594 lines
30 KiB
Plaintext
594 lines
30 KiB
Plaintext
Art as Anarchy
|
|
--------------
|
|
|
|
With Dada modern poetic feeling comes to a head. As I have
|
|
already said rather jokingly, Dada consists of putting down
|
|
in writing things that cannot stand on their own feet. Dada
|
|
sets up a powerful negative logic. It radically reverses
|
|
the direction of intelligence. Dada has nothing in common
|
|
with anything you may think about it, as Dada cannot be
|
|
thought. Don't shrug it off. The very power of its negation
|
|
gives the Dada scandal a most far-reaching meaning.
|
|
Apparently it is a movement created by universal minds.
|
|
Today Pic de la Mirandole would probably be Dada. Dada is
|
|
not a phenomenon. It answers the philosophical requirements
|
|
of the age. It endeavours to ignore objective reality in
|
|
order to plunge into the ultra-realistic depths of the
|
|
unconscious. However negative the Dada movement may appear,
|
|
it is certainly born of transcendent investigations of the
|
|
human mind.
|
|
|
|
We have only to remember the mathematician Henri Poincare,
|
|
whose renowned theory of convenience puzzled the scientific
|
|
world. According to Henri Poincare, what appears to the
|
|
human mind to be most essentially true is what is most
|
|
eminently expected.
|
|
|
|
So mathematics and particularly Euclidian geometry can have
|
|
no meaning from an absolute point of view.
|
|
|
|
Our most rigorously accurate conceptions are in reality
|
|
approximate. The shortest path from one point to another is
|
|
not, if we examine it closely, the straight line. Similarly,
|
|
it is debatable whether the earth is a polyhedron rotating
|
|
around the sun. Certainly it is the most convenient thing
|
|
imagined by our senses, but we might possibly be motionless
|
|
with objective reality moving around us. Evidently we tend
|
|
to choose the principle that best corresponds with the
|
|
delicate disposition of our organs, and all our thoughts are
|
|
inevitably posed on our absurd conception of space.
|
|
|
|
Similarly, Bergson's philosophy is bound to the criticism of
|
|
the idea of time. Dada is a result of intuitive philosophy.
|
|
Bergson represents intelligence as strictly adapted to
|
|
matter and, therefore, incapable of perceiving duration and
|
|
extension as pure quality.
|
|
|
|
Only intuition is likely to resolve these paradoxes by
|
|
ignoring intelligence and preferring instinct.
|
|
|
|
As the brain cannot envisage time and space outside the
|
|
limits of matter, it is essential not to bow to the facts of
|
|
the tangible world, but to rely on what Bergson calls "the
|
|
immediate data of consciousness". It is by obeying this
|
|
deep-seated impulse that we can escape from the crude
|
|
concepts of human reason. Instead of being satisfied with
|
|
the common vision of the world, we should proceed to an
|
|
exploration of the unorganised world where everything is in
|
|
constant creation.
|
|
|
|
According to Bergson's philosophy, the individual is the
|
|
"variable combination of the past". The principle of
|
|
identity must give way to the "vital impulse", which
|
|
reflects the increasing changing of the universe and which
|
|
defies any attempt to canalise it.
|
|
|
|
Briefly, this is the philosophy compared with which so many
|
|
previous systems lose most of their meaning.
|
|
|
|
So Dada is simply this effort to free oneself from the
|
|
relative concepts of human reason. It intends to abolish
|
|
categories. That is why Dada wants to clear nothing up. All
|
|
it wants is occasional glimpses of the far-off glimmers of
|
|
the absolute in the moving wreckage left by the impulse of
|
|
life.
|
|
|
|
More recently still, Einstein's theories have aimed a final
|
|
blow at the philosophy of facts.
|
|
|
|
Einstein identifies the old entities of space and time in a
|
|
four dimensional conception of the universe, i.e. time is
|
|
only a fourth dimension of space.
|
|
|
|
The study of luminous radiations suggested to him unhoped
|
|
for results. The idea of infinity, which has tormented
|
|
human reason throughout all eternity, for the first time
|
|
perhaps seems to subside in the Einsteinian axiom: "Nothing
|
|
is faster than light". The existence of an absolute speed is
|
|
not beyond our understanding.
|
|
|
|
Einstein's mathematical research brings to science bases
|
|
that are less approximate than rectilinear geometry. The
|
|
straight line does not exist. Our error lies in taking the
|
|
geodesic line for one. Light is not propagated in a straight
|
|
line. We must endeavour to understand the universe as a
|
|
curve "that is infinite, but not without limits".
|
|
|
|
We are accustomed to envisaging only restricted space. In
|
|
the same way, the time we can imagine is a local time. "The
|
|
passing of time", said Einstein, "is not always the same".
|
|
The speed of light is an absolute speed, i.e. independent of
|
|
time, and Einstein's calculations lead to the result that,
|
|
if man could reach the speed of light, he would not grow
|
|
old.
|
|
|
|
"We record", says Einstein again, "only variations". Reality
|
|
is hidden from us by the intervention of our senses. We can
|
|
only judge movement with regard to a point that we suppose
|
|
to be fixed. So all movement is relative.
|
|
|
|
Einstein concludes that there exists a field of gravitation
|
|
where nothing is propagated in the void, but where
|
|
everything exists by reciprocal correspondences. He reduces
|
|
all phenomena to electro-magnetic laws.
|
|
|
|
The initial matter is identical; the bodies vary according
|
|
to the situation occupied by the other bodies in the
|
|
universe. Therefore all energy contains a sum of inertia,
|
|
and the ether, which for the modern philosopher represents
|
|
an imponderable milieu implying complete lack of motion, is
|
|
for Einstein an abolished postulate.
|
|
|
|
_But to come back to literature_-
|
|
|
|
Dada undoubtedly counts among its forerunners Alfred Jarry.
|
|
The creator of Pere Ubu shows a radical inadequation to the
|
|
common adhesiveness. He invented petaphysics, the science
|
|
of the particular. His object, he said, was "to study the
|
|
laws that govern exceptions".
|
|
|
|
In skirting the extreme limits of fantasy, Alfred Jarry
|
|
overtook the most lucid suggestions of abstract philosophy.
|
|
In the novel, we would recall the first style of Andre Gide.
|
|
The characters of the philosophical short stories, such as
|
|
"Paludes", singularly prepare the bent of mind proper to
|
|
Dada.
|
|
|
|
In "Paludes" Andre Gide represents life as a bog where we
|
|
wear ourselves out in useless efforts without being capable
|
|
of a completely independent action.
|
|
|
|
He understands the vanity of all construction and, to
|
|
sidetrack the surfeit of human semblances, he escapes into
|
|
the absurd and decides to take from each of our actions only
|
|
the obscure part of unconsciousness that it reveals to us.
|
|
|
|
This "absence of a smile" so peculiar to Andre Gide, which
|
|
however gives the worrying feeling of comedy, can be found
|
|
in Dada, and so can the neutral atmosphere where thought
|
|
evolves like a time-coloured bird.
|
|
|
|
Finally in poetry, besides Mallarme, who was the first to
|
|
try to achieve the freedom of words, should we mention the
|
|
rebel Rimbaud? And nearer to us the work of Guillaume
|
|
Appolinaire who, by his aspiration towards an intangible
|
|
reality, is the instigator of the worst literary impudence.
|
|
All forms of Dada can claim kinship with Appollinaire,
|
|
particularly phonetic Dada, whose bases he established in
|
|
the last poems of "Calligrammes", entitled "Victory".
|
|
|
|
O mouths man is searching for a new language
|
|
Where the grammarian of any language will have nothing to say
|
|
And these old languages are so close to death
|
|
That it is only out of habit and lack of daring
|
|
That we still use them in poetry
|
|
We want new sounds new sounds new sounds
|
|
We want vowel-less consonants
|
|
Consonants that fart loudly
|
|
Imitate the sound of the humming top
|
|
Let a continuous nasal sound crackle
|
|
Click your tongue
|
|
Use the champing sound of the ill-mannered eater
|
|
The aspirated rasping of spitting would make a fine sound
|
|
The different labial farts would trumpet out your speeches
|
|
Get accustomed to belching at will
|
|
Speak with your hands snap your fingers
|
|
Tap your cheek as if it were a drum
|
|
The word is sudden and it's a trembling God
|
|
Advance and bear with me up I regret the hands
|
|
of those who held them out and worshipped me together
|
|
What an oasis of arms will welcome me tomorrow
|
|
Do you know the joy of seeing new things.
|
|
|
|
Moreover the dreadful upheavals of recent years have
|
|
sufficiently enlightened us on the incalculable folly
|
|
engendered by the minds of reasonable men. And if these men
|
|
consider the attempt to upset the meaning of things is
|
|
insanity, Dada can answer them: "Take hold of the end of
|
|
your nose".
|
|
|
|
+++
|
|
|
|
Tristan Tzara must be quoted first of the group Dada, a
|
|
movement that has taken on an international aspect. Dada
|
|
does not pursue any form of art. Dada lays claim to pure
|
|
idiocy. We must not forget that the Dadas stripped words of
|
|
their usual character, and therefore they could not have a
|
|
disparaging meaning. This means that Dada does not proceed
|
|
along the usual paths of reason. Dada is a radical
|
|
disorientation of common sense. In this respect Dadas
|
|
display a veritable ingenuity in being idiots.
|
|
|
|
They carefully avoid everything that is not directly the
|
|
inverse of what we are used to considering morally as
|
|
values. Getting rid of every intellectual acquisition so s
|
|
to be no longer one's own dupe is the object pursued by
|
|
Dada. To upset our manner of seeing, the Dadas modify our
|
|
method of speaking. They want to detach the words that have
|
|
agglutinated by custom and which attract each other like
|
|
filings adhere to a magnet.
|
|
|
|
Tristan Tzara offers to shake all the words of the
|
|
vocabulary in a hat and to pick them out at random. In this
|
|
process the words will have acquired an intrinsic value. New
|
|
relation-ships will have formed between them. You will have
|
|
created the void and you will more easily find the part of
|
|
the unconscious that determines your actions. All writers
|
|
who have wanted to re-create a vocabulary for themselves
|
|
corresponding to their intimate vision of the world have
|
|
mentally practised this operation.
|
|
|
|
But Dada has a more general meaning. There is no field where
|
|
its negative influence does not extend. In reality, Dada is
|
|
an absurd state of mind that nobody escapes. "The real Dadas
|
|
are against Dada", and in fact who is not capering on his
|
|
dada - his hobbyhorse - at the moment? Francophilia,
|
|
Germanophilia are simply variations on Dada in the positive
|
|
state. Dada has tried everything and nothing has been able
|
|
to satisfy its need for diversity.
|
|
|
|
Dada is a virgin germ
|
|
Dada is against the high cost of living
|
|
Dada
|
|
Limited company for the exploitation of ideas
|
|
Dada has 391 different attitudes and colours according to
|
|
the sex of the
|
|
president.
|
|
It changes - affirms - says the opposite at the same time
|
|
- of no importance - shouts - goes fishing.
|
|
Dada is the chameleon of rapid and selfish change.
|
|
Dada is against the future. Dada is dead. Dada is idiotic.
|
|
Long live Dada. Dada is not a literary school yell.
|
|
_Tristan Tzara_
|
|
|
|
Pure idiocy is the universal panacea. Reasonable acts can
|
|
procure only disadvantage. This is what allows Tristan Tzara
|
|
to conclude: 'Subscribe to Dada the only investment that
|
|
pays nothing.'
|
|
|
|
+++
|
|
|
|
Andre Breton is another theoretician of Dada. For him Dada
|
|
corresponds to a need for liberty. He revolts against any
|
|
resignation. Any conviction seemed to him to be a form of
|
|
renouncement. By exploring the unconscious, he has obtained
|
|
the most disconcerting findings. He says: "Innocence is
|
|
tolerated only in its passive form." And, in fact,
|
|
innocence, which is a virtue in a virgin, is a crime in the
|
|
murderer. Andre Breton can no longer understand. And he
|
|
feels at ease only in the atmosphere of annulment created by
|
|
Dada. "What is beautiful, ugly, big, strong, weak, don't
|
|
know, don't know. What is Carpentier, Renan, Foch, don't
|
|
know, don't know."
|
|
|
|
The "Magnetic Fields" written in collaboration with Philippe
|
|
Soupalt, is in this respect a strange book. In spite of the
|
|
radical lack of coordination in the ideas, the Magnetic
|
|
Fields leaves a general impression that cannot be doubted.
|
|
Andre Breton no longer feels attracted to anything. Words
|
|
have rusted and things have lost all power of attraction for
|
|
him. He represents the world as a "waste land". He no longer
|
|
hungers for the "rotting sweetmeats" that life offers him.
|
|
Custom stales. He is weary of considering the universe
|
|
according to categories that lie, and takes refuge in the
|
|
absurd.
|
|
|
|
+++
|
|
|
|
Philippe Soupalt tries to free himself from the three
|
|
unities of number, space and time, but feels himself a
|
|
prisoner within the four cardinal points.
|
|
|
|
He calls his book "Rose des Vents" (Compass Card). He is
|
|
aiming at the lyrical ubiquity towards which Apollinaire's
|
|
orphism was tending.
|
|
|
|
Philippe Souplalt turns the compass dial on its axis. He
|
|
scorns the conception of the universe inflicted on him by
|
|
the grey matter of his brain. To resolve all opposition he
|
|
turns to Dada.
|
|
|
|
My ideas like germs
|
|
dance along my meninges
|
|
to the rythm of the exasperating pendulum
|
|
a revolver shot would be a sweet melody.
|
|
|
|
He wants to go outside himself. Free himself from
|
|
determinism. He scales horizons. "I have broken my static
|
|
ideas," he says. Modern discoveries show him glimpses of
|
|
metaphysical probabilities. The Eiffel Tower shoots its
|
|
beams to the four corners of the world. The idea of space is
|
|
an illusion imposed on our senses by matter. Everything
|
|
moves on the same level. He persuades himself that the
|
|
Gaurisanker is next door to Notre Dame. He is simultaneously
|
|
open to all sensations.
|
|
|
|
The thousand interpretation that words admit of meet in his
|
|
mind when he sees a common notice:
|
|
|
|
REMOVALS TO ALL COUNTRIES
|
|
|
|
This, I think, is how the Dada joke must be understood.
|
|
|
|
+++
|
|
|
|
Louis Aragon has not foresworn every scruple of art.
|
|
Sometimes he even seems to remain attached to the old
|
|
prosodic forms. Yet Loius Aragon has found his salvation in
|
|
Dada. He calls his book "Bonfire". It is a bonfire on which
|
|
he sacrifices all the vain acquisitions of his mind for a
|
|
new order of things that will arise from the absurd
|
|
suggestions of consciousness. A neutral colour - bitumen or
|
|
reseda - is not Aragon's favourite. We even find bright
|
|
colours the Dadas were generally not fond of.
|
|
|
|
In a piece called "Jolt", Aragon shows us how a sudden
|
|
change comes about in the orientation of his thought:
|
|
|
|
BROUF
|
|
Flight for ever from the bitterness
|
|
The wonderful flying meadows newly-painted turn
|
|
Stumbling fields
|
|
Standstill
|
|
My head rings and so many rattles
|
|
My heart is in pieces the scenery shattered
|
|
|
|
The poet remembers his adolescence, the years vexed with
|
|
latin and algebra and he sums up his youth in a poem, "life
|
|
of Jean Baptiste A."
|
|
|
|
Rosa the rose and that drop of ink oh my youth
|
|
Calculate Cos. &
|
|
in function of
|
|
tg. a/2
|
|
My Apero childhood hardly glimpsed
|
|
By the fly-blown windows fo a cafe
|
|
Youth and I didn't kiss every mouth
|
|
The first one to get to the end of the corridor
|
|
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 DEAD
|
|
A shade sleeps in the middle of the sun, it's your eye
|
|
|
|
But now that the poet has rid himself of the narrow human
|
|
conventions, a hope is aflame in his breast. By the light of
|
|
this bonfire he glimpses new constructions, salutary
|
|
transformations.
|
|
|
|
Then will rise the ponies
|
|
Youths
|
|
In bands by the hand by the town
|
|
|
|
Louis Aragon is the only Dada who seems to be preparing a
|
|
territory of conciliation between the suggestions of
|
|
consciousness and the demands of reason.
|
|
|
|
+++
|
|
|
|
Paul Eluard is aiming at a complete transformation of
|
|
language. "Let's try," he says, "it is difficult to remain
|
|
absolutely pure." Language as it reaches us by way of usage
|
|
no longer has any meaning. It is chatter which, according to
|
|
Paul Eluard, no longer has any raison d'etre, and he wants
|
|
to institute, in poetry, the most elementary simplicity.
|
|
|
|
In "Animals and their Men" he endeavours to refresh his
|
|
vision of the world by simplified images and initial
|
|
analogies: The fish in the air and the man in the water. The
|
|
grass in front of the cow, the child in front of the milk.
|
|
|
|
Paul Eluard wants to retain nothing of things but the
|
|
essential relation-ships in order to obtain a complete
|
|
purity of feeling. Here is an example of this elementary
|
|
poetry:
|
|
|
|
WET
|
|
The stone skims over the water
|
|
The smoke does not enter.
|
|
The water like a skin
|
|
That cannot be wounded
|
|
Is caressed
|
|
By man and by the fish
|
|
Snapping like a bow-string,
|
|
The fish, when the man catches it,
|
|
Dies, as it cannot swallow
|
|
This planet of air and light
|
|
And the man sinks to the bottom of the water
|
|
For the fish
|
|
Or for the bitter solitude
|
|
Of the supple ever-closed water.
|
|
|
|
What extremely shocks Paul Eluard's set purpose of
|
|
simplicity is the "distinguished allure". According to him,
|
|
poetry must be something "naive like a mirror". He conceives
|
|
of a poetry where "time does not pass". It is difficult, as
|
|
man moves in a thick atmosphere. In his Examples, he says:
|
|
"man, the air-diver". Yet he has a confused glimpse of a
|
|
universal unity that makes him say: "I have crossed through
|
|
life in one go".
|
|
|
|
+++
|
|
|
|
Francis Picabia is not concerned with practical
|
|
applications. He uses a systematic curtness to destroy
|
|
everything. It would be difficult to find a more complete
|
|
absence of morality elsewhere.
|
|
|
|
It is in the agitated state that follows on love that
|
|
Francis Picabia tries to formulate for himself a conception
|
|
of man stripped of all illusion.
|
|
|
|
Read my little book
|
|
after making love
|
|
in front of the rubber fireplace
|
|
|
|
He calls this little book "Thoughts without language". As he
|
|
does not want to be taken in by words.
|
|
|
|
He no longer distinguishes values. Love, art, religion:
|
|
chemical reactions. It is a quasi-psychological Dada. The
|
|
heart is like the prostate gland, the belly like the brain.
|
|
And Francis Picabia says:
|
|
|
|
The events of my life
|
|
Take place in the sauce
|
|
Of my heartbeats.
|
|
|
|
In "The Girl born without a Mother", poems accompanied by
|
|
drawings, he applies himself to seeing the erotic mechanism
|
|
work. He takes desire for the only reality, and there is
|
|
hardly anything he believes in other than seminal fluid.
|
|
|
|
Life, according to Picabia, is not a "cream cake"; it is an
|
|
"old music-box" that churns out the same tune over and over.
|
|
As for the price he puts on human knowledge? "Men thinh", he
|
|
says, "Like a free Chinaman."
|
|
|
|
Francis Picabia experiences an innocent pleasure in throwing
|
|
stink bombs in schools and academies. The smell of sodium
|
|
cacodylate does not put him off.
|
|
|
|
In "Jesus Christ Rastaquouere" Picabia's disillusioned
|
|
philosophy seems for an instant as if it is trying to escape
|
|
from its incoherence. But if Picabia expresses himself a
|
|
little more clearly than usual, it is to turn common sense
|
|
inside out like a glove. His deliberately disorientated mind
|
|
enjoys standing the scale of values upside down. "it's words
|
|
that don't exist", he says. "What doesn't have a name
|
|
doesn't exist." And by some kind of metaphysical spite he
|
|
uses a conjuror's skill to juggle with traditional
|
|
locutions.
|
|
|
|
I can only give my word of honour if I am lying. Cheat, but
|
|
don't hide
|
|
it. Cheat in order to lose, never to win, for a winner loses
|
|
himself,
|
|
etc.
|
|
|
|
And he sums up his opinion of life in a short story: The
|
|
story of a man who chewed a revolver!
|
|
|
|
"This man was already old, and all his life he had indulged
|
|
in this strange chewing; in fact his extraordinary weapon
|
|
would kill him if he stopped an instant; yet he had been
|
|
warned that, in any case, one day inevitably the revolver
|
|
would go off and kill him; however, with no sign of
|
|
wearying, he went on chewing..."
|
|
|
|
Francis Picabia, strange he may seem, is a tragic poet.
|
|
|
|
+++
|
|
|
|
Clement Pansears is the only representative of Dada in
|
|
Belguim and it is extremely unlikely that anyone here will
|
|
thank him for it. Yet nobody can let his mind roam on the
|
|
periphery of the world of reason, in the barely accessible
|
|
regions of the absurd, as easily as Pansears.
|
|
|
|
The "Pan-pan au cul du nu negre" is Clement Pansears' first
|
|
attempt. This title may mean the "nu negre" followed by the
|
|
"pan-pan", but I think that by pan-pan Clement Pansears
|
|
means a revolver. So it would be different then. Clement
|
|
Pansears listens to all the discordant noises that surround
|
|
us today. He seems to have surveyed all the ideas, as we can
|
|
see from certain things he says ("Une museliere au rheteur
|
|
de la surbrute", etc.) and in the end he gives the
|
|
impression of a disorganised gramophone that begins to sound
|
|
the all-clear when it comes to the end of the record.
|
|
Clement Pansears misuses scientific terminology. Now and
|
|
again, one thinks of Rabelais' Limousin scholar, but he
|
|
justifies himself by saying, "A useless chemist is as good
|
|
as a philosopher - who discovers principles by evaporating
|
|
vocables."
|
|
|
|
In "Bar Nicanor" Clement Pansears follows the same tendency,
|
|
but to a much greater degree. Clement Pansears launches into
|
|
heady delights. In the piece called "Aero" he upsets the
|
|
cardinal points. He drives in the void, executes "trapeze
|
|
turns". His ears tingle by dint of "browsing raw noises in
|
|
interplanetary scales". He exhausts his engine to get as
|
|
much as possible out of it.
|
|
|
|
Getting drunk procures the same incongruous feelings for
|
|
him. He puts his lips to every electuary and examines his
|
|
half-drunkenness to unveil the speck of immateriality that
|
|
throbs inside him. He praises the eminently cosmopolitan
|
|
nature of drunken orgies. Solving existence, according to
|
|
him, is to take a good one over the eight until the walls
|
|
knock into each other, while the principle of being pursues
|
|
the "motley race towards pure quality the infinite
|
|
denominator leading to zero pan-O."
|
|
|
|
Perverted feelings run through the erogeneous zones. He
|
|
destroys woman as a child would a toy, annoyed at not
|
|
getting something more wonderful. Clement Pansears makes one
|
|
think of a Des Esseintes corresponding to the wildest
|
|
audacity of the new man. In "The defence of laziness" a
|
|
morbid perturbation seems to result from the constant effort
|
|
of mental inversion. Sudden shocks like electric bells
|
|
crackle in his head. Clement Pansears has been, one after
|
|
the other, "a tamer of tribades", "a paria esdemolitions",
|
|
"a violator of human identity".
|
|
|
|
Men seem sexless to him. With an Erasmic indifference he
|
|
creates a defence of laziness. What is cynicism, if it is
|
|
not laziness? Laziness in the sovereign condition of human
|
|
reason.
|
|
|
|
It's annoying
|
|
My encephalus is out of tune.
|
|
Impossible to re-tune my understanding
|
|
to the tuning fork of the fashionable cosmic variations.
|
|
|
|
He resigns himself to sacrificing to laziness:
|
|
|
|
Do I revolt you?
|
|
All revolt aborts.
|
|
|
|
What is the point of rebelling? Let us do like the others
|
|
do. Instead of creating the revolutions, let us go on
|
|
general strike. Everything is there. In any case laziness
|
|
extends to the first terrestrial elements.
|
|
|
|
Spasmodic morbidness
|
|
Sea and land
|
|
Penetrate each other
|
|
and the commotion is comatose.
|
|
|
|
"Be lazy," Clement Pansears says to himself, possessed with
|
|
an orgiastic weariness. Clement Pansears is a modern man in
|
|
the most excessive meaning of this expression.
|
|
|
|
+++
|
|
|
|
These are the people who form the Dada Pleiad. But it is
|
|
difficult to be conclusive as regards Dada, as Dada is a
|
|
return to unorganised life, by a means of expression
|
|
stripped of any verbal habits. Dada makes fun of
|
|
onomatopoeia.
|
|
|
|
In ancient times they used to say that those who had lifted
|
|
the veil of physical phenomena had seen the great god Pan.
|
|
The upheavals of our time that have revealed a solution of
|
|
continuity in the evolution of mankind have given rise to a
|
|
panic literature. Dada is without doubt a pessimistic
|
|
movement. But its pessimism is based on the danger of human
|
|
ambitions. It is in de la Rochefoucald and Schopenhauer that
|
|
we must search for the preliminaries to an international
|
|
agreement. Dada is the only possible link between men since
|
|
its fundamental principle consists in being right about
|
|
nothing. Not to know Dada is not to know our time. In a
|
|
century when Lenin falls after Wilson, Dada has nothing that
|
|
can surprise us. Dadas are deliberately out of their depth.
|
|
But if they are fools they are not stupid. They say nothing
|
|
for a laugh and take nothing seriously.
|
|
|
|
Dada is a philosophy. Dada is a moral. Dada is an art, the
|
|
art of being likeable in a time when all superiority has
|
|
become unbearable and when all human grandeur seems a joke.
|
|
Dada is the flower of ruins, not the little blue flower of
|
|
optimism that poets want to pick amid the debris of a
|
|
civilisation, but an azalea, an arid azalea, which is not
|
|
begging for a downpour of blood, but is rather seeking to
|
|
slake its thirst in drought.
|
|
|
|
S.J.Welton
|