Monsters of Russian Literature

[Tatyana Buzina]

Preobrazhenskii is your average scientist (well, not so average, but that's beside the point) who does things first and considers their implications later if ever. Their standard defense is that if you stop to consider possible moral implications of an experiment before you carry it out it will spell the death of science. I've heard that argument more times than I care to count. If Preobrazhenskii is a monster so is the larger part of modern scientists. A sad thought, really. On the other hand, Preobrazhenskii is another character in the line that goes back to Mary Shelley and earlier even though there's a a major difference between Preobrazhenskii and Frankenstein: Frankenstein's monster at least has some potential for good and his fall from grace and goodness is a longer and more convoluted story. At least Shelley gave her monster a chance, Bulgakov never did that for Sharikov. He seems to have been biologically determined to be a monster. This opens up a large field for thoughts none of which are too pleasant regardless of whom we're thinking about. No one comes out a snow white including Bulgakov himself, which is a very sad thought as well.

>Regarding Preobrazhenskii, things here might be getting a little complicated
>if we are going to start discussing humans and their morally reprehensible
>actions. 
>
>Might it be better to separate the concepts of "monster" into human and
>nonhuman categories? On one hand we have the things that go bump in the
>night; on the other, we have Preobrazhenskij, Hitler, and Stalin. 
>
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-- 
Tatyana V. Buzina,
Associate Professor, Chair,
Dpt. of European Languages,
Institute for Linguistics,
Russian State U for the Humanities

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