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OBERIU: An Anthology of Russian Absurdism. Ed. Eugene Ostashevsky. Evanston, Illinois: Northwestern University Press, 2006. xxxiii + 258 pp. $22.95. ISBN 0–8101–2293–6, Forum for Modern Language Studies, Volume 43, Issue 3, JULY 2007, Page 324, https://doi.org/10.1093/fmls/cqm036
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Extract
This volume presents a selection of the writings of members, or associates, of the avantgardist OBERIU movement, which maintained a rudimentary existence in Stalin's Russia from the late 1920s to the early 1940s. It consists “almost entirely of materials translated for the first time” (p. xiv) and thus deliberately avoids (at least, almost entirely) replicating material in the volumes The Man in the Black Coat (Kharms & Vvedensky, 1987) and Incidences (Kharms, 1993; reissued 2006). In addition to the two oberiuty mainstays (to whose works over half the book is devoted), also represented are Zabolotsky, Oleinikov, Lipavsky and the “philosopher” Yakov Druskin (the important existentialist figure behind the group, though the least “funny”). The works, which may be classifiable as experimentalism, absurdism or early postmodernism, can come in the form of prose, poetry (rhymed or not) or dialogue, if not a mixture thereof. Prominent throughout are the quirky OBERIU (or chinar') approaches to numbers, Nature (in its multifarious forms) and death. Kharms's “The Blue Notebook” is offered in full (rather than merely the celebrated “Number 10”). Other notable inclusions are Vvedensky's “A Certain Quantity of Conversations” and Zabolotsky's “The Battle of Elephants”. In all, a valuable addition to OBERIU availability.
