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The Ordinary, the Sacred, and the Grotesque in Daniil Kharms's The Old Woman

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 January 2017

Alice Stone Nakhimovsky
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Extract

The work of Daniil Kharms was lost to the West for many years. A poet and black humorist, creator of Russia's short-lived literature of the absurd, Kharms shared the fate of many of his contemporaries. His work, which was passed from hand to hand after his disappearance in 1941, began to surface in print only in the late 1960s. But in spite of a number of recent publications, Kharms remains largely unknown and misunderstood. His eccentric, often grotesque stories are too easily dismissed as lacking depth. Part of this misunderstanding stems from an incomplete knowledge of Kharms's work: because Western readers are limited to published materials, they are unable to perceive the strong religious strain that underlies much of Kharms's writing.

Type
Articles
Information
Slavic Review , Volume 37 , Issue 2 , June 1978 , pp. 203 - 216
Copyright
Copyright © Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies. 1978

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References

1. The most important is certainly Daniil, Kharms, Isbrannoc, ed. and with an intro. by George Gibian (Wiirzburg : Jal-Verlag, 1974)Google Scholar. This book, the first large-scale publication of Kharms's work in the original is marred by some textual errors, the result of difficulties involved in obtaining and correcting typed manuscripts. The poetry is taken principally from Kharms's early works and tends to give a mistaken impression of his poetry as a whole. In the Soviet Union, A. Aleksandrov, M. Meilakh, and V. Erl1 have published selections of Kharms's poetry and prose, and Meilakh is presently preparing a major publication of Kharms's collected works. The first appearance of Kharms's work in English translation is the anthology, Russia's Lost Literature of the Absurd, trans, and ed. George Gibian (Ithaca and London : Cornell University Press, 1971). Aleksandrov, A. and Meilakh, M.'s article, “Tvorchestvo Daniila Kharmsa,” in Matcrialy XXII nauchnoi studcncheskoi konferentsii (Tartii : Tartuskii Gosudarstvennyi Universitet, 1967 Google Scholar, was the first critical introduction to Kharms's work. A. Flaker's article, “O rasskazakh Daniila Kharmsa,” in Ceskolovenskd rusistika, 14 (1969), is an analysis of Kharms's happenings and very short stories. Critical observations can also be found as introductions to publications of Kharms's work in Soviet journals, such as Aleksandrov, A, “Iumoristicheskie paradoksy Daniila Kharmsa,” Voprosy literatury, 1973, no. 12 Google Scholar. Kharms's early literary activities are mentioned in several articles on Oberiu : Aleksandrov, A, “Oberiu : Predvaritel'nye zametki,” Českoslovcnská rusistika, 13 (1968)Google Scholar; Milner-Gulland, R. R., ‘“Left Art’ in Leningrad : The Oberiu Declaration,” Oxford Slavonic Papers, n.s., vol. 3 (Oxford : Clarendon Press, 1970 Google Scholar; and M. Arndt, “Oberiu, “ Grani, no. 81 (1971).

2. Note, for example, Clarence Brown's review of George Gibian's anthology, Russia's Lost Literature of the Absurd : “In official Soviet reference works the ob“eriuty are put down as writers for children. This is a half-truth, distorted for the usual ideological reasons, but about Xarms it is not far from being the truth tout court” (Slavic and East European Journal, 17, no. 3 [Fall 1973] : 339).

3. Alexander Vvedenskii (1905-41) was an absurdist poet and dramatist. Like his close friend Kharms, with whom he is often paired, Vvedenskii was involved in Oberiu, did his best work after the association disbanded, and published almost nothing during his lifetime. Some of Vvedenskii's work (much more extreme than Kharms's) has been published (see Aleksandr Vvedenskii, Izbrannoe, ed. Wolfgang Kasack [Munich : Verlag Otto Sagner in Kommission, 1974]).

4. Only a few first-rate works from this period have survived, among them the play Elizaveta Bam and several poems. (Many works have been lost.) Kharms's poetry of this period constitutes an interesting experiment in syntactic and narrative fragmentation which is largely abandoned in his later works.

5. Letter of September 21, 1933; copy in author's possession.

6. The philosopher la. S. Druskin was one of the few figures close to the oberiuty to survive. At least one of Kharms's own works is dedicated to Druskin, as is Sergei Slonimskii's musical setting of Kharms's children's poetry. Druskin's philosophical essays have not been published.

7. “la idu po Liteinomu“; photocopy in author's possession. All further excerpts from Kharms's work are taken from unpublished materials with the exception of quotes from The Old Woman, published in Kharms, Isbrannoe.

8. Kharms, Izbrannoe, pp. 132-33.

9. George Gibian mentions this incident in the introduction to Kharms, Izbrannoe, p. 37. There are two more aspects worth noting : First, the significance of the incident is not only metaphoric, it has an important place in the development of events : because the pot cracks, they eat the frankfurters raw, as a result of which the narrator gets stomach cramps and has to spend his train ride in the toilet, thus allowing his suitcase to be stolen. Second, both this. incident and the narrator's eventual breakthrough are foreshadowed in’ his reason for going home after he first sees the old woman : he forgot to turn off his electric stove.

10. See, for example, “Sviaz',” in Kharms, Izbrannoe, p. 123.

11. Kharms, Izbrannoe, p. 151.

12. The wording saloshil ruki za spinu appeared earlier in reference to Sakerdon Mikhailovich, though the old woman's hands were behind her back as well. The phrase golova opushchena na grud’ was used earlier to describe the old woman.

13. “la dolgo smotrel na zelenye derev'ia,” in Kharms, Izbrannoe, p. 256. Gibian notes the resemblance in his introduction to the volume on page 36.

14. Kharms, Isbrannoe, p. 153 (as corrected by A. Nakhimovsky).

15. The sociological overtones involved in the (intellectual) narrator's fear of the workers and little boys on the street should be noted. The overtones are more explicit in the continuation of “I am walking along Liteinyi.” Many of Kharms's happenings, particularly those involving predator and victim, have a discernible class bias.

16. Kharms, Izbrannoe, p. 141.

17. It is widely known that belief in God and belief in immortality are frequently linked in Dostoevsky : “Their whole lives they didn't know each other, and when they leave the inn they won't know each other for another forty years,” says Ivan Karamazov to Alesha. “Well, and what will they discuss when they've seized a minute in some inn? The eternal questions, of course—is there a God, is there immortality?” ( Dostoevskii, F. M., Brat'ia Karamasovy, in Sobranie sochinenii v desiati tomakh, vol. 10 [Moscow, 1958], p. 293 Google Scholar). See also ibid., pp. 170-71 (conversation between Fedor Karamazov, Ivan, and Alesha); and ibid., p. 91 (Miusov's reiteration of Ivan's beliefs). There is nothing particularly Dostoevskian in Kharms's treatment beyond the rapidity with which these questions become the primary topic of conversation. There is, however, a delightful similarity between a statement made about Stavrogin (“If Stavrogin believes, then he doesn't believe that he believes. And if he doesn't believe, then he doesn't believe that he doesn't believe” [ Dostoevskii, F. M., Besy, in Sobranie sochinenii v desiati tomakh, vol. 7, p. 640 Google Scholar]); and Sakerdon Mikhailovich's skeptical retort in The Old Woman (“That means, those who don't want to believe already believe in something. And those who want to believe, believe in nothing from the very start“).

18. Kharms, Isbrannoe, p. 163.

19. Ibid.

20. Perhaps this is why the miracle worker of the narrator's own manuscript does not perform cheap tricks : “He knows that he is a miracle worker and can work any miracle he wants, but he doesn't do this. They throw him out of his apartment. He knows that all he has to do is wave his finger and the apartment will be his, but he doesn't do this, he meekly leaves the apartment and goes to live in a shed outside of town. He can turn the shed into a beautiful brick house, but he doesn't do it—he continues living in the shed and finally dies, not having performed a single miracle in his life.“

21. Kharms, Isbronnoe, p. 165.