dadaloop+
cok ortamliı -CANLI MULTIMEDYA gösteri
AtomMediaMusic BATUR SONMEZ newmediakitchen TEOMAN MADRA

dogaclama audiovisual konser - bilgisayar tabanli ı foto animasyonları - gunumuze ozgu; muzik

teutonia, tunel, goethe institut- alman kultur merkezi
23.05.2003
performans 19.00'da

Dada 1914-1916 arasında Avrupa'da savaş makinasının insanın yazgısına egemen olmasını kanıtlamaktan öte hiçbir anlamı olmayan büyük yıkım yaşandı. 1917'de Lenin İsviçre'den Rusya'ya döndü ve SSCB'nin kuruluşuyla sonuçlanacak Bolşevik devrimini hazırlamaya başladı. 1918'de Kaiser Wilhelm, Kiel'li denizcilerin başkaldırısı sonucunda tahttan indi ve Almanya'da çok partili demokrasi ile cumhuriyet yönetimi arasındaki çekişme başladı ve 1919'da Weimar Cumhuriyeti kuruldu. Ancak huzursuzluklar birbirini izliyordu; Rosa Lüxenburg, Karl Liebknecht, Erzberger, Rathenaus gibi liderler öldürüldü. İtalya'da ayaklanma ve askeri darbe oldu, İrlanda'da bağımsızlık savaşı başladı. Finlandiya ve Polonya Cumhuriyet oldu. Avrupa'da şöyle bir manzara görünüyordu: Devrimler, sağ ve sol, beyaz ve kırmızı arasındaki savaşlar, yoksulluk, açlık, işsizlik, sokak gösterileri, suikastler, çeteler, çizmeli ve çelik migferli askerler ve sivil örgütler. Bütün bu karmaşa arkasında yoğun bir sanat üretimi vardı ve bu üretim, siyasal -ekonomik ortamın gerginliğine koşut olarak kendi yaygınlaşma ve etkileme biçimlerini oluşturuyordu. Savaş öncesinde Kübizm, Fütürizm ve Ekspresyonizm çok genç sanat akımları olarak belirgindi. Dada, 1916'da savaşın ortasında ortaya çıktı ve ilk andan başlayarak Avrupa ruhunun kapsamlı bir manifestosu görünümündeydi. Dada bir explosion (dışapatlama) degil bir implosion (içepatlama) idi. 1958'de Düsseldorf'da Dada sergisi gerçekleştirilirken, Max Ernst, bütün alaycılığıyla "patlamış bir el bombasının parçalarını kaynatmaya kalkışıyorsunuz" demiştir. Savaş öncesinde, toplumsal ya da bireysel olarak insan varlığının anlam ve değerleri üstüne sorular açılmış bunlar kesin yanıt bulmamakla birlikte, modernizmin eşiğindeki insana bazı doyumlar vermişti. Savaş, bu doyumları da silip götürdü ve yerine bir boşluk bıraktı. Dada, sanki bütün yerleşmiş ahlaki, estetik ve toplumsal değerleri başaşağı ederek, arta kalan ütopyaları da silmeyi amaç edinmişti. Bunların içinde en önemlisi sanatı ulusal kültür ögesi olmaktan çıkarıp, sanayii toplumunun deneyselliğe dayalı büyük kent fenomenine dönüştürmektir. Dada, Avrupa'daki siyasal ve toplumsal olayların, savaşın, devrimin, maddi ve manevi kayıpların, sokak savaşlarının, tepkilerin, kitlelerin acısının yankılandığı bir sanat akımıdır. Bu olaylar, Dadacılar için bir arka plan, bir panaroma oluşturuyordu. Savaşın yıkımının altından kalkamayan toplumlar bir değişim geçiriyordu, ama köktenci değişimin geçirildiğini toplumun bilincine yerleştirme işlevini sanat üstleniyordu. Dada, sanat ve yaşam arasındaki sınırın ilk ortadan kalkışıdır; sanatçılar işlerini toplumun ortasında gerçekleştiriyor ve günlük yaşamın izini sürüyorlardı. Bugün müze ve koleksiyonlarda Dada'dan arta kalanlar, tam anlamıyla bir tortudur; çünkü bu akım gerçek anlamda canlı ve eylemci bir sanat üretimidir. Dada'yı anlamaya çalışırken, bütüncül bir uslubun olmadığını ve her kentte o kentin siyasal-ekonomik durumuna göre değişimler olduğunu bilmek gerekir. Dada her yöne açık bir düşünce alış verişiydi ve Hans Arp'ın soyut asemblajları ve George Grozs'un toplumsal eleştirisi dışında herhangi bir uslup bütünlüğü yoktu. Yine de Dada yapıtlarını 3 ana grupta toplamak olasıdır: 1. Kolajlar, Asemblajlar, Malzemeli Resimler, Tipografik Kolajlar 2. Montajlar (özellikle Foto-montajlar) 3. Mekano-Dada, Meta-Makinalar, Mekanik Mankenler Bu kaba sınıflamadan ayrıntılı bir farklılaşma ve başka gruplar çıkar: 1. Malzemeli Resmin özel totolojik biçimi olan Hazır-Nesne 2. Fotogramlar 3. Otomatik Resimler 4. Özellikle Berlin'de gelişen siyasal kara mizah resimleri Belirgin özellikler: Dada, her yöne açık bir sanatı savunduğu için yazın, müzik, resim, heykel, performans, dans, hitabet gibi alanlardaki üretimlerle karşılaşılır; kısacası bu akım, bugünkü anlamıyla disiplinlerarasıdır. Dada'da rastlantısallık önemli bir ögedir. Yazınsal, müziksel, resimsel üretimlerde bu rastlantısallık belirgindir. Dada belgeseliğe dayanır. Dergiler, afişler, broşürler, kataloglar, el ilanları, mektuplar, posta kartları, notlar ve taslaklar Dada'nın icat ettiği ve kullandığı yayılma yöntemleridir. Dada, modern kentin enerji ve dinamizminin kendini sanat yoluyla dışa vurmasıdır: Merkezler Zürih, Berlin, Paris, New York, Hannover, Köln ve Amsterdam'dır; Dada'nın merkez-dışı etkileri de ilginçtir: İspanya, İtalya, Güney Amerika, Polonya, Macaristan, Sırbistan, Romanya, Rusya'da zengin Dada hareketleri olmuştur. Avrupa'da Savaş öncesinde aydınlar ekspresyonist ve fütürist etkili bir dünya bakışının tartışmalarını, eleştirilerini, yorumlarını kafelerde, klüplerde ve sanatçı birliklerinde yapıyorlardı; farklı ülkelerden farklı düzeylerde aydınlar ve sanatçılar birbirlerini düşüncelerin izini sürerek buluyorlardı; kuşkusuz siyasal gelişmelerin şiddeti, aydınların dayanışma içinde olmasını da gerektiriyordu. Bu oluşum bir Dada Enternasyonal olarak da adlandırılır. Fütürizmden ve Ekspresyonizm'den gelen özellikler şunlardı: Özgürleşmiş biçimler (kırılmış, hareketlendirilmiş); Kendiliğindenliğin dinamik-kinetik ilkeleri; Özgürleştirilmiş gürültü; Özgürleştirilmiş söz; Özgürleştirilmiş harfler; Sanatsal sıradüzenin ortadan kaldırılması ve yüksek sanat ile üçüncül sanatın eşdeğer kılınması (tiyatro ve sirkin içiçe geçmesi); Fütürist Marinetti'nin yücelttiği Makina ve Motor ritminden esinlenmiş gibi bir Yüksek Duygulanma. İlk Dada davranışları savaş öncesinde başlamıştı. 1911/12'den başlayarak Marcel Duchamp'ın üretimleri Dada öncüleri olarak da değerlendirilir, Merdivenden İnen Çıplak gibi Kübist resimleri, Kahve Değirmeni, ve ilk hazır nesne Bisiklet Tekerleği gibi. 1914'de bir şişe kurutacağı almış, bunu bir kaideye oturtmuş, imzalamış ve işlevin anlamsızlaşması kavramını ortaya atmıştı. 1915'de Picabia, ilk mechano-morphose'larını üretti. Bunlar büyük değişimlerdi ve Dadaya yol açmışlardı. Man Ray'in fotograf ile yaptığı denemeler ve küçük nesneleri de Dada için belirleyici örneklerdir. Dada'nın kuluçka dönemi, Ekspresyonizm ve Fütürizm sırasındadır, denilebilir. Sanatın ne olduğu sorusu, Dadanın çıkış noktasıydı ve buna bağlı olarak, o güne değin savunulan sanat değerlendirmeleri ve bu değerlendirmeleri yaratan mekanizmalar, kurumlar sorgulanıyordu; bu soruları soran ilk akımlar Dada için örnek olmuştur. Örneğin, bu içerikler Fütürist manifestoda da vardı. Bunun ötesinde, Dada kentsoylu toplumu da eleştiriyordu. Kuralları yıkmak isteyen sanat eylemi, yıkıcı değil, tam tersine özgürleştiriciydi. Fütürizm ve Ekspresyonizm "duygu şahlanışı" ve "esriklik" gibi patetik davranışlar içeriyordu ve bu savaş çığırtkanlığına kadar uzanmıştı. Dadacılar buna karşı çıktılar ve savaş karşıtlığı, pasifist, alaycı bir davranışa girdiler; sonuçta bu da abartılı bir karşı-çıkış oldu. Dadacı yeni bir sanatçı tipi ortya çıkardı: eleştirici-aydın, bilgi ve becerisinin bilincinde olan, bunu oyun haline dönüştüren bir kişilik! Sonuçta, Dada'cılar Fütürizm ve Ekpresyonizm'den kendi amaçların uygun gelen icatları ve dürtüleri aldılar; biçim bozmaları, müdaheleler, kompozisyon kurallarının yadsınması, estetik içeriklerin değersizleştirilmesi ya da dönüştürülmesi gibi teknik deneyimleri ve bilgileri kullandılar. Bunları kuşkucu bir açıdan ve keskin bir çözümleme ve yargıdan geçirerek kullandılar. Temelde amaçları kentsoylu topşlumu içinden kavrayarak, kendisinden kuşkulanmasını sağlamaktı. Burada, teknik tıpkı-üretim çağında, sanatçının artık "büyücü""olmaktan çıkıp, "eylemci" olmaya geçisi söz konusudur. Dada, bölgelere ve ülkelerin özelliklerine göre farklılk gösterir. Dada, 1920'de Berlin'de yapılan Dada Fuarı ile doruk noktasına ulaştı ve 1923'de sona erdi. Birinci Dünya Savaşı sırasında Zürich savaş karşıtları ve kaçaklarının, göçmenlerin toplandığı bir barış toprağıydı; Doğu ve Batı Avrupa'daki kitlesel ölümlerden uzaktı. Zürich Dada, bu nedenle estetik bir anarşizmi simgeler; temsilcileri Tristan Tzara (yazın suikastçısı), Huelsenbeck (dada gazetecisi) klasik uyum kurallarını, rastlantısal olanla yıktıklarını ileri sürüyorlardı. Dada adı Hugo Ball'ın, (Emmy Hennings, Hans Arp, Hans Richter ve Marcel Janco ile birlikte) 1916'da Zürih'de Cabaret Voltaire'de karton elbise giyerek yaptığı gösteride kullandığı tekerlemelere uyarlanarak kullanılmışdır: "jolifandro o bambla falli bambla" enfantilist bir çağrışım yapıyordu. Sözlüklerde Dada Fransızca'da "tahta at", Rumence'de "evet, evet", Almanca'da "aptalca saflık" anlamındaydı. Dada öncesi çeşitli malzemelerle yaptığı kolajlarla öne çıkan Arp, Dada için şöyle bir açıklama yapıyordu: " Dada, doğa gibidir ve anlam taşımaz. Dada doğa içindir ve sanat karşıdır. Dada, doğa gibi doğrudan doğruyadır ve eşyaya gerekli olan yeri vermeye çalışır. Dada sınırsız anlam içindir sınırlı malzeme içindir. Dada'cılar için yaşam sanatın anlamıdır. Sanat araçları yanlış anlayabilir ve sınırlı araçlar yerine sınırsız araçlar kullanabilir. Bu durumda, yaşam yaratılacak yerde, yalnız yaşamın ve yalnız doğanın taklıtleri yapılır. Akademik resim betimler, yaşam ve doğa yerine yanılsamalar üretir. Akademik resim doğayı ve yaşamı aldatır." Berlin Dada siyasal bir görünüm yanında, daha köktenci bir estetik kazanır. Temsilcileri, Johannes Baader, Roul Hausman George Grosz, Wieland Herzfelde, Richard Hülsenbeck ve Hugo Ball'dir. Daha sonra onlara, faşizme ve diğer baskıcı ideolojilere karşı savaş aracı olarak kullanılan foto-montaj icatçıları Hannah Höch ve Heartfield katılırlar. 1920/11 'de yayınlanan "Der Sturm" ve "Die Aktion" dergileri geleneksel kültüre karşı, ücüncül ve sıradan olanın yanında köktenci tavır alırlar; bu öncü dergilere daha sonra Hausmann ve Baader'in çıkarttıkları "Die Freie Strasse" ve "Neue Jugend" dergileri katılır. 1917'de Zürich'deki içine kapalı ortamdan kaçan Hülsenbeck onlara katılır. Dergiler, Dada'cıların deneyim alanıdır ve ilk dönemini yaşayan tüketim ekonomisinin, teknolojinin ve bilimin bütün buluşlarının kullanılmasına açıktır. 1918'de Hausmann "Fotomontaj" yapmaya başlar. Bütün imgeler, siyasal olayların eleştirisini içerir, toplumdaki olumsuz değişimlerin ve bireyin bu değişimler karşısındaki çelişkili durumunu irdeler. Berlin Dada , 1919'da Königsberg'deki bir gazetede ilk manifestosunu yayınlar: "Dadaizm nedir ve Almanya'da ne istiyor?" sorusuna verilen yanıtların özeti, yaratıcı ve akıllı insanların komünizm temelinde uluslararası ve devrimci bir birleşmeyi kabul etmeleridir. 1920'de ise Baader, Hülsenbeck ve Hausmann bir Dada Turnesi hazırlarlar; bütün dergiler bu turnenin hazırlıklarından söz eder, reklamlar verilir ve toplum bir beklenti içine sokulur; topllumu sanat etkinliği içine katma yoludur, bu. 1921'de bir dada Fuarı düzenlenir, 176 yapıt sergilenir; yalnız Berlin'li Dadacılar değil, Picabia, Arp, Max Ernst, Baargeld, Schlichter, Otto Dix gibi sanatçılar da davet edilir. Yapıtlar toplumda ve resmi kurumlarda tepki uyandırır. Grosz, Herzfelde, askerler, din ve devletle alay etmeye kalkıştıkları için mahkemede cezalandırırlar. Berlin Dada, bu fuardan sonra çözülmeye başlar. 1922'de Düsseldorf ve Weimar'da yapılan kongrelerden sonra Berlin Dada sona erer. Tristan Tzara Dada'yı Paris'e taşır, ama oradaki çekişme sonucunda geriye Sürrealizm sağ kalır. Tzara gelmeden önce Paris'in durumu şöyledir: 1905-1913 Paris'de büyük modern sergiler yapılmıştı; Paris, Berlin, Moskova, Barselona, Madrid, Milano arasında önemli bir kültür alış verişi vardı, Kübizm doğmuştu, Delaunay'ın Simultanizm'i vardı, Fütürist manifesto yapılmıştı, Rus Balesi, Ravel, Strawinsky, Apollinaire'in Paris şiir geceleri vardr. Ancak, savaş bütün bunlara son vermişti; 1918 sonunda Apollinaire ölümüştü. Yalnız Andre Gide ve Paul Valery'nin "Nouvelle Revue Francaise"si sağ kalabilmiştir. 1919 başında Andre breton, Aragon ve Soupoult "Litterature" adlı dergiyi kurarlar. Breton Apollinaire aracılığıyla Dada'yı tanımıştır ve Tzara'nın manifestosunu okumuştur. Picabia'da New York'dan döndüğünde Tzara ile mektuplaşır. 1920'de Tzara paris'de dada'yı canlandırmaya çalışır; kendisine delaunay, Max Ernst, Hans Arp, Marcel Duchamp, Man Ray katılırlar. Yayınlar, etkinlik geceleri, manifestolar, sergiler Paris'i yeniden sanatın odağına yerleştirir. Paris Dada gerçekte üç adamın etkinliğiyle, Tzara (Dada dergisi), Picabia (391 Dergisi), Breton (Litterature Dergisi) ile yaratılmıştır. Hemen üçü de dogmalara karşı, kuramsal sertleşmelere karşı savaştıklarını bireyselliği ve farklılığı savunduklarını söylüyorlarsa da, karakterleri ve eğilimleri ayrı yönlerde olduğu için bütüncül bir yapıyı kuramıyorlardı. Picabia özgür ve esrikti, aklına geleni yapıyor, hiçbir kural tanımıyordu, Tzara köktenciydi ve kara mizahçıydı, herşeyi alaya alıyordu, Breton yapıcıydı ve tarihçi bir aklı vardı. Breton en sonunda onları farklılıkların biraraya getirdiğini söyledi. Paris Dada, Varese, Satie gibi avantgard müzikçileri de etkiledi. Tzara, Le Coeur a Gaz adlı oyununa S. Delaunay sahne dekoru yaptı ve Dada filmleri Coeur a Barba (sakallı kalp) adlı derginin açılışında oynatıldı). Man Ray, Le Retour a la Raison filminde ilk kez Rayogramları kullandı ve Picabia sahne dekoruna otomobil ışıklarıyla bir ışık perdesi ekledi. Bu sanatçıların film ve tiyatroya katkıları da belirgindir. 1918-24 arasındaki Paris Dada, gücünü her türlü kavramın yararttığı karmaşadan alan bir kaynaşmadır. Dada'dan sonra gelen Sürrealizm gibi bir akım değildir, farklı bireylerin baş kaldırmasıdır; bireyselliğin keşfidir, hergün yeni değerler saptanır, hergün yeniden doğulur. Hannnover'de Kurt Schwitters tek başına Dada'dır ve Merz'i (günümüzdeki yerleştirmelerin temeli) yaratır. Hannover önemli bir siyasal merkez degildir ve sanat uzaktan izlenir; Ekspresyonizm ve Soyut eğilimler sürüp gitmektedir. İlk Dada hareketleri "Der Morgen" ve "Agathon" adlı edebiyat dergileriyle başlar. Hannover'e 1914'de sanat eğitimi aldıktan sonra dönen Kurt Schwitters, ancak 30'lu yaşlarında Modern'ı yaratanlar arasına katılır. 1918'de Berlin'li Herwarth Walden'in "Der Sturm" hareketi ve Zürich ve Berlin'li Dada'cılar ile ilişki kurar. 1922'de Weimar kongresi sırasında Dada'nın önemli katılımcısı olur ve Hannover'de Dadarevon adlı bir gece düzenler. Hannover'de Schwitters'in etkinliği yanında Dada yayıncılığı öne çıkar. Schwitters, Kandinsky zamanından bu yana Almanya'da var olan bir Soyut sanatı savunuyor ve bunu Dada içine oturtmaya çalışıyordu. 1920'de kendini Tzara ve Huelsenbeck arasında sürmekte olan tartışmanın ortasında buldu. Tzara, Dada'yı soyutlamanın devamı olarak görüyor, Huelsenbeck ise Dada'nın herhangi bir modern akımın devamı olmadığını söylüyordu. Schwitters Tzara tarafını seçti ve Dada'nın Berlin'de siyasallaşmasına karşı çıktı. Şöyle diyordu: "İki grup Dada'cı vardır; Çekirdek ve Kabuk Dadacı. Sonuncular özellikle Almanya'dadır. Huelsenbeck Dada'nın Almanya'ya özgü Bolşevik bir yapısı olduğunu söylemektedir. Merz, ilke olarak yalnız sanata yönelir ve Tzara, Arp, Picabia gibi Çekirdek Dada'cılarla dostluk içindedir." Schwitters bu sanatsal bakış açısıyla 1922/23'de Konstrüktivizm'e yaklaşmış, van Doesburg ve 1923'de Hannover'e gelen El Lissitzky'nin etkisi altında kalmıştır. Öte yandan Schwitters'in 1917/18'de makina tasarımcısı olarak çalıştığını da unutmamak gerekir; onun için makinalar insan aklının soyutlamalarıydı. Schwitters, malzeme resimleri oluştururuken toplumsal yoprumlara ve belgesel saptamalara doğru değil, biçimsel ve dekoratif ögelerin rastlantısal bireşimlerine doğru yöneldi. O, yeni bir malzeme estetiği keşfetti ve kolaji ilk kez üçboyutlu yaptı. Merz (Kommerz und Privatbank) adını verdiği tümel kolajda, Duchamp'ın öncüsü bir gerçekçiliğe ulaştığı söylenir. Köln'deki Dada Max Ernst tarafından temsil edilir ve o da Sürrealizm'e yönelir. Tristan Tzara ve Max Ernst 1919 sonunda mektuplaşmaya başlarlar; bu sırada Ernst Bulletin D adlı dergisini çıkarmaktadır. Ernst daha sonra 1920 Nisan'ında Schammade adlı dergiyi çıkarmaya başladığında Paris Dada yazıları yayınlar. Bu sırada bir Dada sergisi açmaya da çalışır. Archipenko ve Gleizes geçmişte olduğu gibi bir Section d'Or sergisi düzenlerken Ernst Paris Dada'cılarla bu sergiye katılır. Ernst Berlin Dada'ya yakınlık duymaz ve sonunda 1921'de Paris'de Galerie Au Sans Pareil onun kolajlarını sergiler. Köln Dada uzun sürmemiştir. New York ve Avrupa Dada arasındaki ilişki , Francis Picabia'nın 1913'de Armory Show'una katılmak üzere new York'a gelmesiyle canlanır. Picabia, kuramsal açıdan Dadacıydı; lirik soyutlama, kübist makinalar, kolajlardan oluşan yapıtları onu Sürrealist'lere yaklaştırıyordu. New York'da Alfred Stieglitz ile dostluğu ve onun galerisinde sergilemesiyle, Dadacı tavrının özellikleri Duchamp ve Man Ray'i etkiledi. Derleyen: Beral Madra

dada manifesto

dada manifesto by hugo ball 14th July 1916

Dada is a new tendency in art. One can tell this from the fact that until now nobody knew anything about it, and tomorrow everyone in Zurich will be talking about it. Dada comes from the dictionary. it is terribly simple. In French it means "hobby horse." In German it means "good-by," "Get off my back," "Be seeing you sometime." In Romanian: "Yes, indeed, you are right, that's it. But of course, yes, definitely, right." And so forth. An international word. Just a word, and the word a movement. Very easy to understand. Quite terribly simple. To make of it an artistic tendency must mean that one is anticipating complications. Dada psychology, dada Germany cum indigestion and fog paroxysm, dada literature, dada bourgeoisie, and yourselves, honored poets, who are always writing with words but never writing the word itself, who are always writing around the actual point. Dada world war without end, dada revolution without beginning, dada, you friends and also-poets, esteemed sirs, manufacturers, and evangelists. Dada Tzara, dada Huelsenbeck, dada m'dada, dada m'dada dada mhm, dada dere dada, dada Hue, dada Tza. How does one achieve eternal bliss? By saying dada. How does one become famous? By saying dada. With a noble gesture and delicate propriety. Till one goes crazy. Till one loses consciousness. How can one get rid of everything that smack of journalism, worms, everything nice and right, blinkered, moralistic, europeanized, enervated? By saying dada. Dada is the world soul, dada is the pawnshop. Dada is the world's best lily-milk soap. Dada Mr. Rubiner, dada Mr. Korrodi. Dada Mr. Anastasius Lilienstein. In plain language: the hospitality of the Swiss is something to be profoundly appreciated. And in questions of aesthetics the key is quality. I shall be reading poems that are meant to dispense with conventional language, no less, and to have done with it. Dada Johann Fuschgang Goethe, Dada Stendhal. Dada Dalai Lama, Buddha, Bible and Nietzsche. Dada m'dada. Dada mhm dada da. It's a question of connections, and of loosening them up a bit to start with. I don't want words that other people have invented. All the words are other people's inventions. I want my own stuff, my own rhythm, and vowels and consonants too, matching the rhythm and all my own. If this pulsation in seven yards long, I want words for it that are seven yards long. Mr. Schulz's words are only two and a half centimeters long. It will serve to show how articulated language comes into being. I let the vowels fool around. I let the vowels quite simply occur, as a cat miaows... Words emerge, shoulders of words, legs, arms, hands of words. Au, oi, uh. One shouldn't let too many words out. A line of poetry is a chance to get rid of all the filth that clings to this accursed language, as if put there by stockbrokers' hands, hands worn smooth by coins. I want the word where it ends and begins. Dada is the heart of words. Each thing has its word, but the word has become a thing by itself. Why shouldn't I find it? Why can't a tree be called Pluplusch, and Pluplubasch when it has been raining? The word, the word, the word outside your domain, your stuffiness, this laughable impotence, your stupendous smugness, outside all the parrotry of your self-evident limitedness. The word, gentlemen, is a public concern of the first importance. dada manifesto by tristan tzara 23rd March 1918 The magic of a word - DADA - which for journalists has opened the door to an unforeseen world, has for us not the slightest importance. To launch a manifesto you have to want: A.B. & C., and fulminate against 1, 2, & 3, work yourself up and sharpen you wings to conquer and circulate lower and upper case As, Bs & Cs, sign, shout, swear, organise prose into a form that is absolutely and irrefutably obvious, prove its ne plus ultra and maintain that novelty resembles life in the same way as the latest apparition of a harlot proves the essence of God. His existence had already been proved by the accordion, the landscape and soft words. * To impose one's A.B.C. is only natural - and therefore regrettable. Everyone does it in the form of a crystalbluff-madonna, or a monetary system, or pharmaceutical preparations, a naked leg being the invitation to an ardent and sterile Spring. The love of novelty is a pleasant sort of cross, it's evidence of a naive don't-give-a-damn attitude, a passing, positive, sign without rhyme or reason. But this need is out of date, too. By giving art the impetus of supreme simplicity - novelty - we are being human and true in relation to innocent pleasures; impulsive and vibrant n order to crucify boredom. At the lighted crossroads, alert, attentive, lying in wait for years, in the forest. * I am writing a manifesto and there's nothing I want, and yet I'm saying certain things, and in principle I am against manifestos, as I am against principles (quantifying measures of the moral value of every phrase - too easy; approximation was invested by the impressionists). * I'm writing this manifesto to show that you can perform contrary actions at the same time, in one single, fresh breath; I am against action; as for continual contradiction, and affirmation too, I am neither for nor against them, and I won't explain myself because I hate common sense. DADA - this is a word that throws up ideas so that they can be shot down; every bourgeois is a little playwright, who invents different subjects and who, instead of situating suitable characters on the level of his own intelligence, like chrysalises on chairs, tries to find causes or objects (according to whichever psychoanalytic method he practices) to give weight to his plot, a talking and self-defining story. * Every spectator is a plotter, if he tries to explain a word (to know!) From his padded refuge of serpentine complications, he allows his instincts to be manipulated. Whence the sorrows of conjugal life. To be plain: The amusement of redbellies in the mills of empty skulls. DADA DOES NOT MEAN ANYTHING If we consider it futile, and if we don't waste our time over a word that doesn't mean anything... The first thought that comes to these minds is of a bacteriological order: at least to discover its etymological, historical or psychological meaning. We read in the papers that the negroes of the Kroo race call the tail of a sacred cow: DADA. A cube, and a mother, in a certain region of Italy, are called: DADA. The word for a hobby horse, a children's nurse, a double affirmative in Russian and Romanian, is also: DADA. Some learned journalists see it as an art for babies, other Jesuscallingthelittlechildrenuntohim saints see it as a return to an unemotional and noisy primitivism - noise and monotonous. A sensitivity cannot be built on the basis of a word; every sort of construction converges into a boring sort of perfection, a stagnant idea of a golden swamp, a relative human product. A work of art shouldn't be beauty per se, because it is dead; neither gay nor sad, neither light nor dark; it is to rejoice or maltreat individualities to serve them up the cakes of sainted haloes or the sweat of a meandering chase through the atmosphere. A work of art is never beautiful, by decree, objectively, for everyone. Criticism is, therefore, useless; it only exists subjectively, for every individual, and without the slightest general characteristic. Do people imagine they have found the psychic basis common to all humanity? The attempt of Jesus, and the Bible, conceal, under their ample, benevolent wings: shit, animals and days. How can anyone hope to order the chaos that constitutes that infinite, formless variation: man? The principle: "Love thy neighbour" is hypocrisy. "Know thyself" is utopian, but more acceptable because it includes malice. No pity. After the carnage we are left with the hope of a purified humanity. I always speak about myself because I don't want to convince, and I have no right to drag others in my wake, I'm not compelling anyone to follow me, because everyone makes his art in his own way, if he knows anything about the joy that rises like an arrow up to the astral strata, or that which descends into the mines stewn with the flowers of corpses and fertile spasms. Stalactites: look everywhere for them, in creches magnified by pain, eyes as white as angels' hares. Thus DADA was born* , out of a need for independence, out of mistrust for the community. People who join us keep their freedom. We don't accept any theories. We've had enough of the cubist and futurist academies: laboratories of formal ideas. Do we make art in order to earn money and keep the dear bourgeoisie happy? Rhymes have the smack of money, and inflexion slides along the line of the stomach in profile. Every group of artists has ended up at this bank, straddling various comets. Leaving the door open to the possibility of wallowing in comfort and food. Here we are dropping our anchor in fertile ground. Here we really know what we are talking about, because we have experienced the trembling and the awakening. Drunk with energy, we are revenants thrusting the trident into heedless flesh. We are streams of curses in the tropical abundance of vertiginous vegetation, resin and rain is our sweat, we bleed and burn with thirst, our blood is strength. Cubism was born out of a simple manner of looking at objects: Cezanne painted a cup twenty centimetres lower than his eyes, the cubists look at it from above, others complicate it appearance by cutting a vertical section through it and soberly placing it to one side (I'm not forgetting the creators, nor the seminal reasons of unformed matter that they rendered definitive). * The futurist sees the same cup in movement, a succession of objects side by side, mischievously embellished by a few guide-lines. This doesn't stop the canvas being either a good or a bad painting destined to form an investment for intellectual capital. The new painter creates a world whose elements are also its means, a sober, definitive, irrefutable work. The new artist protests: he no longer paints (symbolic and illusionistic reproduction) but creates directly in stone, wood, iron, tin, rocks, or locomotive structures capable of being spun in all directions by the limpid wind of the momentary sensation. * Every pictorial or plastic work is unnecessary , even if it is a monster which terrifies servile minds, and not a sickly-sweet object to adorn the refectories of animals in human garb, those illustrations of the sad fable of humanity. - A painting is the art of making two lines, which have been geometrically observed to be parallel, meet on a canvas, before our eyes, in the reality of a world that has been transposed according to new conditions and possibilities. This world is neither specified nor defined in the work, it belongs, in its innumerable variations, to the spectator. For its creator it has neither case nor theory. Order = disorder; ego = non-ego; affirmation - negation: the supreme radiations of an absolute art. Absolute in the purity of its cosmic and regulated chaos, eternal in that globule that is a second which has no duration, no breath, no light and no control. * I appreciate an old work for its novelty. It is only contrast that links us to the past. * Writers who like to moralise and discuss or ameliorate psychological bases have, apart from a secret wish to win, a ridiculous knowledge of life, which they may have classified, parcelled out, canalised; they are determined to see its categories dance when they beat time. Their readers laugh derisively, but carry on: what's the use? There is one kind of literature which never reaches the voracious masses. The work of creative writers, written out of the author's real necessity, and for his own benefit. The awareness of a supreme egoism, wherein laws become significant. * Every page should explode, either because of its profound gravity, or its vortex, vertigo, newness, eternity, or because of its staggering absurdity, the enthusiasm of its principles, or its typography. On the one hand there is a world tottering in its flight, linked to the resounding tinkle of the infernal gamut; on the other hand, there are: the new men. Uncouth, galloping, riding astride on hiccups. And there is a mutilated world and literary medicasters in desperate need of amelioration. I assure you: there is no beginning, and we are not afraid; we aren't sentimental. We are like a raging wind that rips up the clothes of clouds and prayers, we are preparing the great spectacle of disaster, conflagration and decomposition. Preparing to put an end to mourning, and to replace tears by sirens spreading from one continent to another. Clarions of intense joy, bereft of that poisonous sadness. * DADA is the mark of abstraction; publicity and business are also poetic elements. I destroy the drawers of the brain, and those of social organisation: to sow demoralisation everywhere, and throw heaven's hand into hell, hell's eyes into heaven, to reinstate the fertile wheel of a universal circus in the Powers of reality, and the fantasy of every individual. A philosophical questions: from which angle to start looking at life, god, ideas, or anything else. Everything we look at is false. I don't think the relative result is any more important than the choice of patisserie or cherries for dessert. The way people have of looking hurriedly at things from the opposite point of view, so as to impose their opinions indirectly, is called dialectic, in other words, heads I wind and tails you lose, dressed up to look scholarly. If I shout: Ideal, Ideal, Ideal Knowledge, Knowledge, Knowledge Boomboom, Boomboom, Boomboom I have recorded fairly accurately Progress, Law, Morals, and all the other magnificent qualities that various very intelligent people have discussed in so many books in order, finally, to say that even so everyone has danced according to his own personal boomboom, and that he's right about his boomboom: the satisfaction of unhealthy curiosity; private bell-ringing for inexplicable needs; bath; pecuniary difficulties; a stomach with repercussions on to life; the authority of the mystical baton formulated as the grand finale of a phantom orchestra with mute bows, lubricated by philtres with a basis of animal ammonia. With the blue monocle of an angel they have dug out its interior for twenty sous worth of unanimous gratitude. * If all of them are right, and if all pills are only Pink, let's try for once not to be right. * People think they can explain rationally, by means of thought, what they write. But it's very relative. Thought is a fine thing for philosophy, but it's relative. Psychoanalysis is a dangerous disease, it deadens man's anti-real inclinations and systematises the bourgeoisie. There is no ultimate Truth. Dialectics is an amusing machine that leads us (in banal fashion) to the opinions which we would have held in any case. Do people really think that, by the meticulous subtlety of logic, they have demonstrated the truth and established the accuracy of their opinions? Even if logic were confined by the senses it would still be an organic disease. To this element, philosophers like to add: The power of observation. But this magnificent quality of the mind is precisely the proof of its impotence. People observe, they look at things from one or several points of view, they choose them from amongst the millions that exist. Experience too is the result of chance and of individual abilities. * Science revolts me when it becomes a speculative system and loses its utilitarian character - which is so useless - but is at least individual. I hate slimy objectivity, and harmony, the science that considers that everything is always in order. Carry on, children, humanity ... Science says that we are nature's servants: everything is in order, make both love and war. Carry on, children, humanity, nice kind bourgeois and virgin journalists... * I am against systems; the most acceptable system is that of have none on no principle. * To complete oneself, to perfect oneself in one's own pettiness to the point of filling the little vase of oneself with oneself, even the courage to fight for and against thought, all this can suddenly infernally propel us into the mystery of daily bread and the lilies of the economic field. DADAIST SPONTANEITY What I call the I-don't-give-a-damn attitude of life is when everyone minds his own business, at the same time as he knows how to respect other individualities, and even how to stand up for himself, the two-step becoming a national anthem, a junk shop, the wireless (the wire-less telephone) transmitting Bach fugues, illuminated advertisements for placards for brothels, the organ broadcasting carnations for God, all this at the same time, and in real terms, replacing photography and unilateral catechism. Active simplicity. The incapacity to distinguish between degrees of light: licking the twilight and floating in the huge mouth filled with honey and excrement. Measured against the scale of Eternity, every action is vain - (if we allow thought to have an adventure whose result would be infinitely grotesque - an important factor in the awareness of human incapacity). But if life is a bad joke, with neither goal nor initial accouchement, and because we believe we ought, like clean chrysanthemums, to make the best of a bad bargain, we have declared that the only basis of understanding is: art. It hasn't the importance that we, old hands at the spiritual, have been lavishing on it for centuries. Art does nobody any harm, and those who are capable of taking an interest in it will not only receive caresses, but also a marvellous chance to people the country of their conversation. Art is a private thing, the artist makes it for himself; a comprehensible work is the product of a journalist, and because at this moment I enjoy mixing this monster in oil paints: a paper tube imitating the metal that you press and automatically squeeze out hatred, cowardice and villainy. The artist, or the poet, rejoices in the venom of this mass condensed into one shopwalker of this trade, he is glad to be insulted, it proves his immutability. The author or the artist praised by the papers observes that his work has been understood: a miserable lining to a collaborating with the heat of an animal incubating the baser instincts. Flabby, insipid flesh multiplying itself with the aid of typographical microbes. We have done violence to the snivelling tendencies in our natures. Every infiltration of this sort is macerated diarrhoea. To encourage this sort of art is to digest it. What we need are strong straightforward, precise works which will be forever misunderstood. Logic is a complication. Logic is always false. It draws the superficial threads of concepts and words towards illusory conclusions and centres. Its chains kill, an enormous myriapod that asphyxiates independence. If it were married to logic, art would be living in incest, engulfing, swallowing its own tail, which still belongs to its body, fornicating in itself, and temperament would become a nightmare tarred and feathered with protestantism, a monument, a mass of heavy, greyish intestines. But suppleness, enthusiasm and even the joy of injustice, that little truth that we practise as innocents and that makes us beautiful: we are cunning, and our fingers are malleable and glide like the branches of that insidious and almost liquid plant; this injustice is the indication of our soul, say the cynics. This is also a point of view; but all flowers aren't saints, luckily, and what is divine in us is the awakening of anti-human action. What we are talking about here is a paper flower for the buttonhole of gentlemen who frequent the ball of masked life, the kitchen of grace, our white, lithe or fleshy girl cousins. They make a profit out of what we have selected. The contradiction and unity of opposing poles at the same time may be true. IF we are absolutely determined to utter this platitude, the appendix of alibidinous, evil-smelling morality. Morals have an atrophying effect, like every other pestilential product of the intelligence. Being governed by morals and logic has made it impossible for us to be anything other than impassive towards policemen - the cause of slavery - putrid rats with whom the bourgeois are fed up to the teeth, and who have infected the only corridors of clear and clean glass that remained open to artists. Every man must shout: there is great destructive, negative work to be done. To sweep, to clean. The cleanliness of the individual materialises after we've gone through folly, the aggressive, complete folly of a world left in the hands of bandits who have demolished and destroyed the centuries. With neither aim nor plan, without organisation: uncontrollable folly, decomposition. Those who are strong in word or in strength will survive, because they are quick to defend themselves; the agility of their limbs and feelings flames on their faceted flanks. Morals have given rise to charity and pity, two dumplings that have grown like elephants, planets, which people call good. There is nothing good about them. Goodness is lucid, clear and resolute, and ruthless towards compromise and politics. Morality infuses chocolate into every man's veins. This task is not ordained by a supernatural force, but by a trust of ideas-merchants and academic monopolists. Sentimentality: seeing a group of bored and quarrelling men, they invented the calendar and wisdom as a remedy. By sticking labels on to things, the battle of the philosophers we let loose (money-grubbing, mean and meticulous weights and measures) and one understood once again that pity is a feeling, like diarrhoea in relation to disgust, that undermines health, the filthy carrion job of jeopardising the sun. I proclaim the opposition of all the cosmic faculties to that blennorrhoea of a putrid sun that issues from the factories of philosophical thought, the fight to the death, with all the resources of DADAIST DISGUST Every product of disgust that is capable of becoming a negation of the family is dada; DADA; acquaintance with all the means hitherto rejected by the sexual prudishness of easy compromise and good manners: DADA; abolition of logic, dance of those who are incapable of creation: DADA; every hierarchy and social equation established for values by our valets: DADA; every object, all objects, feelings and obscurities, every apparition and the precise shock of parallel lines, are means for the battle of: DADA; the abolition of memory: DADA; the abolition of archaeology: DADA the abolition of prophets: DADA; the abolition of the future: DADA; the absolute and indiscutable belief in every god that is an immediate product of spontaneity: DADA; the elegant and unprejudiced leap from on harmony to another sphere; the trajectory of a word, a cry, thrown into the air like an acoustic disc; to respect all individualities in their folly of the moment, whether serious, fearful, timid, ardent, vigorous, decided or enthusiastic; to strip one's church of every useless and unwieldy accessory; to spew out like a luminous cascade any offensive or loving thought, or to cherish it - with the lively satisfaction that it's all precisely the same thing - with the same intensity in the bush, which is free of insects for the blue-blooded, and gilded with the bodies of archangels, with one's soul. Liberty: DADA DADA DADA; - the roar of contorted pains, the interweaving of contraries and all contradictions, freaks and irrelevancies: LIFE. * in 1916 at the CABARET VOLTAIRE in Zurich monsieur antipyrine's manifesto by tristan tzara 14th July 1916 DADA is our intensity: it erects inconsequential bayonets and the Sumatral head of German babies; Dada is life with neither bedroom slippers nor parallels; it is against and for unity and definately 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; 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 colours 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, ohoho, bang bang. We declare that the motor car 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 marvellous elite, 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. DADA is neither madness, nor wisdom, nor irony, look at me, dear bourgeois. 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, and the verse became a queen in order to die a little, and the queen became a sardine, and the children ran hither and you, 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. Be we, DADA, don't agree with them, for art isn't serious, I assure you, and if we reveal the crime so as to show that we are learned denunciators, it's to please you, dear audience, I assure you, and I adore you. tristan tzara's manifesto by tristan tzara 19th February 1920 Have a good look at me! I'm an idiot, I'm a practical joker, I'm a hoaxer. Have a good look at me! I'm ugly, my face has no expression, I'm small. I'm like the rest of you!1 But ask yourselves, before you look at me, whether the iris by which you dispatch arrows of liquid sentiments isn't in fact fly-shit, if you belly's eyes are not sections of tumours who looks will at one moment emerge from some part of your body in the form of a blennorrhagic discharge. You see with your navels - why do you hid from your navels the ridiculous spectacle we offer them? And lower down, women's genitals, love, pure love, naturally - rare steaks and oil painting. Everybody who looks and who understands can easily be classified somewhere between poetry and love, between steak and painting. They'll be digested, they'll be digested. I was recently accused of the theft of some furs. Probably because people thought I should still be classified as a poet. One of those poets who satisfy their legitimate need of cold onania in hot furs. H a H u, I know other, equally platonic, pleasures. Ring up your family on the telephone and piss down the hole designed for musical, gastronomic and sacred nonsense. DADA suggests 2 solutions: NO MORE LOOKS! NO MORE WORDS!2 Stop looking! Stop talking! For I, chameleon alteration infiltration with convenient attitudes - multicoloured opinions for every occasion size and price - I do the opposite of what I recommend to other people.3 I've forgotten something: where ? why ? how ? in other words: the ventilator of cold examples will serve the fragile snake of the procession and I have never had the pleasure of seeing you, my dear, the ear will take itself out of the envelope rigid like all marine equipment and the products of Aa & Co's firm, chewing-gum for example and dogs have blue eyes, I drink chamomile tea, they drink the wind, DADA introduces new points of view, people site down now at the corners of tables, in attitudes which lean a bit to the left and to the right, that's why I've quarrelled with Dada, insist everywhere on the suppression of the Ds, eat Aa, brush yourself with Aa toothpaste, buy your clothes at Aa's. Aa is a handkerchief and genitals blowing their noses rapid collapse - made of rubber - noiseless, needs neither manifestos nor address books, it gives a 25% discount buy your clothes at Aa's he has blue eyes. 1 I wanted to give myself a bit of publicity. 2 No more manifestos. 3 Sometimes. Dada has 391 different attitudes and colours according to the sex of the president" - Tristan Tzara "Every word is like an unnecessary stain on silence and nothingness" - Samuel Beckett manifesto of monsieur Aa the antiphilosopher by tristan tzara 5th February 1920 without the pursuit of I worship you which is a French boxer maritime values as irregular as the depression of Dada in the blood of a bicephalous animal I glide between death and the vague phosphates that scratch slightly at the common brain of dadaist poets luckily because gold mine tariff's and the high cost of living made me Decide to abandon D's it isn't true that sham dadas have Deprived me of them because here's enough to bewail the nothing that is called nothing and I've cleared illnesses at the customs I the carapace and umbrella of the brain from noon till two o'clock two hour's subscription superstitious releasing the mechanism of the spermatozoon ballet that you'll find being dress-rehearsed in all the hearts of suspect individuals I'll eat your fingers a bit I'm renewing your subscription to the celluloid love that creaks like metal gates and you are idiots I shall come back once in the guise of your renascent urine as the obstetric wind of joie de vivre and I'm going to establish a boarding school for poets' supporters and I've come again to start again and you're all idiots and the selfkleptomaniac's key only works with crepuscular oil on every knot of every machine there's the nose of a new-born baby and we're all idiots and very suspect of a new form of intelligence and a new logic after our own manner which isn't at all Dada and you're letting yourselves be led astray by Aaism and you're all idiots poultices of the surgical spirit of purified sleep of bandages and of virgin idiots manifeste cannibale dada by francis picabia 27th March 1920 You are all indicted; stand up! Stand up as you would for the Marseillaise or God Save the King.... Dada alone does not smell: it is nothing, nothing, nothing. It is like your hopes: nothing. like your paradise: nothing. like your idols: nothing. like your politicians: nothing. like your heroes: nothing. like your artists: nothing. like your religions: nothing. Hiss, shout, kick my teeth in, so what? I shall still tell you that you are half-wits. In three months my friends and I will be selling you our pictures for a few francs. etimes. monsieur Aa the antiphilosopher sends us this manifesto by tristan tzara 22nd May 1920 Long live the undertakers of the combine! Every act is a revolver shot - both the insignificant gesture and the decisive moment are attacks (I open the fan of knock-outs for the distillation of the air that separates us) - and with the words put down on paper I enter, solemnly, into myself. In the scalp of notions I implant my 60 fingers and brutally shake the curtains, the teeth, the bolts of their joints. I shut, I open, I spit. Careful! The moment has come when I should tell you I've been lying. If there is a system in the lack of system - that of my proportions - I never apply it. In other words, I lie. I lie when I apply it, I lie when I don't apply it, I lie when I write that I lie because I do not lie - because I have lived the mirror of my father - chosen from the profits of baccarat - from town to town - for myself has never been myself - for the saxophone wears like a rose the assassination of the visceral car-driver - he's made of sexual copper and leaves of racecourses. Thus drummed the maize, the alarm and pellagra where the matches grow. Extermination. Yes, naturally. But doesn't exist. Myself: mixture kitchen theatre. Long live the stretcher-bearers of the convocations of ecstasies! Lying is ecstasy - which lasts longer than a second - there is nothing that lasts longer. Idiots brood over the century - they start all over again several centuries later - idiots remain within the circle for ten years - idiots hover over the dial of a year - Myself (an idiot) I stay there for five minutes. The claim of the blood to distribute in my body and my event the accidental colour of the first woman I touched with my eyes in these tentacular times. The bitterest banditry is to finish one's thought-out phrase. The banditry of the gramophone, the little anti-human mirage that I like in myself - because I believe it to be ridiculous and dishonest. But the bankers of language will always get their little percentage on the discussion. The presence of (at least) one boxer is indispensible for a match - affiliated members of a gang of dadaist assassins have signed a self-protection contract for operations of this sort. Their number is extremely limited - the presence of (at least) one singer for a duet, or (at least) one signatory for a receipt, of (at least) one eye for sight, being absolutely indispensible. Put the photographic plate of the face in the acid bath. The shocks that have sensitized it will become visible and will surprise you. Punch yourself in the face and drop dead. how i became charming, likeable and delightful by tristan tzara 19th December 1920 I sleep very late. I commit suicide at 65%. My life is very cheap, it's only 30% of life for me. My life has 30% of life. It lacks arms, strings and a few buttons. 5% is devoted to a state of semi-lucid stupor accompanied by anaemic crackling. This 5% is called DADA. So life is cheap. Death is a bit more expensive. But life is charming and death is equally charming. A few days ago I was at a meeting of imbeciles. There were a lot of people there. Everyone was charming. Tristan Tzara, a small, absurd and insignificant individual was giving a lecture on the art of becoming charming. He was charming, at that. Everyone is charming. And witty. It's delightful, isn't it? Everyone is delightful, at that. 9 degrees below zero. It's charming, isn't it? No, it isn't charming. God isn't up to it. He isn't even in the directory. But even so he's charming. Ambassadors, poets, counts, princes, musicians, journalists, actors, writers, diplomats, directors, dressmakers, socialists, princesses and baronesses are charming. You're all of you charming, very subtle, witty and delightful. Tristan Tzara says to you: he's quite willing to do something else, but he prefers to remain an idiot, a practical joker and a hoaxer. Be sincere for a moment: what I've just said to you - is it charming or idiotic?