dog's heart

The story was written in January — March 1925 ^[1] . During a search carried out by OGPU Bulgakov on May 7, 1926 (warrant 2287, case 45), the manuscript of the story was also seized from the writer. Three editions of the text have been preserved (all in the Manuscripts Division of the Russian State Library ) ^[2] .

In the USSR in the 1960s, the story spread in samizdat .

In 1967, without the knowledge and contrary to the will of the widow of the writer E. S. Bulgakova, the carelessly copied text of “Dog’s Heart” was transmitted to the West ^[2] simultaneously published in several publishing houses and in 1968 was published in the journal “ Grani ” "( Frankfurt ) and in Alec Flegon 's journal Student (London) ^[3] .

Only in June 1987 did the Znamya magazine manage to place a story on its pages (prepared by M.O. Chudakova ). However, the basis of this publication was the same unqualified foreign list containing more than a thousand errors and distortions ^[2] and as it appeared in all subsequent editions - until 1989 (in many cases and after ), when the literary critic and textologist Lidia Yanovskaya first published the authentic text of “The Heart of a Dog” verified by primary sources in the two-volume “Selected Works of M. Bulgakov” ^[4] .

Moscow , December 1924 . An outstanding surgeon , Professor Filipp Filippovich Preobrazhensky achieved remarkable results in rejuvenation . Continuing the research, he conceived an unprecedented experiment - an operation to transplant a human pituitary gland and testes to a dog. He is assisted in this by Dr. Bormental. As a test animal, the homeless dog Sharik was chosen. The results of the operation exceeded all expectations - the Ball gradually began to take on a human face! But then it became clear that he became a rude and a drunkard, like a donor of transplanted organs - Lumpen Klim Chugunkin ^[5] .

The story of the dog, which turned into a person, quickly became known in medical circles, and then became the property of the tabloid press. Colleagues express their admiration to Professor Preobrazhensky, they demonstrate Sharik in a medical lecture, and curious people begin to come to the professor's house. But Preobrazhensky himself is not happy with the outcome of the operation, as he understands that he can leave Sharik.

Meanwhile, Sharik fell under the influence of the communist activist Schwonder, who had inspired him to say that he was a proletarian suffering from oppression by the bourgeoisie (represented by Professor Preobrazhensky and his assistant Dr. Bormental) and set him against the professor.

Shvonder, being the chairman of the house committee, gives Sharik documents in the name of Polygraph Poligrafovich Sharikov , arranging him to work in the service of trapping and destroying stray animals (in the "cleaning") and forces the professor to officially register Sharikov in his apartment. In the "cleaning" service, Sharikov quickly makes a career, becoming the boss. Under the bad influence of Schwonder, having read superficially the communist literature and feeling like a “master of the situation”, Sharikov begins to be rude to the professor, cheekily behaving at home, stealing things with money and pestering the servant. In the end, it comes to the point that Sharikov writes fake information on professors and doctors Bormental. This denunciation only thanks to the influential patient of the doctor does not reach the law enforcement agencies. Then Preobrazhensky and Bormental ordered Sharikov to get out of the apartment, to which he responds with a categorical refusal. The doctor and professor, being unable to bear the impudent and impudent tricks of Polygraph Poligrafovich and expecting only to worsen the situation, decide to do the opposite operation and transplant the dog pituitary to Sharikova, after which he gradually begins to lose his human appearance and turns into a dog again ...

• The ball is a homeless dog that Professor Preobrazhensky picked up on Moscow Street.
• Polygraph Poligrafovich Sharikov - the person into whom the dog turns after the operation performed by Professor Preobrazhensky.
• Filipp Filippovich Preobrazhensky is a brilliant surgeon , a “world-famous figure” who lived in Moscow in the 1920s .
• Ivan Arnoldovich Bormental - a young doctor, an assistant to Professor Preobrazhensky.
• Zinaida Prokofievna Bunina is a young girl, the “social servant” of Professor Preobrazhensky.
• Daria Petrovna Ivanova - cook of professor Preobrazhensky.
• Fedor is the doorman of the house where Professor Preobrazhensky lives.
• Klim Grigorievich Chugunkin - a thief who died in a fight - a recidivist , an alcoholic and a bully whose pituitary gland and seminal glands were used to transplant Shariku. ^[five]
• Schwonder - chairman of the house committee (house committee).
• Vyazemskaya is the head of the cultural department of the house.
• Pestrukhin and Zharovkin are Shvonder’s colleagues, members of the house committee.
• Peter Alexandrovich - People's Commissar of Health, a patient and a good acquaintance of Professor Preobrazhensky.
• Vasnetsova - typist of the cleaning department of the MKH.

• The prototype of the “ Kalabukhov House ”, in which the main events of the story unfold, was the apartment building of the architect S. F. Kulagin (house number 24 on Prechistenka street), built with his money in 1904 .
• Filipp Filippovich Preobrazhensky constantly humming "From Seville to Grenada ... In the quiet dusk of nights." This line is from Tchaikovsky’s novel “Serenade of Don Juan”, verses to which are taken from the poem by A. Tolstoy “ Don Juan ”. Probably, the professor’s occupation is played out here: he returns sexual “youth” to his faded patients. ^[6]
• The professor conducts the operation on Sharik from December 24 to January 6 - from Catholic to Orthodox Christmas Eve . January 7, Christmas , the transformation of the Ball. ^[7]
• There is an opinion that Sharikov can be perceived as a carrier of the demonic principle. This can be seen in his appearance: the hair on his head is "stiff, as if by bushes on an uprooted field," as in the devil. At some point, Sharikov shows Professor Preobrazhensky a shish , and a shish - this is the hair standing on end of the devil’s head. ^[7]
• Perhaps the prototype of Professor Preobrazhensky served as the author for his uncle, mother's brother, Nikolai Mikhailovich Pokrovsky, gynecologist. His apartment in detail coincides with the description of the apartment of Filipp Filippovich, and, in addition, he had a dog. This hypothesis is also confirmed by Bulgakov's first wife, T. N. Lapp , in his memoirs ^[8] . The prototypes of the patients of Professor Preobrazhensky were familiar writers and famous public figures of that time. ^[7] But there are other hypotheses, see Philip Filippovich Preobrazhensky for more details.
• The house committees, which Professor Preobrazhensky complained of, and one of which was headed by Schwonder, really worked very poorly after the revolution. As an example, the injunction to the residents of the Kremlin dated October 14, 1918 ^[9] : “[...] house committees completely fail to fulfill the duties assigned to them by law: the dirt in the yards and squares, in the houses, on the stairs, in the corridors and apartments is terrifying. The garbage from the apartments is not taken out for weeks, stands on the stairs, spreading the infection. The stairs are not only not washed, but not swept. In the yards for weeks lying manure, garbage, the corpses of dead cats and dogs. Homeless cats roam everywhere, being constant carriers of infection. In the city there is a “Spanish" disease, which has entered the Kremlin and has already given deaths ... "
• Abyrvalg - the second word spoken by Sharik after turning from a dog into a man - is the word spoken in reverse order "Glavryba" - the Main Directorate of Fisheries and the State Fisheries Industry at the People’s Commissariat of Food , which in 1922-1924 was the main economic authority in charge of fishing grounds RSFSR . The first similarly constructed word was “Abyr” (from “fish”).
• The rock group " Agatha Christie " recorded the song "Dog Heart", the text of which is a monologue of Sharik.

The most widespread political interpretation of the story relates it to the very idea of ​​the “Russian revolution”, the “awakening” of the social consciousness of the proletariat. Sharikov is traditionally perceived as an allegorical image of the lumpen proletariat , which unexpectedly received a large number of rights and freedoms, but quickly discovered selfish interests and the ability to betray and destroy like their own (the former homeless dog climbs the social ladder, destroying other homeless animals), and those who endowed them with these rights. It should be noted that Klim Chugunkin earned playing music in taverns and was a criminal. The finale of the story looks artificial, without outside interference ( deus ex machina ) the fate of the creators of Sharikov seems a foregone conclusion. It is believed that in the story Bulgakov predicted massive repression of the 1930s ^[10] .

A number of Bulgakov scholars believe that the “Heart of a Dog” was a political satire on the leadership of the state in the mid-1920s. In particular, that Sharikov-Chugunkin is Stalin (both have an “iron” second name), prof. Preobrazhensky is Lenin (who transformed the country), his assistant Dr. Bormental, constantly in conflict with Sharikov, is Trotsky (Bronstein), Shvonder is Kamenev , assistant Zina is Zinoviev , Daria is Dzerzhinsky and so on. ^[eleven]

An OGPU agent was present at the reading of the manuscript of the story during the meeting of writers in Gazetny Lane, who described the work as follows ^[12] :

[...] such things, read in the most brilliant Moscow literary circle, are much more dangerous than the useless and harmless speeches of 101st grade writers at meetings of the All-Russian Union of Poets.

The first edition of “Dog’s Heart” contained practically open allusions to a number of political figures of that time, in particular to the Soviet Plenipotentiary in London Christian Rakovsky and a number of other functionaries, known in the circles of the Soviet intelligentsia as scandalous love affairs ^[13] .

Bulgakov hoped to publish Dog’s Heart in the Nedra almanac, but they recommended that the story not even be given for reading in Glavlit . Nikolai Angarsky , who liked the work, managed to pass it to Lev Kamenev , but he said that "this sharp pamphlet for the present is in no way possible to be printed." In 1926, during a search in Bulgakov’s apartment, the manuscripts of “Dog Heart” were seized and returned to the author only after the request of Maxim Gorky three years later ^[10] .

In Samizdat, the story spread already in the early 1930s .

• “Dog Heart”, short stories for the chamber ensemble of Boris Tishchenko (1988)
• “ Heart of a Dog ”, opera by Alexander Raskatov (2008-09, premiered in 2010 in Amsterdam)

• Allegory
• Dr. Zhivago (novel)
• Satire
• Homo soveticus

• Yankova T. "The author and the hero in" Dog Heart ""
• Dog heart in the library of Maxim Moshkov

• Sakharov V.I. Mikhail Bulgakov: riddles and lessons of fate. - M .: Giraffe, 2006 .-- 331 p.
• Sokolov B.M. Bulgakov. Encyclopedia: characters, prototypes, works, friends and enemies, family. - M .: Eksmo, 2005 .-- 827 p. - ISBN 5699229280 . - ISBN 9785699229284 .
• Tyurina E. A. What is Professor Preobrazhensky singing about? Musical quotes - one of the sources of the text of the story “Dog Heart” by M. A. Bulgakov // Literature at school. - M. , 2007. - No. 7 . - S. 20-23 .
• Tyurina E. A. The Tale of M. A. Bulgakov “A Dog’s Heart”. Ecological and textual problems. - M. , 2007 .-- 47 p.
• Tyurina E. A. About some of the textual problems of M. A. Bulgakov’s novel “The Heart of a Dog” // Textological temporary. Russian literature of the XX century: current issues of textology and source study. - M .: IMLI RAS , 2009. - S. 101-115 .
• Vergelis A.P. Sharikov transformed // New Beach 2016, 53

• Moscow State Museum of M. A. Bulgakov
• Quotes from the movie in MP3
• YouTube movie quotes