Back in June 2016, I was captivated by a programme on BBC Radio 4 about the Russian absurdist writer Daniil Kharms. It chimed not only with me, but I felt with the times we find ourselves in, and ever since, I have been devouring his work.
Daniil Kharms – with thanks to an excellent piece by Chris Cumming
Kharms was born in 1905 and died in 1942 – a suppressed Soviet-era surrealist and absurdist avant-garde writer. Much of his work was not published during his lifetime, but was saved to be rediscovered in the 1960s and 1970s. During the twentieth century, he was better known for his writing for children, which was tolerated by the authorities. That toleration by the authorities didn’t last forever though, and he died of starvation on the psychiatric ward of a Soviet prison. It was said he simulated insanity to avoid execution – but who can be sure?
You will find plenty of reviews and discussions of Kharms’ legacy on the internet (see below), but in the same way that I was transfixed by the playfulness of his work by the BBC Radio 4 programme, I wanted to share some of that excitement by reading a small number of his very short pieces.
Neat Widget Mic (left) and H5 digital recorder (right)
The first four are recorded on a new desk mic I’ve bought which gives pretty good quality, but the remaining are on my digital H5 recorder which I’m trying properly for the first time here – a humdinger of a crystal clear sound (I can’t guarantee the quality of my voice!)
Tumbling Old Women is probably the best known of his works, and the one that really caught my ear first.
Fedya Davidovich embraces butter and toe clippings – which pretty much sounds like the story of my life!
Four Legged Crow spits at you – and pretty much hits the nail on the head about the state of relations on Twitter right now.
The Connection puts life in some philosophical context with the aid of a bed-bug.
An Incident on the Street is typical of his writings where an incident is seemingly leading us one way, only to lead us nowhere at all.
The Death of a Little Man vividly captures an important moment in a man’s life – his end. No niceties or unnecessary gore – just as it comes.
How One Man Fell to Pieces seems to be a lesson about getting carried away, all the while showing that things still carry on as normal when we do, whether that be the use of the dustpan usually reserved for clearing horse manure, or the sweet smell of ‘puffy’ ladies.
Blue Notebook #10 is another signature piece of his writing, beginning by writing about one thing, but by the end of it, because the piece contains none of the things it was intending to cover, the writer either gives up and walks away (as in this case) – or dumps something completely different into the text.
Most of his works are hard to come by now, and a little on the expensive side, as I have found to my cost. I can recommend “Today I Wrote Nothing” if any of the above plants a seed with you – available from Amazon and AbeBooks. It is ‘hit and miss’ – a lot of the work can be more hard going or completely obscure, but that is also part of the charm of it. There are are great reviews in the New York Times and in the London Review of Books.
As someone recently said on one of the UK’s soaps, “You only had to give her a cassette player and a block of cheese and she thought she was in heaven.” That’s pretty much how Kharms has made me feel of late. Thank you for indulging me.
Common 
Oh wow, thanks for this! I keep meaning to read his stuff. I love Gogol and Kafka etc so I think I’ll love it