[A Survey of Russian Literature, with Selections by Isabel Florence Hapgood]@TWC D-Link bookA Survey of Russian Literature, with Selections CHAPTER VIII 5/60
His stern course of action and his disregard of certain rooted Oriental customs aroused the priesthood and the ignorant masses of Teheran against him, and a riot broke out.
After a heroic defense of the legation, all the Russians, including Griboyedoff, were torn to pieces.
His wife had been left behind in Tabreez and escaped.
She buried his remains at a monastery near Tiflis, in accordance with a wish which he had previously expressed. There is not much plot to "Woe from Wit." Moltchalin, Famusoff's secretary, a cold, calculating, fickle young man, has been making love to Famusoff's only child, an heiress, Sophia, an extremely sentimental young person.
Famusoff rails against foreign books and fashions, "destroyers of our pockets and our hearth," and lauds Colonel Skalozub, an elderly pretender to Sophia's hand, explaining the general servile policy of obtaining rank and position by the Russian equivalent of "pull," which is called "connections." He compares his with Tchatsky, to the disadvantage of the latter, who had been brought up with Sophia, and had been in love with her before his departure on his travels three years previously, though he had never mentioned the fact.
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