Heart of a Dog

By Mikhail Bulgakov and Mirra Ginsburg

I first read Mikhail Bulgakov's The Master and Margarita on a balcony of the Hotel Metropole in Saigon on three summer evenings in 1971. The tropical air was heavy and full of the smells of cordite and motorcycle exhaust and rotting fish and wood-fire stoves, and the horizon flared ambiguously, perhaps from heat lightning, perhaps from bombs. Later each night, as was my custom, I would wander out into the steamy back alleys of the city, where no one ever seemed to sleep, and crouch in doorways with the people and listen to the stories of their culture and their ancestors and their ongoing lives. Bulgakov taught me to hear something in those stories that I had not yet clearly heard. One could call it, in terms that would soon thereafter gain wide currency, "magical realism". The deadpan mix of the fantastic and the realistic was at the heart of the Vietnamese mythos. It is at the heart of the present zeitgeist. And it was not invented by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, as wonderful as his One Hundred Years of Solitude is. Garcia Marquez's landmark work of magical realism was predated by nearly three decades by Bulgakov's brilliant masterpiece of a novel. That summer in Saigon a vodka-swilling, talking black cat, a coven of beautiful naked witches, Pontius Pilate, and a whole cast of benighted writers of Stalinist Moscow and Satan himself all took up permanent residence in my creative unconscious. Their presence, perhaps more than anything else from the realm of literature, has helped shape the work I am most proud of. I'm often asked for a list of favorite authors. Here is my advice. Read Bulgakov. Look around you at the new century. He will show you things you need to see.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Grove Press
• Release date: Mar 18, 2016
• ISBN: 9780802190031

Mikhail Bulgakov

Marian Schwartz is a prize-winning translator of Russian who recently received her second Translation Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts to translate Olga Slavnikova’s newest novel, 2017. She has translated classic literary works by Nina Berberova and Yuri Olesha, as well as Edvard Radzinsky’s The Last Tsar. Evgeny Dobrenko is professor in the Department of Russian and Slavonic Studies at the University of Sheffield. He is author, editor, or coeditor of more than fifteen books, including Political Economy of Socialist Realism. 

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HEART OF A DOG

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MIKHAIL BULGAKOV (1891–1940) was born in Kiev. After studying and practicing medicine, he gave up his career for writing. Short story writer, playwright, and novelist, Bulgakov was among the group of writers who did not emigrate after the revolution. He was under constant attack by party-line critics, and by 1930 was completely barred from publication. It was not until the sixties that he was rehabilitated and published again in Russia.

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MIRRA GINSBURG was born in Russia. She is the translator of Bulgakov’s great novel The Master and Margarita, his Life of Monsieur de Molière, and his plays Flight and Bliss. Among other works, she has translated and edited The Fatal Eggs and Other Soviet Satire; Yevgeny Zamyatin’s novel WE; a collection of his stories, The Dragon, and a collection of his essays, A Soviet Heretic; and stories and novels by Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Alexey Remizov, Isaac Babel, Mikhail Zoshchenko, and Andrey Platonov. She is also the editor of many collections of folklore and the author of more than twenty books for children.

ALSO BY MIKHAIL BULGAKOV

Published by Grove Press

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The Master and Margarita

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HEART

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OF A

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DOG

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MIKHAIL BULGAKOV

Translated by Mirra Ginsburg

GROVE PRESS

New York

Copyright © 1968 by Grove Press

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review. Scanning, uploading, and electronic distribution of this book or the facilitation of such without the permission of the publisher is prohibited. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated. Any member of educational institutions wishing to photocopy part or all of the work for classroom use, or anthology, should send inquiries to Grove/Atlantic, Inc., 154 West 14th Street, New York, NY 10011 or [e-mail].

Printed in the United States of America

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Bulgakov, Mikhail Afanasévich, 1891–1940.

Heart of a dog.

Translation of: Sobaché serdtse.

ISBN 978-0-8021-5059-2

eISBN 978-0-8021-9003-1

I. Ginsburg, Mirra. II. Title.

PG3476.B78S6131987891.73’4287-8545

Grove Press

an imprint of Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

154 West 14th Street

New York, NY 10011

Distributed by Publishers Group West

www.groveatlantic.com

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I

Whoo-oo-oo-oo-hooh-hoo-oo! Oh, look at me, I am perishing in this gateway. The blizzard roars a prayer for the dying, and I howl with it. I am finished, finished. That bastard in the dirty cap—the cook of the Normal Diet Cafeteria for employees of the People’s Central Economic Soviet—threw boiling water at me and scalded my left side. The scum, and he calls himself a proletarian! Lord, oh lord, how it hurts! My side is cooked to the bone. And now I howl and howl, but what’s the good of howling?

What harm did I do him? Would the People’s Economic Soviet get any poorer if I rooted in the garbage heap? The greedy brute! Take a look at that mug of his sometimes—it’s wider than it’s long. A crook with a brass jowl. Ah, people, people! It was at noontime that Dirty Cap gave me a taste of boiling water, and now it’s getting dark, it must be about four in the afternoon, judging from the smell of onions from the Prechistenka firehouse. The firemen get kasha for supper, as you know. But kasha is the last thing I’d eat, like mushrooms. However, some mutts of my acquaintance, from the Prechistenka, have told me that at the Bar-Restaurant on Neglinny people gobble a fancy dish—mushrooms en sauce piquant—at three rubles and

seventy-five kopeks a portion. To each his own—to me it is like licking galoshes! Ooh-oo-oo-oo-oo . . .

My side hurts dreadfully, and I can see my future quite clearly: tomorrow I’ll have sores, and, I ask you, what am I going to cure them with? In summertime, you can run down to Sokolniki Park. There is a special kind of grass there, excellent grass. Besides, you can gorge yourself on free sausage ends. And there’s the greasy paper left all over by the citizens—lick it to your heart’s content! And if it weren’t for that nuisance who sings Celeste Aida in the field under the moon so that your heart sinks, it would be altogether perfect. But where can you go now? Were you kicked with a boot? You were. Were you hit with a brick in the ribs? Time and again. I’ve tasted everything, but I’ve made peace with my fate, and if I’m whining now, it’s only because of the pain and the cold—because my spirit hasn’t yet gone out of my body. . . . A dog is hard to kill, his spirit clings to life.

But my body is broken and battered, it’s taken its share of punishment from people. And the worst of it is that the boiling water he slopped over me ate right through the fur, and now my left side is without protection of any kind. I can very easily contract pneumonia, and once I do, my dear citizens, I’ll die of hunger. With pneumonia, you’re supposed to lie under the stairs in a front hallway. But who will run around for me, a sick bachelor dog, and look for sustenance in garbage heaps? Once my lung is affected, I’ll be crawling on my belly, feeble as a pup, and anyone can knock the daylight out of me with a stick. And then the janitors with their badges will grab me by the feet and throw me on the garbage collector’s cart.

Of all the proletarians, janitors are the worst trash. Human dregs—the lowest category. Cooks can be of all sorts. For example, the late Vlas from Prechistenka.

How many lives he saved! Because the main thing is to get a bite to eat when you’re sick. All the old dogs still talk of how Vlas would throw them a bone, and with a solid chunk of meat on it. May he be blessed for it in the Heavenly Kingdom—a real personality he was, the gentry’s cook for the Counts Tolstoy, not one of those nobodies from the Soviet of Normal Diet. The things they do in that Normal Diet, it’s more than a dog’s brain can comprehend. Those scoundrels make soup of stinking corned beef, and the poor wretches don’t know what they’re eating. They come running, gobbling it down, lapping it up.

Take that little typist, ninth grade, getting four and a half chervontsy. True enough, her lover will give her a pair of Persian cotton stockings once in a while. But what won’t she have to put up with for that Persian cotton? You may be sure he will not take her in some ordinary way, no, he’ll insist on French love. They’re scum, those Frenchmen, between you and me. Although they know how to eat, and everything with red wine. Yes . . . So she’ll come running, this little typist. On four and a half chervontsy, after all, you can’t afford to eat at the Bar-Restaurant. She doesn’t even have enough for a movie, and a movie is the only solace in a woman’s life. She shudders and makes faces, but she puts away the stinking soup. . . . Just to think of it: a two-course meal for forty kopeks; and both courses together aren’t worth fifteen kopeks, because the manager has pocketed the other twenty-five. And is that the kind of nourishment she needs? The tip of her right lung isn’t quite right, and she has female trouble from that French love of his, and they’ve deducted from her wages at work, and fed her putrid meat at the cafeteria. But there she is, there she is . . . running toward the gateway in her lover’s stockings. Her feet are cold, her stomach’s cold because her fur’s

like mine now, and her panties give no warmth, a bit of lacy fluff. For her lover’s sake. Let her just try and put on flannel panties, and he’ll yell: but how inelegant you are! I’m fed up with my Matrena, I’ve had enough of flannel pants, it’s my turn to have some fun in life. I’m chairman now, and whatever I filch, all of it goes for female flesh, for lobster tails, for Abrau-D’urso wine. Because I’ve been starved long enough in my youth, I’ve had it, and there’s no life after death.

I am sorry for her, so sorry! But I’m even sorrier for myself. I’m not saying this out of selfishness, but because our conditions really don’t compare. At least, she is warm at home, and I, I . . . Where can I go? Oo-oo-oo-ooh!

Tsk, tsk, tsk ! Sharik, hey, Sharik . . . Why are you whimpering, poor beast? Who hurt you? Ah-h!

The wind, that raging witch, rattled the gate and boxed the young lady on the ear with its broom. It blew up her skirt above her knees, baring the cream-colored stockings and a narrow strip of the poorly laundered lace panties. It drowned out her words and swept across the dog.

Good God . . . What weather . . . Oh . . . And my stomach hurts. It’s that corned beef, that corned beef! When will it all end?

Ducking her head, the young lady threw herself into attack, broke through the gates, and out into the street; the blizzard began to spin and spin her around, push her this way and that, till she became a column of swirling snow and disappeared.

And the dog remained in the gateway. Suffering from his mutilated side, he pressed himself to the cold wall, gasped for air, and firmly decided that he would not go anywhere from there, he’d die right there in the gateway. Despair overwhelmed him. He felt so bitter and sore at heart, so lonely and terrified, that tiny dog’s

Reviews for Heart of a Dog

[Bruce Thompson · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Highly recommended. It’s a quick read at only 138 pages and well worth it. Great social commentary on the state of the Soviet Union.

[Francisco1194 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Very good and digestible read, the author easily transports you to the Soviet era and flows excellently with the plot. A highly recommended book for those who enjoy history, science fiction, a love for dogs, and the social and human analysis of men. (Translated from Spanish)

[Yubiwa70 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Parody of the new Soviet man, hidden for years like so many others. (Translated from Spanish)

[Fermín de Pas · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Short novel, strange, like some writings by the same author.
The plot is based on experiments of transplanting human pituitary glands and genitals into animals.
The comments from the dog Bola are very interesting.
Divided into two parts, the first is the most interesting to me, gradually descending into the second part after the transplant operation.
In any case, the whole is curious and since it is a short story, it is read with pleasure.
Entertaining like everything I have read by Bulgakov. (Translated from Spanish)

[drako1357 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

A satire of socialism from the critical and sarcastic mind of Bulgakov, through this work he shows us how socialism and its leaders attempt to drastically change citizens by distributing goods, services, and resources, and how it fails miserably, which is why it was censored for several years. The story of this dog with a villain's brain tells us that not all changes are for the better and that not all intentions (even if they are good) will yield favorable results. (Translated from Spanish)

[Ingeniando Ando · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Heart of a Dog is a story that blends the reality of a post-revolutionary Russia with the overflowing imagination of the author. In this creativity, a prestigious Russian scientist experiments with a stray dog, whom he names Bola, transplanting human organs into it. What this doctor did not anticipate is that his experiment would spiral out of control.
The work is written in three parts, where in the first part the author presents a view of the world through the eyes of a hungry animal roaming the streets of a hostile city. I consider this my favorite part, due to the empathy evoked by the sad situation of a homeless dog's life. The second part is a kind of log with the observations of the doctor's assistant regarding the experiment conducted by his boss. And the third part is the story of the new citizen Bolla (with a double l), who was humanized but reclaimed the worst of the essence of his human donor.
In my opinion, Bulgakov has a prose that, with his words, places the images of his narration in the reader's mind in such a clear way, as if we were visualizing what is happening in the scene. On the other hand, between the lines, one can perceive in this book a satirical and biting critique of the Bolshevik regime of those 1920s. A recommended and short read. (Translated from Spanish)

[Rossysa · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I had never read such a witty book!! (Translated from Spanish)

[NickSchap · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

A Dog's Heart,
This, sadly lesser-known, treasure of the literary world and the work of the brilliant and genius mind of Bulgakov, is a true masterpiece that captures the essence of life and the events that took place in Russia during the Great Revolution, which led to the creation of the Soviet Union. Describing not only the facts but, more importantly, the underlying absurdity and stupidity that prevailed during those dark times, marked by the decline of the intellectual and cultural world at the hands of mediocre minds. As in the book, the dog, transformed by the professor into a man, begins to seize the world while learning about it, imposing his ridiculous rules on the professor and trying to climb to a higher social position, despite his mediocre, dog’s heart and mind, and an inability to deal with the responsibilities of a higher social rank, but rather using it for his own benefit and at the expense of brilliant minds like the professor. This story serves as the perfect metaphor for the historical events of those times in Russia, where, just like in the book, the brilliant intellectual world fell into the hands of those who sought power but lacked the intellectual and spiritual capacity to deal with the responsibilities and were quite eager to use that new power for their own benefit. But where in the story the professor was fortunate enough to revert his creation to the form to which it belonged, reality turned out to be much darker, scarred Russia for many years to come, where the poor decisions of those times continue to resonate in the present. (Translated from Spanish)

[Samydiaz · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This weekend I read this book, highly recommended, ironic and with black humor. Genre: satire and science fiction. (Translated from Spanish)

[March Delgado · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

For me, it has a lot of influence on the great ones who came later (Koontz, Cook, Herbert). An experiment gone wrong turns a stray dog into a human without morals or ethics. What happens next leaves you astonished. I really liked it. (Translated from Spanish)

[placebo · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

A special, engaging, critical book, and surprisingly very easy to read for me. At times it evokes a certain repulsion or disgust due to some descriptions of the "dog," of its transformation, but still you can't stop reading it, you can't stop wanting to know how the story of Bola, the professor, and the doctor is going to end. (Translated from Spanish)