SOURCE: Wanner, Adrian. “The Misanthrope as Revolutionary Hero: Revisiting Griboedov's Chatskii and Molière's Alceste.” Canadian Slavonic Papers 41, no. 2 (June 1999): 177-88.

In the following essay, Wanner discusses the frequent comparisons between the main characters in Molière's The Misanthrope and Griboedov's Woe from Wit.

It has been the fate of Chatskii, the hero of Griboedov's comedy Gore ot uma (Woe from Wit, 1825), to be eternally compared to Alceste, the hero of Molière's Le misanthrope (The Misanthrope, 1667). At least at first sight, Chatskii and Alceste indeed seem to have much in common. Both of them could be described as aggressively frank personalities who make no secret of the fact that they find their respective aristocratic milieu distasteful. Both have unrequited feelings of love for a woman from that society, and both, with deeply wounded self-esteem, escape to pursue a solitary existence far from the company which they despise...