Эдип в Клонках: К полигенезису «мельничного цикла» Хармса [Oedipus in Klonki: Understading the “Mill Cycle” by Kharms]

Abstract

This article is an attempt to explain the core plot of the so-called “mill cycle” by Daniil Kharms (early 1930s). As part of this task, the author specifies some known subtexts (from Goethe, Pushkin, Zabolotsky, occult literature) and introduces some previously unknown ones (from Aeschylus, Shakespeare, Poe, Khlebnikov, etc.). In line with his long-term work in the field poetics, the author adheres to the belief that all the significant subtexts of the cycle are closely linked by an intelligible and reconstructable interrelationship. This dictates the entire course of the study, which purposefully reveals the relative character of the motivations behind Kharms’s intertextual techniques. Olga Freidenberg’s 1928 paper unexpectedly turns out to be a “dispatch center” of sorts responsible for the semantic coordination of this literary polyphony.