MFL

What would happen if a dog became human? 🐶

Although it might not be the question at the top of everyone’s minds, it certainly was for Mikhail Bulgakov when he wrote Heart of a Dog in 1925.  Set in the early USSR, it is the story of a surgeon, Professor Filip Filippovich Preobrazhensky, and his assistant, Dr Ivan Arnoldovich Bormental, who capture the stray dog Sharik and perform experimental operations on him.  Eventually, by transplanting human organs – in particular, the pituitary gland – into the dog, Sharik turns into a human.  As he gradually gains consciousness, he becomes a fully-fledged human, starts speaking Russian, acquires legal documents and names himself Poligraf Poligrafovich Sharikov.  However, he soon turns out to be a thief, miscreant and liar who wreaks havoc in the lives of his creators.

Mikhail Bulgakov, born in Kyiv, Ukraine in 1891, first trained as a doctor before turning to writing.  Heart of a Dog, along with many other of Bulgakov’s works, was censored and remained unpublished until the 1960s, long after Bulgakov’s death in 1940.

💡 Things to consider

• What right do humans have to exercise the full power of science? The question of whether Preobrazhensky and Bormental had the right to experiment on Sharik runs throughout the novel.  Is it acceptable to risk an animal life for the advancement of human scientific understanding? Bulgakov certainly suggests that it isn’t, as the Frankenstinian monster that he creates is a clear warning against such experiments.  Bulgakov also draws parallels between experimental surgery and murder, and throughout the process, the dog is terrified for his life.  Where is the line drawn between experimentation and destruction?

  

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• The inhumanity (and inhumaneness) of being human: Contradictorily, from a narrative perspective, Sharik appears to become dehumanisedtour de force of inhumane human behaviour – from people who mistreat Sharik when he is a stray dog at the start of the novel, to the cruel behaviour of Preobrazhensky and Bormental in operating on Sharik, to Sharik’s behaviour himself as a human, Bulgakov makes us wonder whether animals are more humane than humans. when he takes on human form.  The novel can roughly be divided into four sections, with different narrators.  Sharik narrates the first and last sections – the two sections when he is a dog.  When he is a human, he has no narrative voice.  Does this suggest that there is something deeply inhuman in being human? Furthermore, the novel is a

• How does a dog fit into human social structures? As innovative as the novel is, the same unfortunately cannot be said of Bulgakov’s views on social class.  Coming from an aristocratic family part of the Russian intelligentsia, Bulgakov’s family had fought against the Bolsheviks, and Bulgakov, it appears, still held pre-revolutionary ideals of a society strictly separated into classes.  As such, while he exaggerates and parodies class differences throughout Heart of a Dog, this is not to refute them – rather, it is to highlight their existence.  Therefore, it is perhaps unsurprising that, when Sharik is in human form, Bulgakov attributes him to a lower social class, and depicts him, and other working-class people, as immoral, unintelligent, vulgar and violent, in stark contrast to the upper-class characters such as Preobrazhensky and Bormental who (their immoral experimentation notwithstanding) are presented in much more favourable terms, in particular in regard to their sophistication and intellect.  Is the positioning of the humanoid dog into a lower social class meant to be a comment on the innately base behaviour of animals, or a damning indictment of the lower classes in the USSR?

🔎 Find out more

• read Heart of a Dog in English translation (it’s only around 100 pages long!) – lots of translations are available, but a good one is by Michael Glenny, published by Vintage in 2009

• watch a Soviet film adaptation of Heart of a Dog, with subtitles in English: https://sovietmoviesonline.com/comedy/sobache-serdce

• a study guide for Heart of a Dog: https://www.litcharts.com/lit/heart-of-a-dog#context

• Goscilo, H., ‘Point of View in Bulgakov’s Heart of a Dog’, Russian Literature Triquarterly, vol. 15 (1978), pp. 281-291

• Burgin, D., ‘Bulgakov’s Early Tragedy as Scientist-Creator: An Interpretation of the “Heart of a Dog”’, Slavonic and East European Journal, vol. 20, no.4 (1978), pp. 494-508

• ‘A Citizen and not a Comrade’: Soviet Class Tensions in “Heart of a Dog”: https://russophilereads.wordpress.com/2019/10/16/a-citizen-and-not-a-comrade-soviet-class-tensions-in-heart-of-a-dog/#:~:text=Heart%20of%20a%20Dog%20is,Preobrazhensky%20is%20selfish%20and%20vain.

• Curtis, J. A. E.,Critical Lives: Mikhail Bulgakov (London: Reaktion Books, 2017)

🍒 The cherry on top

• 💤 Extreme Dormancy: Extremophiles are organisms that can survive in extreme environments. One of these strategies is the use extreme dormancy. Could we harness this same strategy for space travel?! A must-read if you’re interested in Biology.

• 🇺🇸 Japanese American Immigrants in California: The belief of first-generation Japanese immigrants in their racial superiority over Filipinos was a by-product of the San Joaquin Delta’s white hegemony. Find out more in this academic article if you’re interested in History, Politics, or Sociology.

• 🚲 Smartphones are Bicycles for our Mind: The proliferation of smartphones is transforming basic structures of human existence, experience, and performance. How do these machines change what it means to be human? This is a great podcast episode if you’re into Anthropology.

👀 Keep your eyes peeled for…

• 15th July:

  • St John’s College Cambridge Admissions Clinic

  • St John’s College Cambridge Classics Taster Session

  • St John’s College Cambridge Modern and Medieval Languages Taster Session

  • St John’s College Cambridge Theology Taster Session

• 16th July:

  • St John’s College Cambridge Chemical Engineering and Biotechnology Taster Session

  • St John’s College Cambridge Land Economy Taster Session

  • St John’s College Cambridge Music Taster Session

• 17th July:

  • University of Buckingham Psychology Taster Day

  • St John’s College Cambridge Education Taster Session

  • St John’s College Cambridge History, Politics and HSPS Taster Session

  • St John’s College Cambridge Medicine Taster Session

• 18th July:

  • St John’s College Cambridge Architecture and Design Taster Session

  • St John’s College Cambridge Biological Natural Sciences Taster Session

  • St John’s College Cambridge Philosophy Taster Session

  • Churchill College Cambridge Personal Statement Workshop

• 19th July:

  • St John’s College Cambridge Anglo-Saxon, Norse and Celtic Taster Session

  • St John’s College Cambridge Computer Science Taster Session

  • St John’s College Cambridge Economics Taster Session

  • St Hugh’s College Oxford Preparing For Admissions Tests and Interviews Webinar

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