Abstract
Daniil Ivanovich Yuvachev, who adopted the pen name of Daniil Kharms, was born in Petersburg in 1905 and died in a Leningrad prison in 1942. He was a leading member of the group of writers who called themselves the Oberiu group, and like many off-beat writers of the 1920s and early 1930s found employment as a children’s writer in Samuil Marshak’s ‘academy’, the publishing house, Detgiz. He was arrested and exiled briefly in 1931, but returned to Leningrad to continue a hand-to-mouth existence, often on the verge of starvation, until he was arrested again in December 1941.1
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Notes and References
Alice Stone Nakhimovsky, Laughter in the Void: An Introduction to the Writings of Daniil Kharms and Alexander Vvedenskii (Wiener Slawistischer Almanach, Sonderband 5), Vienna, 1982, chapter 1.
See also Il’ya Levin, ‘Mir umyshlennyi i mir sozdannyi’, Kontinent, 24, 1980, pp. 271–5, and the summary chronology of Kharms’s life in Russkaya mysl’, 3550, 3 January 1985.
The most important collection of Kharms’s prose writings is still Daniil Kharms, Izbrannoe (Colloquium slavicum, band 5), edited and introduced by George Gibian, Würzburg, 1974. Other prose writings have appeared in: Neue russische Literatur, Salzburg, 2–3, 1979–80, pp. 135–42 (publication by Gleb Urman); Vremya i my, Tel Aviv, 53, 1980, pp. 182–91; Kontinent, 24, 1980, pp. 271–95 (publication by Il’ya Levin); Soviet Union/Union Soviétique, Arizona State University, 7, 1980, pp. 228–37 (publication by Il’ya Levin) (reprinted in Russica-81: Literaturnyi sbornik, New York, 1982, pp. 353–60); Poiski i razmyshleniya, Paris, 2, 1982, pp. 36–8; Russkaya mysl’, 3550, 3 January 1985 (publication by I. F. Petrovichev). In addition, Nakhimovsky gives English versions of several unpublished stories in the text of her study. We may expect more to appear eventually: the collected work of Kharms scheduled for publication by K-Presse, Bremen, is to be in ten volumes, of which four volumes of poetry have so far appeared. The project came to a halt after the arrest in the Soviet Union of one of its editors, Mikhail Meilakh, now released. Among notable works of Kharms criticism, besides those mentioned above, are: A. Flaker, ‘O rasskazakh Daniila Kharmsa’, Československá rusistika, 14, 1969, pp. 78–84;
A. Aleksandrov and M. Meilakh, ‘Tvorchestvo Daniila Kharmsa’, Materialy XXII nauchnoi studencheskoi konferentsii, Tartu, 1967, pp. 101–4;
R. Milner-Gulland, ‘“Kovarnye stikhi”: Notes on Daniil Kharms and Aleksandr Vvedensky’, Essays in Poetics, 9/1, 1984, pp. 16–37. See also the bibliography in Nakhimovsky, pp. 184–9.
The extensive study of Kharms by Jean-Philippe Jaccard came to the author’s notice too late for its conclusions to be taken into account in this study: see Jean-Philippe Jaccard, ‘De la réalité au texte. L’absurde chez Daniil Harms’, Cahiers du Monde Russe et Soviétique, 26/3–4, 1985, pp. 269–312, and ‘Daniil Harms. Bibliographie’, ibid, pp. 493–522.
Roman Jakobson, ‘Closing Statement: Linguistics and Poetics’, in Style in Language, ed. T. Sebeok, Cambridge, Mass., 1960, p. 353.
V. N. Voloshinov (M. M. Bakhtin), ‘Discourse in Life and Discourse in Poetry’ (‘Slovo v zhizni i slovo v poezii’), trans. John Richmond, in Bakhtin School Papers (Russian Poetics in Translation, 10), ed. Ann Shukman, Oxford, 1983, pp. 5–30, especially 10–13; V. N. Voloshinov (M. M. Bakhtin), ‘The Construction of the Utterance’ (‘Konstruktsiya vyskazyvaniya’), trans. Noel Owen, ibid, pp. 114–38, especially 123–6.
O.G. Revzina and I.I. Revzin, ‘Semioticheskii eksperiment na stsene (Narushenie postulata normal’nogo obshcheniya kak dramaticheskii priem)’, Trudy po znakovym sistemam, Tartu, 5, 1971, pp. 232–54, especially 242.
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Copyright information
© 1989 Catriona Helen Moncrieff Kelly, Michael Laurence Makin and David George Shepherd
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Shukman, A. (1989). Toward a Poetics of the Absurd: The Prose Writings of Daniil Kharms. In: Kelly, C., Makin, M., Shepherd, D. (eds) Discontinuous Discourses in Modern Russian Literature. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-19849-8_4
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-19849-8_4
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London
Print ISBN: 978-1-349-19851-1
Online ISBN: 978-1-349-19849-8
eBook Packages: Palgrave Literature & Performing Arts CollectionLiterature, Cultural and Media Studies (R0)