Morphine (Bulgakov)

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Mikhail Bulgakov around 1935

Morphium ( Russian Морфий , Morfi ) is a short story by the Soviet writer Mikhail Bulgakov , which appeared in 1927 in numbers 45 to 47 of the Moscow magazine Medizinski rabotnik .

In the winter of 1918 in a Russian district town: 27-year-old Dr. med. Wladimir Michailowitsch Bomhart receives the notes of two years his junior college friend Dr. med. Sergei Polyakov; more precisely his medical history.

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Shortly before his suicide, Polyakow had sent a letter for help from his country doctor's practice in the village of Gorelowo to Bomhart in the district town.

February 13, 1918: Before Bomhart can rush to help, Polyakov shot himself with his Browning . Bomhart read Polyakov's medical history, dated January 20, 1917 to February 13, 1918, on February 14, 1918 and published it nine years later:

February 3, 1917: Polyakov was betrayed and abandoned by his partner, the opera singer Amneris. The artist left abroad, never to be seen again.

February 15: Polyakov's colleague, field shearer and midwife Anna Kirillowna, gives the doctor an injection of morphine to relieve his stomach pain .

March 1: Polyakov and Anna, whose husband has become a prisoner of war , have become a secret couple.

March 19: Polyakov has a quarrel with Anna because she doesn't want him to become a morphinist.

April 13th: The morphinist Dr. Polyakov warns any addict who - like him - replaces morphine with cocaine .

May 6: Polyakov succeeds in the upcoming operations, but he watches his employees suspiciously. In the evening he doesn't like to show them his pupils. If Polyakov has no morphine for a few hours, he thinks death is coming slowly.

NOVEMBER 14: The morphine thief Polyakov interrupts the healing treatment - escapes from the Moscow withdrawal sklinik - making in Gorelowo professionally. The morphinist has a hallucination . A witch flies on a pitchfork just above the field. Polyakov becomes emaciated and vomits. The extremities fester.

February 13: Polyakov congratulates himself on an incredible achievement. He held out for over twelve hours without morphine. The sick man breaks up.

filming

reception

Schröter mentions the autobiographical character of the text. In this sense, the above-mentioned district town can be taken as Vjasma . Bulgakov was transferred to the district hospital there at the beginning of autumn 1917. However, Bulgakov himself became addicted to morphine in 1917, not his college friend, but in 1919 he successfully fought against it.

German-language editions

Output used:

  • Morphine. Translated from the Russian by Thomas Reschke . Pp. 106–142 in Ralf Schröder (Ed.): Bulgakow. The red crown. Autobiographical stories and diaries. Volk & Welt, Berlin 1993, ISBN 3-353-00944-2 (= Vol. 5: Collected Works (13 Vols.))

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Russian Medizinski rabotnik - about employees in the health service
  2. ↑ Russian morphine (film)
  3. ↑ Schröter in the edition used, literary history notes, p. 355, 5th Zvu