"I am interested only in 'nonsense', only in that which makes no practical sense. I am interested in life only in its absurd manifestations" (Daniil Kharms)
Daniil Kharms, born Daniil Ivanovich Luvachev, was a Russian writer who lived, saw, and championed everything absurd. Little known until after his death, it was only in the 1960's/1970's that his work came to attention in Russia (and to a lesser extent in the English world). Not surprisingly, Kharms was known for being eccentric, reportedly having more than 30 pseudonyms and purposefully developing a "strange hiccup-snorting seizure that disconcerted the NKVD agents who interrogated him." (https://www.theguardian.com/books/2007/dec/12/fiction).
Kharms was one of the founders of a group of avant-garde and subversive poets who called themselves OBERIU (The Association of Real Art). One of their public statements was Dada-like in its wording:
"Art is a cupboard...Poems aren't pies; we aren't herring."
In a dangerous period in Soviet history to be subversive or different, Kharms and other members of his group were imprisoned in 1931, accused of being enemies of the working class. After being released one year later Kharms found he could no longer get his adult writing published and so focused on Children's writing. During his lifetime, he would only have two of his poems published that were intended for an adult audience.
“There lived a redheaded man who had no eyes or ears. He didn’t have hair either, so he was called a redhead arbitrarily. He couldn’t talk because he had no mouth. He had no nose either. He didn’t even have arms or legs. He had no stomach, he had no back, he had no spine, and he had no innards at all. He didn’t have anything. So we don’t even know who we’re talking about. It’s better that we don’t talk about him any more.”
Today I Wrote Nothing: The Selected Writings)
Today I Wrote Nothing: The Selected Writings)
Despite the title of one of his books being, Today, I Wrote Nothing, Kharms reportedly wrote seven hours a day, knowing that there was little hope of seeing anything published in his lifetime.
Kharms life ended in a tragic and absurd way, being arrested in 1941 and then reportedly pretending he was mad to avoid a death sentence before being sent to a psychiatric asylum where he died of starvation in 1942. Kharms was 36 years old.
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