Dr. Ivan Arnoldovich Bormenthal Character Analysis

“How did you manage to get such a nervous dog to follow you?” asked a pleasant masculine voice, and the trouser leg was rolled down. There was a smell of tobacco, and the glass jars tinkled in one of the cases.
“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 are wrong thinking that terror will help them. No—no, it won’t, whatever its color: white, red, or even brown! Terror completely paralyzes the nervous system.”

“If you care about your digestion, my good advice is—do not talk about Bolshevism or medicine at dinner. And—heaven preserve!—don’t read any Soviet newspapers before dinner.”
“Hm … But there are no others.”
“That’s just it, don’t read any. You know, I carried out thirty tests at my hospital. And what do you think? Patients who read no newspapers feel excellent. But those whom I deliberately compelled to read Pravda lost weight.”

“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.” Philip Philippovich spread out his short fingers, and two shadows like turtles stirred on the tablecloth. “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?”

Philip Philippovich threw him a vicious glance, mumbled something, and cut still deeper. Bormenthal cracked a glass ampule, sucked out the contents with a syringe and treacherously stuck the needle somewhere near Sharik’s heart.

“The devil take it. He didn’t die. Oh, well, he’ll die anyway. Ah, Doctor Bormenthal, I’m sorry for the mutt. He was sly, but affectionate.”

January 6. (Partly in pencil, partly in violet ink)
Today, after his tail dropped off, he enunciated with utmost clarity the word “saloon.” The recording machine is working. The devil knows what is going on.
I am totally bewildered.

January 8. Diagnosis established late in the evening. Philip Philippovich, like a true scientist, acknowledged his mistake: a change of hypophysis produces, not rejuvenation, but complete humanization (underlined three times). This does not detract in the slightest from the staggering importance of his amazing discovery.

Prof. Preobrazhensky’s amazing experiment has revealed one of the secrets of the human brain. From now on, the mysterious function of the hypophysis—the brain appendage—is explained. The hypophysis determines human characteristics. Its hormones may be described as the most important ones in the organism—they are the hormones of the human shape. A new realm is opening in science: a homunculus was created without any of Faust’s retorts. The surgeon’s scalpel has brought into being a new human entity. Professor Preobrazhensky, you are a creator. (Blot)

“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…”
“I thought so,” exclaimed Philip Philippovich, slamming his hand on the tablecloth. “Exactly what I thought.”
“Do you know how to do it, too?” asked Bormenthal with curiosity.
“How, how,” Sharikov began, growing voluble after the vodka. “It’s plain enough. What do you think? One man spreads himself out in seven rooms and has forty pair of pants, and another hangs around garbage dumps, looking for something to eat.”

“Doctor, would you please take him to the circus? But, for God’s sake, take a look at the program first—make sure they have no cats.”
“How do they let such trash into the circus?” Sharikov wondered morosely, shaking his head.

Dr. Bormenthal, pale, with resolute eyes, raised a glass with a stem as slender as a dragonfly.
“Philip Philippovich,” he exclaimed in a voice full of emotion, “I shall never forget how I came to you as a half-starved student, and you gave me a place in the department. Believe me, Philip Philippovich, you are much more to me than a professor, a teacher … My immense regard for you … Permit me to kiss you, my dear Philip Philippovich.”
“Surely, my dear friend…” Philip Philippovich mumbled with embarrassment and rose toward him. Bormenthal embraced him and planted a kiss on his fluffy, smoke-browned mustache.

“Philip Philippovich, I say to you…” Bormenthal exclaimed passionately. He rushed to the door leading into the hallway, closed it more firmly, and returned, continuing in a whisper, “it is the only solution. Of course, I would not presume to advise you, but, Philip Philippovich, look at yourself, you are utterly worn out, it is impossible to go on working under such conditions!”
“Absolutely impossible,” Philip Philippovich agreed, sighing.

“Philip Philippovich, but what if it were Spinoza’s brain?”
“Yes!” barked Philip Philippovich. […] “Certainly, it might be possible to graft the hypophysis of Spinoza or some such devil, and turn a dog into a highly advanced human. But what in hell for? Tell me, please, why is it necessary to manufacture Spinozas artificially when any peasant woman can produce them at any time? […] Doctor, the human race takes care of this by itself, and every year, in the course of its evolution, it creates dozens of outstanding geniuses who adorn the earth, stubbornly selecting them out of the mass of scum.”

“Look at that business with the cats! A man with the heart of a dog.”
“Oh, no, no,” Philip Philippovich sang out. “You are mistaken, Doctor. In heaven’s name, don’t malign the dog. […] The whole horror, you see, is that his heart is no longer a dog’s heart but a human one. And the vilest you could find!”

Philip Philippovich saddled his nose with pince-nez over his glasses and began to read. He muttered to himself for a long time, changing color every second. “… and also threatening to kill the house committee chairman, from which it can be seen that he owns firearms. And he makes counterrevolutionary speeches, and even ordered his social servant Zinaida Prokofievna Bunina to throw Engels into the stove, as an open Menshevik with his assistant Bormenthal, Ivan Arnoldovich, who secretly lives in his apartment without registration. Signed, Director of the purge sub-section P. P. Sharikov—attested to by Chairman of the House Committee, Shvonder, and Secretary Pestrukhin.”

Sharikov invited his own death. He raised his left arm toward Philip Philippovich and made an obscene gesture with his scratched fist which reeked intolerably of cats. Then with his right hand, he took a revolver from his pocket and aimed it at the dangerous Bormenthal. Bormenthal’s cigarette dropped like a falling star, and a few seconds later Philip Philippovich was rushing beck and forth in mortal terror from instrument case to sofa, jumping over broken glass. On the sofa, the director of the purge section lay supine and gurgling, with the surgeon Bormenthal astride his chest and choking him with a small white pillow.

“How did you manage to get such a nervous dog to follow you?” asked a pleasant masculine voice, and the trouser leg was rolled down. There was a smell of tobacco, and the glass jars tinkled in one of the cases.
“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 are wrong thinking that terror will help them. No—no, it won’t, whatever its color: white, red, or even brown! Terror completely paralyzes the nervous system.”

“If you care about your digestion, my good advice is—do not talk about Bolshevism or medicine at dinner. And—heaven preserve!—don’t read any Soviet newspapers before dinner.”
“Hm … But there are no others.”
“That’s just it, don’t read any. You know, I carried out thirty tests at my hospital. And what do you think? Patients who read no newspapers feel excellent. But those whom I deliberately compelled to read Pravda lost weight.”

“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.” Philip Philippovich spread out his short fingers, and two shadows like turtles stirred on the tablecloth. “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?”

Philip Philippovich threw him a vicious glance, mumbled something, and cut still deeper. Bormenthal cracked a glass ampule, sucked out the contents with a syringe and treacherously stuck the needle somewhere near Sharik’s heart.

“The devil take it. He didn’t die. Oh, well, he’ll die anyway. Ah, Doctor Bormenthal, I’m sorry for the mutt. He was sly, but affectionate.”

January 6. (Partly in pencil, partly in violet ink)
Today, after his tail dropped off, he enunciated with utmost clarity the word “saloon.” The recording machine is working. The devil knows what is going on.
I am totally bewildered.

January 8. Diagnosis established late in the evening. Philip Philippovich, like a true scientist, acknowledged his mistake: a change of hypophysis produces, not rejuvenation, but complete humanization (underlined three times). This does not detract in the slightest from the staggering importance of his amazing discovery.

Prof. Preobrazhensky’s amazing experiment has revealed one of the secrets of the human brain. From now on, the mysterious function of the hypophysis—the brain appendage—is explained. The hypophysis determines human characteristics. Its hormones may be described as the most important ones in the organism—they are the hormones of the human shape. A new realm is opening in science: a homunculus was created without any of Faust’s retorts. The surgeon’s scalpel has brought into being a new human entity. Professor Preobrazhensky, you are a creator. (Blot)

“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…”
“I thought so,” exclaimed Philip Philippovich, slamming his hand on the tablecloth. “Exactly what I thought.”
“Do you know how to do it, too?” asked Bormenthal with curiosity.
“How, how,” Sharikov began, growing voluble after the vodka. “It’s plain enough. What do you think? One man spreads himself out in seven rooms and has forty pair of pants, and another hangs around garbage dumps, looking for something to eat.”

“Doctor, would you please take him to the circus? But, for God’s sake, take a look at the program first—make sure they have no cats.”
“How do they let such trash into the circus?” Sharikov wondered morosely, shaking his head.

Dr. Bormenthal, pale, with resolute eyes, raised a glass with a stem as slender as a dragonfly.
“Philip Philippovich,” he exclaimed in a voice full of emotion, “I shall never forget how I came to you as a half-starved student, and you gave me a place in the department. Believe me, Philip Philippovich, you are much more to me than a professor, a teacher … My immense regard for you … Permit me to kiss you, my dear Philip Philippovich.”
“Surely, my dear friend…” Philip Philippovich mumbled with embarrassment and rose toward him. Bormenthal embraced him and planted a kiss on his fluffy, smoke-browned mustache.

“Philip Philippovich, I say to you…” Bormenthal exclaimed passionately. He rushed to the door leading into the hallway, closed it more firmly, and returned, continuing in a whisper, “it is the only solution. Of course, I would not presume to advise you, but, Philip Philippovich, look at yourself, you are utterly worn out, it is impossible to go on working under such conditions!”
“Absolutely impossible,” Philip Philippovich agreed, sighing.

“Philip Philippovich, but what if it were Spinoza’s brain?”
“Yes!” barked Philip Philippovich. […] “Certainly, it might be possible to graft the hypophysis of Spinoza or some such devil, and turn a dog into a highly advanced human. But what in hell for? Tell me, please, why is it necessary to manufacture Spinozas artificially when any peasant woman can produce them at any time? […] Doctor, the human race takes care of this by itself, and every year, in the course of its evolution, it creates dozens of outstanding geniuses who adorn the earth, stubbornly selecting them out of the mass of scum.”

“Look at that business with the cats! A man with the heart of a dog.”
“Oh, no, no,” Philip Philippovich sang out. “You are mistaken, Doctor. In heaven’s name, don’t malign the dog. […] The whole horror, you see, is that his heart is no longer a dog’s heart but a human one. And the vilest you could find!”

Philip Philippovich saddled his nose with pince-nez over his glasses and began to read. He muttered to himself for a long time, changing color every second. “… and also threatening to kill the house committee chairman, from which it can be seen that he owns firearms. And he makes counterrevolutionary speeches, and even ordered his social servant Zinaida Prokofievna Bunina to throw Engels into the stove, as an open Menshevik with his assistant Bormenthal, Ivan Arnoldovich, who secretly lives in his apartment without registration. Signed, Director of the purge sub-section P. P. Sharikov—attested to by Chairman of the House Committee, Shvonder, and Secretary Pestrukhin.”

Sharikov invited his own death. He raised his left arm toward Philip Philippovich and made an obscene gesture with his scratched fist which reeked intolerably of cats. Then with his right hand, he took a revolver from his pocket and aimed it at the dangerous Bormenthal. Bormenthal’s cigarette dropped like a falling star, and a few seconds later Philip Philippovich was rushing beck and forth in mortal terror from instrument case to sofa, jumping over broken glass. On the sofa, the director of the purge section lay supine and gurgling, with the surgeon Bormenthal astride his chest and choking him with a small white pillow.