More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
the cook of the Normal Diet Cafeteria for employees of the People’s Central Economic Soviet—threw boiling water at me and scalded my left side. The scum, and he calls himself a proletarian!
again. I’ve tasted everything, but I’ve made peace with my fate, and if I’m whining now, it’s only because of the pain and the cold—because my spirit hasn’t yet gone out of my body. . . . A dog is hard to kill, his spirit clings to life.
gentry’s cook for the Counts Tolstoy, not one of those nobodies from the Soviet of Normal Diet. The things they do in that Normal Diet, it’s more than a dog’s brain can comprehend. Those scoundrels make soup of stinking corned beef, and the poor wretches don’t know what they’re eating. They come running, gobbling it down, lapping it up. Take that little typist, ninth grade,
chervontsy.
Because I’ve been starved long enough in my youth, I’ve had it, and there’s no life after death.
are. “Sharik” she called him. . . . “Little Ball” . . . What kind of a “Sharik” is he, anyway? Sharik is somebody round, plump, silly, a son of aristocratic parents who gobbles oatmeal, and he is shaggy, lanky, tattered, skinny as a rail, a homeless mutt. But thanks for a kind word, anyway.
isn’t Okhotny Ryad
“Take it! Sharik, Sharik!” Sharik again. They’d christened me. But call me what you will. For such an exceptional deed!
commands. He bent down to Sharik, peered into his eyes, and suddenly passed his gloved hand intimately and caressingly over Sharik’s belly. “Ah,” he said significantly. “No collar. That’s fine, you’re just what I need. Come on, follow me.” He snapped his fingers, “Whuit, whuit!”
Sharik first began to learn by color. When he was only four months old, blue-green signs with the letters MSPO—indicating a meat store—appeared all over Moscow.
“By kindness. The only method possible in dealing with living creatures. By terror you cannot get anywhere with an animal, no matter what its stage of development. I’ve always asserted this, I assert it today, and I shall go on asserting it. They
“Ai !” “I’ll thrash you ! Don’t be afraid, he doesn’t bite.” I don’t bite? the dog thought with astonishment. A little envelope dropped out of the visitor’s trouser
The dog was utterly bewildered, and everything turned upside down in his head. The devil with you, he thought dimly, putting his head down on his paws and dozing off with shame. I wouldn’t even try to figure it out—I couldn’t make head or tail of it anyway.
“You take too dark a view of things, Philip Philippovich,” said the handsome bitten one. “They have changed quite a lot lately.” “My dear friend, you know me, don’t you? I am a man of facts, a man of observation. I am an enemy of unfounded hypotheses. And this is well known not only in Russia, but also in Europe. If I say something, you may be sure it is based on certain facts, from which I have drawn conclusions. And here are the facts for you: the coat rack and the stand for galoshes in our house.”
Does Karl Marx forbid rugs on the stairs? Does he say anywhere in his writings that the second entrance of the Kalabukhov house on Prechistenka must be boarded up, and people must go around the house and enter through the backyard? Who needs this? Why can’t the proletarian leave his galoshes downstairs instead of tracking up the marble?”
“It’s the general rack and ruin, Philip Philippovich. Economic collapse.” “No,” Philip Philippovich argued with utmost assurance. “No. You ought to be the first, Ivan Arnoldovich, to refrain from using these terms. They are a mirage, a puff of smoke, a fiction.”
“What is this general ruin of yours? An old crone with a crutch? A witch who has knocked out all the windows and extinguished all the lights? Why, there’s no such thing! It doesn’t exist. What do you mean by these words?”
I’ll have ruin in my bathroom. Hence, the rack and ruin are not in the bathrooms, but in the heads.
No one can succeed in this, Doctor, and least of all people who, being generally behind Europeans by some two hundred years, still aren’t too sure of how to button their own pants!” Philip Philippovich was in a frenzy of excitement.
And, in the second, there’s Aida at the Bolshoi tonight. And I haven’t heard it for a long time. I love it, . . . Remember? The duet . . . Tari-rarim.” “How do you manage it all, Philip Philippovich?” the doctor asked with
“He who does not hurry manages to get everywhere,” the host explained sententiously. “Of course, if I began to skip around from meeting to meeting and sing all day like a nightingale instead of doing my own work, I would never manage to get anywhere.”
“You swine, why did you tear the owl to shreds? Was it in your way? Was it, I ask you? Why did you smash Professor Mechnikov?” “He should be whipped at least once, Philip Philippovich,” Zina cried indignantly. “He’ll get completely out of hand. Look what he did to your galoshes.” “Nobody should be whipped,” Philip Philippovich cried heatedly. “Remember that, once and for all. Neither man nor animal can be influenced by anything but suggestion. Was he given his meat today?”
he began to realize how much a collar meant in life. There was fierce envy in the eyes of all the dogs he met.
Oh, no, why lie to yourself, you’ll never leave here, you’ll never go back to freedom, the dog spoke to himself in anguish, sniffling. I am a gentleman’s dog, an intellectual creature, I’ve tasted a better life. And what is freedom, anyway? Nothing, a puff of smoke, a mirage, a fiction . . . A sick dream of those wretched democrats
Sharik. Fur—thin, shaggy, grayish brown, mottled. Tail, color of boiled milk. Traces of healed burns on the left side. Undernourished before coming to professor; after a week’s stay, very solid, in good condition. Weight—8 kilograms (exclamation point). Heart, lungs, stomach, temperature
December 23. At 8:15 P.M.—first operation in Europe according to Prof. Preobrazhensky : Sharik’s testes removed under chloroform anesthesia and replaced by graft of human testes with epididymis and seminal cords, obtained from a man of twenty-eight who died four hours and four minutes before the operation and preserved in sterile physiological fluid according to Prof. Preobrazhensky. Directly following, pituitary gland, or hypophysis, removed after trepanning of skull and replaced by a human one taken from above man. Expended : 8 cubes of chloroform, 1 syringe of camphor, 2 syringes of
...more
January 7. He says many words: “cabby,” “no room,” “evening paper,” “the best present for children,” and all the oaths and obscenities that exist in the Russian language.
His appearance is strange. The fur remains only on his head, chin, and chest. The rest of his body is bald, with flabby skin. In the genital area—a maturing man. The skull has grown considerably larger. The forehead is low and slanting. I swear, I shall go mad.
Evening Moscow has done still better—it reports the birth of a baby who plays the violin. This is illustrated by a drawing of a violin and my photograph, with the legend, “Prof. Preobrazhensky, who performed the caesarian operation on the mother.” It’s indescribable. . . . He says a new word, “militiaman.” It turns out that Darya Petrovna was in love with me and swiped my photograph from Philip Philippovich’s album. After I turned out the reporters, one of them got into the kitchen, etc. . .
The creature took his first walk around the apartment. He laughed in the hallway, looking at the electric light. Then, accompanied by Philip Philippovich and myself, he proceeded to the office. He stands firmly on his hind (last word crossed out) . . . feet and looks like a short and poorly built man. He laughed in the office. His smile is unpleasant and seems artificial.
Now, as I walk in the street, I look at dogs with secret horror. Who knows what is hidden in their heads.
Sharik knew how to read. He read. (Three exclamation points) I’ve guessed it. From “Fish Trust.” And he read from the end. I even know where the solution to this riddle lies: in the special nature of the dog’s optic nerves.
a) Body structure—entirely human. b) Weight—approximately 3 poods. c) Height—short. d) Head—small. e) Has begun to smoke. f) Eats human food. g) Dresses himself without help. h) Converses easily. So much for the hypophysis
Dr. Bormenthal
No eating of sunflower seeds in the apartment. —P. Preobrazhensky Under this, with a blue pencil, in huge letters, in Bormenthal’s hand: No playing on musical instruments from 5 P.M. to 7 A.M. Then, in Zina’s hand: When you return, tell Philip Philippovich that I don’t know where he is. Fyodor said he went out with Shvonder. In Preobrazhensky’s hand : Do I have to wait for the glazier a hundred years? In Darya Petrovna’s hand (printed letters) : Zina went to the store, said she would bring
“You’re getting too hard on me, dad,” the man suddenly blubbered. Philip Philippovich turned red and his glasses flashed.
“Is it your pleasure to complain because you have been transformed into a man?” he asked, narrowing his eyes. “Perhaps you prefer to root around in garbage bins again? Freeze in gateways? Well, if I had known . . .” “Why are you throwing it up all the time—garbage and garbage. I came by my piece of bread honestly. And if I’d died under your knife? What will you say to that, comrade?”
“Philip Philippovich!” Philip Philippovich cried irritably. “I’m no comrade of yours! It’s monstrous!” A nightmare, a nightmare, he thought to himself. “But nach’rally, sure . . .” the man said with irony and put one foot forward triumphantly. “We understand you, Sir. What sort of comrades are we to you ! What are we? We didn’t study in no universities, we’ve never lived in fifteen-room apartments with bathrooms. Except it’s time to forget all that now. At the present moment everybody has his right.
“And what do you wish to call yourself?” The man adjusted his tie and answered: “Polygraph Polygraphovich.” “Stop playing the fool,” Philip Philippovich said glumly. “I am talking seriously to you.”
“The house committee helped me. We looked through a calendar. They asked which name I liked, and I picked that one.” “There can be no such name in any calendar.”
“The surname can be hereditary, that’s all right with me.” “Hereditary? Meaning what?” “Sharikov.”
“But when will the operation take place?” a voice persisted and tried to push into the crack. “Our pipe burst . . .” “I’m wearing overshoes.
“What a vile beast !” Sharikov spoke up suddenly and slithered out, squatting on his haunches, with a soup bowl in his hand. Bormenthal slammed the door. He could not restrain himself any longer, and burst out laughing. Philip Philippovich’s nostrils flared and his glasses glinted. “To whom are you referring,” he asked Sharikov from his height, “if I may know?” “The tom, of course. Such scum,” replied Sharikov, his eyes shifting from corner to corner. “You know, Sharikov,” Philip Philippovich said, catching his breath, “I have positively never seen a more brazen creature than you.” Bormenthal
...more
“Sharikov, will you please tell me,” Bormenthal put in, “how long you will go on chasing cats? Shame on you ! It’s disgraceful ! You’re a savage !” “What sort of savage am I,” Sharikov answered glumly. “I ain’t no savage. It’s impossible to stand him in the house. All he does is look around for something to filch. He gobbled up Darya’s stuffing. I wanted to teach him a lesson.”
“All those rules you keep to, always on parade,” he said. “Napkin here, tie there, and ‘pardon me,’ and ‘please,’ and ‘merci’—but for the real thing, it isn’t there. Torturing your own selves, just like in Tsarist times.”
“And what would ‘the real thing’ be, if one may ask?” Sharikov did not answer Philip Philippovich. Instead, he raised his glass and said:
“And what is your opinion of it, if I may ask?” Sharikov shrugged. “I don’t agree.” “With whom? With Engels, or with Kautsky?” “With neither,” answered Sharikov. “That’s marvelous, I swear. Everyone who says the other . . . And what would you propose yourself?” “What’s there to propose? . . . They write and write . . . congress, Germans . . . who knows them. . . Makes your head spin. Just take everything and divide it up . . .”
“Wait. For the havoc you wreaked, which made it impossible for me to see my patients. It’s intolerable. A man jumps around the whole house like a Neanderthal, breaks faucets. Who killed Mme. Polasikher’s cat? Who.. “And the other day, Sharikov, you bit a lady on the stairs,” Bormenthal hastened to add. “You are . . .” growled Philip Philippovich. “She banged me on the jaw,” squealed Sharikov. “It’s my jaw, not the government’s !”
“You are on the lowest rung of development,” Philip Philippovich shouted still more loudly. “You are a creature just in the process of formation, with a feeble intellect. All your actions are the actions of an animal. Yet you permit yourself to speak with utterly insufferable impudence in the presence of two people with a university education—to offer advice on a cosmic scale and of equally cosmic stupidity on how to divide everything . . . And right after gobbling up a boxful of toothpowder too . . .”
The young man, who turned out to be a woman, handed Sharikov his documents, which he immediately stuffed into his pocket.
