Tchatsky, whose woe is due to his persistence in talking sense and truth to people who do not care to hear it, and to his manly independence all the way through, comes to grief through having too much wit; hence the title.
Not one of Pushkin's successors, talented as many of them were, was able to attain to the position of importance which the great poet had rendered obligatory for future aspirants.

It is worth noting that Pushkin's best work, in his second, non-Byronic, purely national style, enjoyed less success among his contemporaries than his early, half-imitative efforts, where the characters were weak, lacking in independent creation, and where the whole tone was gloomy.

This gloomy tone expressed the sentiments of all Russia of the period, and it was natural that Byronic heroes should be in consonance with the general taste.

At this juncture, a highly talented poet arose, Mikhail Yurievitch Lermontoff (1814-1841), who, after first imitating Pushkin, speedily began to imitate Byron--and that with far more success than Pushkin had ever done--with great delicacy and artistic application to the local conditions.

Thus, as a vivid, natural echo of this epoch in Russian life, the poet became dear to the heart of Russians; and in the '40's they regarded him as the equal of the writers they most loved.
Lermontoff, the son of a poor but noble family, was reared by his grandmother, as his mother died when he was a baby, and his father, an army officer, could not care for him.