Jokes attributed to Harms

The co-author of the book, Natalia Dobrokhotova-Maikova, in the 1996 afterword, written for the 1998 edition, reports on the circumstances of its creation ^[2] . She was a freelance artist for the Pioneer magazine , which, in the summer of 1971, after the forced retirement of editor-in-chief Natalya Vladimirovna Ilyina , in the opinion of her faithful team, was waiting for collapse.

“The crash was celebrated on a grand scale. The editors, former employees, favorite authors (all celebrities) secretly compiled a memorable manuscript issue for N.V. It turned out a wonderful book, very funny. Pyatnitsky and I got a heading “Favorite Collection-Sobirailova”, tiny, in a quarter strip. She appeared shortly before, Raine led her, dug up somewhere anecdotes about great writers, mostly, it seems, Mark Twain. Pushkin was also present. Pyatnitsky drew graphic thumbnails for these jokes a little more than a postage stamp. We have reproduced this section. They composed two parodies ” ^[2] . Their text was not included in the main body of jokes.

As Dobrokhotova-Maykova writes: “Then we could not stop. As soon as you open your mouth, a new story arose as if by itself. (...) Everything that was composed was recorded immediately, and Pyatnitsky also painted pictures. All the drawings are his. It seems that there are more texts of mine. There are common ones. Mine, as a rule, is longer, Volodiny is more ingenious ” ^[2] . Pyatnitsky then lived in the family of his co-author and, together with her relatives, made color masks-portraits of Pushkin, Gogol, Tolstoy and Dostoevsky (their images can later be seen on the cover of 1998; these artifacts survived and were exhibited in a private gallery at the Pyatnitsky exhibition in the 21st century) .

Further fate

The first copies of the book were photographs and photocopies of the manuscript with illustrations created by two co-authors. They had a title page with the author’s title “Jolly Fellows,” which was lost in later reproductions (turning into typewritten text). According to her, “for the same reason, the graphical and mathematical Volodin escaped wide publicity a composition about the love of hippos, which was observed by F. M. Dostoevsky (the kingdom of heaven to him), with the ending:“ There is nothing complicated in this science “” ^[2] . Later in the mass consciousness, the text, which lost the title page and became anonymous, “acquired” the authorship of Kharms, who really owns a number of parody miniatures about Pushkin and Gogol.

Copies of jokes in the samizdat format went hand in hand and were a huge success.

I. V. Kukulin reports: “In the late 80s - early 90s. individual texts from the series “Jolly Fellows” were repeatedly printed in newspapers (Pravda, November 23, 1991, and others) with various indications of authorship (Harms, attributed to Harms) or with calls to the author to respond. For the first time, genuine authors were named in a note by N. V. Kotrelev ^[3] in 1988. The texts of Dobrokhotova and Pyatnitsky with the addition of similar texts by other authors were placed in the appendix to Harms' prose and diary collection, which was published ^{[[ 1]} .

In her blog, Dobrokhotova-Maykova writes that the original existed in a green notebook from some conference ^[4] . In 1998, her friend, publisher Vladimir Igorevich Grushetsky (Arda Publishing House), published in a small run the publication “Merry Guys”, according to her, she was “not very successful, the text was typeset and the pictures were mixed up” ^[4] .

Authors

Dobrokhotova-Maykova, Natalya Alexandrovna ^[5] (b. 07.07.1938 ^[6] ) and Pyatnitsky, Vladimir Pavlovich (July 18, 1938 - November 17, 1978 ^[7] ). According to the artist’s recollections, they met at the chemistry department of Moscow State University and were classmates ^[8] , he fell in love with her younger sister Tatyana, with whom she later had a common daughter ^[8] .

Natalia Dobrokhotova-Maykova - Russian artist, translator. She graduated from the chemical faculty of Moscow State University in 1960, worked for two years in the specialty. She studied in the studio at the club of Serafimovich, head M.T. Khazanov. Since 1962 he has been working as an illustrator. For many years she collaborated with the Pioneer magazine, occasionally with other magazines. The main work in children's and popular science literature (publishing houses "Young Guard", "Children's Literature", "Avanta +", etc.), together with sister Tatyana, also a book illustrator ^[5] . Mother of the translator Ekaterina Mikhailovna Dobrokhotova-Maykova ^[9] .

The manuscript is a small notebook, on each page of which there is a joke or drawing. Some jokes occupy two pages. A total of 87 pages contain 55 stories. Their order does not coincide with the location of jokes in popular self-published copies and network reprints.

Forerunners and Prerequisites

According to Dobrokhotova-Maykova, imitation of Harms' literary anecdotes in this project was the most direct. Another source she calls school-folk jokes about Pushkin ("usually stupid and indecent") ^[2] .

The appearance of anecdotes coincided with the 150th anniversary of the birth of F.M. Dostoevsky , whose name appears in 16 anecdotes. Also in that era, as the writer points out, a huge number of stories about Kuzmich (Lukich) and Vasily Ivanovich plyed ^[2] .

Mikhail Nazarenko points out ^[10] that, in contrast to Harms’s original jokes, which were much divorced from real facts, the new cycle draws on real episodes from the writers ’life, although sometimes it reverses them. For example, in a joke about the arson of Petersburg by Dostoevsky, his "participation in the circle of Petrashevists and hard labor are connected with the late meeting of Dostoevsky and Chernyshevsky: according to the memoirs of the latter, Dostoevsky came to him in the spring of 1862 with a prayer to influence the young nihilists and stop the St. Petersburg fires." The constant flight of Turgenev to Baden-Baden, in his opinion, refers more likely to Karmazinov’s movements in “ Demons ” than to a true biography of the writer. Relatively temporary space, according to the literary critic, it is worth talking about the influence of the Blue Book Zoshchenko , where the whole world history is seen through the eyes of Soviet people. “Such duality - history as an absolute past and as an exact copy of modernity - is characteristic of the entire Russian tradition of pseudo-historical texts, starting with Prutkov's anecdotes and“ History of a city ”.”

Mentioned

• Arina Rodionovna
• Volkonskaya, Zinaida Alexandrovna
• Vyazemsky, Peter Andreevich
• Herzen, Alexander Ivanovich
• Gogol, Nikolai Vasilievich
• Goncharova, Alexandra Nikolaevna (as Alexandrina)
• Goncharova, Natalya Nikolaevna
• Grigorovich, Dmitry Vasilievich (as Grigorovsky)
• Dostoevsky, Fedor Mikhailovich
• Derzhavin, Gavrila Romanovich
• Lermontov, Mikhail Yuryevich
• Maykov, Apollon Nikolaevich
• Nekrasov, Nikolai Alekseevich
• Nicholas I and Empress Alexandra Fedorovna
• Pomyalovsky, Nikolai Gerasimovich (as Pomyalovich)
• Pushkin, Alexander Sergeyevich
• Rabindranath Tagore and his wife (Mrinalini Devi)
• Petrashevsky, Mikhail Vasilievich
• Tolstaya, Sofya Andreevna
• Tolstoy, Lev Nikolaevich
• Turgenev, Ivan Sergeevich
• Tyutchev, Fedor Ivanovich
• Chernyshevsky, Nikolai Gavrilovich

Kukulin writes: “The“ historical “texts of Dobrokhotova and Pyatnitsky actively address the real events of the life of Russian classics (Dostoevsky’s stay in penal servitude,“ love of the people ”and pedagogical experience of Leo Tolstoy, etc.), but to a much greater extent - to their semi-mythological images in the minds of Soviet or sub-Soviet intellectuals. These images go back to the stereotypes of the Soviet school curriculum, to critical literature and historical anecdotes of various origins. In Harms' texts, Pushkin and Gogol stumbling over each other become strange characters who parody the very idea of ​​a “historical joke”. “Funny guys” is the next stage of the same tradition. Their characters have constant attributes (...). Compared to Harms' texts, in “Jolly Fellows” a greater place is given to social satire. The texts of Dobrokhotova and Pyatnitsky parody the particular ideological and psychological significance that the history of literature has acquired in Russia. The history of literature is recognized in a parody as a kind of domestic intellectual mythology; The "Merry Guys" parody this mythology - but parody, without canceling its significance. Dobrokhotova and Pyatnitsky created a kind of parallel mythology, and at the same time, a productive cultural mechanism for the further development of such parallel mythologies. “Parallel mythologies” have become a prominent and necessary part of the self-reflection of cultural consciousness for the non-conformist intelligentsia of the USSR. Anti-ideology, mockery of the cliches of the Soviet teaching of literature, the paradoxical persuasiveness of characters - all this led to the fact that the texts of Dobrokhotova and Pyatnitsky were extremely popular in samizdat, and, in turn, served as a model for numerous imitations and alterations ” ^[1] .

Nazarenko writes: “The main narrative principle of“ Jolly Fellows ”undoubtedly goes back to Harms: this is the unpredictability of accurate / distorted / inverted reproduction of facts. Not only psychological, but also chronological shifts are strengthened: Russian literature is seen from the 1970s as a single text, closed to itself, as a single time point (...) The authors immediately destroy the illusion of the isolation of classical literature from the present. In the cycle there are also the realities of the Soviet era: the Kolyma camp, allegedly described by Gogol, the anniversaries of the classics ” ^[10] .

• Kotrelev N.V. Letter to the editors // Soviet Bibliography, 1988, No. 4
• Kobrinsky A. A. "I participate in the gloomy life" // Harms Daniel. Throat raves with a razor. S. 17
• Yampolsky M. B. unconsciousness as a source. M., 1998. S. 135-136
• Eugene Onegin, Little Boy, Winnie the Pooh and other inhabitants of the Soviets (anthology). M.: MiK, 1993 Series: Library of parody and humor. ISBN 5-88548-011-7 . Attributed to Harms and combined with his "Jokes ..." ^[11]
• Dobrokhotova-Maykova Natalia, Pyatnitsky Vladimir. Funny boys. / Fig. V. Pyatnitsky. - M .: Arda, 1998 .-- 110 p .: ill. (o) ISBN 5-89749-001-5
• Nazarenko M.I. Construction of biographies in historical anecdotes // Russian Literature. Research: Sat. scientific labor. - Vol. XI. - K .: BiT, 2007 .-- S. 159-170.
• Harmsiniad. Comics from the life of writers. M., 2019. Hood. Alexey Nikitin