Heart of a Dog

Mikhail Bulgakov (1891-1940) endured the difficult experience of having to live under the pressure of censorship, but has nonetheless left some interesting books that allow us to know what he thought about the process that has taking place in the newborn Soviet Russia. "Heart of a dog" is one of those books. It was written by Bulgakov in 1925, but it wasn`t published in Soviet Russia until 1987, due to the fact that it can easily be interpreted as a critical satire regarding the URSS. "Heart of a dog" is the story of a stray dog, Sharik, that hasn`t led an easy life. He lives in the streets of Moscow, and eats what he can, when he can. However, one day a doctor gives him food and takes him to his home. Sharik believes that his fate has changed, but he doesn`t know that the doctor has rather strange intentions... The doctor wants to perform an experiment on Sharik, in order to learn what would happen if some human organs were transplanted to a dog. The doctor performs the operation, implanting in Sharik the pituitary gland and the testicles of a dead criminal. Against all odds, Sharik survives the operation, and from that moment on begins an extraordinary transformation, that makes him more and more human. But what kind of human is he?. Sharik can talk, and asks everybody to call him first "Mr. Sharikov", and afterwards "Polygraph Polygraphovich Sharikov". He also walks like a human being, and somehow resembles one... But can he think, or does he merely repeat what he hears, specially Marx`s teachings?. Has the doctor`s experiment ruined a perfectly good dog, making him a perfectly despicable "human" being that threatens to denounce counterrevolutionaries and chases cats?. I don`t want to tell you more about this book: you really should read it yourself. It isn`t long, but it is quite interesting. What is more important, it is open to many interpretations, and you can always find your own. Some people believe that for Bulgakov Sharik represented the failure of those who try to create new beings (exactly what was supposedly being done at that time in the URSS, with the "soviet man"). Others highlight the glimpses of Soviet society that "Heart of a dog" allows us to have, and think that the aim of the author was to give the reader at least an idea of what it was like to live in the URSS at that time... These few possible interpretations don't exclude others, so read this book and find them!!. Obviously, I highly recommend "Heart of a dog"... Belen Alcat

I arrived at this book because it is slyly alluded in Edward Ashton's **Mickey7** : there, he mentions a certain **Chugunkin process** as a hint that leads to Bulgakov's book. And the connection is far from fortuitous: this is a book about how science may overstep itself with far from desirable consequences. The strength of Bulgakov's style and narrative immediately grabbed me, as the book starts inside the mind of a stray dog's, **Sharik**. His difficult life on the streets immediately makes him a strong character, a victim who doesn't give up. The strength of this voice really impressed me: ironic, but sharp and inventive. I started reading this book in the Portuguese edition by Alex Zuchi, but I must confess I found it imprecise here and there and then felt necessary to revert to this General Press edition, which was okay. Then I found a PDF edition in Russian at archive.org, which I referred to cover the most obscure passages using the usual AI suspects. The surgery that eventually turns Sharik into **Polygraf Polygrafovich Sharikov** is very graphic and reminded me of **Frankenstein** in tone and spirit, although Mary Shelley's seriously gothic-romantic register vs Bulgakov's satire. Both books are solidly footed in Goethe's **Faust** tradition. Bulgakov references it explicitly, while Shelley grazes it with a reference to **Werther**. Here, as there, the scientific experiment gets out of the creator's control. Professor Philip Philipovich's speech of regret ("why we should set about manufacturing artificial Spinozas when any simple peasant woman can give birth to one at the drop of a hat?") is more conscious of his mistakes than Victor Frankenstein, who to the end can't really grasp the atrocity of his actions, even when he laments to Walton. But both scientists are clear on the need to put an end to their creatures. It is striking that however odd the experiments in the book may sound, there were doctors practicing them by the time Bulgakov wrote his book in 1924. By then, a certain **Serge Abrahamovitch Voronov** was getting rich transplanting monkey testicles onto men as an anti-aging therapy, just like Professor Philip Philipovich does in the book with monkey ovaries (with the lady he examines) or human pituitary glands and testicles (which he implants in Sharik.) Small details introduced in the first chapters--the girl with silk stockings, Professor Philip Philipovich's excited patient, Sharik's dream of a Newfoundland ancestry--are brought back to the plot cohesively. The book even has a soundtrack, in the songs Dr Philip sings all along : Tchaikovsky's **Don Juan's Serenade** and Verdi's **Aida**. All these details are delightful rewards to the reader. Sharik's arc is firmly built, and its tragic conclusion reminded me a lot that of **Charlie Gordon** in Daniel Keyes' **Flowers for Algernon**. Bulgakov had probably in mind all the vicissitudes of the bolshevik bureaucracy by the time of his writing, but his sardonic criticism to eugenics and dogmatic indoctrination extrapolates time boundaries--it is, sadly, rather applicable to modern Sharikovs, victims of pituitary gland transplants by social media.

One of them most important modern writers in Russian history. If you've never read a book of novel, I would start here. It is one of my favorite books, and I would put it on the same level as Old Man and the Sea or The Hobbit

Bulgakovs most sarcastical judgement over the Bolsjeviks in the time right after the revolution - and hysterically fun! This is the Russian Arthur Conan Doyle or Mark Twain. To produce such scenes like when Sharikov starts to speak his first words or gets to choose his own name. A short read and a great laugh - even though the tragedy of communism finally overrun Bulgakovs satire.

As science fiction this is a so-so book. As an allegory of Soviet life at the time Bulgakov was writing, it's definitely better. It's no wonder little of his work was published during Stalin's lifetime. The idea of taking an animal and making it into a human is as old as the hills, and despite the doctor's skills, it's pretty unbelievable that transplanting the testes and pituitary gland of a recently deceased man into a medium-sized dog he's rescued from the streets is going to do anything, especially not the results that develop. However, I did enjoy the early pages, which are told in first-person by the dog. Once the surgery is completed and the patient survives, the doctor and his assistant don't rush to tell the world. What they end up with is a smallish man with no table manners, a garish taste in clothes and a distressing interest in catching and killing cats. However, a little reading of Engels and the dog/man aligns himself with the Communist busybodies who inhabit most of the building outside the doctor's multi-room suite. Ultimately, the doctor and his assistant reverse the surgery, with the doctor opining that there are already too many people in the world without seeking to make more. At the end, the dog is looking forward to sleeping in front of the fire. I don't think this is a book for everyone. I'm grateful that I have been reading Russian writers for many years and also have knowledge of the history of the Soviet Union. However, I suspect I may have missed some of the inside jokes, particularly with the names of the characters. Still, it's probably a good introduction to Bulgakov, and I'm currently reading some of his other works.

A well-translated classic from the early days of the Soviet empire.

Mikhail Bulgakov is a master of the outlandish and the surreal. And this book is full of both. Just when you think Bulgakov can’t get any more outrageous, he surprises you with odd twists and turns. The novella begins with a charming tale of a stray dog but this is no Walt Disney tale, for this dog becomes the pet of a renowned Moscow professor of medicine who plants human glands into the dog’s body and the dog becomes a monstrosity. Communism has presented itself to the world as a scientific political theory and I felt like Bulgakov was trying to tell us that despite the science behind Communism, the brute aspects of humanity can’t be washed away. As a sub-human, part-dog creature, we see behaviors that are rude, boorish, violent, but all too human. Human nature, including the worst aspects of human nature, exists even after scientific Communism has taken over. The goal of creating a new breed of man, which was one of the goals of Communism, is impossible and backfires in the writing of Bulgakov. I am reminded of his masterpiece, the Master and Margarita, where the Communist outlaw God but they forgot to outlaw the Devil. The book was written at a time when there were physicians who were injecting patients with hormones or glands of sheep fetus or monkey gonads to bring about everlasting youth or sexual stamina. Bulgakov takes this theme and runs with it. The dog Sharik becomes the human Sharikov, and as such becomes the image of the dull intelligence, short temper, crudeness, non-verbal, non-rationalizing, violent, prejudicial, of the worst group of lower class, lower income persons. Bulgakov would have us see that the Communist experiment can allow this type of person to gain power and influence and to be very socially destructive in their actions. Moscow must have been chaos in the 1930’s as one complete political and economic system is being replaced by another, and thus there is much room for human brutes to rise in a totalitarian system that allowed no dissent. I don’t want to give the impression that the book is all ideology, since in fact, it is highly inventive, entertaining, and outrageously satiric. The scenes are vivid and well written, easily imagined. I recommend this short book. It reminded me of the George Orwell’s Animal Farm mixed with Mary Shelly’s Frankenstein. I know other reviewers have made this comparison but it is a great description of the book to someone who has not yet read it.

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

A good play for a theater production.

Good book, weird book. Read it for history and it was interesting!

Un libro muy interesante para los amantes de los perros

Bulgakov is a kind of unearthed god. He lived his life in misery, ticking off the years, crushed into the too-tight shoes of Bolshevism. 'Ok, I'm 30.. I haven't written anything of significance and I would like to emigrate.' They would not let him emigrate and would not allow his work to be published. By his 40th birthday he was saying the same thing. Some plays he was allowed to put on, but they were often pulled before opening night, He would then write to Stalin. Stalin would not write back, but he would then be appointed director of some theatre or theatrical arts committee. So many ups and downs. You must read his biography. A more unsatisfying life while he lived it, is unlikely to be found, but his writing is pure heaven. The oddest thing of all. His great novels; Heart of a Dog, Master and Margarita, all came to light long after his death, due to the relentless efforts of his third of fourth wife. Behind every man.. is a GREAT WOMAN!

This is a fine translation of the book. My only complain is the quality of the font once it's printed on the page. Whether it's the paper or the font used, it could really be sharper. The size of the text is good for readability - it just feels like someone up-rezed the page from a smaller size thus resulting in a DPI quality drop.