Abstract
Now that the legacy of the OBERIU group has been published and with it a whole body of memoir and research literature on the authors Vvedensky, Oleinikov, Vaginov, Zabolotsky, Kharms and their writings, we have come to realise that it is fruitless to approach their literature by reducing zaum’ to mere nonsense and by denying that there is a system of aesthetically organised poetics in the intentional alogicality of their writings.1 Recent research has paved the way to a study of the structure and poetics of the absurd, the philosophy of zaum’, or, to use Kharms’s own precise though cunning definition, the system of ‘third cis-finitum logic’ i.e. logic which is finite in this world.2
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution.
Buying options
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Learn about institutional subscriptionsPreview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Notes
Quotations from the writings of the OBERIU group are from the following editions: Daniil Kharms, Sob. proizv., I-IV; K. Vaginov, Sobranie stikhotvorenii 2494 ed. L. Chertkov, preface W. Kazack (Munich: Otto Sagner, 1982); id., Trudy i dni Svistonova (Leningrad, 1929); Aleksandr Vvedenskii, Vved., I—II; N. Zabolotskii, Izbrannye proiz-vedeniia v dvukh tomakh (Moscow, 1972); Oleinikov, 1975.
Khlebnikov’s theory of ‘personal language’ as ‘subjective’ language involved sound-patterning, zaum’ and the ‘language of the gods’, i.e. the unconscious longing of people and gods for a single means of communication. See, V. Grigor’ev, ‘Voobrazhaemaia filologiia Velemira Khlebnikova’ in Stilistika khudozhestvennoi rechi, ed. S. G. Barkhudarov (Kalinin, 1982) p. 34.
A. S. Pushkin, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii v desiati tomakh (Leningrad, 1977) III, pp. 167–8.
N. M. Karamzin, Izbrannye proizvedeniia v dvukh tomakh (Moscow, 1964) I, 627, 632; Pushkin, op. cit., V, 63, 51 (Alexander Pushkin, Eugene Onegin, translated by Charles Johnston, Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1977).
A. I. Kuprin, Sobranie sochinenii v shesti tomakh (Moscow, 1957) II, 249–329. The heroine of Kuprin’s melodramatic tale, Olesia, a beauty from Polese and a sorceress, lives concealed in the ‘depths of the forest’ [‘v nedrakh lesa’] and lovingly tends the wild birds and animals.
The tale ‘The Bear’, no 57–8 in A.N. Afanas’ev, Narodnye russkie skazki (Moscow, 1957) I, 83–4.
Meilakh in Vved. I, xiv has pointed out that the Oberiuty were familiar with Losskii’s works. We can add to his evidence the fact that in 1920–1 Losskii organised a proseminar at Petrograd University on ‘Materialism, hylozoizm and vitalism’ and a few months before he was expelled from the Soviet Union published a brochure, Sovremennyi vitalizm (Petrograd, 1922). Losskii found a general philosophical basis for hylozoism and vitalism in intuitivism. His book Intuitivnaia filosofiia Anri Bergsona of 1911 was published in its third edition in 1922. On this see N. Losskii, Vospominaniya (Munich, 1968) 212.
I. Agol, Vitalism, mekhanicheskii materializm, marksizm (Moscow, 1930) sharply criticises the ideas of the German neo-vitalist, Hans Driesch, and his Russian translator, the well-known histologist and geneticist, A. G. Gurvich.
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Copyright information
© 1991 Neil Cornwell
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Perlina, N. (1991). Daniil Kharms’s Poetic System: Text, Context, Intertext. In: Cornwell, N. (eds) Daniil Kharms and the Poetics of the Absurd. Studies in Russia and East Europe. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-11642-3_13
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-11642-3_13
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London
Print ISBN: 978-1-349-11644-7
Online ISBN: 978-1-349-11642-3
eBook Packages: Palgrave Literature & Performing Arts CollectionLiterature, Cultural and Media Studies (R0)