Young Dr. Bromgard has come to a small country town to assume a new practice. No sooner has he arrived than he receives word that a colleague, Dr. Polyakov, has fallen gravely ill. Before Bromgard can go to his friend's aid, Polyakov is brought to his practice in the middle of the night with a self-inflicted gunshot wound, and, barely conscious, gives Bromgard his journal before dying. What Bromgard uncovers in the entries is Polyakov's uncontrollable and merciless descent into morphine addiction -- his first injection to ease his back pain, the thrill of the drug as it overtakes him, the looming signs of addiction, and the feverish final entries before his death.
Mikhail Afanasyevich Bulgakov (Russian: 袦懈褏邪懈谢 袘褍谢谐邪泻芯胁) was a Russian writer, medical doctor, and playwright. His novel The Master and Margarita, published posthumously, has been called one of the masterpieces of the 20th century. He also wrote the novel The White Guard and the plays Ivan Vasilievich, Flight (also called The Run), and The Days of the Turbins. He wrote mostly about the horrors of the Russian Civil War and about the fate of Russian intellectuals and officers of the Tsarist Army caught up in revolution and Civil War. Some of his works (Flight, all his works between the years 1922 and 1926, and others) were banned by the Soviet government, and personally by Joseph Stalin, after it was decided by them that they "glorified emigration and White generals". On the other hand, Stalin loved The Days of the Turbins (also called The Turbin Brothers) very much and reportedly saw it at least 15 times.
First published in 1925, Morphine is a mini-novel by Mikhail Bulgakov, one of the giants of twenteith century Russian literature. The storyline is simple: Bromgard, a young doctor moves from the backwoods to a small country town to practice medicine in a clinic. A month passes and he receives news that Polyakov, a friend, a "very reasonable man," he knew as a student in medical school is ill and needs his help.
Bromgard plans to travel by train to his friend but before his scheduled departure Polyakov is brought to the clinic on the verge of death, resulting from a self-inflicted bullet wound. But before Polyakov dies, he hands Dr. Bromgard a diary recording his addiction to morphine. And the heart and soul of this Bulgakov tale is the contents of the diary.
Such a simple story. But please don't be fooled - through Bulgakov's literary magic we are given a gem. The author crafts with a kind of subtle perfection the step-by-step decent of an intelligent young man with a promising future in the grip of morphine addiction.
And it all starts so innocently: On the night of February 15th an otherwise perfectly healthy twenty-three year old Dr. Poyakov experiences intense stomach pain. He sends for Anna Kirillovna, a kind and intellegent nurse, and she gives him a morphine injection.
The next day, Dr. Polyakov makes a decision that will prove to be a drastic mistake, turning him into an addict. We read, "Fearing a recurrence of yesterday's attack, I injected myself in the thigh with one centigramme"
Such a penetrating observation on human psychology: the young doctor does not experience intense pain; rather, he gives himself a morphine injection because he fears intense pain. Oh my goodness: according to the wisdom of ancient Greek philosophers, a prime emotion we must overcome is our fear, most especially fear of pain and fear of death. And ff we act based solely on our fear, the consequences can quite possibly be dreadful in the extreme
A mere two weeks later, the young doctor's identity has completely transformed; he and his morphine are one. Here are his words from the diary: "I would say that a man can only work normally after an injection of morphine."
Then, we read the following March 10 entry: "Never before have I had such dreams at dawn. They are double dreams. The main one, I would say, is made of glass. It is transparent. This is what happened: I see a lighted lamp, fearfully bright, from which blazes a stream of many-colored light. Amneris, swaying like a green feather, is singing. An unearthly orchestra is playing with a full, rich sound - although I cannot really convey this in words. In short, in a normal dream music is soundless . . . but in my dream the music sounds, quite heavenly. And best of all I can make the music louder or softer at will."
Ecstasy! Ecstasy! Ecstasy! Our young doctor is completely hooked, psychologically every bit as much as physically. Incidentally, Amneris is an opera singer, the doctor's former mistress who left him weeks prior to his first morphine injection.
But such ethereal, blissful dreams have a price, a big price. On April 9th he writes, "The devil is in this phial. . . . This is the effect: on injecting one syringe of a 2% solution, you feel almost immediately a state of calm, which quickly grows into a delightful euphoria. This lasts for only a minute or two, then it vanishes without a trace as though it has never been. Then comes pain, horror, darkness."
And then a month later we read: "What overtakes the addict deprived of morphine for a mere hour or two is not a "depressed condition": it is slow death."
Ten more months of morphine addiction, alternating between injections and the slow death between injections, Dr. Polyakov takes his own life at tender age of twenty-four. Such a tragedy.
From what I've read on the net, this is a much read and consulted cautionary tale for those involved in the medical industry. And recognizing the many forms of drug addiction in our brave new twenty-first century world, Bulgakov's Morphine is a cautionary tale for each and every one of us.
Life goes on in the middle of war, even in the middle of revolution. There are births and natural deaths, and unfortunate marriages, and people keep doing their jobs. And people also go mad. Some commit suicide without even noticing that a revolution is underway. The Tsar is dead. Long live the Tsar. Or whatever the new man in charge is called.
Or perhaps the suicide is a figure for the ancien regime (or its replacement). Power is, after all, an addictive drug, the dosage of which always has to be increased to achieve an equilibrium. Morphine leads to more morphine, leads to cocaine, leads to oblivion. Unchecked by any external forces, power expands until it kills those who wield it. They corrupt themselves from the inside.
The history of revolution is not dissimilar to that of addiction - fragmentary records which do not begin to express the circumstances or sufferings of either. The narratives of both are equally evasive, rationalising, and self-serving. From the first shot, the first injection, the ultimate trajectory is fixed but unrecognised by those involved. They chase the dream.
Meanwhile others are perfectly happy. How odd existence is when dominated by dreams - induced by either drugs or power. More is never enough.
"Clever people have been pointing out for a long time that happiness is like good health: when it鈥檚 there, you don鈥檛 notice it. But when the years have passed, how you do re-member happiness, oh, how you do remember it!" Thus begins this semi-autobiographical short story.
Set in Russia, during the 1917 October Revolution, the story revolves around a doctor and his nightmarish descent into darkness due to his addiction to morphine.
Oh, how stupid, empty it all is. It鈥檚 hopeless!
Serving in the Red Cross during the First World War, Bulgakov was injured and himself succumbed to the grip of morphine addiction for a while, before giving up his medical career and becoming a writer.
I enjoyed reading this. Once again, I would never have come across this book if it had not been a GR friend reading this and reviewing it and liking it. 馃槉 馃槆 馃檪 馃檭 馃槈
So, this novella is about a doctor in Russia who is sent to the hinterlands to be a doctor to the villagers who live there, and he himself has an ailment and his is given a shot of morphine. End of pain. He is relieved. After the pain is gone, he continues to take it because he is suffering from depression over a love relationship gone south, and taking the drug makes him go into la-la land. No doubt he experiences euphoria. But morphine is addictive as he himself proves.
The novella is mainly told through a number of diary entries, so we come along for the ride as the doctor goes from first injection of morphine to being on the threshold of addiction to being full-blown addicted.
The book was interesting to read but was REALLY interesting for me to read was an article by some scientists in Israel and Italy who did a research study on a manuscript that Bulgakov wrote that was regarded as his masterpiece, 鈥楳aster i Margarita鈥�, and that he finished right before his death. They obtained the original paper that he used to write on (yes, literally write on, they showed a picture of a page of the manuscript, and it was handwriting, not typed) 鈥� and they found traces of the chemical constituents of morphine on the paper 鈥� and concluded that while writing this he was taking morphine. At the time he had a recurrence of a kidney ailment that is known to induce a tremendous amount of pain called visceral pain (nephrosclerosis). He must have been in a lot of pain. He, a number of years prior to this, had been a physician in the Army (World War One) when he contracted typhus, and was given morphine, and for two years was addicted to it. It is said that is how he came up with the idea and theme of this novella, 鈥楳orphine鈥�, through his own experience with the drug. I don鈥檛 think the editors of the scientific study (from the field of proteomics) know whether he was addicted at the time he penned the final pages to 鈥楳aster i Margarita鈥�, 22 years later after his first prolonged experience with the drug, but they thought he was on fairly substantial doses of morphine. The reference/citation to this most fascinating article is below in 鈥楴otes鈥�.
So anyhoo, I was fascinated by that鈥�.and then by doing a little more snooping in Google I was led to another article on Bulgakov and morphine addiction 鈥� 鈥楧r Junkie. The Doctor Addict in Bulgakov鈥檚 Morphine: What are the Lessons for Contemporary Medical Practice鈥� (author: Victoria Tischler) 鈥攁nd I liked this article too. It鈥檚 about not only Bulgakov and his writing of Morphine from a personal side of having used the drug but also other physicians who wrote while under the influence. This journal article is freely available (called 鈥榦pen access鈥� on the internet鈥�. just copy and paste all the stuff I have in brackets here 鈥� [Dr Junkie. The Doctor Addict in Bulgakov鈥檚 Morphine: What are the Lessons for Contemporary Medical Practice; J Med Humanit (2015) 36:359鈥�368] 鈥� and go to Google Scholar and enter this in the address (URL) bar and you will see the article鈥t鈥檚 available in html format.
Notes: 鈥� Citation to the journal article mentioned above: 鈥楳orphine鈥�: Maestro, Marguerite, morphine: The last years in the life of Mikhail Bulgakov. Gleb Zilberstein, Uriel Maor, Emmanuil Baskin, Pier Giorgio Righetti. Journal of Proteomics 131 (2016) 199鈥�204.
鈥� Here鈥檚 an article by same authors who found biological traces of the disease that he had on the pages of 鈥楳aster i Margarita鈥�: Zilberstein G, Maor U, Baskin E, D'Amato A, Righetti PG. Unearthing Bulgakov's trace proteome from the Master i Margarita manuscript. J Proteomics. 2017 Jan 30;152:102-108.
A diary of an addict. What a terrifying testimony! It is a history of a young man's moral and phyisical decline written by himself. What makes it even more frightening is the fact that the young man is a doctor who describes all the symptoms of the addiction in detail and is fully aware of the consequences and the outcome in spite of attempting to constantly deceive himself. Bulgakov himself was addicted to morphine when he was young but, fortunately, was able to overcome the addiction. So, he knew what he was writing about.
'I have the morphine to thank for making me brave. I'm not afraid of rifle fire now.' -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 'For an addict there is one pleasure of which no one can deprive him鈥攈is ability to spend his time in absolute solitude. And solitude means deep, significant thought; it means, calm, contemplation鈥攁nd wisdom.'
Si tuviera que explicar todas las sensaciones que experiment茅 leyendo esto, no podr铆a hacerlo con exactitud, pero puedo intentarlo. Lo empec茅 sin muchas expectativas, creyendo que deber铆a ponerme en los zapatos de una persona depresiva y adicta a la morfina durante ciento y pico de p谩ginas y salir ilesa de la lectura en la medida de lo posible. Y que eso iba a desgastarme y a quitarle el gusto al libro. Mucho de eso sucedi贸, pero lo 煤ltimo no: este libro me encant贸 y me impact贸 tanto que lo tuve que agregar a mis favoritos (hace bastante que no agrego un libro). Lo tiene todo. Est谩 muy bien escrito, describe todo con una sencillez y una profundidad que parecen incompatibles, y las historias son geniales y hasta tienen suspenso. Lo le铆 s贸lo en dos d铆as porque no quer铆a soltarlo.
Pero basta de hablar de c贸mo me sent铆. Explico de qu茅 se trata porque esta edici贸n, la de Anagrama, es una reuni贸n de cuentos de Bulgakov publicados entre 1925 y 1927. 鈥淢orfina鈥� es el 煤ltimo de la lista. La sinopsis se refiere s贸lo a ese y, lamentablemente, habla m谩s de lo necesario. Los primeros siete cuentos pertenecen, si no me equivoco, a Notas de un joven m茅dico. Efectivamente, el protagonista es un doctor reci茅n graduado a quien env铆an a trabajar a un hospital de pueblo, en pleno 1917. 脡l nos transmite, sin ning煤n tipo de arrepentimiento o verg眉enza, los miedos que siente al ejercer su profesi贸n en ese lugar. Tiene un car谩cter bastante malo y poca paciencia, sobre todo con las mujeres (lo pone nervioso el hecho de que gritan de desesperaci贸n). Mientras le铆a me acordaba de las series sobre m茅dicos (las cuales evito como puedo), que suelen presentar un caso cl铆nico en espec铆fico y en el siguiente episodio cambia*. As铆 se manejan, a grandes rasgos, estos relatos.
M谩s all谩 del conflicto que implica unir los relatos, la lectura de Morfina, en conjunto, es genial. El lector asiste a los peores miedos de un doctor (Bulgakov tambi茅n lo era, as铆 que no desconoce la ciencia) y a la lucha constante contra una poblaci贸n pr谩cticamente ignorante, que puede llegar a rechazar los tratamientos por desconocerlos o hasta inventar una historia fant谩stica sobre los mismos. Hay escenas en donde los di谩logos son desopilantes por el desequilibrio que existe entre la palabra del m茅dico y la palabra del paciente, pero tambi茅n hay otros en donde la balanza no se inclina del lado del saber. Y Bulgakov, que escribe de una forma tan linda y contundente, ya usando t茅cnicas del siglo XX (es una obviedad, lo s茅) y permiti茅ndonos entrar en la mente del personaje, tiene la maestr铆a de no juzgar, sino de presentar. Sucede lo mismo con algo tan delicado como la adicci贸n a la morfina que 茅l tambi茅n sufri贸. En ning煤n momento lo sent铆 como una apolog铆a del consumo, sino todo lo contrario. Muestra el deterioro gradual, la abstinencia y sus consecuencias y situaciones que hoy en d铆a parecen conocidas por todos (uno dice 鈥渁h, eso suele suceder鈥�) pero que no pierden el efecto.
Ya dije p煤blicamente que se me revolv铆a el est贸mago con palabras y descripciones (muy breves y simples, cosa que le falta a 厂谩产补诲辞, de Ian McEwan) t铆picas de la medicina. Soy impresionable hasta cuando leo, aunque se me hace m谩s superable que ver. El comentario viene al caso porque si pude impresionarme e incomodarme con la escritura de alguien, entonces es que el recurso le funcion贸, al menos conmigo. En 鈥淢orfina鈥� la angustia es demasiado palpable y por eso lo desaconsej茅 para personas que est茅n atravesando un mal momento. Y no, no pienso que todos son influenciables o algo por el estilo: me refiero a que el libro no es un canto a la felicidad y es un poco oscuro. Entonces, a quienes buscan salir de un estado de 谩nimo triste con la literatura, este libro no les sumar铆a nada bueno porque las sensaciones est谩n muy bien canalizadas en las palabras. Es s贸lo mi humilde opini贸n.
Le encontr茅 un peque帽o defecto y no s茅 si la culpa es de Bulgakov o de la selecci贸n de relatos de esta edici贸n, pero creo que hay un poco de ambas. Hay ciertos detalles sobre fechas y lugares que no coincid铆an y me provocaron una desorientaci贸n con los personajes. Tuve que buscar mucho sobre los cuentos de Bulgakov para aclarar las dudas (las sigo teniendo, as铆 que mi mini investigaci贸n no termin贸) y me hubiera gustado que la informaci贸n estuviera en la contratapa, en lugar de una sinopsis que resume todo 鈥淢orfina鈥�.
Me entusiasm茅 con la transmisi贸n de emociones y toqu茅 pocos temas que suelo incluir. No quer铆a dejar de mencionarlo, mucho menos despu茅s de haberme hecho sufrir. Todo en este libro tiene relieve y ni siquiera los pacientes son planos. Lo disfrut茅 y lo padec铆 en parte iguales. Tengo The Master and Margarita en casa, as铆 que pr贸ximamente volver茅 con Bulgakov.
* Investigando sobre Morfina, me enter茅 de que la serie A Young Doctor鈥檚 Notebook, protagonizada por Daniel Radcliffe, est谩 basada en los relatos de Bulgakov. Menos mal que no la vi.
(*) Ya se aclar贸 mi desorientaci贸n con los personajes, era fundamentalmente un problema con los nombres (隆eso pasa por leer r谩pido!). Me gust贸 m谩s que la primera vez porque hubo algo en la desesperaci贸n de los dos personajes principales de la historia que antes hab铆a pasado por alto. Son desesperaciones distintas y demasiado humanas. Otra cosa que trajo la relectura es la relevancia de las mujeres profesionales de la medicina, que en este libro se tratan con mucho respeto y sin ning煤n estereotipo a cuestas. Seguir铆a recomend谩ndolo.
A short, tragic but brilliant piece of writing on the perils of drug addiction. I have found his realistic work more effective than the likes of master and margarita as he has a greater depth of feeling, and here he highlights the plight a doctor faces when getting hooked on Morphine. The fact it's bases on Bulgakov's own experiences as a physician makes it all the more chilling. Anyone out there thinking of dabbling in drugs - read this, and choose life instead.
Bulgakov'u seviyorum. Gen莽 Bir K枚y Hekimi'nin devam谋 niteli臒indeki bu novella yine iyi e臒itim verilip tabir caizse k谋rsala destek olmaks谋z谋n birdenbire at谋lan hekimin 莽aresizli臒ine bir de 枚zel ya艧ant谋s谋ndaki 莽alkant谋 eklenince neler ya艧ayabilece臒ini g枚sterdi. Bizim co臒rafyam谋zla benzer ya艧anm谋艧l谋klar da Bulgakov'un naif anlat谋m谋na eklenince bu k谋sac谋k kitap bana zaman谋n ko艧ullar谋na kar艧谋 cesur manifesto gibi geldi.
鈥淯n demone in flacone. La cocaina 猫 un demone in flacone!鈥�
Un dolore inaspettato e mai provato. Un poco di morfina per placare le fitte e poter continuare a lavorare. Cos矛 un giovane medico comincia il suo viaggio nell'assuefazione. Breve racconto, sotto forma di diario, legato all'autore per il tema autobiografico. Una dolorosa caduta nel baratro. Implacabile come il gelo della steppa russa che fa da cornice alla tragedia.
Wow, this was so different from . Such a gloomy, depressive but at the same time very precise study of addiction. Seems like Bulgakov knew the subject not just from the doctor's perspective...
Mikhail Bulgakov was trained as a doctor and went to the front in the First World War where he was badly injured twice. [] To curb his pain, he began taking morphine. His addiction grew, and though in 1918 he gave it up altogether, the torture of that addiction never left him. In 1926 he published a short fictional pamphlet or monograph about a doctor in the backwoods who succumbed to morphine addiction. This work, translated by Hugh Alpin and published in 2013 as a New Directions Pearl, is that account.
A doctor happily residing in a small provincial town receives word that a colleague in the backwoods clinic where he once worked is in a perilous state of health. As he readies himself to go to his assistance, he learns from further communication that the ill man is dying of a gunshot wound. The doctor rushes to the remote village only to be in time for the man鈥檚 death. Before he dies, the man presses upon the doctor his diary, which tells the confusing and harrowing story of a slide into morphine addiction.
The pamphlet is not long, only 53 pages, and yet we understand the agonies of increased dosages, the paranoia, the regression into solitude, the despair experienced by the man. It was impossible for him to become free of the drug. The gunshot was self-inflicted.
Bulgakov was raised as a Christian (his father was a priest), one of seven children. He began publishing stories and plays after several years working in war-torn areas, but his work was often repressed by censures. He became 鈥渁 satirist at a time when true satire is absolutely impossible in the USSR.鈥� (from the Intro to by Mirra Ginsburg). He was reduced to producing librettos for opera and dramatizing the works of others. He continued to write, however, and from 1928 to 1940 when he died of inherited liver disease, he worked on his masterpiece, The Master and Margarita, which was not published in the Soviet Union until 1966.