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The publication of Mikhail Bulgakov’s Heart of a Dog was the beginning of the author’s lifelong struggle with Soviet censorship and general destitution. Bulgakov was a very prolific author before this publication. In the early 1920s he wrote more than a hundred articles, essays, reviews and more for magazines in Soviet Russia and many of them were satirical and critical in nature of the young Soviet government. He could get away with it. Soviet censorship was still in its infancy and Stalin personally liked his work. With Heart of a Dog, however, he went too far. He played with the devil a bit too much. Soon after, all of his work got censored and Stalin only gave him permission to work on some theatre plays. Only after his death, 15 years later, did he leave one other major work of fiction which he wrote out of personal devotion, The Master and Margarita. These two works sort of bookended his sad, short career.
The novel would be published again in English in 1968 in Britain, and only in 1987 would it be rereleased in Russia again.
This is a speculative fiction satire of the Russian Revolution. A professor rescues a dying stray dog from the streets of Moscow, and implants testicles and a pituitary gland from a recently deceased man into the dog. What happens next is that the experiment becomes a disaster. The dog turns into a dog-man-like creature that wreaks havoc. Bulgakov hits the ground running with the dog as POV character as the dog monologues his last dying hours in a slightly sarcastic way. And as the dog is fed by the professor and lured to his home office, we see the prof receiving old people and turning them strong again with implanted glands from other animals in some seedy underground practise. The dog doesn’t understand anything of what’s going on, but we can figure it out. These opening chapters are fascinating right from the start.
From the very beginning of the story, Bulgakov’s critical voice can be discerned. In the dog’s monologue on his life in Moscow, the dog criticises the Moscow State Food Stores for their inferior rotten meat, and he looks down on the proletarian comrades. The professor then lures him away through kindness by giving him food, because, as the prof explains, you cannot get anywhere with using terror. Terror is ultimately useless to get creatures to follow you, and it sounds like the prof directly criticises the Bolsheviks. The shitty experiments of the professor can be likened to the misguided science of the Soviets and their desire to reinvent the human race. The reinvented dog-creature starts behaving like the criminal whose glands he were given, and becomes so much harder to deal with than when he was just a loyal friendly dog.
The writing style is really entertaining, at first; really funny, but it has a dark undertone too and ultimately becomes a black comedy with a pessimistic look at human nature. Like an inverted version of Orwell’s Animal Farm, perhaps, setting out to show that humans are darker in their heart than other animals. Especially the remade animal the dog-human [he names himself Poligraph Poligraphovich] goes totally off the rails, exhibiting the worst traits that the working class proletariat is stereotyped as having. Cursing, smoking, spitting, lying, and impossible to habilitate. Keep in mind though that the professor represents the old Tsarist regime, so that’s not exactly praise-worthy, but from the professor’s [and Bulgakov’s] perspective, at least things worked. The dog-creature quickly becomes a destructive force in the professor’s life.
Mikhail Bulgakov was born in Kiev on 15th May 1891. He trained as a doctor but gave up practising medicine in 1920 to devote his life to writing. In 1925 he completed The Heart of a Dog, which remained unpublished in the Soviet Union until 1987. By 1930 Bulgakov had become so frustrated by the suppression of his work that he wrote to Stalin begging to be allowed to emigrate if he was not given the opportunity to make his living as a writer in the USSR. Stalin telephoned him personally and offered him a job at the Moscow Arts Theatre. In 1938, he completed The Master and Margarita. He sadly died in 1940. In 1973 The Master and Margarita was finally published in full.
Blurb
A rich, successful Moscow professor befriends a stray dog and attempts a scientific first by transplanting into it the testicles and pituitary gland of a recently deceased man. A distinctly worryingly human animal is now on the loose, and the professor’s hitherto respectable life becomes a nightmare. An absurd and superbly comic story, this novel can also be read as a fierce parable of the Russian Revolution.
Review
This book was on a table in the Waterstones in London and I must admit I was intrigued. I do find the piles of books on the tables at Waterstones very tempting and I often end up buying books I usually would not go for. Having read a few books with cats on the cover recently I thought it was about time I read a book with a dog on the front. Sadly I found this book rather a disappointment.
Firstly, I have not read The Master and Margarita but it is on my to read pile and even though this book has been a disappointing read for me, I will give The Master and Margarita a chance and keep it on my to read pile. I do not regret reading this book, as it was interesting and I did enjoy small parts of it.
The story begins with the meeting of the stray dog and the dog’s thoughts. The poor dog has been badly wounded and is contemplating its end and the reader gets to see the world of Russia through its eyes. Then Professor Philip Philipovich comes on to the scene and befriends the wounded dog. This Professor takes the stray into his home, treats his wounds and appears to be a dream come true for the dog. The dog’s world has changed for the better and it is glorious, until it all changes and the Professor’s true intentions become clear.
The Professor specialises in rejuvenating people’s sexual organs by replacing them with animal organs. This becomes clear when he examines a lady and says he will replace her ovaries with the ovaries of a monkey. This to be honest disturbed me when I read it and I was dubious whether to continue, as things like that quite often put me off, but by this point I had fallen in love with the little dog and wanted to know what would happen to him next.
The graphic detail of the surgery really put me off and I must admit I had to skim some of the details as I could not handle it, especially just before sleep. It was extremely realistic and this is obviously where Bulgakov’s medical background comes in handy when writing about the surgery. Again I only kept going because I desperately wanted to know what would happen next to the dog.
The descriptions of the way Soviet Russia was becoming was very interesting and I can see how worrying it would have been for the people living in Russia at the time it was all happening. I can also see why the book was confiscated from Bulgakov, because the last thing the Soviet Union would have wanted was this bleak view of Russia being broadcast to the world. I think the stray dog’s point of view whilst in the doorway waiting for death was the best description of Russia and really summed up what Bulgakov was trying to get across.
However as the story went on, I just think it went somewhat off the rails and a bit too over the top for me. Also Philip started to drive me slightly crazy with his constantly quoting from the theatre for example “To the banks of the sacred nile…” it was like the man was demented and just made no sense.
The dog as a normal dog was the best part of this book and I just could not understand why a man would want to perform the experiment that he did to the dog. Maybe it is because I have no real interest in science but it just did not make sense. Frankenstein made sense to me because the good doctor was trying to find a cure for death but putting the testicles and pituitary gland of a human into a dog made no sense at all to me.
As a Russian book I was surprised at how short it was, my general experience of Russian literature is of huge tomes, some of which are my favourite books. Shortness for this book was one of its advantages though.
I do not think my review of this book will be popular as I tend to be against the general consensus but my views are my own and everyone has their own opinions, which is good as we would be a pretty boring race if we all felt and thought the same. My overall rating of the book is 2 stars out of 5, the reason it was not 1 star was because I liked the beginning a great deal and the dog before it all went wrong.
A quick read to while away an afternoon break like I used it for.
Lady Book Dragon
Published by higgy88
Crazy dog owning musician who loves knitting, reading and exercising in her spare time. View all posts by higgy88
What is the message of Heart of a Dog?
Themes. The novella has been interpreted both as a satire on Bolshevism and as a criticism of eugenics. One commonly-accepted interpretation is that Bulgakov was trying to show all the inconsistencies of the system in which Sharikov, a man with a dog's intelligence, could become an important part.
Is Heart of a Dog anti communist?
In Heart of a Dog, Bulgakov satirizes the communist revolution in the Soviet Union and the concept of a New Soviet man, and criticizes the science and practice of eugenics.
What is the summary of the heart of a dog?
Bulgakov's novella Heart of a Dog tells the story of an experiment gone badly wrong in 1920s Moscow. A Professor plucks a hungry stray dog off the streets, performs an operation to implant the pituitary gland from a criminal's corpse into the dog's body, and creates a grotesque human-canine hybrid called Sharikov.
Is Heart of a Dog dystopian?
The Heart of a Dog, dystopian novelette by Mikhail Bulgakov, written in Russian in 1925 as Sobachye serdtse. It was published posthumously in the West in 1968, both in Russian and in translation, and in the Soviet Union in 1987.