DA
DA Monsieur Antipyrine's Manifesto
A D A D
A
DADA is our intensity: it erects inconsequential bayonets and the x head of
German babies; Dada is life with neither bedroom slippers nor parallels; it is against and for unity and definitely against the future...
we are wise enough to know that our brains are going to become flabby cushions, that our anti-dogmatism is as exclusive as a civil servant, and that we cry liberty but are not free;
W BUT
WE CRY LIBERTY T ARE NOT FREE
a severe necessity with entire discipline nor morals and that we spit on humanity.
DADA remains within the framework of European weaknesses, it’s still shit,
but from now on we want to shit in different colors so as to adorn the zoo of art with all the flags of all the consulates.
We are circus ringmasters and we can be found whistling amongst the winds of fairgrounds, in convents, prostitutions, theatres, realities, feelings, restaurants,
H O
G O N H A O B H G N A B
E R A L C E D E W M " E H T T A TH
" R A C R O OT
M
is a feeling that has cosseted us quite enough in the dilatoriness of its abstractions, as have transatlantic liners, noises and ideas.
and while we put on a show of being facile, we are actually searching for the central essence of things, and are pleased if we can hide it; we have no wish to count the windows of the marvelous elite ...
&
& & && & & &
THIS IS DA for DADA doesn’t exist for anyone, and we want everyone to understand this. This is Dada’s balcony, I assure you. From there you can hear all the military marches, and come down cleaving the air like a seraph landing in a public baths to piss and understand the parable.
ADA’S BALCON Y, I ASSURE YOU .
DADA is neither madness, nor wisdom, nor irony, look at me, dear bourgeois.
> LO
Art used to be a game of nuts in May, children would go gathering words that had a final ring, then they would exude, shout out the verse, and dress it up in dolls’ bootees,
ME
A T OOK
And the children ran hither and yon, unseen... Then came the great ambassadors of feeling, who yelled historically in chorus: Psychology Psychology hee hee Science Science Science Long live France We are not naive We are successive We are exclusive We are not simpletons and we are perfectly capable of an intelligent discussion.
SUCCE EX
INTELLIGEN T ESSIVE XCLUSIVE
PHILO
Philosophy is the question: from which side shall we look at life, God, the idea, or other phenomena. Everything one looks at is false.
I do not consider the relative result more important than the choice between cake and cherries after dinner. The system of quickly looking at the other side of a thing in order to impose your opinion indirectly is called dialectics, in other words, haggling over the spirit of fried potatoes while dancing method around it. If I cry out:
D I L A E L D I A E L D A I E D I DEAL IDE I L L A E E A D E D I I ID L A E E D G I D L E A L O E N W D I KNO K G D E L W O KN
I L E A E L G E G D D EAL IDEA E D E G E L D L G D E I W L D W L O L IDEA E O N W L N K O K W N E B O L E L K G N A G A D E K E E ID EDG LE LED GE BOOM M L W O D W L A M O E NOW KN KNO WLE BOO OMBO E M O E K O G O N M G B D E LE LED GE K BOO M MBO O W M D W O KNO LE BOO MBO BOO OOM W B O M O O E O M N B G K O O B O M B M O O O O B B M O O
s e c n a d e n o y r e v e l l l a a n r o e s t f r a e p n w o s i to h
� “ M O O B M O O B
�
I have given a pretty faithful version of progress, law, morality and all other fine qualities that various highly intelligent men have discussed in so many books, only to conclude that after all everyone dances to his own personal boomboom...
patho and that the writer is entitled to his boomboom: the satisfaction of pathological curiosity; a private bell for inexplicable needs; a bath; pecuniary difficulties; a stomach with repercussions in life;
ological curiosity
E H T T I R O H T U A
Y T
of the mystic wand formulated as the bouquet of a phantom orchestra make up of silent fiddle bows with philtres made of chicken manure. With the blue eye-glasses of an angel they have excavated the inner life for a dime’s worth of unanimous gratitude. If all of them are right and if all pills are Pink Pills, let us try for once not to be right.
An excerpt from “Dada Manifesto 1918”
. G N I H T Y R E V E S E T I C X E A "DAD V E S W O N K A D A D S T I P S DADA
. G N I H T Y R VE " . . . T U B , T U O G N I H T Y R EVE
“HAS DADA EVER SPOKEN TO YOU”
about Italy about accordions about women’s pants about the fatherland about sardines about Fiume about Art (you exaggerate my friend)
about gentleness about D’Annunzio what a horror about heroism about mustaches about lewdness about sleeping with Verlaine about the ideal (it’s nice)
about Massachusetts about the past about odors about salads about genius, about genius, about genius about the eight-hour day about the Parma violets
NEVER NEVER NEVER DADA doesn’t speak. DADA has no fixed idea. DADA doesn’t catch flies. THE MINISTRY IS OVERTURNED. BY WHOM? BY DADA The Futurist is dead. Of What? Of DADA
NEVER NEVER NEVER
R. NEVER. NEVER R. NEVER. NEVER R. NEVER. NEVER
DADA
A?.
A Young girl commits suicide. Because of What? DADA The spirits are telephoned. Who invented it? DADA Someone walks on your feet. It's DADA
If you have serious ideas about life, If you make artistic discoveries and if all of a sudden your head begins to crackle with laughter, If you find all your ideas useless and ridiculous, know that IT IS DADA
N I G BE E P S
O T G N I NN U O Y O T K EA
E O D T A H W ADA D
ES ? O D A
cubism constructs a cathedral of artistic liver paste WHAT DOES DADA DO? expressionism poisons artistic sardines WHAT DOES DADA DO? simultaneism is still at its first artistic communion WHAT DOES DADA DO? futurism wants to mount in an artistic lyricism-elevator WHAT DOES DADA DO? unanism embraces allism and fishes with an artistic line WHAT DOES DADA DO?
neo-classicism discovers the good deeds of artistic art WHAT DOES DADA DO? paroxysm makes a trust of all artistic cheeses WHAT DOES DADA DO? ultraism recommends the mixture of these seven artistic things WHAT DOES DADA DO? creationism vorticism imagism also propose some artistic recipes WHAT DOES DADA DO? WHAT DOES DADA DO?
NEO-
-CLASSICISM
A W E R S C N A R F 0 “5 D N I F O H W N O S PER N I A L P X E TO
E H T O T D R A W Y A W T S E B E H T DS ” . S U O T A D A ND
Dada passes everything through a new net. Dada is the bitterness which opens its laugh on all that which has been made consecrated forgotten in our language in our brain in our habits. It says to you: There is Humanity and the lovely idiocies which have made it happy to this advanced age DADA HAS ALWAYS EXISTED THE HOLY VIRGIN WAS ALREADY A DADAIST
H T V
Y L O H E H N I G R I V
G I R R E V E N S I DA R E V E N S I A D DA ER RIGH V E N S I DA
T H G T H G I R R HT
Citizens, comrades, ladies, gentlemen. Beware of forgeries! Imitators of DADA want to present DADA in an artistic form which it has never had.
CITIZENS, You are presented today in a pornographic form, a vulgar and baroque spirit which is not the PURE IDIOCY claimed by DADA BUT DOGMATISM AND PRETENTIOUS IMBECILITY.
I T CI
E Z I T I C , S N E Z I , S N E Z I T CI S N E IZ
Tristan Tzara
(1896-1963) Romanian-born French poet and essayist known mainly as a founder of Dada, writing the first Dada texts and the movement's manifestos, member of the Surrealist movement, the Communist Party and the French Resistance. His poems revealed the anguish of his soul, caught between revolt and wonderment at the daily tragedy of the human condition. His mature works started with L'Homme approximatif and continued with Parler seul and La Face intèrieure.
Paris January 12, 1921 E. Varèse, Tr. Tzara, Ph. Soupault, Soubeyran, J. Rigaut, G. Ribemont-Dessaignes, M. Ray, F. Picabia, B. Péret, C. Pausaers, R.Hülsenbeeks, J. Evola, M. Ernst, P. Eluard, Suz. Duchamp, M. Duchamp, Crotti, G. Cantarelli, Marg. Buffet, Gab. Buffet, A. Breton Baargeld, Arp., W. C. Arensberg, L. Aragon
From Approximate Man and Other Writings, Translated and Edited by Mary Ann Caws (Wayne State University Press) Reprinted in “Teachers & Writers Collaborative� 5 Union Square W. New York City 10003