The Russian and later Soviet writer and poet Daniel Kharms lived a difficult life. In his biography, all the details he had to go through were described in detail – persecution by the authorities, exile and everything else. Creativity Harms had a significant impact on the culture and development of literature, despite the fact that this recognition came to him already posthumously.
Kharms’ father was a revolutionary, for which he was exiled to Sakhalin Island. After serving the term of exile, he settled first in Vladivostok and then in Petersburg, where his son Daniel was born. The father of Daniil Kharms was personally acquainted with such prominent writers as Anton Pavlovich Chekhov and Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy. The real surname of Harms is Yuvachev. He wrote his first poems while he was still at school. In his youth, Daniel was expelled from the Leningrad Technical School, but the reason for the expulsion is unknown.
The researchers of the biography of Daniil Kharms still have not come to a common opinion as to why he chose such a pseudonym for himself. Kharms was a member of a single literary association with A. Vvedensky and N. Zabolotsky. In 1925 he joined the All-Russian Union of Poets, from where he was expelled after 4 years for non-payment of membership fees. The first play written by the writer was staged on the theater stage in 1928. Once, Daniel Harms read Gumilev’s verses from the stage, shortly before this shot on charges of anti-Soviet activities. For this he was detained and interrogated. Daniel Harms often dressed very eccentric. Once he ordered a tailor in a suit in which one lapel of his jacket was longer than the other. Surprised friends, he said that he likes it. The writer had a love for dogs, especially small ones. He kept them at home and always took them on walks.
Daniel Harms loved jokes. Once they came to visit and began to take off his trousers for all, which shocked the present ladies. It turned out that under these trousers he was wearing one more. Under the influence of Boris Zhitkov and Samuil Marshak, at one time Harms worked in the field of children’s literature. On charges of anti-Soviet activities, Harms, along with Vvedensky, was arrested and exiled to Kursk in 1932, but six months later he returned to Leningrad. After the link, Daniel Harms for a long time really needed money. Then he began to work more on prose than on poetry. The writer loved to show tricks, deftly juggling with colorful ping-pong balls. Creativity Kharms was largely formed under the impression from the works of Velimir Khlebnikov.
Even in his youth, Daniel Harms came up with his own cipher, which he used almost until the end of his life, writing notes in his diary. Modern philologists easily deciphered it. The writer used in his work more than 40 pseudonyms, and most of them were consonant with the main one – Charms, Haarms, Horms and so on. Several times the neighbors, indignant at the Kharms habit of standing naked by the window, in front of passers-by, called the police on his soul. Throughout his life, Daniel Harms did not like children. The writer has been married twice. He enjoyed success with women, and his second spouse recalled that he was not a faithful husband. Since the beginning of World War II, Harms was arrested on charges of anti-Soviet activities. He was threatened with execution, and he, in order to be saved, pretended to be insane. He was placed in a psychiatric clinic, where a year later he died during the blockade of Leningrad. An asteroid discovered in 1982 was named in honor of Daniil Kharms.
