After reading the words: “Summary,“ Dog’s Heart ”, you can only smile sarcastically. What can be a “summary” of a classic work without time that is projected onto the past and present of a vast country? The author, the son of a professor of theology, had the unique gift of Aesopian style.
Why, it’s all written about us, the present! Didn’t modern adults ever have to see a hateful grin when a lawyer condemns the innocent “for an indicator”, when a teacher, crossing out the life path of talented ones, takes free training “on the phone” when the doctor, noticing a skinny wallet, forgets about the Hippocratic oath? The Sharikovs turned out to be an artificially introduced, but really tenacious mutation of our people. By the way, starting to write according to the well-known copywriting template, only a diva can be given. Let me ask: “What could be“ a summary of the story “A Dog’s Heart”, if this is actually a story? All the same, we will set the maximum task for ourselves - to show, reveal, describe, maybe even a slightly unexpected interpretation of Bulgakov’s story in a few lines.
Is it not with a break in history, namely, with the October Revolution of 1917 that the operation itself on a dog, carried out by an intellectual, the “world luminary” Professor Preobrazhensky, is associated with? If so, then Dog Heart is a summary of our story. A violent act, when rebellious intellectual revolutionaries broke into the natural course of the history of the Russian state by “appointing” as the hegemon the worst part of the working class. "Having nothing," the lumpen proletariat, chronically unable to add, nor multiply, but only divide and take away. It is in this environment that the “Sharikov” cohort is born.
By the way, the book quite ironically shows the role of the domestic intelligentsia. On the one hand, Professor Preobrazhensky has an impressive intellectual baggage, correct views on the arrangement of the world. On the other hand, he only earns a living by operations, helping the old libertines with the sexually implanted monkeys to engage in further debauchery. With the third, it was he who “initiated” Sharikov with his ideas.
Bulgakov, like an artist, draws an epoch, its brief content, with several precise strokes. The dog’s heart is rooted, it has become humanized and beats. Following the logic of the story, Polygraph Poligrafovich Sharikov at first, only potentially, at the level of reflexes, with contempt and hatred for everything human - culture, politeness, respect. At first, he makes a career and feels his seething hatred on cats, having received the position of head of the city department for cleaning stray animals in order to "strangle them." But then he pragmatically begins to further clear his living space, his further “runway,” by writing a denunciation for the physical destruction of his benefactor Preobrazhensky. Finally, his real grin appears, he begins to threaten with a pistol. This is a summary. “Dog’s heart” reduces everything to a happy end: Dr. Bormental and Professor Preobrazhensky, having made physical efforts and completed the operation, returned Sharikov to his original state. How simple and elegant everything is! Recall that the action of this fantastic story takes place in 1925 - 1926. But did it happen in our history? Not at all. Cognizing the smell of blood, the Sharikovs made a real bloody feast in the 30s ... Up to the 50s, those who were objectionable were strangled like unfortunate cats, "clearing the cities." And what is striking, the values ​​expressed "from the author" by Professor Preobrazhensky did not become a measure of the life of our entire society. Turn on the TV, peer at the news. How often the arrogant, boorish violation of the rational and fair, still wins. Sharikov forever!
So does the phrase “summary” apply to this work? “Dog’s heart” is multidimensional, it made and still makes you think about society, about the role of the present culture and traditions, about the future. Let us recall the monologue of Zinovy ​​Gerdt from an immortal film based on the novel by
the Weiner brothers about the future “era of mercy,” about the importance of each person’s current change in his soul, heart, mind so that calm and kindness reign there.