Books can be weird. I can read Russian Absurd, which are absurd vignettes recovered from Kharms’ notebooks, written in the 1920s and 1930s, pieces as the introduction says that may not have been intended for public consumption, and they don’t seem dated and they don’t seem foreign and they don’t seem like something I should never have heard about until now. True, a lot of old women tend to fall out of windows, but I can picture myself as an old woman tumbling after defenestration, so that seems all right. And the man alternates between looking terrifyingly serious:
to a foppish Pushkin-esque dandy:
to simply terrifying:
He starved to death in 1942. That hurts my heart. And there’s so much out there, so much writing I may never get to know, hidden in notebooks in languages I don’t speak.
The sky is shimmering with lamps
And we are flying like the stars
I am glad your friends saved your notebooks Daniil Kharms. I am glad I got to read from them.
Russian Absurd by Daniil Kharms went on sale February 15, 2017.
I received a copy free from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.
ETA: I have, as I always do with deceased authors, checked yes to Netgalley‘s Are you interested in connecting with this author (interviews, events, etc)? They have yet to conduct even one séance for me to talk to the dead.