While the dilemma of the professor's household in dealing with his creation is comical and revealing, this reader confesses to having no dog in the hunt.

whom the transformed creature continued to hate savagely. If that be the case, then perhaps the Bourgeoisie are all cats. 'They're dogs, anyway,' the book seems to cry. All of this provides fuel for interpretations of this work as a satire of Bolshevism, set against the old-world order and affectations of the Bourgeoisie. But a question asked here (and there are many interpretations of this work) is: would the dog have been different if the glands had been taken from a 'Spinoza' level human being?ĭespite the professor’s best efforts to cultivate him into a decent Bourgoise citizen, the former dog takes on the ethics of a working class Proletarian, fueled by Bolshevik ideals, seemingly bound by no aesthetic, and basically intent on survival in a bureaucracy-driven world. He went on to write some of the greatest novels in twentieth century Russian literature, including The White Guard, Heart of a Dog, and his masterpiece, The Master and Margarita. He graduated as a doctor but gave up the practice of medicine in 1920 to devote himself to literature. After interrogations, his personal diary and several unfinished works were confiscated by the secret service. MIKHAIL BULGAKOV was born in Kiev on May 15th 1891. Soon after, Bulgakov was interrogated by the Soviet secret service, OGPU. If his magnum opus The Master and Margarita were to be compared to one of Shostakovichs symphonies (the bleak 4th, perhaps, or the enigmatic 5th), Heart of a Dog would be one of the jazz or ballet suites - slighter, lighter but no less hard-hitting. His story 'Heart of a Dog' (1925) is a bitter satire about the loss of civilized values in Russia under the Soviet system. This, we are led to believe, is the result of the human glands that were sewn into him having, which were taken from a drunkard. Like Shostakovich, Bulgakov kept an ambiguous relationship with the Soviet authorities. Unruly to begin with, the dog soon develops into a creature displaying an amplified capacity for uncouth and selfish behaviors. A strange tale about a starving Moscow street dog metamorphized into something resembling a human, at least in the essential respects of human biology.

Heart of a Dog by Mikhail Bulgakov