Title of the article:

BLACK HUMOR IN DANIIL KHARMS’S WORKS

Author(s):

Yu Gao

Information about the author/authors

Yu Gao — Doctoral candidate, Heilongjiang University, School of Russian, Xuefu Road, 74, 150080 Harbin, China. ORCID ID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8388-0303. E-mail: 15776609418@sina.cn

Section

Philological sciences

Year

2021

Volume

Vol. 60

Pages

pp. 208–223

Received

August 10, 2020

Date of publication

June 28, 2021

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.37816/2073-9567-2021-60-208-223

Index UDK

821.161.1.0

Index BBK

83.3(2Рос=Рус)6

Abstract

Daniil Kharms` s works have been a hot topic of research worldwide for several years. The present study discusses Kharms’s black humor writings of the 1930s, exposes aesthetic potential and humanistic content of black humor as an avant-garde phenomenon, and defines the role of black humor in the plot of works containing allusions to arrest in secret, hospitals and the life of Soviet children. As paper suggests the themes and subjects of Kharms’s black humor are designed to enhance humanistic content. In Kharms’s art world of black humor, “purity” is a kind of harmonious world order representing the earth as “a space, filled with madness and fear” on a real level while on an artistic level it functions as the purity of creative mind generating circular compositional structure and using semantic shift and narrative interruption. In other words, purity embodies the real world while belonging to it. The popularity of Kharms may be, firstly, explained by a clear feeling of absurdism and black humor, the root of which is his requirement for humanization of life and firm faith in God. Kharms believed that religion is “ambiguous and amorphous” and should be expressed in some form or object, without which the essence of religiosity would be lost, even if the most reliable authority and firm dogma are there. Thus, overtly inhuman elements which give a false impression of writer’s spiritual value, do not express the essence of his worldview, but reflect surrounding senseless reality. Out of dissatisfaction with reality, Kharms uses black humor to respond to the evil and absurdity of life.

Keywords

Daniil Kharms, black humor, absurd, reality, humanity.

References

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