Leontyevskaya St., 17, Saint Petersburg, Russia, 196627
During the holidays, the parents sent their son to Tsarskoye Selo, to his aunt — Natalia Kolyubakina. Her apartment was located in a building at the corner with Orangery Street, not far from the Catherine Palace, at 27 Malaya Street. Kolyubakina taught at the Tsarskoye Selo Mariinsky Women's Gymnasium, where Anna Akhmatova once studied. After the revolution, the gymnasium became the 2nd Detskoye Selo Soviet Unified Labor School. From September 1, 1922, to 1924, Kharm lived in Detskoye Selo and studied at the 2nd Detskoye Selo Unified Labor School, formerly the gymnasium. The director of this school and the teacher of Russian literature was his aunt Natalia Ivanovna Kolyubakina.
Among his classmates, Daniil singled out Natasha Zegzhda, with whom he became friends after an evening organized by Kolyubakina in 1922 dedicated to the anniversary of A. Blok’s death. At this evening, N. Zegzhda gave a report and drew a portrait of Blok based on his 1921 photograph.
Around that time, his avant-garde tendencies in behavior began to form: a desire to stand out outwardly, an almost exquisite unusualness in clothing.
According to the memories of Zegzhda’s sister, L.A. Baranova, one can imagine what Kharm looked like in the spring of 1923:
“He was dressed entirely in beige-brown tones — a checkered jacket, shirt with a tie, knickerbockers, long checkered socks, and yellow shoes with thick soles. Daniil usually held a small pipe in his mouth, apparently for originality, since I don’t remember any smoke coming from it.”
Classmate M.P. Semenova-Rudenskaya remembered him like this:
“From the very beginning, he was unlike the others. He wore a brown speckled suit, knee-length trousers, knickerbockers, and huge boots. He seemed like a completely grown young man. His jacket was unbuttoned, revealing a vest made of the same fabric as the suit, and from the small pocket of the vest hung a watch chain, on which, as we later learned, hung a shark tooth.”
While studying at school, Kharm began composing poetry. To his aunt’s horror, he then composed a funny punning one-liner: “zadam po zadam za dam.”
L. Baranova and N. Zegzhda recall from memory a quatrain that apparently is the first surviving poem by Kharm:
Soon will the trousers call the Tatar,
Yes, knicksen, polka, waltz tour.
Are we given kikapu by roosters,
Yes, chiriki-boyariki, yes finger in the navel.
This poem was recited in the manner of a polka, as a recitative. Kharm also loved to play absurd burime or, as it was then called, “poetic nonsense” — when each participant in the game had to add one line in turn to the composing poem, so that a funny nonsense resulted.
After finishing school in the summer of 1924, Kharm returned to Leningrad.
