Question by violagirl: The House Committee from Mikhail Bulgakov’s “Heart of a Dog“?
I am studying the novel “Heart of a Dog,” and I have been wondering what role the House Committee played at that time in Russia.
Answers and Views:
Answer by Cuckoo
Heart of a Dog is a biting satire of the New Soviet man, written in 1925 at the height of the NEP period, when Communism appeared to be weakening in the Soviet Union. It is “one of novelist Mikhail Bulgakov’s most beloved stories” featuring a stray dog “named Sharik who takes human form as a slovenly proletarian.” It also features Professor Filip Filippovich Preobrazhensky who implants a human pituitary gland and testicles into Sharik. Sharik proceeds to become more and more human as time passes, picks for himself the absurd name Poligraf Poligrafovich Sharikov, makes himself a career with the “Moscow Cleansing Department responsible for eliminating vagrant quadrupeds (cats, etc.)”, and turns the life in the professor’s house into a nightmare until the professor reverses the procedure.
The story has become a cultural phenomenon in Russia, known and discussed “from schoolchildren to politicians.” The story has been filmed in both Russian and Italian-language versions, made into an English-language play and an opera, and been the cause of critical argument.
http://books.google.com/books?id=ehaZrlRY_YgC&q=Poligrafovich#search_anchor
http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB121123197068805001
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heart_of_a_Dog
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