ABOUT THIS BOOK

A writer who defies categorization, Daniil Kharms has come to be regarded as an essential artist of the modernist avant-garde. His writing, which partakes of performance, narrative, poetry, and visual elements, was largely suppressed during his lifetime, which ended in a psychiatric ward where he starved to death during the siege of Leningrad. His work, which survived mostly in notebooks, can now be seen as one of the pillars of absurdist literature, most explicitly manifested in the 1920s and ’30s Soviet Union by the OBERIU group, which inherited the mantle of Russian futurism from such poets as Vladimir Mayakovsky and Velimir Khlebnikov. This selection of prose and poetry provides the most comprehensive portrait of the writer in English translation to date, revealing the arc of his career and including a particularly generous selection of his later work.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY

DANIIL KHARMS (1905–1942) was a major figure in twentieth-century Russian and Soviet literature. An enigmatic and genre-bending artist, he was among the most significant voices in what came to be known as the literature of Russian absurdism.

ALEX CIGALE was awarded an NEA Literary Translation Fellowship in 2015. His translations from Russian and his original poetry in English have appeared in such journals as the New England Review, PEN America, TriQuarterly, and World Literature Today.

REVIEWS

"Reading this book makes me want to put myself in Kharms’s way." —Gary Shteyngart, author of The Russian Debutante’s Handbook, Absurdistan, and Super Sad True Love Story

"If the prospect of reading a minimalist, absurdist, surrealist Russian intimidates, Cigale’s translation should help allay those fears. His agile rendering of Kharms’s work is as fine a representation in English as I’ve seen of the ambiguity, shading, and tense-shifting that typifies Russian prose, aspects that English translations too often muddle." —Il’ja Rákoš, The Millions

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"Russian Absurd is not only a fitting introduction to Kharms, but it should inspire readers to seek out other translations by Alex Cigale, who was awarded a 2015 NEA Literary Translation Fellowship." —Rain Taxi

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"...lively and funny... a profound and subtle testament to Kharms." —Times Literary Supplement

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

SELECTED PROSE:

The Early Years (1928-1933)

From the Notebooks, 1928
Once upon a time, a fly (The Family Gibberundum), 1929-1930
The Sabre, 1929
A tramcar was running down the tracks, 1930
We lay on the bed, 1930
Let us look out of the window, 1930
Beaverson was walking down the road, 1930
Theme for a Story: A certain engineer, 1929-1930
The Whorld, 1930
I want to tell you about a series of events, 1930
Once upon a time Andrey Vasilievich…, 1931
The Power of Words, 1931
I was sitting on the roof of the State Publishing House, 1931
How strange it is, how inexpressibly strange, 1931
Morning (“Yes, today I saw a dream about a dog….”), 1931
I am sitting here on a stool, 1931
Is it possible to reach the moon by throwing a stone, 1931
Olga Forsh approached Alexei Tolstoy, 1931
At 2 o’clock past midday on Nevsky Prospect, 1931
Before I enter, I will knock, 1931
Numbers cannot be defined by their sequence, 1932
The infinite; that is the answer to all questions, 1932
Himmel’kumov was staring at a young lady, 1931-1933
From the Notebooks, 1933, 1935

The Middle Years (1934-1938)

Two Letters to Klavdia Vasilyevna [Pugacheva], 1933
Letter to Anonymous, in Kursk, 1933
Then everyone began to speak in their own private language, 1933-1934
A Knight in Shining Armor, 1934-1936
A little old man was scratching himself, 1933-1934
Andrey Semeonovich spat into a cup, 1934
I was born among the cat-tails, 1934
… Everyone thinks I’m a genius, 1934-1936
The personal inner turmoil of a certain musician, 1935-1936
The window, shuttered with a curtain, 1935
An Unexpected Binge, 1935
Sweet Little Lida, 1935
You see – he said – I have been watching, 1935
A Terrifying Death, 1935
When the wife goes away, 1935
“And now I will tell you how I was born….”, 1935
The Incubation Period, 1935
One personage, wringing her hands from sorrow, 1935
A Fable, 1935
The Carpenter Kushakov, 1935
There once lived a man, and his name was Kuznetsov, 1935
So, my sweet little Lena, 1935
The Brave Hedgehog, 1935
From the Notebooks, mid-1930s
The Fate of the Professor’s Wife, 1936
What Happened to Petrakov, 1936
An Occurrence, 1936
A certain mechanic decided to stand at work, 1936
The Cashier Woman, 1936
Father and Daughter, 1936
Petya Nailor was pacing around the apartment, 1936
Kulakov squeezed himself into a deep armchair, 1936
One man went to sleep with faith, 1936-1937
Two men got to talking, 1936-1937
The Rat, 1936-1937
I detest children, second half of 1930s
The Blue Notebook No. 10, 1937
One man, no longer wishing to eat split peas, 1937
Precisely 56 years ago, 1935-1937
Tumbling Babushkas (Excessive Curiosity), 1937
Connection, 1937
How one man fell to pieces, 1938
The Four-Legged Crow, 1938

The Late Years (1939-1941)

From the Diaries, 1937-1938
I raised the dust…, 1939
Fedya Davidovich, 1939
The Old Woman, 1939
A Brick, 1939-1940
A Treatise, More or Less in the Spirit of Emerson, 1939
Knights (“House full of old women”), 1940
A Genuine Lover of Nature, 1939-1940
Perechin [Mr. Contrarian], 1940
Mouseman's [Myshin’s] Victory, 1940
How easy it is for a man to become lost…, 1940
An Obstacle, 1940
A Lecture, 1940
The Power of, 1940
The Descent (Nearby and Far Away), 1940
A certain graphologist, 1940
All people love money, 1940
The Conversationalists, 1940
It was summertime, late 1930s
The Good Doctor, 1940
One man was chasing another..., 1940
The Adventures of Mr. Caterpillar, 1940
The streets were becoming immersed in silence, 1940
A man of average height [A Lynching], 1940
Trunk [A Hard Case], 1940
Northern Fable, 1940
Symphony No. 2, 1941
A young man who had surprised the watchman, undated

Selected Poems (1927-1939)

Society of friends of chamber music, 1927
You can sew…, 1931
In the name of the Farher, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, 1931
The wise are guided by a split sec, 1933
Seated at a table, flighty thoughts, 1930-1933
Before me hangs a portrait, 1933
Having slammed shut the tome, 1933
Dear manager of moneys, mid-1930s
Then even a wife will not save you, mid-1930s
The Permanence of Rejoicing and of Dirt, 1933
King of the Universe, 1934
It is your part to god-create me, 1935
Chorus, 1935
Immersed in their thoughts people scrum, 1933-1936
Money is for saving time, 1935
Thoughts Regarding a Girl [396]
To Oleinikov, 1935
To an Anonymous Natasha, 1935
Dream of Two Ladies in Blackface, 1936
A quiet evening thus descends, 1936
A Pleasant Little Walk, 1935-1937
Yes, I'm a poet forsaken by the sky, 1935-1937
Once Petrov went to the forest, 1936
In every church bell there is spite, 1936
Variations {“Among the Guests”), 1936
The night sky pales and starts to brighten, 1936
Upon the river floats a boat, 1936
The days are fleeing like fleet swifts, 1936
I love at times to look out the window, 1936-37
Dear Lord, feed me on your flesh, 1937
Your dreams will destroy you, 1937
I am incapable of thinking smoothly, 1937
The end's here, my strength expires, 1937
We have been killed in the field of life, 1937
My friend fell in a laughable tub, 1937
We – are people, You – are gods, 1937
I was watching a slowly eyelid, 1937
Earlier today I will go to bed, 1937
This is how hunger begins, 1937
Satisfying to tear stirrups with one's teeth, 1937-1938
A thing of beauty, endearing indeed, 1938
A Very Terrifying Tale, 1938
The Sensual Woodsman, 1938
They shoved me under the table, 1938
I thought of eagles for a long time, 1939

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