Friday, October 19, 2007

The Eleven Asertions of Daniil Ivanovich Kharms

Assertion I
Objects have disappeared.
Assertion II
It used to be that the numerical series began with 2. 1 is not a number. 1 is the first and sole perfection. The first quantity, the first number, and the first departure from perfection is 2. (Pythagoras's unit)
Assertion III
Let us imagine that 1 is the first number.
Assertion IV
The new 1 is subject to the law of common numbers. The law of numbers is the law of masses. (Kharms's unit)
Assertion V
The law of single 1s is false - there is no such law. There is only the law of masses.
Assertion VI
The object is disarmed. It has been repudiated. Only the heap is armed.
Assertion VII
The law of large and small numbers is the same. The difference is only quantitative.
Assertion VIII
The human being and the word and the number are subject to one and the same law.
Assertion IX
New human thought has moved and flowed. It became fluid. The old human thought says about the new that 'it has become touched'. That is why for some people the Bolsheviks are insane.
Assertion X
One person thinks logically, many people think fluidly.
Assertion XI
I am one, but I think fluidly.

18 March 1930

Adapted from Daniil Kharms and Alexander Vvedensky, The Man with the Black Coat: Russia's Literature of the Absurd (ed. and trans. George Gibian, Evanston, Northwestern University Press 1987)

No comments: