Daniil Kharms
Encyclopedia
Daniil Kharms was an early Soviet
-era surrealist and absurdist
poet
, writer
and dramatist. One of his pseudonyms, which was signed in Latin alphabet, was Daniel Charms.
, a well known member of the revolutionary group The People's Will. By this time the elder Yuvachev had already been imprisoned for his involvement in subversive acts against the tsar Alexander III
and had become a religious philosopher, acquaintance of Anton Chekhov
during the latter's trip to Sakhalin
.
Daniil invented the pseudonym Kharms while attending high school at the prestigious German "Peterschule", probably influenced by his fascination with Arthur Conan Doyle
's Sherlock Holmes
. While at the Peterschule, he learned the rudiments of both English and German, and it may have been the English "harm" and "charm" that he incorporated into "Kharms". Throughout his career Kharms used variations on his name and the pseudonyms DanDan, Khorms, Charms, Shardam, and Kharms-Shardam, among others. It is rumored that he scribbled the name Kharms directly into his passport.
In 1924, he entered the Leningrad Electrotechnicum, from which he was expelled for "lack of activity in social activities". After his expulsion, he gave himself over entirely to literature. He joined the circle of Aleksandr Tufanov, a sound-poet, and follower of Velemir 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 inseparable 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 and had a 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 the intrinsic meaning to be found in objects and words outside of their practical function.
By the late 1920s, his antirational verse, nonlinear theatrical performances, and public displays of decadent and illogical behavior earned Kharms — who always dressed like an English dandy with a calabash pipe — the reputation of being a talented but highly eccentric “fool” or “crazy-man” in Leningrad cultural circles.
Even then, in the late 20s, despite rising criticism of the OBERIU performances and diatribes against the avant-garde in the press, Kharms nurtured a fantasy of uniting the progressive artists and writers of the time (Malevich, Filonov, Terentiev, Vladimir Mayakovsky
, Kaverin, Zamyatin
) with leading Russian Formalist critics (Tynianov, Shklovsky, Eikhenbaum, 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. Needless to say it didn't happen that way.
Kharms was arrested in 1931 together with Vvedensky, Tufanov and some other writers, and was in exile from his hometown (forced to live in the city of 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 an evidence. Soviet authorities, having become increasingly hostile toward the avant-garde in general, deemed Kharms’ writing for children anti-Soviet because of its absurd logic and its refusal to instill materialist and social Soviet values.
He 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 very private writing life. He wrote for the desk drawer, for his wife, Marina Malich, and for a small group of friends, the “Chinari”, who met privately to discuss matters of philosophy, music, mathematics, and literature.
In the 1930s, as the mainstream Soviet literature was becoming more and more conservative under the guidelines of Socialist Realism
, Kharms found refuge in children's literature
. (He had worked under Marshak at DetGiz, the state-owned children's publishing house since the mid-1920s, writing new material and translating children literature from the west, including Wilhelm Busch
's Max and Moritz). Many of his poems and short stories for children, published in the Chizh (Чиж), Yozh (Ëж), Sverchok (Сверчок) and Oktyabryata (Октябрята) magazines, are considered classics of the genre and his roughly twenty children's books are well known and loved by kids to this day, - despite his personal deep disgust for children, unknown to the public - whereas his "adult" writing was not published during his lifetime with the sole exceptions of two early poems. Still, these were lean times and his honorariums didn't quite pay the bills, plus the editors in the children's publishing sector were suffering under extreme pressure and censorship and some were disposed of during Stalin's
purges.
Thus, Kharms lived in debt and hunger for several years until his final arrest on suspicion of treason in the summer of 1941 (most people with a previous arrest were being picked up by the NKVD
in those times). He was imprisoned in the psychiatric ward at Leningrad Prison No. 1. and died in his cell in February, 1942—most likely, from starvation, as the Nazi blockade of Leningrad
had already begun. His work was saved from 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 widely beloved work for children. His other writings (a vast assortment of stories, miniatures, plays, poems, and pseudo-scientific, philosophical investigations) were virtually unknown until 1970's, and not published officially in Russia until "glasnost
".
s (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.)
He was married twice (to Esther Rusakova and Marina Malich). His wives sometimes appear in those of his poems that are lyrical or erotic.
The poet often professed his extreme abhorrence of children and pets, as well as old people; his career as a children's writer notwithstanding.
Kharms' world is unpredictable and disordered; characters repeat the same actions many times in succession or otherwise behave irrationally; linear stories start to develop but are interrupted in midstream by inexplicable catastrophes that send them in completely different directions.
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.
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. (Moscow Conceptualist artists and writers such as Kabakov, Prigov, Rubinstein, were influenced by this newly found avant-garde predecessor).
A complete collection of his works was published in Bremen as four volumes, in 1978-1988. In Russia, Kharms works were widely published only from the late 1980s. Now several editions of Kharms's collected works and selected volumes have been published in Russia, and collections are now available in German, French and Italian. In 2004 a selection of his works appeared in Irish.
As for English translations—oddly, many have appeared of late in American literary journals. In the 1970s George Gibbian at Cornell published the first English collection of OBERIU writing, which included stories and a play by Daniil Kharms and one play by Alexander Vvedensky. Gibbian's translations appeared in Annex Press
magazine in 1978. In the early 1990s a slim selected volume translated into British English by Neil Cornwell came out in England. New translations of all the members of the OBERIU group (and their closely knit group of friends, the Chinari) appeared in Summer, 2006 in the USA (OBERIU: An Anthology of Russian Absurdism, containing poetry, drama and prose by Alexander Vvedensky, Daniil Kharms, Nikolai Zabolotsky, Nikolai Oleinikov, Leonid Lipavsky and Yakov Druskin, edited Eugene Ostashevsky and translated by Matvei Yankelevich, Thomas Epstein, Genya Turovskaya
, Eugene Ostashevsky and Ilya Bernstein.), including not only prose, but plays, poetry, and philosophical tracts and treatises, with an introduction by Eugene Ostashevsky (not Susan Sontag
, who is on some websites advertised as the author of the foreword). An English translation of a collection of his works, translated by Matvei Yankelevich, was published in 2007. Its title is Today I Wrote Nothing and includes poems, plays, short prose pieces, and his novella "The Old Woman".
Some poems were also translated by Roman Turovsky.
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....
-era surrealist and absurdist
Absurdist fiction
Absurdist fiction is a genre of literature, most often employed in novels, plays or poems, that focuses on the experiences of characters in a situation where they cannot find any inherent purpose in life, most often represented by ultimately meaningless actions and events...
poet
Poet
A poet is a person who writes poetry. A poet's work can be literal, meaning that his work is derived from a specific event, or metaphorical, meaning that his work can take on many meanings and forms. Poets have existed since antiquity, in nearly all languages, and have produced works that vary...
, writer
Writer
A writer is a person who produces literature, such as novels, short stories, plays, screenplays, poetry, or other literary art. Skilled writers are able to use language to portray ideas and images....
and dramatist. One of his pseudonyms, which was signed in Latin alphabet, was Daniel Charms.
Life
Daniil Ivanovich Yuvachev (Даниил Иванович Ювачёв) was born in St. Petersburg, into the family of Ivan YuvachevIvan Yuvachev
Ivan Pavlovich Yuvachev was a narodovolets, a member of The People's Will revolutionary organization that assassinated Tsar Alexander II, after seven failed assassination attempts...
, a well known member of the revolutionary group The People's Will. By this time the elder Yuvachev had already been imprisoned for his involvement in subversive acts against the tsar Alexander III
Alexander III of Russia
Alexander Alexandrovich Romanov , historically remembered as Alexander III or Alexander the Peacemaker reigned as Emperor of Russia from until his death on .-Disposition:...
and had become a religious philosopher, acquaintance of Anton Chekhov
Anton Chekhov
Anton Pavlovich Chekhov was a Russian physician, dramatist and author who is considered to be among the greatest writers of short stories in history. His career as a dramatist produced four classics and his best short stories are held in high esteem by writers and critics...
during the latter's trip to Sakhalin
Sakhalin
Sakhalin or Saghalien, is a large island in the North Pacific, lying between 45°50' and 54°24' N.It is part of Russia, and is Russia's largest island, and is administered as part of Sakhalin Oblast...
.
Daniil invented the pseudonym Kharms while attending high school at the prestigious German "Peterschule", probably influenced by his fascination with Arthur Conan Doyle
Arthur Conan Doyle
Sir Arthur Ignatius Conan Doyle DL was a Scottish physician and writer, most noted for his stories about the detective Sherlock Holmes, generally considered a milestone in the field of crime fiction, and for the adventures of Professor Challenger...
's Sherlock Holmes
Sherlock Holmes
Sherlock Holmes is a fictional detective created by Scottish author and physician Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. The fantastic London-based "consulting detective", Holmes is famous for his astute logical reasoning, his ability to take almost any disguise, and his use of forensic science skills to solve...
. While at the Peterschule, he learned the rudiments of both English and German, and it may have been the English "harm" and "charm" that he incorporated into "Kharms". Throughout his career Kharms used variations on his name and the pseudonyms DanDan, Khorms, Charms, Shardam, and Kharms-Shardam, among others. It is rumored that he scribbled the name Kharms directly into his passport.
In 1924, he entered the Leningrad Electrotechnicum, from which he was expelled for "lack of activity in social activities". After his expulsion, he gave himself over entirely to literature. He joined the circle of Aleksandr Tufanov, a sound-poet, and follower of Velemir Khlebnikov's ideas of zaum
Zaum
Zaum is a word used to describe the linguistic experiments in sound symbolism and language creation of Russian Futurist poets such as Velimir Khlebnikov and Aleksei Kruchenykh....
(or trans-sense) poetry. He met the young poet Alexander Vvedensky at this time, and the two became close friends and inseparable 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 and had a great success.
In 1928, Daniil Kharms founded the avant-garde collective OBERIU
Oberiu
OBERIU was a short-lived avant-garde collective of Russian Futurist writers, musicians, and artists in the 1920s and 1930s...
, or Union of Real Art. He embraced the new movements of Russian Futurism
Russian Futurism
Russian Futurism is the term used to denote a group of Russian poets and artists who adopted the principles of Filippo Marinetti's "Manifesto of Futurism"...
laid out by his idols, Khlebnikov, Kazimir Malevich
Kazimir Malevich
Kazimir Severinovich Malevich was a Russian painter and art theoretician, born of ethnic Polish parents. He was a pioneer of geometric abstract art and the originator of the Avant-garde Suprematist movement.-Early life:...
, 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 the intrinsic meaning to be found in objects and words outside of their practical function.
By the late 1920s, his antirational verse, nonlinear theatrical performances, and public displays of decadent and illogical behavior earned Kharms — who always dressed like an English dandy with a calabash pipe — the reputation of being a talented but highly eccentric “fool” or “crazy-man” in Leningrad cultural circles.
Even then, in the late 20s, despite rising criticism of the OBERIU performances and diatribes against the avant-garde in the press, Kharms nurtured a fantasy of uniting the progressive artists and writers of the time (Malevich, Filonov, Terentiev, Vladimir Mayakovsky
Vladimir Mayakovsky
Vladimir Vladimirovich Mayakovsky was a Russian and Soviet poet and playwright, among the foremost representatives of early-20th century Russian Futurism.- Early life :...
, Kaverin, Zamyatin
Yevgeny Zamyatin
Yevgeny Ivanovich Zamyatin was a Russian author of science fiction and political satire. Despite having been a prominent Old Bolshevik, Zamyatin was deeply disturbed by the policies pursued by the CPSU following the October Revolution...
) with leading Russian Formalist critics (Tynianov, Shklovsky, Eikhenbaum, Ginzburg, etc.,) and a younger generation of writers (all from the OBERIU crowd—Alexander Vvedensky, Konstantin Vaginov
Konstantin Vaginov
Konstantin Konstantinovich Vaginov was a Russian poet and novelist. In twenties he was a member of almost all the poetic groups of Saint Petersburg. In 1921 he joined Nikolai Gumilyov's Guild of Poets....
, Nikolai Zabolotsky, Igor Bakhterev), to form a cohesive cultural movement of Left Art. Needless to say it didn't happen that way.
Kharms was arrested in 1931 together with Vvedensky, Tufanov and some other writers, and was in exile from his hometown (forced to live in the city of Kursk
Kursk
Kursk is a city and the administrative center of Kursk Oblast, Russia, located at the confluence of the Kur, Tuskar, and Seym Rivers. The area around Kursk was site of a turning point in the Russian-German struggle during World War II and the site of the largest tank battle in history...
) 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 an evidence. Soviet authorities, having become increasingly hostile toward the avant-garde in general, deemed Kharms’ writing for children anti-Soviet because of its absurd logic and its refusal to instill materialist and social Soviet values.
He 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 very private writing life. He wrote for the desk drawer, for his wife, Marina Malich, and for a small group of friends, the “Chinari”, who met privately to discuss matters of philosophy, music, mathematics, and literature.
In the 1930s, as the mainstream Soviet literature was becoming more and more conservative under the guidelines of Socialist Realism
Socialist realism
Socialist realism is a style of realistic art which was developed in the Soviet Union and became a dominant style in other communist countries. Socialist realism is a teleologically-oriented style having its purpose the furtherance of the goals of socialism and communism...
, Kharms found refuge in children's literature
Children's literature
Children's literature is for readers and listeners up to about age twelve; it is often defined in four different ways: books written by children, books written for children, books chosen by children, or books chosen for children. It is often illustrated. The term is used in senses which sometimes...
. (He had worked under Marshak at DetGiz, the state-owned children's publishing house since the mid-1920s, writing new material and translating children literature from the west, including Wilhelm Busch
Wilhelm Busch
Wilhelm Busch was an influential German caricaturist, painter, and poet who is famed for his satirical picture stories with rhymed texts....
's Max and Moritz). Many of his poems and short stories for children, published in the Chizh (Чиж), Yozh (Ëж), Sverchok (Сверчок) and Oktyabryata (Октябрята) magazines, are considered classics of the genre and his roughly twenty children's books are well known and loved by kids to this day, - despite his personal deep disgust for children, unknown to the public - whereas his "adult" writing was not published during his lifetime with the sole exceptions of two early poems. Still, these were lean times and his honorariums didn't quite pay the bills, plus the editors in the children's publishing sector were suffering under extreme pressure and censorship and some were disposed of during Stalin's
Joseph Stalin
Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin was the Premier of the Soviet Union from 6 May 1941 to 5 March 1953. He was among the Bolshevik revolutionaries who brought about the October Revolution and had held the position of first General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union's Central Committee...
purges.
Thus, Kharms lived in debt and hunger for several years until his final arrest on suspicion of treason in the summer of 1941 (most people with a previous arrest were being picked up by the NKVD
NKVD
The People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs was the public and secret police organization of the Soviet Union that directly executed the rule of power of the Soviets, including political repression, during the era of Joseph Stalin....
in those times). He was imprisoned in the psychiatric ward at Leningrad Prison No. 1. and died in his cell in February, 1942—most likely, from starvation, as the Nazi blockade of Leningrad
Siege of Leningrad
The Siege of Leningrad, also known as the Leningrad Blockade was a prolonged military operation resulting from the failure of the German Army Group North to capture Leningrad, now known as Saint Petersburg, in the Eastern Front theatre of World War II. It started on 8 September 1941, when the last...
had already begun. His work was saved from 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
Samizdat
Samizdat was a key form of dissident activity across the Soviet bloc in which individuals reproduced censored publications by hand and passed the documents from reader to reader...
.
His reputation in the 20th century in Russia was largely based on his widely beloved work for children. His other writings (a vast assortment of stories, miniatures, plays, poems, and pseudo-scientific, philosophical investigations) were virtually unknown until 1970's, and not published officially in Russia until "glasnost
Glasnost
Glasnost was the policy of maximal publicity, openness, and transparency in the activities of all government institutions in the Soviet Union, together with freedom of information, introduced by Mikhail Gorbachev in the second half of the 1980s...
".
Works
Kharms' stories are typically brief vignetteVignette (literature)
In theatrical script writing, sketch stories, and poetry, a vignette is a short impressionistic scene that focuses on one moment or gives a trenchant impression about a character, an idea, or a setting and sometimes an object...
s (see also short prose
Short prose
Short prose is a generic term for various kinds of very short fictional prose; short prose may or may not be narrative. Short prose pieces are considerably shorter than a short story, i.e., usually less than c. 1,000 words...
and feuilleton
Feuilleton
Feuilleton was originally a kind of supplement attached to the political portion of French newspapers, consisting chiefly of non-political news and gossip, literature and art criticism, a chronicle of the latest fashions, and epigrams, charades and other literary trifles...
) 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
Nikolai Gogol
Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol was a Ukrainian-born Russian dramatist and novelist.Considered by his contemporaries one of the preeminent figures of the natural school of Russian literary realism, later critics have found in Gogol's work a fundamentally romantic sensibility, with strains of Surrealism...
tripping over each other; Count Leo Tolstoy
Leo Tolstoy
Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy was a Russian writer who primarily wrote novels and short stories. Later in life, he also wrote plays and essays. His two most famous works, the novels War and Peace and Anna Karenina, are acknowledged as two of the greatest novels of all time and a pinnacle of realist...
showing his chamber pot to the world; Pushkin and his sons falling off their chairs; etc.)
He was married twice (to Esther Rusakova and Marina Malich). His wives sometimes appear in those of his poems that are lyrical or erotic.
The poet often professed his extreme abhorrence of children and pets, as well as old people; his career as a children's writer notwithstanding.
Kharms' world is unpredictable and disordered; characters repeat the same actions many times in succession or otherwise behave irrationally; linear stories start to develop but are interrupted in midstream by inexplicable catastrophes that send them in completely different directions.
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.
Kharms' adult works were picked up by Russian samizdat
Samizdat
Samizdat was a key form of dissident activity across the Soviet bloc in which individuals reproduced censored publications by hand and passed the documents from reader to reader...
starting around the 1960s, and thereby did have an influence on the growing "unofficial" arts scene. (Moscow Conceptualist artists and writers such as Kabakov, Prigov, Rubinstein, were influenced by this newly found avant-garde predecessor).
A complete collection of his works was published in Bremen as four volumes, in 1978-1988. In Russia, Kharms works were widely published only from the late 1980s. Now several editions of Kharms's collected works and selected volumes have been published in Russia, and collections are now available in German, French and Italian. In 2004 a selection of his works appeared in Irish.
As for English translations—oddly, many have appeared of late in American literary journals. In the 1970s George Gibbian at Cornell published the first English collection of OBERIU writing, which included stories and a play by Daniil Kharms and one play by Alexander Vvedensky. Gibbian's translations appeared in Annex Press
Annex Press
ANNEX PRESS is an experimental small press founded in 1973 by Julian Kabza, publisher, editor. In the 1970s and 80's, Annex published work of new music documentation, conceptual art and texts by French, Russian and American experimental writers: Bob Perelman, Blue Gene Tyranny, Ron Silliman,...
magazine in 1978. In the early 1990s a slim selected volume translated into British English by Neil Cornwell came out in England. New translations of all the members of the OBERIU group (and their closely knit group of friends, the Chinari) appeared in Summer, 2006 in the USA (OBERIU: An Anthology of Russian Absurdism, containing poetry, drama and prose by Alexander Vvedensky, Daniil Kharms, Nikolai Zabolotsky, Nikolai Oleinikov, Leonid Lipavsky and Yakov Druskin, edited Eugene Ostashevsky and translated by Matvei Yankelevich, Thomas Epstein, Genya Turovskaya
Genya Turovskaya
Genya Turovskaya is an American poet, born in Ukraine. Her work has been published in many journals and literary reviews. She received various awards and fellowships, such as a MacDowell Colony Fellowship, a Montana Artist Refuge Fellowship, the Witter Bynner Translation Residency at Santa Fe Art...
, Eugene Ostashevsky and Ilya Bernstein.), including not only prose, but plays, poetry, and philosophical tracts and treatises, with an introduction by Eugene Ostashevsky (not Susan Sontag
Susan Sontag
Susan Sontag was an American author, literary theorist, feminist and political activist whose works include On Photography and Against Interpretation.-Life:...
, who is on some websites advertised as the author of the foreword). An English translation of a collection of his works, translated by Matvei Yankelevich, was published in 2007. Its title is Today I Wrote Nothing and includes poems, plays, short prose pieces, and his novella "The Old Woman".
Some poems were also translated by Roman Turovsky.
Influence
- Beginning in 1970's many of Kharms' children's texts were set to music, and were often heard on the radio.
- The Russian-American jazz pianist Simon NabatovSimon NabatovSimon Nabatov is a jazz pianist.He began playing at three and his first composition was at six. He began his professional career in Rome in 1979 and later attended the Juilliard School. In 1984 Keyboard Magazine named him Best Pianist. In 1989 he left New York City, where he had settled, for Cologne...
has released a CD of settings of Kharms' texts, entitled A Few Incidences (with singer Phil MintonPhil MintonPhil Minton is a jazz/free-improvising vocalist and trumpeter.Minton is a highly dramatic baritone who tends to specialize in literary texts: he has sung lyrics by William Blake with Mike Westbrook's group, Daniil Kharms and Joseph Brodsky with Simon Nabatov, and extracts from James Joyce's...
).
- Ted MiltonTed MiltonTed Milton is an English poet and musician, best known for leading the Blurt, an experimental jazz-rock group.Milton grew up in Africa, Canada and Great Britain. He published some early poems in magazines like Paris Review...
staged a performance around Kharms' texts, entitled In Kharms Way (with laptop musician Sam Britton).
- The band Esthetic EducationEsthetic educationEsthetic Education is a rock band based in Kiev, Ukraine. Its present members are Louis Franck , Dmytro Shurov , Yuriy Khustochka , Illya Halushko , and Andriy Nadolsky...
composed his poem Juravli I Korabli. It appeared on their debut album Face ReadingFace ReadingFace Reading is the debut album of Esthetic Education. It was recorded in 2004 and first released on December 29, 2004.- Original 2004 release :# “Gonzo the Clown” – 2:43# “Beautiful” – 3:22# “Mr...
, and on their live album Live at RingLive at RingLive at Ring is Esthetic Education's live album recorded on 10 February 2006 in Kiev's club Ring, and was released in June 2006.-Track listing:All songs by Louis Franck/Dima Shurov/Yury Hustochka, except where noted.# "Machine"# "Ordinary Saturday"...
.
- Composer Haflidi HallgrimssonHaflidi HallgrímssonHafliði Hallgrímsson is an Icelandic composer, currently living in Edinburgh. Hallgrímsson was the Principal Cellist of the Scottish Chamber Orchestra, but left that position in 1983 to pursue a full-time career as a composer...
has composed music featuring Daniil Kharms writings translated into English.
External links
Biography Article on Kharms Festival in Petersburg Translations of Mini-Stories in English From Kharm's Notebook A scholarly article on Malevich that explores connection to Kharms selected poems, in English 31 plays in English and Russian Biography, selected works, in English and Russian Selected short stories in English Selected short stories, poems, letters, biography and other information in Russian (some information in English as well)- Works by Daniil KharmsEnglish translations of 4 poetic and 2 prose miniatures "Danill Kharms and Sherlock Holmes: Between Imitation and Deconstruction" by Lisanne Sauerwald, Clues: A Journal of Detection 28.2 (2010)