Annotating Kharms

Abstract

The paper is dedicated to the quest for the sources of the two notes made by Daniil Kharms in his notebooks and dated May 1927 and July 1933. The first one is devoted to someone “great Rebbe from Liadi”: Kharms was going to get his book with musical score from Doibver Levin. The motif in question is the arba bavot nigun, also called “the great nigun”, ascribed to Schneur Salman Schneerson von Liadi, the founder of Liubavich Hasid dynasty, The paper analyses the “magic” context of Kharms interest in nigun (which, according to the followers of Habad, could influence reality) and the circumstances of the hypothetic visit of Levin, Kharms and Bekhterev to the sixth Liubavich Rebbe Joseph Yitzhak Schneerson, who was then residing in Leningrad. The second part of the paper is dedicated to the origins of Kharm’s note on the ship “Pyatnitsa” (“Friday”) alledgedly created to fight superstitions. It is demonstrated that the form of the legend written down by Kharms points to its direct source — Fenimore Cooper’s novel The Red Rover. However the Russian source could have been the first edition of the novel that contained the author’s note telling the legend; this note was withdrawn from all later reeditions.

Keywords

• notebooks
• annotation
• daniil kharms
• schneur salman schneerson von liadi
• arba bavot nigun
• joseph yitzhak schneerson
• fenimore cooper
• hms friday