Saturday, July 08, 2006

Dadaist Manifesto by Tristan Tzara

DADA EXCITES EVERYTHING

DADA knows everything. DADA spits everything out.
BUT . . . . . . . . .
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
      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 BEGINNING TO SPEAK TO YOU
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?

50 francs reward to the person who finds the best
way to explain DADA to us

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

DADA IS NEVER RIGHT

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


Paris January 12, 1921
E. Varèse, Tr. Tzara, Ph. Soupault,
Soubeyran, J. Rigaut, G. Ribe-
mont-Dessaignes, M. Ray, F. Pi-
cabia, B. Péret, C. Pausaers
R.Hülsenbeeks, J. Evola, M. Ernst,
P. Eluard, Suz. Duchamp, M. Du-
champ, Crotti, G. Cantarelli, Marg.
Buffet, Gab. Buffet, a. Breton
Baargeld, Arp., W. C. Arensberg,
L. Aragon

For all information
write "AU SANS PAREIL"
37, Avenue Kléber.
Tel. PASSY 25-22

--- 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

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