his original title Gore umu (“Woe to Wit”) to Gore ot uma allowed purposeful ambiguity (7 and 9).

5. There has been major controversy surrounding Griboedov's naming of his “Chadsky”/Chatsky. Although Piksanov sees the name as “purely invented” and views the derivation of Chatsky from chad as “artificial,” Medvedeva argues that this derivation is likely (reflecting Chatsky's tendency to live in “the fumes—chad—of ideas and enthusiasm”). Karlinsky sees the name “Chadsky” as suggesting “both that the young man fumes a lot and that his head is in a daze,” but El'zon proposes that “Chatsky” is linked with chaiushchii (thinking, hoping), recalling the proverb “Zhdut Fomu, chaiut, byt' umu” (which means, very roughly, “They are waiting for Foma, hoping for brains”). Tynianov even suggests that the name reflects a link with that of the philosopher Chaadaev (which was occasionally written as “Chadaev”). As I shall argue below, I believe that the text explains Chatsky's name in act 4, associating it with the “burning” of the hopes with which Chatsky had returned to Moscow in act 1. On this controversy, see V. I. Korovin, commentary to Griboedov, Gore ot uma (Moscow: Russkii iazyk, 1984), 132-33; Simon Karlinsky, Russian Drama from Its Beginnings to the Age of Pushkin (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1985), 288; M. D. El'zon, “‘Chad’” ili ‘chaiat’? O smysle familii ‘Chatskii,’” Russkaia literatura 24, no. 2 (1981): 182-83; Iu. N. Tynianov, “Siuzhet ‘Goria ot uma’,” in Pushkin i ego sovremenniki, ed. V. A. Kaverin and Z. A. Nikitina (Moscow: Nauka, 1968), 360-68.

6. All quotes throughout this article are from A. S. Griboedov, Gore ot uma, ed. N. K. Piksanov and A. L. Grishulin (Moscow: Nauka, 1969). References will be given to act and line number. Thus, “3.52” is act 3, line 52.

7. Gorich is tied to Moscow because of his wife, Natal'ia Dmitrievna, who, unlike him, loves Moscow's balls, social life, and style. Her constant henpecking reflects the broader theme of misogyny in the play, which Simon Karlinsky has identified as one of its two main themes (the other, “gerontophobia,” will be discussed below). As Karlinsky argues: “What is really wrong with Moscow is that it is run by corrupt old men (‘the older the worse’) and by domineering women of all ages” (292).

   It is significant that Gorich longs to leave Moscow and return to the country. Thus, a second theme raised by Gorich and Chatsky (the only two male characters who can be seen as positive) is the opposition between the negative Moscow and the positive rural areas (the home of what Chatsky calls “our bold, intelligent folk” [umnyi, bodryi nash narod, 3.615]). Griboedov, therefore, is probably being ironic when he has Famusov threaten to punish Sophia by sending her “to the country (v derevniu), to your aunt's, to the backwoods (glush'),” where (in her father's words) she will “grieve woe” (“Tam budesh' gore gorevat').”

8. On fire and change, see Gaston Bachelard, The Psychoanalysis of Fire, trans. Alan C. M. Ross (Boston: Beacon, 1964), 7, 16.

   One early indication that change/lack of change will be central to Griboedov's play is the repeated emphasis in the early scenes on clocks and time. The words chasy (clock) and chas (hour) are repeated four times in the first scene (21 lines) and six times in the first 75 lines. Indeed, the first prop mentioned in the stage directions to act 1, scene 1 is the “large clock.”

9. The commonplace image of love as a “sacred fire” was rather frequently used in Russia during the Golden Age—especially by Romantic writers. For example Lermontov in the “Princess Mary” section of Hero of our Time (Geroi nashego vremeni, 1840) has Pechorin write in his diary for 3 June: “[A]n electric spark ran from my hand to hers; almost all passions begin this way, and we often deceive ourselves greatly in thinking that a woman loves us for our physical or moral qualities. Of course, these qualities prepare and incline their hearts for the reception of the sacred fire, but nevertheless it is the first contact that decides the matter” (M. Iu. Lermontov, Sobranie sochinenii v chetyrekh tomakh [Moscow: Izdatel'stvo Akademii nauk, 1958-59], 4:406-7).

10. Chatsky's search for a passion that will match his own is reflected in the use of fire imagery for women whom he finds attractive. For example, in an early manuscript for the play, Griboedov had Sophia respond to Chatsky's accusations of Molchalin by “hotly” (goriacho) defending the latter, presenting a clear parallelism between her and Chatsky (Griboedov, Gore ot uma, 1969, 182). After his rejection by Sophia, Chatsky is attracted to Natal'ia Dmitrievna at the ball: “[Y]ou're such a lot prettier / You've become younger, fresher; / There's fire, color, laughter, play in all your features” (“[P]okhorosheli strakh; / Molozhe vy, svezhee stali; / Ogon', rumianets, smekh, igra vo vsekh chertakh,” 3.233-35).

11. In this speech about his “boiling” love, Chatsky pretends to admire Molchalin, saying to Sophia: “Let's grant him a lively wit, a bold genius. / But is there that passion in him? That feeling? That ardor (pylkost') / That would make all the world except for you / Seem just vanity and dust?” (3.43-46). In an earlier draft, Griboedov had emphasized the phlegmatic Molchalin's lack of fire even more explicitly, continuing after the penultimate line just quoted: “Seem just laughter and dust? Just smoke and trivia and vanity?” (dym, meloch' i tscheta) (Griboedov, Gore ot uma, 1969, 181).

12. On the theory of humors, which predominated in medicine from Galen through the medieval period and was a frequent source of metaphors in literature from the Renaissance through the early nineteenth century, see E. M. W. Tillyard, The Elizabethan World Picture (New York: Vintage Books, n.d), 69-79.

13. The term “fiery” (ognennyi) was used for Chatsky by critics from the first appearance of the play. For example, Pushkin in 1825 called Chatsky “fervent” (pylkii, etymologically “flaming”), and one 1833 commentary said he was “animated by fiery passions” and “fervid.” On such criticism, see A. M. Gordin, ed., A. S. Griboedov v russkoi kritike (Moscow: Gosudarstvennoe izdatel'stvo khudozhestvennoi literatury, 1958), 40. According to Orlov, passion and “zeal” (goriachnost', etymologically “hotness”) were frequent characteristics of the liberal youth of the 1810s-1820s (Griboedov, 121).

14. In the theory of humors, the “cold and moist” phlegmatic type opposes the “warm and dry” choleric type (Tillyard, Elizabethan World Picture, 69). Molchalin has some of the typical characteristics of the “phlegmatic” individual: unemotional, even-tempered, calm. His name may also reflect the saying that “silence is a mark of assent” (molchanie—znak soglasiia), which originated with Pope Boniface VIII but was popular in Russia (N. S. Ashukin and M. G. Ashukina. Krylatye slova: Literaturnye tsitaty, obraznye vyrazheniia, 2d ed. [Moscow: Gosudarstvennoe izdatel'stvo khudozhestvennoi literatury, 1960], 370-71). I am grateful to Monika Greenleaf and Stephen Moeller-Sally for suggesting Molchalin's possible connection with the phlegmatic personality.

15. Karlinsky argues that “all of Chatsky's speeches that identify old age with corruption—beginning with his famous Act II monologue ‘And who are the judges’—are quite specifically aimed at the situation in Moscow.” He goes on to say that “the trouble with the aged” in this play is that “they shut out the modern world and still see things in eighteenth-century terms” (Russian Drama, 292).

16. In a famous January 1825 letter to Katenin, Griboedov himself stressed the opposition between the “intelligent” Chatsky and Moscow society as a whole. As he wrote: “[I]n my comedy there are 25 fools (gluptsov) for one intelligent (zdravomysliashchego) person. And this person, of course, contradicts the society which surrounds him” (quoted in Tynianov, “Siuzhet ‘Goria ot uma’,” 348). Pushkin, in a letter to Bestuzhev of the same month, disagreed with Griboedov, stating that the only “intelligent” (umnoe) character in the comedy is Griboedov himself; he criticized Chatsky by noting that “the first sign of an intelligent man is to know from the first glance with whom he is dealing and not to cast pearls before Repetilovs”—perhaps an unwitting draft of his own future lines to his muse in “Exegi monumentum” (1836); “And do not contradict the fool” (I ne osparivai gluptsa) (letter excerpted in Gordin, A. S. Griboedov v russkoi kritike, 40).

17. The image of the “smoke of the fatherland” probably first occurs in Homer's Odyssey (book 1, lines 57-59), in a prayer by Athena to Cronus asking him to release Odysseus from the spell of Calypso, who “charms him to forget Ithaca.” As Athena states: “Odysseus, however, wanting to catch sight even of smoke leaping up from his fatherland, is longing to die” (The Odyssey, trans. and ed. Albert Cook [New York: Norton, 1974], 5). The phrase was later used by Ovid (Epistulae ex Ponto, 1.3.33), from whom the Latin proverb came (Ashukin and Ashukina, Krylatye slova, 243).

    In Russia, this phrase had been used as an epigraph for the journal Rossiiskii muzeum (The Russian museum, 1792-94) and was quoted in a number of poems at the turn of the century, including Derzhavin's poem “The Harp” (“Arfa,” 1798)—the probable immediate source of Chatsky's quote. Griboedov has Chatsky quote the last line of Derzhavin's poem in the version that appeared in the journal Aonidy (1798-99, book 3, p. 14) (V. I. Korovin, commentary to Griboedov, Gore ot uma, 1984, 135). For an interesting short history of this phrase in Russian literature from Derzhavin through Mayakovsky, see Ashukin and Ashukina, Krylatye slova, 242-43.

18. Quoted in Ernst Benz, The Eastern Orthodox Church: Its Thought and Life, trans. Richard and Clara Winston (New York: Anchor Books, 1963), 188.

19. In an early manuscript of the play, Skalozub made even stronger comments about the effects of the Moscow fire: “In my judgment, the fire flamed as if someone ordered it (Pozhar kak na zakaz pylal). It helped to beautify the city. And the style of life has improved.” But Chatsky responds, “It was a gloomy year (chernyi god) for us and served no purpose” (Griboedov, Gore ot uma, 1969, 161).

20. Given the association of Chatsky with fire (as discussed earlier), it would at first appear that Griboedov has Chatsky in mind as the person “with a soul” in whom a “spark” would be placed to destroy the “spirit of … blind imitation” in Russia. But as the speech progresses, Griboedov uses imagery implying that such changes could be made in Russia only by a powerful monarch. Indeed, the image of restraint “with strong reins” recalls the iconographic tradition—used in the West since Roman times and in Russia since the eighteenth century—of the emperor as horseman, controlling the “horse” of his empire with strong “reins.” This tradition was used, for example, by the sculptor Falconet some fifty years before Woe from Wit when he depicted Peter the Great as “the Bronze Horseman.” On the symbolism of horsemanship in Russian literature and culture of the eighteenth century, see Stephen Baehr, The Paradise Myth in Eighteenth-Century Russia: Utopian Patterns in Early Secular Russian Literature and Culture (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1991), 50, 58, 213.

    The need for a monarch who could eliminate the “harm” caused by Peter's westernizing reforms is implied several lines after this speech when Chatsky says that “for me our North [Russia] has become a hundred times worse” since Peter's reforms, requiring Russians to change their ways and imitate the West: “he gave everything away for a new style— / Our morals and our language and our holy past— / And changed our majestic clothing for another, / Which was like that of a jester (po shutovskomu obraztsu)” (3.602-5). Chatsky makes a clear opposition in his speeches between “copies” (spiski) or “imitations” (podrazhan'ia) and “originals” (originaly) (for example, 3.323-24; 3.595), and stresses that Russia should be returned to its own original path and should stop copying the foreign.

21. Since completing this section, I have seen Apollon Grigor'ev's 1862 comment that “Griboedov's comedy is a true divina commedia” (Gordin, A. S. Griboedov 225).

22. It is probably not coincidental that this last speech (act 4, scene 14) is pronounced on a stage lit with a large number of lanterns and candles—the “fire” illuminating the truth. Famusov at the beginning of the scene explicitly calls for “more candles, more lanterns” (4.420). Indeed, Griboedov seems to have designed the play to move from darkness (the play begins at the first sign of dawn) to light (the “exposure scene” that we are discussing, where Famusov discovers the rendezvous between Sophia and her lover, Sophia realizes the truth about Molchalin, and Chatsky, finally, realizes that Sophia loves Molchalin). The candles and lanterns reveal Moscow's old aristocrats as liars, cheaters, double-dealers, and so forth. On one level, Chatsky is like the raisonneur of eighteenth-century Russian drama, “illuminating” society for what it is.

23. J. E. Cirlot, A Dictionary of Symbols, trans. Jack Sage (New York: Philosophical Library, 1962), 21.

24. These verses were (and still are) extremely well known in Russia. Ivan Bunin even used Revelation 18:10 as an epigraph to one edition of his 1915 “The Gentleman from San Francisco.”

    Chapter 18 of Revelation may provide a clue to the overall meaning of Griboedov's play, uniting the major themes of “fire” and “woe” with the theme of judgment, which is also central to the play (as reflected in important speeches like “A sud'i kto? [Who are the Judges], 2.340ff.). Indeed, like the gor- roots (fire, woe) and the um- roots (intelligence, mind, wit), the sud- root (judgment) is extremely important in the play, reflecting, once again, Griboedov's tendency to stress central themes through a repetition of roots.

25. According to Dal', the phrase “u nikh Sodom i Gomorra” meant “the epitome of disorder.” Compare also the proverb “Takoi sodom, chto dym koromyslom” (There is such disorder that all hell is breaking loose; literally, There is such a Sodom that smoke is like a yoke). See Vladimir Dal', Tolkovyi slovar' zhivogo velikorusskogo iazyka, 4 vols. (Moscow: Gosudarstvennoe izdatel'stvo inostrannykh i natsional'nikh slovarei, 1956), 4.260; 1.506.

26. In this icon, the victory of Ivan IV at Kazan is allegorically depicted as the victory of Christianity over Islam. As Olga Dacenko has observed, “Christ's armed horsemen advancing in triple rank toward the Heavenly City symbolize the Russian people, God's chosen ones, the ‘new Israel.’” See M. W. Alpatov and Olga Dacenko, Art Treasures of Russia, trans. Norbert Guterman (New York: Abrams, 1967), 142. I am grateful to Michael Flier of Harvard University for pointing out the possible relevance of this icon in a March 1995 discussion.

27. For a discussion of this tradition of Russia as paradise, third Rome, or a place enjoying the Golden Age, see Baehr, The Paradise Myth. On the reversal of this tradition in the early nineteenth century, see ibid., 162-67.

28. James H. Billington, Fire in the Minds of Men: Origins of the Revolutionary Faith (New York: Basic Books, 1980), 104.

29. F. V. Rostopchin, Okh, Frantsuzy! ed. G. D. Ovchinnikov (Moscow: Russkaia kniga, 1992), 151; Irina Mess-Baehr, “‘Soldattskaia’ satira i allegoriia v neizdannykh antinapoleonovskikh stikhakh Derzhavina,” Study Group on Eighteenth-Century Russia Newsletter 8 (1980): 82 n.

30. P. A. Viazemskii, Stikhotvoreniia, ed. L. Ia. Ginzburg and K. A. Kumpan (Leningrad: Sovetskii pisatel', 1986), 142.

31. P. A. Viazemskii, Izbrannye stikhotvoreniia, ed. V. S. Nechaeva (Moscow: Academia, 1935), 540. Viazemskii, in a letter of 22 March 1820 to A. I. Turgenev that included this poem, encouraged such political readings of the poem, stating that he wondered if this fable would pass the censors because of its allusions (Viazemskii, Stikhotvoreniia, 472). His fears proved justified when the censors rejected its publication.

32. Aleksandr Odoevskii, “Strun veshchikh plamennye zvuki,” cited in A. S. Pushkin, Stikhotvoreniia, ed. B. V. Tomashevskii (Leningrad: Sovetskii pisatel', 1955), 3:819. Odoevskii's acknowledgment of receipt of the “flaming sounds of prophetic strings” of Pushkin's poetic lyre (that is, the 1827 poem Pushkin sent to the Decembrists, entitled “Vo glubine sibirskikh rud”) in its very first line already signals the relevance of revolutionary fire symbolism. The last four lines of the poem affirm this, stating that the Decembrists (and, implicitly, other freedom fighters) will “forge swords from chains / And once again light the fire of freedom / And with this freedom we will pounce upon rulers (grianem na tsarei), / And nations (narody) will sigh with joy.” For Pushkin's text and additional commentary, see 392 and 819.

33. F. M. Dostoevskii, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii, 30 vols., ed. B. G. Bazanov et al. (Leningrad: Nauka, 1972-90), 10:395; Aleksandr Blok, Sobranie sochinenii, 8 vols. (Moscow: Gosudarstvennoe izdatel'stvo khudozhestvennoi literatury, 1960-63), 7:279. The theme of revolutionary fire in Dostoevsky already begins in Crime and Punishment, when Raskol'nikov goes to a tavern to read newspaper accounts about the murder that he has committed and can find only material on (revolutionary) fires being set throughout Petersburg (and, as Luzhin notes, throughout the country); see Dostoevsky, 6:117, 124-25.

34. Anatole Mazour, The First Russian Revolution, 1825: The Decembrist Movement (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1961), 29.

35. See N. I. Turgenev, Dekabrist N. I. Turgenev, ed. N. G. Svirin (Moscow: Izdatel'stvo Akademii nauk SSSR, 1936), 396 n. The term “Extinguisher” came from a liberal French newspaper, Nain Jaune, which satirized the Old Regime (Turgenev, Dekabrist, 387 n). In the 5 January 1815 issue there appeared “The Organic Statutes of the Order of Extinguisher,” providing the bylaws of this “group,” supposedly created on the order of Mizofan the 2367th: “Wishing to restrain ‘the oppressive progress of enlightenment,’ Mizofan announces the founding of this order, [which] consists of a grand master, judges or grand extinguisher, commanders, and knights of the double extinguisher.” According to these bylaws, “every person entering this order must take a vow of hatred for philosophy, for liberal ideas, and for any constitutional charter” (quoted in Turgenev, Dekabrist, 396 n). In his letters, Turgenev sometimes used two cone-shaped candlesnuffers instead of the word “extinguisher” to signify this group (e.g. Turgenev, Dekabrist, 193, letter 76); at least once he called the movement by the French equivalent name, describing contemporary Russia as being dominated by “egoism, laziness, and in addition a lack of trust of anything good, a coarse mysticism, and éteignorisme (eten'uarizm)” (288). I am grateful to Savely Senderovich for giving me the reference to this volume.

36. I. Medvedeva notes that the “learned committee” (uchenyi komitet) satirized by Chatsky in his first diatribe against Moscow—a committee on which Sophia's “tubercular relative, an enemy of books” served, and which “demanded with a shout that no one should be literate or should learn” (1.379-82)—was effectively under the control of the “extinguisher of enlightenment M. L. Magnitskii” (Gore ot uma A. S. Griboedova, 2d ed. [Moscow: Khudozhestvennaia literatura, 1974], 32).

37. The Carbonarists, faithful to their name (which meant “charcoal-burners”), used imagery of fire throughout their ritual: new members were referred to as sticks or pieces of wood who were to be transformed into “the purer, more useful form of charcoal.” Meetings were depicted as “a ritual purification by fire in the furnaces of a secret grotto.” Guards standing at the door where the Grand Master entered were called “flames,” and two sabers “like flames of fire,” were placed on either side of the door (Billington, Fire in the Minds of Men, 133).

38. As a Mason (an active member of the lodge Soedinennye druz'ia / “Des Amis Réunis” from 1816), Griboedov would have known from Masonic songs that Freemasonry was often called a “sacred fire” by its members. So the old countess's error had an element of truth. This association of Freemasonry with a “sacred fire” appears in Russian Masonic songs as early as the reign of Empress Elizabeth. One song, for example, says that James Keith (the founder of Freemasonry in Russia) “lit the sacred fire” of Freemasonry in Russia (Pesni, n.p., n.d., 66). Within the Masonic lodge fire imagery (especially images of “sparks” and of burning) was frequent.

    It may (or may not) be coincidental that the first question asked by Sophia to Liza in act 1 and repeated by Repetilov in act 4—“What time is it? (Kotoryi chas?, 1.15, 17; 4.69)—was also a question asked at the opening of the initiation ceremony into Freemasonry (asked by the grand master to the officers of the lodge). (In the opening of the lodge, the answer is “five minutes to seven”; in the play Liza answers “seven, eight, nine.”) Both in the play and in the lodge, the question reflects the important theme of time and of change. See, for example, Harry B. Weber, “Pikovaia dama: A Case for Freemasonry in Russian Literature,” Slavic and East European Journal 12 (1968): 438.

39. It is likely that in this play the Mason Griboedov is reacting against the popular contamination of the Masonic quest for enlightenment and moral change with the revolutionary quest for violent political change.

40. On Griboedov's friendship with future Decembrists, see Karlinsky, Russian Drama, 284; Harold B. Segel, “Griboedov, Aleksandr Sergeevich,” in Handbook of Russian Literature, ed. Victor Terras (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1985), 184-85; and M. Nechkina, Griboedov i dekabristy, 3d ed. (Moscow: Khudozhestvennaia literatura, 1977).

41. For a summary of the views of Dostoevsky, Goncharov, and Grigor'ev on this “most secret union,” see: A. V. Arkhipova, “Dvorianskaia revoliutsionnost' v vospriiatii F. M. Dostoevskogo,” in Literaturnoe nasledie dekabristov, ed. V. G. Bazanov and V. E. Vatsuro (Leningrad: Nauka, 1975), 221-24; Bonamour, A. S. Griboedov, 318; Medvedeva introduction to Griboedov, Sochineniia v stikhakh, 45.

    D. P. Costello has suggested that this “most secret union” is a parody of Arzamas (the “mock-secret” society to which Pushkin, Zhukovsky, Batiushkov, and other important literary figures belonged), a group that Griboedov had previously parodied in his 1817 comedy The Student and that, like Repetilov's, also met “on Thursdays” (4.96), discussed Byron, and at points created impromptu vaudevilles (4.167); see his argument in his edition of Gore ot uma (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1951), 192.

    Simon Karlinsky, on the other hand, sees the “most secret union” as a parody of the secret societies that prepared for the Decembrist rebellion; he argues on the basis of the satire in act 4—including the discussion of themes like legislative chambers (implying constitutional government) and juries (4.101-2)—that Griboedov “must have been aware of the … societies that fomented the [Decembrist] rebellion,” even though he did not know of their specific plans for rebellion, as an investigation disclosed after Griboedov was arrested (284-85). Following V. Filippov, Karlinsky argues that “Griboedov's familiarity with the inner workings of the Decembrist societies extends even to having Repetilov cite a phrase from Baldassare Galuppi's opera Didone abbandonata ‘A! non lasciar mi, no, no, no,’ which was used by the Decembrists as a password” (295).

    For additional material on the supposed Decembrist references in act 4 to Byron and his revolutionary activities, as well as to chambers of deputies (parliamentary systems) and the jury system, see V. I. Korovin's notes to his edition of Gore ot uma, 153. For an exhaustive analysis of possible Decembrist connections, see Nechkina, Griboedov i dekabristy.

42. The harmfulness of chad is expressed in Russian through such proverbs as “S khudoi golovoi, ne suisia v chad” (If you have a headache, stay away from the fumes), and “Zharko topit', ne boiat'sia chadu” (Those who heat a place warmly are not afraid of the fumes) (Dal', Tolkovyi slovar', 4.580).

43. Another emblem for the unchanging city is the ball, where (as the stage directions state at the end of act 3), “everyone goes round and round” (vse kruzhatsia). As I have mentioned, several stage props in the play are also implicit metaphors. See the discussions of the clock (above and note 8) and of the candles and lanterns in the “discovery” scene (note 22).