This satire of life in the early years of the Soviet Union cost its author dear at the time and it has not lost its provocative power
Claire Armitstead Wednesday 4 January 2017
Mikhail Bulgakov was 33 years old, a former doctor and an up-and-coming playwright and short-story writer when he invited a group of people to a reading of his new novella, The Heart of a Dog. He had held a similar soiree the previous year to launch another novella, The Fatal Eggs, and though the earlier reading had gone well, it had made him anxious enough to muse in his diary: “Is it a satire? Or a provocative gesture? … I’m afraid that I might be hauled off … for all these heroic feats.”
Heartbreaking tales of love, devotion, innocence – and philosophy. From Homer to Kafka, these works show humanity intimately observed by its best friend
Jill Ciment
Wednesday 26 August 2015
Man created dog, or dog created man, about 30,000 years ago somewhere in east Asia. Dogs witnessed us when we were still part very much part of the animal kingdom, marginal creatures foraging for a living, before we had stone tools, before we mastered agriculture, invented money, built cities, and polluted the earth. Dogs are like a first lover who knew us when: they know where we really come from, and who we really are.
They have shared our hearths and meals and affections for longer than any other animal. A 12,000-year-old grave in Israel contains the skeleton of a woman holding the skeleton of a puppy. We have even shared death with them. How could they not make their way into our imaginations?
While dogs have been bearing witness to our behaviour for 30,000 years, we have also been closely observing them. We are their first loves, too. We knew them when they were still wolves, before they tasted kibble, had their nails trimmed and their teeth brushed.
In my novel, Heroic Measures, one of the points of view belongs to Dorothy, a 12-year-old dachshund who stands 12 inches tall and weighs 10lb 2oz. Entering her consciousness seemed no different to me as a writer than visiting the minds of the older couple, Ruth and Alex, who have been Dorothy’s family since she was eight weeks old. Dorothy’s character is as idiosyncratic and individual as any human I have created.
Here are 10 favourite narratives told from a dog’s point of view.
Argos, Odysseus’s loyal hound, is one of the first dogs in western literature. After waiting 20 years for his master’s return, Argos must make a most painful decision. He realises that Odysseus is in disguise. If he greets his master, or if his master acknowledges him, Odysseus will be in mortal danger. Argos has to accept that after two decades of longing for this moment, he will only be rewarded with a glimpse of the man he loves.
All of London’s dog novels hark back to the courting stage of man and wolf, when we were still both beasts. London’s plots are really love stories - two wary beings learn to trust each other and fall in love. Buck, a huge St Bernard/shepherd mix, is kidnapped from his comfortable middle-class home, sold into bondage, and escapes. In the Alaskan wilderness, he discovers the bestial instinct within himself. Only late in life does Buck fall in love with a man, John Thornton, who saves his life. When he loses John to an Indian’s arrow, he returns to the wild and joins a wolf pack. London intends for Buck’s howl, “the song of the pack”, to be a dirge.
Poprishchin, a lowly clerk infatuated with his supervisor’s beautiful daughter, keeps a diary as he sinks into madness. He begins to suspect that his dog, Fidel, is having an affair with her dog, Meggy, and exchanging love letters. The first epistolary dog’s tale.
Narrated from the point of view of a dachshund mix, and presented as a children’s tale, this is a horrifying story of a beaten dog who joins the circus only to return to her original cruel master because she feels more comfortable being kicked than loved. Janet Malcolm, in her book, Reading Chekhov, writes that Kashtanka might be the great man’s most autobiographical story.
Sharik, a stray, finds himself adopted by a successful surgeon and thinks he has entered earthly paradise, only to discover that the doctor’s real intentions are to perform medical experiments on him. During one procedure, the doctor attaches a pair of human testicles to Sharik. To the doctor’s delight and the dog’s astonishment, Sharik transmogrifies into a primitive man. But though he looks like a man …
Franz Kafka, with a dog, in 1905. Photograph: Getty Images
The erudite dog who narrates this meditation on the origins of nourishment believes himself to be not “different from any other dog”, and yet he asks if it is possible for a creature to be “more unfortunate still” than he is. Kafka, like Plato, believed that the dog is the most philosophical beast in the world.
At the end of Kafka’s Metamorphosis, the insect-being that had been the man Gregor dies, much to the relief of his family who never reconciled with his horridness. Our narrator in Investigations of a Dog summits on the point of isolation and silence and never really descends. Kafka seems to be saying that knowledge unshared distances us from one another as much as it enlightens.
His biographer Elias Canetti writes:
"The uniqueness of his work, in which emotions hardly appear, though literature otherwise swarms with them, volubly and chaotically. If one thinks about it with a little courage, our world has indeed become one in which fear and indifference predominate. Expressing his own reality without indulgence, Kafka was the first to present the image of this world."
A shot rings out on a farm in rural Illinois – one neighbour has murdered another. Late in the novel, Maxwell allows the murderer’s dog a point of view. The dog has witnessed her human in his most heinous state, but of course she never passes judgment on him.
A grieving man, Joe, is walking Victor, his dead wife’s dog, when they are approached by an aggressive dog twice Victor’s size. The man scares off the mongrel and Victor thinks: “What devotion! Almost canine.” But safe once again, Victor remembers that Joe never wanted him. If not for the wife, Victor would still be in the pound. In a moment of doggy insight, Victor tells Joe that he loved his dead mistress more than Joe loved his dead wife.
King, the dog and guardian of a homeless couple, narrates this story dramatising 24 hours of precarious survival on a scrap heap somewhere near a motorway in France. The term “dog-eat-dog society” has never been more cleanly defined.
The title says it all. A wonderful collection of doggerel. Disclaimer: Sadie, the dachshund whom my character, Dorothy, was based on, has a poem in it.
Besides many musical themes, Bulgakov also presents lines of poetry in The Master and Margarita. Sometimes they are quoted by the characters, sometimes they are heard in the background. The poems they come from are written by Aleksander Sergeevich Pushkin (1799-1837), without any doubt the most popular Russian poet ever, and by Vladimir Vladimirovich Mayakovsky (1893-1930), a contemporary of Bulgakov with whom he had a love-hate relationship.
In Russian this park is called Патриарши пруды (Patriarshiy Prudy), in English Patriarch's Ponds. «Ponds» is in plural. Although there is only one pond in this park situated between Malaya Bronnaya ulitsa in the east, Bolshoi Patriarshy pereulok in the south, Patriarshy pereulok in the west, and Yermolaevsky pereulok in the north. It’s a big pond surrounded by a wide footpath with benches. Bulgakov lived nearby for some years in Bolshaya Sadovaya ulitsa or the Big Garden street.
The name of the pond refers to the Patriarch, the head of the Russian Orthodox Church who had his residence close to the park. In the past there were three ponds, as suggested by the name af a street nearby: Trekhproedny pereulok or Threeponds avenue. In 1918, after the revolution, the ponds were renamed Pioneers' Ponds.
Russia and Ukraine are engaged in a cultural cold war over the nationality of one of the world's most celebrated playwrights
Kelly Nestruck Thu 11 Dec 2008 15.21 GMT
Few would disagree that Mikhail Bulgakov is a great writer. But is the man who wrote Flight and A Cabal of Hypocrites a great Russian writer, or a great Ukrainian writer? Or, can any country that exists today really lay full claim to him?
Ukrainian journalist, playwright, novelist, and short story writer, whose major work was the Gogolesque fantasy The Master and Margarita. In the story the Devil visits Stalinist Moscow to see if he can do some good. The book is considered a major Russian novel of the 20th century. It first appeared in a censored form in the Soviet journal Moskva in 1966-67. Bulgakov used satire and fantasy also in his other works, among them the short story collection Diaboliad (1925).
From Lewis Carroll’s Cheshire Cat to Franz Kafka’s ‘Ungeziefer’, linguistically gifted beasts have made for some of the most luminous characters in fiction
Pajtim Statovci
A
nimal characters in works of fiction have generally been used in a rather anthropomorphic way. This can be seen as a problem, though, and many say that reading animals as symbols of us reduces them, makes them smaller, steals their right to be seen as subjects who have their unique, distinctive way of existing. Others say that it’s not a problem at all because it’s not as if animals – even though they’re each different in shape and thought – will ever get to know what we write about them, how we place, use and interpret them and give them meaning through human filters.
Placing myself in the discussion as a writer of animal characters (as I am in my novel My Cat Yugoslavia) is extremely difficult. Does a writer of fiction that includes animal characters commit an act of theft? Can nature really be appropriated? Who does it belong to, and who gets to say what counts as “animal culture”? Is it scientists, biologists, scholars in humanities, people who have lived with animals, or no one? The question is exceptionally complex. However, it is interesting and most welcome, too, that we continue to discuss the rights of beings that are unarmed, incapable of defending themselves through language that’s not clearly understandable to us.
All that being said, here they come: my top 10 talking, zoomorphic animal characters.
1. Behemoth in The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov
This demonic beast, this marvellous shape-shifting creature, this sarcastic, vodka-loving cat, is one of the most iconic talking animals, and justifiably so. Behemoth, a member of an evil entourage led by Satan himself, will leave an everlasting mark on the reader. I promise you this. His whimsical, absurd and ingenious character inspired me tremendously when writing My Cat Yugoslavia.
2. The Cheshire Cat in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll
This talking feline won’t terrify you with Behemoth’s cutthroat insults and deranged actions, but it will make you laugh just as copiously. Famous for its broad grin, it appears and disappears as it chooses, while tormenting Alice with philosophical statements and giving her advice that seems irrational. But that’s part of its alluring magic.
3. “Ungeziefer” in The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka
Gregor Samsa wakes up one morning as a bug-like, monstrous vermin. A busy salesman who slavishly follows the rules, he immediately knows he’s in big trouble. While Gregor himself doesn’t seem to be bothered by his new clumsy shape and unsightly appearance, he’s rejected by his family and ends up suffering a terrible fate. There are many possible interpretations of the story. To me, it’s about how our battles and confrontations don’t necessarily make us stronger – sometimes they just make us weaker, sadder and more pathetic.
4. Maf in The Life and Opinions of Maf the Dog, and of His Friend Marilyn Monroe by Andrew O’Hagan
Frank Sinatra gave Mafia Honey, a Maltese terrier, to Monroe as a Christmas present in 1960. O’Hagan’s fourth novel follows the final years of the actor from the point of view of this singular pooch. This well-educated and articulate dog will not only give you a unique perspective on Monroe’s life, it will steal your heart away. He’s that charming and spot-on.
‘Some animals are more equal than others’ … a still from the 1954 animated film of Animal Farm. Photograph: Allstar/Cinetext/Halas/Batchelor
5. Napoleon and Snowball in Animal Farm by George Orwell
Napoleon and Snowball, two pigs greedy for power, start off as allies. As the story continues and violence proliferates, they become dedicated rivals. What the hatred and violence between them generates is simply more hate and violence. This novel feels more current than ever.
6. Bagheera in The Jungle Books by Rudyard Kipling
This black panther is one of my favourite talking animals in children’s books because he’s just the coolest. In Kipling’s Mowgli stories, as well as in various adaptations of them, Bagheera is a real class act. He’s smart, reliable and thinks ahead, and on top of that he has perfect timing. Mowgli would be in terrible trouble without the awesome Bagheera. Shere Khan has nothing on him.
7. Red Peter in A Report to an Academy by Franz Kafka
Here is an ape who has mastered the art of being a human being by leaving his “ape self” behind. After being captured on the Gold Coast he’s given two options: he can either live in a zoo or become a turn at a music hall. Red Peter chooses the latter, and adjusts to the highly oppressive and judgmental people around him. I guess sometimes it’s easier to adapt to being othered in various ways than to fight for the right to be seen and heard as an individual.
8. Pig Tales by Marie Darrieussecq
A young woman in her 20s lands a job at perfume counter. Soon after that, she understands that she’s expected to have sex with male customers. Then she starts gradually transforming into a sow. Darrieussecq’s debut novel – Truismes in the original French – was a massive success on publication in 1996. It offers one of the most distinctive and unique transformation stories of our time and explores questions of sexuality, identity and gender with much-needed insight and superb creativity.
9. The Cowardly Lion in The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by L Frank Baum
I have great sympathy for the Cowardly Lion. He is expected to be brave, powerful and courageous. Instead, he is terribly scared of the world around him. What makes him adorable is that he’s so freaking sensitive and sentimental, and extremely self-conscious about it. To me, he is a symbol of self-hatred. I’m sure everyone who has been told that they can’t do something, that they should act in a certain fashion, that they are not good or smart or capable enough can relate. We become blind to our strengths when our weaknesses are brought up more frequently, when we begin to think that we don’t deserve more and feel shame for what we should be proud of.
10. Sharik or Comrade Sharikov in The Heart of a Dog by Mikhail Bulgakov
Overshadowed by The Master and Margarita, Bulgakov’s novella is an equally remarkable and momentous work of fiction. It tells the story of a wealthy and successful doctor who surgically implants human testicles and a pituitary gland into a stray dog, a mongrel he names Sharik. Sharik narrates the story until the surgery transforms him into something like a human being. Then the man/canine becomes Comrade Sharikov, a cat-killing nuisance who tortures and harasses virtually everyone in sight.
My Cat Yugoslavia by Pajtim Statovci, translated by David Hackston, is published by Pushkin Press, priced £14.99.
