M.A. Bulgakov began to write when he was still 15â17 years old, he probably didnât write very well then, but he could already say to himself: âI will become a writer or nobodyâ. So it eventually came out. True, between the 17-year-old writer and the famous classic of Russian literature there was one intermediate station - the medical faculty of Kiev University. M.A. Bulgakov went there for financial reasons - his medical relatives earned good money. He probably did not know then that medicine would become for him a springboard in literature. Without medical practice, there would be no early masterpiece - the work âNotes of a Young Doctorâ.
M.A. Bulgakov - anthropologist
All polls in our country say: "We are in awe" when it comes to "The Master and Margarita." Each student considers it his duty to say that the ballad about the Master is his favorite book. The disgraced Soviet writer became the property of the masses - what a horror. But Bulgakov's âNotes of the Young Doctorâ remain, thank God, hidden from the view of the crowd, and those who really appreciate Mikhail Afanasevichâs prose enjoy it.
All those problems, highlighted in relief in the main novel of the Soviet classic, were already presented in his earlier works. M.A. Bulgakov, as an anthropologist of Soviet man, was always interested in the indestructible characteristics of the latter: ignorance, love of paperwork, trembling and servility to power, the presence in him, despite the "luminous image", of base "human, too human" "passions" - love of money, sensual pleasures, booze. All future thematic âpainâ of the Russian classic is already somehow presented in the series of short stories âNotes of a Young Doctorâ.
What are the notes about?
If we talk about the collection of short stories "Notes of a Young Doctor", their summary is reduced to a description of partially real and partially invented stories with mandatory moral content. They happened to M.A. Bulgakov, when he worked as a general practitioner in the village of Nikolskoye, Smolensk region. He stayed there for about a year.
âA towel with a roosterâ
The stories that make up Bulgakovâs âNotes of a Young Doctorâ series are opened by the case of a young girl whose limbs inadvertently fell into a crumple. From one leg below the knee there were only "rags", while the other was badly damaged. The doctor was still inexperienced; he had just arrived at the duty station. Although he is in a state of shock, he quickly decides to amputate his leg, from which little is left. After some time (two months) the girl in gratitude brings a towel with a cock.
Baptism by Turn
Another case with a young doctor occurs when a delivering girl is brought into him, and her fetus does not stand up as it should. The doctor again panics, he rushes to read some medical books, encyclopedias, not finding anything necessary and useful in them, throws them into the corner of the office and learns from the midwife. In the end, successfully performs the operation to turn the fetus. Then, when it was all over, after a while he picked up a book lying in the corner of his office and began to read, it turned out that there were a lot of important and necessary things in fact. Perhaps the funniest âthingâ in the series of short stories âNotes of a young doctorâ by Bulgakov.
"Steel Throat"
In this story, under the authorâs shelling, the illiteracy of the villagers, who did not allow the doctor to make a girl with diphtheria, a tracheotomy for a long time, falls. Then people believed that the doctor was a wizard, and he inserted steel in the girl's place instead of her throat.
"Winter storm"
About an unsuccessful case: a woman hit her head, she began to bleed, they raised a young doctor who just lay down, they said that he could not cope without him. He was equipped with a sled, he drove to the sick house, but he could not save her. Then, without hesitating for a second, he set off on the return trip, but a blizzard hit ... some place in the story is devoted to the fight against the elements, but then the doctor nevertheless gets to the house.
"The darkness of Egypt"
At the core of the story is again the plot of human ignorance. On the doctorâs birthday, the miller comes to him, as it turns out later, with malaria. The doctor prescribes quinine for him, while the miller, who is not included in the intricacies of treatment, emptied all 10 packets at once in order to recover as soon as possible. He was barely saved. The funny and tragic thing about this is that at the festive table the doctor proved to his colleagues that not all the villagers are uneducated and ignorant.
The title of the story says that there is nothing blacker than human ignorance, and even âEgyptian darknessâ cannot be compared with it.
"The missing eye"
In this story of Bulgakovâs Notes of a Young Doctor, the doctor at first is delighted with the experience gained and is important in every way, but then life puts him back in place. The doctor comes across a patient with some kind of strange formation in his eye, who canât determine what it is. And then the abscess (and it was him) by itself is eliminated. And the young doctor gives himself the vow never to revel in his own greatness and mythical "experience." Actually, this is precisely the main moral meaning of the story.
Star Rash
The last story from the cycle is again devoted to the subject of patient ignorance. A man came to the doctor who had a âstuffy throatâ. He is diagnosed with syphilis, and he thinks this is a joke and that he has a common cold. Unhappy with the doctor, he leaves. Then a woman comes and tells with tears that her husband in a letter reported a terrible disease. They examine her and find nothing in the end. It turns out that in those parts a real syphilitic "plague" is rampant. Many, many suffer from it, but do not want to be treated in any way. This work crowns the Notes of the Young Doctor
For whom are "Notes ..." written?
The answer is obvious: for everyone. They must be read both by patients and doctors. The first, so as not to neglect the treatment, and the second will remember the natural modesty that a doctor must possess if he wants to become a high-class professional. Bulgakovâs stories are also interesting because they, continuing the Gogol line in literature, show how the Russian national character has changed in the conditions of Soviet reality.