A Dog's Heart: A Monstrous Story

It's just something about those Russians. I guess because they've had to put up with so much turmoil, for so long, historically; or it could be those long Russian winters; but for whatever reason they have produced a steady stream of excellent satirists for the past two hundred years. Refer to Nikolai Leskov's LAUGHTER AND GRIEF, for a mid 19th century examination of the phenomenon from someone who first noticed it. Leskov's narrator, Vatahvskov, states in a conversation amongst his colleagues that the feature most singular in Russian society is "its abundance of unpleasant surprises." Which brings me to Bulgakov and to HEART OF A DOG, for it is a novella full of "unpleasant surprises," both happening to and instigated by, Bulgakov's singular literary creation, Sharik (aka Mr. Sharik, aka Citizen Sharikov, aka Polygraph Polygraphovich Sharikov, commisar of cat control, etc.) Bulgakov takes an absurd situation (think of Gogol's "nose" wandering around the streets of St. Petersburg for comparison) and crafts it into a wonderful parody of the societal madhouse that was 30s Moscow under the party's intolerable decrees. His is a portrait of political correctness run amok. Citizen Shvonder, the representation of all things banal about the collectivist mentality of the era is the Bulgakov's primary target in this regard. His jealous rage at the fact that professor Phillipov is living the high life, while he and his ilk are sharing one room apartments, remains comically ineffectual. It was Bulgakov's way at getting back at all of the party appartchiks that were in fact causing him a great deal of consternation and physical hardship at the time. A reviewer who was critical of this work as being too much akin to a Chagall painting was drawing an accurate analogy. Yet, coming from a perspective in which magical realism has become an accepted literary technique, I don't consider that a drawback. It is part of the same Russian tradition. The fanciful and the grotesque have long been an integral part of Russian fiction. Bulgakov is simply one of its more famous and adept practitioners.BEK

Bulgakov was a true Russian genius, but one who lacked the "politically correct" postures of other less talented soviet hacks. As a result, his works were nearly unknown in his lifetime. But gradually, his books have been published and translated and with each book his stature grows. Bulgakov may stand with Myakovsky, Mandelstam, Akmatova, Shostakovitch and Malevich as the greatest artistic minds to come from the Soviet Union. The Heart of a Dog is a great book, perhaps not as multifaceted as Bulgakov's masterpiece, Master and Margarita, but brilliant nonetheless. The book seems perhaps a combination of Gogol's The Nose, and Kafka's Metamorphosis. Sharik - a perfectly normal stray dog is adopted by a famous scientist who transplants the testes and pituitary gland of criminal. Sharik gradually develops into a lewd, drunken cur of a man who is fabulously successful in the new Soviet society. As Joanna Daneman says in a previous review, Bulgakov's theatrical background is highly visible in this work. Each chapter is crafted like a distinct scene...the comedy is often extremely broad. Sharik is as pointed and broad a caricature of The New Soviet Man...as seen from it's dark underbelly. Many of the scenes are almost broad slapstick. And yet, the humor, while broad, is also quite bitter. It is obvious that Bulgakov saw the deterioration of his society and was deeply disturbed by it. Bulgakov's disdain of the Proletariat is a bit disturbing to an American. After all, we are the country of the common man. And there is a hidden "snobbery" in the work, which can be a bit hard to take. But so much of the book is dead on...and it is extremely funny. Heart of a Dog is an enjoyable and important addition to the growing Bulgakov oeuvre.

...or maybe, it's just the social difference. But this wonderful, biting, angry satire is really not... that... funny. Or rather, it is, but in a way that laughing at yourself can be. Not hillarious, not easy, not light, but with full realization of the horror that is going on. To begin with, Sharik the Dog is a wonderful, delightful animal. A real stray, the best of them--ready to serve and protect out of gratitude. Having been beaten, scalded, starved... imagine his joy when a nice-looking older gentleman takes him in, feeds him, bandages his scalded side. The poor thing is absolutely gratified. And really, just like Prof. Preobrazhensky says, Sharik is a very, very good dog. So how does a very, very good dog turns into an absolute horror of a human? Whoever said that Sharikov the man is semi-developed is just wrong--he is fully developed, and herein lies the nightmare. He walks. Talks. Apparently induces a young woman to have sex with him, having promised her marriage and lied that the surgical scar on his forehead is left from the Civil War. He works in the Oblava (the office dealing with the catching, killing and using as fur of the stray cats), but not so much out of necessity, rather because it answers his heart of a dog. Unfortunately, his hatred of cats is the only thing left from the adorable stray (who thought that he was unusually handsome and his granmother must have sinned with a Newfoundland). In all else, from his ridiculous, uneducated choice of a name, to the way he talks, to the lack of manners, to the Communist literature he reads, to his statements that the only way to solve the current situation is to "divide everything between those who have and those who have not"--in all of it, he is a quintessential proletariat man (the brain that was put into the dog came from a former alcoholic and prison inmate, Klim Chugunkin). The popular slogan of that era was Lenin's (I think) phrase that under the Soviet rule, a "kitchenmaid will rule the country". Well, it took us some seventy years to realize that a kitchenmaid shouldn't rule anything but a kitchen... Bulgakov saw it much earlier. His Sharikov is a terrifying portrait of what a member of lumpen-proletariat--a man without sense or education, common and base--becomes when he comes into relative power (at least over cats). To Russians, the image of Sharikov cannot be all that funny--after all, the inception of their state--their country, their life, their dark past--was intertwined inextricably with people like the late Klim Chugunkin (the last name means "wrought-iron"), aka P.P. Sharikov. The other characters in the book--the old Professor Preobrazhensky and the galant, gentlemanly young Dr. Bormental--are both of a disappearing bread. After the Revolution, People with Preobrazhensky's sensibilities came face to face with the necessity to leave their country. Preobrazhensky, however, a distinguished man of science, an experimental biologist, highly respected--is pretending that

Mikhail Bulgakov, best known for his brilliant novel "The Master and Margarita" was steeped in the theatrical craft. When his books were censored, he wrote a wild, heartfelt letter to authorities in Soviet Russia, asking that, if they were not to be allowed to publish his work, would they then assign him to work in theater, even as a lowly stagehand. In one of Stalin's capricious moves, Bulgakov was, indeed, assigned to work as an assistant director at a Moscow theater.Meanwhile, Bulgakov continued to amass what must be one of the world's great hordes of literary work unpublished in the lifetime of an author. "Heart of a Dog" is probably his most viciously anti-Soviet, anti-Proletariat work, and it reads like a cross between Orwell's "Animal Farm" and Mary Shelley's "Frankenstein" but with Bulgakov's intense sarcasm and humor thrown in. The book is so dramatic, it's almost impossible to read it without seeing it run like a film or play behind your eyes as you read it.A professor (whose Russian name is a play on the scientist Pavlov) adopts a mongrel dog. The dog Sharik (Fido, Rover...) is grateful! His life on the street has been hard, he's been kicked, scalded with hot water and he is starving. The professor feeds him well. Ah, he's gaining weight and healing up. What a nice man! A god, even, well, to a dog. But wait a minute! The professor, noted surgeon that he is, is preparing to operate. He seizes the dog....And then we see the results of the professor's cruel experiment. A dog gets a human brain portion and begins to develop as a human. But he isn't a nice friendly, tail-wagging human. Oh, no. He's low, a cur, yes, a dog of a man who chases cats uncontrollably, pinches women's bottoms and drinks like a fish (oops mixed metaphor there.) He demands to be registered and get papers like a human being in Soviet society. And the authorities are anxious, even rabid to assist him. Sharikov takes a first name and patronymic that is so inappropriate, so hysterically funny that you have to laugh out loud. Then he gets a prominent job as a purge director, eliminating those counter-revolutionary cats from Moscow's pure Communist society. That is, until the professor cooks up a plot.This is a gem of a book. Bulgakov shares Orwell's deep hatred of totalitarianism, but unlike the delicate satire of Orwell, Bulgakov writes with massive belly laughs of deeply sarcastic humor and over-the-top jokes. He's a dramatist at heart, and this book shows his theatrical thinking, where exaggerated movement and stage props play as much a role in exposition as dialog. This is a true small masterpiece and should appeal to just about anyone. It would be a very good book for a high school or college literature study. It is really wonderful, and prepares the reader for Bulgakov's wildly out of control masterpiece "Master and Margarita." Don't miss this book for anything!

From a native Russian speaker, just a few remarks which hopefully will help you understand the book better:1. Professor Preobrazhensky is modeled on professor Pavlov (of the salivating dogs fame), who himself is well known for a few remarks such as "for the kind of experiment the Communists are conducting on Russia I wouldn't sacrifice even a frog" and "a revolution is not an excuse for being 20 minutes late for work" (to a lab assistant who got caught in street shooting).2. The book lashes out - VIOLENTLY - at working class, at lumpenproletariat (and in Soviet Russia these two terms were dangerously close for much of the 20th century). Please remember that when you're reading about Sharikov - the caricature of a heavily-drinking, crude Soviet worker (if you've ever spent time in small industrial towns in Russia, you'll be able to understand this book easily)3. Sharik is a cliche nickname for dogs in Russia (something like Spot). Sharikov is akin to a dog taking the last name Spotter for himself.4. Polygraph Polygraphovich sounds as ridiculous in English as it does in Russian :)Some of my anglophone friends had problems with this 1925 book. Just trying to be helpful...