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Balagan Is Theater Too: Performance and Accessibility in Daniil Kharms and Vsevolod Nekrasov
Author(s) -
MORSE AINSLEY
Publication year - 2019
Publication title -
the russian review
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.136
H-Index - 24
eISSN - 1467-9434
pISSN - 0036-0341
DOI - 10.1111/russ.12209
Subject(s) - imitation , poetics , poetry , literature , manifesto , conversation , period (music) , art , aesthetics , history , philosophy , linguistics , law , psychology , social psychology , political science
The rediscovery of the OBERIU poets’ work in the 1960s was a major aesthetic revelation for contemporary Soviet poets. Alongside the obvious OBERIU critique of language and poetics of the absurd, other aspects of their work proved attractive and productive to Thaw‐era writers. In his writings on Daniil Kharms, the minimalist poet Vsevolod Nekrasov admiringly emphasized Kharms’s command of the “real” and “concrete” (in language and literature), as well as, somewhat paradoxically, the “theatrical.” An unofficial poet during the Soviet period, Nekrasov worked as a traveling theater critic in the 1960s–80s, and co‐authored a book on the nineteenth‐century realist playwright Alexander Ostrovsky. His take on Kharms and theater clearly reflects the priorities of his own poetic project, while shedding light on some of the paradoxes of OBERIU theater as well. To wit, the theater section of the 1927 OBERIU manifesto, authored by Kharms, rejects the traditional play’s realist imitation of life while declaring: “Our task is to present onstage the world of concrete objects in their interactions and collisions.” This paper explores the shifting meanings of concepts like “real” and “concrete,” and their ongoing significance for literature, through a sort of conversation between Nekrasov and Kharms.