And then I've thought, hey, wasn't there an episode of Fringe I never got to? Or what have you.
(and in searching for some nice Fringe-related image, I managed to discover that there is a hidden code in these between-breaks glyphs, which now I will be obsessed with tracking… you have an exam, you have an exam, you have an exam)
Really, the worst obstacle that came up was actually directly related to what should have been most helpful: my modernism seminar last term. After coming up with the idea for this blog, it occurred to me, hey, what an easy way to knock a couple dozen titles off my list: take my notes from class and write 'em up on the blog, save myself the trouble of having to come back to it later.
But then I thought, oh, I'm a couple weeks late thinking of it. A couple weeks is a couple poets is a dozen poems, and by then it felt far too onerous.
So I read the sequels to Howl's Moving Castle instead.
Alright, I also read all those modernist poems. And the Tatyana Tolstaya short story from the list, and one of Pelevin's, and the Tyutchev poems, and started both And Quiet Flows the Don and Doktor Zhivago, and have about finished Olesha's Envy (super weird Christmas reading, by the way). And I finished Bulgakov's Master and Margarita and The Heart of a Dog.
So now I am going to suck it up and *write* about them. Because that's really what's going to help, right?
(I found this on another blog about books [though one with far less coherence than I hope mine has], and rather liked it: Mikhail Bulgakov and his characters in Master and Margarita)
I'll start with the Bulgakov, since I finished two of those, and that is like… a theme. There is consistency, at least. I will do Heart of a Dog here, and then will do M&M later, when I have the gumption (and I will, I assure you, find the gumption).
So, Heart of a Dog. Stats –
Author: Mikhail Bulgakov, obviously. Born in 1891, died in 1940. Banned from publication in 1930. Had (I can only imagine) a depressing last decade at the end, there. His works only began to be rehabilitated in Russia in the 1960s, ten+ years after Stalin's death (which was 1953, for those who are keeping count).
Year of publication: Trick question! The answer is 1987. Bulgakov finished writing it, however, in 1925, which matches up to the events in the story, many of which are told in the form of a diary.
Genre: As far as genre in the Russian sense, it is a satire, in novella form (123 pages in the English version). As far as genre in the commercial, Western sense, it is satire, in science fiction form.
Flap description: "This hilarious, brilliantly inventive novel by the author of The Master and Margarita tells the story of a scroungy Moscow mongrel named Sharik [NB: Sharik is also the name of one of the prison dogs in Dosty's House of the Dead.]. Thanks to the skills of a renowned Soviet scientist and the transplanted pituitary gland and testes of a petty criminal, Sharik is transformed into a lecherous, vulgar man who spouts Engels and inevitably finds his niche in the bureaucracy as the government official in charge of purging the city of cats."
Accuracy of flap: Like 87%*, maybe. It is hilarious, and the man Sharik becomes is certainly lecherous and vulgar and fully party-minded, but the last sentence leads the reader to believe that the story will end up being mostly about Sharik's adventures as said cat-herding government official. This is not true: Sharik(ov) only disappears from the scientist's home in the chapter before the epilogue, on page 108, returning with the position on page 109 – and this already after the scientist and his assistant agree between themselves to reverse the operation. The purging of Moscow cats is only referred to as part of the exposition, but never actually seen (more's the pity). Also, the English flap leaves out the hilarious, ridiculous, wonderful fact of the first name and patronymic Sharik chooses for himself when he becomes Sharikov: Polygraph Polygraphovich.
* a completely non-scientific, unsubstantiated percentage
Principle characters:
- Sharik, the sweet and grateful mongrel, who understands Russian and can read signs and follows the Professor home on a night he is sure he is about to die from hunger.
- Polygraph Polygraphovich Sharikov, the vulgar letch of above description, who is short and ugly, with a hairy forehead, an obsession with chasing cats, a taste for too much alcohol, and a wandering hand around women. And also all the political leanings of an under-educated, criminal, working class proletarian.
- The Professor, Philip Philipovich, who owns a sumptuous suite of rooms in which he sleeps, dines, and works – with both an office/library, as well as an operating room. His fame and the success of his practice allows him these things, but at the cost of other "good citizens" who are having to crowd into single-room apartments by the twos and threes all around him. He is the one who rescues Sharik from the cold, beefs him up, and then performs the experimental surgery that brings Sharikov into citizenship (not "being," though, as this is a socio-political satire, of course)
- Dr. Bormenthal, the Professor's handsome assistant, who Sharik bites on the leg his first night there, and who is a practicing physician in his own right. He is a little like Dr. Watson to the Professor's Sherlock, keeping notes and giving advice and living in the foyer. He hates Sharikov with a passion.
- Shvonder, the local party man who despises the Professor's bourgeois tendencies, and takes Sharikov under his wing as a new party advocate.
- Zina, the maid, and Darya Petrovna, the housekeeper, both who are scared and offended by Sharikov, and both who live in the Professor's set of rooms.
Best execution of concept: I think the most telling moment of this story is when Sharikov declares that it isn't right that he doesn't have a real name, or any kind of official documentation, and Shvonder comes up to the Professor's rooms to help settle the matter. The Professor, throughout Sharik/Sharikov's time with him, descends further and further into vexed exhaustion and self-recrimination, especially as Sharikov's rise in the eyes of the state officials highlights the absurdity of the whole situation.
In this scene, the Professor is bewildered as to what he should be writing on the documents, and Shvonder treats it with utter straightforwardness:
"What shall I write?" [the Professor] asked impatiently.
"Oh, well," said Shvonder. "It's a simple business. Write out a certificate, citizen Professor. Certifying such and such, you know, and that the bearer of same is in fact Polygraph Polygraphovich Sharikov, hm… originating, you know… from your apartment."
Bormenthal stirred in his chair with a look of perplexity. Philip Philippovich twisted his mustache.
"Hm… what a predicament! I couldn't imagine anything more stupid. Originating! He didn't originate, but simply… well, in a word…"
"That's your business," Shvonder said with calm malice, "whether he originated or not… When all is said and done, Professor, it was your experiment! It was you who created citizen Sharik."
"It's perfectly simple," Sharikov barked from his place near the bookcase. He was peering at his tie, reflected in the depths of the glass.
"I would be very grateful," Philip Philippovich snapped back, "if you kept out of the conversation. It isn't 'perfectly simple.' It isn't simple at all."
"Why should I keep out?" Sharikov mumbled in an offended tone, and Shvonder immediately came to his support.
"Excuse me, Professor, but citizen Sharikov is entirely right. It is certainly his right to participate in the discussion of his own fate, especially insofar as it has to do with documents. A document is the most important thing in the world."
-----
It's just wonderful, that here is a successful (if horrifying) experiment in biological engineering, and Shvonder, the party man, is far more concerned about documentation and the rights of a citizen than he is about any of the rest. A+, Bulgakov, A+.
According to Caryl: Emerson, that is, of The Cambridge Introduction to Russian Literature fame. You know her, right? Of course you do.
"A prosewriter and playwright, Bulgakov was permeated by Gogolian texts. […] Two of Bulgakov's most famous novellas show Gogolian demonology already "Muscovized" – that is, reoriented toward fertility, botched reincarnations, and the production of biological as opposed to mechanical monsters.
When body parts come off in a Gogol Petersburg tale […] they strut around the city as reincarnated Rank, identifiable not by the face (if there is a face) but by the official shape of the button. When living bodies are rearranged in Bulgakov, they either proliferate out of control or – to the horror of all – become human beings.
Like Chekhov, Bulgakov was trained as a medical doctor. He understood and respected physiology. [… His] second novella, Heart of a Dog, again combines science and reproduction, but more on the model of Frankenstein's monster than H.G. Wells' Food of the Gods. Also written in 1925, this manuscript was confiscated (together with Bulgakov's diaries) in a secret-police search of the writer's apartment in 1926, and first appeared in Russia only in the glasnost year 1987.
[more basic plot description]
It is no accident that Woland, the enabling hero of The Master and Margarita, is also a professor, albeit of black magic, not body parts. The are of experimentation has now moved from reptiles [in Bulgakov's first novella, The Fatal Eggs] through the human-canine body to the human soul. This is an appropriate sequence for the biologically inflected myth of Holy Moscow."
Any other take-away bits?: Moscow does not come up smelling like roses, when Bulgakov's in charge. Not at all.
Alright. Later, Master and Margarita.
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