Biography and episodes of life Daniil Kharms. When born and died Daniil Kharms, memorable places and dates important events his life. Quotes from a writer and poet, photos and videos.
Years of life of Daniil Kharms:
born December 30, 1905, died February 2, 1942
Epitaph
“Fall asleep and in a moment with your airy soul
Enter the carefree gardens.
And the body sleeps like soulless dust,
And the river sleeps on my chest.
And sleep with lazy fingers
It touches your eyelashes.
And I paper sheets
I don’t rustle my pages.”
Daniil Kharms, 1935
Biography
The famous Daniil Kharms, a magnificent master of the absurd, was a man unlucky fate. If his children's books were published, then his works for adults were not needed. His sharp eye instantly noticed unpleasant, funny and stupid traits in the people around him. It is not surprising that the writer quickly fell into disgrace. He was arrested twice and died on the very tough year blockade of Leningrad.
Start literary creativity Kharms is closely associated with the so-called Oberiut group - members of the Association of Real Art. Writers and poets of the “left” movement created avant-garde, incomprehensible things that were little suited to Soviet reality. Nevertheless, the talent of many of them could not be ignored, and already established writers tried to find use for it. So, D. Kharms was helped by Samuel Marshak, who introduced him to children's literature. Kharms wrote poems and stories, invented puzzles and charades, and translated children's books.
Kharms’s first sentence to three years in a correctional camp was commuted to deportation, and even that ended quickly for the writer. But his attitude in life changed after that. Returning to Leningrad, Kharms lived in poverty, he was little published, and one could forget about publishing “adult” things. Daniil Kharms found himself in a real psychological crisis, although he did not stop writing, even realizing that perhaps his works would never see the light of day.
When did the Great Patriotic War, Kharms was crushed. It seemed to him that the power fascist troops cannot be defeated; he thought with horror about death and was categorically against going to the front. The writer’s mood became known: he was reported, and Kharms was arrested a second time. To avoid capital punishment, the writer feigned schizophrenia and was placed in the psychiatric ward of the prison, where he died. There is a possibility that his remains, along with many other unknown victims of Leningrad prisons, were buried on the Levashovskaya Heath, but the exact place of Kharms’s final resting place is unlikely to be found.
Only after rehabilitation in the 1960s. The Soviet reader began to discover previously unpublished works by Kharms. His short stories were replicated by samizdat, and at the end of the twentieth century. A collection of works was published in six volumes. Today there is no longer any doubt that D. Kharms greatly influenced modern literature and music; Songs were written based on his poems, and his plays are still staged in theaters today.
Life line
December 30, 1905 Date of birth of Danil Ivanovich Yuvachev (Kharms).
1915-1918 Study at Realschule.
1922-1924 Study at the second Children's Village Unified Labor School.
1924-1926 Study at the First Leningrad Electrical Technical School.
1926-1929 Membership in the Leningrad branch of the All-Russian Union of Poets.
1926-1927 Organization of several literary associations.
1920-1930s Work in children's magazines "Chizh", "Hedgehog", "Cricket", "Oktyabryata".
1928 The release of Kharms’s first children’s book, “The Naughty Cork.” Marriage to E. Rusakova.
1931 Arrest on charges of participation in an anti-Soviet writers group.
1932 Deportation to Kursk, return to Leningrad. Divorce.
1934 Marriage to Marina Malich.
1941 Second arrest for spreading “slanderous and defeatist sentiments.”
February 2, 1942 Date of death of Daniil Kharms.
1960 Recognition of D. Kharms as innocent and rehabilitation.
1965 The beginning of posthumous publications of “adult” things by D. Kharms.
Memorable places
1. House No. 22-24 on Nevsky Prospekt in St. Petersburg (Petrishule), where D. Kharms studied.
2. The First Leningrad Electrical Technical School (now the St. Petersburg Energy Technical School), where Daniil Kharms studied.
3. House number 16 on Pervyshevskaya street. (now Ufimtseva St.) in Kursk, where D. Kharms was exiled.
4. House No. 11 on the street. Mayakovsky in St. Petersburg, where D. Kharms lived.
5. Psychiatric department of the Kresty prison (9 Arsenalnaya Street) in St. Petersburg, where D. Kharms died.
Episodes of life
Daniil Kharms took a very careful approach to working on children's books. He didn’t like her too much, but, according to his friends, he simply “couldn’t do her badly.” In total, eight of his individual children's books were published.
During the writer's lifetime, only two of his poems not for children were published.
In recent years, D. Kharms and his wife lived very poorly: in fact, their only income was what Marina Malich earned. Nevertheless, the writer was very scrupulous in financial matters, hated to borrow, and if he was forced, he carefully ensured that he returned what he borrowed on time.
Igor Zolotovitsky reads D. Kharms’ poem “Liar”
Testaments
“I’m only interested in ‘nonsense’; only that which has no practical meaning. I’m only interested in life in its absurd manifestation.”
“Doubt is already a particle of faith.”
“Confidence or, more precisely, faith cannot be acquired, it can only be developed in oneself.”
“Why should we be ashamed of our good body, given to us by nature, when we are not ashamed of our vile deeds, created by ourselves?”
Condolences
“He was a man of extraordinary charm, great knowledge and great intelligence. And our conversations were only about art - and nothing else... This man enjoyed great love from everyone who knew him. It's impossible to imagine anyone saying anything about him bad word- this is absolutely excluded. His intelligence was genuine and his manners were genuine.”
Solomon Gershov, artist
“He had such stories that I couldn’t even believe that it could have happened. But every time he insisted that it happened to him.”
Klavdia Pugacheva, actress
“He considered himself a wizard and loved to scare scary stories about your magical power... He disliked those who were beaten most of all, familiar words, opinions and everything that has already been encountered often and set the teeth on edge. He very rarely liked people; he spared no one.”
Alisa Poret, artist and muse of D. Kharms
Daniil Ivanovich Kharms, real name Yuvachev, born December 30 (December 17, old style) 1905 in St. Petersburg. His father was a naval officer. In 1883, he was brought to trial for complicity in the Narodnaya Volya terror, spent four years in solitary confinement and more than ten years in hard labor, where he experienced religious conversion: along with the memoir books “Eight Years on Sakhalin” (1901) and “The Shlisselburg Fortress” (1907) he published mystical treatises “Between the World and the Monastery” (1903), “Secrets of the Kingdom of Heaven” (1910).
Kharms's mother had noble origin, was in charge of a shelter for former convict women in St. Petersburg in the 1900s.
After the revolution, she became a castellan at the Barracks Hospital named after S.P. Botkin, his father worked as a senior auditor of the State Savings Banks, and later as the head of the accounting department of the working committee for the construction of the Volkhov hydroelectric station.
In 1915-1918, Daniel studied at the privileged Main German School of St. Peter in Petrograd (Petrishul).
In 1922-1924 - at the 2nd Detskoselsky Unified Labor School, a former gymnasium in Tsarskoe Selo, where his aunt Natalya Kolyubakina was the director and teacher of Russian literature.
In 1924-1926 he studied at the First Leningrad Electrical Technical School, from where he was expelled for “poor attendance and inactivity in public works.”
In the early 1920s, Daniil Yuvachev chose the pseudonym "Kharms", which gradually became so attached to him that it became part of his surname.
In the 1930s, when all Soviet citizens were issued passports, he added a hyphen to the second part of his last name, so it became “Yuvachev-Kharms.”
The pseudonym "Kharms" is interpreted by researchers as "charm", "enchantment" (from the French charm), as "harm" and "misfortune" (from the English harm) and as a "sorcerer". In addition to the main pseudonym, Daniil used about 30 more pseudonyms - Charms, Harmonius, Shardam, Dandan, as well as Ivan Toporyshkin, Karl Ivanovich Shusterling and others.
He began writing poetry while studying at school, and later chose poetry as his main profession.
The earliest surviving poem by Kharms, “In July, Somehow Our Summer...” dates back to 1922.
The early Kharms was greatly influenced by the poet Alexander Tufanov, successor of Velimir Khlebnikov, author of the book “To Zaumi,” who founded the Order of Zaumni in March 1925, the core of which included Kharms himself, who took the title “Behold Zaumi.”
The departure from Tufanov was predetermined by his friendship with the poet Alexander Vvedensky, with whom in 1926 Kharms created the "School of Plane Trees" - a chamber community, which, in addition to two poets, included philosophers Yakov Druskin, Leonid Lipavsky and the poet, later editor of the children's magazine "Hedgehog" Nikolai Oleinikov. The main form of activity of the "plane trees" was performances with the reading of their poems.
In 1926, Kharms’ poem “The Case of railway"was published in a collection of poems; in 1927, "Poem by Pyotr Yashkin" was published in the collection "Bonfire".
In 1928, Kharms became a member literary group The Association of Real Art (OBERIU), which included poets Alexander Vvedensky, Nikolai Zabolotsky and others, who used the techniques of alogism, absurdity, and grotesque. At the “Three Left Hours” evening organized by the association, the highlight of the program was the production of Kharms’ play “Elizabeth Bam.”
In the same year, writer Samuil Marshak attracted Kharms to work in the Leningrad department of the children's literature publishing house Detgiz. "Ivan Ivanovich Samovar" (1928), "Ivan Toporyshkin" (1928), "About how dad shot my ferret" (1929), " Funny siskins"(co-authored with Marshak, 1929), "Million" (1930), "Liar" (1930) and others. Kharms's poems were published in 11 separate editions.
In December 1931, Kharms, along with other employees of the Leningrad children's publishing sector, was arrested on suspicion of anti-Soviet activities and was sentenced to three years in prison, which was replaced in 1932 by exile to Kursk, where he was escorted along with Vvedensky. In 1932, he managed to return to Leningrad, where he continued to collaborate in the magazines "Hedgehog" and "Chizh", published a free translation of the story "Plikh and Plyukh" by the German poet Wilhelm Busch.
In 1934, Kharms was admitted to the Union of Writers of the USSR. In the same year, he began work on the philosophical treatise "Existence", which was not completed.
In March 1937, the magazine “Chizh” published the poem “A Man Came Out of the House,” which tells how in the USSR a man left his house and disappeared without a trace. After this, Kharms was no longer published in children's publications. In the same year, he began creating the prose cycle "Cases".
At the end of May - beginning of June 1939, Kharms wrote the story "The Old Woman", which many researchers consider the main thing in the writer's work.
In the fall of 1939, Kharms feigned mental illness, and in September-October he was admitted to the neuropsychiatric dispensary of the Vasileostrovsky district, where he was diagnosed with schizophrenia.
In the summer of 1940, he wrote the stories “Knights”, “Myshin’s Victory”, “Lecture”, “Pashkvil”, “Interference”, “Falling”, in September - the story “Power”, later - the story “A translucent young man was rushing about on the bed...”.
In 1941, for the first time since 1937, two children's books with Kharms' participation were published.
The last surviving work of Kharms was the story “Rehabilitation,” written in June 1941.
On August 23, 1941, Kharms was arrested and accused of anti-Soviet activities. In mid-December he was transferred to the psychiatric department of the prison hospital at Kresty.
On February 2, 1942, Daniil Kharms died in custody in besieged Leningrad from exhaustion. His name was erased from Soviet literature.
In 1960, Kharms’ sister Elizaveta Gritsyna appealed to the USSR Prosecutor General with a request to review her brother’s case. On July 25, 1960, by a resolution of the Leningrad prosecutor's office, Kharms was found innocent, his case was closed for lack of evidence of a crime, and he himself was rehabilitated.
A collection of his children's poems, "The Game" (1962), was published in the USSR. Since 1978, his collected works have been published in Germany. By the mid-1990s, Kharms took the place of one of the main representatives of Russian literary literature of the 1920-1930s, opposing Soviet literature.
The first complete three-volume collected works of Daniil Kharms was published in Russia in the 2010s.
Daniil Kharms was married twice. The first wife, Esther Rusakova, the daughter of a former political emigrant, after a divorce from the writer in 1937, along with her family, was arrested, sentenced to five years in the camps and soon died in Magadan.
Kharms’s second wife, Marina Malich, came from the Golitsyn family; after her husband’s death, she was evacuated from besieged Leningrad to Pyatigorsk, from where she was taken away by the Germans for forced labor in Germany. She managed to get to France, and later Marina emigrated to Venezuela. According to her memoirs, literary critic Vladimir Glotser wrote the book “Marina Durnovo: My husband Daniil Kharms.”
The material was prepared based on information from RIA Novosti and open sources
Daniil Kharms (Daniil Ivanovich Yuvachev) was born on December 30 (old style - 17) 1905. His father, Ivan Pavlovich Yuvachev, was a man of exceptional destiny. For participation in the Narodnaya Volya terror, he (then a naval officer) was tried in 1883 and spent four years in solitary confinement, and then more than ten years in hard labor. Kharms’s mother ran a shelter for former convicts in St. Petersburg.Kharms studied at St. Petersburg German school(Peterschule), where he acquired a thorough knowledge of German and English. In 1924, he entered the Leningrad Electrical Technical School, from where a year later he was expelled for “poor attendance” and “inactivity in public works.” Thus, the writer was unable to receive either higher or secondary specialized education. But he was intensively engaged in self-education, especially interested in philosophy and psychology. He lived exclusively on literary earnings. Since 1924, he begins to call himself Kharms. This was the main of his many aliases; originating, perhaps, from both the French “charm” (charm, charm) and the English “harm” (harm, misfortune); it quite accurately reflected the essence of the writer’s attitude to life and work: Kharms knew how to travesty the most serious things and find very sad moments in the most seemingly funny ones. The same ambivalence was characteristic of his personality: an orientation towards the game, towards a cheerful prank, was combined with sometimes painful suspiciousness, with the confidence that he was bringing misfortune to those he loved.
In 1925, Kharms met young Esther Rusakova and soon married her. The romance and marriage were difficult and painful for both parties - until the divorce in 1932. However, throughout his life he will remember Esther and compare with her all the women with whom fate brings him together.
In 1925, Kharms joined a small group of Leningrad poets, led by Alexander Tufanov; they called themselves “zaumniks.” Here an acquaintance occurs and a friendship arises with Alexander Vvedensky. In 1926, they, together with young philosophers Leonid Lipavsky and Yakov Druskin, formed the “Chinari” association. Around the same time, Kharms and Vvedensky were accepted into the Leningrad branch of the All-Russian Union of Poets. In the collections of the Union they publish two of their poems, which remain the only “adult” works that they are destined to see published. The main form of activity of the “plane trees” is performances with the reading of their poems in clubs, universities, literary circles; they usually ended in scandals.
Kharms participates in various left-wing associations and initiates their creation. In 1927, the Association of Real Art (OBERIU) emerged, which, in addition to Kharms and Vvedensky, included Nikolai Zabolotsky, Konstantin Vaginov, Igor Bakhterev, and Nikolai Oleinikov, who became a close friend of Kharms, also joined them.
The only evening of OBERIU on January 24, 1928 became a kind of benefit performance for Kharms: in the first part he read poetry, and in the second his play “Elizabeth Bam” was staged (it in many ways anticipates the discoveries of the European theater of the absurd). Sharply negative reviews in the press determined the impossibility of such evenings; now the Oberiuts could only perform small programs. Finally, one of their speeches at the Leningrad State University dormitory aroused new accusations of counter-revolutionism. In 1930, OBERIU ceased to exist, and at the end of 1931, Kharms and Vvedensky were arrested. The sentence, however, was relatively mild - exile to Kursk, and the efforts of friends led to the fact that already in the fall of 1932 the poets were able to return to Leningrad.
Back at the end of 1927, Oleinikov and Boris Zhitkov organized the “Association of Writers of Children's Literature” and invited Kharms to it. From 1928 to 1941, he constantly collaborated in children's magazines “Hedgehog”, “Chizh”, “Cricket”, “Oktyabryata”, and published about 20 children’s books. Poems and prose for children provide a unique outlet for his playful element, but they were written solely for earning money and the author did not attach much importance to them. The attitude of official party criticism towards them was clearly negative.
After the exile, there could be no talk of any publications or speeches. Moreover, it was necessary to hide his creativity from outsiders. Therefore, communication between former Oberiuts and people close to them now took place in apartments. Kharms, Vvedensky, Lipavsky, Druskin, Zabolotsky, Oleinikov, had conversations on literary, philosophical and other topics. The activities of this circle continued for several years. But in 1936, Vvedensky married a Kharkov woman and went to her; in 1937, Oleinikov was arrested and soon shot.
Kharms’ “adult” works are now written exclusively “for the table.” Poetry is replaced by prose, and the leading prose genre is the story. In the 30s there is a desire for a large form. Its first example can be considered the cycle “Cases” - thirty short stories and sketches, which Kharms arranged in a certain order, copied into a separate notebook and dedicated to his second wife Marina Malich (whom he married in 1935). In 1939, a second one appeared big thing- story “The Old Woman”. About a dozen stories written in 1940-1941 are known.
By the end of the 30s, the ring around Kharms was shrinking. There are fewer and fewer opportunities to be published in children's magazines. The consequence of this was a very real famine. The tragedy of the writer’s works during this period intensifies to a feeling of complete hopelessness, complete meaninglessness of existence. Kharms' humor also undergoes a similar evolution: from light, slightly ironic - to black.
The beginning of the war and the first bombing of Leningrad intensified Kharms’s feeling of his own approaching death. In August 1941, he was arrested for “defeatist statements.” Long time no one knew anything about him future fate, only in February 1942 Marina Malich was informed about the death of her husband. Opinion about him last days contradictory. Some believe that Kharms, who was threatened with execution, feigned a mental disorder and was sent to a prison psychiatric hospital, where he died during the first winter of the siege of Leningrad. There is also information that Kharms was actually diagnosed with schizophrenia shortly before his arrest, so he was admitted to the hospital for compulsory treatment. It is not known exactly where he died - in Leningrad or Novosibirsk. Date of death - February 2, 1942
Kharms's manuscripts were preserved by his friend Joseph Druskin; he took them in the winter of 1942 from the writer’s empty room. I did not part with this suitcase either during the evacuation or upon returning to Leningrad; I did not touch its contents for about twenty years, maintaining hope for a miracle - the return of the owner. And only when there was no hope, he began to sort out the papers of his deceased friend.
Daniil Kharms has verses that many call prophetic:
A man left the house
With rope and bag
And on a long journey, and on a long journey
I set off on foot.
He walked and kept looking ahead,
And he kept looking forward,
Didn't sleep, didn't drink,
Didn't sleep, didn't drink,
Didn't sleep, didn't drink, didn't eat.
And then one morning
He entered the dark forest
And from that time on, and from that time on,
And from then on he disappeared...
And if somewhere it
I'll have to meet you
Then hurry, then hurry,
Tell us quickly.
Twenty-five years after his death, Kharms was appreciated by a wide readership. His second birth began, which continues today.
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Copyright: Daniil Kharms
Daniil Ivanovich Yuvachev (1905 - 1942) while still at school came up with a pseudonym for himself - Kharms, which varied with amazing ingenuity, sometimes even in the signature under one manuscript: Kharms, Horms, Charms, Haarms, Shardam, Kharms-Dandan, etc. The fact is that Kharms believed that an unchanging name brings misfortune, and took new surname as if trying to get away from him. However, it was the pseudonym “Kharms” with its duality (from the French “charme” - “charm, charm” and from the English “harm” - “harm”) that most accurately reflected the essence of the writer’s attitude to life and creativity.
Daniil Yuvachev was born on December 17 (30), 1905 in St. Petersburg, in the family of Ivan Yuvachev, a former naval officer, revolutionary-People's Will, exiled to Sakhalin and took up religious philosophy there. Kharms's father knew Chekhov, Tolstoy and Voloshin.
Daniil studied at a privileged St. Petersburg German school. In 1924 he entered the Leningrad Electrical Technical School, but was soon forced to leave it. In 1925 he took up writing.
In 1925, Yuvachev met the poetic and philosophical circle of plane trees. He quickly gained scandalous fame in the circles of avant-garde writers under his pseudonym “Kharms”, invented at the age of 17. Kharms was accepted into the All-Russian Union of Poets in March 1926 on the basis of the submitted poetic works, two of which (“An Incident on the Railway” and “The Poem of Peter Yashkin, a Communist”) were published in the Union’s small-circulation collections.
The early Kharms was characterized by “zaum”; he joined the “Order of Brainiacs DSO” led by Alexander Tufanov. Since 1926, Kharms actively tried to organize the forces of “left” writers and artists in Leningrad, creating the short-lived organizations “Radix” and “Left Flank”. In 1927, S. Marshak attracted Kharms to work in children's literature. This is how Kharms received his first publications and his first money from them. Profits from publications remained almost the only source of money throughout Kharms’ life. He didn’t work anywhere else; when there was no money (and this was the case all his life), he borrowed money. Sometimes he gave it on time, sometimes he didn’t give it at all.
In February, the first issue of the children's magazine "Hedgehog" was published, in which Kharms's first children's works "Ivan Ivanovich Samovar" and "Naughty Cork" were published. Since 1928, Kharms has been writing for the children's magazine Chizh. Surprisingly, with a relatively small number of children's poems (“Ivan Ivanovich Samovar”, “Liar”, “Game”, “Million”, “How Dad Shot My Ferret”, “A Man Came Out of the House”, “What Was That?”, “Tiger on the Street”...) he created his own country in poetry for children and became its classic.
At the same time, Kharms became one of the founders of avant-garde poetic and art group“Union of Real Art” (OBERIU). Later, in Soviet journalism, the works of OBERIU were declared “the poetry of the class enemy,” and since 1932, the activities of OBERIU in its previous composition ceased.
In December 1931, Kharms was arrested along with a number of other Oberiuts, accused of anti-Soviet activities and sentenced on March 21, 1932 by the OGPU board to three years in correctional camps. But two months later the sentence was replaced by deportation, and the poet went to Kursk.
He arrived on July 13, 1932. “I didn’t like the city in which I lived at that time,” he wrote about Kursk. It stood on a mountain and there were postcard views everywhere. They disgusted me so much that I was even glad to sit at home. Yes, in fact, apart from the post office, the market and the store, I had nowhere to go... There were days when I did not eat anything. Then I tried to create a joyful mood for myself. He lay down on the bed and started smiling. I smiled for up to 20 minutes at a time, but then the smile turned into a yawn...”
Kharms stayed in Kursk until the beginning of November, returning to Leningrad on the 10th. He continued to communicate with like-minded people and wrote a number of books for children to earn a living. After the publication in 1937 of the poem “A Man with a Club and a Bag Came Out of the House” in a children’s magazine, which “has since disappeared,” Kharms was no longer published. This brought him and his wife to the brink of starvation.
On August 23, 1941, Kharms was arrested for defeatist sentiments following a denunciation by an NKVD agent. In particular, Kharms was accused of saying, “If they give me a mobilization leaflet, I’ll punch the commander in the face and let them shoot me; but I won’t wear a uniform” and “ Soviet Union lost the war on the first day, Leningrad will now either be besieged and we will die of starvation, or they will bomb it, leaving no stone unturned.” To avoid execution, Kharms feigned madness. The military tribunal ordered Kharms to be kept in a psychiatric hospital. There, Daniil Kharms died during the siege of Leningrad, in the most difficult month in terms of the number of starvation deaths.
Daniil Kharms was rehabilitated in 1956, but for a long time his main works were not officially published in the USSR. Before the time of perestroika, his work circulated from hand to hand in samizdat, and was also published abroad with a large number distortions and abbreviations.
“I,” wrote Kharms on October 31, 1937, “are only interested in "nonsense"; only that which has no practical meaning. I am interested in life only in its absurd manifestation. Heroism, pathos, prowess, morality, hygiene, morality, tenderness and excitement are words and feelings that I hate.
But I fully understand and respect: delight and admiration, inspiration and despair, passion and restraint, debauchery and chastity, sadness and grief, joy and laughter.”
The biography of Daniil Kharms begins when the first Russian revolution mercilessly destroyed human destinies, and ends at the terrible time of the Leningrad blockade - misunderstood, crossed out political regime, betrayed by those whom he considered friends...
At the time of his birth, our hero was not yet Kharms. His name was Daniil Ivanovich Yuvachev. He was born in St. Petersburg on December 30, 1905.
Subsequently, Kharms loved to talk about this moment in the genre of phantasmagoria: “I was born in the reeds. Like a mouse. My mother gave birth to me and put me in the water. And I swam. Some kind of fish with four whiskers on its nose was circling around me. I started crying. Suddenly we saw porridge floating on the water. We ate this porridge and started laughing. We had a lot of fun..."
From the first day of his life, Daniel was immersed in a concentrated solution of love and severity. The source of the first was mother Nadezhda Ivanovna Kolyubakina, a comforter for women who survived imprisonment, a noblewoman by birth. The severity came from his father, Ivan Pavlovich Yuvachev, an ex-People's Volunteer who miraculously escaped hanging and was cleansed of revolutionary sentiments in his 15-year exile in Sakhalin. At his behest, his son learned German and English languages, read a lot of smart books, was trained in applied sciences.
At the Petrishule real school, Daniil was known as a good student, not a stranger to pranks, for example, he liked to play the unfortunate “orphan” in front of the teacher in order to avoid punishment. His first one dates back to approximately the same period. literary experience- a funny fairy tale. He wrote it for his 4-year-old sister Natalia, early death which became the first strong shock for the future poet.
The bright time of childhood was cut short - the year 1917 struck. After long journeys around the country, the Yuvachevs returned to St. Petersburg, which became Petrograd. Daniil worked at the Botkin Hospital, studied at the Children's Rural Labor School and wrote his first poems, which were more like a pile of nonsense. My father, raised on Pushkin and Lermontov, was horrified. To those around him, the young man seemed quite grown up.
What was especially striking was his reluctance to be “like everyone else.” Daniil stood out for his originality in clothing and oddities in behavior. And, it seems, he personified himself with someone else, but this “someone” had so many names that it was easy to get confused in them. The most important of them appeared on the flyleaf of one of the Bibles - “Harms” (from English “harm”). There are several versions of its origin. According to one of them, he was “suggested” to the writer by Sherlock Holmes, whom he admired from the age of 12.
At that time, everything “English” interested him: at the age of 17, Daniil attracted the attention of young girls with a “ceremonial suit” with a hint of English style: a brown jacket with light specks, golf trousers, long socks and yellow high-soled boots. This “stylistic madness” was crowned by a pipe in the corner of his mouth that did not know fire.
Daniil Kharms - Biography of personal life
His “loves” can tell a lot about a person. Daniil Ivanovich’s absolute “love” was women - curvaceous, witty, with a sense of humor. He married the beautiful Esther Rusakova early, and although the relationship was difficult (he cheated on her, she was jealous), he retained tender feelings for her. In 1937, she was sentenced to five years in the camps and died in Magadan a year later.
The second official wife was Marina Malich, a more patient and calm woman. Thanks to her and Kharms’s friend Yakov Druskin, we can read today notebooks writer, his early and rare works.
WITH early years Kharms gravitated toward Westernism. One of his favorite pranks was to “pretend to be a foreigner.”
He radiated an inexplicable magnetism, although photographs from those years captured a roughly hewn face with heavy brow ridges and piercingly light eyes hidden deeply beneath them. The mouth, like an overturned crescent, gave the face an expression of tragic theater mask. Despite this, Kharms was known as a sparkling joker.
One of the writer’s friends told how in the spring of 1924 he visited Daniil. He suggested taking a walk along Nevsky, but before that he went into the barn, grabbed a table leg, then asked a friend to paint his face - he depicted circles, triangles and other geometric objects on the poet’s face. “Write down what passersby say,” said Kharms, and they went for a walk. Most passersby shied away from the strange couple, but Daniel liked it.
If the pranks were intended to be expressive means rebellious soul of an avant-garde writer, then “playing schizophrenic” in 1939 had a vital goal: to avoid conscription military service and escape from persecution by the OGPU. It noticed Kharms back in the fall of 1924 after speaking at an evening dedicated to creativity Gumilyov. Then they just “talked” with him.
And on December 10, 1931, everything was serious: arrest, investigative actions, cruel torture. As a result, Kharms “confessed” to anti-Soviet activities - he spoke about his “sins”: writing hacky children’s works, creating literary movement called “zaum” and attempts to restore the former political system, while diligently indicating all “appearances, names, passwords.” He was sentenced to three years in a concentration camp. My father saved me - the concentration camp was replaced with exile in Kursk.
Returning to Leningrad, Kharms found the ranks of yesterday’s friends considerably thinned: some had died, others had been imprisoned, some had managed to escape abroad. He felt that the end was near, but continued to live to the fullest: falling in love with all the curvaceous women, writing poetry, most often for children, only for which he was tolerably paid. It’s funny that Kharms didn’t particularly like children, but they simply adored him. When he appeared on stage at the Leningrad Palace of Pioneers, he warmed up the audience with real tricks. This caused a flurry of delight.
In 1941 they came for him again. Kharms knew: it was not a matter of the denunciation that Antonina Oranzhireeva, Anna Akhmatova’s closest friend and official OGPU informant, wrote against him. He himself, his “avant-gardeism,” his reluctance to keep pace with the others - that’s what drove those others to fury. And they will not rest as long as he is alive.
Daniel's father died, there was no one to stand up for the writer, many friends turned away from him, remembering his “confession.” He could have been shot, but a “played” diagnosis came to their aid - schizophrenia. It is impossible to imagine a more terrible departure: to him, the descendant noble family, an extraordinary, talented person, was treated like a criminal. They were forced to go through physical and mental humiliation...
Prisoners of “Krestov”, like all residents of besieged Leningrad, were entitled to 150 grams of bread per day. In the icy cell of the prison hospital, the hunted, exhausted and helpless Kharms waited in line to be transported to Kazan, where the mentally ill were “treated.” But they simply forgot about him, like other prisoners of the “Crosses”, during these terrible blockade days - they stopped feeding him, thereby dooming him to painful death.
The cardiogram of Daniil Ivanovich Yuvachev-Kharms straightened out on February 2, 1942. The cold body of the one-of-a-kind poet was found a few days later, lying alone on the floor of a hospital cell.
Only in 1960 did some changes occur in his biography: by a resolution of the Leningrad prosecutor's office, Kharms was found not guilty, his case was closed for lack of evidence of a crime, and he himself was rehabilitated.