Heart of a Dog by Mikhail Bulgakov Summary and Reviews
|
List Price: Our Price: $11.31 You Save: $2.69 (19%) Availability: Usually ships in 1 to 3 months Buy Used: from $1.07 (click here) Category: Book See more book details and other editions |
|---|
Book Reviews of Heart of a Dog
Book Review: Body of a dog and soul of a human
Summary: 5 Stars
Among clever humor and piercing symbolism, Bulgakov's main target in this book is the post-revolutionary proletariat. He took the body of a dog, put in the soul and entity of an alcoholic into it, and it became a uniform party member.
Book Review: Bulgakov's Soviet Satire
Summary: 5 Stars
Bulgakov was a true Russian genius, but one who lacked the "politically correct" postures of other less talented soviet hacks. As a result, his works were nearly unknown in his lifetime. But gradually, his books have been published and translated and with each book his stature grows. Bulgakov may stand with Myakovsky, Mandelstam, Akmatova, Shostakovitch and Malevich as the greatest artistic minds to come from the Soviet Union. The Heart of a Dog is a great book, perhaps not as multifaceted as Bulgakov's masterpiece, Master and Margarita, but brilliant nonetheless. The book seems perhaps a combination of Gogol's The Nose, and Kafka's Metamorphosis. Sharik - a perfectly normal stray dog is adopted by a famous scientist who transplants the testes and pituitary gland of criminal. Sharik gradually develops into a lewd, drunken cur of a man who is fabulously successful in the new Soviet society.
As Joanna Daneman says in a previous review, Bulgakov's theatrical background is highly visible in this work. Each chapter is crafted like a distinct scene...the comedy is often extremely broad. Sharik is as pointed and broad a caricature of The New Soviet Man...as seen from it's dark underbelly. Many of the scenes are almost broad slapstick. And yet, the humor, while broad, is also quite bitter. It is obvious that Bulgakov saw the deterioration of his society and was deeply disturbed by it.
Bulgakov's disdain of the Proletariat is a bit disturbing to an American. After all, we are the country of the common man. And there is a hidden "snobbery" in the work, which can be a bit hard to take. But so much of the book is dead on...and it is extremely funny. Heart of a Dog is an enjoyable and important addition to the growing Bulgakov oeuvre.
Book Review: Dark and majestic
Summary: 4 Stars
Placed within the boundaries of post revolutionary Russia (October revolution 1917) this novel with its dark atmosphere pierces deeply into bones of a reader, leaving him amazed and stunned with a size to which can escalate human stupidity, and evilness and unintelligent behaviour by following the paths of some greater revoultion, of some welfare for all.By walking the alleys of Moscow, professor Petar Petrovic Preobrazensky comes across a wanderrer dog, and after feeding him, he performs an operation on him, in which he combines part of a dead man body (dead man is alchocolic, violent, and member of communist party)with the parts of a dog.
What is caused by operation is already presented in some other novels like 'Frankestein' but here (considering that this is Bulgakov and all...) is totaly unexpected. Dog starts to transform, slowly at first, into a human being whose parts he now posesses. What becomes apparent in the process are all the bad thing one can have when "suffering" from a posession of a human heart. He losses all nobility of a dog, ant transforms himself into a man that he used o be before, with all negative sides that remained.
Association with the president of House Comitee Svonde, will lead to major problems.
Bulgakov uses his famous, fluid style, not allowing break beetween narration and dialogue, though short this novel keeps his reader glued to his chair, and doesn't allow him to leave mists of post revolutionary Moscow, mists of human spirit (in which was believed that by mere act of revolting (violent), all became different than it used to be, neglecting the fact that people that used to live under empire are the same people the now live under Lenin)
Though somewhat flawish on some places, with weak links between objects and verbs, with holes in some spaces, that should (or could) be filled with more detailed narration, this novel stands side by side with the rest of Bulgakov's work.
Thumbs up!
Book Review: Decade of a Dying Nation
Summary: 5 Stars
Bulgakov's novel is a farce based on the Soviet 'experiment' with its citizens. Rather than read the populous and create a socialist union that would fit early twentieth century Russia, the Bolsheviks attempted to create a society of conscientious political workers. But the lack of education and the inherent crudeness of the raw material that was the 'masses' made the experiment's failure inevitable. Polygraph Polygraphovich, born a dog, is surgically transformed into the quintessential soviet man--opportunistic and petty. In reading Heart of a Dog, one cannot help but feel the unfulfilled potential of the Russian Revolution. Bulgakov's masterful subtleties elucidate the Soviet thirties as a decade of a dying nation, when Stalinist theory negated the 1917 RevolutionBook Review: Dog of a Man
Summary: 5 Stars
Bulgakov's poignant satire of the Soviet man, made him a pariah in official literary circles of the Soviet Union. Sharikov, who is nothing but a cur becomes a human being who presumes to take a job on the purge committee in charge of getting rid of the udesirable social element, in this case, the cats.This brave allegory is one of Bulgakov's best works. The author came from a long line of Russian priests, was trained as a doctor, and gave up medicine to write full-time. He chose not to leave Russia after the Bolshevik revolution of 1917, and led a rather miserable existence in Russia until his death in 1941. At least he avoided Stalin's purges. In this book, and in most others, Bulgakov shows his "theological heritage" by being very concerned with values, moral issues, and the like. The new man, whose advent was so loudly heralded by communists turned out to be a loutish, arrogant, semi-educated creature. This new man, with his old habits and simplistic views of life, assumes power and presumes to know how everybody should live. This is a well-executed allegory about one of the great tragedies of human history, when intellectual arrogance presumed to postulate the "new man" as false hope, as a promise of communist paradise on Earth.