At least with Dostoyevsky, if you kill an old pawnbroker, she stays dead and doesn't turn up three hours later crawling around in your apartment. Not so with Kharms.
The Old Woman is case in point. The unnamed narrator, a writer I'll call Daniil, spots an old woman holding a clock as he walks through a courtyard. He stops and asks her for the time. The old woman tells him to have a look whereupon he discovers there are no hands on the clock. The old woman peers at the clock face herself and says: it is now a quarter to three. Daniil walks on but this is not the last of the old woman, and that's understatement.
Further along, Danill runs into Sakerdon Mikhailovich and invites his buddy for a drink of vodka at the local cellar bar. After which he proceed on his leisurely stroll but then Daniil suddenly remembers: he forgot to turn off his electric oven! He turns round, walks home, takes off his jacket, locks the door and lies down on the couch in order to get some needed sleep before resuming his writing.
His rest is interrupted by offensive shouting from urchins out on the street. Danill engages his imagination: those urchins are infected by tetanus and since they are frozen stiff, their parents must drag them home. The urchins recover but he hits them with another tetanus infection and they all croak. Hehehe – serves them right.
Ah, the stove is still on! Danill jumps up and turns the damn thing off. He lies down again, this time with pen and paper. Ever the creative artist, he feels a terrible power within. He starts a story about a miracle worker who never once in his life performed miracles. Imagination on fire, Daniil pops up, grabs different objects and starts running around the room, from window to table to oven to window where he can see a man with an artificial leg walking along knocking loudly with his leg and stick.
Suddenly, there’s a knocking on his door. It’s the old woman from the courtyard! He’s dumbfounded. The old woman says: so, here I am. The old woman walks in, takes a seat in his very own armchair and tells him to shut and lock the door. Then the old woman orders: kneel. Daniil gets down on his knees. He feels all is absurd. He tells the old woman he should kick her out. Unflustered, she demands that he lie down on his stomach and bury his face in the floor. He obeys.
But then he comes to his senses and moves toward the old woman. Her head is drooping. He grabs the old woman and realizes: the old woman is dead. Daniil is annoyed beyond measure. “What did she die in my room for? I can’t stand dead people.”
What to do? Speak with the house manager? Cover the old woman with a newspaper? Then he hears the engine driver in the next apartment moving around. That’s all he needs – another tenant finding out he has a dead old woman sitting in his armchair. Daniil lights his pipe, pulls his legs up on his couch, relaxes and ponders his next step. He drifts off into a dream where his hands have turned into a fork and spoon. Moments later, a clay Sakerdon Mikhailovich is sitting next to him in a folding chair.
Upon waking, Daniil is filled with joy – the old woman is not in the armchair. Ah, it all was only a dream! He gives a sigh of relief: oh, my good Lord, all the things that can happen in dreams. Well, at least now there's no reason to go to the house manager. But then he catches sight of the dead old woman lying face up on the floor, her dentures out of her mouth and clamping into her nose. What a swine! Danill runs over and kicks the old woman in the chin. Not a good idea – people will think he murdered the old woman. Drats! And on top of it all, he’s starving. Off to the bakery for bread.
Standing in the queue at the bakery, Daniil meets an attractive young woman. They strike up a conversation; its love at first sight. Danill invites his beautiful lover back to his apartment. She gladly accepts and off they go. But wait – what will she think once she catches sight of the dead woman? Alarmed, Daniil starts running in the opposite direction. And so the tale continues with many more topsy-turvy happenings.
I relayed the opening portion of Danill Kharms’ The Old Woman to share a specific taste of the author’s brand of absurdism. The more Kharms we read, the more we encounter the author’s recurring themes of starvation, falling out of windows, senseless violence, verbal abuse and men and women being hauled off to jail. And Kharms offers no overarching moral judgement - these things just happen as they happen.
However, those in power within Soviet Russia were of quite a different mind: they interpreted the author's writing as a slap in the face to all things Soviet. Daniil Kharms faced ongoing harassment up until the day when he was locked away in a mental institution where it is reported he died of starvation at the age of thirty-eight.
If your interest has been piqued, as I certainly hope it has, I encourage you to pick up Incidences published by Serpent's Tale, a collection of dozens of the author's shorter fiction along with the 30-page The Old Woman. Additionally, as a bonus, the book also includes Neil Cornwell's extensive introduction to the life and writing of Daniil Kharms within historical, cultural and literary context.
Russian absurdist Daniil Kharms, 1905-1942
“I am interested only in "nonsense"; only in that which makes no practical sense. I am interested in life only in its absurd manifestations.” ― Daniil Kharms
Comments
Post a Comment