Transformation, Transformation

The Bulgakov effect

The Heart of a Dog by Mikhail Bulgakov, translated by Michael Glenny

This is a novel published in Russian and, therefore, it shows off a depraved attitude towards human and animal life. Bulgakov is excused, of course. He was merely satirising his own country. He was merely showing how it was. But how it was, dear reader, was not well.

The action begins with a dog lamenting his lot. He is treated badly by man. He is denied his food. They are rude to him and cruel. Poor dog, who suffers dumbly as he does. Pity he is not more.

The real action starts in the company of Professor Philip Philipovich Preobrazhensky, who is a renowned and pompous surgeon. He is naturally sure of his own gifts. And being a man who cannot leave well enough alone, he decides to make of surgery something which has never been done before. He is a new man, in his own mind. It is only reasonable that he create a new man, also. A man almost of whole cloth.

Hence the entry of a stray dog, who is called Sharik. The professor decides to use the dog for a new experiment, something never before attempted.

What maketh man? the professor asks himself. Is it his soul? That is unlikely. It must be his mind. But where is his mind located? If one wants to make a man out of a dog, what must one do to give this action vitality? The professor does not think long. He transplants human testes and most of a brain into the poor dog.

Sharik, of course, does not know what has been done to him. And he suffers a terrible change, a terrible transformation. The dog does not become a man, exactly. But he grows and changes to resemble him. The dog loses its hair. It is now a grotesque, hybrid creature. Too stupid to be a man, prone to erratic emotions, the kinds of enthusiasms that overtake our animals. But not a dog, either. Deprived of that happy ignorance, that complete presence in the moment, that mankind has bred into its canines.

Sharik is violent; he is destructive. He is deeply, profoundly unhappy. Not that this would be unique to a natal man in Russia.

The dog’s changes are not complete. Sharik keeps transforming. Now he is yet more like a man, he insists on having a man’s name. The dog-man wishes to be called Poligraph Poligraphovich Sharikov, which of course has a texture that is different. It sounds almost as if the words were barked rather than spoken.

None too slowly, the dog-man goes mad. The professor, who is tasked with seeing to his subject’s needs, and writing up his experimentation, is not helped by all of this. Will he be able to arrest this terrible thing that he has done? Will he be able to unwind his own crime against nature?

Naturally, this is one of a grand tradition of literature. It is ‘the Soviet Prometheus.’ And as such, it is also satirical in ways Bulgakov pioneered. The professor does not experiment in a vacuum.

There has been a revolution, comrades. And certain things are now demanded of us. The professor lives in grand rooms, as befit his status. He once was a very important man. But there has been a revolution, comrades. And the professor is visited by the secret police, by delegations of his fellow residents, people of the new party, people of the future, and they make it clear that he ought to surrender some of his space.

After all, what greater right to it does he have than they? What has he done to transcend the fact that he is ordinary, just as they are? What can he possibly say in his own defence?

All the while, the professor is aided by a faithful underling, Bormenthal, who does as his superior says, suffers the humiliations and privations associated with an experiment of this kind, does much of the dirty work. It is Bormenthal who alerts the professor finally to the dreadful evil they have done; the upending of the natural order; the ruining of not only their lives, but also the life of another.

Bormenthal is a humble servant. He does what he is told. But he has a conscience. Such men are rare.

This is a short book and as a story of a terrifying transformation, it is akin to – but not quite as transcendent as – Kafka’s Metamorphosis. The latter says something very serious about life. Does Bulgakov’s work? I wonder.