Daniil Kharms

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Image:Daniil Kharms.jpg Daniil Kharms (Template:Lang-ru; Template:OldStyleDate – 2 February, 1942) was an early Soviet-era satirist who used a surrealist or absurdist style.

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Life

Born Daniil Ivanovich Yuvachev (Даниил Иванович Ювачёв) in St. Petersburg, he came up with the Kharms pseudonym while in high school at the prestigious German "Peterschule", probably under influence of his fascination with Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes. While there, he learned the rudiments of both English and German. He also used pseudonyms of Khorms, Charms, and Shardam.

In 1924, he entered the Leningrad electrotechnicum, from which he was expelled for "lack of activity in social activities." After his expulsion, he gave himself over entirely to literary activities.

In 1927, the Association of Writers of Children's Literature was formed, and Kharms was invited to be a member. From 1928 until 1941, Kharms continually produced children's works.

He was convicted of anti-Soviet activity and spent a year in exile in Kursk. During the Siege of Leningrad in 1941, Kharms was arrested for the second time on charge of being a defeatist. Kharms starved to death in prison in early 1942.

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Works

Kharms' stories are typically brief vignettes, often only a few paragraphs long, in which scenes of poverty and deprivation alternate with fantastic, dreamlike occurrences and broad comedy. Occasionally they incorporate incongruous appearances by famous authors.

Kharms' world is unpredictable and disordered; characters repeat the same actions many times in succession or otherwise behave irrationally; linear stories start to develop but are interrupted in midstream by inexplicable catastrophes that send them in completely different directions.

In 1920s, Kharms was one of the founders of OBERIU and one of the leaders of the Left Art. In the 1930s, as the mainstream Soviet literature was becoming more and more conservative under the guidelines of Socialist Realism, Kharms found refuge in children's literature. Many of his poems and short stories for children, published in the Chizh (Чиж),Yozh (Еж), Sverchok (Сверчок) and Oktyabryata (Октябрята) magazines, are considered classics of the genre and his roughly twenty children's books are well known and loved by kids to this day.

Kharms' adult works of that period were never published until they were picked by samizdat starting from the 1960s. A complete collection of his works was published in Bremen as four volumes, in 1978-1988. In Russia, Kharms works were widely published only from the late 1980s.

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External links

{{Persondata |NAME=Kharms, Daniil |ALTERNATIVE NAMES=Yuvachev, Daniil Ivanovich |SHORT DESCRIPTION=writer |DATE OF BIRTH=30 December, 1905 |PLACE OF BIRTH=St. Petersburg, Russia |DATE OF DEATH=2 February, 1942 |PLACE OF DEATH= }}

bs:Daniil Harms ca:Daniil Kharms de:Daniil Charms fr:Daniil Harms he:דניאיל חארמס nl:Daniil Charms ro:Daniil Harms ru:Хармс, Даниил Иванович sh:Danil Harms sl:Danijel Ivanovič Harms sr:Данил Хармс fi:Daniil Harms sv:Daniil Charms

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