Daniil Ivanovich Kharms was real

Yesterday while driving I heard part of a radio programme in which the man being interviewed talked about his documentary about a Russian poet whose name sounded like Daniel Harms. The man was a comedian and podcaster and when he began reading some of the poems I couldn't tell whether it was a spoof documentary or whether the poet was real.

Here's an example:

The Red-Haired Man 
There was a red-haired man who had no eyes or ears. 
Neither did he have any hair, so he was called red-haired theoretically. 

He couldn't speak, since he didn't have a mouth. Neither did he have a nose. 
He didn't even have any arms or legs. He had no stomach and he had no back and he had no spine and he had no innards whatsoever. He had nothing at all! 

Therefore there's no knowing whom we are even talking about. 
In fact it's better that we don't say any more about him. 

See what I mean? And here's another:

The Meeting
Now, one day a man went to work and on the way he met another man, who, having bought a loaf of Polish bread, was heading back home where he came from.

And that’s it, more or less.

Anyway a little googling this morning shows him to be real and called Daniil Ivanovich Kharms, an absurdist (you're telling me) poet who starved to death in the psychiatric ward of a Soviet hospital during the siege of Leningrad, having been put there by the Stalinist government for, among other reasons, his general strangeness..

His writing is intriguing. I may have to read some more or possibly look for the documentary online.

But just imagine that you're part of a writing group and you turn up one week with your work in progress. You read out The Meeting and say, 'Actually it's not in progress: it's finished.' I suspect you would be greeted by an embarrassed silence.

Come to think of it, that's probably the reaction Kharms often got. But, as I say, worth finding out more.