Born in St. Petersburg in 1905, Daniil Kharms was one of the founders, in 1928, of OBERIU, or Association of Real Art, an avant-garde group of writers and artists who embraced the ideas of the Futurists and believed that art should operate outside the rules of logic. In his lifetime, Kharms produced several works for children, but his writing for adults was not published. In 1931, Kharms was charged with anti-Soviet activities and briefly exiled from Leningrad. In 1941, he was arrested by the N.K.V.D. for making “defeatist statements”; sentenced to incarceration in the psychiatric ward of a prison hospital, he died of starvation the following year, during the siege of Leningrad. It wasn’t until the late nineteen-seventies that Kharms’s playful and poetic work began to appear in mainstream publications in Russia. Several books followed, as did festivals in Kharms’s honor and critical comparisons to Beckett, Camus, and Ionesco. The following texts have never been published in English.
At two o’clock on Nevsky Prospekt, or, rather, on the Avenue of October 25th, nothing of note occurred. No, no, that man who has stopped near the Coliseum is there purely by accident. Maybe his bootlace came untied, or maybe he wanted to light a cigarette. Or something else entirely! He’s just a visitor and doesn’t know where to go. But where are his things? Wait, he’s raising his head for some reason, as if to look into the third floor, or even the fourth, maybe even the fifth. No, look, he simply sneezed, and now he’s on his way again. He slouches a little and his shoulders are hunched. His green overcoat flaps in the wind. Just now he turned onto Nadezhdenskaya and disappeared around the corner.
A shoeshine man with Eastern features stared after him and smoothed his fluffy mustache with his hand.
His overcoat was long and thick, of a purple hue, either plaid or striped, or maybe, damn it all, polka dot.
(1931)
How strange, how indescribably strange, that behind the wall, this very wall, there’s a man with an angry face sitting on the floor with his legs stretched out, wearing red boots.
If one could only punch a hole in the wall and look through it, one would see right away that this angry man is sitting there.
But it’s better not to think about him. What is he? Is he not a particle of a dead life that has drifted in from the imaginary void? Whoever he may be, God be with him.
(1931)
We lived in two rooms. My friend had the smaller room, while I had a rather large room, three windows across. My friend would go out all day and come back only to spend the night. As for me, I was in my room all the time, and if I went out it was either to the post office or to buy something for dinner. In addition, I had a case of dry pleurisy, which gave me all the more reason to stay put.
I like being alone. But then a month went by, and I got sick of my solitude. Books didn’t entertain me, and I often sat at my desk for long stretches without writing a line. I would pick up my book again, leaving the page blank. And in that sickly state on top of everything! In short, I started to sulk.
The city I lived in at that time was loathsome to me. It stood on a hill, and everywhere you looked it was like a picture postcard. I became so disgusted with those views that I was happier to stay at home. And, really, apart from the post office, the market, and the store, there was nowhere to go.
And so I sat at home like a hermit.
There were days when I ate nothing. On those days I would try to manufacture a joyous mood for myself. I would lie down on my bed and smile. I’d smile for twenty minutes at a time, but then the smile would turn into a yawn. That was not at all pleasant. I would open my mouth just enough to make a smile, but it would open wider and I’d yawn. I’d start daydreaming.
I saw before me an earthen jug full of milk and pieces of fresh bread. And myself sitting at a desk and writing quickly. On the desk, the chairs, and the bed were sheets of paper covered in writing. And I wrote more and more, winking and smiling at my ideas. And how nice that nearby was the bread and the milk and a walnut snuffbox full of tobacco!
I opened the window and looked out at the garden. Violet and yellow flowers grew right next to the house. Tobacco was also growing, and a big military-chestnut tree stood farther away. And, over there, the beginning of an orchard.
It was very quiet. Only trains whistled under the mountain.
Today I couldn’t do anything. I paced the room, then sat down at the desk, but soon I’d rise and switch to the rocking chair. I’d pick up a book and right away discard it, and pace the room again.
I suddenly had the impression that I had forgotten something, some incident or important word.
I painstakingly tried to remember this word, and it seemed to me that it began with the letter “M.” No, no! Not with an “M” at all but with an “R.”
Reason? Rapture? Rectangle? Rib? Or: Mind? Misery? Matter?
I was making coffee and singing to myself all the words that started with “R.” Oh, what a tremendous number of words I made up beginning with the letter “R”! Perhaps among them was that one word, but I didn’t recognize it, taking it to be the same as all the others.
Then again, perhaps that word didn’t come up.
(1932-33)
A neck stuck out of the collar of the fool’s shirt, and on the neck was a head. The head was at one time closely cropped. By now the hair had grown out like a brush. The fool talked about a lot of things. No one listened to him. Everyone thought, When will he shut up and leave? But the fool, noticing nothing, continued talking and laughing.
Finally, Elbov couldn’t stand it any longer and went up to the fool and said, curtly and viciously, “Make yourself scarce this very minute.” The fool looked around, at a loss, without a clue to what was going on. Elbov gave the fool a clout on the ear. The fool flew out of his chair and dropped to the floor. Elbov gave the fool a kick and he went flying through the doorway and rolled down the stairs.
——
So it is in life: a fool through and through, and yet he wants to express himself. He needs to be punched in the snout. That’s right—in the snout!
Everywhere I look I see this foolish mug of a convict. A boot in the snout is what he needs.
(1934)
A window with a drawn curtain was getting brighter and brighter because the day was beginning. The floors squeaked, the doors creaked, chairs were being moved around in apartments. Climbing out of bed, Ruzhetsky fell on the floor and smashed his face. He was in a rush to get to work, so he went outside, covering his face with his hands. His hands made it hard for him to see where he was going. Twice he bumped into an advertising kiosk; then he shoved some old man in a vinyl hat with fur earflaps, which sent the old man into such a fury that a janitor, who happened to be in proximity, because he was trying to catch a cat with a shovel, said to the increasingly agitated old man, “Shame on you, Gramps, for making so much trouble at your age.”
(1935)
A Frenchman was given a couch, four chairs, and an armchair. The Frenchman sat down on the chair by the window, but then he wanted to lie around on the couch. The Frenchman sat on the couch, but then he wanted to sit awhile in the armchair. The Frenchman got up from the couch and sat down in the armchair like a king, but in his own head he already had thoughts like: It’s a bit too opulent in the armchair; better to be a little plainer, on the chair. The Frenchman switched to the chair by the window, but he was restless in this chair, because there was a kind of draft coming from the window. The Frenchman switched to the chair near the stove and realized that he was tired. Then the Frenchman decided to lie down on the couch and rest, but before he made it to the couch he veered off to the side and sat down in the armchair.
“Now, that’s good!” the Frenchman said, but right away he added, “But it’s probably better on the couch.”
(Late nineteen-thirties)
Marina told me that one Sharik visited her in bed. Who, or what, this Sharik was I couldn’t for the life of me determine.
A few days later, this Sharik visited again. Then he started coming quite often, about every three days.
——
I was not at home. When I came home, Marina told me that Cinderyushkin had called on the phone asking for me. Apparently, if you can believe it, some Cinderyushkin wanted me!
——
Marina bought some apples. We ate a few after dinner and left maybe two apples for later that evening. But in the evening, when I wanted to claim my apple, the apple was not to be found. Marina said that Misha the waiter had come by and taken the apples away for a salad. He didn’t need the cores, so he had cleaned the apples right there in our room and thrown the cores away in the wastepaper basket.
——
I found out that Sharik, Cinderyushkin, and Misha usually live in our stove. It’s hard for me to comprehend how they got settled in there.
——
I was asking Marina about Sharik, Cinderyushkin, and Misha. Marina tried to avoid giving me any straight answers. When I let her know of my fear that this company was possibly not completely good-natured, Marina assured me that, in any case, they were “Golden Hearts.” I could get nothing more out of Marina.
——
Over time, I learned that the Golden Hearts had not all had the same level of education. To be honest, Sharik had received a high-school education, and Cinderyushkin and Misha had received none at all. Sharik had even written some scholarly works. And for that reason his attitude toward the rest of the Golden Hearts was somewhat haughty.
I was very curious as to what sort of scholarly works these were. But that remained unknown. Marina said that he had been born with a pen in his hand, but didn’t divulge any more details of his scholarly activities. I began to suss it out and, finally, I learned that he was in the cobbler’s line of work. Whether this had anything to do with his scholarly activity I was unable to determine.
——
Once, I learned that the Golden Hearts had had a party. They’d pooled their money and bought a marinated eel. Misha had even brought a jar of vodka. It should be said: Misha likes to drink.
——
Sharik’s boots were made out of cork.
——
One evening Marina told me that Cinderyushkin called me a troublemaker because I’d stepped on his foot. I also got angry and asked Marina to pass on to Cinderyushkin that he should stay out of my way.
(1935-36)
When sleep is running away from a man, and the man lies on his bed, dumbly stretching out his legs, while nearby a clock ticks on the nightstand and sleep is running away from the clock, then it seems to the man that an immense black window opens wide before him and that his thin little gray human soul is going to fly out through this window and his lifeless body will stay lying on the bed, dumbly stretching out its legs, and the clock will ring its quiet bell: “Yet another man has fallen asleep.” At that moment, the immense and utterly black window will swing shut with a bang.
A man by the last name of Oknov was lying on his bed, dumbly stretching out his legs, trying to fall asleep. But sleep was running away from Oknov. Oknov lay with his eyes open, and frightening thoughts knocked inside his increasingly wooden head.
(1938) ♦
(Translated, from the Russian, by Matvei Yankelevich, with Simona Schneider and Eugene Ostaeshevsky.)
EDITORS’ NOTE: The name of one of the translators of “So It Is in Life,” by Daniil Kharms, was misspelled. He is Eugene Ostashevsky.
