American Association of Teachers of Slavic and East European Languages

Russian Minimalist Prose: Generic Antecedents to Daniil Kharms's "Sluchai"

Author(s): Adrian Wanner
Source: The Slavic and East European Journal, Vol. 45, No. 3 (Autumn, 2001), pp. 451-472
Published by: American Association of Teachers of Slavic and East European Languages
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RUSSIAN MINIMALISTPROSE:GENERIC
ANTECEDENTSTO DANIIL KHARMS'S
"SLUCHAI"
AdrianWanner,PennsylvaniaState University

Daniil Kharms'sultra-shortprose works belong to the more bafflingphe-

nomena of twentieth-centuryRussian literature.A reader accustomedto
traditionalnarrativeswill be quick to interpretthese "mini-stories"with
their utter lack of a conventionalplot as evidence for the typical avant-
garde gesture of radicalrupturefrom establishednorms. Nevertheless, it
seems unsatisfactoryto simply classify Kharms'soeuvre as a form of de-
structive"anti-literature"and leave it at that. It has long been recognized
that even the most radicalavant-gardeaesthetic is in many ways indebted
to a pre-existing tradition. An example that readily comes to mind is
KazimirMalevich'ssuprematism,whose radicaldeparturefromrealistfigu-
ration is rooted in the spiritualistgeometryof Russianicon painting.Like-
wise, it can be arguedthat Kharms's(anti-)narrativeprose did not emerge
ex nihilo, but belongs to a specificgenerictradition.While makingno claim
to exhaustiveness, this article will locate some generic antecedents of
Kharms'smini-storieswithin Russian literature,using the notion of mini-
malism,appropriatedfromthe realmof Americanvisualarts, as a heuristic
tool.
The only attempt thus far to link Kharms'sshort prose with a concrete
generic model from Russian literatureis Ellen Chances's 1982 article on
Kharmsand Chekhov.Chancesobserved a row of parallelsbetween Che-
khov'sshortstories and Kharms'smini-stories,such as the incorporationof
dramatictechniques into the narrative, the abundanceof ostentatiously
superfluousdetails,the use of zero endings,repetitionas a structuraldevice,
childrenas narrators,a stark confrontationof beauty and ugliness, and so
on. However, Chances stresses as much the differencesas the similarities
between the two authors. Despite his modernisttechniques, Chekhov,ac-
cording to Chances, ultimately remains grounded in reality, whereas
Kharmsengages in a sort of parodisticverbiage devoid of any referential

SEEJ,Vol.45, No. 3 (2001):p. 451-p. 472 451

452 Slavic and East European Journal

meaning. The Chekhovian story mutates into the Kharmsian anti-story,

which Chances finds lacking not only in referentiality, but also in relevance.
As she notes with some exasperation: "But so what? What has Xarms
proved? What is he saying? And who cares?"1
It seems clear that, whatever Kharms's attitude to Chekhov may have
been,2 Chekhov's short stories do not constitute the only generic model for
Kharms's mini-stories. In his introduction to his landmark 1991 volume of
Kharms criticism, Neil Cornwell has noted that "the prose miniature--a
form which Kharms may ultimately be judged to have made his own -has
long been a genre more commonly found in Russian literature than else-
where" (11). Casting a rather wide net, Cornwell mentions Dostoevsky's
feuilletons, Turgenev's prose poems, the shortest stories of Garshin and
Chekhov, and, from the twentieth century, short pieces by Zamiatin, Olesha
and Zoshchenko as well as the aphoristic writings of Siniavsky and the prose
poems of Solzhenitsyn (the latter two, of course, postdating Kharms). This
inventory is far from exhaustive, to be sure, and Cornwell does not follow
up further on any of these connections. It becomes evident that not all of
these texts are equally germane to Kharms's "Sluchai." In this article, I will
highlight the link between Kharms's mini-stories and what I will call the
tradition of Russian minimalist prose.
This label requires some explanation. The term "minimalism" first
gained prominence in the plastic arts as a designation for a group of New
York artists who came to the fore in the 1960s, including Carl Andre, Dan
Flavin, Donald Judd, Sol LeWitt, Robert Morris, and others. Although
these artists never formed a coherent school (some of them in fact rejected
the minimalist label), they shared a common concern with arranging in-
dustrial materials such as steel, copper, brick, plywood, mirrored glass or
fluorescent light into regular, symmetrical or gridded structures. Starkly
presented, these works disposed of any pretense of craft or ornamental
composition and were resistant to symbolic or metaphorical interpretation.
Analogous to the development in the plastic arts, the minimalist label was
also used by musicologists to characterize the reductionist and repetitious
compositions of a Philip Glass or Steve Reich. In the realm of literature,
the use of the term "minimalism" is somewhat less established. In the
United States, it has become the designation for a type of short fiction
popular during the 1980s, most prominently the stories of Raymond
Carver, sometimes dubbed "K-Mart realism," "hick chic," or "Diet Pepsi
minimalism."3
Of course, literary minimalism is not limited to American fiction of the
1980s. Nothing prevents us from applying the minimalist label in a wider
sense and to claim it as a tendency of reductionist or sparse writing that can
become productive in any literature at any time. From such a perspective,
Heraclitus or Aesop might qualify as proto-minimalists. As Warren Motte
 RussianMinimalistProse 453

has pointed out in his recent monographon minimalismin contemporary

French literature,France has a particularlyrich traditionof prose minia-
tures, stretching from Pascal, La Rochefoucauld, La Fontaine, and La
Bruyereall the way up to a host of contemporarywriters.Another author
who is sometimesreferredto as a foundingfatherof modernliterarymini-
malismis SamuelBeckett. Beckett'sthirty-five-secondplay Breath,accord-
ing to Motte, qualifiesas "the most radicalexample of minimalism... in
Englishliterature"(24). Motte never mentionsRussianliterature,yet Rus-
sia too produced a tradition of minimalistwriting which deserves to be
analyzedas such. It is interestingto note that the term minimalismitself is
of Russianorigin. The two individualscreditedwith coiningthe expression
are the Russian-bornartist John Graham (ne Ivan Dombrovskii, 1886-
1961) and the former cubo-futuristDavid Burliuk (1882-1967).4 In addi-
tion, the Russianavant-gardein general, and KazimirMalevichin particu-
lar, have been identifiedas precursorsof the New Yorkminimalismof the
1960s.5
The traditionof Russian minimalismis little explored. So far, the term
has only been applied to contemporary"postmodern"Russianpoetry.6To
my knowledge, the issue of Russian prose minimalismhas never been
addressedat all. Yet one could arguethat the effect of minimalismis more
strikingin prose thanin verse. In poetry,miniatureformsare not an uncom-
mon phenomenon, given the naturaltendency of poetic discoursetoward
condensation and heightened attention to the material side of language.
The brevity of a quatrain, a tercet, or even a distich is unlikely to raise
eyebrows. The critical limit is reached only with the monostich, which
hovers uneasily between verse and prose, since in order to recognize the
principleof lineation as such, we need more than one line. A minimalist
effect can also be achieved by repeatingthe same word or phrase a multi-
tude of times. Theoretically,this repetitioncan go on ad infinitum.As an
example, one could mention German Lukomnikov'spoem "100 tysiach
pochemu,"whichrepeatsthe word "Pochemu?"("Why?")a hundredthou-
sand times.7In a prose text, the minimalist"threshold"is reached sooner
thanin verse. A text of only a few lines, while quite ordinaryin lyricpoetry,
seems unusually short in the context of narrativeprose. The device of
repetition, which is to some extent natural to poetry, will be perceived
immediatelyas a kind of "fault"in the linear texture of prosaicdiscourse.
There is no universalagreementon the meaning of narrativeminimal-
ism. Motte defines"smallness"and "simplicity,"converginginto the notion
of "lessening,"as minimalistkey terms. It is importantto realize, however,
that not everythingsmall or simple qualifiesipso facto as minimalist.Mini-
malism entails a polemic thrust. It is characterizedas much by what it
negates as by what it affirms.The starknessand sparsenessof minimalist
sculpturehas to be seen as a reaction againstthe exuberanceand mystic
454 Slavic and East European Journal

pretentiousnessof abstractexpressionism,its precursormovement in the

visual arts. "Lessening"entails not only a reductionin scope and complex-
ity, but also a ruptureof the beholder'shorizonof expectation.The public
is likely to perceive the minimalistobject not just as small and simple, but
rather as "too small"and "too simple"when measuredagainstthe preva-
lent standard of aesthetic norms. An unpreparedviewer is likely to be
baffledor disturbedby minimalistsculpture,whichdefies most parameters
in whichart has been traditionallydefined. Its productiondoes not seem to
require any particularartistic talent or even simple craftsmanship.Any-
body, after all, could assemble a pile of bricks or a stack of wood and
declareit to be a work of art. Its anonymous,industrialoutlook disposesof
the notion of the artisticgenius conveyinga unique, individualvision- to
borrowWalterBenjamin'sterms, the auraof the work of art is shatteredin
the process of mechanicalreproduction.8Perhapseven more disturbingis
the apparent lack of referential or allegorical meaning. The minimalist
object has no mimetic function;it does not symbolize anything.It simply
exists.
To be sure, not every pile of bricksor stackof wood is a work of art. But
there is no inherent, ontologicaldifferencebetween a "mere"pile of bricks
and a minimalistsculptureconsistingof a pile of bricks.The only difference
between the two lies in the approachof the viewer, which in its turn is
conditioned by the object's presentation:we look differentlyat a pile of
bricks exhibited in an art gallery or museum than we look at the same
object encounteredon a constructionsite. In other words, mattersof fram-
ing and labeling are central to the notion of minimalart. The minimalist
object becomes art not by its essence, but by fiat: the fact that it is pre-
sented and labeled as a work of art is sufficientto constitute it as art (in
some instances, the hefty price tag of the object may provide additional
validation in terms of capitalist market value-a pile of bricks worth
$100,000 obviously cannot be a "mere"pile of bricks). What is at stake
here is a radicalredefinitionof art from an essentialistto a purelyrelational
category.MarcelDuchamp'sready-mades,whichhave been named among
the avatars of minimal art, present a well-knownexample of this trend.
As we have seen, laconicity and simplicityalone are not sufficient to
qualify a text as "minimalist."What is requiredis a consciousflauntingof
establishednorms of narrativityor literariness.Brevity,althoughnot uni-
versally regarded as a necessary ingredient of literaryminimalism,does
play a crucial role in this project. Kharms'sminimaliststories test our
thresholdof generic acceptanceby consciouslyunderbiddingthe minimal
length that we consider necessary for a text to qualify as a "story."This
phenomenonis best illustratedwith a concreteexample.The text I propose
to look at is Kharms's"Vstrecha"("A Meeting"), the nineteenthpiece in
the cycle "Sluchai"("Incidents"):
 RussianMinimalistProse 455

BcTpeqa
BOT OAHaW)lbIOAHH qIenOBeKnoumeJiHa cJiyaK6y, aa no gopore BCTpeTHJI
npyroro
KynHBnonibCKHfi6aTOH,HanpaBJIaJIcK ce6e BOCBOSCH.
qeJiOBeKa,KOTOpbIm,
BOT,co6CTBeHHO,H Bce. (PSS 2:345)

A Meeting

The other day a man went to work, but on his way, he met another man, who had bought a
loaf of Polish bread and was on his way home, to his own place.
That's about all. (Gibian 59)

The text contains several elements that we can associate with conven-
tionalnarrativity.It featuresa title and an openingformulawhichlooks like
the traditionalbeginning of a story: a deictic marker (vot) points to a
specific temporal moment (odnazhdy) and individual (odin chelovek),
whom we expect to be the principalcharacterin the event that is going to
unfold. The rest of the openingsentence, introducinga second character,is
hardlysurprisingeither. It confirmsour expectationstriggeredby the title:
since the story is called "A Meeting,"we expect the protagonistto encoun-
ter anothercharacter.The fact that this person is carryinga pol'skii baton,
a commontype of bread at that time, seems to add an element of daily-life
realism. Several questions arise at this point: Does the narratormention
this detail simplyfor the sake of "atmosphere,"or will the breadplay a role
in the story? At the same time, a potential tension or conflict arises: one
characteris going to work, while the other is going home. Why?Are they
workingon separateshifts? Does the firstcharacterresent the fact that he
has to go to work, while the other one will be relaxingat home with his
newly acquiredloaf of bread?Have they met before, or are they complete
strangers?
We will never know, of course. Just at the moment when our curiosityis
triggeredabout the possible ramificationsof this narrativeopeninggambit,
the storyis cut short. Fromhis exposition, the narratorswitchesabruptlyto
a closing formula.This unexpectedending forces us to reconsiderwhat we
have just read. It turnsout that what we have been consideringwas not the
beginningof a story after all, it was the story. The encounterpromisedin
the title did indeed happen, and, as it turnsout, there is nothingelse left to
say. Although all the outwardtrappingsof a conventionalstory, such as a
title, an opening, and a conclusion, are present in the text, these elements
seem to fulfill merely a structural,but not a functional role. As Jean-
PhilippeJaccardhas noted in his discussionof Kharmsmini-stories,"every
element is in place (subject, title, plot, characters,etc.), but the participa-
tion of each of them in the narrationfrequentlyamounts to zero [.. .],
similarto a car in which the steeringwheel is in the correctplace, but not
connectedto the wheels" (268).
The matter-of-facttone of the narratorprecludesspeculationsthat the
456 Slavic and East European Journal

reported event is anything else than what it appears to be: two men cross-
ing paths in the street, each going about his own business. To be sure, the
fleeting anonymous encounter between strangers in the metropolis is a
favorite topos of literary modernism, expressed perhaps most poignantly in
Baudelaire's famous sonnet "A une passante." But there is no sense at all
of portentous fatefulness and tragically missed opportunity in Kharms's
deadpan narrative. What Kharms seems to be presenting is a simple, un-
adorned "slice of life" of utter banality, akin to the stack of bricks or
plywood boxes of minimalist sculpture. The only shocking aspect of this
story is the fact that it is told at all, since, after all, there seems to be
nothing worth telling. The reader is left with the same frustration that
might befall an art lover who visits a museum or gallery in search of
aesthetic illumination and encounters only piles of bricks and stacks of
plywood.
If "Vstrecha" leaves the reader's desire for narrative gratification unful-
filled, alternative approaches of reading prove equally unproductive. The
text lacks the polished form or aesthetic appeal that we would associate with
poetry, the pithily stated wisdom of a philosophical aphorism, or the witti-
cism of an anecdote. Neither does it invite symbolic or allegoric interpreta-
tion. Even the notion of the fragment, so central to both romantic and
modernist aesthetics, proves less than helpful in this case. "Vstrecha" is not
presented as the broken splinter of a shattered whole, longing for a lost state
of completeness. It seems in fact quite complete in itself. Just like a piece of
minimalist sculpture, it is simply "there," a stubborn irritant to hermeneutic
deciphering.
We can conclude then that the point of this story is hardly its "content,"
which is truly minimal. Rather, the focus of interest becomes the act of
storytelling itself. Although there seems to be no content worth telling, the
narrator nevertheless engages in an (aborted) act of narration. The reader's
frustrated search for narrative gratification foregrounds the situation of
literary consumption. The "encounter" thematized in the title of the story
also relates to the relationship between reader and text.9 In his study of
French minimalist fiction, Motte has pointed out that "minimalists invest
very heavily indeed in the encounter, relying on the carefully constructed
immediacy of their work and wagering boldly on the notion of presence"
(16). As Jaccard has shown, Kharms's narrator focuses his lens on a specific
"point zero" in space and time. The characters of the story only exist for
the brief moment in which they linger in the narrator's field of vision. Once
they walk out of it, they disappear from the narration as well, and the story
grinds to a halt (273). This situation leads to a host of interrelated ques-
tions, which, mutatis mutandis, relate to any work of minimalist art: What
do we expect from a story? What makes a story worth telling? Is a story in
which nothing particular happens still a story?
 RussianMinimalistProse 457

MaryLouise Pratthas arguedthat the qualityof "tellability"involvesthe

narrationof something "unusual,contraryto expectations, or otherwise
problematic."10 Kharms'smini-storyseems to offer none of this. At best,
the mere fact that the story is told could be called unusual, contraryto
expectation and problematic. In this sense, Kharms'snarrativestrategy
differs from the poetics of the "insignificantevent" of such authors as
Chekhov and Zoshchenko, where, as Cathy Popkinhas shown, the viola-
tion of minimumstandardsof tellabilityis only apparent,since the seem-
ingly trivial event emerges ultimately as "enormouslysignificant"(213).
Kharms'stext remainsstubbornlyinsignificant.Accordingto the terminol-
ogy established by the narratologistGerald Prince, "Vstrecha"does not
even qualifyas a "minimalstory,"since the event reportedby the narrator
does not entail a qualitativechange.1l
The extremebrevityof "Vstrecha"constitutesone of the key elements of
Kharms'spoetics. As he noted in his diary,"Mnogosloviemat'bezdarnosti"
("verbosityis the mother of mediocrity")(1991, 504). "Vstrecha"is by no
meanshis shortestwork. Manyof Kharms'sstoriesseem nothingmore than
"microtextsof concise inconsequentiality"(Cornwell1998, 137), as demon-
stratedby the followingexample:"An old man was scratchinghis head with
both hands.In placeswherehe couldn'treachwithboth hands,he scratched
himselfwith one, but very,veryfast [bystro-bystro]. And whilehe was doing
it he blinked rapidly[bystro]"(PSS 2:42). Despite the furious activityde-
scribedin this text, no narrativegain ensues. The wordbystro(fast) whichis
repeated three times, functionsas a metafictionalcomment:the story goes
by so fast that it is over before it has really begun.12
The sudden death which befalls many of Kharms'scharacterscould be
read as another metanarrativeallegory.Frequently,the story comes to a
prematureend throughthe passingaway of the protagonist,such as in the
followingexample: "A man with a stupidface ate an entre-c6te,hiccupped
and died. The waiterscarriedhim into the corridorleading to the kitchen
and put him on the floor along the wall, covering him with a dirty table-
cloth" (PSS 2:71). Instead of a dramaticor tragic occurrence, death is
presentedas a banal non-event. Ultimately,Kharmsseems to mobilize his
narrativesliterallyfor nothing.Considerthe followingbeginningof a story:
"At 2 o'clock in the afternoon on Nevsky Prospekt, or rather, on the
Prospektof October25, nothingparticularhappened"(PSS 2:34). Specific
parametersof time and space are providedhere only to serve as a frame-
work for a zero-event.
It is importantto note that such a reductionistapproachwas by no means
Kharms'sinvention. The Russian avant-garde,of which Kharms was a
belated member,had long experimentedwith minimalformsof writing.As
the most extreme example and non plus ultraof a minimalisttext in Rus-
sian literaturemention should be made of "Poemakonsta"("The Poem of
458 Slavicand East EuropeanJournal

the End"), the final piece in the collection Smert' iskusstvu (Death to Art,
1913) writtenby the futuristpoet VasiliskGnedov (1890-1978). The poem
consists of a page that, except for the title, number,and publisher'sseal at
the bottom, is left blank. Gnedov thus anticipatedcomparablephenomena
in the realms of twentieth-centuryvisual art and music, such as Yves
Klein's notorious exhibition in the Iris Clert Gallery,Paris, in April 1958,
which consistedof empty,white-washedwalls, or JohnCage'scomposition
4'33" (1952).
In all these cases, a zero-degreework of literature,art or music, like the
zero value in mathematics, cannot be simply equated with nothing.13A
frame provides temporal and spatial parameterswhich confine and define
the reception of the piece as a specimen of music or art. In the case of
Gnedov, the text has a title and appears as an item in a book of poems,
where it occupies the last page. Cage's compositioncan be and is meant to
be performed, witl musiciansgatheringon stage in front of an audience,
and emitting no sound for the prescribedtime interval. The same per-
formabilityapplies to Gnedov's poem as well. Read by the author,the text
was in fact a popularand much-demandeditem in publiclectures. Gnedov
wouldraisehis armand then quicklylet it fall in a dramaticgesture,eliciting
stormyapplausefrom the audience.14The fact that Gnedov labeled his text
a poema ratherthan a stikhotvorenieunderlinesa potentialnarrativeor epic
content, which is presented, as it were, as a pure virtuality.
Many of Gnedov's other poems are only slightlyless minimalist.Two of
the fifteen poems in the collection Smert'iskusstvuconsist of one letter
each ("u-," "iu"),15two others consist of one neologisticword. Nine texts
are one-line poems. One of them simply repeats the word "Buba"three
times. The one-line poem in itself, of course, was not Gnedov's invention.
The most notorious example of this genre in Russian literatureis Valery
Briusov's"0, zakroisvoi blednye nogi" ("O, cover your pale legs"), which
created a succes de scandale when it appeared in the 1895 collection
Russkie simvolisty. The youthful bravado and desire to "epaterles bour-
geois" of the leadingdecadentof the 1890shad more than a passingresem-
blance to the iconoclasm and aggressive anti-philistinismof his futurist
successorstwenty years later (althoughboth Briusovand the futuristswere
loath to acknowledge that parentage).16In this sense, Kharms'sminimal-
ism of the 1930s can also be read as a provocation against the officially
enforced "middlebrow"taste of Stalinist culture. In their extreme la-
conicity, Kharms'smini-storiesprovide a counterpointto the publiclyen-
couragedmonumentalismof Soviet literaryproduction.
One could argue that Gnedov's and Briusov's texts do not qualify as
direct generic antecedents of Kharms'smini-stories,since they constitute
examples of minimalistpoetry ratherthan minimalistprose.17It is true, of
course, that in extremely short texts the opposition between poetry and
 Russian Minimalist Prose 459

prose becomes neutralized. Nevertheless, given its title and the fact that it
appears in a volume of poems, Gnedov's zero-text needs to be classified as
poetry. An analogous example of attaching a "poetry" label to something
that does not seem to warrant such a designation can be found in Kharms's
story "Sonet" ("A Sonnet," PSS 2:331-32), which, in spite of its generic
title, is written in prose.
The paradoxical genre of the poeme en prose, developed by Charles
Baudelaire and introduced into Russian literature with Ivan Turgenev's
Stikhotvoreniia v proze, provides a model for this type of cross-generic
labeling. Located in the no-man's land between poetry and prose, the
prose poem raises a host of theoretical questions about the nature of
poetry and prose as well as general problems of generic classification. The
notion of "lessening," which we have introduced as a key term of minimal-
ist aesthetics, is crucial for the definition of the prose poem. In the context
of prose literature, it is "less than a story," given its brevity; as a work of
poetry, given its lack of meter, rhyme, and lineation, it is "less than a
poem." Essentially, the nature of the genre consists in a cluster of minus-
functions, defining itself primarily by what it is not rather than by what it
is. As in the case of a minimalist work of art, the prose poem establishes its
"poeticity" not through any inherent formal quality, but simply by being
labeled as such.18
One of the earliest critics in Russia to notice this radical feature of the
prose poem was Nikolai Chernyshevsky. In a letter to his son, who had sent
him from Paris a few of his own prose poems inspired by Turgenev's
Stikhotvoreniia v proze, Chernyshevsky condemned the new genre in un-
equivocal terms. He alleged that such texts cannot claim a literary status at
all. At best they are "themes" or "rough drafts" (chernovye nabroski)
which require an act of painstaking labor to be transformed into a work of
art. As Chernyshevsky put it: "Peasant huts are built with rough-hewn logs.
But giving the public a wood chip [shchepku] betrays a lack of respect for
one's gift. The chip has to be transformed through thoughtful carving into a
very beautiful little thing of regular outlines; only then will it be a suitable
gift."'9 With this example of the wood chip as a work of art, Chernyshevsky
provided an unwitting anticipation of the twentieth-century concept of the
"ready-made." Thirty years before Marcel Duchamp scandalized the New
York art world with his urinal, Chernyshevsky had already furnished the
standard arguments that would later be raised against minimal or concep-
tual forms of art: How can something be called art if it displays no evidence
of craft and technique? If anybody can do it, how can it be special?
At first sight, Turgenev's prose poems seem to have little in common
with Kharms's mini-stories, aside from purely external features such as a
short prosaic form interspersed with occasional dialogues. Interestingly
enough, a text more akin to Kharms's mini-stories can be found not in
460 Slavic and East European Journal

Turgenev's Stikhotvoreniia v proze per se, but in a parody of Turgenev's

prose poems published in the satirical journal Strekoza:
PaccKa3 6e3 Ha3BaHHI

Hac 6bIli B KOMHaTe neJiOBeK OJHHHan;aTb H BCe MbI yKaCHO MHOrOrOBOpHJIH.

BbIJI TenjIIbI MaICKHii Beqep ...
Bapyr MbI BCe 3aMOJI'IaJH.
- <<rocnoaa, nopa pacxoJHTbcRa!? cKa3an OIHH H3 HaC.
MbI BCTaJIHH pa30omIIHc .. .20

A Tale without a Title

There were about eleven of us in the room and we all talked an awful lot.
It was a warm May evening ...
Suddenly we all grew silent.
-"Gentlemen, it is time to go!" said one of us.
We all stood up and left ...

The anonymous author of this parody lampoons the plotlessness of the

prose poem. A motivation for the lack of narrative is provided by the lyrical
nature of Turgenev's prose poetry (a mood parodistically alluded to with the
reference to a "warm May evening"), but it clashes with the expectation of a
plot generated by the prosaic form and the generic title "rasskaz" (story).
Just as in Kharms's "Vstrecha," the entire story is concerned with the narra-
tion of a banal non-event. The number eleven seems to have been deliber-
ately chosen to preclude from the outset any kind of allegoric interpretation,
since eleven is devoid of any obvious symbolic connotations. Although we
are told that the characters do a lot of talking, they do not appear to be
saying anything worthwhile. Lacking a memorable event, the narrator can't
even think of a title for the story. He resorts to a purely generic label, which
leaves the reader frustrated, since the promised story fails to materialize.
Like its characters, the story suddenly falls silent.
A parody usually has the benefit of foregrounding (and exaggerating) the
dominant features of the text or genre it refers to. In the present case, the
parody makes visible a latent trait not fully realized in Turgenev's texts. It
points to the "destructive" potential inherent in the genre of the prose poem,
whose paradoxical ontological status between poetry and prose has led many
twentieth-century authors from anti-poetry to a form of anti-narrative prose.
In the history of modernist poetics, the boundaries between a parody and a
"serious" text can become quite permeable, as one author's parody is appro-
priated by others as a fruitful innovation. Vladimir Solovyov's spoofs at
Briusov's decadent lyrics of the 1890s, for example, anticipate the later
"trans-sense" experiments of the futurists and oberiuty.21Similarly, the plot-
lessness of the decadent prose poem can become in the oeuvre of avant-garde
writers a consciously applied technique of narrative estrangement.
 RussianMinimalistProse 461

Among the authors of Russian minimalist prose miniatures before

Kharms, Fedor Sologub deserves to be mentioned most prominently.
Sologub's seventy-nine Skazochki ("Little Fairy Tales") are among the
least known and least explored works of this writer'svoluminouslegacy.
They have never been republishedsince they appearedin the 1913 edition
of Sologub'sworks,22and unlike his novels, they have not attractedmuch
criticalattentionthus far.23One puzzlingfeatureof Sologub'sSkazochkiis
that they do not fit easily into any kind of recognizablegeneric category.
The title suggestsa formof folk tales, to be sure, but the texts only partially
live up to this expectation.We do find the typicalopeningformula"zhil(i)-
byl(i). . ." ("once upon a time. . ."), the signal marker of the Russian fairy
tale, and the style is at times folksy and colloquial,with a preponderanceof
diminutives and a proclivity toward puns and verbal games. The non-
realisticcontent of the stories and the fact that they are populatedby "flat"
charactersalso point to the realm of fairy tales.
In many respects, however, Sologub's Skazochki deviate from the ge-
neric tradition that they seemingly evoke. In the majority of texts, the
acting charactersare childrenratherthan the customaryfairy tale heroes.
In a strangetwist, the implicitaudienceof fairytales assumeshere the role
of the literaryprotagonist(originally,of course, fairytales were not a genre
specificallyintended for children, but they had become associated with
children'sliteratureby Sologub'stime). One wonderswho constitutesthe
implicitaudienceof Sologub'stexts. The qualifier"politicheskieskazochki"
which Sologub attached to some of his stories seems to point to an adult
ratherthan a juvenile readership.However, someone who expects straight-
forwardpolitical satire in the mannerof Saltykov-Shchedrin'sSkazki will
be disappointed.In manycases, it seems hardto distillany kindof transpar-
ent political agenda from Sologub's Skazochki. In fact, the stories origi-
nally marked as "political"were republishedin the Sobranie sochinenii
edition without such a qualification,and mingle with "non-political"tales
on a randombasis.
It is not surprisingthen that Sologub'slittle fairytales evoked consterna-
tion among contemporarycritics, especially those who expected literary
texts to express a progressivehumanitarianmessage. V. G. Korolenko, in
his review of the firstedition of fairytales, quoted two of Sologub'sstories
in extenso to demonstrate their absurdity.24Perhaps it will be useful to
follow Korolenko'sexample and to quote one of these texts. This can all
the more easily be done as it is very short:
Becenaa geBqOHKa

)KHuiaTaKasiseceJiaAsAeB'oHKa, - eii ITOxoqeuIb cglejiai, a oHa cMeeTcs.

y Hee KyKJIynoxpyrH, a OHa 6eXKHT3a HHMH,3ajIHBaeTca-cMeeTca H KpH'IHT:
BOT OTHHJIH
-HamneBaTb Ha Hee! He HaAoMHeee.
462 Slavicand East EuropeanJournal

BOTMajSIbHKHee npH6HJm,a oHa xoxoqeT:

-HarmeBaT! - KpHqtIT, - re Hame He nponaxaano!
roBOpHTee MaTb:
- Hero, Aypa, cMeemibca,- BOTB03bMyBeHHK.
AeBqOHKa XOXOHeT.
- BepH, - rOBOpHT,- BeHHK,- BOTTOHe 3annaqy, - HannieBaTb
Ha Bce!
Beceniaa TaKaqgeBqOHKa! (SS 13)
The CheerfulLittle Girl
There once lived a cheerfullittle girl-you could do to her whateveryou wanted,and she
would laugh.
Her companionstook awayher doll, and she wouldrunafterthem, breakinto laughterand
shout:
"I don't give a damn![literally:I spit on it]. I don't need it."
The boys beat her up, and she would guffaw:
"I don't give a damn!" she would shout, "what have we not lost!"
The mothertells her:
"Whatare you laughingat, you fool--I am gettingthe birchwhip."
The little girl guffaws.
"Get your whip," she says, "I am not going to cry--I don't give a damn about anything!
[literally:I spit on everything!]
Sucha cheerfullittle girl!
This story deceives the reader's expectations triggered by the heading
"fairy tale." At first sight, the text appears to provide the moral edification
associated with the genre of children's literature. One could argue that it
illustrates the idea of cheerful equanimity in the face of adversity, the
renunciation of worldly possessions, the "turning of the other check," and
so on, i.e., it seems to give a positive example in the venerable Russian
tradition of Christian meekness and humility. However, it becomes clear
that Sologub's heroine hardly qualifies as a positive role model for young
readers. The expression "naplevat'," which is repeated three times in the
text and functions like a structuring leitmotiv, does not belong in the stylis-
tic register of fairy tale language. Its somewhat aggressive vulgarity culmi-
nates in the final exclamation "naplevat' na vse!", which seems more an
expression of decadent world-weariness and cynicism than of charming
childlike simplicity. The last sentence of the story repeats the words of the
title, but the sense of closure that this device seems to convey remains
deceptive, as the reader in the meantime has become thoroughly confused
about the meaning of this title.
Besides the absence of a moral message, the text also lacks another
essential feature of fairy tales: there is no story to speak of, only an accumu-
lation of repeated actions. Repetition, to be sure, is a standard feature of
folk narrative, but what is missing here is a sense of denouement. The
typical fairy tale pattern of quest, adversity and fulfillment described by
Vladimir Propp is nowhere in sight. The various events reported by the
 RussianMinimalistProse 463

narrator do not constitute a sequential development leading to some quali-

tative change, but rather a senseless going around in circles. One could
easily imagine the story to continue ad libitum.
Many of Sologub's fairy tales thwart basic expectations of linear plot-
development and logical narrative cohesiveness. In this sense, they antici-
pate later twentieth-century examples of what has become known as the
"literature of the absurd." One of the most salient features of Sologub's
"Skazochki" that sets them apart from the fairy tales of other Russian
authors is their brevity. Instead of the customary fabulistic expansion of the
folk tale, Sologub offers extremely condensed miniatures. Many of them
take up less than a page. This laconicity is a major contributing factor to
the general "strangeness" of these stories. Sologub's shortest texts occupy
only a few lines, such as the following example:

TpH nIIeBKa
IlIei ienosBeK, H nnjOHynTpIDKlbI.
OH yIlmeJ,nJIeBKH ocTanHCb.
1 cKa3ajiOH,HrmeBOK:
- MbI 3secb, a HejoBeKa HeT.
H Apyrofl cKa3aan:
- OH ymeJi.
H1 TpeTHfi:
- OH TOJIbKO3aTeM H npHxoaHJI, Hac nOCaAHTb3gecb.
TOO6bI
MbI- IeJIb )KH3HH
IeJIoBeKa.OH yineii, a MbIocranHcb. (SS 64)
The Three Spittles
A man came and spat three times.
He went away; the spittles remained.
And one spittle said:
- We are here, and the man is gone.
And the other said:
-He has left.
And the third:
-He only came to put us here. We are the goal of man's life. He went away, and we have
remained.

Using a somewhat unsavory image, Sologub's parable anticipates Hei-

degger's Geworfenheit, as it were, in the form of Gespucktheit. The begin-
ning of the story resembles Kharms's "Sinfoniia No. 2" ("Symphony No.
2," 1941), which opens with the same image:
AHTOH MHXainJOBHI nrIJoHyJI, cKa3ajn <<3X>, OILITbhnJOHyJI, OIITb CKa3aJI <<3X, OIIHTb
nMIoHyJ, OIAITbCKa3aan<3x>>H ymejn. H Bor c HHM.PaccKaacynyqmie npo HInbKsIIaBJnoBHMa.
(PSS 2:159)
Anton Mikhailovich spat, said "Ugh," spat again, said "Ugh" again, spat again, said "Ugh"
again, and went out. The hell with him. I'd better tell you about Ilya Pavlovich. (Gibian 49)
464 Slavic and East European Journal

In Kharms'sreworking, the three-fold act of spitting has turned into an

extended slapstickscenario. At the same time, Sologub'stale of the three
spittles providesthe conclusionto Kharms'sabortednarrative.
There is an obvioussimilaritybetween Sologub'sfairytales and Kharms's
mini-stories.25Both writersoperate with minimalist(non-) narrativesand
faux closures. In addition, they both evoke a "fallen"world of depressing
banality, shot through with acts of random violence and occurrencesof
unmotivated,sudden death. Possible escapes into a transcendentcounter-
realityare hinted at, but remainvague. Most importantly,both Kharmsand
Sologub rely on fairy tale patterns to create a minimalistgenre of Anti-
Marchen.26 The role of the Russianfolk tale in Kharms's"Sluchai"cycle has
been studied by Frank Gobler. Many of his findings apply as well to
Sologub'sfairy tales. Gobler mentions the lack of a text-internalnarrator,
an alogical narrativestyle, iterative and durativestructuresof chronology
typicalfor both absurddramaand fairytales, plots markedby cruelty,and
de-individualized,de-emotionalizedcharacters.In a strangetwist, Kharms
inverses the practice of the folk tale which endows animals with human
attributesby populating his seemingly realistic world with dehumanized
figures.Whereasthe literaryKunstmarchenusuallypsychologizesthe folk-
tale, Kharms's(and Sologub's)tales representthe opposite:they constitute
examplesof de-psychologizedKunstmdrchen,signaling,in some respects,a
returnto a more primitivistfolk mythology.
Sologub's and Kharms'sparodisticcitationof the fairy tale traditionre-
fers not only to literarymodels (Krylov,Andersen), but also to the Russian
folktale, as a consultation of A. N. Afanasiev's standardcollection will
confirm. In light of the minimalistand absurdistcharacterof Sologub's
Skazochki and Kharms'smini-stories,Afanasiev's series of so-called Do-
kuchnyeskazki ("TiresomeTales")deserves particularattention. In their
extreme laconicitysome of these texts seem to anticipatethe minimalismof
the later Russian avant-garde,as the followingexampledemonstrates:
)KHI-6bij cTapHK, y crapHKa 6biJI KonoJeqi, a B KoJIooe-To eJne; TyT H cKa3Ke KOHelI.
(3:305)
There once lived an old man, the old man had a well, in the well there was a dace: here the
storyends
[or, to capturethe rhyme,we could translate:"therewas a dace in the well; there is nothing
else to tell"].

This "story"begins with a traditionalfairy tale opening, only to short-

circuitthe narrativeby directlycuttingto a closing formula.Plot develop-
ment is abandonedin favor of a lyricaldevice- the consonanceof internal
rhyme. By withholdingthe promisednarration,the text highlightsthe act
of storytellingitself.
 Prose
RussianMinimalist 465

One of Afanasiev's dokuchnye skazki served as the inspiration for

Sologub's fairy tale "Pro belogo bychka" ("About the White Bull"),27a
story that again thematizes the impossibilityof storytelling.The opening
question of the folk tale, "Skazat' li tebe skazku pro belogo bychka?"
("Shall I tell you the story of the white bull?") functions as a sort of
narrativetease, since the promised story never materializes.Instead, the
narratorrevertscontinuouslyto the initialannouncement,creatinga series
of circular loops. In Sologub's reworking of Afanasiev's text, the girl
Lenochka senses that the story-tellingnanny engages in this form of ver-
biage only to conceal the fact that she does not reallyknow anythingabout
the white bull. Lenochkadecides thereforeto go to sleep and dreamabout
this creature herself. But when, after almost a whole night of dreamless
sleep, she finally succeeds in this attempt, the annoying nanny comes to
wake her up, thus thwartingagain the quest for narrativefulfillment.
Kharmsused the same motif in an untitled text of 1934-35 (PSS 2:60).
The story begins with the announcement "Khotite, ia rasskazhu vam
rasskazpro etu kriukitsu?"("ShallI tell you the story of this kriukitsa?").
The story never gets off the ground, however, because the narratorcan't
rememberwhat to call his fairytale creature- kriukitsa?kiriukitsa?kuria-
kitsa? kirikriukitsa?kurikriakitsa?kirikuriukitsa?kirikukukrekitsa?,and
so on. Kharmslinguisticplay with letters and syllables,which he inherited
from the trans-senselanguageof the futurists,leads to the breakdownof
communicationand makes any storytellingimpossible.
Kharmshimself marked the adherence to and deviation from the folk-
tale model (skazka)with two titles that allude to the folktale and deformit
at the same time: Skasskaand Skavka(PSS 2:39 and 1:174).28The former
is the story of a characternamed Semenov who keeps losing one thing
after the other. First he loses his handkerchief, then his hat, then his
jacket, and then his boots. At this point, he decides to go home, but gets
lost. He sits down and falls asleep, which bringsthe story to a close. The
formulaicrepetition of misfortunes,a frequentlyencounteredelement in
Kharms'snarrativeprose, points to the folktale tradition, which is also
evoked with the opening "Zhil-bylodin chelovek" ("Once upon a time
there lived a man"). But nothing miraculousor even particularlyinterest-
ing happens in this story. At best, we must conclude that Semenov is a
complete idiot. His misfortunesare reportedin an unemphatic,matter-of-
fact style. He is such an insignificantcharacterthat, after he falls asleep,
the narratorseems to lose interest in him. As Thomas Grob has noted,
compared to the violence in other texts, Semenov's fate is relatively be-
nign, however:the story ends untragically,even peacefully(90).
The second text with a misspelled fairy tale title, "Skavka,"takes the
form of a minimalistpoem:
466 Slavicand East EuropeanJournal

BOCeMb ienjOBeKCHII5T Ha iaBKe

BOT H KOHeCLMoei CKaBKe

eight people sit on a bench

here my story comes to an ench

The distortion of the generic title word (making it rhyme, incidentally, with
Kafka!) is motivated by a rhyme constraint. Unlike the word "Skasska,"
which, although misspelled, is at least phonetically correct, "Skavka" consti-
tutes a neologism. Jaccard has pointed to the important transitional nature
of this poem in Kharms's oeuvre (281). Written in 1930, it combines the
deformative avant-garde poetics of his earlier style with the laconic minimal-
ism of the later prose narratives. Significantly, Kharms uses the material of
the folktale to demonstrate the impossibility of traditional narration.
In at least one instance, Kharms borrowed a technique of communicative
disturbance directly from Sologub's fairy tales. Sologub's story "Tik" fea-
tures a boy who has the annoying habit of interrupting all his sentences with
the word "tik!" (SS 12). In Kharms's "Sluchai" cycle, the same motif ap-
pears in a vaguely Chekhovian dramatic scene with the title "Tiuk!" (PSS
2:346-47). The little boy has turned into an elderly man who drives his
female companion crazy by constantly uttering the word "tiuk!" when she
hits on a log of firewood with her axe. The shift from child to adult is
significant. While the young age of the character in Sologub's text provides a
natural explanation for a behavior which, although annoying, constitutes a
form of essentially harmless play, the adult character in Kharms's scene
seems positively deranged.
The self-stylization of the author as an infantile character, as evidenced
in the matter-of-fact-like and disturbingly unemotional reporting of ab-
surd, cruel, and shocking events, is a technique that can also be observed in
the dreams of Aleksei Remizov.29 In their absurdist laconicity, as well as in
their at times violent content, many of Remizov's dreams anticipate
Kharms's mini-stories. In some instances, Remizov, just like Kharms, en-
gages in metafictional comments on his own narrative minimalism. In one
of Remizov's dreams, the narrator is confronted with "paper from the
fourth dimension" on which it is impossible to write with either pencil or
pen. The whole secret, he is told by someone, consists in "making some-
thing from nothing" (31). In another dream, the narrator is hauling a cart
loaded with sand to a mountain village. When he arrives, the women of the
village inform him that the sand will be used to weave cloth (68). The
paradox of a woven structure - a text! - made of sand points to the prob-
lem of creating a coherent narrative out of autonomous minimal units.
In conclusion, we note that the principle of minimalism provides an
overarching theoretical rubric for the various examples of Russian prose
miniatures that we have identified as possible antecedents of Kharms's mini-
 RussianMinimalistProse 467

stories. As we have seen, this "subversive" principle also underlines the

genre of the prose poem. In their minimalist subversion of traditional narra-
tive, Kharms's anti-stories question the notion of literariness in the same way
as the prose poem's impossible binarism between poetry and prose questions
the notion of poeticity. Just as minimalist sculpture hovers uneasily on the
margins between art and non-art, the prose poem can be defined as "any
short text which, by dint of transgressing the canons of accepted literary
discourses, borders on a non-literary or 'para-literary' discourse" (Metzi-
dakis 78). Anna Gerasimova stated something very similar when she charac-
terized the literary production of the oberiuty as "a phenomenon, as it were,
on the limit of literature [na grani literatury]" (78).
Many of Kharms's texts are difficult to classify if we adhere to a strict
binary system of "literature" vs. "non-literature." This becomes evident in
the curious publication history of his work. The fact that his oeuvre ap-
peared posthumously has meant that editors and publishers had to decide
which of his prose texts fall into the category of fiction (khudozhestvennaia
literatura) and which ones remain outside this category. Kharms's note-
books seem to freely mix fictional and non-fictional texts, and the persona
in his diaries is a literary construct rather than an autobiographical self. In
comparing the various editions of Kharms's works that have appeared over
the past few years, we note that a growing number of texts are placed in the
category of khudozhestvennaia literatura. The quite arbitrary decision of
lifting a text or text fragment from a diary or notebook and declaring it to
be a piece of "literature" has far-reaching consequences for its reception.
As in the case of the prose poem, it is the "frame" rather than any intrinsic
quality that places the text in a different aesthetic category.30
It is interesting to note that Kharms himself engaged in a similar process
of framing and (re)contextualizing. The title of the opening piece of the
"Sluchai" cycle, "Golubaia tetrad' No. 10," is revealing of this procedure.
In attaching the number ten, rather than one, to his first story, Kharms
marks the text as appropriated from a different environment, the "Blue
Notebook."31 By openly proclaiming the text as a transplant from this
heterogeneous collage of sketches, diary entries, aphorisms, and poems,
Kharms is "laying bare the device" of citing and re-inserting a text as a sort
of "ready made" into his cycle of mini-stories. As we have seen, minimalist
art similarly relies on techniques of framing and recontextualization in
order to establish itself as art. "Golubaia tetrad' No. 10," Kharms's per-
haps best-known story, embodies this problem in exemplary fashion:
rony6aH TeTpaab,N2. 10

Bbin O;HH pbicbIebI eOBeK, y KOTOporOHe 6bIno rna3 H ymefi. Y Hero He 6bino H BOIOC,
TaK YTOpbIxCHMero Ha3bIsanIHyCIOBHO.
FOBOpHTbOH He MOr, TaK KaK y Hero He 6bIJio pTa. Hoca ToaKe y Hero He 6bino.
468 Slavic and East European Journal

Y Hero He 6bIJIo gaxce pyK H HOr. 14 KHBOTa y Hero He 6bino, H CIHHbI y Hero He 6bInO, H
xpe6Ta y Hero He 6bIno, H HHKaKHX y Hero He 6biio. HHqero He 6bino! TaK
BHyTpeHHOCTefi
xTO HenOHITHO, O KOMHieT peIb.
Yxa JiyqImeMbIO HeM He 6yAeM6ojibme roBOpHTb.(PSS 2:330)

Blue NotebookNo. 10
There was once a red-haired man who had no eyes and no ears. He also had no hair, so he
was calledred-hairedonly in a mannerof speaking.
He wasn'table to talk, becausehe didn'thave a mouth. He had no nose, either.
He didn'teven have any armsor legs. He also didn'thave a stomach,and he didn'thave a
back, and he didn't have a spine, and he also didn'thave any other insides. He didn'thave
anything.[Or:There was nothing].So it's hardto understandwhomwe're talkingabout.
So we'd better not talk about him any more. (Gibian63)

As a sort of programmatic opening manifesto of the "Sluchai" cycle,

"Golubaia tetrad' No. 10" points to the narrative dilemma of "creating
something out of nothing" (as Remizov put it in his dream).32 How can we
refer to a character with no hair as a "red-haired man"? In the same
manner, one could argue, as we refer to a text with no obvious poetic
qualities as a prose poem, or an object with no obvious aesthetic attributes
as a work of minimalist art-it all happens "in a manner of speaking"
(uslovno).33 This insight leads to a more wide-ranging ontological dilemma:
How can we talk about someone or something at all in the absence of any
perceptible attributes? The resulting disintegration of the narrative ends in
the ultimate vanishing point of all minimalist art: the empty canvas, the
white page, the protracted silence. Confronted with an artifact that appears
to be lacking in aesthetic complexity, poeticity, or narrativity, the reader or
beholder is left alone to ponder his or her own operative assumptions about
the meaning of art and life.

NOTES
1 Chances,186. ContemporaryKharmsscholarssuch as Jean-PhilippeJaccardor Mikhail
Iampolsky would probably react to such a statement with consternation or scorn. Never-
theless, in juxtaposition to Jaccard's and Iampolsky's formidable attempts to interpret
Kharms's texts as serious philosophy, Chances's genuine bewilderment at the strangeness
of Kharms's stories is rather refreshing.
2 Kharms'spublisheddiariesand notebookscontainno referenceto Chekhov.
3 For a discussionof American minimalistfiction of the 1980s, see the special issue of
Mississippi Review (vols. 40-41, 1985), with an introduction by Kim Herzinger.
4 See Colpitt, 3, and Baker, 17-18. In his 1937 tract "Systemand Dialectics of Art,"
publishedin Paris,Grahamofferedthe followingdefinitionof minimalism:"Minimalism
is the reducingof paintingto the minimumingredientsfor the sake of discoveringthe
ultimate, logical destination of painting in the process of abstracting. Painting starts with
a virgin,uniformcanvasand if one worksad infinitumit revertsagainto a plainuniform
surface (dark in color), but enriched by process and experiences lived through. Founder:
Graham"(115-16). The term "minimalism"
had been used a few yearsbefore by David
 Russian Minimalist Prose 469

Burliukin a 1929catalogessay on Graham.See Green, 38, n.13. Accordingto Baker,"it

is unclearwhetherhe borrowedthe termfrom Grahamor vice versa"(134, n.6).
5 See BarbaraRose, "ABC Art," 275.
6 See Janecek.This articlehas been republishedin Russian, togetherwith several other
contributions,in "Minimum=Maximum: Minimalizmi mini-formyv sovremennoilitera-
ture." Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie 23 (1997): 245-342.
7 Novoe literaturnoeobozrenie23 (1997), 266 (in orderto save paper,the printedversion
omits lines 23 through999,986).
8 See the essay "TheWorkof Art in the Age of MechanicalReproduction"in Benjamin,
217-51.
9 QuotingAristotleand Lacan,Iampolskyinterpretsthe notionof "encounter"in an even
widerexistentialsense as the fundamentalmodusof our confrontationwithreality.In this
sense, the chanceencountertypifiesthe quintessentialKharmsian"sluchai"(86-88).
10 Quoted in Popkin,4.
11 As an example of a minimalstory, Princeoffers: "Johnwas happy,then he saw Peter,
then, as a result, he was unhappy."Rather than a minimalstory, Kharms'stext would
have to be called a "minimalnarrative,"whichPrincedefinesas the accountof a single
event ("She opened the door") or a single temporaljuncture("She ate then she slept")
(53).
12 GrahamRoberts has defined metafictionas a key feature of OBERIU poetics. (171-
178).
13 On the importanceof the numberzero for Kharms'spoeticsandphilosophy,see "Lezero
et l'infini"in Jaccard,98-102, and "Vokrugnolia"in Iampol'skii,287-313.
14 See Markov,80.
15 Nils Ake Nilssonhas arguedthat these two poems have at least a grammaticalmeaning.
"U-"is a verbalprefix,with the hyphencallingthe readerto fill in the missingverb, and
"iu"is a morphologicalmarkerof the first person singular,which makes this poem "a
programmaticstatementof Ego-futurism"(223).
16 In his pamphletFuturizmv stikhakhV Briusova,AndreiShemshurin,who liked neither
Gnedov nor Briusov, drew a connection between Gnedov's minimalistpoems and
Briusov'smonostich(see 20-21).
17 In Kharms'spoetic works,we do findone-linepoems. See on this Kobrinskii,1:19.
18 For a generaldiscussionof the Russianprose poem, see Wanner1997.
19 N. G. Chernyshevskyto A. N. Chernyshevsky,Astrakhan,5 March,1885(15:518).
20 "Khoroshego-ponemnozhku (Podrazhenie 'Stikhotvoreniiamv proze' Turgeneva)."
Strekozano.3 (1883), 3.
21 See on this Kobrinskii,1:13-14.
22 Volume 10 of Sobraniesochinenii contains seventy-three"Skazochki"(9-120). Page
referencesto this edition, abbreviatedSS, will be given in parenthesesin the text. A first
collection of thirty-ninefairy tales was publishedby Grif in 1904 as Kniga skazok,
followedby a slim volume of Politicheskieskazochkia year later.Five additionalstories
not contained in Sobranie sochinenii appeared in Politicheskie skazochki (Moscow:
Rodnaiarech', 1916).
23 The most extensivediscussioncan be found in Rabinowitz,132-152; and Steltner.
24 See "FedorSologub.Knigaskazok"(Russkoebogatstvo,December1904),republishedin
Korolenko,392-93.
25 As we know from Kharms'sdiaries, he held Sologubin high esteem. In a list of poems
that he knewby heart, he mentionsfour pieces by Sologub(Kharms1991,434). Svetozar
Shishmanreportsthat Kharmsat one point refusedto sit downwithMikhailZoshchenko
at the same table, becausethe latterhad made fun of Sologubin one of his stories (88).
26 On Sologub'suse of the Anti-Marchen,see Hart.
470 Slavic and East European Journal

27 See Afanas'evno. 531 (3:305)and Sologub,SS 20.

28 Deliberate misspellingsplay an importantrole in Kharms'spoetics. See on this the
chapter"'Bez grammaticheskoioshibki. . .'? Orfograficheskii 'sdvig'v tekstakhDaniila
Kharmsa"in Kobrinkii, 1:151-74. Kharms'soeuvre also features a correctlyspelled
"Skazka,"which was publishedin 1935 in the journal Chizh. The main character,as in
Sologub's"Pro belogo bychka,"is called Lenochka.Althougha seemingly"harmless"
story for children,"Skazka"containsmanyof the elementstypicalfor Kharms's"adult"
fiction,such as physicalviolence, senselessrepetitions,and self-referentiality.
29 See on this Wanner1999.
30 A relatedproblemconsistsin the distinctionbetweenKharms's"adult"storiesand those
writtenfor children.In the latest edition (and most completeto date) of Kharms'swork,
TsirkShardam,all texts are printedin chronologicalorder withoutattentionto generic
categories.
31 The complete"Golubaiatetrad"'has been publishedin PSS 2:321-29.
32 By discussing"Golubaiatetrad'No. 10"as a minimalistmeta-narrative,I do not meanto
dismissalternative,complementaryreadingsof thisstory,suchas a theologicalinterpreta-
tion (the red-hairedman as the absent God, see Carrick,75-78), or a reference to
historicalreality (the date of composition, 1937, certainlysuggests a commenton the
Stalinistpurges).
33 "Uslovnost"'literallymeans"convention."The disintegrationof the narrativehas there-
fore to be perceivedagainstthe backdropof "conventionof representation."

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