Satire warning in M. Bulgakov's novellas "Fatal Eggs" and "Heart of a Dog"

By the mid-20s, after the publication of the novellas "Notes on the Cuffs", "The Devil", the novel "The White Guard, the writer had already developed as a brilliant artist of words with a sharply honed satirical pen. Thus, he approaches the creation of the novellas "Fatal Eggs" and "Heart of a Dog" with a rich literary background. It can be safely argued that the publication of these stories testified to the fact that Bulgakov successfully worked in the genre of satirical science fiction stories, which in those years was a new phenomenon in literature. It was a fantasy, not divorced from life, it combined strict realism with the fantasy of a scientist. The satire itself, which has become a constant companion of Bulgakov the artist, in the stories "Fatal Eggs" and "Heart of a Dog" acquired a deep and socio-philosophical meaning.

Attention is drawn to Bulgakov's characteristic method of asking questions to himself. In this regard, the author of "Fatal Eggs" and "Heart of a Dog" is one of the most "questioning" Russian writers of the first half of the 20th century. Almost all of Bulgakov's works are essentially permeated with the search for answers to questions about the essence of truth, truth, about the meaning of human existence.

The writer posed the most acute problems of his time, which have not lost their relevance even today. They are filled with the thoughts of a humanist artist about the laws of nature, about the biological and social nature of man as a person.

"Fatal Eggs" and "Heart of a Dog" are a kind of warning story, the author of which warns about the danger of any scientific experiment associated with a violent attempt to change human nature, its biological appearance.

The protagonists of "Fatal Eggs" and "Heart of a Dog" are talented representatives of the scientific intelligentsia, scientists-inventors who tried to penetrate the "holy of holies" of human physiology with their scientific discoveries. The fates of Professors Persikov, the hero of "Fatal Eggs" and Preobrazhensky, the hero of the "Heart of a Dog", develop in different ways. Their reaction to the results of experiments in the course of which they encounter representatives of various social strata is inadequate. At the same time, they have a lot in common. First of all, they are honest scientists who bring their strength to the altar of science.

Bulgakov was one of the first writers who was able to truthfully show how it is unacceptable to use the latest achievements of science to enslave the human spirit. This idea runs like a red thread in The Fatal Eggs, where the author warns his contemporaries about a terrible experiment.

Bulgakov turned the topic of the scientist's responsibility to life in a new way in "Heart of a Dog". The author warns - you must not give power to illiterate balls, which can lead to its complete degradation.

To implement the idea in both stories, Bulgakov chose a science fiction plot, where inventors played an important role. According to their pathos, the stories are satirical, but at the same time they are also openly denunciatory. The humor was replaced by biting satire.

In the story "Heart of a Dog," the disgusting creation of human genius at all costs tries to break out into people. The evil creature does not understand that for this it is necessary to go through a long path of spiritual development. Sharikov tries to compensate for his worthlessness, illiteracy and inability by natural methods. In particular, he renews his wardrobe, puts on patent leather boots and a poisonous tie, but otherwise his suit is dirty, tasteless. Clothes cannot change the whole appearance. The point is not in its external appearance, in its innermost essence. He is a dog-like man with animal habits.

In the professor's house, he feels himself the master of life. An inevitable conflict arises with all the inhabitants of the apartment. Life becomes a living hell.

In Soviet times, many officials, favored by the authorities of their superiors, believed that "they have their legal right to everything."

Thus, the humanoid creature created by the professor not only takes root under the new government, but makes a dizzying leap: from a yard dog it turns into an orderly to cleanse the city of stray animals.

An analysis of the novellas “Fatal Eggs” and “Heart of a Dog” gives us reason to evaluate them rather not as a parody of the society of the future in Russia, but as a kind of warning of what may happen with the further development of a totalitarian regime, with the reckless development of technical progress not based on moral values.

M. A. Satira Bulgakov.

("Fatal Eggs" and "Heart of a Dog" by MABulgakov.

Eighty years ago, young Mikhail Bulgakov wrote the stories "Fatal Eggs" and "Heart of a Dog", which we never tire of wondering today and which we constantly reread with rapture. In creative pursuits, the unique Bulgakov style of thought and word is born. In his satirical prose, there is the charming humor of a cheerful, experienced interlocutor-intellectual, who knows how to talk funny about very sad circumstances and who has not lost the gift of wondering at the vicissitudes of fate and human quirks. The very rhythm and intonation of this prose are prompted by time. It is evident that the author is able, in the words of Chekhov, to write shortly about long things. No wonder the well-known satirist and science fiction writer E. Zamyatin noted with approval about Bulgakov's early story "The Devil's Day": "Science fiction, rooted in everyday life, fast, like in a movie, change of pictures." Here, for the first time, what has become a distinctive feature of Bulgakov's mature prose is noted.

Pushkin used to say: "Where the sword of laws does not reach, the scourge of satire gets there." In "Fatal Eggs" and "Heart of a Dog" satire penetrates far and deep into the real life of the 1920s, and science fiction helps it, showing this life and people from an unexpected point of view. Recall that Bulgakov, in his essay "Kiev-city" (1923), mentions the "atomistic bomb", then not invented, but already described by the English science fiction writer Herbert Wells. The name of the author of The Invisible Man also appears in The Fatal Eggs. Bulgakov was an attentive reader and could not ignore the rapidly developing science fiction literature in the 1920s.

But fiction is not an end in itself for him, it is only a way to express favorite thoughts, to show everyday life and people from an unexpected point of view, serves the general idea of ​​the trilogy about the fate of science, which originated in the essay "Kiev-city" and embodied in the stories "Fatal Eggs" and "Dog heart "and the play" Adam and Eve ". Dostoevsky advised writers: "The fantastic in art has a limit and rules. The fantastic must touch the real so much that you must almost believe it."

Bulgakov skillfully and creatively follows this advice. He admits the possibility of a miracle, an ingenious scientific invention, but places it in reality and is then faithful to the laws of this reality, to the logic of mental movements and thoughts of real, not invented people. There is in Bulgakov's fantastic prose an unexpected, deeply hidden sadness, skeptical wisdom and tragedy, which make us remember Swift's sad satire. And this makes the stories "Fatal Eggs" and "Heart of a Dog" surprisingly reliable and at the same time prophetic.

The novel "Fatal Eggs" was begun by the writer in the fall of 1924 and completed in October. And all sorts of adventures immediately began with her. The name itself is multifaceted, parodic, and therefore it was thought over and changed for a long time. In 1921, the most curious collection "Dog Box, or Proceedings of the Creative Bureau of Nicholas", where the defiant signature "Rock" flashed, was published in Moscow. Bulgakov obviously knew the expression "fatal eggs of history", which belonged to G. Heine. But at first he called the story mischievously - "Professor Persikov's eggs". Then it also, apparently, was read ambiguously - "Rocky eggs".

For a long time, the author considered the story "a test of the pen", another feuilleton. However, the censorship and the authorities were of a different opinion about the "Fatal Eggs". "Big difficulties with my grotesque story" Fatal Eggs "... Will it pass the censorship", - written in Bulgakov's diary. The author's fears, alas, were justified right there. In the text of the story, the Soviet censorship made more than 20 "otters" and changes (in the overwhelming majority of Bulgakov's editions they have not been restored from the manuscript, and the manuscript itself mysteriously disappeared from the archive of the RSL, although its photocopy is available in the USA), and the circulation of Bulgakov's book "The Devil ", the central thing of which was" Fatal eggs ", was confiscated. Frightened publishing house "Nedra" pulled the payment of the fee.

From the diary of the writer it is clear that he was afraid of exile for his politically poignant story. But Bulgakov was much more worried about the ending of "Fatal Eggs": "The end of the story is ruined, because I wrote it hastily." This understandable, but annoying author's "flaw" was noticed by Gorky: "I liked Bulgakov very much, very much, but he made the end of the story bad. The reptile trip to Moscow has not been used, but think what a monstrously interesting picture it is!" In the memoirs of his flatmate V. Lyovshin, it is said that, asking by phone for an advance delayed by the publishing house, Bulgakov improvised exactly the ending of Fatal Eggs that Gorky wanted to read: hordes of giant boas. " The testimony of the listener of the author's reading of the story about its other epilogue has also survived: "The final picture is a dead Moscow and a huge snake coiled around the bell tower of Ivan the Great ... A funny theme!" But the ending, which was repeatedly revised by the author, did not change anything in the sharp and deep philosophical and political sense of Bulgakov's fantastic satire.

In the story "Fatal Eggs", as in "The Devil", Bulgakov experiments, heaps jokes and puns, skillfully plays with style, tries different creative manners, while not shying away from parody and sharp political grotesque. About one of the visitors of Professor Persikov, the most polite security officer, it was said forcefully: "On his nose sat like a crystal butterfly, a pince-nez." There is also a memory of his own student youth and passion for entomology, of his unique collection of butterflies, donated to Kiev University. But this is not the only point. There are many such beautiful metaphors and spectacular phrases in the "ornamental" prose of the 1920s, especially in the prose writer and playwright Yuri Olesha, then Bulgakov's friend. Then the butterfly collector Vladimir Nabokov wrote so forcefully. However, the cheerful author of "Fatal Eggs" was well aware of the truth expressed by his gloomy and dreamy contemporary Andrei Platonov: "By playing with a metaphor, the author wins one metaphor."

Bulgakov wanted to win something more. Let us recall only one episode of his story, where an author, a doctor and a newspaperman, who in the NEP era learned the complexity of the daily struggle for existence, looks with Professor Persikov through a microscope at the unexpected result of the action of the red "ray of life" invented by the scientist: "In a red stripe, and then the whole disc became cramped, and an inevitable struggle began. The newly born violently pounced on each other and tore to shreds and swallowed. Among the born lay the corpses of those who died in the struggle for existence. The best and the strong won. And these best were terrible. First, they were approximately twice the volume of ordinary amoebas, and secondly, they were distinguished by some special malice and agility. Their movements were swift, their pseudopods are much longer than normal, and they worked with them, without exaggeration, like an octopus with tentacles. "

We hear the voice of an eyewitness, his intonation is serious and agitated, because, of course, we are talking not only about the world of amoebas. The writer saw something, understood, wants to tell us about his discovery and therefore avoids spectacular phrases and obsessive games of metaphors, he does not need this. We immediately see that Bulgakov's own style is completely different. One of the first to understand this was Gorky, who read the story in Sorrento: "Bulgakov's Fatal Eggs" are witty and cleverly written. Gorky had in mind not only style.

Wit, dexterity, and even fiction itself for Bulgakov is not an end in itself, with their help he describes the "countless ugliness" of life, the insolence of illiterate newspapermen, penetrates deep into the souls of people, into the historical meaning of the events of that time. And his fictional prose is already far from a newspaper feuilleton, although the experience of a journalist came in handy here (compare Bulgakov's sharp feuilleton about Meyerhold "Biomechanical Chapter" with a pamphlet description of the theater named after the "late" Vs. Meyerhold in "Fatal Eggs"). We notice that this gay satire has a very serious purpose.

Contemporaries saw it too. We will not talk about the writers, but here is the OGPU intelligence report dated February 22, 1928: “There is a vile place, an angry nod towards the late Comrade Lenin, that there is a dead toad, which even after death has an evil expression on its face. his book walks freely - it is impossible to understand. It is read voraciously. Bulgakov enjoys the love of young people, he is popular. " This was the response of the authorities to the "Fatal Eggs", she immediately understood everything and flew into a rage.

In Bulgakov's "Notes on the Cuffs" it is said with bitter irony: "Only through suffering does truth come ... That's right, rest assured! But they don't pay money or rations for knowing the truth. It's sad, but true." Wonderful humorous talent did not prevent the author from saying a very serious, the main word for him is "truth". Being in the center of a rapid cycle of events, people and opinions, the satirist Bulgakov asks himself and his readers the eternal question of the evangelical Pontius Pilate, his future character: "What is truth?" In the difficult 1920s, he answered this question with the White Guard, the satirical stories Fatal Eggs and Heart of a Dog.

These stories are about the professors of the old school, brilliant scientists who made great discoveries in a new, not quite clear to them era, arrogantly bringing revolutionary changes to the great evolution of nature. Perhaps Bulgakov's satirical dilogy about science can be called a witty and at the same time serious variation on the eternal theme of "Faust" by Goethe. In the depths of incredibly funny stories are hidden tragedy, sad reflections on human shortcomings, on the responsibility of the scientist and science, and on the terrible power of self-righteous ignorance. The themes, as we can see, are eternal, which have not lost their significance today.

Another return of Doctor Faust took place. Professors Persikov and Preobrazhensky came to Bulgakov's prose from Prechistenka, where the hereditary Moscow intelligentsia had long settled. A recent Muscovite, Bulgakov knew and loved this ancient district of the ancient capital and its enlightened inhabitants. In Obukhov (Chisty) Lane, he settled in 1924 and wrote "Fatal Eggs" and "Heart of a Dog". People of thought lived here, close to him in spirit and culture. After all, Bulgakov considered it his duty as a writer "to depict the Russian intelligentsia as the best stratum in our country." The author loves and pity the eccentric scientists Persikov and Preobrazhensky.

Why did the classical intellectuals from Prechistenka become the object of brilliant satire? After all, even later Bulgakov was going to "write either a play or a novel" Prechistenka "in order to bring out this old Moscow, which annoys him so much."

A contemporary recalled the writer: "His humor at times took, so to speak, an exposing character, often growing to philosophical sarcasm." Bulgakov's satire is intelligent and sighted, the writer’s deep understanding of people and historical events prompted him that the talent of a scientist, impeccable personal honesty, combined with loneliness, arrogant misunderstanding and rejection of the new reality can lead to tragic and unexpected consequences. And therefore in the stories "Fatal Eggs" and "Heart of a Dog" a merciless satirical exposure of the "pure" science devoid of ethical principles and its self-righteous "priests", who imagined themselves as creators of a new life, was made, later continued in the play "Adam and Eve".

The experience and knowledge of the doctor helped the writer create these stories, but we must also remember about Bulgakov's skeptical attitude to medicine. After all, he said that time would pass - and our therapists would be laughed at, as at Moliere's doctors. And he himself laughed at them heartily in, alas, and now not outdated feuilleton "The Flying Dutchman". And in Bulgakov's last notebook there is a note: "Medicine? Its history? Her delusions? The history of her mistakes?"

The stories "Fatal Eggs" and "Heart of a Dog" are devoted precisely to the delusions of science, including the medical one. At first, the author himself could not understand what kind of genre it was: "What is this? Feuilleton? Or audacity? Or maybe serious?" Yes, this is a story, a deep and therefore especially impudent satire, a tragic fantasy. And basically she is very serious and sad, although she does not shy away from feuilleton techniques, sometimes approaches a pamphlet and libel. The author himself understood this well and wrote in his diary: “I’m afraid they would have mend me for all these exploits in“ places not so distant. ”Again Bulgakov turned out to be a prophet: for“ Heart of a Dog ”he was summoned for interrogation on denunciations. brothers "-literators, they were going to exile on the" case of Smenovekhovtsy "," sewn up "with the help of Lezhnev, but again something prevented this. In 1925, VV Veresaev said about Bulgakov:" Censorship cuts him mercilessly. Recently I stabbed the wonderful thing "Heart of a Dog", and he is completely discouraged. And he lives almost beggarly. "

Censorship knew its business. The fate of the brilliant professor Persikov, who loved some of his pimpled toads ("It is known, a frog will not replace a wife," sympathizes with him is the nameless bowler hat from the guard) and therefore became the cause of many tragic events. For, having washed his hands, like Pontius Pilate, he meekly gave his dangerous "ray of life" into the hands of Alexander Semyonovich Rokk, a professional "leader", an extremely self-confident, cheeky and uneducated subject. The writer's sister Nadezhda, and not only she, saw in this tragicomic figure a pamphlet attack against Trotsky. And today's researchers, of course, agree with her, and in Persikov they see the features of Lenin. These are just hypotheses. Even so, fictional characters are in no way equal to such arbitrarily defined prototypes. Another thing is that these very different people in Bulgakov's story, as in real life, are an inseparable couple, and this is their and our tragedy.

And in their fearless hands, the "ray of life" turned into a source of death, from which countless hordes of reptiles were born, who went to Moscow and caused the death of Persikov himself and many other people. Science, succumbing to the greatest temptation of arrogant self-righteousness and the rude pressure of the cynical and illiterate authorities, once again wavered and retreated, and the forces of decomposition and disunity poured into the gap formed, trampled on science itself, drove it into numbered cities, "sharashki" and "boxes" ... Scientists, these "children of the people", in an immoral union with the totalitarian government indifferent to them and the unfortunate people, gave rise to a national tragedy, which easily acquires planetary, even cosmic proportions. This is the eternal theme of crime and punishment, inherited by the author of Fatal Eggs from Dostoevsky and resolved by means of tragic satire.

Like any talented writer, Bulgakov has nothing superfluous in his works, in this small world every detail is important and not accidental. The tale "Fatal Eggs" is permeated with tragic symbols of blood, fire, darkness and death. Fate, a tragic fate reign in it, and the writer reinforces this intonation by introducing Tyutchev's piercing line "Life is like a wounded bird" into the story. Such is the price of science's failures.

And the bright image of the summer sun, a symbol of eternal life, is especially important here. He is opposed by the gloomy office of the scientific eccentric Persikov, with the curtains down. It is felt that a "demon of knowledge" (Pushkin) dwells here. Coldness and loneliness blows in the room, even a work table is eerie, "on the far edge of which, in a damp dark hole, someone's eyes twinkled lifelessly, like emeralds." And the unfortunate professor himself seems to be a deity only to the illiterate guard Pankrat.

The most interesting thing is that Persikov's "ray of life" is artificial. The fruit of the armchair mind, it cannot be born from the living sun and arises only in a cold electric radiance. Only undead, expressively described by Bulgakov, could come from such a ray. The experiment of the brilliant Persikov disrupted the natural development of life, and therefore it is immoral, unleashes terrible forces and is doomed to failure. The epilogue of the story is also important: the living eternal nature protected itself from the invasion of monsters, helped people who came to their senses late in their desperate struggle against forces hostile to life.

The ingenuity of invention and the power of the author's satirical talent are amazing, here not a single line is outdated and has not lost its significance, and the colorful panorama of Moscow itself is the time of NEP with its bustle, newspapers, theaters, pictures of morals, remarkable in its historical accuracy and true artistry. Moreover, today, after Hiroshima, Chernobyl and other terrible planetary disasters, "Fatal Eggs" are read as a brilliant prediction of future great upheavals (remember the burning Smolensk left by troops and residents, desperate defensive battles near Vyazma and Mozhaisk, panic and evacuation of Moscow) and a very sober, prophetic warning, not accidentally repeated in the prophetic play "Adam and Eve".

It is curious that later the Battle of Borodino was described in the same style in the school textbook "Course of the History of the USSR", which Bulgakov began in 1936 and did not complete: when both the Russians and the French went into bayonet combat without firing a single shot. " The writer lived to see the outbreak of World War II, he understood that war would inevitably come to Russian soil and that "everyone should be ready for this." It is all the more interesting to read today his early story "Fatal Eggs", where the prototype of the future enemy invasion is given and the nationwide struggle against it is shown.

But this is a story about a civil war, about a Russian revolt, a terrible, senseless and merciless, but generated, alas, by a brilliant scientific discovery. The guilt of the Russian intelligentsia is great ... If there were no Persikov's ray, monsters would not have been born. The armchair scientist Karl Marx would not have written his thick volumes and would not have adapted their genius and soulless popularizer Lenin to Russian reality and psychology - there would not have been a terrible bloody turmoil.

In the 20th century, abstract ideas, including scientific ones, which had been chewed for a long time in the quiet of offices and libraries by half-insane ideologists and solitary scribes, suddenly broke free and became a material force. Bulgakov's father was a historian, and his teacher Karamzin issued a prophetic warning to everyone: "The late French Revolution left a seed like a locust: nasty insects crawl out of it." Mikhail Bulgakov showed that the fatal eggs of the revolution, like the trichines from the prophetic dream of Raskolnikov, will give rise to evil, strife, confusion, fire and blood for a long time, our people, including the intelligentsia, have not been completely ill with ideology and politics, have not yet suffered their own distinctive worldview.

The sad story of the mistake and death of Professor Persikov ends with the victory of life, and its inevitable tragedy is balanced by the humorous tone of the story and the brilliance of the satirist's fantasy. Laughter resolves sadness. Thoughts of the author of the story are deep and serious, and yet "Fatal Eggs" is full of genuine fun, games of an observant and caustic mind, and extremely entertaining.

Particularly good in "Fatal Eggs" is the scene of the meeting of the hapless experimenter Rocca with the giant snake-anaconda he bred: "Deprived of eyelids, open icy and narrow eyes sat in the roof of the head, and absolutely unprecedented malice flickered in these eyes. Alexander Semyonovich raised the flute to his lips, he squeaked hoarsely and began to play, breathlessly every second, a waltz from Eugene Onegin. Eyes in the green immediately lit up with irreconcilable hatred for this opera. " Further, as you know, followed by a terrible, but just payback for ignorance and arrogance. The Russian revolt wiped out the unfortunate professor Persikov and his ingenious invention from the face of the earth. In Bulgakov's prophetic story about the brilliance and poverty of the Russian intelligentsia, everyone is rewarded according to his deeds and his faith.

"Heart of a Dog" is a masterpiece of Bulgakov's satire, after this surprisingly mature piece only the Moscow scenes of "The Master and Margarita" were possible. And here the writer follows in the footsteps of his teacher Gogol, his "Notes of a Madman", where in one of the chapters a spiritually mutilated man is shown from a dog's point of view and where it says: "Dogs are a clever people." He also knows about the romantics Vladimir Odoevsky and Ernst Theodor Amadeus Hoffmann, who wrote about intelligent talking dogs. But he does not know that in 1922 the gloomy Austrian Franz Kafka wrote the grotesque story "Studies of a Dog".

It is clear that the author of "Dog's Heart", a doctor and surgeon by profession, was an attentive reader of the then scientific journals, where much was said about "rejuvenation", amazing organ transplants in the name of "improving the human race." So Bulgakov's fantasy, with all the brilliance of the author's artistic gift, is quite scientific.

The theme of the story is man as a social being, over whom totalitarian society and the state are making a grandiose inhuman experiment, with cold cruelty embodying the brilliant ideas of their theoretical leaders. This transformation of personality is served by "new" literature and art. Let us recall only one proud Soviet song:

Proudly walks along the pole,
Changes the flow of rivers
Shifts high mountains
Soviet common man.

After all, this is a vigorous song of praise about Bulgakov's Sharikov, leaving behind a desert and devastation, it was written for him, as well as the cheerful songs of the regular Stalinist merry fellow IO Dunaevsky sounded for him, popular comedies "Merry Guys", "Kuban Cossacks" and " The circus". Such cheerful simplicity is worse than any theft.

Therefore, "Heart of a Dog" can also be read as an experience of artistic anthropology and pathological anatomy, showing the amazing spiritual transformations of a person under the fearless scalpel of history. And here the border is clearly visible, which Bulgakov's clever and humane satire does not cross. For one cannot thoughtlessly mock and laugh at human misfortunes, even if the person himself is guilty of them. The personality is destroyed, crushed, all its centuries-old achievements - spiritual culture, faith, family, home - are destroyed and prohibited. The Sharikovs are not born themselves ...

Today we talk and write a lot about "Homo sovetikus", a special flawed creature, sadistically raised in the Gulag "pen" by the totalitarian regime (see the corresponding works of the philosophizing publicist A. Zinoviev and others). But we forget that this conversation began a long time ago and not by us. And the conclusions were different.

The philosopher Sergei Bulgakov in the book "At the Feast of the Gods" (1918), read so carefully by the author of "Dog's Heart", watched with interest and horror the terrible distortions in the souls and appearance of people of the revolutionary era: "I confess to you that" comrades "seem to me sometimes creatures completely devoid of spirit and possessing only lower mental abilities, a special kind of Darwinian monkeys - homo socialisticus ". We are talking about the party-state nomenclature and the "new" intelligentsia. Mikhail Bulgakov spoke about these "transformations" as a social artist, great satirist and science fiction writer. But it is hardly worth reducing his story to the scourging of ballpoints.

"Heart of a Dog" is a multifaceted work, and everyone reads it according to their thoughts and their own time. It is clear, for example, that now the attention of readers with the help of the omnipotent cinema, theater and television is stubbornly attracted to Sharikov, pushing towards very decisive parallels and generalizations. Yes, this character is deeply unsympathetic, but he is unthinkable without the dog Sharik, this couple explains each other.

After all, the dog is not only cunning, affectionate and gluttonous. He is smart, observant, even conscientious - dozed off with shame in the gynecologist's office. In addition, Sharik has an indisputable satirical gift: the human life he saw from the gateway is extremely interesting in the aptly captured and ridiculed details of the then life and characters. It is he who owns a subtle thought, repeated by the author of the story many times: "Oh, eyes are a significant thing! Like a barometer. You can see everything - who has a great dryness in the soul ...". The dog is no stranger to political thought and thinks philosophically: “And what is will? we see in the "devil's box" an immoral political game of fictions and mirages.

Sharik also understood the very simple psychology of the new "masters of life" and so outlined it in his caustic words: "I am tired of my Matryona, I have worn out with flannel pants, now my time has come. I am now the chairman, and no matter how much I cheat, everything is for women. body, on cancerous necks, on Abrau-Dyurso (champagne - BC)! Because I got hungry in my youth enough, it will be with me, but the afterlife does not exist. " Since then, this "nomenclature" psychology has changed little, although the evil and capricious "Matryona" today have replaced the blue flannel "friendship" pantaloons for expensive French underwear and drive "Toyota" and "Peugeot" to fitness clubs, boutiques, masseurs, strippers and sushi bars, while their gloomy husbands - "managers" "by definitions" twist stolen bucks and state property in their offices ...

The author makes the dog cute, gives him bright memories of his early youth at the Preobrazhenskaya outpost and free roaming dogs, a poetic dream about cheerful pink dogs sailing on boats on the lake. We repeat, Bulgakov has nothing accidental or superfluous, and this important detail - the place of young careless games - clearly connects Sharik with his "donor" Klim Chugunkin, who was killed in a drunken brawl in the dirty "Stop Signal" pub near the Preobrazhenskaya Zastava.

Uniting, by the ill will of Preobrazhensky, with a vile personality, intelligent and humane, so to speak, the dog turns into an evil and filthy cat strangler Sharikov. This is the movement of the author's thought from one character to another, carrying their artistic assessment. It is up to the reader to notice and contrast eloquent details.

At the beginning, Bulgakov called his story "A Dog's Happiness. A Monstrous Story." But her main character was not a dog or Sharikov, but a professor of the old school. He created the colorful Philip Filippovich Preobrazhensky, looking back at his uncle, the gynecologist-gynecologist Nikolai Mikhailovich Pokrovsky, known throughout Moscow. The writer's first wife, Tatyana Nikolaevna Lappa, recalled: “When I started reading, I immediately guessed that it was him. Mikhail was very offended for this. He had a dog at one time, a Doberman Pinscher. " But Bulgakov's angry professor has gone very far from his real prototype.

Already in our time, foreign researchers have tried to expand the list of prototypes, to read in the "Heart of a Dog" a certain political "secret". And that's what they did.

Preobrazhensky is V.I. Lenin, Bormental is Lev Trotsky, an aging loving lady who came to the doctor to rejuvenate is the famous champion of women's rights A.M. Kollontai, Shvonder is L.B. Kamenev, the blond in a hat is a famous communist astronomer P.K.Sternberg, a young girl Vyazemskaya - secretary of the Moscow party committee of V.N. Yakovlev, who then reappeared in the life of the playwright Bulgakov. All this is funny and even witty, but rather belongs to the sphere of literary entertaining fiction and hypotheses.

There is no "secret writing" in "Heart of a Dog", Bulgakov's images are good and significant in themselves, and the "Moscow student" Philip Preobrazhensky does not in any way resemble the "Kazan student" Vladimir Ulyanov. It is necessary to read in the book what is in it, without imposing anything on the author.

However, no one is forbidden to fantasize. "Heart of a Dog" is a great book and therefore multifaceted, everyone reads it according to their level, thoughts, following the spirit of their time, they find their own there. And this is natural, this is the case with "The Master and Margarita". But it is obvious that Bulgakov's story is richer and better than any scheme arbitrarily imposed on it. Let us allow ourselves the question: can today's reader imagine the appearance and character of the Moscow party leader LB Kamenev or his curly-haired Leningrad counterpart G.E. Zinoviev? And Bulgakov's professor lives visibly, convincing and colorful, his character is original and therefore fluid, contradictory, is a fusion of intelligence, talent of a scientist and a surgeon, innocence and very negative qualities. And this image is given through his speeches, lively conversation, the movement of angry thoughts. This is a person who is not alien to the simple joys of life, conceit, deep delusions and major mistakes. It is visible and understandable without historical research.

After all, the proud and majestic professor Philip Philipovich Preobrazhensky, a pillar of genetics and eugenics, who conceived from profitable operations to rejuvenate aging ladies and lively old people to move to a decisive improvement of the human race, is perceived as a supreme being, a great priest only by Sharik. And his arrogant, maliciously caustic judgments about the new reality and new people belong to the character, and not to the author, although there is more real truth in the words of the skeptical professor than we would like.

The very loneliness of the middle-aged Preobrazhensky, his desire to retire, hide from the restless world in a comfortable apartment, live in the past, with one "high" science already carry the author's assessment of the character, a negative assessment (remember the loneliness of Bulgakov's Pilate), despite the obvious sympathy for his indisputable merits , medical genius, high culture of mind and knowledge. His accidentally dropped words "suitable death" say a lot about Preobrazhensky. They have a soulless attitude towards life and people.

However, the self-righteousness of the professor, who planned to improve nature itself with his reliable scalpel, compete with life, correct it and create, by order of some "new" person, was punished quickly and cruelly. In vain the faithful Bormental was delighted: "Professor Preobrazhensky, you are a creator !!" The gray-haired Faust created an informer, an alcoholic and a demagogue, who sat on his neck and turned the life of an already unfortunate professor into an ordinary Soviet hell. Sly Shvonder only cleverly used this fatal mistake.

Those who innocently or selfishly consider Professor Preobrazhensky to be a purely positive hero, suffering from the villain Sharikov, general rudeness and disorder of a new life, should recall the words from Bulgakov's later fantastic play "Adam and Eve" about clean old professors: "In fact, old men any idea is indifferent, with the exception of one - that the housekeeper serves coffee on time ... I'm afraid of ideas! Each of them is good in itself, but only until the old professor equips it technically ... " ... The entire subsequent history of the 20th century, which inevitably turned into a bloody world struggle of political ideas perfectly armed by scientists, confirmed the correctness of this prophecy.

What does the quite prosperous Professor Preobrazhensky want? Maybe democracy, parliamentary order, glasnost? No matter how it is ... Here are his true words, about which the commentators of the story are for some reason silent: “Policeman! - BC). Put a policeman next to each person and make this policeman moderate the vocal impulses of our citizens. " Scary and irresponsible words ...

After all, we all know that after a few years such a "policeman" was assigned to almost everyone, and the devastation really ended, people stopped singing gloomy revolutionary anthems, switched to Dunaevsky's cheerful songs and began to build Dneproges, Magnitka, the metro, etc. But at what cost! And Preobrazhensky agrees to this price, if only he was served natural coffee on time and his brilliant scientific experiments were generously financed. It is not far from here to go to the use of prisoners' labor (see the description of the products of the GULAG prisoners in Bulgakov's feuilleton "Golden City") and even to medical experiments on these prisoners - in the name of high pure science, of course. After all, the eugenics mentioned by the professor, the science of "improving the human race", not only allowed such experiments, but was also based on them.

The author describes the decisive operations of the brilliant surgeon Preobrazhensky as monstrous vivisections, a fearless invasion of someone else's life and destiny. The Creator gradually turns into a murderer, an "inspired robber", a "well-fed vampire": "The knife jumped into his hands as if by itself, after which Philip Philipovich's face became terrible." The white robes of the priest of science are covered in blood. During interrogation at the OGPU, the author confessed: "I think that the work" The Story of a Dog's Heart "came out much more topical than I thought when creating it." But the whole point is that Bulgakov's story about the professor is, alas, topical even today ... So this nice character also contains an exposing satire, a deep and prophetic criticism of a selfish scientific psychology that does without ethics, easily accepting the notorious principle "They cut woods - the chips are flying. " After all, it was not Sharikov who "gave" the world nuclear weapons, Chernobyl and AIDS ...

It's good at least that the newly-minted Soviet Faust came to his senses, he himself returned his creation to a primitive state - the disgusting homunculus Sharikov and understood all the immorality of "scientific" violence against nature and man: "Explain to me, please, why you need to artificially fabricate Spinoz, when any woman can do it. give birth whenever you like! .. After all, Madame Lomonosov gave birth to this famous one of hers in Kholmogory! " Insight, however late, is always better than arrogant blinding.

And here the author, developing the theme of Dostoevsky, brings his hero to the significant conclusion: "Never go to a crime, no matter who it is directed against. Live to old age with clean hands." After all, this is one of the main ideas of the novel "The Master and Margarita", precisely outlined in "Heart of a Dog". So the story of crime and punishment began in Bulgakov's early prose and does not end here.

For we meet the same idea in Bulgakov's novel The Life of Monsieur de Moliere, where the epicurean professor from The Heart of a Dog is echoed by the cheerful sage Gassendi: “Any good doctor will tell you how to stay healthy. , I will tell you: do not commit crimes, my children, you will have neither repentance nor regret, but only they make people unhappy. " Behind the words of the characters, one can feel the author's favorite idea, which was already indicated in the satirical stories of the 1920s and was fully expressed in The Master and Margarita.

As in The Fatal Eggs, in the story about Preobrazhensky, the picturesque background, the author's favorite image of fire, precisely outlined figures and secondary events (the cunning unprincipled Shvonder and his hysterical company, the thieving and mischievous Sharikov, the passionate cook), as well as the wonderful an epilogue, so masterfully invented and written that it can be re-read endlessly, like the whole story, by the way, a masterpiece of clever and funny amusement. In "Heart of a Dog" it is clearly seen how the author consistently expels superficial feuilleton from his prose and arrives at high creativity, becomes a wonderful artist, a worthy heir to the great satirists Gogol and Shchedrin and the inspired thinker Dostoevsky. This is the path to "The Master and Margarita". The author later called the story "rough", but it is, of course, just honest, strong, deep satire, knowing no prohibitions and boundaries, going to the end.

Perhaps that is why "Heart of a Dog" was the most secret, hushed up work of Mikhail Bulgakov in Soviet times. The conspiracy of silence only intensified after the publication of a defective "pirated" copy of the story abroad in 1968. It was forbidden even to mention the name of the seditious thing in the press and in public speeches. Is it stupid? Yes, but this is the Soviet logic. In addition, this stubborn silence by the totalitarian power of the pamphlet that exposes and ridicules it has its own secret history, enshrined in official documents, memoirs of readers and listeners of Dog's Heart, minutes of meetings of the literary association Nikitinskiye Subbotniki, and secret reports of GPU informants.

Bulgakov was well aware of the special attention of the "organs" to the instructive story of Sharikov. It was no coincidence that he demonstratively arranged a reading of the story in the Moscow editorial office of the Nakanune newspaper, that is, on the territory of the OGPU. But most of all Bulgakov wanted to make "Heart of a Dog" a fact of the literature of that time, he strove to acquaint as many writers as possible with the text. For the first time he read the story at the apartment of NS Angarsky in February 1925, during a meeting there of the editorial board of the Nedra publishing house. Veresaev, Trenev, Nikandrov, Sokolov-Mikitov, Vs. Ivanov, Podyachev and others were present. This is the color of the literature of that time.

According to the OGPU, "Heart of a Dog" was also read in the literary circle "The Green Lamp" and in the poetic association "Knot" gathered at PN Zaitsev's. Andrey Bely, Boris Pasternak, Sofia Parnok, Alexander Romm, Vladimir Lugovskoy and other poets appeared in the "Knot". Here Bulgakov was met by a young philologist A.V. Chicherin: "Mikhail Afanasyevich Bulgakov, very thin, surprisingly ordinary (in comparison with Bely or Pasternak!), Also came to the" Knot "community and read" Fatal eggs "," Dog's heart ". No fireworks. Quite simply. But I think that almost Gogol could envy such reading, such a game. "

On March 7 and 21, 1925, the author read the story in the crowded collection of Nikitinskiye Subbotniks. There was no discussion at the first meeting, but then the brothers-writers expressed their opinion, it is preserved in the transcript (State Literary Museum). Here are their speeches in full.

"M.Ya.Shneider - Aesopian language is a familiar thing: it is the result of a special [editing] of reality. The shortcomings of the story are unnecessary efforts to understand the development of the plot. One must accept an implausible storyline. From the point of view of playing with a plot, this is the first a literary work that dares to be oneself. The time has come for realizing an attitude to what happened. Written in a completely pure and clear Russian language. Inventively responding to what was happening, the artist made a mistake: he didn’t needlessly resort to everyday comedy, which he once was " Inspector. "The author's strength is significant. He is above his task.

ESSAY

INTRODUCTION

This topic relevant

Tasks aim

Lessons learned from the analysis of Fatal Eggs and Heart of a Dog.

Everything that was happening around and what was called the construction of socialism was perceived by Bulgakov as an experiment - huge in scale and more than dangerous. To attempts to create a new perfect society by revolutionary, i.e. methods that did not exclude violence, he was extremely skeptical about educating a new, free person by the same methods. For him, this was such an interference in the natural course of things, the consequences of which could turn out to be deplorable, including for the "experimenters" themselves. In the diary of M. Bulgakov ("Under the heel. My diary"), the point of view of a witness, ironically observing from the sidelines a grandiose social experiment ("It would be interesting to know how long the eschatological intonations ("Yes, let it all end with something. I believe ..."). The author warns readers about this with his works.

The stories "Fatal Eggs" and "Heart of a Dog", in my opinion, are distinguished by an extremely clear author's idea. Briefly, it can be formulated as follows: for the first time, Bulgakov's rejection of revolutionary changes was definitely manifested, and the revolution that took place in Russia was not the result of the natural socio-economic and spiritual development of society, but an irresponsible and premature experiment; therefore, it is necessary to return the country, if possible, to its former natural state.

CONCLUSION

In the story "Heart of a Dog" the professor corrects his mistake - Sharikov again turns into a dog. He is content with his fate and with himself. But in life, such experiments are irreversible. And Bulgakov managed to warn about this at the very beginning of those destructive transformations that began in our country in 1917 after the revolution, when all the conditions were created for the appearance of a huge number of ball-balls with dog hearts. The totalitarian system contributes greatly to this. Probably due to the fact that these monsters have penetrated into all areas of life, that they are among us now, Russia is going through hard times now. The Sharikovs with their truly canine survivability, no matter what, will go everywhere over the heads of others. The heart of a dog in alliance with the human mind is the main threat of our time.

In the course of the work, an attempt was made to prove that the stories written at the beginning of the twentieth century remain relevant and in our day, serve as a warning to future generations. Today is so close to yesterday ... At first glance, it seems that outwardly everything has changed, that the country has become different. But the consciousness, stereotypes, the way of thinking of people will not change in ten or twenty years - more than one generation will pass before the balls disappear from our life, before people become different, before there are no vices described by Bulgakov in his immortal works ... How I want to believe that this time will come! ...

Such are the gloomy reflections on the consequences (on the one hand, possible, on the other - accomplished) of the interaction of three forces: apolitical science, aggressive social rudeness and spiritual power reduced to the level of the house committee.

ESSAY

"EXPERIMENT IN THE STORIES OF MA BULGAKOV" FATAL EGGS "AND" DOG'S HEART "

INTRODUCTION …………………………………………………………………… 2

1. Life and time of creation of stories "Fatal eggs" and "Heart of a dog" ........ 3

2. The experiment of professor Persikov in the story "Fatal eggs" ..................... 5

3. The experiment of Professor Preobrazhensky and its consequences in the story "Heart of a Dog" …………………………………………………………………. eight

4. Lessons learned from the analysis of Fatal Eggs and Heart of a Dog ………………………………………………………………………… .. 12

CONCLUSION ………………………………………………………………… 13

List of sources used …………………………………………. fourteen

INTRODUCTION

Bulgakov's work is the summit phenomenon of Russian artistic culture of the twentieth century. Bulgakov's work is diverse. But a special place in it is occupied by the theme of a scientific experiment, which rises in the socio-philosophical stories of satirical fiction "Fatal Eggs" and "Heart of a Dog", which have much in common.

This topic relevant and today, because Bulgakov's satirical fiction warns society about impending dangers and cataclysms. We are talking about the tragic discrepancy between the achievements of science - the desire of man to change the world - and his contradictory, imperfect essence, inability to foresee the future, here he embodies his conviction in the preference of normal evolution over a violent, revolutionary method of invading life, about the responsibility of a scientist and a terrible, destructive force smug aggressive ignorance. These themes are eternal and they have not lost their significance now.

Tasks of this essay are to analyze the plots in the stories of MA Bulgakov "Fatal eggs" and "Heart of a Dog", the place and influence of scientific experiments of their main characters on the development of plots in the stories, and also to draw conclusions about which the writer warned his contemporaries in his works , and aim of this essay to find out what impact it has on our modern life.

In this work, materials of critical articles by literary critics of the work of the writer M.A. Bulgakov of the Soviet and modern periods were used, as well as independent conclusions on this topic.

The novelty of my work lies in the proof of the significance, relevance and "vitality" of the literary heritage of MABulgakov today, about the threat of any thoughtless experiment that contradicts human nature and his morality.

Life and time of creation of the stories "Fatal Eggs" and "Heart of a Dog".

The story "Fatal Eggs" was written in 1924, and published in 1925, at first in an abridged form in the magazine "Krasnaya Panorama" No. 19-22, 24, and in No. 19-21 it was called "Ray of Life" and only in No. 22.24 acquired the now well-known name "Fatal Eggs". In the same year, the story was published in the almanac "Nedra", in the sixth issue, and was included in Bulgakov's collection of "The Devil", published in two editions in 1925 and 1926, and the publication of the collection in 1926 was Bulgakov's last lifetime book in his homeland.

The story "Heart of a Dog", written in 1925, the author never saw in print; it was confiscated from the author along with his diaries by the OGPU during a search on May 7, 1926. "Heart of a Dog" is Bulgakov's last satirical story. She escaped the fate of her predecessors - she was not ridiculed and trampled by pseudo-critics from the "Soviet literature", tk. was published only in 1987 in the Znamya magazine.

The action of "Fatal Eggs" is timed to 1928, the realities of Soviet life in the first post-revolutionary years can be easily recognized in the story. The most expressive in this respect is the reference to the notorious "housing problem", which was allegedly resolved in 1926: "Just as amphibians come to life after a long drought, with the first heavy rain, the company built, starting from the corner of Gazetny Lane and Tverskaya, in the center of Moscow, 15 fifteen-story houses, and on the outskirts of 300 workers' cottages, each for 8 apartments, once and for all finishing off that terrible and ridiculous housing crisis that so tormented Muscovites in the years 1919-1925 ".

The hero of the story, Professor Preobrazhensky, came to Bulgakov's story from Prechistenka, where the hereditary Moscow intelligentsia had long settled. A recent Muscovite, Bulgakov knew and loved this area. He settled in Obukhovoy (Chisty) Lane, here he wrote "Fatal Eggs" and "Heart of a Dog". People who were close to him in spirit and culture lived here. The prototype of Professor Philip Filippovich Preobrazhensky is considered to be Bulgakov's maternal relative, Professor N.M. Pokrovsky. But, in essence, it reflected the type of thinking and the best features of that layer of the Russian intelligentsia, which in Bulgakov's entourage was called "Prechistinka".

Bulgakov considered it his duty to "persistently portray the Russian intelligentsia as the best layer in our country." He respectfully and lovingly treated his hero-scientist, to some extent Professor Preobrazhensky is the embodiment of the outgoing Russian culture, culture of spirit, aristocracy.

Since 1921 M.A. Bulgakov lived in Moscow, which, like the whole country, was passing to the era of NEP - paradoxical, acute, contradictory. The harsh era of war communism was a thing of the past. The era was raging. Bulgakov's pen was in a hurry to capture the rapidly flowing incredible, unique reality. It responded with satirical strokes in essays and feuilleton, whole fantastic satirical works such as "Fatal Eggs" and "Heart of a Dog".

Fatal Eggs (1924) is a story written by Mikhail Bulgakov in a special period of the country's cultural life. Then many works were created only in order to motivate a wide range of the population to perform the tasks necessary for the country's survival in critical conditions. Therefore, many different one-day authors appeared, whose creations did not linger in the memory of readers. Not only art, but also science was put on stream. Then all the advanced inventions went to the service of industry and agriculture, increasing their efficiency. But scientific thought on the part of the Soviet government was subjected to ideological control, which (among other things) makes fun of Bulgakov in "The Fatal Eggs."

The story was created in 1924, and the events in it unfold in 1928. The first publication took place in the Nedra magazine (No. 6, 1925). The work had different names - first "Ray of Life", in addition, there was one more - "Professor Persikov's Eggs" (the meaning of this name was to preserve the satirical tone of the story), but for ethical reasons this name had to be changed.

The central figure of the story - Professor Persikov, distantly contains some features of real prototypes - the doctors-brothers of the Pokrovsky, Bulgakov's relatives, one of whom lived and worked on Prechistenka.

In addition, the text does not just mention the Smolensk province, in which the events of the "Fatal Eggs" unfold: Bulgakov worked there as a doctor and came to the Pokrovskys' Moscow apartment for a short time. The situation of the Soviet country during the period of War Communism also comes from real life: then there were food interruptions due to the unstable socio-political situation, unrest occurred in management structures due to lack of professionalism, and the new government had not yet fully coped with control over public life ...

Bulgakov in "Fatal Eggs" ridicules both the cultural and socio-political situation of the country after the revolutionary coup.

Genre and direction

The genre of the work "Fatal Eggs" is a story. It is characterized by a minimal number of plot lines and, as a rule, a relatively small amount of narration (relative to the novel).

Direction - modernism. Although the events outlined by Bulgakov are fantastic, the action takes place in a real place, the characters (not only Professor Persikov, but everyone else) are also quite viable citizens of the new country. And a scientific discovery is not fabulous, it only has fantastic consequences. But on the whole, the story is realistic, although some of its elements are painted grotesquely, satirically.

This combination of fantasy, realism and satire is characteristic of modernism, when the author sets up bold experiments on a literary work, bypassing the established classical norms and canons.

The modernist trend itself appeared in the special conditions of social and cultural life, when the old genres and trends began to become obsolete, and art required new forms, new ideas and ways of expression. "Fatal Eggs" was just such a work that met modernist requirements.

About what?

"Fatal Eggs" is a story about a brilliant discovery of a scientist - professor of zoology Persikov, which ended in tears, both for those around him and for the scientist himself. The hero opens a beam in his laboratory, which can only be obtained with a special combination of mirrored glasses with beams of light. This ray affects living organisms so that they increase and begin to multiply at an uncanny rate. Professor Persikov and his assistant Ivanov are in no hurry to release their discovery "into the light" and believe that it is still necessary to work on it and conduct additional experiments, since the consequences can be unexpected and even dangerous. However, sensational information about the "ray of life" quickly penetrates the press, recorded by the semi-literate but lively journalist Bronsky, and, filled with false, unverified facts, spreads in society.

The discovery against the will of the scientist becomes known. Persikov is harassed by journalists on the streets of Moscow, demanding to tell about the invention. It becomes impossible to work in the laboratory because of the barrage of press workers, even a spy comes, who for five thousand rubles tries to find out the secret of the beam from the professor.

After that, the NKVD guards the house and laboratory of Persikov, not letting in the journalists and thus providing the professor with a calm working environment. But soon an epidemic of chicken infection occurs in the country, because of which people are categorically forbidden to eat chickens, eggs, sell live chickens and chicken meat. An extraordinary commission has even been set up to combat chicken plague. But bypassing the law, someone still sells chicken and eggs, and soon an ambulance arrives for buyers of these products.

The country is excited. On the occasion of the epidemic, topical works are created that meet the momentary mood of the public. When it begins to subside, Professor Persikov, with a special document from the Kremlin, is visited by the head of an exemplary state farm by the name of Rokk, who, with the help of the "ray of life", intends to resume chicken breeding.

The document from the Kremlin turns out to be an order to advise Rocca on the use of the "ray of life", and a call from the Kremlin immediately rings. Persikov is categorically opposed to using the beam, which has not yet been fully studied, in chicken breeding, but he has to give Rokk the cameras with which he can get the desired effect. The hero takes the cameras to a state farm in the Smolensk province and orders chicken eggs.

Soon, three boxes of eggs, unusual in appearance, spotted, arrive in overseas packaging. Rokk puts the resulting eggs under the beam and tells the guard to keep an eye on them so that no one steals the hatched chickens. The next day, eggshells are found, but no chickens. The caretaker blames the watchman for everything, although he swears that he closely watched the process.

In the last chamber, the eggs are still intact, and Rocke hopes that at least they will hatch into chickens. He decided to take a break and goes with his wife Manya to swim in the pond. On the shore of the pond, he notices a strange calm, and then a huge snake rushes at Manya and devours it right in front of her husband. From this he turns gray and almost falls into madness.

A strange news reaches the GPU that something strange is going on in the Smolensk province. Two agents of the GPU - Shchukin and Polaitis go to the state farm and find there a distraught Rock, who cannot really explain anything.

Agents inspect the state farm building - the former estate of Sheremetev, and find chambers with a reddish ray and hordes of huge snakes, reptiles and ostriches in the greenhouse. Shchukin and Polaitis die in a battle with monsters.

The editorial offices of newspapers receive strange reports from the Smolensk province about incomprehensible birds the size of a horse, huge reptiles and snakes, and Professor Persikov receives boxes of chicken eggs. At the same time, the scientist and his assistant see a sheet with an emergency message about anacondas in the Smolensk province. It immediately turns out that the orders of Rokka and Persikov were mixed up: the caretaker received snake and ostrich, and the inventor received chicken.

Persikov by that time invents a special poison for killing toads, which then comes in handy for fighting huge snakes and ostriches.

Red Army units armed with gas are fighting this scourge, but Moscow is alarmed anyway, and many are about to flee the city.

Distraught people rush into the institute where the professor works, destroy his laboratory, blaming him for all the troubles and thinking that it was he who released the huge snakes, they kill his watchman Pankrat, the housekeeper Marya Stepanovna and himself. Then they set the institute on fire.

In August 1928, frost suddenly sets in, which kills the last snakes and crocodiles that were not finished off by special detachments. After the epidemics that were caused by the rotting of the corpses of snakes and people affected by the invasion of reptiles, by 1929 comes the usual spring.

The beam opened by the late Persikov can no longer be received by anyone, not even his former assistant Ivanov, now an ordinary professor.

The main characters and their characteristics

1. Vladimir Ipatievich Persikov- a genius scientist, professor of zoology, who discovered a unique ray. The hero opposes the use of the beam because its discovery has not yet been verified and investigated. He is careful, does not like unnecessary fuss and believes that any invention requires many years of testing before the time comes for its exploitation. Because of interference in his activities, the work of his entire life perishes with him. The image of Persikov symbolizes humanism and the ethics of scientific thinking, which are destined to perish under the conditions of the Soviet dictatorship. A lonely talent is opposed to an unenlightened and led crowd that has no opinion of its own, drawing it from the newspapers. According to Bulgakov, it is impossible to build a developed and just state without an intellectual and cultural elite, who were expelled from the USSR by stupid and cruel people who have neither the knowledge nor the talent to build the country on their own.
2. Pyotr Stepanovich Ivanov- Assistant Professor Persikov, who helps him in his experiments and admires his new discovery. However, he is not such a talented scientist, so he does not manage to get a "ray of life" after the death of the professor. This is the image of an opportunist who is always ready to appropriate the achievements of a truly significant person, even if he has to step over his corpse.
3. Alfred Arkadievich Bronsky- an ubiquitous, fast, dexterous journalist, semi-literate employee of many Soviet magazines and newspapers. He was the first to penetrate Persikov's apartment and learn about his unusual discovery, then spread this news everywhere against the will of the professor, embellishing and distorting the facts.
4. Alexander Semyonovich Rokk- a former revolutionary, and now the head of the state farm "Krasny Luch". Uneducated, rude, but cunning person. He attends the report of Professor Persikov, where he talks about the "ray of life" he discovered, and he comes up with the idea to restore the chicken population after the epidemic with the help of this invention. Rock, due to illiteracy, does not realize the full danger of such an innovation. This is a symbol of a new type of people, tailored according to the standards of the new government. A dependent, stupid, cowardly, but, as they say, a "punchy" citizen who plays only according to the rules of the Soviet state: he runs around the authorities, seeks permission, by hook or by crook tries to adapt to the new requirements.

Themes

• The central theme is the recklessness of people in handling new scientific inventions and a lack of understanding of the danger of the consequences of such treatment. People like Rocca are narrow minded and want to get things done by any means. They do not care what will happen after, they are only interested in the momentary benefit from what could turn into a collapse tomorrow.
• The second theme is social: the confusion in governance structures that can cause any disaster. After all, if the uneducated Rokk had not been allowed to manage the state farm, the catastrophe would not have happened.
• The third theme is impunity and the huge influence of the media, the irresponsible pursuit of sensations.
• The fourth theme is ignorance, which resulted in many people not understanding the cause-and-effect relationship and unwillingness to understand it (they blame Professor Persikov for the disaster that has come, although in fact Rockk and the authorities who helped him are to blame).

Problematic

• The problem of authoritarian power and its destructive influence on all spheres of society. Science should be separated from the state, but this was impossible under the conditions of Soviet power: distorted and simplified science, suppressed by ideology, was shown to all people through newspapers, magazines and other media.
• In addition, the "Fatal Eggs" discusses a social problem, which consists in the unsuccessful attempt of the Soviet system to combine the scientific intelligentsia and the rest of the population, far from science in general. No wonder the story shows how an NKVD officer (in fact, a representative of the authorities), protecting Persikov from journalists and spies, finds a common language with a simple and illiterate guard Pankrat. The author implies that they are on the same intellectual level with him: the only difference is that one has a special badge under the collar of his jacket, while the other does not. The author hints at how imperfect such a government is, where insufficiently educated people try to control what they themselves do not really understand.
• An important problem of the story is the irresponsibility of the totalitarian government to society, which is symbolized by Rocca's careless handling of the "ray of life", where Rocca himself is power, "ray of life" is the state's means of influencing people (ideology, propaganda, control), and reptiles, reptiles and ostriches hatched from eggs - society itself, whose consciousness is distorted and damaged. A completely different, more reasonable and rational way of managing society is symbolized by Professor Persikov and his scientific experiments, which require caution, taking into account all the subtleties and attentiveness. However, it is this method that is rooted out and disappears altogether, because the crowd is aware and does not want to independently understand the intricacies of politics.

Meaning

"Fatal eggs" is a kind of satire on the Soviet regime, on its imperfection due to its novelty. The USSR is like one big invention, not tested by experience, and therefore dangerous for society, an invention that no one knows how to handle so far, due to which various malfunctions, failures and catastrophes occur. Society in "Fatal Eggs" is experimental animals in the laboratory, subjected to irresponsible and unscrupulous experiments, which clearly serve not to benefit, but to harm. Uneducated people are allowed to manage this laboratory, they are entrusted with serious tasks that they cannot perform due to their inability to navigate in social, scientific and other spheres of life. As a result, from the experimental citizens, moral monsters can turn out, which will lead to irreversible catastrophic consequences for the country. At the same time, the unenlightened crowd ruthlessly attacks those who can really help it overcome difficulties, who know how to use an invention of a national scale. The intellectual elite is being exterminated, but there is no one to replace it. It is very symbolic that after the death of Persikov, no one can restore the invention that was lost with him.

Criticism

A. A. Platonov (Klimentov), ​​considered this work as a symbol of the implementation of revolutionary processes. According to Platonov, Persikov is the creator of the revolutionary idea, his assistant Ivanov is the one who implements this idea, and Rokk is the one who decided for his own benefit to use the idea of ​​revolution in a distorted form, and not as it should be (for the general benefit) - as a result, everyone suffered. The characters in the Fatal Eggs behave as Otto von Bismarck (1871 - 1898) once described: "The revolution is prepared by geniuses, carried out by fanatics, and the fruits of it are used by crooks." Some critics believed that "Fatal Eggs" were written by Bulgakov for fun, but members of the RAPP (Russian Association of Proletarian Writers) reacted negatively to the book, quickly considering the political background in this work.

The philologist Boris Sokolov (b. 1957) tried to find out what prototypes Professor Persikov had: it could be the Soviet biologist Alexander Gurvich, but if we proceed from the political meaning of the story, then this is Vladimir Lenin.

In the works "Fatal Eggs" and "Heart of a Dog" contrast serves to create a disharmonious world, an irrational being. The real is opposed to the fantastic, and the person is opposed to the cruel state system. In the story "Fatal Eggs," the rational ideas of Professor Persikov collide with the absurd system in the person of Rock, which leads to tragic consequences. It is no coincidence, therefore, that the biography of Persikov and Rocca is built on the same principle: before and after October. That is, the pre-revolutionary way of life is opposed to the Soviet one.
Before the revolution, the professor lectured in four languages, studied amphibians, introduced a measured and predictable life, but in 1919, three of his five rooms were taken away from him, his research was no longer needed, and the windows at the institute were frozen through and through. Bulgakov gives an expressive detail: "The clock embedded in the wall of the house at the corner of Herzen and Mokhovaya stopped at eleven and a quarter." Time stood still, the course of life was interrupted after the revolution.
Rock until 1917 served in the famous concert ensemble of maestro Petukhov. But after October "he left the" Voshebnye Dreams "and the dusty starry satin in the foyer and threw himself into the open sea of ​​war and revolution, exchanging his flute for a destructive Mauser." Bulgakov ironically and at the same time with bitterness concludes that “it was precisely the revolution that was needed” to fully reveal this person, who either edited a huge newspaper, then wrote works on irrigation of the Turkestan region, then held all sorts of honorary positions. Thus, Persikov's erudition and knowledge contrasts with Rocca's ignorance and adventurism.
At the beginning of the work, Bulgakov writes about Persikov: “It was not a mediocre mediocrity on the mountain of the republic who sat at the microscope. No, Professor Persikov was sitting! " And a little further about Rocca: “Alas! On the mountain of the republic, Alexander Semyonovich's ebullient brain did not go out, in Moscow Rokk faced Persikov's invention, and in the rooms on Tverskaya "Red Paris" Alexander Semyonovich had an idea of ​​how to revive chickens in the republic with the help of Persikov's beam within a month. " Contrasting the characters and activities of Persikov and Rokk, Bulgakov sheds light on the absurdity of the social system in which people like Rokk come to power, and the professor is forced to obey orders from the Kremlin.
M.A. Bulgakov uses the technique of contrast for a deeper understanding of the character of the protagonist, in order to show his exclusivity. The professor is a serious adult and an accomplished scientist, but at the same time Marya Stepanovna follows him like a nanny. “Your frogs excite an unbearable shiver of disgust in me. All my life I will be unhappy because of them, ”said his wife to Professor Persikov when she left him, and Persikov did not even try to argue with her, that is, the problems of zoology are more important for him than family life. The worldview of Professor Persikov contrasts with the worldview and moral foundations of the whole society. "Persikov was too far from life - he was not interested in it ..."
“It was a very sunny August day. He interfered with the professor, so the curtains were drawn. " Persikov is not like the others, even in that, like everyone else, he does not enjoy a fine summer day, but, on the contrary, treats him as something superfluous and useless. Even the love letters sent to him at the end of the presentation of one of his works were mercilessly torn by him.
The author considers Persikov to be an exceptional person and shows this to the reader, opposing the professor to all other people, not only in the moral, but also in the physical aspect: "... I fell ill with pneumonia, but did not die." As you know, pneumonia is a very serious disease, from which even now, in the absence of proper treatment, people die. However, Professor Persikov survived, which speaks of his exceptionalism.
Thanks to the contrast, we can catch changes in the inner state of the protagonist: “Pankrat was horrified. It seemed to him that the professor's eyes were crying in the twilight. It was so extraordinary, so scary. "
"That's right," Pankrat replied tearfully and thought: "It would be better if you yelled at me!" Thus, the ray discovered by the professor changed not only his life, but also the lives of people around him.
"Go, Pankrat," the professor uttered heavily and waved his hand, "go to bed, dear, darling, Pankrat." How great the emotional shock of Persikov, who called the night watchman "darling"! Where did his imperiousness and severity go? The former Persikov is here opposed to the current Persikov - dejected, downtrodden, miserable.
M.A. Bulgakov uses the technique of contrast, even in small details, to show all the comic and absurdity of life in Soviet Russia: Persikov lectures on the topic "Reptiles of the Hot Belt" in galoshes, a hat and a muffler in an auditorium where it is invariably 5 degrees below zero. At the same time, the situation at the institute contrasts with the external environment of life in Soviet Moscow: no matter what happens on the street, nothing changes within the walls of the institute, while outside the window the way of life of a multinational long-suffering country is boiling and changing.
The story contrasts with the prejudices and ignorance of ordinary people and the scientific worldview. The old woman Stepanovna, who thinks that her chickens have been spoiled, is contrasted with prominent scientists who believe that this is a pestilence caused by a new unknown virus.
The contrast in Fatal Eggs also serves to create a comic effect. It is achieved due to incompatibility, mismatch: syntactic, semantic, stylistic, meaningful. The surname of Persikov is confused. The content of Vronsky's article about the professor does not correspond to reality. Rocca's actions are illogical. The behavior of the crowd towards Persikov is unreasonable, unfair. Combinations of the type "unheard of in history case", "three in the composition of sixteen comrades", "chicken questions", etc. are built on the principle of violation of the semantic-syntactic valence of words. And all this is a reflection of the violation not only of the laws of nature, but above all - of moral and social laws.
So, gradually we are approaching the sounding of one of the most important thoughts of the work, which is expressed, again, thanks to the reception of contrast.
The ray discovered by Persikov becomes a symbol of a new era in natural science and at the same time a symbol of revolutionary ideas.
No wonder it is "bright red", the color of October and Soviet symbols. It is no coincidence that the names of the Moscow magazines are mentioned: "Red Ogonyok". Krasny Projector, Krasny Peretz, Krasny Zhurnal, Krasnaya Vechernyaya Moskva newspaper, Krasny Paris hotel. The state farm where Rocca's experiments are carried out is called "Red Ray". In this case, the red ray in Fatal Eggs symbolizes the socialist revolution in Russia, forever merged with red, with the confrontation between red and white in a civil war.
At the same time, the revolution, which is represented in the work by the red ray, is opposed to the evolution, which is implicit, and it can only be seen in a distorted version when the action of the ray is described. “These organisms in a few moments reached growth and maturity only then, in turn, immediately to give a new generation. In the red stripe, and then in the entire disc, it became cramped, and an inevitable struggle began. The new-borns threw themselves violently at each other, tore to shreds and swallowed. Among those born were the corpses of those killed in the struggle for existence. The best and the strong won. And these best ones were terrible. Firstly, they were approximately twice the volume of ordinary amoebas, and secondly, they were distinguished by some kind of special malice and agility. Their movements were swift, their pseudopods are much longer than normal, and they worked with them, without exaggeration, like octopuses with tentacles. "
Persikov's assistant Ivanov calls the ray of life - monstrous, which is paradoxical - how can an invention that gives life be monstrous?
Or recall the shouts of a boy with newspapers: "The nightmarish discovery of the ray of life of Professor Persikov !!!"
Indeed, we understand that the ray of life is monstrous when we learn about the consequences that led to its use in inept hands.
Thus, the ray of life turns into a ray of death: violation of the social, historical and spiritual evolution of society leads to national tragedy.

As in the work "Fatal Eggs", MA Bulgakov in "Heart of a Dog" uses the technique of contrast at different levels of the text.
In Heart of a Dog, as in Fatal Eggs, the author opposes evolution to revolution. Evolution is again implicit, it is only meant as the opposite of revolution, which, in turn, is expressed very clearly and is expressed in the intervention of Professor Preobrazhensky in the natural course of things. Preobrazhensky's good intentions become a tragedy for him and his loved ones. After a while, he realizes that violent, unnatural interference with the nature of a living organism leads to catastrophic results. In the story, the professor manages to correct his mistake - Sharikov again turns into a kind dog. But in life, such experiments are irreversible. And Bulgakov acts here as a visionary who was able to warn of the irreversibility of such violence against nature in the middle of those destructive transformations that began in our country in 1917.
The author uses the technique of contrast to contrast the intelligentsia and the proletariat. And although, at the very beginning of the work of M.A. Bulgakov is ironic about Professor Preobrazhensky, he still sympathizes with him, because he understands his mistake and corrects it. The same as Shvonder and Sharikov, in the author's understanding, will never be able to assess the scale of their activities and the level of harm they cause to the present and future. Sharikov believes that he is raising his ideological level by reading the book recommended by Shvonder - the correspondence between Engels and Kautsky. From the point of view of Preobrazhensky, all this is a profanation, empty attempts, which in no way contribute to the mental and spiritual development of Sharikov. That is, the intelligentsia and the proletariat are also opposed in terms of their intellectual level. Fantastic elements help to express the idea of ​​unrealizable hopes for a better society in a revolutionary way. The two classes are contrasted not only in portraits, powers and habits, but also in speech. One has only to recall the bright, figurative and categorical speech of Preobrazhensky and the "abbreviated" speech of Shvonder, stamped with Soviet labels. Or the sustained, correct speech of Bormental and the vulgar speech of Sharikov. The speech characteristics of the heroes show the difference between people of the old upbringing and the new, who were nothing, but became everything. Sharikov, for example, who drinks, swears, blackmails and insults his "creator", the person who gives him shelter and food, holds a leading position in the city's cleaning department. Neither the ugly appearance nor the origin prevented him. By opposing Preobrazhensky to those who come to replace those like him, Bulgakov makes one feel all the drama of the era that has come in the country. He in no way justifies Preobrazhensky, who, during the devastation in the country, eats caviar and roast beef on weekdays, but, nevertheless, he considers the "Shvonders" and "balls" to be even worse representatives of society, if only because they get away with everything with hands. Bulgakov more than once draws the reader's attention to the preference in that era of a proletarian origin. So Klim Chugunkin, a criminal and a drunkard, can easily save his origin from a harsh fair punishment, while Preobrazhensky, the son of the cathedral archpriest, and Bormental, the son of a forensic investigator, cannot hope for the saving power of origin.
Bulgakov opposes the everyday, everyday worldview to the scientific one. From a scientific point of view, the result is phenomenal, unprecedented in the whole world, but in everyday life it seems monstrous and immoral.
In order to fully show the result and significance of Preobrazhensky's experiment, Bulgakov, using the technique of contrast, describes the changes occurring with a creature that was once a cute dog, thus opposing the original character to the resulting one. First, Sharikov begins to swear, then smoking is added to the swearing (the dog Sharik did not like tobacco smoke); seeds; balalaika (and Sharik did not approve of music) - moreover, balalaika at any time of the day (evidence of attitude towards others); untidiness and bad taste in clothes. Sharikov's development is rapid: Philip Philipovich loses the title of deity and turns into "daddy". These qualities of Sharikov are joined by a certain morality, or, more precisely, immorality (“I’ll get registered, and I’ll fight with butter”), drunkenness, and theft. This process of transformation “from the cutest dog into scum” is crowned by a denunciation of the professor, and then an attempt on his life.
Thanks to the contrast, the author contrasts pre-revolutionary Russia with Soviet one. This is manifested in the following: the dog compares Count Tolstoy's cook to the cook from the Nutrition Board. In this very "Normal diet" "scoundrels from stinking corned beef cook cabbage soup." One can feel the author's longing for the outgoing culture, noble life. But the author yearns not only for everyday life. The revolutionary government encourages snitching, denunciations, the most base and crude human traits - we see all this in the example of Sharikov, who now and then writes denunciations of his benefactor, notices his every word regardless of the context, understanding in his own way. The peaceful life of Professor Preobrazhensky in the Kalabukhov house before the revolution is contrasted with the life of the present.
Eternal values ​​are contrasted with temporary, transient values ​​inherent in Soviet Russia. A striking sign of a revolutionary time is women, in which women cannot be discerned either. They are devoid of femininity, wear leather jackets, behave emphatically rude, even speak of themselves in a masculine way. What kind of offspring can they give, according to what canons to raise it? The author draws the reader's attention to this. The opposition of moral values ​​to temporary can be traced in something else: no one is interested in duty (Preobrazhensky, instead of treating those who really need it, operates moneybags), honor (the typist is ready to marry an ugly gentleman, seduced by hearty dinners), morality (an innocent animal two times they operate, disfiguring him and putting him in mortal danger).
With the help of contrast, Bulgakov forms a grotesque, unnatural image of the reality of Soviet Russia. It combines the global (transformation of a dog into a human) and small (description of the chemical composition of the sausage), comic (details of Sharik's humanization) and tragic (the result of this very humanization). The grotesqueness of the world is enhanced even by the opposition of high art (theater, Verdi's opera) to low art (circus, balalaika).
Showing the character and image of the protagonist, his feelings in connection with the consequences of the experiment, Bulgakov again resorts to the method of contrast. At the beginning of the story, Preobrazhensky appears before us as an energetic, youthful, creative person. Then we see a haggard, listless old man who sits for a long time in his office with a cigar. And although Professor Preobrazhensky still remains in the eyes of his student an omnipotent deity - in fact, the "magician" and "sorcerer" was powerless in the face of the chaos introduced into his life by the accomplished experiment.
In "Heart of a Dog" there are two opposing spaces. One of them is Preobrazhensky's apartment on Prechistenka, “dog paradise” as Sharik calls it, and an ideal space for a professor. The main components of this space are comfort, harmony, spirituality, “divine warmth”. Sharik's arrival in this space was accompanied by the fact that "the darkness clicked and turned into a dazzling day, and from all sides it sparkled, shone and turned white." The second space - external - is unprotected, aggressive, hostile. Its main features are a blizzard, wind, street dirt; its permanent inhabitants are "a scoundrel in a dirty cap" ("a thief with a copper muzzle", "a greedy creature"), a cook from a dining room, and "the most disgusting scum" of all proletarians - a janitor. The outer space appears - as opposed to the inner one - as a world of absurdity and chaos. Shvonder and his entourage come from this world. Thus, the inner, ideal space is violated, and the main character is trying to restore it (remember how reporters annoyed Professor Persikov).
With the help of contrast, the author depicts not only a representative of the intelligentsia - Preobrazhensky, but also a representative of the proletariat - Shvonder. People like him, in words, defend the noble ideas of the revolution, but in fact, having seized power, they seek to get themselves a larger piece of public property. On the mismatch between external behavior (fighters for social justice) and internal essence (self-interest, dependence), a satirical image of these heroes is built, however, like everything else in the work.

The stories of M.A. Bulgakov's "Heart of a Dog" and "Fatal Eggs" were a reflection of Soviet reality in the first post-revolutionary years. They were topical in nature and reflected all the imperfections of the structure of society in which the writer happened to live. Moreover, in various aspects, both stories are relevant today, as people continue not to fulfill their duty, lose honor, forget about true values, and scientific discoveries and experiments are becoming more and more dangerous and irreversible.
The author achieves such a result solely due to the reception of contrast. In the first chapter of this work, it was noted that the technique of contrast is suitable for works that are written in an era of paradoxes and contrasts. Soviet Russia of that period fits this description. Now the whole world fits this description. Having entered the new millennium, humanity has not been able to live up to its expectations of something new, and therefore we are all now experiencing a crisis and disharmony of global problems.
Thus, the importance of contrast in literature can hardly be overestimated, because literature, like other types of art, is in some way the engine of progress, makes humanity not only think inertly, but also act, literature encourages. And she is helped in this by the technique of contrast, on which most literary techniques are based, thanks to which it is possible to more accurately express the intention of the work and to expose and contrast various aspects. After all, as you know, the truth is learned by comparison.