Daniil Kharms: Writing and the Event (Avant-Garde & Modernism Studies) - Hardcover

Jakovljevic PhD, Branislav

4.56

9 ratings by Goodreads

9780810125537: Daniil Kharms: Writing and the Event (Avant-Garde & Modernism Studies)

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0810125536 ISBN 13: 9780810125537

Publisher: Northwestern University Press, 2009

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The "texts" of Russian artist and thinker Daniil Kharms (1905-1942) were so many and varied and often unique (narrative, dramatic, philosophical, poetic, mathematical, pictographic, diagrammatic, musical, biographical) that they defied categorization―and, thus, thorough study or appreciation―through much of the twentieth century. This book, the first in English to view Kharms’s oeuvre in its entirety, is also the first to offer a complete, inclusive, and coherent understanding of the overall project of this artist and writer now considered a major figure in the modernist canon of Europe.

The book follows Kharms’s development as a creative thinker, inquiring into the nature of Kharmsian nonsense, the ontological status of the OBERIU object, writing as performance, Kharms’s gestural language, his "language machines," and his ideas of order, number, infinity, and chance. Reading every paper trace (as well as extant memories) of Kharms’s activities as part of a large project of world creation, Branislav Jakovljevic situates him in a twentieth-century effort―exemplified by Kafka, Beckett, Artaud, Malevich, and Khelbnikov, among others―to go beyond an interpretation of meaning circumscribed by rational and logical thought. Examining texts that could conceivably be called "literary" as well as sketches, diagrams, hieroglyphs, photographs, and unclassifiable others, Jakovljevic’s study is the first to provide a properly broad perspective on this creative thinker’s farranging, far-reaching, and finally comprehensive achievement.

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About the Author:

Branislav Jakovljevic is an assistant professor in the department of drama at Stanford University. He specializes in modernist theater and the avant-garde, and in his current research he focuses on the relation of the event to performance. He lives in Palo Alto, California.

Review:

"Several keys to understanding Kharms’s oeuvre are offered here. By drawing in discussions of a broad range of Western thinkers, Jakovljevic brings Kharms to the English-language reader in a familiar and exciting context, making a strong case for Kharms’s inclusion in the international avant-garde canon as both artist and thinker."― Matvei Yankelevich, Hunter College

Jakovljevic offers a new departure, starting from an appreciation of Kharms as a thoroughly modern and avant-garde artist... [Daniil Kharms: Writing and the Event] provides a fascinating and illuminating investigation of Kharms’s writings, graphic art and mathematical treatises that have not been adequately explored. —Slavonic and East European Review

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