I love when a name comes out of nowhere and hits you smack in the face. Just like that. I was talking with Erling on the phone, and he mentioned that a director friend of his in Austria wanted to use a Daniil Kharms text for a libretto. Kharms? Never heard of him, but the web is indeed a wondrous place and Google is its handmaiden. First, I read his Plummeting Old Women, and then I moved on to Zdagger Upper Story. He starved in a Leningrad prison hospital in 1942. Some think his nom de plume was a play on English charms and harms, but some have noted that Kholms was an early transliteration of Sherlock Holmes in Russian.
Петр Павлович: (входя в комнату)
Здыгр аппр устр устр
я несу чужую руку
здыгр аппр устр устр
где профессор Тартарелин?
здыгр аппр устр устр
где приемные часы?
если эти побрякушки
с двумя гирями до полу
эти часики старушки
пролетели параболу[Даниил Хармс. Адам и Ева.]
Pyotr Pavlovich (entering the room):
Zdagger Upper Ooster Ooster
I am carrying someone’s elbow
Zdagger Upper Ooster Ooster
Where’s Professor De Dispenchin?
Zdagger Upper Ooster Ooster
Where on Earth are office hours?
If this little clockie dangling
Its two weights a-reaching down
Oldish clockie while still pending
Flew an arc without a frown[Daniil Kharms. Zdagger Upper Story. Translation by Serge Winitski.]
I’m not quite sure how old Daniil suceeding in avoiding me all these years, but I’m glad now that we’ve found each other..
Posted by jim at October 27, 2004 04:56 PM"Kharms" has popped up near me at least twice a year for the last five years - it's nice to finally have a text to put to the name!
Posted by: PF on October 27, 2004 11:06 PMI'm glad you and Kharms have found each other; he's been a favorite of mine for a while now. Akhmatova said "He managed to do what almost no one else could, write the so-called prose of the twentieth century. When they describe, for instance, how the hero went out into the street and suddenly flew up into the air, no one else can do that convincingly, only Kharms." Solomon Volkov, in his magnificent compilation of Petersburg history and gossip St. Petersburg: A Cultural History, describes him thus:
"A poet, prose writer, and playwright, Kharms stylized himself as the classic Petersburg eccentric. Tall and long-haired, looking, as one of his friends said, like both 'a puppy of good pedigree and the young Turgenev,' Kharms strolled around Leningrad in an unusual getup for a Soviet city: a British-style gray jacket, vest, and plus fours tucked into checked socks. The image of 'mysterious foreigner' was completed by a starched collar, narrow black velvet ribbon on his forehead, thick walking stick, pocket watch the size of a saucer on a chain, and crooked pipe.
"Kharms was very superstitious. He would return home if he met a hunchback on the street, and drank milk only if all the windows and doors were shut tight and the smallest cracks were stuffed with cotton...
"At the literary evenings of the 'oberiuts,' as the members of Oberiu were called, the heavily powdered Kharms would be wheeled out on the stage on top of a huge black lacquered wardrobe, from which he would begin reciting in a singsong his intentionally infantile verses:
Once granny waved
and the steam engine instantly
served the children and said:
eat your mush and trunk.
[Kak-to babushka makhnula
i totchas zhe parovoz
detyam podal i skazal:
peite kashu i sunduk.]
Thanks, LH. Now I just have to read up on Russian literature and authors.
Posted by: jim on October 30, 2004 08:00 AM