“LONG LIVE KHARMS!” (March 6, 2014)
Thus the title of an article on my Internet service provider’s website this afternoon. Surprised, I open it and start browsing through it. As it turns out, an alternative theater in the Croatian capital is preparing a show dedicated to Daniil Kharms. The article goes on and on about the actors’ ideas about the show. Some of them have read the Soviet-era absurdist in their youth, but they have never thought that they would ever be playing in a show dedicated to him. Most of them are delighted by the entire experience. I go back and forth through the article, but I cannot find a single passage about Kharms himself and his place in the literature of his times. His forename does not appear in it even once, either. Annoyed, I leave the article and the website in a jiffy. I am sure never to see the show in question. Nor to see any other show in the theater in question. Long live Kharms, but without the razzmatazz of a petty-bourgeois cultural elite in the Western Balkans, of all places! But my annoyance comes with a twist all its own. Namely, I could not but see myself in Kharms’ shoes so many years later. Yet another innocent absurdist to drag hither and thither across a wretched stage. The pits.