Table Of ContentDANIIL KHARMS AND THE
POETICS OF THE ABSURD
By the same author
V. F. Odoyevsky: his fife, times and milieu (1986)
Pasternak's 'Dr Zhivago' (1987)
Daniil Kharms: The Plummeting Old Women (trans.) (1989)
The Literary Fantastic: from Gothic to Postmodernism (1990)
Daniil Kharms and the
Poetics of the Absurd
Essays and Materials
Edited by
N eil Cornwell
Senior Lecturer in Russian Studies
University 01 Bristol
Palgrave Macmillan
ISBN 978-1-349-11644-7 ISBN 978-1-349-11642-3 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-1-349-11642-3
© Neil Cornwell 1991
Softcover reprint ofthe hardcover 1st edition 1991 978-0-333-52590-6
All rights reserved. For information, write:
Scholarly and Reference Division,
St. Martin's Press, Inc., 175 Fifth Avenue,
New York, NY 10010
First published in the United States of America in 1991
ISBN 978-0-312-06177-7
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Daniil Kharms and the poetics of the absurd: essays and materials I
edited by Neil Cornwell.
p. cm.
Majority of the essays translated from Russian.
Includes bibliographical references (p. ) and index.
ISBN 978-0-312-06177-7
1. Kharms, Daniil, 1905-1942-Criticism and interpretation.
2. Absurd (Philosophy) in literature. 1. Cornwell, Neil.
PG3476.K472Z65 1991
89 1. 78 '4209-dc20 91-7702
CIP
Contents
An unpublished relie of Daniil Kharms vii
Robin Milner-Gulland
Aeknowledgements ix
Note on Transliteration and Abbreviations x
Epigraph: Aleksandr Galieh, Legenda 0 tabake xii
Notes on the Contributors xv
PART I: INTRODUCTORY
1 Introduetion: Daniil Kharms, Blaek Miniaturist 3
Neil Cornwell
2 On Daniil Kharms 22
Iakov Druskin
3 A Kharms Chronology 32
Anatolii Aleksandrov
PART 11: GENERAL STUDIES
4 Daniil Kharms in the Context of Russian and European
Literature of the Absurd 49
Jean-Philippe Jaccard
5 The Anti-World of Daniil Kharms: On the Signifieanee
of the Absurd 71
Anthony Anemone
PART 111: THE PROSE WORKS
6 Towards an Interpretation of Kharms's Sluchai 97
Robin Aizlewood
7 Slobodan PesiC's Film Slucaj Harms and Kharms's Sluchai 123
Milena Michalski
8 Elements of the Fantastic in Daniil Kharms's Starukha 132
Rosanna Giaquinta
v
VI Contents
9 Some Features of the Poetics of Kharms's Prose:
the story Upadanie ('The Falling') 149
Aleksandr Kobrinsky
PART IV: THE POETIC WORKS
10 On One Enigmatic Poem by Daniil Kharms 159
Lazar Fleishrnan
11 'I Razrushenie' 169
Daniil Kharrns
12 Kharms's '1st Destruction' 171
Jerzy Faryno
13 Daniil Kharms's Poetic System: Text, Context, Intertext 175
Nina Perlina
PART V: THE THEATRICAL WORKS
14 The Oberiuty and the Theatricalisation ofLife 195
Tat'iana Nikol'skaia
15 Kharms's Play Elizaveta Barn 200
Mikhail Meilakh
16 Yelizaveta Barn: A Dramatic Work. A new translation
from the definitive text by Neil Cornwell 220
Daniil Kharms
PART VI: CONCLUSION AND APPARATUS
17 Beyond the Turning-Point: An Afterword 243
Robin Milner-Gulland
18 Selected Bibliography 268
Neil Cornwell and Julian Grafty
Index 278
~ . of s:
. me ord
". lleMMHrpllACMMA OTA"II , -BCEPüccl1i-lCKI1H -I', COlO3 n03TOB .' ... NiJL \ ~f){,~....., e. " . 20-""", .1t~~~~ AeAcTBHTenbHwA .'lJlIIIIH . , • j BCCZPOCcHAcKoro COlO38 nOnOB. !t!.''-· ,.,. ~/tJe,1'" ••. ' ~...... .; ... ) .r~"'::;~_A.4 Il . ~ :~t'·'·;··':···Jd ~-:. c j"t.! . J~ ~ ~.j6.. ~J;:?V~ ,. • "" ·"/A. __ . _ n."""rp .... r. ,-.,..:...~1e24· Union of Poets, dated 15 April, 1926, in the naresumably of the River Neva, bearing the w
~~ 'f ~J ." ~ -f-9 , DMneT AIIAcT.MTllnllH ..,.....~ 19~r •. nO ~';~p;~~.; . . " .; ~, •• n. Branch) of the All-Russian cover is a pencil sketch, pdrugie doma' and 'krivo'.
.. 'i: Bcllntn."t.H .... 'HOC ..a....on. "My ... '· -~P)'6 . c-.,...~. ".00. 'UlMe ... ~.&I.I#r . I-oe no'yroAMt 2·oe I-'-"·'-K.I nOAyroA~e Membership Card (Leningrad On the back Daniil Kharms. Chut'mir ne skazal: Mania', '
'
An Unpublished Relic of
D aniil Kharms
Daniil Kharms's first membership card of the All-Russian Union of
Poets (now in an English collection) is an object of particular signifi
cance in two respects. Dating from early in 1926 - when the Union
itself had only just been established - it marks the beginning of
Kharms's public career as a writer (such as it was); the poems he
published in the Union's collections (Sbornik stikhov 1926; Koster
1927) were the only 'adult' works of his that saw print in his lifetime.
It is worth noting his adoption of 'Kharms' by this stage as his
'official' pseudonym.
The document's greatest point of interest, however, is that it
carries on its back a pencil drawing whose idiosyncratic manner
leaves us in little doubt that it is by Kharms hirnself. The boating
scene represented is presumably set in Leningrad; the curious build
ing could weH be a highly stylised image of the Leningrad mosque
that stands to the east of the Peter-Paul fortress, elose to the
Kronverksky Kanal and not far from the Neva. The text reads,
above, CHUT' MIR NE SKAZAL: MANlA: below, DRUGIE DOMA and
KRIVO; however, modem Kharms specialists I have consulted have
not been able to identify who 'Mania' (assuming this is a name!) may
be.
Robin Milner-Gulland
viii
Acknowledgements
Thanks are due to the appropriate editors or journals, and of course
authors, for permission to translate and reprint the articles here by A.
Aleksandrov (the original is to be found in Polet, 1988: thanks in this
case also to VAAP, Moscow, for permission to reproduce); J-P
Jaccard (original noted in Bibliography as 'Jaccard, 1988a'), L.
Fleishman (Fleishman, 1987) and M. Meilakh (Meilakh, 1987).
These essays have all been edited, revised or supplemented for the
present volume.
I should like to thank Ann Shukman for checking and improving
my translations of articles trom the Russian (as weIl as for doing her
own); Marie Press for doing the same with my translation from the
French; and Mikhail Meilakh for an invaluable consultation over my
translation of Elizaveta Bam. Any remaining faults, however, must
be mine alone.
Bibliographical assistance, general encouragement, or assistance
with contributors or contributions has been rendered by Mikhail
Meilakh, J ulian Graffy, Robin Milner-Gulland, Anatolii Aleksandrov,
Rosanna Giaquinta, Gerry Smith, Martin Dewhirst and Lazar Fleish
man. Special thanks for her assistance, advice and inspiration at all
stages of this project, from its initiation to its completion, must go to
Ann Shukman.
N.C.
Bristol, May 1990
ix
