The Suicide

Theme:

The Suicide by Nikolai Erdman, a brilliant and penetrating satire about an unemployed man who contemplates suicide and is besieged by spokespeople of discontented groups, from butchers to intellectuals, who want him to turn his suicide into a gesture on their behalf.

The Suicide is a 1928 play by the Russian playwright Nikolai Erdman. Its performance was proscribed during the Stalinist era and it was only produced in Russia several years after the death of its writer. Today it is regarded as one of the finest plays to have come out of Communist Russia.

Famous Quotes:

A young unemployed man, recently married, supported by his wife and mother-in-law. Somewhat hypochondriac

A Byronic poet of vast pretension who is desperately trying to survive the stylistic Revolution with as little change as possible.

A New Woman who uses feminist rhetoric to hold on to the advantages gained during the war. More at home bargaining than on the shop floor.

An intern at “Eternity” Funeral parlour. Depressed, cynical. Envies the rich.

Every meal is torment! I try not to eat, but then in the middle of the night when I’m alone in bed with you, reaming and drooling about sausage–you crucify me/with guilt.

You think you can boss me around because you wear the pants in this house. All right, this hallway. And it’s killing me.

Alexander indicates the apartment, the grey dawn. Life is a wonderful gift, Semyon.

–a traveling circus, preferably…

This is no way to live…