Daniil Kharms: Three Case StudiesThe article suggests the interpretation of three compositions by Kharms in which not only ti­tles but also many details of the text indicate in a paradoxical way a certain musical prototype. In the Variations (1936) Kharms

The article suggests the interpretation of three compositions by Kharms in which not only ti­tles but also many details of the text indicate in a paradoxical way a certain musical prototype. In the Variations (1936) Kharms renders the classic Theme and variations structure. There are both the theme — four beginning verses — and “variations” of the same length, in which the theme is repeated in altered form, and a kind of change of mode (minor after ma­jor), and a loud climax at the end. The Passacaglia No. 1 (1937) is shaped like a sort of score of space with several layers. There are constant (ostinato) elements in every layer: lyrical hero (“I”), water, swaying near his feet, and “someone” deep in the water, who suddenly reveals his existence. The short story The Beginning of a Very Good Summer Day. Symphony (a. 1937) is composed of 176 words. However, its shape looks like a symphony in four movements. There is an op­positions between “masculine” and “feminine” in the first section (Timofey, jumping out of his window; peasant Khariton, throwing a stone; woman with an abscess), a final movement in folk character (a long line of people waiting to buy sugar is portrayed) and so on. Along with a musical prototype there is also a literary one — The 2nd Symphony by Andrey Bely in relation to which Kharms’s “symphony” became equally a continuation and a con­secutive denial of genre foundations of the literary symphony.