Daniil Kharms and Sherlock Holmes: Between Imitation and Deconstruction

Daniil Kharms (1905-42) is known as an author of Russian absurd literature. It is generally overlooked that the pseudonym Kharms encodes Sherlock Holmes's Russian name of Kholms. An intertextual comparison between Kharms and Holmes shows how Arthur Conan Doyle's Holmes made his way into Russian absurd literature. This article originally appeared in Clues: A Journal of Detection, Volume 28, Issue 2.