cover art by Boris Dmitriov (1926)
“The emperor daigned
to attend the premiere with the heir apparent: he was extremely pleased, and
laughed heartily. The play is very entertaining, but an intolerable insult to
the nobility, the civil service and the merchantry.”
Khrapovitsky's diary, 1836
“Everybody got his and
me first of all!”
Tsar Nicholas I (allegedly), 1836
“The audience, struck
by the novelty, laughed enormously, but I expected a better reception.... One of
my friends explained the reason jokingly. Says he, `How can you expect them to
give a better reception to this play, since half the audience is made up of
those who are “getting it”, and the other half those who are “giving it.”'”
Mikhail Shchepkin, 1838
“The comedy was
accepted by many people as a liberal manifesto...a political bombshell flung at
society under the guise of a comedy.”
Prince Pyotr Vyazemsky, 1836
“I decided to gather
into one heap everything in Russia that I was aware of at the time, all the
injustices committed in those places and on those occasions where justice is
especially required of humanity, and, at the same time, to laugh at it all. The
effect, as everyone knows, was astonishing. Behind the laughter which had never
before spurted from me with such force, the reader can notice sorrow...”
Nikolay Gogol, 1847
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