Review: A Country Doctor's Notebook by Mikhail Bulgakov

Mikhail Bulgakov is world renowned for the brilliant The Master and Margarita but if you go back to the start of his writing career you get a slightly different but still hugely enjoyable experience.

The main difference with A Country Doctor's Notebook is that it starts in 1916 when the war is the background but the revolution and the Stalinistic oppression that hung over the rest of his writing has not yet arrived. As a result you get an insight into a country of extremes - light and dark is Bulkgakov's metaphor - with vast differences between cities and the countryside.

Sent as a newly qualified doctor to head up a rural hospital with a staff of two midwifes and an assistant the main character and alter-ego for Bulgakov heads away from electricity, telephones and civilisation to a remote world where the weather and the roads can make a six mile journey take all day. This is an environment where ignorance about medical matters among the peasants is supporting the spread of syphilis and people fail to follow their courses of medication because they simply cannot grasp what the doctor is telling them.

But the stories about individual cases, used to illustrate the experience of being a country doctor, are told with a degree of warmth and humour that makes you stick with the story and grow to like the main character. Of course he can be boorish and arrogant but underneath he shares his constant insecurity about his lack of ability and inexperience with most medical crises.

The small hospital is not just a learning ground for him in terms of medicine but also as a man as he copes with facing the demons of isolation and loneliness for months on end. By the end he is not only a much more competent doctor but also a better observer of human nature.

For all but a couple of chapters the story focuses on the remote country hospital but once the main character leaves and heads back into civilisation to a larger city-based hospital there is a shift in direction. Now he uses the stories of others, both doctors, to illustrate the dark side of being in such a remote and isolated situation at such a young age as well as introducing the theme of the revolution and the battle for control of Russian in the civil war.

The last couple of chapters give off the sort of feeling that most of his work would have following the arrival of Lenin and his friends with a tension and fear that is not apparent before starting to creep in. It makes the earlier stories about the country hospital ones that can be seen with a degree of sentimentality.

The Russia described in the first two thirds of the book disappears not long afterwards under five-year plans and the persecution of rich farmers. There is a certain irony that just as Bulgakov starts to find his writing wings and soars with this descriptions of rural Russia the full stop at the end of the book is not just his return to the bright electric lights of the city but a stop to an era stretching back hundreds of years. You sense that not long after the ink dried on writing this book it became in large parts a work of almost instant history.






Published by The Harvill Press, 1995
Translated by Michael Glenny

book review - The Life of Monsieur de Moliere - Mikhail Bulgakov

Bulgakov is one of my favourite authors so it was with a pleasure to pick up his biography of Moliere. Produced beautifully by One World Classics, which specialise in publishing hard to find texts from Russian authors, the look and feel wins you over straight away.

Although in many respects this is a straight forward biography, after an opening chapter that is full of invention and brilliance, there are a few things that stand out about it.

Firstly, you have to remember this is a book being written in Russia by an author who clearly adores Moliere. That fact reminds you of just how outward looking those stuck in the middle of Stalin’s USSR actually were. It is all too easy to think of the Soviet literary scene as being a closed world.

Secondly, there are clear parallels that are being drawn by Bulgakov between his own position as a writer dependant on the whim of a dictator and the French playwright who had to constantly win over the King’s favour. There are several key moments in his life and career where the role of the King is crucial to Moliere.

Thirdly, Bulgakov is also drawing your attention to the longevity of great art. As he points out to the mid-wife at the start of the book the baby turned into a man whose work is still read, performed and enjoyed long after his death. That message above all others is one that would appeal to a great writer like Bulgakov who got little appreciation in his own life time.

For those that don’t like biography and I count myself in that category, this book provides an alternative to the exhaustive day-by-day accounts. The key moments are highlighted showing how Moliere developed both artistically and personally. He managed to poke fun at aristocracy and various sections of society, including doctors, sometimes skating very close to the edge in terms of censorship.

But he managed to stick to his principles and the art he produced still speaks and many of those who barbed and blocked his success at the time have long since crumbled to dust and been forgotten by history.

Great writers live on, provide inspiration and can provide lessons for others thousands of miles away and living in a different era.

The Life of Monsieur Moliere - post V

So this biography written by one writer with a great deal of passion and care about another comes to an end.

The role of the King is vital throughout Moliere's life with the patronage of the monarch needed on the numerous occasions where he manages to provoke the rage of various sections of the aristocracy.

But what is clearly amazing is the sheer volume of work that the playwright managed to produce. Not only that but the quality of his comedies were such that they have of course let the name Moilere live on through history.

The postscript at the end by Bulgakov is sad in that he know he will never get to Paris to see the monument of his hero. In many ways Bulgakov also had an existence dominated by a King the problem is that his was not so supportive and in the end almostr crushed the writer.

A review will come soon...

The Life of Monsieur Moliere - post IV

Pushing it too far, with the backing of the King who seems to be happy to see Moliere score a few points as he goes down in flames, fortune starts to run out for the famous writer.

On a professional front he reacts rather childishly to criticism of his play and writes a response that then sparks similar plays that provide those looking to fan the flames of a spat between Moliere and his enemies with plenty of ammunition. But of course Moliere goes further and doesn’t just round on the critics but goes for those that have up to that point been neutral towards him.

On a private front he marries someone who is suspected of being his own daughter after a determined courtship only to find once he has his bride home that their relationship is doomed. His personal life becomes one of suffering.

After years of success the reaction to his embroilment in arguments with critics and other actors shows just how thin the veneer of regard was for Moliere. But he has taken up his pen and saved the day and you sense he will do so again.

More next week...

The Life of Monsieur Moliere - post III

What starts to become clear about Moliere is just how talented he was not just in penning comedies that were box office hits but in terms of the relationships he made. By befriending the King’s brother he was able to keep at bay his critics and get plays published and performed despite complaints.

His days of travelling were behind him and he settled into Paris lampooning on stage the women with their social salons and the cuckolded husbands of the very rich. He managed to keep the King laughing even when he went for Dukes. Of course because of the author you are perhaps trying too hard to draw parallels with Russian society but you can well imagine the dependence that an author of plays or novels would have on the King (Stalin) and his court.

But he was not a young man and it had taken years for him to find this success and Bulgakov, who continues to have a friendly and in obstructive touch, points out the growing tensions in French society.

Once you reach the top there is of course only one way to go...

The Life of Monsieur de Moliere - post II

What you have to admire about Bulgakov and his treatment of this biography is the light touch. He manages to get from birth to 30 in as many pages but chooses the facts to concentrate on very carefully.

It is perhaps a consequence of the fact that Moliere himself did not appear until he left home and turned his back on his father’s world of being court upholsterer. The young actor headed out into the highways and byways of France determined to make his name with his troop.

The moment of truth came after his attempts to play tragedies were disastrous so he switched to comedies, which he started to write himself. That was the key, the decision not just to write but to act to his strengths, and it started to turn his fortunes around.

The other stylistic touch that you appreciate from Bulgakov is the way he throws in all the information he has at hand without making it stodgy. In that respect it reminds you of the Shakespeare biography produced a couple of years ago by Bill Bryson.

More soon…

First Impressions: The Life of Monsieur de Moliere

Although this is very much a first impression, simply the introduction and the author's first chapter, it is worth blogging about. If you want to know why Bulgakov is such a delight to read then look at the way he starts a biography of Moliere. He could opt for the dry details of the background of his mother and father and their location and class status. he could opt for a 19th century style used by most of his famous Russian contemporary writers and start even further back with great grandfathers.

Instead he starts with a midwife who is picking up a freshly born Moliere and informs this startled woman in a two-way dialogue that the baby she is holding in her arms is destined to be more famous than the Sun king and one of the most admired and mimicked playwrights of all time. She is shocked but listens as Bulgakov informs her, and his reader, just how important and deserving the babe in her arms is of the labours he has spent on the rest of the book.

More soon...

book review - A Dead Man's Memoir (A Theatrical Novel)

The reviewing catch-up continues, and will do until next week, so here is another from the tail-end of last year.

This is a strange book that is framed with a sense of bitterness. As a writer and playwright Mikhail Bulgakov knew more than most about the tightrope that you walked in Soviet Russia. Deliver something too sycophantic and your peers would condemn you but deliver something too critical and you would be cast out into the wilderness or even worse sent through the Gulag system.

The character in this story is caught in the trap of the position of writing a book that is deemed to be not only of mediocre quality by the literary establishment but something that is also on the wrong side of the censor. But despite that situation, which drives the writer to suicide, he still manages to get his work published and is invited to put on a play.

The combination of Kafka type madness swamping the literary world and a heightened sense of politics that the writer never manages to grasp produces a nauseous feeling of madness. For instance in his play he has written in a scene involving a gun shot but the head of the theatre specifically dislikes the use of gun shots so this has to be turned into a knife being brandished. The casting is also a political minefield and the initial failure to get it right undermines support for the play among the theatrical troupe.

But if there is one thing that will stick with me from this book, which can be awkward and depressing to get through, it will be about the impact that a deeply oppressive system has on creativity.

As he starts to write the play Bulgakov describes the writer sitting down and watching characters he has invented come to life on a stage. All he has to do is curl up with them night after night and capture the dialogue and stage directions. It appears almost like magic with the writer peering over the actors as they dance around a tiny stage weaving their stories.

But as the rewrites are demanded and the pressures to please various factions get put on the writer those magical figures disappear and his writing becomes uninspired and politically motivated. He loses the soul from his work and that is ultimately the quality the attracted him to the theatre in the first place.

Although the main character can be accused of being naïve the consequences of working in a country where creativity has to meet a long list of strict requirements take their toll and reduce him to a broken man whose vision has been destroyed.

book review - The Fatal Eggs

As might have become clear over the past year Mikhail Bulgakov is one of my favourite authors and this slime volume is a cracker.

It works on many different levels. On one level it is about science fiction with a professor discovering, quite by chance, a ray of life that gives growth and multiples the sizes of cells. But on the other it is a satire on the Soviet system.

The combination of the two produces a chilling end to a story that in the first half has an almost comical feel to it. Having discovered his ray of life the professor is still operating in his own world unaware of a plague that has wiped out the Russian chicken population.

However armed with the knowledge of the professor’s discovery and an ambition to climb up the party apparatus an official gets the backing to commandeer the ray of life and turn it to repopulating the chickens that have been wiped out due to the plague.

At the same time the professor, without the ray of life, has returned to his first love of reptiles and has placed an order for an assortment of eggs including crocodiles, snakes and alligators so he can hatch them and study them at his institute.

Of course it is those eggs that end up in the hands of the keen bureaucrat with terrifying consequences. The moment a 30 foot snake swallows the bureaucrats head any sense of humour disappears and as the country battles to stave off the attack from giant reptiles the professor eventually becomes the focus of the anger of the masses and pays for his discovery with his life.

What you take away from this book that feels in many respects like Heart of a Dog is that science and the state don’t mix too well. Of course that was one of the guiding principles of Stalinism that the state could harness the power of science and use things like the ray of life to overtake enemies and rivals.

But there is also a clear dig at the basic mechanics of the state with the chicken eggs going to the professor and the reptile eggs going to the chicken farm. How could that sort of elementary mistake happen in a perfectly run society? Of course the consequences of the cock-up can be measured in hundreds of deaths and maybe that last thought is the most powerful one.

In a country where people in their hundreds of thousands were sent into the gulag system the idea of pen pushing murderers is neither that far from reality or particularly funny. The fact that Bulgakov is able to attack them and undermine them in such a short number of pages is a testament to his satirical brilliance and his skill as a writer.

A Dead Man's Memoir (A Theatrical Novel) post III

Despite the madness of the theatre he play goes into rehearsal and the hero of the story gets closer to his moment of glory. But he has to suffer interference and the politics of the theatre.

he ends the novel, which has that unfinished quality about it by saying that it is crucial that those acting on a stage make it so believable that the audience totally believes it.

the fact, like so many others in the Soviet system, that he has seen the falseness behind the facade makes it difficult to believe in what is happening on stage.

A review will follow...

A Dead Man's Memoir (A Theatrical Novel) post II

this is still not easy reading but unlike a Kafka novel, which it does resemble with its oddness, there is humour in here. The laughs come from the extremes of the theatrical crowd with one scene having a group of people al;l resemble their theatre portraits down to the clothes they are wearing.

What it shows is the madness of trying to be creative and write a play in a culture that is not only working to the state censors but also happy to add its own censorial policies.

The result is to confirm the narrators desire to commit suicide as he gets further and further away from the magical experience he had of creating the play in the first place.

Final bit tomorrow...

book review - Heart of a Dog

The concept of having literary heroes is not something that I have had before but if I had to choose then Mikhail Bulgakov would be mine. He not only managed to keep his integrity when plenty of those around him were losing theirs but kept writing when the pressure of the Stalinist system would have crushed most writers.

Add to that what he wrote and this is someone who deserves to be better read and as a result of these lovely editions from Hesperus might well be. You know that when you open a Bulgakov book you are going to be introduced into a story that will not only be a clear satirical attack on the communist system but will also be a very well crafted story.

Using his knowledge and experience as a medical student this story concentrates on a theme – rejuvenation – and takes it to a science fictionesque extreme. A professor that is managing to cling onto his former luxuries – like having an apartment with a decent set of rooms picks up a dog one night.

The story starts from the dog’s perspective and he reveals how a stray learns to identify certain places like the butchers based not just on small but the colour used in the state design of the shop logos.

That knowledge comes back later to echo but meanwhile there are a series of clients, some influential and able to protect the professor, traipsing through the clinic and having all sorts of implants from other animals to rejuvenate sex drive and performance.

The dog watches all of this with mild interest until the moment he becomes the focus of the operation. A criminal’s mind is put into the dog and the resulting creature, that does start to resemble a man, is to bring in all the brutish ugliness of Moscow into the professor’s protected world.

He drives the medic to distraction and just when you think he will kill him he reverses the operation and frightens the criminals friends of the dog away with their accusations of murder.

There are clear messages here about handing over power and responsibility to criminals that are not only unable to rejuvenate themselves but also fail to have a positive impact on their community.

Although the battles between the dog and the professor are about the right to tenancy writ large this is about ownership of the state and the Tsar has been replaced with the mind of a thug. In some respects the dog is an innocent victim as well because he is no more cut out for life as a human. Once a man he still chases and kills cats and cannot suppress his former self.

This is not just about the power and ambition of science with a Jekyll and Hyde type warning about the costs of pushing the boundaries. But it is also a lesson in political science with those that dabble with ignorance also likely to get burnt as a result.

There is clearly a moral at the end that the natural order will be restored and those that in their naivety thought they could improve on society by letting the communists in can easily switch them back off. Sadly that of course proved to be more of a fiction than Bulgakov would no doubt have liked.

A Dead Man's Memoir (A Theatrical Novel) post I -

IF you ever get pushed on one of those questions about who is your favourite writer then the usual response is to fudge it and say that it depends on your mood or when you read them.

But I am becoming more and more convinced that my answer to that question now would still involve the usual get-out clauses but would also mention that Mikhail Bulgakov has to be close.

The reasons for that is a combination of good writing and great characterisation but also a writer with a mission. This is someone who literally risked everything to write and prized it above all else that he risked time and time again the wrath of the Stalinist state.

Sadly there aren’t that many works and in the hunt for more of his work I have picked up this book.

It feels autobiographical in the sense it is about a writer who has his book turned down by the state because it fails to pass the censors. He is dragged into the literary establishment and almost destroyed by it. But he is saved by the entrance of a publisher who wants to publish his book and then a theatre owner who is prepared to put on his play.

The story feels like something from Kafka with the publishers office changing every time he visits until finally it is gone forever. Strange but very interesting.

More tomorrow...

The Fatal Eggs - post II

At points it is easy to fall into the trap of assuming this is some sort of farce focusing on the role the media and the politicians and the secret service can play. But as things take a more frightening turn the story becomes more horror science fiction and the power of the description makes this really work.

A cock up that must have been a constant feature of a centralised state causes a chain reaction that leads to mayhem. What is added to the mix is an over zealous party member who believes he can use the ray of light to further his own career.

In the end it costs him his wife and his sanity as giant snakes and crocodiles rip through the countryside. In the end with Moscow threatened the end comes for the besieged professor who has seen his dreams of isolated experimenting shattered forever.

This might be a very short book, at just shy of 100 pages, but it is a well weaved story and it really captures your imagination and because of the combination of humour, satire and wicked science fiction this is going to come close to being one of my favourite reads of the year.

A review will follow soon…

The Fatal Eggs - post I

With his background in science and medicine Bulgakov confidently weaves a story that in many respects is similar to A Dog's Heart.

Just as with that story there is a professor Persikov beavering away in his lab in Moscow trying to make a breakthrough in his field, which concerns frogs. He discovers, almost by accident a ray of life that makes everything in its path grow at an incredibly fast rate. Before long the news of his discovery has spread across moscow and he is besieged by journalists.

Where A Dog's Heart was concerned with the politics of shared housing and a dumbed down intellectualism that threatened to hand the stupid the chance to lead this is also about journalism.

The professor at the heart of the story, Persikov, is a victim of tabloid journalism that makes his brief utterances long passages that land him in even more hot water. There is one great exchange when the professor asks the secret police if they can not rid him of the problem:

"And is it not possible for you to shoot the reporters?' asked Persikov, looking over the top of his glasses.
This question amused the guests greatly. Not only the gloomy small one, but even the tinted one in the entrance hall smiled. The angel, sparkling and beaming, explained that for the moment, hm... of course, it would be a good thing... but, you see, the press, after all... although, actually, a plan like that is already taking shape in the Council of Labour and Defence..."

The rest of this short book will be concluded tomorrow with the professor no doubt being drafted in with his ray of life to help repopulate the Russian chicken world following a plague that has wiped out poultry. No doubt the experiments will lead to something horrendous. Just like they did in real life when old Uncle Joe was steering the good ship USSR.

More tomorrow...

A Dog's Heart - post III

The book ends with a twist but not the one you might have been expecting. The pressure starts to mount as the dog/human gets a job ridding the city of cats. He starts to throw his weight around Moscow and in the end drives the doctor’s to conspire against him with the reader led to believe that the doctors will kill him.

In a fireside discussion they talk of the consequences and reveal that they will lose everything if they do kill the thuggish lodger. It sums up the risks that those who thought that they could fight the authorities had to weigh up with most like these men deciding that the costs were not worth it.

In the end the dog is returned and those looking for a murderer are dumbfounded and disturbed by the transformation that they have witnessed. Were they equally as concerned as the country tore itself apart?

There are also questions here about science and is it a dog’s heart or a man’s heart? Where does the evil come from?

Cracking book. A review will follow soon…

A Dog's Heart - post II

This is a great idea with the story entering Jekyll and Hyde territory as the professor swaps the brain of a man and testicles with the dog. Just as with Frankenstein and Stephenson’s work the dilemma is for the bender of scientific laws as he has to face up to the consequences of his action.

Sure there is something immediate about the changes that the communists were trying to impose on Russia in an attempt to politically rejuvenate the country but as they found out handing power to certain types of people backfired.

As the stitches sew back up the dog’s skull there is a pause as you expect some sort of intelligent dog to spring forth but the result is not quite what you would expect with the dog becoming humanised. He takes on the character of a thug that appears to be a mixture of the stray dogs own upbringing and the roughness of the man who had a background as a criminal.

The result of this thuggish beast is to turn the world of the professor upside down. Firstly the introduction of foul language and violence but then he also starts to drag his owner/creator into a dispute into with the housing committee which results in the professor losing some of his rooms.

The irony is that this dog/man is exactly the sort of Russian and Russia that the opera-loving professor had tried so hard to keep out of his home.

Last chunk tomorrow…

A Dog's Heart - post I

There is something that is wonderful about Russian literature when it is being delivered by someone with the skill of Bulgakov. The imagination is running at full speed with the narrator for large chunks being a stray dog, and the satirical look at Soviet society is also revved up. But there is also something else that leans on the author’s experience in the medical field as the dog meets and moves in with a professor dedicated to the strange art of rejuvenation.

Monkey’s ovaries inserted into old women and god knows what else inserted into elderly politicians to keep them performing in the bedroom all happen as the dog starts to regain health and acclimatise himself to his new surroundings.

Meanwhile the professor faces a stand-off with the housing committee about the number of rooms he enjoys using and then lectures his assistance on his dislike of the proletariat. The professor has the support of those he treats but he is sailing close to the wind if that were to ever fail.

That as well as a hint he might have some plans for the dog keep you wondering just where this is going. Plus you wonder what other secrets of the dog’s mind will be revealed with so far the lessons of associating colours with meat and butchers emporiums something that I had top confess had never passed my mind.

More tomorrow or it might be some more Gideon Mack, see how things work out…

book of books - Master and Margarita

The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov is a novel that is working on various different levels but regardless of that it is a book you will never forget and lingers on as you unravel the story in your mind trying to work out what it all means.

Bearing in mind the book was written against a background of Stalin’s Russia, where people would disappear in the middle of the night, friends would denounce each other and the Gulag system was at its height this conveys the sense of reality being distorted. Things that shouldn’t happen are happening in real life so the idea that people would wear clothes that then leave the naked after they vanish is no more stupid than the thought that people would change their ideas just to survive the purges.

Plot summary
The book starts with two atheists sitting in a park in Moscow talking about how Jesus didn’t exist when the Devil, a character under different names but mainly described as Woland, walks up and says he knows Jesus lived because he was there. There then unfolds the story of Pontius Pilate putting to death a man he knows is innocent told through a book that is being written by the character called the Master; a story of the Devil (Woland) running rampant through 1930s Moscow performing all sorts of acts in the guise of a magician with his henchmen; plus the love story of the Master and Margarita who leaves her life of bored luxury to follow the writer to the end.

Is it well written?
Some of the scenes will never be forgotten but and it is a challenge to get through what is clearly not a normal story. But it transmits the feeling of fear, oppression and topsy turvy decisions that must have been the norm in Stalin’s time. The Christ story is told in a way that is more narratively engaging than the traditional biblical story and the actions of Woland leave you sometimes bemused and at other points horrified. But as a satire on Modern Russia the only comparison that I have read, I’m sure there are plenty of others, is Animal Farm by George Orwell.

Should it be read?
The book is so well known that it would be odd if it was not consumed at some point by a reader and it deserves to be because rather than hide in the past and produce pastoral stories that implied the peasants needed a revolution, like some modern Russian authors, this is set clearly in modern Moscow. The other benefit of reading this is that it gives you a chilling insight into the power of the regime, as portrayed by Woland to literally erase or move people from their lives.

Leads to
More Bulgakov, although as already posted The White Guard is very different in style, Animal Farm by Orwell or some of the non-fiction titles about life in Stalin’s Russia, In the Court of the Red Tsar is particularly good example by Simon Sebag-Montefiore.

Version read – Penguin modern classics paperback

book of books - The White Guard

For most people the name Mikhail Bulgakov is linked with the Master and Margarita, a book that is very different in style from The White Guard (I will post a review of the Master… later) so it is good to come to this with an open mind.

This book is on a par with other war time novels including All Quiet on the Western Front in describing what people feel under fire. The difference is that the setting is not trenches or woodland but on the streets of Kiev.

But not only is it a book about war but is also about revolution and impact of fluid and brutal politics on normal people trying to work out where their loyalties should lie.

Plot summary
The central focus of the story is the Turbin family – Alexei, Elena and Nikolka – and the City of Kiev. The year is 1918 and the Tsar’s regime has collapsed and the Germans are still in the Ukraine and those who fought for Russia or were cadets on their way to becoming officers sit and ponder what happens next. Events start to develop with the Germans, now a defeated nation , pulling out from the City and as the Cossack army advances each individual has to decide whether to fight or to melt into the background. Alexei is wounded and almost dies, Nikolka fights then runs but in so doing become a man and Elena loses a husband into exile but sees her brothers safe.

Is it well written?
It captures the fear and the inner turmoil of people facing the decision to fight or run and also the tension in the city. You want the main characters to survive and come out intact and Bulgakov makes sure that you are left worrying about them until the end and even then with the hint of more trouble to come you are left wondering just what becomes of them. This story is timeless because it is fundamentally about human nature and in terms of showing a host of emotions ranging from cowardice to bravery and grief and joy then the White Guard has real depth.

Should it be read?
What might prevent more people from reading this is not interest but availability and the problem with being able to see beyond the Master and Margarita. This is an engaging read that drags you in and despite its difficult subject is absorbing page turner that really gets you to care for the people inside number 13 St Andrew’s Hill and for the City itself as the guns are aimed at its heart from the armoured train waiting to crawl into Kiev and start the killing all over again.

Leads to
In a way although it might lead to more Bulgakov the sort of books that are in a similar vein are All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque and Red Badge of Courage by Stephen Crane.

Version read – Fontana modern classics paperback