aatseel

[Elena Mikhailik]

Professor Karen Evans-Romaine
Department of Modern Languages
Gordy Hall 283
Ohio University
Athens, OH 45701
Phone: 740-593-2791 (office), 740-593-2765 (department)
Fax: 740-593-0729
Email: evans-ro at ohio.edu

I would like to propose a following paper: "What is boiling in a retort?
"The Fatal Eggs" and "The Heart of a Dog" as laboratory experiments." for
the panel Mixail Bulgakov Society (if this panel still exists).  Please
find the abstract enclosed.

Thank you for your time and attention.  Looking forward to hearing from you.


Sincerely yours,

Elena Mikhailik

My details:
Dr. Elena Mikhailik
Department of German and Russian Studies,
University of New South Wales,
KENSINGTON  2052  NSW
AUSTRALIA
or
46/1 Roper Avenue
SOUTH COOGEE  2034  NSW
AUSTRALIA
Ph: (612) 9430 3418 (w)
     (612) 9385 2325 (w)
     (612) 9315 5634 (h)
E-mail: E.Mikhailk at unsw.edu.au
          e.mikhailik at sbs.com.au





What is boiling in a retort?
"The Fatal Eggs" and "A Heart of a Dog" as laboratory experiments.

In 1926 Victor Shklovskij dismissed the success of Bulgakov’s "Fatal Eggs"
as a "success of an opportunely used quotation".  Since then the "Fatal
Eggs" and "The Heart of a Dog" were mostly discussed in terms of their
satirical message.

However, if we consider the motif structure of the "White Guard" and
"Master and Margarita", it could be argued  that while the motif capacity
of two satirical novelettes is unequal to that of Bulgakov’s major works it
still seems to maintain many of the basic motifs of Bulgakov’s prose (eg.
motifs of home, death, betrayal, responsibility, professional work, of
besieged world-city, of the fury of the elements, of urban phantasmagory,
aggressive Soviet newspeak and the ever-present classic arias). Especially
prominent in the novelettes are  the motifs of catastrophe.

That motif structure gains yet another dimension through the highly visible
system of literary references Bulgakov employs.
While the "The Fatal Eggs" eggs are presented as a straightforward science
fiction text, a local replica of "The Food of Gods" by Herbert Wells, the
"The Heart of a Dog" could be perceived as a XX century Soviet echo of Mary
Shelley’s "Frankenstein".  And "Master and Margarita" among the plethora of
its literary reminiscences contains aggressive references to Goethe’s
"Faust", 18th century picaresque novels, medieval legends of the devil, New
Testament and its apocrifical versions and ancient Jewish demonology.  It
seems that the more complex and detailed Bulgakov's description of the
brave new revolutionary world grows, the more archaic become the literary
sources he draws on.

In this paper we are going to examine the motif structure and intertextual
"packaging" of the "The Fatal Eggs" and "The Heart of a Dog" in their
relationship with the corresponding structures of the "White Guard" and
"Master and Margarita".  We are going to suggest that Bulgakov used his two
satirical novelettes as a kind of a testing ground, as a laboratory where
he tried to catch the essence of a catastrophe he depicted in the "White
Guard", to determine the nature of the post-catastrophic society and to
develop artistic devices capable of representing both that catastrophe and
that society.  We are going to demonstrate that the novel "Master and
Margarita" incorporated the results of those experiments and on a certain
level in itself was created as a mach larger experiment, as an attempt to
take a bird’s-eye view of the retort basking in the light of Professor
Persikov’s miraculous red ray.  An experiment that puts under the question
not only the normality but the reality of the Moscow of the thirties.

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