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that Zolotogromov must already be aroused.
Zolotogromov agreed that the girl was having quite an effect on him.
Abel'far sat there red in the face and she was breathing heavily.
-- However, the air in this room is becoming unbearable -- said
Strakhova. Abel'far fidgeted on her chair and then leapt up and went out of
the room.
-- There -- said Petrova -- you see the result of female seductiveness.
It even acts on the ladies. Abel'far has gone off to put herself to rights.
I can feel that I will soon have to do the same thing.
-- That -- said Amonova -- only shows the advantage we thin women
possess. Everything with us is always as it should be. But both you and
Abel'far are splendiferous ladies and you have to keep yourselves very much
in check.
-- Yet -- said Zolotogromov -- splendiferousness and a certain lack of
bodily hygiene are what is to be particularly valued in a woman.
1934-37
* Zolotogromov is a male surname; all other characters are female.
--------
A Comedy in Three Parts
GRANNY Bobrov (Playing patience) Now that's the card. Oh, it's all
coming out topsy-turvy! A king. And where am I supposed to put that? Just
when you want one, there's never a five around. Oh, I could do with a five!
Now it'll be the five. Oh, sod it, another king!
She flings the cards on to the table with such force that a porcelain
vase falls off the table and smashes.
GRANNY Oh! Oh! My Gawd! These bloody cards! (She crawls under the table
and picks up the pieces). This'll never glue back together again. And it was
a good vase, too. You can't get them like that any more. This bit's right
over there! (Stretches for the piece. BOBROV enters the room).
BOBROV Granny! Is that you clambering about under the table?
GRANNY Yes, okay, okay. What do you want?
BOBROV I just came to ask you: you wouldn't happen to have a chest of
tea?
GRANNY Come on then, give me a hand up from under the table.
BOBROV What have you done, dropped something? Oh, you've broken the
vase!
GRANNY (Mimicking him) You've broken the vase!
(BOBROV helps GRANNY up. But as soon as he lets go of her, GRANNY sits
back down on the floor).
BOBROV Oh, you're down again!
GRANNY Down, so now what?
BOBROV Let me help you up (Pulls GRANNY up).
GRANNY The cards were going badly. I tried this and that... But don't
pull me by the arms, get hold of me under the armpits. All I got, you know,
was king after king. I need a five and all the kings keep turning up.
BOBROV lets go of GRANNY and GRANNY again sprawls on the floor.
GRANNY Akh!
BOBROV Oh, Lord! You're down again.
GRANNY What are you on about: down, down! What are you after, anyway?
BOBROV I came to ask if you've a chest of tea.
GRANNY I know that. You've already told me. I don't like listening to
the same tale twenty times. The thing is: akh, I'm down again! and a chest
of tea. Well, what are you looking at! Get me up, I'm telling you.
BOBROV (Pulling GRANNY up) I'll just, excuse me, put you in the
armchair.
GRANNY You'd do better to prattle on a bit less and pull me up in a
proper fashion. I meant to tell you, and it almost slipped my mind: you
know, that door in my bedroom isn't shutting properly again. No doubt you
messed the whole thing up.
BOBROV No, I put a staple on with fillister-head screws.
GRANNY Do you think I know anything about staples and fillister heads?
I don't care about all that. I just want the door to shut.
BOBROV It doesn't shut properly because the fillister heads won't stay
in the woodwork.
GRANNY That'll do, that'll do. That's your business. I just need to...
Akh! (She again sprawls on the floor).
BOBROV Oh, Lord!
GRANNY Have you decided to fling me to the floor deliberately? Decided
to have a bit of fun? Oh you useless devil! You're just a useless devil and
you might as well clear off!
BOBROV No, Granny, 'onest injun, I just meant to put you in the
armchair.
GRANNY Did you hear what I said? I told you to clear out! So why aren't
you going? Well, why aren't you going? Do you hear? Clear off out of it!
Well? Bugger off! (exits BOBROV)
GRANNY Off! Go on! Away! Bugger off! Talk about a reprobate! (Gets up
from the floor and sits in the armchair). And his wife is simply an indecent
madam. The madam walks about absolutely starkers and doesn't bat an eyelid,
even in front of me, an old woman. She covers her indecent patch with the
palm of her hand, and that's the way she walks around. And then she touches
bread with that hand at lunchtime. It's simply revolting to watch. She
thinks that if she's young and pretty, then she can do anything she likes.
And as for herself, the trollop, she never washes herself properly just
where she should do. I, she says, like a whiff of woman to come from a
woman! And as for me, as soon as I see her coming, I'm straight into the
bathroom with the eau de Cologne to my nose. Perhaps it may be nice for men,
but as for me, you can spare me that. The shameless hussy! She goes around
naked without the slightest embarrassment. And when she sits down she
doesn't even keep her legs together properly, so that everything's on show.
And -- there, she's well just always wet. She's leaking like that all the
time. If you tell her she should go and wash herself, she will say you
shouldn't wash there too often and she'll take a handkerchief and just wipe
herself. And you're lucky if it's a handkerchief, because just with her hand
she smears it all over the place. I never give her my hand, as there's
perpetually an indecent smell from her hands. And her breasts are indecent.
It's true, they are very fine and bouncy, but they are so big that, in my
opinion, they're simply indecent. That's the wife that Foma found for
himself! How she ever got round him is beyond me.
1933
--------
A Tragic Vaudeville in One Act
LEV MARKOVICH (Bouncing up to the LADY) Let me!
LADY (Keeping him at arms length) Leave me!
LEV MARKOVICH (Bumping into her) Let me!
LADY (Shoving him with her knees) Go away!
LEV MARKOVICH (Gripping her with his hands) Let's, just once!
LADY (Shoving him with her knees) Away! Away!
LEV MARKOVICH Just one thrust!
LADY (Bellowing) No-o.
LEV MARKOVICH A thrust! One thrust!
LADY (Shows the whites of her eyes).
LEV MARKOVICH fumbles around, reaches with his hand for his tool and
suddenly, as it turns out, he can't find it.
LEV MARKOVICH Wait a minute! (Feels himself up and down with his
hands). What the h-hell!
LADY looks at LEV MARKOVICH with astonishment.
LEV MARKOVICH Well, that's a damn funny thing!
LADY What's happened?
LEV MARKOVICH Hum ... hmm ... (looks around, completely flummoxed).
(Curtain)
1934
--------
-- They say all the best tarts are fat-arsed. Gee-ee, I really like
busty tarts, I love the way they smell.
Having said this, he started to increase in height and, upon reaching
the ceiling, he crumbled into a thousand little pellets. The yard-keeper
Panteley came, swept all these pellets up into his scoops in which he
usually picked up the horse muck, and he carried these pellets away
somewhere to the back yard.
And the sun continued to shine as ever and splendiferous ladies
continued to smell just as ravishingly as ever.
1936
--------
I didn't go in for blocking up my ears. Everyone blocked theirs up and
I alone didn't block mine and therefore I alone heard everything. Similarly,
I didn't blindfold myself with a rag, as everyone else did, and therefore I
saw everything. Yes, I alone saw and heard everything. But unfortunately I
didn't understand anything and, therefore, what was the value of me alone
seeing and hearing everything? I couldn't even remember what I had seen and
heard. Just a few fragmentary recollections, flourishes and nonsensical
sounds. There was a tram conductor who came running through, followed by an
elderly lady with a spade between her lips. Someone said: '... probably from
under her chair...' A naked Jewish girl spreads her legs and empties a cup
of milk over her sexual organs, the milk trickles down into a deep dinner
plate. From the plate, the milk is poured back into the cup and offered to
me to drink. I take a drink: there is a smell of cheese from the milk...
The naked Jewish girl is sitting there before me with her legs apart,
her sexual organs stained with milk. She leans forward and looks at her
sexual organs. From her sexual organs there starts to flow a transparent and
syrupy liquid... I am going through a big and rather dark yard. In the yard
there lie high, heaped up piles of firewood. From behind the wood someone's
face is looking out. I know: it's Limonin following me. He's on the watch:
to see whether I'm going to visit his wife. I turn to the right and go
through the outside door on to the street. From the gateway the joyful face
of Limonin is looking out... And now Limonin's wife is offering me vodka. I
down four glasses with a few sardines and start thinking about the naked
Jewish girl. Limonin's wife puts her head on my knees. I knock back one more
glass and light up my pipe.
-- You are so sad today -- Limonin's wife says to me. I tell her some
nonsense or other and go off to the Jewish girl.
1940
--------
1. Do not take offense at the following argument, for there is nothing
offensive in it, unless one does not consider that the circle may be spoken
of in a geometrical sense. If I say that the circle describes four identical
radii, and you say: not four, but one, then we have a right to ask one
another: why? But I don't want to talk about that kind of description of the
circle, but of the perfect description of a circle.
2. The circle is the most perfect flat figure. I am not going to say
why in particular that is so. But this fact arises of itself in our
consciousness in any consideration of flat figures.
3. Nature is so created that the less noticeable the laws of formation,
the more perfect the thing.
4. Nature is also so created that the more impenetrable a thing, the
more perfect it is.
5. On perfection, I would say the following: perfection in things is a
perfect thing. It is always possible to study a perfect thing or, in other
words, in a perfect thing these is always something not studied. If a thing
should prove to have been completely studied, then it would cease to be
perfect, for only that which is incomplete is perfect -- that is to say the
infinite.
6. A point is infinitely small and thereby attains perfection, but at
the same time it remains inconceivable. Even the smallest conceivable point
would not be perfect.
7. A straight line is perfect, for there is no reason for it not to be
infinitely long on both sides, to have neither end nor beginning, and
thereby be inconceivable. But by putting pressure on it and limiting it on
both sides, we render it conceivable, but at the same time imperfect.
If you believe this, then think on.
8. A straight line, broken at one point, forms an angle. But a straight
line which is broken simultaneously at all its points is called a curve. A
curve does not have to be of necessity infinitely long. It may be such that
we can grasp it freely at a glance and yet at the same time remain
inconceivable and infinite. I am talking about a closed curve, in which the
beginning and the end are concealed. And the most regular, inconceivable,
infinite and ideal curve will be a circle.
17 July 1931
--------
1. Advice to humourous performers
I have noticed that it is very important to determine the point at
which laughter can be induced. If you want the auditorium to laugh, come out
on to the stage and stand there in silence until someone bursts out
laughing. Then wait a little bit longer until someone else starts laughing,
and in such a way that everyone can hear. However, this laughter must be
genuine and claqueurs, in such an instance, should not be used. When all
this has taken place, then the point at which laughter can be induced has
been reached. After this you may proceed to your programme of humour and,
rest assured, success is guaranteed.
2. Where are several sorts of laughter.
There is the average sort of laughter, when the whole hall laughs, but
not at full volume. There is the strong sort of laughter, when just one part
of the hall or another laughs, but at full volume, and the other part of the
hall remains silent as, in this case, the laughter doesn't get to it at all.
The former sort of laughter requires vaudeville delivery from a vaudeville
actor, but the latter sort is better. The morons don't have to laugh.
1933
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1. A world which is not can not be called existing, because it is not.
2. A world consisting of something unified, homogeneous and continuous
can not be called existing, because in such a world there are no parts and,
once there are no parts, there is no whole.
3. An existing world must be heterogeneous and have parts.
4. Every two parts are different, because one part will always be thus
one and the other that one.
5. If only this one exists, then that one cannot exist, because, as we
have said, only this exists. But such a this cannot exist, because if this
exists it must be heterogeneous and have parts. And if it has parts that
means it consists of this and that.
6. If this and that exist, this means that not this and not that exist,
because if not this and not that did not exist, then this and that would be
unified, homogeneous and continuous and consequently would also not exist.
7. We shall call the first part this and the second part that and the
transition from one to the other we shall call neither this nor that.
8. We shall call neither this nor that 'the impediment'.
9. Thus: the basis of existence comprises three elements: this, the
impediment and that.
10. We shall express non-existence as zero or a unity. Therefore we
shall have to express existence by the number three.
11. Thus: dividing a unitary void into two parts, we get the trinity of
existence.
12. Or: a unitary void, experiencing a certain impediment, splits into
parts, which make up the trinity of existence.
13. The impediment is that creator which creates 'something' out of
'nothing'.
14. If this one, on its own, is 'nothing' or a non-existent
'something', then the 'impediment' is also 'nothing' or a non-existent
'something'.
15. By this reckoning there must be two 'nothings' or nonexistent
'somethings'.
16. If there are two 'nothings' or non-existent 'somethings', then one
of them is the 'impediment' to the other, breaking it down into parts and
becoming itself a part of the other.
17. In the same way the other, being the impediment to the first,
splits it into parts and itself becomes a part of the first.
18. In this way are created, of their own accord, non-existent parts.
19. Three, of their own accord, non-existent parts create the three
basic elements of existence.
20. The three, of their own accord, non-existent basic elements of
existence, all three together, make up a certain existence.
21. If one of the three basic elements of existence should disappear,
then the whole would disappear. So: should the 'impediment' disappear, then
this one and that one would become unitary and continuous and would cease to
exist.
22. The existence of our universe generates three 'nothings' or
separately, on their own account, three non-existent 'somethings': space,
time and something else which is neither time nor space.
23. Time, of its essence, is unitary, homogeneous and continuous and
thereby does not exist.
24. Space, of its essence, is unitary, homogeneous and continuous and
thereby does not exist.
25. But as soon as space and time enter into a certain mutual
relationship they become the impediment, the one of the other, and begin to
exist.
26. As they begin to exist, space and time become mutually parts, one
of the other.
27. Time, experiencing the impediment of space, breaks down into parts,
generating the trinity of existence.
28. A split down and existing, consists of the three basic elements of
existence: the past, the present and the future .
29. The past, the present and the future, as basic elements of
existence, always stood in inevitable dependence, each on the other. There
cannot be a past without a present and a future, or a present without a past
and a future, or a future without a past and a present.
30. Examining these three elements separately, we see that there is no
past because it has already gone and here is no future because it has not
yet come. That means that there remains only one thing -- the 'present'. But
what is the 'present'?
31. When we are pronouncing this word, the letters of this word which
have been pronounced become past and the unpronounced letters still lie in
the future. This means that only that sound which is being pronounced now is
'present'.
32. But of course the process of pronouncing this sound possesses a
certain length. Consequently, a certain part of this process is 'present',
just as the other parts are either past or future. But the same thing too
may be said of this part of the process which had seemed to us to be 'the
present'.
33. Reflecting in this manner, we see that there is no 'present'.
34. The present is only the 'impediment' in the transition from past to
future and past and future appear to us as the this and that of the
existence of time.
35. Thus: the present is the 'impediment' in the existence of time and,
as we said earlier, space serves as the impediment in the existence of time.
36. By this means: the 'present' of time is space.
37. There is no space in the past and the future, it being contained
entirely in the 'present'. And the present is space.
38. And since there is no present, neither is there any space.
39. We have explained the existence of time but space, of its own
accord, does not yet exist.
40. In order to explain the existence of space, we must take that
incidence when time performs as the impediment of space.
41. Experiencing the impediment of time, space splits into parts,
generating the trinity of existence.
42. Broken down, existing space consists of three elements: there, here
and there.
43. In the transition from one there to the other there, it is
necessary to overcome the impediment here, because if it were not for the
impediment here, then the one there and the other there would be unitary.
44. Here is the 'impediment' of existing space. And, as we said above,
the impediment of existing space is time.
45. Therefore: the here of space is time.
46. The here of space and the 'present' of time are the points of
intersection between time and space.
47. Examining space and time as basic elements in the existence of the
universe, we would say: the universe expresses space, time and something
else which is neither time nor space.
48. That 'something' which is neither time nor space is the
'impediment', which generates the existence of the universe.
49. This 'something' expresses the impediment between time and space.
50. Therefore this 'something' lies at the point of intersection of
time and space.
51. Consequently this 'something' is to be found in time at the point
of the 'present' and in space at the point of the 'here'.
52. This 'something' which is to be found at the point of intersection
of space and time generates a certain 'impediment', separating the 'here'
from the 'present'.
53. This 'something', generating the impediment and separating the
'here' from the 'present', creates a certain existence which we call matter
or energy. (Henceforth we shall provisionally call this simply matter.)
54. Thus: the existence of the universe, as organised by space, time
and their impediment, is expressed as matter.
55. Matter testifies to us of time.
56. Matter testifies to us of space.
57. By this means: the three basic elements of the existence of the
universe are perceived by us as time, space and matter.
58. Time, space and matter, intersecting one with another at definite
points and being basic elements in the existence of the universe, generate a
certain node.
59. We shall call this node -- the Node of the Universe.
60. When I say of myself: 'I am', I am placing myself within the Node
of the Universe.
--------
On an Approach to Immortality
It is peculiar to each person to strive for enjoyment, which is always
either sexual satisfaction, or satiation, or acquisition.
But only that which lies not on the path to enjoyment leads towards
immortality. All systems leading to immortality in the end come down to a
single rule: continually do that which you don't feel like doing, because
every person feels like either eating, or satisfying their sexual feelings,
or acquiring something, or all of these more or less at a stroke. It is
interesting that immortality is always connected with death and is treated
by various religious systems as eternal enjoyment, or as eternal torment, or
as an eternal absence of enjoyment and torment.
1939
--------
28 June 1932. Tsarskoye Selo
Dear Tamara Aleksandrova and Leonid Savel'evich,
Thank you for your wonderful letter. I have re-read it many times and
learned it off by heart. I can be awakened in the night and I will
immediately and word-perfectly begin: 'Hello there, Daniil Ivanovich, we are
completely lost without you. Lyonya has bought himself some new...' and so
on, and so on.
I have read this letter to all my acquaintances in Tsarskoye Selo.
Everyone likes it very much. Yesterday my friend Bal'nis came to see me. He
wanted to stay the night. I read him your letter six times. He smiled very
broadly, so it was evident that he liked the letter, but he didn't have time
to express a detailed opinion, for he left without staying for the night.
Today I went round to his place myself and read the letter through to him
once more, so as to enable him to refresh his memory. Then I asked Bal'nis
for his opinion. But he broke a leg off one of his chairs and with the aid
of this leg he chased me out on to the street and furthermore said that if I
turn up once more with this drivel he will lie my hands up and stuff my
mouth with muck from the rubbish pit. These were, of course, on his part
rather rude and stupid remarks. I, of course, went away and took the view
that he quite possibly had a bad cold and that he was not himself. From
Bal'nis I went off to Yekaterinskiy Park and had a go on the rowing boats.
On the whole lake, apart from me, there were two or three other boats. And,
by the way, there was a very beautiful girl in one of the boats. And she was
completely on her own. I turned my boat (incidentally, you have to row
carefully when you're turning a boat, because the oars are liable to jump
out of the rowlocks) and rowed after the beauty. I felt as though I
resembled a Norwegian and I must have cut a fresh and healthy figure in my
grey jacket and my fluttering tie and, as they say, had quite a whiff of the
sea about me. But near the Orlov Column some hooligans were swimming and, as
I rowed past, one of them just happened to have to swim right across my
path. Then another of them shouted: -- Wait a minute, while this cross-eyed
and sweaty specimen goes past! -- and pointed at me with his foot. This was
very disagreeable because the beauty heard every word. And since she was
rowing in front of me and in a rowing boat, as everyone knows, you sit with
the back of your head towards your direction of movement, the beauty could
not only hear, but she could see the hooligan pointing at me with his foot.
I tried to make out that all this had nothing to do with me and started to
look to the side with a smile on my face. But there wasn't a single other
boat around. And at this point the hooligan shouted again: -- Now what do
you think you're looking at? We're talking to you, aren't we? Hey, you, the
sucker in the cap!
I set about rowing with might and main, but the oars kept jumping out
of the rowlocks and the boat only moved slowly. Finally, after an enormous
effort, I caught up with the beauty and we got acquainted. She was called
Yekaterina Pavlovna. We took back her boat and Yekaterina Pavlovna moved
over to mine. She turned out to be a very witty conversationalist. I had
decided to dazzle my friends with wit, and so I got out your letter and made
a start on reading it: 'Hello, there, Daniil Ivanovich, we are completely
lost without you. Lyonya has bought himself some new ...' and so on.
Yekaterina Pavlovna suggested that, if we pulled in to the bank, then I
might see something. And I did, I saw Yekaterina Pavlovna making off, and
out of the bushes there crept a filthy urchin, saying: -- Mister, give us a
ride in yer boat.
This evening the letter came to grief. It happened like this: I was
standing on the balcony, reading your letter and eating semolina. At that
moment Auntie called me into the living room to help her wind the clock. I
covered the semolina with the letter and went into the room. When I came
back the letter had absorbed all the semolina into itself and I ate it.
The weather in Tsarskoye Selo is well set: variable cloud, south-west
wind, possible rain.
This morning an organ-grinder came into our garden and played a trashy
waltz, filched a hammock and ran away.
I read a very interesting book about how one young man fell in love
with a certain young person, and this young person loved another young man,
and this young man loved another young person and this young person loved
another young man yet again, who loved not her but another young person.
And suddenly this young person stumbles down a trapdoor and fractures
her spine. But when she has completely recovered from that, she suddenly
catches her death of cold and dies. Then the young man who loves her does
himself in with a revolver shot. Then the young person who loves this young
man throws herself under a train. Then the young man who loves this young
person climbs up a tram pylon from grief and touches the live wire, dying
from an electric shock. Then the young person who loves this young man
stuffs herself with ground glass and dies from perforation of the
intestines. Then the young man who loves this young person runs away to
America and takes to the drink to such a degree that he sells his last suit
and, for the lack of a suit, he is obliged to lie in hospital, where he
suffers from bedsores, and from these bedsores he dies.
In a few days I shall be in town. I definitely want to see you. Give my
best wishes to Valentina Yefimovna and Yakov Semyonovich.
Daniil Kharms
--------
Dear Nikandr Andreyevich,
I have received your letter and straight away I realised that it was
from you. At first I thought that it might by chance not be from you, but as
soon as I unsealed it I immediately realised it was from you, though I had
been on the point of thinking that it was not from you. I am glad that you,
long ago now, got married, because when a person gets married to the one he
wanted to marry, then this means he has got what he wanted. I am very glad
you got married, because when a person marries the one he wanted to marry,
that means he has got what he wanted. Yesterday I received your letter and
immediately thought that this letter was from you, but then I thought that
it seemed not to be from you, but unsealed it and saw: it really is from
you. You did exactly the right thing, writing to me. First you didn't write,
and then you suddenly wrote, although before that, before that period when
you didn't write, you also used to write. Immediately as I received your
letter, I straight away decided that it was from you and, then, I was very
glad that you had already got married. For, if a person should feel like
getting married, then he really has to get married, come what may. Therefore
I am very glad that you finally got married to the very one you wanted to
marry. And you did exactly the right thing, writing to me. I was greatly
cheered up on seeing your letter and I even immediately thought it was from
you. It's true, while I was unsealing it, the thought did flash across my
mind that it was not from you, but then, all the same, I decided it was from
you. Thank you for writing. I am grateful to you for this and very glad for
you. Perhaps you can't guess why I am so glad for you, but I will tell you
at once that I am glad for you because you got married, and to the very one
you wanted to marry. And, you know, it is very good to marry the very one
you want to marry, because then you have got the very thing you wanted. It's
for that very reason that I am so glad for you. But also I am glad because
you wrote me a letter. I had even from some distance decided that the letter
was from you, but as I took it in my hands I then thought: but what if it's
not from you? But then I start to think: no, of course it's from you. I
unseal the letter myself and at the same time I think: from you or not from
you? From you or not from you? Well, as I unsealed it, then I could see:
it's from you. I was greatly cheered and decided to write you a letter as
well. There's a lot which has to be said, but literally there's no time. I
have written what I had time to write in this letter and the rest I shall
write another time, as now there really isn't time at all. It's a good
thing, at least, that you wrote me a letter. Now I know that you got married
a long time ago. I, from your previous letters too, knew that you had got
married and now I see again: it's absolutely true, you have got married. And
I'm very glad that you got married and wrote me a letter. I straight away,
as soon as I saw your letter, decided that you had got married again. Well,
I think it's a good thing that you have again got married and written me a
letter about it. Now write to me and tell me who your new wife is and how it
all came about. Say hello from me to your new wife.
Daniil Kharms
1933
--------
...I don't know the right word to express that strength in you which so
delights me. I usually call it purity.
I have been thinking about how beautiful everything is at first! How
beautiful primary reality is! The sun and the grass are beautiful, grass and
stone, and water, a bird, a beetle, a fly, and a human being (a kitten and a
key, a comb). But if I were blind and deaf, had lost all my faculties, how
could I know all this beauty? everything gone and nothing for me at all. But
I suddenly acquire touch anti immediately almost the whole world appears
again. I invent hearing and the world improves significantly. I invent all
the other faculties and the world gets even bigger and better. The world
starts to exist as soon as I let it in to me. Never mind its state of
disorder, at least it exists! However, I started to bring some order into
the world. And that's when Art appeared. Only at this point did I grasp the
true difference between the sun and a comb but, at the same time, I realised
that they are one and the same.
Now my concern is to create the correct order. I am carried away by
this and only think of this. I speak about it, try to narrate it, describe
it, sketch it, dance it, construct it. I am the creator of a world and this
is the most important thing in me. How can I not think constantly about it!
In everything I do, I invest the consciousness of being creator of a world.
And I am not making simply some boot, but, first and foremost, I am creating
something new. It doesn't bother me that the boot should turn out to be
comfortable, durable and elegant. It's more important that it should contain
that same order pertaining in the world as a whole, so that world order
should not be the poorer, should not be soiled by contact with skin and
nails, so that, notwithstanding the form of the boot, it should preserve its
own form, should remain the same as it was, should remain pure.
It is that same purity which permeates all the arts. When I am writing
poetry, the most important thing seems to me not the idea, not the content,
and not the form, and not the misty conception of 'quality', but something
even more misty and incomprehensible to the rationalistic mind, but
comprehensible to me and, I hope, to you (...) -- it is the purity of order.
This purity is one and the same -- in the sun, in the grass, in a human
being and in poetry. True art is on a par with primary reality; it creates a
world and constitutes the world's primary reflection. It is indisputably
real.
But, my God, what trivialities make up true art! The Divine Comedy is a
great piece of work, but <Pushkin's> lines 'Through the agitated mists the
moon makes its way' are no less great. For in both there is the same purity
and consequently an identical proximity to reality, that is to independent
existence. That means it is not simply words and thoughts printed on paper,
but a piece of work which is just as real as the cut-glass bubble for the
ink standing in front of me on the table. These verses seem to have become a
piece of work which could be taken off the paper and hurled at the window,
and the window would smash. That's what words can do!
But, on the other hand, how helpless and pitiful these same words can
be! I never read the newspapers. They are a fictitious world, not the
created one. Just pitiful, down-at-heel typographical print on rotten
prickly paper.
Does a person need anything, apart from life and art? I don't think so:
nothing else is needed, as everything genuine is to be found in them.
I think that purity can be in everything, even in the way a person eats
soup.
1933
--------
28 February, 1936
Dear Liza,
I convey my best wishes to Kirill on his birthday and similarly
congratulate his parents on successfully fulfilling the plan prescribed for
them by nature for the raising up to the age of two years of human
offspring, unable to walk, but therefore gradually beginning to destroy
everything around and finally, in attaining this junior pre-school age,
belabouring across the head with a voltmeter stolen from his father's
writing table his loving mother, who has failed to evade the highly
skillfully delivered assaults of her not as yet fully mature child, who is
planning already in his immature skull, having done away with his parents,
to direct all his most penetrating attentions towards his venerable
grandfather and by the same means demonstrate a mental development allotted
beyond his years, in honour of which, on the 28th of February, will gather a
couple of admirers of this indeed outstanding phenomenon, among whose
number, to my great chagrin, I shall not be able to be, finding myself at
the time in question under a certain pressure, being enraptured on the
shores of the Gulf of Finland by an ability, innate since childhood, of
grabbing a steel pen and, having dipped it in an ink-well, in short sharp
phrases expressing my profound and at times even in a certain way highly
elevated thoughts.
Daniil Kharms
--------
Dear Aleksandr Ivanovich,
I have heard that you are saving money and have already saved
thirty-five thousand. What for? Why save money? Why not share what you have
with those who do not even have a totally spare pair of trousers? I mean,
what is money? I have studied this question. I possess photographs of the
banknotes in widest circulation: to the value of a rouble, three, four and
even five roubles. I have heard of banknotes of an intrinsic worth of up to
30 roubles at a time! But, as for saving them: what for? Well, I am not a
collector. I have always despised collectors who amass stamps, feathers,
buttons, onions and so on. They are stupid, dull superstitious people. I
know for example that what are called 'numismatists' -- that's those who
accumulate coins -- have the superstitious habit of putting them, have you
ever thought where? Not on the table, not in a box, but... on their books!
What do you think of that? Whereas money can be picked up, taken to a shop
and exchanged, well... let's say for soup (that's a kind of food), or for
grey-mullet sauce (that's also a kind of foodstuff).
No, Aleksandr Ivanovich, you are almost as couth a person as I, yet you
save money and don't change it into a range of other things. Forgive me,
dear Aleksandr Ivanovich, but that is not terribly clever! You've simply
gone a little stupid living out there in the provinces. There must be no one
to talk to, even. I'm sending you my picture so that you will be able at
least to see before you a clever, cultivated, intellectual, first-rate face.
Your friend Daniil Kharms
Late 1930's
--------
A Tale
. . . And between them the following conversation takes place.
Hamsun
In the courtyard an old woman is standing and holding a clock in her
hands. I walk through, past the old woman, stop and ask her:
-- What time is it?
-- Have a look -- the old woman says to me.
I look and see that there are no hands on the clock.
-- There are no hands here -- I say.
The old woman looks at the clock face and tells me: -- It's now a
quarter to three.
-- Oh, so that's what it is. Thank you very much -- I say and go on.
The old woman shouts something after me but I walk on without looking
round. I go out on to the street and walk on the sunny side. The spring sun
is very pleasant. I walk on, screwing up my eyes and smoking my pipe. On the
corner of Sadovaya I happen to run into Sakerdon Mikhailovich. We say hello,
stop and talk for a long time. I get fed up with standing on the street and
I invite Sakerdon Mikhailovich into a cellar bar. We drink vodka, eat
hard-boiled eggs and sprats and then say goodbye, and I walk on alone.
At this point I remember that I had forgotten to turn off the electric
oven at home. This is very annoying. I turn round and walk home. The day had
started so well and this was the first misfortune. I ought not to have taken
to the street.
I get home, take off my jacket, take my watch out of my waistcoat
pocket and hang it on a nail; then I lock the door and lie down on the
couch. I shall recline and try to get to sleep.
The offensive shouting of urchins can be heard from the street. I lie
there, thinking up various means of execution for them. My favourite one is
to infect them all with tetanus so that they suddenly stop moving. Their
parents can drag them all home. They will lie in their beds unable even to
eat, because their mouths won't open. They will be fed artificially. After a
week the tetanus can pass off, but the children will be so feeble that they
will have to lie in their beds for a whole month. Then they will gradually
start to recover but I shall infect them with a second dose of tetanus and
they will all croak.
I lie on the couch with my eyes open and I can't get to sleep. I
remember the old woman with the clock whom I saw today in the yard and feel
pleased that there were no hands on her clock. Only the other day in the
second-hand shop I saw a revolting kitchen clock and its hands were made in
the form of a knife and fork.
Oh, my God! I still haven't turned off the electric oven! I jump up and
turn it off, and then I lie down again on the couch and try to get to sleep.
I close my eyes. I don't feel sleepy. The spring sun is shining in through
the window, straight on to me. I start to feel hot. I get up and sit down in
the armchair by the window.
Now I feel sleepy but I am not going to sleep. I get hold of a piece of
paper and a pen and I am going to write. I feel within me a terrible power.
I thought it all over as long ago as yesterday. It will be the story about a
miracle worker who is living in our time and who doesn't work any miracles.
He knows that he is a miracle worker and that he can perform any miracle,
but he doesn't do so. He is thrown out of his flat and he knows that he only
has to wave a finger and the flat will remain his, but he doesn't do this;
he submissively moves out of the flat and lives out of town in a shed. He is
capable of turning this shed into a fine brick house, but he doesn't do
this; he carries on living in the shed and eventually dies, without having
done a single miracle in the whole of his life.
I just sit and rub my hands with glee. Sakerdon Mikhailovich will burst
with envy. He thinks that I am beyond writing anything of genius. Now then,
now then, to work! Away with any kind of sleep and laziness! I shall write
for eighteen hours straight off!
I am shaking all over with impatience. I am not able to think out what
has to be done: I needed to take a pen and a piece of paper, but I grabbed
various objects, not at all those that I needed. I ran about the room: from
the window to the table, from the table to the oven, from the oven again to
the table, then to the divan and again to the window. I was gasping from the
flame which was ablaze in my breast. It's only five o'clock now. The whole
day is ahead, and the evening, and all night is . . .
I stand in the middle of the room. Whatever am I thinking of? Why, it's
already twenty past five. I must write. I move the table towards the window
and sit down at it. A sheet of squared paper is in front of me, in my hand
is a pen.
My heart is still beating too fast and my hand is shaking. I wait, so
as to calm down a little. I put down my pen and fill my pipe. The sun is
shining right in my eyes; I squint and light up my pipe.
And now a crow flies past the window. I look out of the window on to
the street and see a man with an artificial leg walking along the pavement.
He is knocking loudly with his leg and his stick.
-- So -- I say to myself, continuing to look out of the window.
The sun is hiding behind a chimney of the building opposite. The shadow
of the chimney runs along the roof, flies across the street and falls on my
face. I should take advantage or this shadow and write a few words about the
miracle worker. I grab the pen and write: 'The miracle worker was on the
tall side.'
Nothing more can I write. I sit on until I start feeling hungry. Then I
get up and go over to the cupboard where I keep my provisions; I rummage
there but find nothing. A lump of sugar and nothing more. Someone is
knocking at the door.
-- Who's there?
No one answers me. I open the door and see before me the old woman who
in the morning had been standing in the yard with the clock. I am very
surprised and cannot say anything.
-- So, here I am -- says the old woman and comes into my room.
I stand by the door and don't know what to do: should I chase the old
woman out or, on the contrary, suggest that she sit down? But the old woman
goes of her own accord over to my armchair beside the window and sits down
in it.
-- Close the door and lock it -- the old woman tells me.
I close and lock the door.
-- Kneel -- says the old woman.
And I get down on my knees.
But at this point I begin to realise the full absurdity of my position.
Why am I kneeling in front of some old woman? And, indeed, why is this old
woman in my room and sitting in my favourite armchair? Why hadn't I chased
this old woman out?
-- Now, listen here -- I say -- what right have you to give the orders
in my room, and, what's more, boss me about? I have no wish at all to be
Zolotogromov agreed that the girl was having quite an effect on him.
Abel'far sat there red in the face and she was breathing heavily.
-- However, the air in this room is becoming unbearable -- said
Strakhova. Abel'far fidgeted on her chair and then leapt up and went out of
the room.
-- There -- said Petrova -- you see the result of female seductiveness.
It even acts on the ladies. Abel'far has gone off to put herself to rights.
I can feel that I will soon have to do the same thing.
-- That -- said Amonova -- only shows the advantage we thin women
possess. Everything with us is always as it should be. But both you and
Abel'far are splendiferous ladies and you have to keep yourselves very much
in check.
-- Yet -- said Zolotogromov -- splendiferousness and a certain lack of
bodily hygiene are what is to be particularly valued in a woman.
1934-37
* Zolotogromov is a male surname; all other characters are female.
--------
A Comedy in Three Parts
GRANNY Bobrov (Playing patience) Now that's the card. Oh, it's all
coming out topsy-turvy! A king. And where am I supposed to put that? Just
when you want one, there's never a five around. Oh, I could do with a five!
Now it'll be the five. Oh, sod it, another king!
She flings the cards on to the table with such force that a porcelain
vase falls off the table and smashes.
GRANNY Oh! Oh! My Gawd! These bloody cards! (She crawls under the table
and picks up the pieces). This'll never glue back together again. And it was
a good vase, too. You can't get them like that any more. This bit's right
over there! (Stretches for the piece. BOBROV enters the room).
BOBROV Granny! Is that you clambering about under the table?
GRANNY Yes, okay, okay. What do you want?
BOBROV I just came to ask you: you wouldn't happen to have a chest of
tea?
GRANNY Come on then, give me a hand up from under the table.
BOBROV What have you done, dropped something? Oh, you've broken the
vase!
GRANNY (Mimicking him) You've broken the vase!
(BOBROV helps GRANNY up. But as soon as he lets go of her, GRANNY sits
back down on the floor).
BOBROV Oh, you're down again!
GRANNY Down, so now what?
BOBROV Let me help you up (Pulls GRANNY up).
GRANNY The cards were going badly. I tried this and that... But don't
pull me by the arms, get hold of me under the armpits. All I got, you know,
was king after king. I need a five and all the kings keep turning up.
BOBROV lets go of GRANNY and GRANNY again sprawls on the floor.
GRANNY Akh!
BOBROV Oh, Lord! You're down again.
GRANNY What are you on about: down, down! What are you after, anyway?
BOBROV I came to ask if you've a chest of tea.
GRANNY I know that. You've already told me. I don't like listening to
the same tale twenty times. The thing is: akh, I'm down again! and a chest
of tea. Well, what are you looking at! Get me up, I'm telling you.
BOBROV (Pulling GRANNY up) I'll just, excuse me, put you in the
armchair.
GRANNY You'd do better to prattle on a bit less and pull me up in a
proper fashion. I meant to tell you, and it almost slipped my mind: you
know, that door in my bedroom isn't shutting properly again. No doubt you
messed the whole thing up.
BOBROV No, I put a staple on with fillister-head screws.
GRANNY Do you think I know anything about staples and fillister heads?
I don't care about all that. I just want the door to shut.
BOBROV It doesn't shut properly because the fillister heads won't stay
in the woodwork.
GRANNY That'll do, that'll do. That's your business. I just need to...
Akh! (She again sprawls on the floor).
BOBROV Oh, Lord!
GRANNY Have you decided to fling me to the floor deliberately? Decided
to have a bit of fun? Oh you useless devil! You're just a useless devil and
you might as well clear off!
BOBROV No, Granny, 'onest injun, I just meant to put you in the
armchair.
GRANNY Did you hear what I said? I told you to clear out! So why aren't
you going? Well, why aren't you going? Do you hear? Clear off out of it!
Well? Bugger off! (exits BOBROV)
GRANNY Off! Go on! Away! Bugger off! Talk about a reprobate! (Gets up
from the floor and sits in the armchair). And his wife is simply an indecent
madam. The madam walks about absolutely starkers and doesn't bat an eyelid,
even in front of me, an old woman. She covers her indecent patch with the
palm of her hand, and that's the way she walks around. And then she touches
bread with that hand at lunchtime. It's simply revolting to watch. She
thinks that if she's young and pretty, then she can do anything she likes.
And as for herself, the trollop, she never washes herself properly just
where she should do. I, she says, like a whiff of woman to come from a
woman! And as for me, as soon as I see her coming, I'm straight into the
bathroom with the eau de Cologne to my nose. Perhaps it may be nice for men,
but as for me, you can spare me that. The shameless hussy! She goes around
naked without the slightest embarrassment. And when she sits down she
doesn't even keep her legs together properly, so that everything's on show.
And -- there, she's well just always wet. She's leaking like that all the
time. If you tell her she should go and wash herself, she will say you
shouldn't wash there too often and she'll take a handkerchief and just wipe
herself. And you're lucky if it's a handkerchief, because just with her hand
she smears it all over the place. I never give her my hand, as there's
perpetually an indecent smell from her hands. And her breasts are indecent.
It's true, they are very fine and bouncy, but they are so big that, in my
opinion, they're simply indecent. That's the wife that Foma found for
himself! How she ever got round him is beyond me.
1933
--------
A Tragic Vaudeville in One Act
LEV MARKOVICH (Bouncing up to the LADY) Let me!
LADY (Keeping him at arms length) Leave me!
LEV MARKOVICH (Bumping into her) Let me!
LADY (Shoving him with her knees) Go away!
LEV MARKOVICH (Gripping her with his hands) Let's, just once!
LADY (Shoving him with her knees) Away! Away!
LEV MARKOVICH Just one thrust!
LADY (Bellowing) No-o.
LEV MARKOVICH A thrust! One thrust!
LADY (Shows the whites of her eyes).
LEV MARKOVICH fumbles around, reaches with his hand for his tool and
suddenly, as it turns out, he can't find it.
LEV MARKOVICH Wait a minute! (Feels himself up and down with his
hands). What the h-hell!
LADY looks at LEV MARKOVICH with astonishment.
LEV MARKOVICH Well, that's a damn funny thing!
LADY What's happened?
LEV MARKOVICH Hum ... hmm ... (looks around, completely flummoxed).
(Curtain)
1934
--------
-- They say all the best tarts are fat-arsed. Gee-ee, I really like
busty tarts, I love the way they smell.
Having said this, he started to increase in height and, upon reaching
the ceiling, he crumbled into a thousand little pellets. The yard-keeper
Panteley came, swept all these pellets up into his scoops in which he
usually picked up the horse muck, and he carried these pellets away
somewhere to the back yard.
And the sun continued to shine as ever and splendiferous ladies
continued to smell just as ravishingly as ever.
1936
--------
I didn't go in for blocking up my ears. Everyone blocked theirs up and
I alone didn't block mine and therefore I alone heard everything. Similarly,
I didn't blindfold myself with a rag, as everyone else did, and therefore I
saw everything. Yes, I alone saw and heard everything. But unfortunately I
didn't understand anything and, therefore, what was the value of me alone
seeing and hearing everything? I couldn't even remember what I had seen and
heard. Just a few fragmentary recollections, flourishes and nonsensical
sounds. There was a tram conductor who came running through, followed by an
elderly lady with a spade between her lips. Someone said: '... probably from
under her chair...' A naked Jewish girl spreads her legs and empties a cup
of milk over her sexual organs, the milk trickles down into a deep dinner
plate. From the plate, the milk is poured back into the cup and offered to
me to drink. I take a drink: there is a smell of cheese from the milk...
The naked Jewish girl is sitting there before me with her legs apart,
her sexual organs stained with milk. She leans forward and looks at her
sexual organs. From her sexual organs there starts to flow a transparent and
syrupy liquid... I am going through a big and rather dark yard. In the yard
there lie high, heaped up piles of firewood. From behind the wood someone's
face is looking out. I know: it's Limonin following me. He's on the watch:
to see whether I'm going to visit his wife. I turn to the right and go
through the outside door on to the street. From the gateway the joyful face
of Limonin is looking out... And now Limonin's wife is offering me vodka. I
down four glasses with a few sardines and start thinking about the naked
Jewish girl. Limonin's wife puts her head on my knees. I knock back one more
glass and light up my pipe.
-- You are so sad today -- Limonin's wife says to me. I tell her some
nonsense or other and go off to the Jewish girl.
1940
--------
1. Do not take offense at the following argument, for there is nothing
offensive in it, unless one does not consider that the circle may be spoken
of in a geometrical sense. If I say that the circle describes four identical
radii, and you say: not four, but one, then we have a right to ask one
another: why? But I don't want to talk about that kind of description of the
circle, but of the perfect description of a circle.
2. The circle is the most perfect flat figure. I am not going to say
why in particular that is so. But this fact arises of itself in our
consciousness in any consideration of flat figures.
3. Nature is so created that the less noticeable the laws of formation,
the more perfect the thing.
4. Nature is also so created that the more impenetrable a thing, the
more perfect it is.
5. On perfection, I would say the following: perfection in things is a
perfect thing. It is always possible to study a perfect thing or, in other
words, in a perfect thing these is always something not studied. If a thing
should prove to have been completely studied, then it would cease to be
perfect, for only that which is incomplete is perfect -- that is to say the
infinite.
6. A point is infinitely small and thereby attains perfection, but at
the same time it remains inconceivable. Even the smallest conceivable point
would not be perfect.
7. A straight line is perfect, for there is no reason for it not to be
infinitely long on both sides, to have neither end nor beginning, and
thereby be inconceivable. But by putting pressure on it and limiting it on
both sides, we render it conceivable, but at the same time imperfect.
If you believe this, then think on.
8. A straight line, broken at one point, forms an angle. But a straight
line which is broken simultaneously at all its points is called a curve. A
curve does not have to be of necessity infinitely long. It may be such that
we can grasp it freely at a glance and yet at the same time remain
inconceivable and infinite. I am talking about a closed curve, in which the
beginning and the end are concealed. And the most regular, inconceivable,
infinite and ideal curve will be a circle.
17 July 1931
--------
1. Advice to humourous performers
I have noticed that it is very important to determine the point at
which laughter can be induced. If you want the auditorium to laugh, come out
on to the stage and stand there in silence until someone bursts out
laughing. Then wait a little bit longer until someone else starts laughing,
and in such a way that everyone can hear. However, this laughter must be
genuine and claqueurs, in such an instance, should not be used. When all
this has taken place, then the point at which laughter can be induced has
been reached. After this you may proceed to your programme of humour and,
rest assured, success is guaranteed.
2. Where are several sorts of laughter.
There is the average sort of laughter, when the whole hall laughs, but
not at full volume. There is the strong sort of laughter, when just one part
of the hall or another laughs, but at full volume, and the other part of the
hall remains silent as, in this case, the laughter doesn't get to it at all.
The former sort of laughter requires vaudeville delivery from a vaudeville
actor, but the latter sort is better. The morons don't have to laugh.
1933
--------
1. A world which is not can not be called existing, because it is not.
2. A world consisting of something unified, homogeneous and continuous
can not be called existing, because in such a world there are no parts and,
once there are no parts, there is no whole.
3. An existing world must be heterogeneous and have parts.
4. Every two parts are different, because one part will always be thus
one and the other that one.
5. If only this one exists, then that one cannot exist, because, as we
have said, only this exists. But such a this cannot exist, because if this
exists it must be heterogeneous and have parts. And if it has parts that
means it consists of this and that.
6. If this and that exist, this means that not this and not that exist,
because if not this and not that did not exist, then this and that would be
unified, homogeneous and continuous and consequently would also not exist.
7. We shall call the first part this and the second part that and the
transition from one to the other we shall call neither this nor that.
8. We shall call neither this nor that 'the impediment'.
9. Thus: the basis of existence comprises three elements: this, the
impediment and that.
10. We shall express non-existence as zero or a unity. Therefore we
shall have to express existence by the number three.
11. Thus: dividing a unitary void into two parts, we get the trinity of
existence.
12. Or: a unitary void, experiencing a certain impediment, splits into
parts, which make up the trinity of existence.
13. The impediment is that creator which creates 'something' out of
'nothing'.
14. If this one, on its own, is 'nothing' or a non-existent
'something', then the 'impediment' is also 'nothing' or a non-existent
'something'.
15. By this reckoning there must be two 'nothings' or nonexistent
'somethings'.
16. If there are two 'nothings' or non-existent 'somethings', then one
of them is the 'impediment' to the other, breaking it down into parts and
becoming itself a part of the other.
17. In the same way the other, being the impediment to the first,
splits it into parts and itself becomes a part of the first.
18. In this way are created, of their own accord, non-existent parts.
19. Three, of their own accord, non-existent parts create the three
basic elements of existence.
20. The three, of their own accord, non-existent basic elements of
existence, all three together, make up a certain existence.
21. If one of the three basic elements of existence should disappear,
then the whole would disappear. So: should the 'impediment' disappear, then
this one and that one would become unitary and continuous and would cease to
exist.
22. The existence of our universe generates three 'nothings' or
separately, on their own account, three non-existent 'somethings': space,
time and something else which is neither time nor space.
23. Time, of its essence, is unitary, homogeneous and continuous and
thereby does not exist.
24. Space, of its essence, is unitary, homogeneous and continuous and
thereby does not exist.
25. But as soon as space and time enter into a certain mutual
relationship they become the impediment, the one of the other, and begin to
exist.
26. As they begin to exist, space and time become mutually parts, one
of the other.
27. Time, experiencing the impediment of space, breaks down into parts,
generating the trinity of existence.
28. A split down and existing, consists of the three basic elements of
existence: the past, the present and the future .
29. The past, the present and the future, as basic elements of
existence, always stood in inevitable dependence, each on the other. There
cannot be a past without a present and a future, or a present without a past
and a future, or a future without a past and a present.
30. Examining these three elements separately, we see that there is no
past because it has already gone and here is no future because it has not
yet come. That means that there remains only one thing -- the 'present'. But
what is the 'present'?
31. When we are pronouncing this word, the letters of this word which
have been pronounced become past and the unpronounced letters still lie in
the future. This means that only that sound which is being pronounced now is
'present'.
32. But of course the process of pronouncing this sound possesses a
certain length. Consequently, a certain part of this process is 'present',
just as the other parts are either past or future. But the same thing too
may be said of this part of the process which had seemed to us to be 'the
present'.
33. Reflecting in this manner, we see that there is no 'present'.
34. The present is only the 'impediment' in the transition from past to
future and past and future appear to us as the this and that of the
existence of time.
35. Thus: the present is the 'impediment' in the existence of time and,
as we said earlier, space serves as the impediment in the existence of time.
36. By this means: the 'present' of time is space.
37. There is no space in the past and the future, it being contained
entirely in the 'present'. And the present is space.
38. And since there is no present, neither is there any space.
39. We have explained the existence of time but space, of its own
accord, does not yet exist.
40. In order to explain the existence of space, we must take that
incidence when time performs as the impediment of space.
41. Experiencing the impediment of time, space splits into parts,
generating the trinity of existence.
42. Broken down, existing space consists of three elements: there, here
and there.
43. In the transition from one there to the other there, it is
necessary to overcome the impediment here, because if it were not for the
impediment here, then the one there and the other there would be unitary.
44. Here is the 'impediment' of existing space. And, as we said above,
the impediment of existing space is time.
45. Therefore: the here of space is time.
46. The here of space and the 'present' of time are the points of
intersection between time and space.
47. Examining space and time as basic elements in the existence of the
universe, we would say: the universe expresses space, time and something
else which is neither time nor space.
48. That 'something' which is neither time nor space is the
'impediment', which generates the existence of the universe.
49. This 'something' expresses the impediment between time and space.
50. Therefore this 'something' lies at the point of intersection of
time and space.
51. Consequently this 'something' is to be found in time at the point
of the 'present' and in space at the point of the 'here'.
52. This 'something' which is to be found at the point of intersection
of space and time generates a certain 'impediment', separating the 'here'
from the 'present'.
53. This 'something', generating the impediment and separating the
'here' from the 'present', creates a certain existence which we call matter
or energy. (Henceforth we shall provisionally call this simply matter.)
54. Thus: the existence of the universe, as organised by space, time
and their impediment, is expressed as matter.
55. Matter testifies to us of time.
56. Matter testifies to us of space.
57. By this means: the three basic elements of the existence of the
universe are perceived by us as time, space and matter.
58. Time, space and matter, intersecting one with another at definite
points and being basic elements in the existence of the universe, generate a
certain node.
59. We shall call this node -- the Node of the Universe.
60. When I say of myself: 'I am', I am placing myself within the Node
of the Universe.
--------
On an Approach to Immortality
It is peculiar to each person to strive for enjoyment, which is always
either sexual satisfaction, or satiation, or acquisition.
But only that which lies not on the path to enjoyment leads towards
immortality. All systems leading to immortality in the end come down to a
single rule: continually do that which you don't feel like doing, because
every person feels like either eating, or satisfying their sexual feelings,
or acquiring something, or all of these more or less at a stroke. It is
interesting that immortality is always connected with death and is treated
by various religious systems as eternal enjoyment, or as eternal torment, or
as an eternal absence of enjoyment and torment.
1939
--------
28 June 1932. Tsarskoye Selo
Dear Tamara Aleksandrova and Leonid Savel'evich,
Thank you for your wonderful letter. I have re-read it many times and
learned it off by heart. I can be awakened in the night and I will
immediately and word-perfectly begin: 'Hello there, Daniil Ivanovich, we are
completely lost without you. Lyonya has bought himself some new...' and so
on, and so on.
I have read this letter to all my acquaintances in Tsarskoye Selo.
Everyone likes it very much. Yesterday my friend Bal'nis came to see me. He
wanted to stay the night. I read him your letter six times. He smiled very
broadly, so it was evident that he liked the letter, but he didn't have time
to express a detailed opinion, for he left without staying for the night.
Today I went round to his place myself and read the letter through to him
once more, so as to enable him to refresh his memory. Then I asked Bal'nis
for his opinion. But he broke a leg off one of his chairs and with the aid
of this leg he chased me out on to the street and furthermore said that if I
turn up once more with this drivel he will lie my hands up and stuff my
mouth with muck from the rubbish pit. These were, of course, on his part
rather rude and stupid remarks. I, of course, went away and took the view
that he quite possibly had a bad cold and that he was not himself. From
Bal'nis I went off to Yekaterinskiy Park and had a go on the rowing boats.
On the whole lake, apart from me, there were two or three other boats. And,
by the way, there was a very beautiful girl in one of the boats. And she was
completely on her own. I turned my boat (incidentally, you have to row
carefully when you're turning a boat, because the oars are liable to jump
out of the rowlocks) and rowed after the beauty. I felt as though I
resembled a Norwegian and I must have cut a fresh and healthy figure in my
grey jacket and my fluttering tie and, as they say, had quite a whiff of the
sea about me. But near the Orlov Column some hooligans were swimming and, as
I rowed past, one of them just happened to have to swim right across my
path. Then another of them shouted: -- Wait a minute, while this cross-eyed
and sweaty specimen goes past! -- and pointed at me with his foot. This was
very disagreeable because the beauty heard every word. And since she was
rowing in front of me and in a rowing boat, as everyone knows, you sit with
the back of your head towards your direction of movement, the beauty could
not only hear, but she could see the hooligan pointing at me with his foot.
I tried to make out that all this had nothing to do with me and started to
look to the side with a smile on my face. But there wasn't a single other
boat around. And at this point the hooligan shouted again: -- Now what do
you think you're looking at? We're talking to you, aren't we? Hey, you, the
sucker in the cap!
I set about rowing with might and main, but the oars kept jumping out
of the rowlocks and the boat only moved slowly. Finally, after an enormous
effort, I caught up with the beauty and we got acquainted. She was called
Yekaterina Pavlovna. We took back her boat and Yekaterina Pavlovna moved
over to mine. She turned out to be a very witty conversationalist. I had
decided to dazzle my friends with wit, and so I got out your letter and made
a start on reading it: 'Hello, there, Daniil Ivanovich, we are completely
lost without you. Lyonya has bought himself some new ...' and so on.
Yekaterina Pavlovna suggested that, if we pulled in to the bank, then I
might see something. And I did, I saw Yekaterina Pavlovna making off, and
out of the bushes there crept a filthy urchin, saying: -- Mister, give us a
ride in yer boat.
This evening the letter came to grief. It happened like this: I was
standing on the balcony, reading your letter and eating semolina. At that
moment Auntie called me into the living room to help her wind the clock. I
covered the semolina with the letter and went into the room. When I came
back the letter had absorbed all the semolina into itself and I ate it.
The weather in Tsarskoye Selo is well set: variable cloud, south-west
wind, possible rain.
This morning an organ-grinder came into our garden and played a trashy
waltz, filched a hammock and ran away.
I read a very interesting book about how one young man fell in love
with a certain young person, and this young person loved another young man,
and this young man loved another young person and this young person loved
another young man yet again, who loved not her but another young person.
And suddenly this young person stumbles down a trapdoor and fractures
her spine. But when she has completely recovered from that, she suddenly
catches her death of cold and dies. Then the young man who loves her does
himself in with a revolver shot. Then the young person who loves this young
man throws herself under a train. Then the young man who loves this young
person climbs up a tram pylon from grief and touches the live wire, dying
from an electric shock. Then the young person who loves this young man
stuffs herself with ground glass and dies from perforation of the
intestines. Then the young man who loves this young person runs away to
America and takes to the drink to such a degree that he sells his last suit
and, for the lack of a suit, he is obliged to lie in hospital, where he
suffers from bedsores, and from these bedsores he dies.
In a few days I shall be in town. I definitely want to see you. Give my
best wishes to Valentina Yefimovna and Yakov Semyonovich.
Daniil Kharms
--------
Dear Nikandr Andreyevich,
I have received your letter and straight away I realised that it was
from you. At first I thought that it might by chance not be from you, but as
soon as I unsealed it I immediately realised it was from you, though I had
been on the point of thinking that it was not from you. I am glad that you,
long ago now, got married, because when a person gets married to the one he
wanted to marry, then this means he has got what he wanted. I am very glad
you got married, because when a person marries the one he wanted to marry,
that means he has got what he wanted. Yesterday I received your letter and
immediately thought that this letter was from you, but then I thought that
it seemed not to be from you, but unsealed it and saw: it really is from
you. You did exactly the right thing, writing to me. First you didn't write,
and then you suddenly wrote, although before that, before that period when
you didn't write, you also used to write. Immediately as I received your
letter, I straight away decided that it was from you and, then, I was very
glad that you had already got married. For, if a person should feel like
getting married, then he really has to get married, come what may. Therefore
I am very glad that you finally got married to the very one you wanted to
marry. And you did exactly the right thing, writing to me. I was greatly
cheered up on seeing your letter and I even immediately thought it was from
you. It's true, while I was unsealing it, the thought did flash across my
mind that it was not from you, but then, all the same, I decided it was from
you. Thank you for writing. I am grateful to you for this and very glad for
you. Perhaps you can't guess why I am so glad for you, but I will tell you
at once that I am glad for you because you got married, and to the very one
you wanted to marry. And, you know, it is very good to marry the very one
you want to marry, because then you have got the very thing you wanted. It's
for that very reason that I am so glad for you. But also I am glad because
you wrote me a letter. I had even from some distance decided that the letter
was from you, but as I took it in my hands I then thought: but what if it's
not from you? But then I start to think: no, of course it's from you. I
unseal the letter myself and at the same time I think: from you or not from
you? From you or not from you? Well, as I unsealed it, then I could see:
it's from you. I was greatly cheered and decided to write you a letter as
well. There's a lot which has to be said, but literally there's no time. I
have written what I had time to write in this letter and the rest I shall
write another time, as now there really isn't time at all. It's a good
thing, at least, that you wrote me a letter. Now I know that you got married
a long time ago. I, from your previous letters too, knew that you had got
married and now I see again: it's absolutely true, you have got married. And
I'm very glad that you got married and wrote me a letter. I straight away,
as soon as I saw your letter, decided that you had got married again. Well,
I think it's a good thing that you have again got married and written me a
letter about it. Now write to me and tell me who your new wife is and how it
all came about. Say hello from me to your new wife.
Daniil Kharms
1933
--------
...I don't know the right word to express that strength in you which so
delights me. I usually call it purity.
I have been thinking about how beautiful everything is at first! How
beautiful primary reality is! The sun and the grass are beautiful, grass and
stone, and water, a bird, a beetle, a fly, and a human being (a kitten and a
key, a comb). But if I were blind and deaf, had lost all my faculties, how
could I know all this beauty? everything gone and nothing for me at all. But
I suddenly acquire touch anti immediately almost the whole world appears
again. I invent hearing and the world improves significantly. I invent all
the other faculties and the world gets even bigger and better. The world
starts to exist as soon as I let it in to me. Never mind its state of
disorder, at least it exists! However, I started to bring some order into
the world. And that's when Art appeared. Only at this point did I grasp the
true difference between the sun and a comb but, at the same time, I realised
that they are one and the same.
Now my concern is to create the correct order. I am carried away by
this and only think of this. I speak about it, try to narrate it, describe
it, sketch it, dance it, construct it. I am the creator of a world and this
is the most important thing in me. How can I not think constantly about it!
In everything I do, I invest the consciousness of being creator of a world.
And I am not making simply some boot, but, first and foremost, I am creating
something new. It doesn't bother me that the boot should turn out to be
comfortable, durable and elegant. It's more important that it should contain
that same order pertaining in the world as a whole, so that world order
should not be the poorer, should not be soiled by contact with skin and
nails, so that, notwithstanding the form of the boot, it should preserve its
own form, should remain the same as it was, should remain pure.
It is that same purity which permeates all the arts. When I am writing
poetry, the most important thing seems to me not the idea, not the content,
and not the form, and not the misty conception of 'quality', but something
even more misty and incomprehensible to the rationalistic mind, but
comprehensible to me and, I hope, to you (...) -- it is the purity of order.
This purity is one and the same -- in the sun, in the grass, in a human
being and in poetry. True art is on a par with primary reality; it creates a
world and constitutes the world's primary reflection. It is indisputably
real.
But, my God, what trivialities make up true art! The Divine Comedy is a
great piece of work, but <Pushkin's> lines 'Through the agitated mists the
moon makes its way' are no less great. For in both there is the same purity
and consequently an identical proximity to reality, that is to independent
existence. That means it is not simply words and thoughts printed on paper,
but a piece of work which is just as real as the cut-glass bubble for the
ink standing in front of me on the table. These verses seem to have become a
piece of work which could be taken off the paper and hurled at the window,
and the window would smash. That's what words can do!
But, on the other hand, how helpless and pitiful these same words can
be! I never read the newspapers. They are a fictitious world, not the
created one. Just pitiful, down-at-heel typographical print on rotten
prickly paper.
Does a person need anything, apart from life and art? I don't think so:
nothing else is needed, as everything genuine is to be found in them.
I think that purity can be in everything, even in the way a person eats
soup.
1933
--------
28 February, 1936
Dear Liza,
I convey my best wishes to Kirill on his birthday and similarly
congratulate his parents on successfully fulfilling the plan prescribed for
them by nature for the raising up to the age of two years of human
offspring, unable to walk, but therefore gradually beginning to destroy
everything around and finally, in attaining this junior pre-school age,
belabouring across the head with a voltmeter stolen from his father's
writing table his loving mother, who has failed to evade the highly
skillfully delivered assaults of her not as yet fully mature child, who is
planning already in his immature skull, having done away with his parents,
to direct all his most penetrating attentions towards his venerable
grandfather and by the same means demonstrate a mental development allotted
beyond his years, in honour of which, on the 28th of February, will gather a
couple of admirers of this indeed outstanding phenomenon, among whose
number, to my great chagrin, I shall not be able to be, finding myself at
the time in question under a certain pressure, being enraptured on the
shores of the Gulf of Finland by an ability, innate since childhood, of
grabbing a steel pen and, having dipped it in an ink-well, in short sharp
phrases expressing my profound and at times even in a certain way highly
elevated thoughts.
Daniil Kharms
--------
Dear Aleksandr Ivanovich,
I have heard that you are saving money and have already saved
thirty-five thousand. What for? Why save money? Why not share what you have
with those who do not even have a totally spare pair of trousers? I mean,
what is money? I have studied this question. I possess photographs of the
banknotes in widest circulation: to the value of a rouble, three, four and
even five roubles. I have heard of banknotes of an intrinsic worth of up to
30 roubles at a time! But, as for saving them: what for? Well, I am not a
collector. I have always despised collectors who amass stamps, feathers,
buttons, onions and so on. They are stupid, dull superstitious people. I
know for example that what are called 'numismatists' -- that's those who
accumulate coins -- have the superstitious habit of putting them, have you
ever thought where? Not on the table, not in a box, but... on their books!
What do you think of that? Whereas money can be picked up, taken to a shop
and exchanged, well... let's say for soup (that's a kind of food), or for
grey-mullet sauce (that's also a kind of foodstuff).
No, Aleksandr Ivanovich, you are almost as couth a person as I, yet you
save money and don't change it into a range of other things. Forgive me,
dear Aleksandr Ivanovich, but that is not terribly clever! You've simply
gone a little stupid living out there in the provinces. There must be no one
to talk to, even. I'm sending you my picture so that you will be able at
least to see before you a clever, cultivated, intellectual, first-rate face.
Your friend Daniil Kharms
Late 1930's
--------
A Tale
. . . And between them the following conversation takes place.
Hamsun
In the courtyard an old woman is standing and holding a clock in her
hands. I walk through, past the old woman, stop and ask her:
-- What time is it?
-- Have a look -- the old woman says to me.
I look and see that there are no hands on the clock.
-- There are no hands here -- I say.
The old woman looks at the clock face and tells me: -- It's now a
quarter to three.
-- Oh, so that's what it is. Thank you very much -- I say and go on.
The old woman shouts something after me but I walk on without looking
round. I go out on to the street and walk on the sunny side. The spring sun
is very pleasant. I walk on, screwing up my eyes and smoking my pipe. On the
corner of Sadovaya I happen to run into Sakerdon Mikhailovich. We say hello,
stop and talk for a long time. I get fed up with standing on the street and
I invite Sakerdon Mikhailovich into a cellar bar. We drink vodka, eat
hard-boiled eggs and sprats and then say goodbye, and I walk on alone.
At this point I remember that I had forgotten to turn off the electric
oven at home. This is very annoying. I turn round and walk home. The day had
started so well and this was the first misfortune. I ought not to have taken
to the street.
I get home, take off my jacket, take my watch out of my waistcoat
pocket and hang it on a nail; then I lock the door and lie down on the
couch. I shall recline and try to get to sleep.
The offensive shouting of urchins can be heard from the street. I lie
there, thinking up various means of execution for them. My favourite one is
to infect them all with tetanus so that they suddenly stop moving. Their
parents can drag them all home. They will lie in their beds unable even to
eat, because their mouths won't open. They will be fed artificially. After a
week the tetanus can pass off, but the children will be so feeble that they
will have to lie in their beds for a whole month. Then they will gradually
start to recover but I shall infect them with a second dose of tetanus and
they will all croak.
I lie on the couch with my eyes open and I can't get to sleep. I
remember the old woman with the clock whom I saw today in the yard and feel
pleased that there were no hands on her clock. Only the other day in the
second-hand shop I saw a revolting kitchen clock and its hands were made in
the form of a knife and fork.
Oh, my God! I still haven't turned off the electric oven! I jump up and
turn it off, and then I lie down again on the couch and try to get to sleep.
I close my eyes. I don't feel sleepy. The spring sun is shining in through
the window, straight on to me. I start to feel hot. I get up and sit down in
the armchair by the window.
Now I feel sleepy but I am not going to sleep. I get hold of a piece of
paper and a pen and I am going to write. I feel within me a terrible power.
I thought it all over as long ago as yesterday. It will be the story about a
miracle worker who is living in our time and who doesn't work any miracles.
He knows that he is a miracle worker and that he can perform any miracle,
but he doesn't do so. He is thrown out of his flat and he knows that he only
has to wave a finger and the flat will remain his, but he doesn't do this;
he submissively moves out of the flat and lives out of town in a shed. He is
capable of turning this shed into a fine brick house, but he doesn't do
this; he carries on living in the shed and eventually dies, without having
done a single miracle in the whole of his life.
I just sit and rub my hands with glee. Sakerdon Mikhailovich will burst
with envy. He thinks that I am beyond writing anything of genius. Now then,
now then, to work! Away with any kind of sleep and laziness! I shall write
for eighteen hours straight off!
I am shaking all over with impatience. I am not able to think out what
has to be done: I needed to take a pen and a piece of paper, but I grabbed
various objects, not at all those that I needed. I ran about the room: from
the window to the table, from the table to the oven, from the oven again to
the table, then to the divan and again to the window. I was gasping from the
flame which was ablaze in my breast. It's only five o'clock now. The whole
day is ahead, and the evening, and all night is . . .
I stand in the middle of the room. Whatever am I thinking of? Why, it's
already twenty past five. I must write. I move the table towards the window
and sit down at it. A sheet of squared paper is in front of me, in my hand
is a pen.
My heart is still beating too fast and my hand is shaking. I wait, so
as to calm down a little. I put down my pen and fill my pipe. The sun is
shining right in my eyes; I squint and light up my pipe.
And now a crow flies past the window. I look out of the window on to
the street and see a man with an artificial leg walking along the pavement.
He is knocking loudly with his leg and his stick.
-- So -- I say to myself, continuing to look out of the window.
The sun is hiding behind a chimney of the building opposite. The shadow
of the chimney runs along the roof, flies across the street and falls on my
face. I should take advantage or this shadow and write a few words about the
miracle worker. I grab the pen and write: 'The miracle worker was on the
tall side.'
Nothing more can I write. I sit on until I start feeling hungry. Then I
get up and go over to the cupboard where I keep my provisions; I rummage
there but find nothing. A lump of sugar and nothing more. Someone is
knocking at the door.
-- Who's there?
No one answers me. I open the door and see before me the old woman who
in the morning had been standing in the yard with the clock. I am very
surprised and cannot say anything.
-- So, here I am -- says the old woman and comes into my room.
I stand by the door and don't know what to do: should I chase the old
woman out or, on the contrary, suggest that she sit down? But the old woman
goes of her own accord over to my armchair beside the window and sits down
in it.
-- Close the door and lock it -- the old woman tells me.
I close and lock the door.
-- Kneel -- says the old woman.
And I get down on my knees.
But at this point I begin to realise the full absurdity of my position.
Why am I kneeling in front of some old woman? And, indeed, why is this old
woman in my room and sitting in my favourite armchair? Why hadn't I chased
this old woman out?
-- Now, listen here -- I say -- what right have you to give the orders
in my room, and, what's more, boss me about? I have no wish at all to be