“I AM A PHENOMENON QUITE OUT OF THE ORDINARY” The Notebooks, Diaries, and Letters of D K ANIIL HARMS Cultural Revolutions: Russia in the Twentieth Century Editorial Board: Anthony Anemone (The New School) Robert Bird (The University of Chicago) Eliot Borenstein (New York University) Angela Brintlinger (The Ohio State University) Karen Evans-Romaine (Ohio University) Jochen Hellbeck (Rutgers University) Lilya Kaganovsky (University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign) Christina Kiaer (Northwestern University) Alaina Lemon (University of Michigan) Simon Morrison (Princeton University) Eric Naiman (University of California, Berkeley) Joan Neuberger (University of Texas, Austin) Ludmila Parts (McGill University) Ethan Pollock (Brown University) Cathy Popkin (Columbia University) Stephanie Sandler (Harvard University) Boris Wolfson (Amherst College), Series Editor “I AM A PHENOMENON QUITE OUT OF THE ORDINARY” The Notebooks, Diaries, and Letters of D K ANIIL HARMS Selected, Translated and Edited by Anthony Anemone and Peter Scotto BOSTON 2013 The publication of this book is supported by the Mikhail Prokhorov Foundation (translation program TRANSCRIPT). Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data: A catalog record for this title is available from the Library of Congress. Copyright 2013 Academic Studies Press All rights reserved ISBN 978-1-936235-96-4 (cloth) ISBN 978-1-61811-146-3 (electronic) Cover design by Sasha Pyle Published by Academic Studies Press in 2013 28 Montfern Avenue Brighton, MA 02135, USA [email protected] www.academicstudiespress.com For our fathers. “Translations that are more than transmissions of subject matter come into being when in the course of its survival a work has reached the age of its fame.” −Walter Benjamin CONTENTS Acknowledgements Introduction About this translation Preliminaries 1924–1925 1926 1927 1928 1929 1930 1931 Arrest by OGPU. December 1931 1932 Diary 1932-1933 1933 1934 1935 1936 The Blue Notebook 1937 1938 1939 1940 1941 Unknown years Epilogue and Finale Chronology Selected Bibliography Commentary Glossary of Names, Places, Institutions and Concepts