“Vladimir feels he has an extra card in the deck, that his existence is rigged, that all he has to do to make it worth living is apply his own will.”
Who is Vladimir Demikhov? And why dedicate a book to him? Good, excellent questions. But the most appropriate would be: why read it? Well, indeed.
“Vladimir Petrovich Demikhov (1916-1998) – Soviet surgeon and researcher: one of the most renowned pioneers of organ transplantation; commonly referred to as the father of heart and lung transplantation.” (cit.)
He wasn’t a surgeon: he was a pathologist, and he managed to earn a degree (in biological sciences, not medicine) at the age of 47, before an official commission but surrounded by his fiercest detractors, who showered him with insults, calling him a charlatan and a fraud. “Well-known” isn’t a fitting adjective, just as the adverb “commonly” is perplexing. If he’s remembered, with that vexed look that signifies a certain strain on memory, it’s for being the mad scientist who persistently pitted one dog against another, creating dozens of two-headed, not particularly long-lived Cerberi. For this reason alone, we might want to delve deeper into a biography so poorly documented: given the macabre tone of his experiments, it’s obviously not an investigation suited to the faint-hearted or overly sensitive.
We daresay that “Demichov” should be read for several reasons: out of curiosity and insight, certainly, but above all to gain a deeper understanding of the intellectual stance of its author. The book fits well into a trend of anecdotal biographies that, like those of Nori or Mercadini, intersect excerpts from the author’s personal life with ethical reflections (considering the scientific-experimental aspect of this story) but which, above all, knowingly delve into broader questions about human psychology, the concept of identity, and the subjective perception of reality. Without hiding behind a thorough and meticulous research of sources, La Porta navigates the vast sea of interpretative speculation and leads us through the existential questions that led him to investigate such a controversial life.
The only consideration he allows himself regarding the possible empathic dissociation of Demichov the man is certainly more subdued than any other exclamation that might cross our minds during the reading, which remains disturbing in its description of the traumas of war, the humiliating ostracism in his homeland, and the determination beyond all apparent common sense in a stubborn and contrary yet, for him, crystal-clear direction. Just as he knew that the woman he passed on the stairs would become his lifelong companion, so he knows that his shocking intuition could checkmate the scythe that torments human time. The author repeats several times: Vladimir—the misunderstood, the gifted, the unpopular, the alienated—faced with every obstacle does what he does best: he persists. And it is true that, at the cost of countless non-human lives, he illuminated the path of those who today can save the lives of mothers, children, and loved ones. Was there something monstrous in the hallucinatory coldness of his obstinacy? Or did the profoundly altruistic instinct of his vision prevail?
There are no true and definitive answers (can we ever read the mind of any man?), nor does La Porta try to provide them, yet, as we read, we continue to question our principles and our perspective, learning to rotate the moon in the hope of glimpsing its dark side, driven by that mad desire for knowledge that can make us delirious or extremely humble in our definition of humanity.
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Salvatore La Porta, Demichov, Il Saggiatore, Milano, 2025