Daniil Kharms

Daniil Ivanovich Kharms (Дании́л Ива́нович Хармс; 30 December 1905 – 2 February 1942) was an early Soviet-era Russian avant-gardist and absurdist poet, writer and dramatist.

Kharms was born as Daniil Yuvachev in St. Petersburg, into the family of Ivan Yuvachev, a member of the revolutionary group The People's Will.

By the time of his son's birth, Ivan Yuvachev had already been imprisoned for his involvement in subversive acts against Tsar Alexander III and had become a philosopher.

Daniil invented the pseudonym Kharms while attending Saint Peter's School.

While at Saint Peter's, he learned the rudiments of both English and German, and it may have been the English words "harm" and "charm" that he incorporated into "Kharms".

His pseudonym might have been also influenced by his fascination with Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes, as the two words (Holmes and Harms) start and end similarly but there are a number of other theories regarding the pseudonym.

Throughout his career, Kharms used variations on this name and the pseudonyms DanDan, Khorms, Charms, Shardam, and Kharms-Shardam, among others.

By the late 1920s, his anti-rational verse, nonlinear theatrical performances, and public displays of decadent and illogical behavior earned Kharms – who dressed like an English dandy with a calabash pipe – the reputation of a talented and highly eccentric writer.

In the late 1920s, despite rising criticism of the Oberiu performances and diatribes against the avant-garde in the press, Kharms sought to unite progressive artists and writers of the time (Malevich, Filonov, Terentiev, Vladimir Mayakovsky, Kaverin, Zamyatin) with leading Russian formalist critics (Viktor Shklovsky, Yuri Tynianov, Boris Eichenbaum, Lev S. Ginzburg, etc.) and a younger generation of writers (all from the OBERIU crowd: Alexander Vvedensky, Konstantin Vaginov, Nikolai Zabolotsky, Igor Bakhterev), to form a cohesive cultural movement of Left Art.

(He had worked under Samuil Marshak at Detgiz, the state-owned children's publishing house since the mid-1920s, writing new material and translating children's literature from the west, including Wilhelm Busch's Max and Moritz).

Many of his poems and short stories for children were published in the Chizh (Чиж), Yozh (Ëж), Sverchok (Сверчок) and Oktyabryata (Октябрята) magazines.

In 1924, he entered the Leningrad Electrotechnicum, from which he was expelled for "poor attendance," "not participating in community service," and not "fitting into the class physiologically".

After his expulsion, he gave himself over entirely to literature.

He joined the circle of Aleksandr Tufanov, a sound-poet, and follower of Velimir Khlebnikov's ideas of zaum (or trans-sense) poetry.

He met the young poet Alexander Vvedensky at this time, and the two became close friends and collaborators.

In 1927, the Association of Writers of Children's Literature was formed, and Kharms was invited to be a member.

From 1928 until 1941, Kharms continually produced children's works, to great success.

In 1928, Daniil Kharms founded the avant-garde collective Oberiu, or Union of Real Art.

He embraced the new movements of Russian Futurism laid out by his idols, Khlebnikov, Kazimir Malevich, and Igor Terentiev, among others.

Their ideas served as a springboard.

His aesthetic centered around a belief in the autonomy of art from real world rules and logic, and that intrinsic meaning is to be found in objects and words outside of their practical function.

In 1928, his play "Elizaveta Bam" ("Елизавета Бам") premiered; it is said to have foreshadowed the Theatre of the Absurd.

The play begins with Elizaveta being arrested by the secret police for the murder of one of the arresting officers, who is later killed by another character, and ends with the first scene repeating.

It has been compared to Kafka's Trial and Nabokov's Invitation to a Beheading for its "depiction of a hapless individual destroyed by arbitrary governmental authority."

In the 1930s, as mainstream Soviet literature was becoming more and more conservative under the guidelines of Socialist Realism, Kharms found refuge in children's literature.

Kharms was arrested in 1931 and exiled to Kursk for most of a year.

He was arrested as a member of "a group of anti-Soviet children's writers", and some of his works were used as evidence in the case.

Soviet authorities, having become increasingly hostile toward the avant-garde in general, deemed Kharms' writing for children anti-Soviet because of its refusal to instil materialist and social Soviet values.

Kharms continued to write for children's magazines when he returned from exile, though his name would appear in the credits less often.

His plans for more performances and plays were curtailed, the OBERIU disbanded, and Kharms receded into a mostly private writing life.

In 1937 Marshak's publishing house in Leningrad was shut down, some of employees were arrested: Alexandr Vvedensky, Nikolai Oleinikov, Nikolai Zabolotsky, Tamara Gabbe, and later – Kharms; the majority was fired.

His "adult" works were not published during his lifetime with the sole exception of two early poems.

His notebooks were saved from destruction in the war by loyal friends and hidden until the 1960s, when his children's writing became widely published and scholars began the job of recovering his manuscripts and publishing them in the west and in samizdat.

His reputation in the 20th century in Russia was largely based on his popular work for children.

Kharms' adult works were picked up by Russian samizdat starting around the 1960s, and thereby did have an influence on the growing "unofficial" arts scene.

His other writings (a vast assortment of stories, miniatures, plays, poems, and pseudo-scientific, philosophical investigations) were virtually unknown until the 1970s, and not published officially in Russia until "glasnost".

Kharms' stories are typically brief vignettes (see also short prose and feuilleton) often only a few paragraphs long, in which scenes of poverty and deprivation alternate with fantastic, dreamlike occurrences and acerbic comedy.

Occasionally they incorporate incongruous appearances by famous authors (e.g.: Pushkin and Gogol tripping over each other; Count Leo Tolstoy showing his chamber pot to the world; Pushkin and his sons falling off their chairs; etc.)

His manuscripts were preserved by his sister and, most notably, by his friend Yakov Druskin, a notable music theorist and amateur theologist and philosopher, who dragged a suitcase full of Kharms's and Vvedensky's writings out of Kharms's apartment during the blockade of Leningrad and kept it hidden throughout difficult times.

A complete collection of his works was published in Bremen in four volumes, in 1978–1988.