Tristan Tzara (; ; born Samuel or Samy Rosenstock, also known as S. Samyro; – 25 December 1963) was a Romanian and French
avant-garde
The avant-garde (; In 'advance guard' or ' vanguard', literally 'fore-guard') is a person or work that is experimental, radical, or unorthodox with respect to art, culture, or society.John Picchione, The New Avant-garde in Italy: Theoretical ...
poet, essayist and
performance art
Performance art is an artwork or art exhibition created through actions executed by the artist or other participants. It may be witnessed live or through documentation, spontaneously developed or written, and is traditionally presented to a pu ...
ist. Also active as a journalist, playwright, literary and art critic, composer and film director, he was known best for being one of the founders and central figures of the
anti-establishment
An anti-establishment view or belief is one which stands in opposition to the conventional social, political, and economic principles of a society. The term was first used in the modern sense in 1958, by the British magazine ''New Statesman'' ...
Dada
Dada () or Dadaism was an art movement of the European avant-garde in the early 20th century, with early centres in Zürich, Switzerland, at the Cabaret Voltaire (in 1916). New York Dada began c. 1915, and after 1920 Dada flourished in Pari ...
movement. Under the influence of
Adrian Maniu
Adrian Maniu (February 6, 1891 – April 20, 1968) was a Romanian poet, prose writer, playwright, essayist, and translator.
Born in Bucharest, his father Grigore, a native of Lugoj, was a jurist and professor of commercial law at the University of ...
, the adolescent Tzara became interested in
Symbolism and co-founded the magazine ''
Simbolul
''Simbolul'' (Romanian for "The Symbol", ) was a Romanian avant-garde literary and art magazine, published in Bucharest between October and December 1912. Co-founded by writers Tristan Tzara and Ion Vinea, together with visual artist Marcel Janco, ...
'' with
Ion Vinea (with whom he also wrote
experimental
An experiment is a procedure carried out to support or refute a hypothesis, or determine the efficacy or likelihood of something previously untried. Experiments provide insight into cause-and-effect by demonstrating what outcome occurs when a ...
poetry) and painter
Marcel Janco
Marcel Janco (, ; common rendition of the Romanian name Marcel Hermann Iancu ; 24 May 1895 – 21 April 1984) was a Romanian and Israeli visual artist, architect and art theorist. He was the co-inventor of Dadaism and a leading exponent of Const ...
.
During
World War I
World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fightin ...
, after briefly collaborating on Vinea's ''
Chemarea'', he joined Janco in Switzerland. There, Tzara's shows at the
Cabaret Voltaire and
Zunfthaus zur Waag, as well as his poetry and
art manifesto
An art manifesto is a public declaration of the intentions, motives, or views of an artist or artistic movement. Manifestos are a standard feature of the various movements in the modernist avant-garde and are still written today. Art manifestos ...
s, became a main feature of early Dadaism. His work represented Dada's
nihilistic side, in contrast with the more moderate approach favored by
Hugo Ball.
After moving to Paris in 1919, Tzara, by then one of the "presidents of Dada", joined the staff of ''
Littérature'' magazine, which marked the first step in the movement's evolution toward
Surrealism. He was involved in the major polemics which led to Dada's split, defending his principles against
André Breton and
Francis Picabia, and, in Romania, against the
eclectic modernism
Modernism is both a philosophy, philosophical and arts movement that arose from broad transformations in Western world, Western society during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The movement reflected a desire for the creation of new fo ...
of Vinea and Janco. This personal vision on art defined his Dadaist plays ''
The Gas Heart'' (1921) and ''
Handkerchief of Clouds'' (1924). A forerunner of
automatist techniques, Tzara eventually aligned himself with Breton's Surrealism, and under its influence wrote his celebrated
utopian poem "The Approximate Man".
During the final part of his career, Tzara combined his
humanist
Humanism is a philosophical stance that emphasizes the individual and social potential and agency of human beings. It considers human beings the starting point for serious moral and philosophical inquiry.
The meaning of the term "human ...
and
anti-fascist perspective with a
communist vision, joining the
Republicans in the
Spanish Civil War
The Spanish Civil War ( es, Guerra Civil Española)) or The Revolution ( es, La Revolución, link=no) among Nationalists, the Fourth Carlist War ( es, Cuarta Guerra Carlista, link=no) among Carlists, and The Rebellion ( es, La Rebelión, link ...
and the
French Resistance
The French Resistance (french: La Résistance) was a collection of organisations that fought the German occupation of France during World War II, Nazi occupation of France and the Collaborationism, collaborationist Vichy France, Vichy régim ...
during
World War II
World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposing ...
, and serving a term in the
National Assembly. Having spoken in favor of
liberalization in the
People's Republic of Hungary
The Hungarian People's Republic ( hu, Magyar Népköztársaság) was a one-party socialist state from 20 August 1949
to 23 October 1989.
It was governed by the Hungarian Socialist Workers' Party, which was under the influence of the Soviet U ...
just before the
Revolution of 1956, he distanced himself from the
French Communist Party
The French Communist Party (french: Parti communiste français, ''PCF'' ; ) is a political party in France which advocates the principles of communism. The PCF is a member of the Party of the European Left, and its MEPs sit in the European Un ...
, of which he was by then a member. In 1960, he was among the intellectuals who protested against French actions in the
Algerian War.
Tristan Tzara was an influential author and performer, whose contribution is credited with having created a connection from
Cubism and
Futurism to the
Beat Generation,
Situationism and various currents in
rock music
Rock music is a broad genre of popular music that originated as " rock and roll" in the United States in the late 1940s and early 1950s, developing into a range of different styles in the mid-1960s and later, particularly in the United States an ...
. The friend and collaborator of many modernist figures, he was the lover of dancer
Maja Kruscek in his early youth and was later married to Swedish artist and poet
Greta Knutson.
Name
''S. Samyro'', a partial
anagram of ''Samy Rosenstock'', was used by Tzara from his debut and throughout the early 1910s.
[Cernat, p.108-109] A number of undated writings, which he probably authored as early as 1913, bear the signature ''Tristan Ruia'', and, in summer of 1915, he was signing his pieces with the name ''Tristan''.
[Cernat, p.109][ Jacques-Yves Conrad]
''Promenade surréaliste sur la colline de Montmartre''
, at the University of Paris III: Sorbonne Nouvellebr>Center for the Study of Surrealism
; retrieved 23 April 2008
In the 1960s, Rosenstock's collaborator and later rival Ion Vinea claimed that he was responsible for coining the ''Tzara'' part of his pseudonym in 1915.
Vinea also stated that Tzara wanted to keep ''Tristan'' as his adopted first name, and that this choice had later attracted him the "infamous pun" ''Triste Âne Tzara'' (
French for "Sad Donkey Tzara").
This version of events is uncertain, as manuscripts show that the writer may have already been using the full name, as well as the variations ''Tristan Țara'' and ''Tr. Tzara'', in 1913–1914 (although there is a possibility that he was signing his texts long after committing them to paper).
In 1972, art historian
Serge Fauchereau Serge Fauchereau (born October 31, 1939, in Rochefort-sur-mer) is a French scholar and art curator responsible for the exhibitions ''Paris-New York'', ''Paris-Berlin'', ''Paris-Moscow'', ''Europa-Europa'', ''Futurismo'' and ''Futurismi'', among othe ...
, based on information received from Colomba, the wife of avant-garde poet
Ilarie Voronca
Ilarie Voronca (pen name of Eduard Marcus; 31 December 1903, Brăila—8 April 1946, Paris) was a Romanian avant-garde poet and essayist. life and career
Voronca was of Jewish ethnicity. In his early years, he was connected with Eugen Lovine ...
, recounted that Tzara had explained his chosen name was a pun in
Romanian, ''trist în țară'', meaning "sad in the country"; Colomba Voronca was also dismissing rumors that Tzara had selected ''Tristan'' as a tribute to poet
Tristan Corbière
Tristan Corbière (18 July 1845 – 1 March 1875), born Édouard-Joachim Corbière, was a French poet born in Coat-Congar, Ploujean (now part of Morlaix) in Brittany, where he lived most of his life before dying of tuberculosis at the age of 29 ...
or to
Richard Wagner's ''
Tristan und Isolde
''Tristan und Isolde'' (''Tristan and Isolde''), WWV 90, is an opera in three acts by Richard Wagner to a German libretto by the composer, based largely on the 12th-century romance Tristan and Iseult by Gottfried von Strassburg. It was comp ...
'' opera.
[Cernat, p.110] Samy Rosenstock legally adopted his new name in 1925, after filing a request with Romania's
Ministry of the Interior.
The French pronunciation of his name has become commonplace in Romania, where it replaces its more natural reading as ''țara'' ("the land", ).
[ Andra Matzal]
"România-fantomă o să mai existe în forma unei suferințe psihice" (interview with Andrei Codrescu)
a
Club Literatura
, '' Cotidianul''; retrieved 29 June 2009
Biography
Early life and ''Simbolul'' years
Tzara was born in
Moinești
Moinești (; hu, Mojnest) is a city in Bacău County, Western Moldavia, Romania, with a population of 21,787 . Its name is derived from the Romanian-language word ''moină'', which means "fallow" or "light rain". Moinești once had a large Jewish ...
,
Bacău County
Bacău County () is a county ( județ) of Romania, in Western Moldavia, with its capital city at Bacău. It has one commune, Ghimeș-Făget, in Transylvania.
Geography
This county has a total area of .
In the western part of the county the ...
, in the
historical region
Historical regions (or historical areas) are geographical regions which at some point in time had a cultural, ethnic, linguistic or political basis, regardless of latterday borders. They are used as delimitations for studying and analysing soc ...
of
Western Moldavia. His parents were
Jewish Romanians who reportedly spoke
Yiddish
Yiddish (, or , ''yidish'' or ''idish'', , ; , ''Yidish-Taytsh'', ) is a West Germanic language historically spoken by Ashkenazi Jews. It originated during the 9th century in Central Europe, providing the nascent Ashkenazi community with a ve ...
as their first language; his father Filip and grandfather Ilie were entrepreneurs in the forestry business.
[Livezeanu, pg. 241][ Victor Macarie]
"Inedit: Tristan Tzara"
, in '' Convorbiri Literare'', November 2004. Tzara's mother was Emilia Rosenstock ( Zibalis).
Owing to the
Romanian Kingdom's discrimination laws, the Rosenstocks were not
emancipated, and thus Tzara was not a full citizen of the country until after 1918.
He moved to
Bucharest
Bucharest ( , ; ro, București ) is the capital and largest city of Romania, as well as its cultural, industrial, and financial centre. It is located in the southeast of the country, on the banks of the Dâmbovița River, less than north of ...
at the age of eleven, and attended the Schemitz-Tierin
boarding school.
It is believed that the young Tzara completed his secondary education at a state-run high school, which is identified as the
Saint Sava National College
The Saint Sava National College (Romanian: ''Colegiul Național Sfântul Sava''), Bucharest, named after Sabbas the Sanctified, is the oldest and one of the most prestigious high schools in Romania. It was founded in 1694, under the name of t ...
or as the Sfântul Gheorghe High School. In October 1912, when Tzara was aged sixteen, he joined his friends Vinea and Marcel Janco in editing ''
Simbolul
''Simbolul'' (Romanian for "The Symbol", ) was a Romanian avant-garde literary and art magazine, published in Bucharest between October and December 1912. Co-founded by writers Tristan Tzara and Ion Vinea, together with visual artist Marcel Janco, ...
''. Reputedly, Janco and Vinea provided the funds.
[Cernat, pg. 99] Like Vinea, Tzara was also close to their young colleague
Jacques G. Costin, who was later his self-declared promoter and admirer.
Despite their young age, the three editors were able to attract collaborations from established
Symbolist authors, active within
Romania's own Symbolist movement. Alongside their close friend and mentor
Adrian Maniu
Adrian Maniu (February 6, 1891 – April 20, 1968) was a Romanian poet, prose writer, playwright, essayist, and translator.
Born in Bucharest, his father Grigore, a native of Lugoj, was a jurist and professor of commercial law at the University of ...
(an
Imagist who had been Vinea's tutor), they included
N. Davidescu,
Alfred Hefter-Hidalgo Alfred Hefter (last name also Hefter-Hidalgo) (1892 in Iași – 1957 in Rome) was a Romanian poet, journalist, and writer of Jewish descent. In 1935 he founded the French-language newspaper '' Le Moment'', which was published in Bucharest (besides ...
,
Emil Isac,
Claudia Millian,
Ion Minulescu,
I. M. Rașcu,
Eugeniu Sperantia,
Al. T. Stamatiad,
Eugeniu Ștefănescu-Est, and
Constantin T. Stoika
Constantin T. Stoika (February 14, 1892 – October 23, 1916) was a Romanian poet and prose writer.
Born in Buzău to journalist Titus Stoika and his wife Irena (''née'' Ciorogârleanu), he attended primary school in Piatra Neamț and in the ...
, as well as journalist and lawyer
Poldi Chapier.
[Cernat, pg. 49] In its inaugural issue, the journal even printed a poem by one of the leading figures in Romanian Symbolism,
Alexandru Macedonski
Alexandru Macedonski (; also rendered as Al. A. Macedonski, Macedonschi or Macedonsky; 14 March 1854 – 24 November 1920) was a Romanian poet, novelist, dramatist and literary critic, known especially for having promoted French Symbolism in h ...
.
''Simbolul'' also featured illustrations by Maniu, Millian and
Iosif Iser.
![Tzara, Maxy, Vinea, Costin (1915)](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/ec/Tzara%2C_Maxy%2C_Vinea%2C_Costin_%281915%29.jpg)
Although the magazine ceased print in December 1912, it played an important part in shaping
Romanian literature
Romanian literature () is literature written by Romanian authors, although the term may also be used to refer to all literature written in the Romanian language.
History
The development of the Romanian literature took place in parallel with tha ...
of the period. Literary historian
Paul Cernat sees ''Simbolul'' as a main stage in Romania's
modernism
Modernism is both a philosophy, philosophical and arts movement that arose from broad transformations in Western world, Western society during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The movement reflected a desire for the creation of new fo ...
, and credits it with having brought about the first changes from Symbolism to the radical avant-garde. Also according to Cernat, the collaboration between Samyro, Vinea and Janco was an early instance of literature becoming "an interface between arts", which had for its contemporary equivalent the collaboration between Iser and writers such as
Ion Minulescu and
Tudor Arghezi
Tudor Arghezi (; 21 May 1880 – 14 July 1967) was a Romanian writer, best known for his unique contribution to poetry and children's literature. Born Ion N. Theodorescu in Bucharest, he explained that his pen name was related to ''Argesis'', th ...
. Although Maniu parted with the group and sought a change in style which brought him closer to traditionalist tenets, Tzara, Janco and Vinea continued their collaboration. Between 1913 and 1915, they were frequently vacationing together, either on the
Black Sea
The Black Sea is a marginal mediterranean sea of the Atlantic Ocean lying between Europe and Asia, east of the Balkans, south of the East European Plain, west of the Caucasus, and north of Anatolia. It is bounded by Bulgaria, Georgia, Rom ...
coast or at the Rosenstock family property in
Gârceni,
Vaslui County
Vaslui County () is a county ( județ) of Romania, in the historical region Western Moldavia, with the seat at Vaslui.
Demographics
In 2011, it had a population of 395,499 and the population density was 74/km².
* Romanians - over 98%
* ...
; during this time, Vinea and Samyro wrote poems with similar themes and alluding to one another.
''Chemarea'' and 1915 departure
Tzara's career changed course between 1914 and 1916, during a period when the
Romanian Kingdom kept out of
World War I
World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fightin ...
. In autumn 1915, as founder and editor of the short-lived journal ''Chemarea'', Vinea published two poems by his friend, the first printed works to bear the signature ''Tristan Tzara''. At the time, the young poet and many of his friends were adherents of an
anti-war and anti-
nationalist
Nationalism is an idea and movement that holds that the nation should be congruent with the state. As a movement, nationalism tends to promote the interests of a particular nation (as in a group of people), Smith, Anthony. ''Nationalism: Th ...
current, which progressively accommodated
anti-establishment
An anti-establishment view or belief is one which stands in opposition to the conventional social, political, and economic principles of a society. The term was first used in the modern sense in 1958, by the British magazine ''New Statesman'' ...
messages. ''Chemarea'', which was a platform for this agenda and again attracted collaborations from Chapier, may also have been financed by Tzara and Vinea.
According to Romanian avant-garde writer
Claude Sernet, the journal was "totally different from everything that had been printed in Romania before that moment." During the period, Tzara's works were sporadically published in Hefter-Hidalgo's ''
Versuri și Proză'', and, in June 1915,
Constantin Rădulescu-Motru's ''Noua Revistă Română'' published Samyro's known poem ''Verișoară, fată de pension'' ("Little Cousin, Boarding School Girl").
Tzara had enrolled at the
University of Bucharest
The University of Bucharest ( ro, Universitatea din București), commonly known after its abbreviation UB in Romania, is a public university founded in its current form on by a decree of Prince Alexandru Ioan Cuza to convert the former Princel ...
in 1914, studying mathematics and philosophy, but did not graduate.
["Tristan Tzara"]
, biographical note i
''Cronologia della letteratura rumena moderna (1780–1914)'' database
at the University of Florence
The University of Florence (Italian: ''Università degli Studi di Firenze'', UniFI) is an Italian public research university located in Florence, Italy. It comprises 12 schools and has around 50,000 students enrolled.
History
The first universi ...
's Department of Neo-Latin Languages and Literatures; retrieved 23 April 2008. In autumn 1915, he left Romania for Zürich, in neutral Switzerland. Janco, together with his brother Jules Janco, had settled there a few months before, and was later joined by his other brother, Georges Janco. Tzara, who may have applied to the Faculty of Philosophy at the
local university
Local colleges and universities (LCUs) are higher educational institutions that are being run by local government units in the Philippines.
A local government unit (LGU) maybe a barangay, a municipality, city, or a province that puts up a post-se ...
,
[Marta Ragozzino, "Tristan Tzara", in ''Art e Dossier'', March 1994, Giunti, pg. 48] shared lodging with Marcel Janco, who was a student at the ''
Technische Hochschule
A ''Technische Hochschule'' (, plural: ''Technische Hochschulen'', abbreviated ''TH'') is a type of university focusing on engineering sciences in Germany. Previously, it also existed in Austria, Switzerland, the Netherlands (), and Finland (, ). ...
'', in the Altinger Guest House (by 1918, Tzara had moved to the Limmatquai Hotel). His departure from Romania, like that of the Janco brothers, may have been in part a
pacifist political statement. After settling in Switzerland, the young poet almost completely discarded Romanian as his language of expression, writing most of his subsequent works in French.
The poems he had written before, which were the result of poetic dialogues between him and his friend, were left in Vinea's care.
[Cernat, pg. 116] Most of these pieces were first printed only in the
interwar period.
It was in Zürich that the Romanian group met with the
German Hugo Ball, an
anarchist poet and pianist, and his young wife
Emmy Hennings
Emmy Hennings (born Emma Maria Cordsen, 17 January 1885 – 10 August 1948) was a poet and performing artist, founder of the Dadaist Cabaret Voltaire with her second husband Hugo Ball.
Life and work
Hennings was born on 17 January 1885 in ...
, a
music hall performer. In February 1916, Ball had rented the
Cabaret Voltaire from its owner, Jan Ephraim, and intended to use the venue for
performance art
Performance art is an artwork or art exhibition created through actions executed by the artist or other participants. It may be witnessed live or through documentation, spontaneously developed or written, and is traditionally presented to a pu ...
and exhibits. Hugo Ball recorded this period, noting that Tzara and Marcel Janco, like
Hans Arp,
Arthur Segal,
Otto van Rees, and
Max Oppenheimer "readily agreed to take part in the cabaret".
[Cernat, pg. 111; Richter, pg. 14] According to Ball, among the performances of songs mimicking or taking inspiration from various national
folklore
Folklore is shared by a particular group of people; it encompasses the traditions common to that culture, subculture or group. This includes oral traditions such as tales, legends, proverbs and jokes. They include material culture, ranging ...
s, "Herr Tristan Tzara recited Rumanian poetry." In late March, Ball recounted, the group was joined by German writer and drummer
Richard Huelsenbeck
Carl Wilhelm Richard Hülsenbeck (aka Charles R. Hulbeck) (23 April 189220 April 1974) was a German writer, poet, and psychoanalyst born in Frankenau, Hessen-Nassau who was associated with the formation of the Dada movement.
Life and work
Huel ...
.
He was soon after involved in Tzara's "simultaneist verse" performance, "the first in Zürich and in the world", also including renditions of poems by two promoters of
Cubism,
Fernand Divoire and
Henri Barzun.
Birth of Dada
![Placa en Cabaret Voltaire retouched](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/fa/Placa_en_Cabaret_Voltaire_retouched.jpg)
It was in this milieu that
Dada
Dada () or Dadaism was an art movement of the European avant-garde in the early 20th century, with early centres in Zürich, Switzerland, at the Cabaret Voltaire (in 1916). New York Dada began c. 1915, and after 1920 Dada flourished in Pari ...
was born, at some point before May 1916, when a publication of the same name first saw print. The story of its establishment was the subject of a disagreement between Tzara and his fellow writers. Cernat believes that the first Dadaist performance took place as early as February, when the nineteen-year-old Tzara, wearing a
monocle
A monocle is a type of corrective lens used to correct or enhance the visual perception in only one eye. It consists of a circular lens, generally with a wire ring around the circumference that can be attached to a string or wire. The other ...
, entered the Cabaret Voltaire stage singing sentimental melodies and handing paper wads to his "scandalized spectators", leaving the stage to allow room for masked actors on
stilts
Stilts are poles, posts or pillars that allow a person or structure to stand at a height above the ground.
In flood plains, and on beaches or unstable ground, buildings are often constructed on stilts to protect them from damage by water, wav ...
, and returning in clown attire.
[Cernat, pg. 112] The same type of performances took place at the
Zunfthaus zur Waag beginning in summer 1916, after the Cabaret Voltaire was forced to close down.
According to music historian Bernard Gendron, for as long as it lasted, "the Cabaret Voltaire was dada. There was no alternative institution or site that could disentangle 'pure' dada from its mere accompaniment
..nor was any such site desired." Other opinions link Dada's beginnings with much earlier events, including the experiments of
Alfred Jarry,
André Gide
André Paul Guillaume Gide (; 22 November 1869 – 19 February 1951) was a French author and winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature (in 1947). Gide's career ranged from its beginnings in the symbolist movement, to the advent of anticolonialism ...
,
Christian Morgenstern
Christian Otto Josef Wolfgang Morgenstern (6 May 1871 – 31 March 1914) was a German author and poet from Munich. Morgenstern married Margareta Gosebruch von Liechtenstern on 7 March 1910. He worked for a while as a journalist in Berlin ...
,
Jean-Pierre Brisset,
Guillaume Apollinaire
Guillaume Apollinaire) of the Wąż coat of arms. (; 26 August 1880 – 9 November 1918) was a French poet, playwright, short story writer, novelist, and art critic of Polish descent.
Apollinaire is considered one of the foremost poets of t ...
,
Jacques Vaché,
Marcel Duchamp
Henri-Robert-Marcel Duchamp (, , ; 28 July 1887 – 2 October 1968) was a French painter, sculptor, chess player, and writer whose work is associated with Cubism, Dada, and conceptual art. Duchamp is commonly regarded, along with Pablo Picasso ...
, and
Francis Picabia.
In the first of the movement's manifestos, Ball wrote: ''"
he bookletis intended to present to the Public the activities and interests of the Cabaret Voltaire, which has as its sole purpose to draw attention, across the barriers of war and nationalism, to the few independent spirits who live for other ideals. The next objective of the artists who are assembled here is to publish a ''revue internationale''
rench for 'international magazine'"''
[Richter, pg. 14] Ball completed his message in French, and the paragraph translates as: "The magazine shall be published in Zürich and shall carry the name 'Dada' ('Dada'). Dada Dada Dada Dada."
The view according to which Ball had created the movement was notably supported by writer
Walter Serner, who directly accused Tzara of having abused Ball's initiative.
[Richter, pg. 123]
A secondary point of contention between the founders of Dada regarded the paternity for the movement's name, which, according to visual artist and essayist
Hans Richter, was first adopted in print in June 1916.
[Richter, pg. 32] Ball, who claimed authorship and stated that he picked the word randomly from a dictionary, indicated that it stood for both the French-language equivalent of "
hobby horse
The term "hobby horse" is used, principally by folklorists, to refer to the costumed characters that feature in some traditional seasonal customs, processions and similar observances around the world. They are particularly associated with May Da ...
" and a
German-language
German ( ) is a West Germanic language mainly spoken in Central Europe. It is the most widely spoken and official or co-official language in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Liechtenstein, and the Italian province of South Tyrol. It is also a ...
term reflecting the joy of children being rocked to sleep. Tzara himself declined interest in the matter, but Marcel Janco credited him with having coined the term. Dada manifestos, written or co-authored by Tzara, record that the name shares its form with various other terms, including a word used in the
Kru languages
The Kru languages are spoken by the Kru people from the southeast of Liberia to the west of Ivory Coast.
Classification
According to Güldemann (2018), Kru lacks sufficient lexical resemblances and noun class resemblances to conclude a relati ...
of
West Africa
West Africa or Western Africa is the westernmost region of Africa. The United Nations defines Western Africa as the 16 countries of Benin, Burkina Faso, Cape Verde, The Gambia, Ghana, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Ivory Coast, Liberia, Mali, M ...
to designate the tail of a sacred cow; a toy and the name for "mother" in an unspecified
Italian dialect; and the double affirmative in Romanian and in various
Slavic languages
The Slavic languages, also known as the Slavonic languages, are Indo-European languages spoken primarily by the Slavic peoples and their descendants. They are thought to descend from a proto-language called Proto-Slavic, spoken during the ...
.
Dadaist promoter
Before the end of the war, Tzara had assumed a position as Dada's main promoter and manager, helping the Swiss group establish branches in other European countries.
This period also saw the first conflict within the group: citing irreconcilable differences with Tzara, Ball left the group. With his departure, Gendron argues, Tzara was able to move Dada
vaudeville
Vaudeville (; ) is a theatrical genre of variety entertainment born in France at the end of the 19th century. A vaudeville was originally a comedy without psychological or moral intentions, based on a comical situation: a dramatic composition ...
-like performances into more of "an incendiary and yet jocularly provocative theater."
[Gendron, pg. 77]
He is often credited with having inspired many young modernist authors from outside Switzerland to affiliate with the group, in particular the Frenchmen
Louis Aragon,
André Breton,
Paul Éluard,
Georges Ribemont-Dessaignes and
Philippe Soupault
Philippe Soupault (2 August 1897 – 12 March 1990) was a French writer and poet, novelist, critic, and political activist. He was active in Dadaism and later was instrumental in founding the Surrealist movement with André Breton. Soupault in ...
.
[Richter, pg. 33] Richter, who also came into contact with Dada at this stage in its history, notes that these intellectuals often had a "very cool and distant attitude to this new movement" before being approached by the Romanian author.
In June 1916, he began editing and managing the periodical ''Dada'' as a successor of the short-lived magazine ''Cabaret Voltaire''—Richter describes his "energy, passion and talent for the job", which he claims satisfied all Dadaists. He was at the time the lover of
Maja Kruscek, who was a student of
Rudolf Laban
Rudolf von Laban, also known as Rudolf Laban (German; also ''Rudolph von Laban'', hu, Lábán Rezső János Attila, Lábán Rudolf; 15 December 1879 – 1 July 1958), was an Austro-Hungarian, German and British dance artist, choreographer and ...
; in Richter's account, their relationship was always tottering.
As early as 1916, Tristan Tzara took distance from the Italian
Futurists, rejecting the
militarist
Militarism is the belief or the desire of a government or a people that a state should maintain a strong military capability and to use it aggressively to expand national interests and/or values. It may also imply the glorification of the mil ...
and proto-
fascist stance of their leader
Filippo Tommaso Marinetti
Filippo Tommaso Emilio Marinetti (; 22 December 1876 – 2 December 1944) was an Italian poet, editor, art theorist, and founder of the Futurist movement. He was associated with the utopian and Symbolist artistic and literary community Abbaye d ...
. Richter notes that, by then, Dada had replaced Futurism as the leader of modernism, while continuing to build on its influence: "we had swallowed Futurism—bones, feathers and all. It is true that in the process of digestion all sorts of bones and feathers had been regurgitated."
Despite this and the fact that Dada did not make any gains in Italy, Tzara could count poets
Giuseppe Ungaretti and
Alberto Savinio, painters
Gino Cantarelli and
Aldo Fiozzi, as well as a few other Italian Futurists, among the Dadaists. Among the Italian authors supporting Dadaist manifestos and rallying with the Dada group was the poet, painter and in the future a fascist racial theorist
Julius Evola, who became a personal friend of Tzara.
[S. Batchelor, "Existence, Enlightenment and Suicide: The Dilemma of Nanavira Thera", in Tadeusz Skorupski (ed.), ''The Buddhist Forum'', Vol. IV (Seminar Papers 1994–1996), ]Routledge
Routledge () is a British multinational publisher. It was founded in 1836 by George Routledge, and specialises in providing academic books, journals and online resources in the fields of the humanities, behavioural science, education, law ...
, London, 1996, pp. 11-13;
The next year, Tzara and Ball opened the ''Galerie Dada'' permanent exhibit, through which they set contacts with the independent Italian visual artist
Giorgio de Chirico and with the German
Expressionist journal ''
Der Sturm'', all of whom were described as "fathers of Dada". During the same months, and probably owing to Tzara's intervention, the Dada group organized a performance of ''Sphinx and Strawman'', a puppet play by the
Austro-Hungarian Expressionist
Oskar Kokoschka
Oskar Kokoschka (1 March 1886 – 22 February 1980) was an Austrian artist, poet, playwright, and teacher best known for his intense expressionistic portraits and landscapes, as well as his theories on vision that influenced the Viennese Expres ...
, whom he advertised as an example of "Dada theater". He was also in touch with ''
Nord-Sud'', the magazine of French poet
Pierre Reverdy (who sought to unify all avant-garde trends),
and contributed articles on
African art
African art describes the modern and historical paintings, sculptures, installations, and other visual culture from native or indigenous Ethnic groups of Africa, Africans and the African continent. The definition may also include the art of the ...
to both ''Nord-Sud'' and
Pierre Albert-Birot's ''SIC'' magazine.
[Richter, pg. 167] In early 1918, through Huelsenbeck, Zürich Dadaists established contacts with their more explicitly
left-wing
Left-wing politics describes the range of political ideologies that support and seek to achieve social equality and egalitarianism, often in opposition to social hierarchy. Left-wing politics typically involve a concern for those in soci ...
disciples in the German Empire —
George Grosz,
John Heartfield
John Heartfield (born Helmut Herzfeld; 19 June 1891 – 26 April 1968) was a 20th century German visual artist who pioneered the use of art as a political weapon. Some of his most famous photomontages were anti-Nazi and anti-fascist statements. ...
,
Johannes Baader,
Kurt Schwitters,
Walter Mehring,
Raoul Hausmann
Raoul Hausmann (July 12, 1886 – February 1, 1971) was an Austrian artist and writer. One of the key figures in Berlin Dada, his experimental photographic collages, sound poetry, and institutional critiques would have a profound influence on ...
,
Carl Einstein,
Franz Jung, and Heartfield's brother
Wieland Herzfelde
Wieland Herzfelde ( Herzfeld; 11 April 1896 – 23 November 1988) was a German publisher and writer. He is particularly known for his links with German avant-garde art and Marxist thought, and was the brother of the photo montage artist John H ...
. With Breton, Soupault and Aragon, Tzara traveled
Cologne
Cologne ( ; german: Köln ; ksh, Kölle ) is the largest city of the German western state of North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW) and the fourth-most populous city of Germany with 1.1 million inhabitants in the city proper and 3.6 millio ...
, where he became familiarized with the elaborate
collage works of Schwitters and
Max Ernst
Max Ernst (2 April 1891 – 1 April 1976) was a German (naturalised American in 1948 and French in 1958) painter, sculptor, printmaker, graphic artist, and poet. A prolific artist, Ernst was a primary pioneer of the Dada movement and Surrealis ...
, which he showed to his colleagues in Switzerland. Huelsenbeck nonetheless declined to Schwitters membership in Berlin Dada.
As a result of his campaigning, Tzara created a list of so-called "Dada presidents", who represented various regions of Europe. According to Hans Richter, it included, alongside Tzara, figures ranging from Ernst, Arp, Baader, Breton and Aragon to Kruscek, Evola,
Rafael Lasso de la Vega,
Igor Stravinsky,
Vicente Huidobro
Vicente García-Huidobro Fernández (; January 10, 1893 – January 2, 1948) was a Chilean poet born to an aristocratic family. He promoted the avant-garde literary movement in Chile and was the creator and greatest exponent of the literary m ...
,
Francesco Meriano and
Théodore Fraenkel. Richter notes: "I'm not sure if all the names who appear here would agree with the description."
End of World War I
The shows Tzara staged in Zürich often turned into scandals or riots, and he was in permanent conflict with the
Swiss law enforcers. Hans Richter speaks of a "pleasure of letting fly at the
bourgeois, which in Tristan Tzara took the form of coldly (or hotly) calculated insolence" (''see
Épater la bourgeoisie''). In one instance, as part of a series of events in which Dadaists mocked established authors, Tzara and Arp falsely publicized that they were going to fight a
duel in Rehalp, near Zürich, and that they were going to have the popular novelist
Jakob Christoph Heer for their witness. Richter also reports that his Romanian colleague profited from Swiss neutrality to play the
Allies and
Central Powers
The Central Powers, also known as the Central Empires,german: Mittelmächte; hu, Központi hatalmak; tr, İttifak Devletleri / ; bg, Централни сили, translit=Tsentralni sili was one of the two main coalitions that fought in ...
against each other, obtaining art works and funds from both, making use of their need to stimulate their respective
propaganda efforts. While active as a promoter, Tzara also published his first volume of collected poetry, the 1918 ''Vingt-cinq poèmes'' ("Twenty-five Poems").
[Cardinal, pg. 530]
A major event took place in autumn 1918, when
Francis Picabia, who was then publisher of ''
391'' magazine and a distant Dada affiliate, visited Zürich and introduced his colleagues there to his
nihilistic views on art and reason. In the
United States
The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territori ...
, Picabia,
Man Ray
Man Ray (born Emmanuel Radnitzky; August 27, 1890 – November 18, 1976) was an American visual artist who spent most of his career in Paris. He was a significant contributor to the Dada and Surrealist movements, although his ties to eac ...
and
Marcel Duchamp
Henri-Robert-Marcel Duchamp (, , ; 28 July 1887 – 2 October 1968) was a French painter, sculptor, chess player, and writer whose work is associated with Cubism, Dada, and conceptual art. Duchamp is commonly regarded, along with Pablo Picasso ...
had earlier set up their own version of Dada. This circle, based in New York City, sought affiliation with Tzara's only in 1921, when they jokingly asked him to grant them permission to use "Dada" as their own name (to which Tzara replied: "Dada belongs to everybody"). The visit was credited by Richter with boosting the Romanian author's status, but also with making Tzara himself "switch suddenly from a position of balance between art and
anti-art
Anti-art is a loosely used term applied to an array of concepts and attitudes that reject prior definitions of art and question art in general. Somewhat paradoxically, anti-art tends to conduct this questioning and rejection from the vantage poi ...
into the
stratospheric regions of pure and joyful nothingness." The movement subsequently organized its last major Swiss show, held at the Saal zur Kaufleutern, with choreography by
Susanne Perrottet
Susanne may refer to:
*Susanne (given name), a feminine given name (including a list of people with the name)
*, later USS ''SP-411'', a United States Navy patrol boat in commission from 1917 to 1919
*, the proposed name and designation for a vess ...
,
Sophie Taeuber-Arp
Sophie Henriette Gertrud Taeuber-Arp (; 19 January 1889 – 13 January 1943) was a Swiss artist, painter, sculptor, textile designer, furniture and interior designer, architect, and dancer.
Born in 1889 in Davos, and raised in Trogen, Switzerlan ...
, and with the participation of
Käthe Wulff,
Hans Heusser, Tzara, Hans Richter and
Walter Serner. It was there that Serner read from his 1918 essay, whose very title advocated ''Letzte Lockerung'' ("Final Dissolution"): this part is believed to have caused the subsequent mêlée, during which the public attacked the performers and succeeded in interrupting, but not canceling, the show.
Following the November 1918
Armistice with Germany
The Armistice of 11 November 1918 was the armistice signed at Le Francport near Compiègne that ended fighting on land, sea, and air in World War I between the Entente and their last remaining opponent, Germany. Previous armistices ...
, Dada's evolution was marked by political developments. In October 1919, Tzara, Arp and
Otto Flake
Otto Flake (29 October 1880, Metz – 10 November 1963) was a German writer.
Early life
Flake was born on 29 October 1880 in Metz. He attended high school in Colmar and studied German philology, philosophy and art history at the University of St ...
began publishing ''
Der Zeltweg'', a journal aimed at further popularizing Dada in a post-war world were the borders were again accessible.
[Richter, pg. 80.] Richter, who admits that the magazine was "rather tame", also notes that Tzara and his colleagues were dealing with the impact of
communist revolution
A communist revolution is a proletarian revolution often, but not necessarily, inspired by the ideas of Marxism that aims to replace capitalism with communism. Depending on the type of government, socialism can be used as an intermediate stag ...
s, in particular the
October Revolution
The October Revolution,. officially known as the Great October Socialist Revolution. in the Soviet Union, also known as the Bolshevik Revolution, was a revolution in Russia led by the Bolshevik Party of Vladimir Lenin that was a key mome ...
and the
German revolts of 1918, which "had stirred men's minds, divided men's interests and diverted energies in the direction of political change."
The same commentator, however, dismisses those accounts which, he believes, led readers to believe that ''Der Zeltweg'' was "an association of revolutionary artists."
According to one account rendered by historian Robert Levy, Tzara shared company with a group of Romanian
communist students, and, as such, may have met with
Ana Pauker
Ana Pauker (born Hannah Rabinsohn; 13 February 1893 – 3 June 1960) was a Romanian communist leader and served as the country's foreign minister in the late 1940s and early 1950s. Ana Pauker became the world's first female foreign minister whe ...
, who was later one of the
Romanian Communist Party's most prominent activists.
Arp and Janco drifted away from the movement ca. 1919, when they created the
Constructivist-inspired workshop ''
Das Neue Leben
Das or DAS may refer to:
Organizations
* Dame Allan's Schools, Fenham, Newcastle upon Tyne, England
* Danish Aviation Systems, a supplier and developer of unmanned aerial vehicles
* Departamento Administrativo de Seguridad, a former Colombian ...
''.
[Cernat, pg. 115] In Romania, Dada was awarded an ambiguous reception from Tzara's former associate Vinea. Although he was sympathetic to its goals, treasured Hugo Ball and Hennings and promised to adapt his own writings to its requirements, Vinea cautioned Tzara and the Jancos in favor of lucidity. When Vinea submitted his poem ''Doleanțe'' ("Grievances") to be published by Tzara and his associates, he was turned down, an incident which critics attribute to a contrast between the reserved tone of the piece and the revolutionary tenets of Dada.
Paris Dada
![Tristan Tzara lisant L'Action Française](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/18/Tristan_Tzara_lisant_L%27Action_Fran%C3%A7aise.jpg)
In late 1919, Tristan Tzara left Switzerland to join Breton, Soupault and
Claude Rivière in editing the Paris-based magazine ''
Littérature''.
Already a mentor for the French avant-garde, he was, according to Hans Richter, perceived as an "Anti-
Messiah
In Abrahamic religions, a messiah or messias (; ,
; ,
; ) is a saviour or liberator of a group of people. The concepts of '' mashiach'', messianism, and of a Messianic Age originated in Judaism, and in the Hebrew Bible, in which a ''mashiach ...
" and a "prophet".
[Richter, pg. 168] Reportedly, Dada mythology had it that he entered the French capital in a snow-white or lilac-colored car, passing down
Boulevard Raspail through a
triumphal arch
A triumphal arch is a free-standing monumental structure in the shape of an archway with one or more arched passageways, often designed to span a road. In its simplest form a triumphal arch consists of two massive piers connected by an arch, cro ...
made from his own pamphlets, being greeted by cheering crowds and a fireworks display.
Richter dismisses this account, indicating that Tzara actually walked from
Gare de l'Est to Picabia's home, without anyone expecting him to arrive.
He is often described as the main figure in the ''Littérature'' circle, and credited with having more firmly set its artistic principles in the line of Dada.
When Picabia began publishing a new series of ''391'' in Paris, Tzara seconded him and, Richter says, produced issues of the magazine "decked out
..in all the colors of Dada."
He was also issuing his ''Dada'' magazine, printed in Paris but using the same format, renaming it ''Bulletin Dada'' and later ''Dadaphone''. At around that time, he met American author
Gertrude Stein
Gertrude Stein (February 3, 1874 – July 27, 1946) was an American novelist, poet, playwright, and art collector. Born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, in the Allegheny West neighborhood and raised in Oakland, California, Stein moved to Paris ...
, who wrote about him in ''
The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas'', and the artist couple
Robert
The name Robert is an ancient Germanic given name, from Proto-Germanic "fame" and "bright" (''Hrōþiberhtaz''). Compare Old Dutch ''Robrecht'' and Old High German ''Hrodebert'' (a compound of '' Hruod'' ( non, Hróðr) "fame, glory, honou ...
and
Sonia Delaunay
Sonia Delaunay (13 November 1885 – 5 December 1979) was a French artist, who spent most of her working life in Paris. She was born in Odessa (then part of Russian Empire), and formally trained in Russian Empire and Germany before moving to Fr ...
(with whom he worked in tandem for "poem-dresses" and other simultaneist literary pieces).
[Tag Gronberg, "Sonia Delaunay's Simultaneous Fashions and the Modern Woman", in Whitney Chadwick, Tirza True Latimer (eds.), ''The Modern Woman Revisited: Paris between the Wars'', Rutgers University Press, Piscataway, pp. 114-115; ]
Tzara became involved in a number of Dada experiments, on which he collaborated with Breton, Aragon, Soupault, Picabia or
Paul Éluard.
["Tristan Tzara 1896–1963"](_blank)
in Susan Salas, Laura Wisner-Broyles, ''Poetry Criticism'', Vol. 27, Gale Group Inc., 2000
eNotes.com
retrieved 23 April 2008 Other authors who came into contact with Dada at that stage were
Jean Cocteau
Jean Maurice Eugène Clément Cocteau (, , ; 5 July 1889 – 11 October 1963) was a French poet, playwright, novelist, designer, filmmaker, visual artist and critic. He was one of the foremost creatives of the s ...
,
Paul Dermée
Paul Dermée (1886–1951) was a Belgian writer, poet, literary critique. Born Camille Janssen in Liège, Belgium in 1886, he died in Paris in 1951.
He knew the painters Picasso, Juan Gris, Sonia and Robert Delaunay and the poets Valéry Larbaud ...
and
Raymond Radiguet. The performances staged by Dada were often meant to popularize its principles, and Dada continued to draw attention on itself by
hoaxes and
false advertising, announcing that the
Hollywood film star
Charlie Chaplin was going to appear on stage at its show,
or that its members were going to have their heads shaved or their hair cut off on stage. In another instance, Tzara and his associates lectured at the ''
Université populaire'' in front of industrial workers, who were reportedly less than impressed.
[Richter, pp. 175-176] Richter believes that, ideologically, Tzara was still in tribute to Picabia's nihilistic and anarchic views (which made the Dadaists attack all political and cultural ideologies), but that this also implied a measure of sympathy for the
working class
The working class (or labouring class) comprises those engaged in manual-labour occupations or industrial work, who are remunerated via waged or salaried contracts. Working-class occupations (see also " Designation of workers by collar colo ...
.
Dada activities in Paris culminated in the March 1920
variety show
Variety show, also known as variety arts or variety entertainment, is entertainment made up of a variety of acts including musical performances, sketch comedy, magic, acrobatics, juggling, and ventriloquism. It is normally introduced by a comp ...
at the
Théâtre de l'Œuvre, which featured readings from Breton, Picabia, Dermée and Tzara's earlier work, ''La Première aventure céleste de M. Antipyrine'' ("The First Heavenly Adventure of Mr. Antipyrine"). Tzara's melody, ''Vaseline symphonique'' ("Symphonic Vaseline"), which required ten or twenty people to shout "cra" and "cri" on a rising scale, was also performed. A scandal erupted when Breton read Picabia's ''Manifeste cannibale'' ("Cannibal Manifesto"), lashing out at the audience and mocking them, to which they answered by aiming rotten fruit at the stage.
The Dada phenomenon was only noticed in Romania beginning in 1920, and its overall reception was negative. Traditionalist historian
Nicolae Iorga
Nicolae Iorga (; sometimes Neculai Iorga, Nicolas Jorga, Nicolai Jorga or Nicola Jorga, born Nicu N. Iorga;Iova, p. xxvii. 17 January 1871 – 27 November 1940) was a Romanian historian, politician, literary critic, memoirist, Albanologist, poet ...
, Symbolist promoter
Ovid Densusianu
Ovid Densusianu (; also known under his pen name Ervin; 29 December 1873, Făgăraș – 9 June 1938, Bucharest) was a Romanian poet, philologist, linguist, folklorist, literary historian and critic, chief of a poetry school, university professor ...
, the more reserved modernists
Camil Petrescu
Camil Petrescu (; 9/21 April 1894 – 14 May 1957) was a Romanian playwright, novelist, philosopher and poet. He marked the end of the traditional novel era and laid the foundation of the modern novel era in Romania.
Life
Petrescu was born in Bu ...
and
Benjamin Fondane
Benjamin Fondane () or Benjamin Fundoianu (; born Benjamin Wechsler, Wexler or Vecsler, first name also Beniamin or Barbu, usually abridged to B.; November 14, 1898 – October 2, 1944) was a Romanian and France, French poet, critic and Existentia ...
all refused to accept it as a valid artistic manifestation. Although he rallied with tradition, Vinea defended the subversive current in front of more serious criticism, and rejected the widespread rumor that Tzara had acted as an
agent of influence for the
Central Powers
The Central Powers, also known as the Central Empires,german: Mittelmächte; hu, Központi hatalmak; tr, İttifak Devletleri / ; bg, Централни сили, translit=Tsentralni sili was one of the two main coalitions that fought in ...
during the war.
Eugen Lovinescu, editor of ''
Sburătorul'' and one of Vinea's rivals on the modernist scene, acknowledged the influence exercised by Tzara on the younger avant-garde authors, but analyzed his work only briefly, using as an example one of his pre-Dada poems, and depicting him as an advocate of literary "extremism".
Dada stagnation
![St-Julien-le-Pauvre & houses](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/33/St-Julien-le-Pauvre_%26_houses.jpg)
By 1921, Tzara had become involved in conflicts with other figures in the movement, whom he claimed had parted with the spirit of Dada. He was targeted by the Berlin-based Dadaists, in particular by Huelsenbeck and Serner, the former of whom was also involved in a conflict with
Raoul Hausmann
Raoul Hausmann (July 12, 1886 – February 1, 1971) was an Austrian artist and writer. One of the key figures in Berlin Dada, his experimental photographic collages, sound poetry, and institutional critiques would have a profound influence on ...
over leadership status.
According to Richter, tensions between Breton and Tzara had surfaced in 1920, when Breton first made known his wish to do away with musical performances altogether and alleged that the Romanian was merely repeating himself. The Dada shows themselves were by then such common occurrences that audiences expected to be insulted by the performers.
A more serious crisis occurred in May, when Dada organized a mock trial of
Maurice Barrès, whose early affiliation with the Symbolists had been shadowed by his
antisemitism
Antisemitism (also spelled anti-semitism or anti-Semitism) is hostility to, prejudice towards, or discrimination against Jews. A person who holds such positions is called an antisemite. Antisemitism is considered to be a form of racism.
Antis ...
and
reactionary stance:
Georges Ribemont-Dessaignes was the prosecutor, Aragon and Soupault the defense attorneys, with Tzara, Ungaretti,
Benjamin Péret and others as witnesses (a
mannequin stood in for Barrès). Péret immediately upset Picabia and Tzara by refusing to make the trial an absurd one, and by introducing a political subtext with which Breton nevertheless agreed. In June, Tzara and Picabia clashed with each other, after Tzara expressed an opinion that his former mentor was becoming too radical. During the same season, Breton, Arp, Ernst,
Maja Kruschek and Tzara were in Austria, at
Imst, where they published their last manifesto as a group, ''Dada au grand air'' ("Dada in the Open Air") or ''Der Sängerkrieg in Tirol'' ("The Battle of the Singers in
Tyrol
Tyrol (; historically the Tyrole; de-AT, Tirol ; it, Tirolo) is a historical region in the Alps - in Northern Italy and western Austria. The area was historically the core of the County of Tyrol, part of the Holy Roman Empire, Austrian Emp ...
"). Tzara also visited
Czechoslovakia
, rue, Чеськословеньско, , yi, טשעכאסלאוואקיי,
, common_name = Czechoslovakia
, life_span = 1918–19391945–1992
, p1 = Austria-Hungary
, image_p1 ...
, where he reportedly hoped to gain adherents to his cause.
Also in 1921, Ion Vinea wrote an article for the Romanian newspaper ''
Adevărul'', arguing that the movement had exhausted itself (although, in his letters to Tzara, he continued to ask his friend to return home and spread his message there). After July 1922, Marcel Janco rallied with Vinea in editing ''
Contimporanul
''Contimporanul'' (antiquated spelling of the Romanian language, Romanian word for "the Contemporary", singular masculine form) was a Romanian (initially a weekly and later a monthly) avant-garde Literary magazine, literary and art magazine, publi ...
'', which published some of Tzara's earliest poems but never offered space to any Dadaist manifesto. Reportedly, the conflict between Tzara and Janco had a personal note: Janco later mentioned "some dramatic quarrels" between his colleague and him. They avoided each other for the rest of their lives and Tzara even struck out the dedications to Janco from his early poems.
Julius Evola also grew disappointed by the movement's total rejection of tradition and began his personal search for an alternative, pursuing a path which later led him to
esotericism
Western esotericism, also known as esotericism, esoterism, and sometimes the Western mystery tradition, is a term scholars use to categorise a wide range of loosely related ideas and movements that developed within Western society. These ideas ...
and fascism.
''Evening of the Bearded Heart''
![Theo van Doesburg kleine Dada soirée](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b1/Theo_van_Doesburg_kleine_Dada_soir%C3%A9e.jpg)
Tzara was openly attacked by Breton in a February 1922 article for ''
Le Journal de Peuple'', where the Romanian writer was denounced as "an impostor" avid for "publicity". In March, Breton initiated the ''Congress for the Determination and Defense of the Modern Spirit''. The French writer used the occasion to strike out Tzara's name from among the Dadaists, citing in his support Dada's Huelsenbeck, Serner, and
Christian Schad
Christian Schad (21 August 189425 February 1982) was a German painter and photographer. He was associated with the Dada and the New Objectivity movements. Considered as a group, Schad's portraits form an extraordinary record of life in Vienna a ...
.
[Cernat, p.114] Basing his statement on a note supposedly authored by Huelsenbeck, Breton also accused Tzara of opportunism, claiming that he had planned wartime editions of Dada works in such a manner as not to upset actors on the political stage, making sure that German Dadaists were not made available to the public in countries subject to the
Supreme War Council.
Tzara, who attended the Congress only as a means to subvert it, responded to the accusations the same month, arguing that Huelsenbeck's note was fabricated and that Schad had not been one of the original Dadaists.
Rumors reported much later by American writer
Brion Gysin had it that Breton's claims also depicted Tzara as an informer for the
Prefecture of Police.
[ Nicholas Zurbrugg, "Brion Gysin", in ''Art, Performance, Media: 31 Interviews'', ]University of Minnesota Press
The University of Minnesota Press is a university press that is part of the University of Minnesota. It had annual revenues of just over $8 million in fiscal year 2018.
Founded in 1925, the University of Minnesota Press is best known for its boo ...
, Minneapolis, p.190.
In May 1922, Dada staged its own funeral.
[Londré, p.398; Richter, p.191] According to Hans Richter, the main part of this took place in
Weimar
Weimar is a city in the state of Thuringia, Germany. It is located in Central Germany between Erfurt in the west and Jena in the east, approximately southwest of Leipzig, north of Nuremberg and west of Dresden. Together with the neighbouri ...
, where the Dadaists attended a festival of the
Bauhaus
The Staatliches Bauhaus (), commonly known as the Bauhaus (), was a German art school operational from 1919 to 1933 that combined crafts and the fine arts.Oxford Dictionary of Art and Artists (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 4th edn., 20 ...
art school, during which Tzara proclaimed the elusive nature of his art: "Dada is useless, like everything else in life.
..Dada is a virgin microbe which penetrates with the insistence of air into all those spaces that reason has failed to fill with words and conventions."
In "The Bearded Heart" manifesto a number of artists backed the marginalization of Breton in support of Tzara. Alongside Cocteau, Arp, Ribemont-Dessaignes, and Éluard, the pro-Tzara faction included
Erik Satie,
Theo van Doesburg
Theo van Doesburg (, 30 August 1883 – 7 March 1931) was a Dutch artist, who practiced painting, writing, poetry and architecture. He is best known as the founder and leader of De Stijl. He was married to artist, pianist and choreographer Nell ...
,
Serge Charchoune,
Louis-Ferdinand Céline
Louis Ferdinand Auguste Destouches (27 May 1894 – 1 July 1961), better known by the pen name Louis-Ferdinand Céline ( , ) was a French novelist, polemicist and physician. His first novel ''Journey to the End of the Night'' (1932) won the '' Pr ...
,
Marcel Duchamp
Henri-Robert-Marcel Duchamp (, , ; 28 July 1887 – 2 October 1968) was a French painter, sculptor, chess player, and writer whose work is associated with Cubism, Dada, and conceptual art. Duchamp is commonly regarded, along with Pablo Picasso ...
,
Ossip Zadkine
Ossip Zadkine (russian: Осип Цадкин; 28 January 1888 – 25 November 1967) was a Belarusian-born French artist. He is best known as a sculptor, but also produced paintings and lithographs.
Early years and education
Zadkine was born on ...
,
Jean Metzinger,
Ilia Zdanevich, and
Man Ray
Man Ray (born Emmanuel Radnitzky; August 27, 1890 – November 18, 1976) was an American visual artist who spent most of his career in Paris. He was a significant contributor to the Dada and Surrealist movements, although his ties to eac ...
. During an associated soirée, ''Evening of the Bearded Heart'', which began on 6 July 1923, Tzara presented a re-staging of his play ''
The Gas Heart'' (which had been first performed two years earlier to howls of derision from its audience), for which
Sonia Delaunay
Sonia Delaunay (13 November 1885 – 5 December 1979) was a French artist, who spent most of her working life in Paris. She was born in Odessa (then part of Russian Empire), and formally trained in Russian Empire and Germany before moving to Fr ...
designed the costumes.
Breton interrupted its performance and reportedly fought with several of his former associates and broke furniture, prompting a theatre riot that only the intervention of the police halted. Dada's vaudeville declined in importance and disappeared altogether after that date.
Picabia took Breton's side against Tzara, and replaced the staff of his ''391'', enlisting collaborations from
Clément Pansaers and
Ezra Pound. Breton marked the end of Dada in 1924, when he issued the first ''
Surrealist Manifesto''. Richter suggests that "Surrealism devoured and digested Dada."
Tzara distanced himself from the new trend, disagreeing with its methods and, increasingly, with its politics.
In 1923, he and a few other former Dadaists collaborated with Richter and the
Constructivist artist
El Lissitzky on the magazine ''G'', and, the following year, he wrote pieces for the
Yugoslav-
Slovenia
Slovenia ( ; sl, Slovenija ), officially the Republic of Slovenia (Slovene: , abbr.: ''RS''), is a country in Central Europe. It is bordered by Italy to the west, Austria to the north, Hungary to the northeast, Croatia to the southeast, an ...
n magazine ''Tank'' (edited by
Ferdinand Delak).
Transition to Surrealism
![Paris 18 - Maison Tristan Tzara -1](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/98/Paris_18_-_Maison_Tristan_Tzara_-1.JPG)
Tzara continued to write, becoming more seriously interested in the theater. In 1924, he published and staged the play ''
Handkerchief of Clouds'', which was soon included in the repertoire of
Serge Diaghilev's ''
Ballets Russes''. He also collected his earlier Dada texts as the ''Seven Dada Manifestos''.
Marxist thinker
Henri Lefebvre
Henri Lefebvre ( , ; 16 June 1901 – 29 June 1991) was a French Marxist philosopher and sociologist, best known for pioneering the critique of everyday life, for introducing the concepts of the right to the city and the production of s ...
reviewed them enthusiastically; he later became one of the author's friends.
In Romania, Tzara's work was partly recuperated by ''Contimporanul'', which notably staged public readings of his works during the international art exhibit it organized in 1924, and again during the "new art demonstration" of 1925. In parallel, the short-lived magazine ''Integral'', where
Ilarie Voronca
Ilarie Voronca (pen name of Eduard Marcus; 31 December 1903, Brăila—8 April 1946, Paris) was a Romanian avant-garde poet and essayist. life and career
Voronca was of Jewish ethnicity. In his early years, he was connected with Eugen Lovine ...
and
Ion Călugăru were the main animators, took significant interest in Tzara's work. In a 1927 interview with the publication, he voiced his opposition to the Surrealist group's adoption of communism, indicating that such politics could only result in a "new bourgeoisie" being created, and explaining that he had opted for a personal "
permanent revolution", which would preserve "the holiness of the ego".
In 1925, Tristan Tzara was in
Stockholm, where he married
Greta Knutson, with whom he had a son, Christophe (born 1927).
A former student of painter
André Lhote, she was known for her interest in
phenomenology and
abstract art.
["Greta Knutson", in Penelope Rosemont, '' Surrealist Women'', ]Continuum International Publishing Group
Continuum International Publishing Group was an academic publisher of books with editorial offices in London and New York City. It was purchased by Nova Capital Management in 2005. In July 2011, it was taken over by Bloomsbury Publishing. , all ...
, London & New York, 1998, p.69. Around the same period, with funds from Knutson's inheritance, Tzara commissioned
Austria
Austria, , bar, Östareich officially the Republic of Austria, is a country in the southern part of Central Europe, lying in the Eastern Alps. It is a federation of nine states, one of which is the capital, Vienna, the most populous ...
n architect
Adolf Loos
Adolf Franz Karl Viktor Maria Loos (; 10 December 1870 – 23 August 1933) was an Austrian and Czechoslovak architect, influential European theorist, and a polemicist of modern architecture. He was an inspiration to modernism and a widely- ...
, a former representative of the
Vienna Secession whom he had met in Zürich, to build him a house in Paris.
The rigidly
functionalist ''Maison Tristan Tzara'', built in
Montmartre
Montmartre ( , ) is a large hill in Paris's northern 18th arrondissement. It is high and gives its name to the surrounding district, part of the Right Bank. The historic district established by the City of Paris in 1995 is bordered by Rue Ca ...
, was designed following Tzara's specific requirements and decorated with samples of
African art
African art describes the modern and historical paintings, sculptures, installations, and other visual culture from native or indigenous Ethnic groups of Africa, Africans and the African continent. The definition may also include the art of the ...
.
It was Loos' only major contribution in his Parisian years.
In 1929, he reconciled with Breton, and sporadically attended the Surrealists' meetings in Paris.
The same year, he issued the poetry book ''De nos oiseaux'' ("Of Our Birds").
This period saw the publication of ''
The Approximate Man'' (1931), alongside the volumes ''L'Arbre des voyageurs'' ("The Travelers' Tree", 1930), ''Où boivent les loups'' ("Where Wolves Drink", 1932), ''L'Antitête'' ("The Antihead", 1933) and ''Grains et issues'' ("Seed and Bran", 1935).
By then, it was also announced that Tzara had started work on a screenplay.
[Cernat, p.277] In 1930, he directed and produced a cinematic version of ''Le Cœur à barbe'', starring Breton and other leading Surrealists.
Five years later, he signed his name to ''The Testimony against
Gertrude Stein
Gertrude Stein (February 3, 1874 – July 27, 1946) was an American novelist, poet, playwright, and art collector. Born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, in the Allegheny West neighborhood and raised in Oakland, California, Stein moved to Paris ...
'', published by
Eugene Jolas
John George Eugène Jolas (October 26, 1894 – May 26, 1952) was a writer, translator and literary critic.
Early life
John George Eugène Jolas was born October 26, 1894, in Union Hill, New Jersey (what is today Union City, New Jersey). His p ...
's magazine ''
transition'' in reply to Stein's memoir ''
The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas'', in which he accused his former friend of being a
megalomaniac
Megalomania is an obsession with power and wealth, and a passion for grand schemes.
Megalomania or megalomaniac may also refer to:
Psychology
* Narcissistic personality disorder
* Grandiose delusions
* Omnipotence (psychoanalysis), a stage o ...
.
The poet became involved in further developing
Surrealist techniques, and, together with Breton and
Valentine Hugo
Valentine Hugo (1887–1968) was a French artist and writer. She was born Valentine Marie Augustine Gross, only daughter to Auguste Gross and Zélie Démelin, in Boulogne-sur-Mer. She is best known for her work with the Russian ballet and with th ...
, drew one of the better-known examples of "
exquisite corpses". Tzara also prefaced a 1934 collection of Surrealist poems by his friend
René Char, and the following year he and Greta Knutson visited Char in
L'Isle-sur-la-Sorgue
L'Isle-sur-la-Sorgue (; oc, L'Illa de Sòrga or ) is a town and commune on the Sorgue river in Southeastern France. Politically, the commune is in the arrondissement of Avignon within the department of Vaucluse, in the région of Provence-Al ...
. Tzara's wife was also affiliated with the Surrealist group at around the same time.
This association ended when she parted with Tzara late in the 1930s.
At home, Tzara's works were collected and edited by the Surrealist promoter
Sașa Pană
Sașa Pană (; pen name of Alexandru Binder; 8 August 1902—22 August 1981) was a Romanian avant-garde poet, novelist, and short story writer.
Biography
Born to a Jewish family in Bucharest, he trained as a physician in Iași and Bucharest, b ...
, who corresponded with him over several years. The first such edition saw print in 1934, and featured the 1913–1915 poems Tzara had left in Vinea's care.
In 1928–1929, Tzara exchanged letters with his friend
Jacques G. Costin, a ''Contimporanul'' affiliate who did not share all of Vinea's views on literature, who offered to organize his visit to Romania and asked him to translate his work into French.
Affiliation with communism and Spanish Civil War
Alarmed by the establishment of
Adolf Hitler
Adolf Hitler (; 20 April 188930 April 1945) was an Austrian-born German politician who was dictator of Nazi Germany, Germany from 1933 until Death of Adolf Hitler, his death in 1945. Adolf Hitler's rise to power, He rose to power as the le ...
's
Nazi regime
Nazi Germany (lit. "National Socialist State"), ' (lit. "Nazi State") for short; also ' (lit. "National Socialist Germany") (officially known as the German Reich from 1933 until 1943, and the Greater German Reich from 1943 to 1945) was ...
, which also signified the end of Berlin's avant-garde, he merged his activities as an art promoter with the cause of
anti-fascism, and was close to the
French Communist Party
The French Communist Party (french: Parti communiste français, ''PCF'' ; ) is a political party in France which advocates the principles of communism. The PCF is a member of the Party of the European Left, and its MEPs sit in the European Un ...
(PCF). In 1936, Richter recalled, he published a series of photographs secretly taken by
Kurt Schwitters in
Hanover
Hanover (; german: Hannover ; nds, Hannober) is the capital and largest city of the German state of Lower Saxony. Its 535,932 (2021) inhabitants make it the 13th-largest city in Germany as well as the fourth-largest city in Northern Germany ...
, works which documented the destruction of Nazi propaganda by the locals,
ration stamp
A ration stamp, ration coupon or ration card is a stamp or card issued by a government to allow the holder to obtain food or other commodities that are in short supply during wartime or in other emergency situations when rationing is in for ...
with reduced quantities of food, and other hidden aspects of Hitler's rule. After the outbreak of the
Spanish Civil War
The Spanish Civil War ( es, Guerra Civil Española)) or The Revolution ( es, La Revolución, link=no) among Nationalists, the Fourth Carlist War ( es, Cuarta Guerra Carlista, link=no) among Carlists, and The Rebellion ( es, La Rebelión, link ...
, he briefly left France and joined the
Republican forces.
Alongside
Soviet reporter
Ilya Ehrenburg, Tzara visited
Madrid
Madrid ( , ) is the capital and most populous city of Spain. The city has almost 3.4 million inhabitants and a Madrid metropolitan area, metropolitan area population of approximately 6.7 million. It is the Largest cities of the Europ ...
, which was besieged by the
Nationalists
Nationalism is an idea and movement that holds that the nation should be congruent with the state. As a movement, nationalism tends to promote the interests of a particular nation (as in a group of people), Smith, Anthony. ''Nationalism: The ...
(''see
Siege of Madrid'').
[Livezeanu, p.246] Upon his return, he published the collection of poems ''Midis gagnés'' ("Conquered Southern Regions").
Some of them had previously been printed in the brochure ''Les poètes du monde défendent le peuple espagnol'' ("The Poets of the World Defend the Spanish People", 1937), which was edited by two prominent authors and activists,
Nancy Cunard
Nancy Clara Cunard (10 March 1896 – 17 March 1965) was a British writer, heiress and political activist. She was born into the British upper class, and devoted much of her life to fighting racism and fascism. She became a muse to some of the ...
and the Chilean poet
Pablo Neruda. Tzara had also signed Cunard's June 1937 call to intervention against
Francisco Franco. Reportedly, he and Nancy Cunard were romantically involved.
Although the poet was moving away from Surrealism,
his adherence to strict
Marxism-Leninism was reportedly questioned by both the PCF and the Soviet Union.
[Beitchman, p.49] Semiotician
Semiotics (also called semiotic studies) is the systematic study of sign processes (semiosis) and meaning making. Semiosis is any activity, conduct, or process that involves signs, where a sign is defined as anything that communicates something, ...
Philip Beitchman places their attitude in connection with Tzara's own vision of
Utopia
A utopia ( ) typically describes an imaginary community or society that possesses highly desirable or nearly perfect qualities for its members. It was coined by Sir Thomas More for his 1516 book '' Utopia'', describing a fictional island societ ...
, which combined communist messages with
Freudo-Marxist psychoanalysis
PsychoanalysisFrom Greek: + . is a set of theories and therapeutic techniques"What is psychoanalysis? Of course, one is supposed to answer that it is many things — a theory, a research method, a therapy, a body of knowledge. In what might b ...
and made use of particularly violent imagery. Reportedly, Tzara refused to be enlisted in supporting the
party line, maintaining his independence and refusing to take the forefront at public rallies.
[ Sorin Pop]
"François Buot, Tristan Tzara. Omul care a pus la cale revoluția Dada"
(book review), in '' Observator Cultural'', Nr. 195, November 2003
However, others note that the former Dadaist leader would often show himself a follower of political guidelines. As early as 1934, Tzara, together with Breton, Éluard and communist writer
René Crevel
René Crevel (; 10 August 1900 – 18 June 1935) was a French writer involved with the surrealist movement.
Life
Crevel was born in Paris to a family of Parisian bourgeoisie. He had a traumatic religious upbringing. At the age of fourteen, h ...
, organized an informal trial of independent-minded Surrealist
Salvador Dalí
Salvador Domingo Felipe Jacinto Dalí i Domènech, Marquess of Dalí of Púbol (; ; ; 11 May 190423 January 1989) was a Spanish surrealist artist renowned for his technical skill, precise draftsmanship, and the striking and bizarre images in ...
, who was at the time a confessed admirer of Hitler, and whose portrait of
William Tell had alarmed them because it shared likeness with
Bolshevik
The Bolsheviks (russian: Большевики́, from большинство́ ''bol'shinstvó'', 'majority'),; derived from ''bol'shinstvó'' (большинство́), "majority", literally meaning "one of the majority". also known in English ...
leader
Vladimir Lenin
Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov. ( 1870 – 21 January 1924), better known as Vladimir Lenin,. was a Russian revolutionary, politician, and political theorist. He served as the first and founding head of government of Soviet Russia from 1917 to 1 ...
. Historian
Irina Livezeanu
Irina Livezeanu (born 1952) is a Romanian-American historian. Her research interests include Eastern Europe, Eastern European Jewry, the Holocaust in Eastern Europe, and modern nationalism. Several of her publications deal with the history of Roma ...
notes that Tzara, who agreed with
Stalinism and shunned
Trotskyism, submitted to the PCF cultural demands during the writers' congress of 1935, even when his friend Crevel committed suicide to protest the adoption of
socialist realism
Socialist realism is a style of idealized realistic art that was developed in the Soviet Union and was the official style in that country between 1932 and 1988, as well as in other socialist countries after World War II. Socialist realism is c ...
.
[Livezeanu, p.251] At a later stage, Livezeanu remarks, Tzara reinterpreted Dada and Surrealism as revolutionary currents, and presented them as such to the public. This stance she contrasts with that of Breton, who was more reserved in his attitudes.
World War II and Resistance
During
World War II
World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposing ...
, Tzara took refuge from the
German occupation forces, moving to the southern areas, controlled by the
Vichy regime.
On one occasion, the
antisemitic and
collaborationist publication ''
Je Suis Partout
''Je suis partout'' (, lit. ''I am everywhere'') was a French newspaper founded by , first published on 29 November 1930. It was placed under the direction of Pierre Gaxotte until 1939. Journalists of the paper included Lucien Rebatet, , the illu ...
'' made his whereabouts known to the
Gestapo
The (), abbreviated Gestapo (; ), was the official secret police of Nazi Germany and in German-occupied Europe.
The force was created by Hermann Göring in 1933 by combining the various political police agencies of Prussia into one orga ...
.
["Tristan Tzara, radical, mondain et anticonformiste"]
in ''Marianne
Marianne () has been the national personification of the French Republic since the French Revolution, as a personification of liberty, equality, fraternity and reason, as well as a portrayal of the Goddess of Liberty.
Marianne is displayed in ...
'', 13 January 2003
He was in
Marseille
Marseille ( , , ; also spelled in English as Marseilles; oc, Marselha ) is the prefecture of the French department of Bouches-du-Rhône and capital of the Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur region. Situated in the camargue region of southern Fra ...
in late 1940-early 1941, joining the group of anti-fascist and Jewish refugees who, protected by American diplomat
Varian Fry
Varian Mackey Fry (October 15, 1907 – September 13, 1967) was an American journalist. Fry ran a rescue network in Vichy France that helped approximately 2,000 to 4,000 anti-Nazi and Jewish refugees to escape Nazi Germany and the Holocaust ...
, were seeking to escape
Nazi-occupied Europe. Among the people present there were the anti-
totalitarian
Totalitarianism is a form of government and a political system that prohibits all opposition parties, outlaws individual and group opposition to the state and its claims, and exercises an extremely high if not complete degree of control and reg ...
socialist
Victor Serge
Victor Serge (; 1890–1947), born Victor Lvovich Kibalchich (russian: Ви́ктор Льво́вич Киба́льчич), was a Russian revolutionary Marxist, novelist, poet and historian. Originally an anarchist, he joined the Bolsheviks fi ...
, anthropologist
Claude Lévi-Strauss
Claude Lévi-Strauss (, ; 28 November 1908 – 30 October 2009) was a French anthropologist and ethnologist whose work was key in the development of the theories of structuralism and structural anthropology. He held the chair of Social An ...
, playwright
Arthur Adamov, philosopher and poet
René Daumal
René Daumal (; 16 March 1908 – 21 May 1944) was a French spiritual para-surrealist writer, critic and poet, best known for his posthumously published novel '' Mount Analogue'' (1952) as well as for being an early, outspoken practitioner ...
, and several prominent Surrealists: Breton, Char, and
Benjamin Péret, as well as artists
Max Ernst
Max Ernst (2 April 1891 – 1 April 1976) was a German (naturalised American in 1948 and French in 1958) painter, sculptor, printmaker, graphic artist, and poet. A prolific artist, Ernst was a primary pioneer of the Dada movement and Surrealis ...
,
André Masson
André-Aimé-René Masson (4 January 1896 – 28 October 1987) was a French artist.
Biography
Masson was born in Balagny-sur-Thérain, Oise, but when he was eight his father's work took the family first briefly to Lille and then to Brussel ...
,
Wifredo Lam,
Jacques Hérold
Jacques Hérold (born Herold Blumer; 10 October 191011 January 1987) was a prominent Surrealism, surrealist painter born in Piatra Neamț, Romania.
Biography
Considered one of the most important late-period Surrealism, Surrealist painters, Hér ...
,
Victor Brauner
Victor Brauner (, also spelled Viktor Brauner; 15 June 1903 – 12 March 1966) was a Romanian painter and sculptor of the surrealist movement.
Early life
He was born in Piatra Neamț, Romania, the son of a Jewish timber manufacturer who subsequen ...
and
Óscar Domínguez
Óscar M. Domínguez (3 January 1906 – 31 December 1957) was a Spanish surrealist painter.
Biography
Born in San Cristóbal de La Laguna on the island of Tenerife, on the Canary Islands Spain, Domínguez spent his youth with his grandmother ...
.
[Danièle Giraudy, Musée de Marseille (eds.), ''Le jeu de Marseille: autour d'André Breton et des surréalistes à Marseille en 1940–1941'', Éditions Alors Hors du Temps, Marseille, p.79sqq] During the months spent together, and before some of them received permission to leave for America, they invented a new
card game
A card game is any game using playing cards as the primary device with which the game is played, be they traditional or game-specific.
Countless card games exist, including families of related games (such as poker). A small number of card ga ...
, on which traditional card imagery was replaced with Surrealist symbols.
Some time after his stay in Marseille, Tzara joined the
French Resistance
The French Resistance (french: La Résistance) was a collection of organisations that fought the German occupation of France during World War II, Nazi occupation of France and the Collaborationism, collaborationist Vichy France, Vichy régim ...
, rallying with the
Maquis. A contributor to magazines published by the Resistance, Tzara also took charge of the cultural broadcast for the
Free French Forces
__NOTOC__
The French Liberation Army (french: Armée française de la Libération or AFL) was the reunified French Army that arose from the merging of the Armée d'Afrique with the prior Free French Forces (french: Forces françaises libres, l ...
clandestine radio station.
He lived in
Aix-en-Provence, then in
Souillac, and ultimately in
Toulouse
Toulouse ( , ; oc, Tolosa ) is the prefecture of the French department of Haute-Garonne and of the larger region of Occitania. The city is on the banks of the River Garonne, from the Mediterranean Sea, from the Atlantic Ocean and from Pa ...
.
His son Cristophe was at the time a Resistant in northern France, having joined the ''
Francs-Tireurs et Partisans
The ''Francs-tireurs et partisans français'' (FTPF), or commonly the ''Francs-tireurs et partisans'' (FTP), was an armed resistance organization created by leaders of the French Communist Party during World War II (1939–45). The communist par ...
''.
In
Axis
An axis (plural ''axes'') is an imaginary line around which an object rotates or is symmetrical. Axis may also refer to:
Mathematics
* Axis of rotation: see rotation around a fixed axis
* Axis (mathematics), a designator for a Cartesian-coordinat ...
-allied and antisemitic Romania (''see
Romania during World War II''), the regime of
Ion Antonescu ordered bookstores not to sell works by Tzara and 44 other Jewish-Romanian authors. In 1942, with the generalization of antisemitic measures, Tzara was also stripped of his Romanian citizenship rights.
In December 1944, five months after the
Liberation of Paris, he was contributing to ''
L'Éternelle Revue'', a pro-communist newspaper edited by philosopher
Jean-Paul Sartre
Jean-Paul Charles Aymard Sartre (, ; ; 21 June 1905 – 15 April 1980) was one of the key figures in the philosophy of existentialism (and phenomenology), a French playwright, novelist, screenwriter, political activist, biographer, and lit ...
, through which Sartre was publicizing the heroic image of a France united in resistance, as opposed to the perception that it had passively accepted German control.
[ Susan Rubin Suleiman, ''Crises of Memory and the Second World War'', ]Harvard University Press
Harvard University Press (HUP) is a publishing house established on January 13, 1913, as a division of Harvard University, and focused on academic publishing. It is a member of the Association of American University Presses. After the retir ...
, Cambridge, 2006, p.30-31. Other contributors included writers Aragon, Char, Éluard,
Elsa Triolet,
Eugène Guillevic,
Raymond Queneau
Raymond Queneau (; 21 February 1903 – 25 October 1976) was a French novelist, poet, critic, editor and co-founder and president of Oulipo ('' Ouvroir de littérature potentielle''), notable for his wit and cynical humour.
Biography
Queneau w ...
,
Francis Ponge,
Jacques Prévert and painter
Pablo Picasso
Pablo Ruiz Picasso (25 October 1881 – 8 April 1973) was a Spanish painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramicist and Scenic design, theatre designer who spent most of his adult life in France. One of the most influential artists of the 20th ce ...
.
Upon the end of the war and the restoration of French independence, Tzara was
naturalized a French citizen.
During 1945, under the
Provisional Government of the French Republic, he was a representative of the Sud-Ouest region to the
National Assembly.
According to Livezeanu, he "helped reclaim the
South from the cultural figures who had associated themselves to Vichy
rance"
In April 1946, his early poems, alongside similar pieces by Breton, Éluard, Aragon and Dalí, were the subject of a midnight broadcast on
Parisian Radio. In 1947, he became a full member of the PCF
(according to some sources, he had been one since 1934).
International leftism
Over the following decade, Tzara lent his support to political causes. Pursuing his interest in
primitivism, he became a critic of the
Fourth Republic's
colonial policy, and joined his voice to those who supported
decolonization
Decolonization or decolonisation is the undoing of colonialism, the latter being the process whereby imperial nations establish and dominate foreign territories, often overseas. Some scholars of decolonization focus especially on separatism, in ...
.
Nevertheless, he was appointed
cultural ambassador of the Republic by the
Paul Ramadier
Paul Ramadier (17 March 1888 in La Rochelle – 14 October 1961 in Rodez) was a French statesman.
Biography
The son of a psychiatrist, Ramadier graduated in law from the University of Toulouse and started his profession as a lawyer in Par ...
cabinet. He also participated in the PCF-organized Congress of Writers, but, unlike Éluard and Aragon, again avoided adapting his style to
socialist realism
Socialist realism is a style of idealized realistic art that was developed in the Soviet Union and was the official style in that country between 1932 and 1988, as well as in other socialist countries after World War II. Socialist realism is c ...
.
He returned to Romania on an official visit in late 1946-early 1947,
[ János Farkas]
"Tristan Tzara în Ungaria. Octombrie 1956"
, in '' Apostrof'', Vol. XVII, Nr. 12 (199) as part of a tour of the emerging
Eastern Bloc during which he also stopped in
Czechoslovakia
, rue, Чеськословеньско, , yi, טשעכאסלאוואקיי,
, common_name = Czechoslovakia
, life_span = 1918–19391945–1992
, p1 = Austria-Hungary
, image_p1 ...
,
Hungary
Hungary ( hu, Magyarország ) is a landlocked country in Central Europe. Spanning of the Pannonian Basin, Carpathian Basin, it is bordered by Slovakia to the north, Ukraine to the northeast, Romania to the east and southeast, Serbia to the ...
, and the
Federal People's Republic of Yugoslavia.
The speeches he and
Sașa Pană
Sașa Pană (; pen name of Alexandru Binder; 8 August 1902—22 August 1981) was a Romanian avant-garde poet, novelist, and short story writer.
Biography
Born to a Jewish family in Bucharest, he trained as a physician in Iași and Bucharest, b ...
gave on the occasion, published by ''
Orizont
''Orizont'' is a 2015 Romanian drama film written and directed by , adapted from the novella ' by Ioan Slavici.
Plot
Cast
* András Hatházi - Lucian
* - Andra
* Bogdán Zsolt - Zoli
* - Pintea
* - Adi
* Maria Seleș - Victoria
* Elena P ...
'' journal, were noted for condoning official positions of the PCF and the
Romanian Communist Party, and are credited by Irina Livezeanu with causing a rift between Tzara and young Romanian avant-gardists such as Victor Brauner and
Gherasim Luca (who rejected communism and were alarmed by the
Iron Curtain having fallen over Europe). In September of the same year, he was present at the conference of the pro-communist
International Union of Students
The International Union of Students (IUS) was a worldwide nonpartisan association of university student organizations.
The IUS was the umbrella organization for 155 such students' organizations across 112 countries and territories representing a ...
(where he was a guest of the French-based
Union of Communist Students, and met with similar organizations from Romania and other countries).
In 1949–1950, Tzara answered Aragon's call and become active in the international campaign to liberate
Nazım Hikmet, a
Turkish poet whose 1938 arrest for communist activities had created a ''
cause célèbre
A cause célèbre (,''Collins English Dictionary – Complete and Unabridged'', 12th Edition, 2014. S.v. "cause célèbre". Retrieved November 30, 2018 from https://www.thefreedictionary.com/cause+c%c3%a9l%c3%a8bre ,''Random House Kernerman Webs ...
'' for the pro-Soviet public opinion.
[Mark Carroll, ''Music and Ideology in Cold War Europe'', ]Cambridge University Press
Cambridge University Press is the university press of the University of Cambridge. Granted letters patent by King Henry VIII in 1534, it is the oldest university press in the world. It is also the King's Printer.
Cambridge University Pre ...
, Cambridge, 2003, p.52. Tzara chaired the Committee for the Liberation of Nazım Hikmet, which issued petitions to national governments
and commissioned works in honor of Hikmet (including musical pieces by
Louis Durey and
Serge Nigg).
Hikmet was eventually released in July 1950, and publicly thanked Tzara during his subsequent visit to Paris.
His works of the period include, among others: ''Le Signe de vie'' ("Sign of Life", 1946), ''Terre sur terre'' ("Earth on Earth", 1946), ''Sans coup férir'' ("Without a Need to Fight", 1949), ''De mémoire d'homme'' ("From a Man's Memory", 1950), ''Parler seul'' ("Speaking Alone", 1950), and ''La Face intérieure'' ("The Inner Face", 1953), followed in 1955 by ''À haute flamme'' ("Flame out Loud") and ''Le Temps naissant'' ("The Nascent Time"), and the 1956 ''Le Fruit permis'' ("The Permitted Fruit").
[''Books in the Vera and Arturo Schwarz Collection''](_blank)
at the Israel Museum; retrieved 23 April 2008 Tzara continued to be an active promoter of modernist culture. Around 1949, having read
Irish
Irish may refer to:
Common meanings
* Someone or something of, from, or related to:
** Ireland, an island situated off the north-western coast of continental Europe
***Éire, Irish language name for the isle
** Northern Ireland, a constituent unit ...
author
Samuel Beckett's manuscript of ''
Waiting for Godot'', Tzara facilitated the play's staging by approaching producer
Roger Blin
Roger Blin (Neuilly-sur-Seine, France, 22 March 1907 – Évecquemont, France, 21 January 1984) was a French actor and director. He staged world premieres of Samuel Beckett's '' Waiting for Godot'' in 1953 and ''Endgame'' in 1957.C. J. Ackerle ...
.
[ David Bradby, ''Beckett: Waiting for Godot'', ]Cambridge University Press
Cambridge University Press is the university press of the University of Cambridge. Granted letters patent by King Henry VIII in 1534, it is the oldest university press in the world. It is also the King's Printer.
Cambridge University Pre ...
, Cambridge, 2001, p.46. He also translated into French some poems by Hikmet and the Hungarian author
Attila József.
In 1949, he introduced Picasso to art dealer
Heinz Berggruen (thus helping start their lifelong partnership), and, in 1951, wrote the catalog for an exhibit of works by his friend
Max Ernst
Max Ernst (2 April 1891 – 1 April 1976) was a German (naturalised American in 1948 and French in 1958) painter, sculptor, printmaker, graphic artist, and poet. A prolific artist, Ernst was a primary pioneer of the Dada movement and Surrealis ...
; the text celebrated the artist's "free use of stimuli" and "his discovery of a new kind of humor."
1956 protest and final years
![Tristan Tzara grave](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/ad/Tristan_Tzara_grave.jpg)
In October 1956, Tzara visited the
People's Republic of Hungary
The Hungarian People's Republic ( hu, Magyar Népköztársaság) was a one-party socialist state from 20 August 1949
to 23 October 1989.
It was governed by the Hungarian Socialist Workers' Party, which was under the influence of the Soviet U ...
, where the government of
Imre Nagy was coming into conflict with the
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, ...
.
This followed an invitation on the part of Hungarian writer
Gyula Illyés, who wanted his colleague to be present at ceremonies marking the
rehabilitation of
László Rajk
László Rajk (8 March 1909 – 15 October 1949) was a Hungarian Communist politician, who served as Minister of Interior and Minister of Foreign Affairs. He was an important organizer of the Hungarian Communists' power (for example, organizi ...
(a local communist leader whose prosecution had been ordered by
Joseph Stalin
Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin (born Ioseb Besarionis dze Jughashvili; – 5 March 1953) was a Georgian revolutionary and Soviet political leader who led the Soviet Union from 1924 until his death in 1953. He held power as General Secretar ...
).
Tzara was receptive of the Hungarians' demand for
liberalization,
contacted the anti-
Stalinist and former Dadaist
Lajos Kassák
Lajos Kassák (March 21, 1887 – July 22, 1967) was a Hungarian poet, novelist, painter, essayist, editor, theoretician of the avant-garde, and occasional translator. He was among the first genuine working-class writers in Hungarian litera ...
, and deemed the anti-Soviet movement "revolutionary".
However, unlike much of Hungarian public opinion, the poet did not recommend emancipation from Soviet control, and described the independence demanded by local writers as "an abstract notion".
The statement he issued, widely quoted in the Hungarian and international press, forced a reaction from the PCF: through Aragon's reply, the party deplored the fact that one of its members was being used in support of "
anti-communist and anti-Soviet campaigns."
His return to France coincided with the outbreak of the
Hungarian Revolution, which ended with a Soviet military intervention. On 24 October, Tzara was ordered to a PCF meeting, where activist
Laurent Casanova reportedly ordered him to keep silent, which Tzara did.
Tzara's apparent dissidence and the crisis he helped provoke within the Communist Party were celebrated by Breton, who had adopted a pro-Hungarian stance, and who defined his friend and rival as "the first spokesman of the Hungarian demand."
He was thereafter mostly withdrawn from public life, dedicating himself to researching the work of 15th-century poet
François Villon
François Villon ( Modern French: , ; – after 1463) is the best known French poet of the Late Middle Ages. He was involved in criminal behavior and had multiple encounters with law enforcement authorities. Villon wrote about some of these ...
,
and, like his fellow Surrealist
Michel Leiris, to promoting
primitive and
African art
African art describes the modern and historical paintings, sculptures, installations, and other visual culture from native or indigenous Ethnic groups of Africa, Africans and the African continent. The definition may also include the art of the ...
, which he had been collecting for years.
In early 1957, Tzara attended a Dada retrospective on the
Rive Gauche
The Rive Gauche (, ''Left Bank'') is the southern bank of the river Seine in Paris. Here the river flows roughly westward, cutting the city in two parts. When facing downstream, the southern bank is to the left, and the northern bank (or ''Rive D ...
, which ended in a riot caused by the rival avant-garde
Mouvement Jariviste, an outcome which reportedly pleased him. In August 1960, one year after the
Fifth Republic had been established by
President
President most commonly refers to:
*President (corporate title)
* President (education), a leader of a college or university
* President (government title)
President may also refer to:
Automobiles
* Nissan President, a 1966–2010 Japanese ...
Charles de Gaulle, French forces were confronting the Algerian rebels (''see
Algerian War''). Together with
Simone de Beauvoir,
Marguerite Duras
Marguerite Germaine Marie Donnadieu (, 4 April 1914 – 3 March 1996), known as Marguerite Duras (), was a French novelist, playwright, screenwriter, essayist, and experimental filmmaker. Her script for the film '' Hiroshima mon amour'' (1959) e ...
,
Jérôme Lindon Jerome (c.347–420) was a priest, confessor, theologian and historian from Dalmatia.
Jerome may also refer to:
People Given name
* Jerome (given name), a masculine name of Greek origin, with a list of people so named
* Saint Jerome (disambiguat ...
,
Alain Robbe-Grillet
Alain Robbe-Grillet (; 18 August 1922 – 18 February 2008) was a French writer and filmmaker. He was one of the figures most associated with the '' Nouveau Roman'' (new novel) trend of the 1960s, along with Nathalie Sarraute, Michel Butor and ...
and other intellectuals, he addressed
Premier Michel Debré
Michel Jean-Pierre Debré (; 15 January 1912 – 2 August 1996) was the first Prime Minister of the French Fifth Republic. He is considered the "father" of the current Constitution of France. He served under President Charles de Gaulle from 195 ...
a letter of protest, concerning France's refusal to grant Algeria its independence.
[ Laure Adler, ''Marguerite Duras: A Life'', ]University of Chicago Press
The University of Chicago Press is the largest and one of the oldest university presses in the United States. It is operated by the University of Chicago and publishes a wide variety of academic titles, including ''The Chicago Manual of Style'', ...
, Chicago, 2000, p.233-234. As a result,
Minister of Culture
A culture minister or a heritage minister is a common cabinet position in governments. The culture minister is typically responsible for cultural policy, which often includes arts policy (direct and indirect support to artists and arts organizatio ...
André Malraux
Georges André Malraux ( , ; 3 November 1901 – 23 November 1976) was a French novelist, art theorist, and Minister of Culture (France), minister of cultural affairs. Malraux's novel ''La Condition Humaine'' (Man's Fate) (1933) won the Prix Go ...
announced that his cabinet would not subsidize any films to which Tzara and the others might contribute, and the signatories could no longer appear on stations managed by the state-owned
French Broadcasting Service.
In 1961, as recognition for his work as a poet, Tzara was awarded the prestigious
Taormina Prize.
One of his final public activities took place in 1962, when he attended the
International Congress on African Culture, organized by English curator
Frank McEwen
Francis Jack McEwen, OBE (19 April 1907 – 15 January 1994) was an English artist, teacher, and museum administrator. He is best remembered today for his efforts to bring attention to the work of Shona artists in Rhodesia, and for helpin ...
and held at the
National Gallery
The National Gallery is an art museum in Trafalgar Square in the City of Westminster, in Central London, England. Founded in 1824, it houses a collection of over 2,300 paintings dating from the mid-13th century to 1900. The current Director ...
in
Salisbury
Salisbury ( ) is a cathedral city in Wiltshire, England with a population of 41,820, at the confluence of the rivers Avon, Nadder and Bourne. The city is approximately from Southampton and from Bath.
Salisbury is in the southeast of ...
,
Southern Rhodesia
Southern Rhodesia was a landlocked self-governing British Crown colony in southern Africa, established in 1923 and consisting of British South Africa Company (BSAC) territories lying south of the Zambezi River. The region was informally kno ...
. He died one year later in his Paris home, and was buried at the
Cimetière du Montparnasse.
Literary contributions
Identity issues
Much critical commentary about Tzara surrounds the measure to which the poet identified with the national cultures which he represented. Paul Cernat notes that the association between Samyro and the Jancos, who were Jews, and their
ethnic Romanian colleagues, was one sign of a cultural dialogue, in which "the openness of Romanian environments toward artistic modernity" was stimulated by "young emancipated Jewish writers." Salomon Schulman, a Swedish researcher of
Yiddish literature
Yiddish literature encompasses all those belles-lettres written in Yiddish, the language of Ashkenazic Jewry which is related to Middle High German. The history of Yiddish, with its roots in central Europe and locus for centuries in Eastern Euro ...
, argues that the combined influence of Yiddish folklore and
Hasidic philosophy
Hasidic philosophy or Hasidism ( he, חסידות), alternatively transliterated as Hasidut or Chassidus, consists of the teachings of the Hasidic movement, which are the teachings of the Hasidic ''rebbes'', often in the form of commentary on th ...
shaped European modernism in general and Tzara's style in particular, while American poet
Andrei Codrescu speaks of Tzara as one in a
Balkan
The Balkans ( ), also known as the Balkan Peninsula, is a geographical area in southeastern Europe with various geographical and historical definitions. The region takes its name from the Balkan Mountains that stretch throughout the who ...
line of "absurdist writing", which also includes the Romanians
Urmuz,
Eugène Ionesco
Eugène Ionesco (; born Eugen Ionescu, ; 26 November 1909 – 28 March 1994) was a Romanian-French playwright who wrote mostly in French, and was one of the foremost figures of the French avant-garde theatre in the 20th century. Ionesco inst ...
and
Emil Cioran
Emil Mihai Cioran (, ; 8 April 1911 – 20 June 1995) was a Romanian philosopher, aphorist and essayist, who published works in both Romanian and French. His work has been noted for its pervasive philosophical pessimism, style, and aphorisms. H ...
. According to literary historian
George Călinescu
George Călinescu (; 19 June 1899, Bucharest – 12 March 1965, Otopeni) was a Romanian literary critic, historian, novelist, academician and journalist, and a writer of classicist and humanist tendencies. He is currently considered one of the mos ...
, Samyro's early poems deal with "the voluptuousness over the strong scents of rural life, which is typical among Jews compressed into
ghetto
A ghetto, often called ''the'' ghetto, is a part of a city in which members of a minority group live, especially as a result of political, social, legal, environmental or economic pressure. Ghettos are often known for being more impoverished t ...
s."
[Călinescu, p.887]
Tzara himself used elements alluding to his homeland in his early Dadaist performances. His collaboration with
Maja Kruscek at
Zuntfhaus zür Waag featured samples of
African literature, to which Tzara added Romanian-language fragments.
He is also known to have mixed elements of
Romanian folklore
The folklore of Romania is the collection of traditions of the Romanians. A feature of Romanian culture is the special relationship between folklore and the learned culture, determined by two factors. First, the rural character of the Romanian ...
, and to have sung the native suburban
romanza
''Romanza'' is the first compilation album by Italian singer Andrea Bocelli, released internationally in 1997.
Although a compilation, ''Romanza'' is considered Bocelli's breakthrough album and remains his most commercially successful to date, ...
''La moară la Hârța'' ("At the Mill in Hârța") during at least one staging for Cabaret Voltaire. Addressing the Romanian public in 1947, he claimed to have been captivated by "the sweet language of
Moldavian peasants".
Tzara nonetheless rebelled against his birthplace and upbringing. His earliest poems depict provincial Moldavia as a desolate and unsettling place. In Cernat's view, this imagery was in common use among Moldavian-born writers who also belonged to the avant-garde trend, notably
Benjamin Fondane
Benjamin Fondane () or Benjamin Fundoianu (; born Benjamin Wechsler, Wexler or Vecsler, first name also Beniamin or Barbu, usually abridged to B.; November 14, 1898 – October 2, 1944) was a Romanian and France, French poet, critic and Existentia ...
and
George Bacovia
George Bacovia (; the pen name of Gheorghe Vasiliu ; – 22 May 1957) was a Romanian symbolist poet. While he initially belonged to the local Symbolist movement, launched as a poet by Alexandru Macedonski with the poem and poetry collection ( ...
. Like in the cases of Eugène Ionesco and Fondane, Cernat proposes, Samyro sought self-exile to
Western Europe
Western Europe is the western region of Europe. The region's countries and territories vary depending on context.
The concept of "the West" appeared in Europe in juxtaposition to "the East" and originally applied to the ancient Mediterranean ...
as a "modern,
voluntarist" means of breaking with "the peripheral condition", which may also serve to explain the pun he selected for a pseudonym.
According to the same author, two important elements in this process were "a maternal attachment and a break with paternal authority", an "
Oedipus complex
The Oedipus complex (also spelled Œdipus complex) is an idea in psychoanalytic theory. The complex is an ostensibly universal phase in the life of a young boy in which, to try to immediately satisfy basic desires, he unconsciously wishes to have ...
" which he also argued was evident in the biographies of other Symbolist and avant-garde Romanian authors, from Urmuz to
Mateiu Caragiale
Mateiu Ion Caragiale (; – January 17, 1936), also credited as Matei or Matheiu, or in the antiquated version Mateiŭ,Sorin Antohi"Romania and the Balkans. From Geocultural Bovarism to Ethnic Ontology" in ''Tr@nsit online'', Institut für die ...
. Unlike Vinea and the ''
Contimporanul
''Contimporanul'' (antiquated spelling of the Romanian language, Romanian word for "the Contemporary", singular masculine form) was a Romanian (initially a weekly and later a monthly) avant-garde Literary magazine, literary and art magazine, publi ...
'' group, Cernat proposes, Tzara stood for radicalism and insurgency, which would also help explain their impossibility to communicate. In particular, Cernat argues, the writer sought to emancipate himself from competing nationalisms, and addressed himself directly to the center of European culture, with Zürich serving as a stage on his way to Paris.
The 1916 ''Monsieur's Antipyrine's Manifesto'' featured a Cosmopolitanism, cosmopolitan appeal: "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."
With time, Tristan Tzara came to be regarded by his Dada associates as an exotic character, whose attitudes were intrinsically linked with Eastern Europe. Early on, Ball referred to him and the Janco brothers as "Orientals".
Hans Richter believed him to be a fiery and impulsive figure, having little in common with his German collaborators. According to Cernat, Richter's perspective seems to indicate a vision of Tzara having a "Italic peoples, Latin" temperament.
This type of perception also had negative implications for Tzara, particularly after the 1922 split within Dada. In the 1940s,
Richard Huelsenbeck
Carl Wilhelm Richard Hülsenbeck (aka Charles R. Hulbeck) (23 April 189220 April 1974) was a German writer, poet, and psychoanalyst born in Frankenau, Hessen-Nassau who was associated with the formation of the Dada movement.
Life and work
Huel ...
alleged that his former colleague had always been separated from other Dadaists by his failure to appreciate the legacy of "Humanism in Germany, German humanism", and that, compared to his German colleagues, he was "a barbarian".
In his polemic with Tzara, Breton also repeatedly placed stress on his rival's foreign origin.
At home, Tzara was occasionally targeted for his Jewishness, culminating in the ban enforced by the
Ion Antonescu regime. In 1931, Const. I. Emilian, the first Romanian to write an academic study on the avant-garde, attacked him from a Conservatism, conservative and
antisemitic position. He depicted Dadaists as "Jewish Bolshevism, Judaeo-Bolsheviks" who corrupted Culture of Romania, Romanian culture, and included Tzara among the main proponents of "literary anarchism". Alleging that Tzara's only merit was to establish a literary fashion, while recognizing his "formal virtuosity and artistic intelligence", he claimed to prefer Tzara in his ''
Simbolul
''Simbolul'' (Romanian for "The Symbol", ) was a Romanian avant-garde literary and art magazine, published in Bucharest between October and December 1912. Co-founded by writers Tristan Tzara and Ion Vinea, together with visual artist Marcel Janco, ...
'' stage. This perspective was deplored early on by the modernist critic Perpessicius. Nine years after Emilian's polemic text, Fascism, fascist poet and journalist Radu Gyr published an article in ''
Convorbiri Literare'', in which he attacked Tzara as a representative of the "Judaism, Judaic spirit", of the "foreign plague" and of "Dialectical materialism, materialist-Historical materialism, historical dialectics".
Symbolist poetry
Tzara's earliest Symbolist poetry, Symbolist poems, published in ''Simbolul'' during 1912, were later rejected by their author, who asked
Sașa Pană
Sașa Pană (; pen name of Alexandru Binder; 8 August 1902—22 August 1981) was a Romanian avant-garde poet, novelist, and short story writer.
Biography
Born to a Jewish family in Bucharest, he trained as a physician in Iași and Bucharest, b ...
not to include them in editions of his works.
The influence of French Symbolists on the young Samyro was particularly important, and surfaced in both his Lyric poetry, lyric and Prose poetry, prose poems.
Attached to Symbolist musicality at that stage, he was indebted to his ''Simbolul'' colleague
Ion Minulescu and the Belgian Maurice Maeterlinck.
Philip Beitchman argues that "Tristan Tzara is one of the writers of the twentieth century who was most profoundly influenced by symbolism—and utilized many of its methods and ideas in the pursuit of his own artistic and social ends." However, Cernat believes, the young poet was by then already breaking with the syntax of conventional poetry, and that, in subsequent experimental pieces, he progressively stripped his style of its Symbolist elements.
During the 1910s, Samyro experimented with Symbolist imagery, in particular with the "hanged man" motif, which served as the basis for his poem ''Se spânzură un om'' ("A Man Hangs Himself"), and which built on the legacy of similar pieces authored by
Christian Morgenstern
Christian Otto Josef Wolfgang Morgenstern (6 May 1871 – 31 March 1914) was a German author and poet from Munich. Morgenstern married Margareta Gosebruch von Liechtenstern on 7 March 1910. He worked for a while as a journalist in Berlin ...
and Jules Laforgue.
[Cernat, p.52] ''Se spânzură un om'' was also in many ways similar to ones authored by his collaborators
Adrian Maniu
Adrian Maniu (February 6, 1891 – April 20, 1968) was a Romanian poet, prose writer, playwright, essayist, and translator.
Born in Bucharest, his father Grigore, a native of Lugoj, was a jurist and professor of commercial law at the University of ...
(''Balada spânzuratului'', "The Hanged Man's Ballad") and Vinea (''Visul spânzuratului'', "The Hanged Man's Dream"): all three poets, who were all in the process of discarding Symbolism, interpreted the theme from a Tragicomedy, tragicomic and iconoclastic perspective.
These pieces also include ''Vacanță în provincie'' ("Provincial Holiday") and the
anti-war fragment ''Furtuna și cântecul dezertorului'' ("The Storm and the Deserter's Song"), which Vinea published in his ''Chemarea''. The series is seen by Cernat as "the general rehearsal for the Dada adventure." The complete text of ''Furtuna și cântecul dezertorului'' was published at a later stage, after the missing text was discovered by Pană. At the time, he became interested in the free verse work of the American Walt Whitman, and his translation of Whitman's Epic poetry, epic poem ''Song of Myself'', probably completed before
World War I
World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fightin ...
, was published by Alfred Hefter-Hidalgo in his magazine ''
Versuri și Proză'' (1915).
Beitchman notes that, throughout his life, Tzara used Symbolist elements against the doctrines of Symbolism. Thus, he argues, the poet did not cultivate a memory of historical events, "since it deludes man into thinking that there was something when there was nothing."
[Beitchman, p.29] Cernat notes: "That which essentially unifies, during [the 1910s], the poetic output of Adrian Maniu, Ion Vinea and Tristan Tzara is an acute awareness of literary conventions, a satiety
..in respect to Aestheticism, calophile literature, which they perceived as exhausted." In Beitchman's view, the revolt against cultivated beauty was a constant in Tzara's years of maturity, and his visions of social change continued to be inspired by Arthur Rimbaud and the Comte de Lautréamont. According to Beitchman, Tzara uses the Symbolist message, "the birthright [of humans] has been sold for a mess of porridge", taking it "into the streets, cabarets and trains where he denounces the deal and asks for his birthright back."
Collaboration with Vinea
The transition to a more radical form of poetry seems to have taken place in 1913–1915, during the periods when Tzara and Vinea were vacationing together. The pieces share a number of characteristics and subjects, and the two poets even use them to allude to one another (or, in one case, to Tzara's sister).
In addition to the lyrics were they both speak of provincial holidays and love affairs with local girls, both friends intended to reinterpret William Shakespeare's ''Hamlet'' from a modernist perspective, and wrote incomplete texts with this as their subject. However, Paul Cernat notes, the texts also evidence a difference in approach, with Vinea's work being "meditative and melancholic", while Tzara's is "Hedonism, hedonistic".
[Cernat, p.117] Tzara often appealed to revolutionary and ironic images, portraying provincial and middle class environments as places of artificiality and decay, demystifying pastoral themes and evidencing a will to break free. His literature took a more radical perspective on life, and featured lyrics with subversive intent:
In his ''Înserează'' (roughly, "Night Falling"), probably authored in Mangalia, Tzara writes:
Vinea's similar poem, written in Tuzla, Constanța, Tuzla and named after that village, reads:
Cernat notes that ''Nocturnă'' ("Nocturne") and ''Înserează'' were the pieces originally performed at
Cabaret Voltaire, identified by
Hugo Ball as "Rumanian poetry", and that they were recited in Tzara's own spontaneous French translation. Although they are noted for their radical break with the traditional form of Romanian verse,
[ Dennis Deletant]
"Întoarcerea României în Europa: între politică și cultură"
, in ''Revista 22'', Nr. 879, January 2007 Ball's diary entry of 5 February 1916, indicates that Tzara's works were still "conservative in style".
[Richter, p.16] In Călinescu's view, they announce Dadaism, given that "bypassing the relations which lead to a realistic vision, the poet associates unimaginably dissipated images that will surprise consciousness."
In 1922, Tzara himself wrote: "As early as 1914, I tried to strip the words of their proper meaning and use them in such a way as to give the verse a completely new, general, meaning [...]."
Alongside pieces depicting a Jewish cemetery in which graves "crawl like worms" on the edge of a town, chestnut trees "heavy-laden like people returning from hospitals", or wind wailing "with all the hopelessness of an orphanage",
Samyro's poetry includes ''Verișoară, fată de pension'', which, Cernat argues, displays "playful detachment [for] the musicality of internal rhymes".
It opens with the lyrics:
The
Gârceni pieces were treasured by the moderate wing of the Romanian avant-garde movement. In contrast to his previous rejection of Dada, ''
Contimporanul
''Contimporanul'' (antiquated spelling of the Romanian language, Romanian word for "the Contemporary", singular masculine form) was a Romanian (initially a weekly and later a monthly) avant-garde Literary magazine, literary and art magazine, publi ...
'' collaborator
Benjamin Fondane
Benjamin Fondane () or Benjamin Fundoianu (; born Benjamin Wechsler, Wexler or Vecsler, first name also Beniamin or Barbu, usually abridged to B.; November 14, 1898 – October 2, 1944) was a Romanian and France, French poet, critic and Existentia ...
used them as an example of "pure poetry", and compared them to the elaborate writings of French poet Paul Valéry, thus recuperating them in line with the magazine's ideology.
Dada synthesis and "simultaneism"
Tzara the Dadaist was inspired by the contributions of his experimental modernist predecessors. Among them were the literary promoters of
Cubism: in addition to
Henri Barzun and
Fernand Divoire, Tzara cherished the works of
Guillaume Apollinaire
Guillaume Apollinaire) of the Wąż coat of arms. (; 26 August 1880 – 9 November 1918) was a French poet, playwright, short story writer, novelist, and art critic of Polish descent.
Apollinaire is considered one of the foremost poets of t ...
.
Despite Dada's condemnation of
Futurism, various authors note the influence
Filippo Tommaso Marinetti
Filippo Tommaso Emilio Marinetti (; 22 December 1876 – 2 December 1944) was an Italian poet, editor, art theorist, and founder of the Futurist movement. He was associated with the utopian and Symbolist artistic and literary community Abbaye d ...
and his circle exercised on Tzara's group. In 1917, he was in correspondence with both Apollinaire and Marinetti. Traditionally, Tzara is also seen as indebted to the early avant-garde and black comedy writings of Romania's
Urmuz.
For a large part, Dada focused on performances and satire, with shows that often had Tzara, Marcel Janco and Huelsenbeck for their main protagonists. Often dressed up as German Tyrol, Tyrolian peasants or wearing dark robes, they improvised poetry sessions at the Cabaret Voltaire, reciting the works of others or their spontaneous creations, which were or pretended to be in Esperanto or Māori language. Bernard Gendron describes these soirées as marked by "heterogeneity and eclecticism", and Richter notes that the songs, often punctuated by loud shrieks or other unsettling sounds, built on the legacy of noise music and Futurism (music), Futurist compositions.
With time, Tristan Tzara merged his performances and his literature, taking part in developing Dada's "simultaneist poetry", which was meant to be read out loud and involved a collaborative effort, being, according to
Hans Arp, the first instance of Surrealist automatism.
Ball stated that the subject of such pieces was "the value of the human voice." Together with Arp, Tzara and
Walter Serner produced the
German-language
German ( ) is a West Germanic language mainly spoken in Central Europe. It is the most widely spoken and official or co-official language in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Liechtenstein, and the Italian province of South Tyrol. It is also a ...
''Die Hyperbel vom Krokodilcoiffeur und dem Spazierstock'' ("The Hyperbole of the Crocodile's Hairdresser and the Walking-Stick"), in which, Arp stated, "the poet crows, curses, sighs, stutters, Yodeling, yodels, as he pleases. His poems are like Nature [where] a tiny particle is as beautiful and important as a star." Another noted simultaneist poem was ''L'Amiral cherche une maison à louer'' ("The Admiral Is Looking for a House to Rent"), co-authored by Tzara, Marcel Janco and Huelsenbach.
Art historian Roger Cardinal describes Tristan Tzara's Dada poetry as marked by "extreme semantic and syntactic incoherence".
Tzara, who recommended destroying just as it is created, had devised a personal system for writing poetry, which implied a seemingly chaotic reassembling of words that had been randomly cut out of newspapers.
[Robin Lydenberg, ''Word Cultures: Radical Theory and Practice in William S. Burroughs'', University of Illinois Press, Urbana & Chicago, p.45. ]
Dada and anti-art
The Romanian writer also spent the Dada period issuing a long series of manifestos, which were often authored as prose poetry,
and, according to Cardinal, were characterized by "rumbustious tomfoolery and astringent wit", which reflected "the language of a sophisticated savage".
Huelsenbeck credited Tzara with having discovered in them the format for "compress[ing] what we think and feel", and, according to Hans Richter, the genre "suited Tzara perfectly."
Despite its production of seemingly theoretical works, Richter indicates, Dada lacked any form of program, and Tzara tried to perpetuate this state of affairs. His Dada manifesto of 1918 stated: "Dada means nothing", adding "Thought is produced in the mouth." Tzara indicated: "I am against systems; the most acceptable system is on principle to have none."
In addition, Tzara, who once stated that "logic is always false",
[ Ion Pop (literary historian), Ion Pop]
"Un urmuzian: Ionathan X. Uranus"
, in ''Tribuna (Romania), Tribuna'', Vol. V, Nr. 96, September 2006 probably approved of Serner's vision of a "final dissolution". According to Philip Beitchman, a core concept in Tzara's thought was that "as long as we do things the way we think we once did them we will be unable to achieve any kind of livable society."
Despite adopting such
anti-art
Anti-art is a loosely used term applied to an array of concepts and attitudes that reject prior definitions of art and question art in general. Somewhat paradoxically, anti-art tends to conduct this questioning and rejection from the vantage poi ...
istic principles, Richter argues, Tzara, like many of his fellow Dadaists, did not initially discard the mission of "furthening the cause of art."
[Richter, p.54] He saw this evident in ''La Revue Dada 2'', a poem "as exquisite as freshly-picked flowers", which included the lyrics:
![Guillaume Apollinaire Calligramme](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/fc/Guillaume_Apollinaire_Calligramme.JPG)
''La Revue Dada 2'', which also includes the Onomatopoeia, onomatopoeic line ''tralalalalalalalalalalala'', is one example where Tzara applies his principles of chance to sounds themselves.
This sort of arrangement, treasured by many Dadaists, was probably connected with Apollinaire's calligrams, and with his announcement that "Man is in search of a new language."
[Mary Lewis Shaw, "Concrete and Abstract Poetry: The World as Text and the Text as World", in Leonard M. Trawick (ed.), ''World, Self, Poem: Essays on Contemporary Poetry from the "Jubliation of Poets"'', Kent State University Press, Kent, 1990, p.169. ] Călinescu proposed that Tzara willingly limited the impact of chance: taking as his example a short parody piece which depicts the love affair between cyclist and a Dadaist, which ends with their decapitation by a jealous husband, the critic notes that Tzara transparently intended to "shock the
bourgeois".
Late in his career, Huelsenbeck alleged that Tzara never actually applied the experimental methods he had devised.
The Dada series makes ample use of contrast, Ellipse (figure of speech), ellipses, ridiculous imagery and nonsensical verdicts.
Tzara was aware that the public could find it difficult to follow his intentions, and, in a piece titled ''Le géant blanc lépreux du paysage'' ("The White Leprous Giant in the Landscape") even alluded to the "skinny, idiotic, dirty" reader who "does not understand my poetry."
He called some of his own poems ''lampisteries'', from a French word designating storage areas for light fixtures. The Lettrism, Lettrist poet Isidore Isou included such pieces in a succession of experiments inaugurated by Charles Baudelaire with the "destruction of the anecdote for the form of the poem", a process which, with Tzara, became "destruction of the word for nothing".
[David W. Seaman, "French Lettrisme—Discontinuity and the Nature of the Avant-Garde", in Freeman G. Henry (ed.), ''Discontinuity and Fragmentation'', Rodopi Publishers, Rodopi, Amsterdam, 1994, p.163. ] According to American literary historian Mary Ann Caws, Tzara's poems may be seen as having an "internal order", and read as "a simple spectacle, as creation complete in itself and completely obvious."
Plays of the 1920s
Tristan Tzara's first play, ''
The Gas Heart'', dates from the final period of Paris Dada. Created with what Enoch Brater calls a "peculiar verbal strategy", it is a dialogue between characters called Ear, Mouth, Eye, Nose, Neck, and Eyebrow.
[Brater, p.25] They seem unwilling to actually communicate to each other and their reliance on proverbs and idiotisms willingly creates confusion between metaphorical and literal speech.
The play ends with a dance performance that recalls similar devices used by the proto-Dadaist
Alfred Jarry. The text culminates in a series of doodles and illegible words.
[Brater, p.26] Brater describes ''The Gas Heart'' as a "parod[y] of theatrical conventions".
In his 1924 play ''
Handkerchief of Clouds'', Tzara explores the relation between perception, the subconscious and memory. Largely through exchanges between commentators who act as third parties, the text presents the tribulations of a love triangle (a poet, a bored woman, and her banker husband, whose character traits borrow the clichés of conventional drama), and in part reproduces settings and lines from ''Hamlet''. Tzara mocks classical theater, which demands from characters to be inspiring, believable, and to function as a whole: ''Handkerchief of Clouds'' requires actors in the role of commentators to address each other by their real names, and their lines include dismissive comments on the play itself, while the protagonist, who in the end dies, is not assigned any name. Writing for ''Integral'', Tzara defined his play as a note on "the relativity of things, sentiments and events." Among the conventions ridiculed by the dramatist, Philip Beitchman notes, is that of a "privileged position for art": in what Beitchman sees as a comment on Marxism, poet and banker are interchangeable Capitalism, capitalists who invest in different fields. Writing in 1925, Fondane rendered a pronouncement by
Jean Cocteau
Jean Maurice Eugène Clément Cocteau (, , ; 5 July 1889 – 11 October 1963) was a French poet, playwright, novelist, designer, filmmaker, visual artist and critic. He was one of the foremost creatives of the s ...
, who, while commenting that Tzara was one of his "most beloved" writers and a "great poet", argued: "''Handkerchief of Clouds'' was poetry, and great poetry for that matter—but not theater." The work was nonetheless praised by
Ion Călugăru at ''Integral'', who saw in it one example that modernist performance could rely not just on props, but also on a solid text.
''The Approximate Man'' and later works
After 1929, with the adoption of Surrealism, Tzara's literary works discard much of their satirical purpose, and begin to explore universal themes relating to the human condition.
According to Cardinal, the period also signified the definitive move from "a studied inconsequentiality" and "unreadable gibberish" to "a seductive and fertile surrealist idiom."
The critic also remarks: "Tzara arrived at a mature style of transparent simplicity, in which disparate entities could be held together in a unifying vision."
In a 1930 essay, Fondane had given a similar verdict: arguing that Tzara had infused his work with "suffering", had discovered humanity, and had become a "Clairvoyance, clairvoyant" among poets.
This period in Tzara's creative activity centers on ''
The Approximate Man'', an Epic poetry, epic poem which is reportedly recognized as his most accomplished contribution to French literature.
While maintaining some of Tzara's preoccupation with language experimentation, it is mainly a study in social alienation and the search for an escape.
Cardinal calls the piece "an extended meditation on mental and elemental impulses
..with images of stunning beauty",
while Breitchman, who notes Tzara's rebellion against the "excess baggage of [man's] past and the notions
..with which he has hitherto tried to control his life", remarks his portrayal of poets as voices who can prevent human beings from destroying themselves with their own intellects. The goal is a new man who lets intuition and spontaneity guide him through life, and who rejects measure. One of the appeals in the text reads:
The next stage in Tzara's career saw a merger of his literary and political views. His poems of the period blend a
humanist
Humanism is a philosophical stance that emphasizes the individual and social potential and agency of human beings. It considers human beings the starting point for serious moral and philosophical inquiry.
The meaning of the term "human ...
vision with
communist theses.
The 1935 ''Grains et issues'', described by Beitchman as "fascinating", was a prose poem of social criticism connected with ''The Approximate Man'', expanding on the vision of a possible society, in which haste has been abandoned in favor of oblivion (eternal), oblivion. The world imagined by Tzara abandons symbols of the past, from literature to public transportation and currency, while, like psychologists Sigmund Freud and Wilhelm Reich, the poet depicts violence as a natural means of human expression. People of the future live in a state which combines waking life and the realm of dreams, and life itself turns into revery. ''Grains et issues'' was accompanied by ''Personage d'insomnie'' ("Personage of Insomnia"), which went unpublished.
Cardinal notes: "In retrospect, harmony and contact had been Tzara's goals all along."
The post-
World War II
World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposing ...
volumes in the series focus on political subjects related to the conflict.
In his last writings, Tzara toned down experimentation, exercising more control over the lyrical aspects.
He was by then undertaking a Hermeneutics, hermeutic research into the work of Goliards and
François Villon
François Villon ( Modern French: , ; – after 1463) is the best known French poet of the Late Middle Ages. He was involved in criminal behavior and had multiple encounters with law enforcement authorities. Villon wrote about some of these ...
, whom he deeply admired.
Legacy
Influence
Beside the many authors who were attracted into Dada through his promotional activities, Tzara was able to influence successive generations of writers. This was the case in his homeland during 1928, when the first avant-garde manifesto issued by ''unu'' magazine, written by
Sașa Pană
Sașa Pană (; pen name of Alexandru Binder; 8 August 1902—22 August 1981) was a Romanian avant-garde poet, novelist, and short story writer.
Biography
Born to a Jewish family in Bucharest, he trained as a physician in Iași and Bucharest, b ...
and Moldov, cited as its mentors Tzara, writers Breton, Ribemont-Dessaignes, Vinea,
Filippo Tommaso Marinetti
Filippo Tommaso Emilio Marinetti (; 22 December 1876 – 2 December 1944) was an Italian poet, editor, art theorist, and founder of the Futurist movement. He was associated with the utopian and Symbolist artistic and literary community Abbaye d ...
, and
Tudor Arghezi
Tudor Arghezi (; 21 May 1880 – 14 July 1967) was a Romanian writer, best known for his unique contribution to poetry and children's literature. Born Ion N. Theodorescu in Bucharest, he explained that his pen name was related to ''Argesis'', th ...
, as well as artists Constantin Brâncuși and
Theo van Doesburg
Theo van Doesburg (, 30 August 1883 – 7 March 1931) was a Dutch artist, who practiced painting, writing, poetry and architecture. He is best known as the founder and leader of De Stijl. He was married to artist, pianist and choreographer Nell ...
. One of the Romanian writers to claim inspiration from Tzara was
Jacques G. Costin, who nevertheless offered an equally good reception to both Dadaism and
Futurism, while
Ilarie Voronca
Ilarie Voronca (pen name of Eduard Marcus; 31 December 1903, Brăila—8 April 1946, Paris) was a Romanian avant-garde poet and essayist. life and career
Voronca was of Jewish ethnicity. In his early years, he was connected with Eugen Lovine ...
's ''Zodiac'' cycle, first published in France, is traditionally seen as indebted to ''The Approximate Man''. The Kabbalah, Kabbalist and Surrealist author Mihail (Marcel) Avramescu, Marcel Avramescu, who wrote during the 1930s, also appears to have been directly inspired by Tzara's views on art.
Other authors from that generation to have been inspired by Tzara were Poland, Polish Futurist writer Bruno Jasieński, Japanese poet and Zen thinker Takahashi Shinkichi, and Chilean poet and Dadaist sympathizer
Vicente Huidobro
Vicente García-Huidobro Fernández (; January 10, 1893 – January 2, 1948) was a Chilean poet born to an aristocratic family. He promoted the avant-garde literary movement in Chile and was the creator and greatest exponent of the literary m ...
, who cited him as a precursor for his own ''Creacionismo''.
An immediate precursor of Theater of the Absurd, Absurdism, he was acknowledged as a mentor by
Eugène Ionesco
Eugène Ionesco (; born Eugen Ionescu, ; 26 November 1909 – 28 March 1994) was a Romanian-French playwright who wrote mostly in French, and was one of the foremost figures of the French avant-garde theatre in the 20th century. Ionesco inst ...
, who developed on his principles for his early essays of literary and social criticism, as well as in tragic farces such as ''The Bald Soprano''. Tzara's poetry influenced
Samuel Beckett (who translated some of it into English);
the Irish author's 1972 play ''Not I'' shares some elements with ''
The Gas Heart''. In the United States, the Romanian author is cited as an influence on
Beat Generation members. Beat writer Allen Ginsberg, who made his acquaintance in Paris, cites him among the Europeans who influenced him and William S. Burroughs. The latter also mentioned Tzara's use of chance in writing poetry as an early example of what became the cut-up technique, adopted by
Brion Gysin and Burroughs himself.
Gysin, who conversed with Tzara in the late 1950s, records the latter's indignation that Beat poets were "going back over the ground we [Dadaists] covered in 1920", and accuses Tzara of having consumed his creative energies into becoming a "Communist Party bureaucrat".
Among the late 20th-century writers who acknowledged Tzara as an inspiration are Jerome Rothenberg,
[Christine A. Meilick, ''Jerome Rothenberg's Experimental Poetry and Jewish Tradition'', Lehigh University Press, Bethlehem, 2005, p.46-47, 85sqq. ] Isidore Isou and
Andrei Codrescu. The former Situationist International, Situationist Isou, whose experiments with sounds and poetry come in succession to Apollinaire and Dada,
declared his Lettrism to be the last connection in the Charles Baudelaire-Tzara cycle, with the goal of arranging "a nothing
..for the creation of the anecdote."
For a short period, Codrescu even adopted the pen name ''Tristan Tzara''.
He recalled the impact of having discovered Tzara's work in his youth, and credited him with being "the most important French poet after Rimbaud."
In retrospect, various authors describe Tzara's Dadaist shows and street performances as "happenings", with a word employed by post-Dadaists and Situationists, which was coined in the 1950s. Some also credit Tzara with having provided an ideological source for the development of
rock music
Rock music is a broad genre of popular music that originated as " rock and roll" in the United States in the late 1940s and early 1950s, developing into a range of different styles in the mid-1960s and later, particularly in the United States an ...
, including punk rock, punk subculture and post-punk.
Tristan Tzara has inspired the songwriting technique of Radiohead, and is one of the avant-garde authors whose voices were mixed by DJ Spooky on his trip hop album ''Rhythm Science''. Romanian contemporary classical musician Cornel Țăranu set to music five of Tzara's poems, all of which date from the post-Dada period. Țăranu, Anatol Vieru and ten other composers contributed to the album ''La Clé de l'horizon'', inspired by Tzara's work.
Tributes and portrayals
![Tzara by Tihanyi](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/ce/Tzara_by_Tihanyi.jpg)
In France, Tzara's work was collected as ''Oeuvres complètes'' ("Complete Works"), of which the first volume saw print in 1975,
and an international poetry award is named after him (''Prix International de Poésie Tristan Tzara''). An international periodical titled ''Caietele Tristan Tzara'', edited by the Tristan Tzara Cultural-Literary Foundation, has been published in
Moinești
Moinești (; hu, Mojnest) is a city in Bacău County, Western Moldavia, Romania, with a population of 21,787 . Its name is derived from the Romanian-language word ''moină'', which means "fallow" or "light rain". Moinești once had a large Jewish ...
since 1998.
[ Oltița Cîntec]
"Un profesor inimos din Moinești și o societate cultural-literară atrag atenția întregii lumii asupra României"
, in ''Evenimentul'', 10 March 2003
According to Paul Cernat, ''Aliluia'', one of the few avant-garde texts authored by Ion Vinea features a "transparent allusion" to Tristan Tzara. Vinea's fragment speaks of "the Wandering Jew", a character whom people notice because he sings ''La moară la Hârța'', "a suspicious song from Greater Romania." The poet is a character in Indian novelist Mulk Raj Anand's ''Thieves of Fire'', part four of his ''The Bubble'' (1984), as well as in ''The Prince of West End Avenue'', a 1994 book by the American Alan Isler. Rothenberg dedicated several of his poems to Tzara,
as did the Neo-Dadaist Valery Oișteanu. Tzara's legacy in literature also covers specific episodes of his biography, beginning with
Gertrude Stein
Gertrude Stein (February 3, 1874 – July 27, 1946) was an American novelist, poet, playwright, and art collector. Born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, in the Allegheny West neighborhood and raised in Oakland, California, Stein moved to Paris ...
's controversial memoir. One of his performances is enthusiastically recorded by Malcolm Cowley in his autobiographical book of 1934, ''Exile's Return'', and he is also mentioned in Harold Loeb's memoir ''The Way It Was''. Among his biographers is the French author François Buot, who records some of the lesser-known aspects of Tzara's life.
At some point between 1915 and 1917, Tzara is believed to have played chess in a coffeehouse that was also frequented by
Bolshevik
The Bolsheviks (russian: Большевики́, from большинство́ ''bol'shinstvó'', 'majority'),; derived from ''bol'shinstvó'' (большинство́), "majority", literally meaning "one of the majority". also known in English ...
leader
Vladimir Lenin
Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov. ( 1870 – 21 January 1924), better known as Vladimir Lenin,. was a Russian revolutionary, politician, and political theorist. He served as the first and founding head of government of Soviet Russia from 1917 to 1 ...
. While Richter himself recorded the incidental proximity of Lenin's lodging to the Dadaist milieu,
no record exists of an actual conversation between the two figures.
[Olson, p.43][Jenna Scherer]
"''Travesties'' Shows Importance of Being Stoppard"
, in ''Boston Herald'', 15 April 2008 Andrei Codrescu believes that Lenin and Tzara did play against each other, noting that an image of their encounter would be "the proper icon of the beginning of [modern] times."
This meeting is mentioned as a fact in ''Harlequin at the Chessboard'', a poem by Tzara's acquaintance
Kurt Schwitters. German playwright and novelist Peter Weiss, who has introduced Tzara as a character in his 1969 play about Leon Trotsky (''Trotzki im Exil''), recreated the scene in his 1975–1981 cycle ''The Aesthetics of Resistance''. The imagined episode also inspired much of Tom Stoppard's 1974 play ''Travesties'', which also depicts conversations between Tzara, Lenin, and the Irish modernist author James Joyce (who is also known to have resided in Zürich after 1915).
[Michael Coveney, "Usurpation Supreme", in ''The Observer'', 19 March 1993][Charles Isherwood, "Lenin, Joyce and Philosophy with Vaudevillian Verve", in ''The New York Times'', 27 May 2005] His role was notably played by David Westhead in the 1993 British production,
and by Tom Hewitt (actor), Tom Hewitt in the 2005 American version.
Alongside his collaborations with Dada artists on various pieces, Tzara himself was a subject for visual artists.
Max Ernst
Max Ernst (2 April 1891 – 1 April 1976) was a German (naturalised American in 1948 and French in 1958) painter, sculptor, printmaker, graphic artist, and poet. A prolific artist, Ernst was a primary pioneer of the Dada movement and Surrealis ...
depicts him as the only mobile character in the Dadaists' group portrait ''Au Rendez-vous des Amis'' ("A Friends' Reunion", 1922),
while, in one of
Man Ray
Man Ray (born Emmanuel Radnitzky; August 27, 1890 – November 18, 1976) was an American visual artist who spent most of his career in Paris. He was a significant contributor to the Dada and Surrealist movements, although his ties to eac ...
's photographs, he is shown kneeling to kiss the hand of an androgynous
Nancy Cunard
Nancy Clara Cunard (10 March 1896 – 17 March 1965) was a British writer, heiress and political activist. She was born into the British upper class, and devoted much of her life to fighting racism and fascism. She became a muse to some of the ...
. Years before their split,
Francis Picabia used Tzara's Calligraphy, calligraphed name in ''Moléculaire'' ("Molecular"), a composition printed on the cover of ''
391''. The same artist also completed his schematic portrait, which showed a series of circles connected by two perpendicular arrows. In 1949, Switzerland, Swiss artist Alberto Giacometti made Tzara the subject of one of his first experiments with lithography. Portraits of Tzara were also made by
Greta Knutson, Robert Delaunay, and the Cubism, Cubist painters M. H. Maxy and Lajos Tihanyi. As an homage to Tzara the performer, art rocker David Bowie adopted his accessories and mannerisms during a number of public appearances. In 1996, he was depicted on a series of Romanian stamps, and, the same year, a concrete and steel monument dedicated to the writer was erected in Moinești.
Several of Tzara's Dadaist editions had illustrations by Picabia, Janco and
Hans Arp.
In its 1925 edition, ''Handkerchief of Clouds'' featured etchings by Juan Gris, while his late writings ''Parler seul'', ''Le Signe de vie'', ''De mémoire d'homme'', ''Le Temps naissant'', and ''Le Fruit permis'' were illustrated with works by, respectively, Joan Miró, Henri Matisse,
Pablo Picasso
Pablo Ruiz Picasso (25 October 1881 – 8 April 1973) was a Spanish painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramicist and Scenic design, theatre designer who spent most of his adult life in France. One of the most influential artists of the 20th ce ...
, Nejad Devrim
and
Sonia Delaunay
Sonia Delaunay (13 November 1885 – 5 December 1979) was a French artist, who spent most of her working life in Paris. She was born in Odessa (then part of Russian Empire), and formally trained in Russian Empire and Germany before moving to Fr ...
. Tzara was the subject of a 1949 eponymous documentary film directed by Danish filmmaker Jørgen Roos, and footage of him featured prominently in the 1953 production ''Les statues meurent aussi'' ("Statues Also Die"), jointly directed by Chris Marker and Alain Resnais.
Posthumous controversies
The many polemics which surrounded Tzara in his lifetime left traces after his death, and determine contemporary perceptions of his work. The controversy regarding Tzara's role as a founder of Dada extended into several milieus, and continued long after the writer died. Richter, who discusses the lengthy conflict between Huelsenbeck and Tzara over the issue of Dada foundation, speaks of the movement as being torn apart by "petty jealousies".
In Romania, similar debates often involved the supposed founding role of
Urmuz, who wrote his avant-garde texts before
World War I
World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fightin ...
, and Tzara's status as a communicator between Romania and the rest of Europe. Vinea, who claimed that Dada had been invented by Tzara in
Gârceni ca. 1915 and thus sought to legitimize his own modernist vision, also saw Urmuz as the ignored precursor of radical modernism, from Dada to Surrealism. In 1931 the young, modernist literary critic Lucian Boz evidenced that he partly shared Vinea's perspective on the matter, crediting Tzara and Constantin Brâncuși with having, each on his own, invented the avant-garde.
Eugène Ionesco
Eugène Ionesco (; born Eugen Ionescu, ; 26 November 1909 – 28 March 1994) was a Romanian-French playwright who wrote mostly in French, and was one of the foremost figures of the French avant-garde theatre in the 20th century. Ionesco inst ...
argued that "before Dadaism there was Urmuzianism", and, after
World War II
World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposing ...
, sought to popularize Urmuz's work among aficionados of Dada. Rumors in the literary community had it that Tzara successfully sabotaged Ionesco's initiative to publish a French edition of Urmuz's texts, allegedly because the public could then question his claim to have initiated the avant-garde experiment in Romania and the world (the edition saw print in 1965, two years after Tzara's death).
A more radical questioning of Tzara's influence came from Romanian essayist Petre Pandrea. In his personal diary, published long after he and Tzara had died, Pandrea depicted the poet as an opportunist, accusing him of adapting his style to political requirements, of dodging military service during
World War I
World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fightin ...
, and of being a "Lumpenproletariat, Lumpenproletarian".
[Cernat, p.113] Pandrea's text, completed just after Tzara's visit to Romania, claimed that his founding role within the avant-garde was an "illusion
..which has swelled up like a multicolored balloon", and denounced him as "the
Balkan
The Balkans ( ), also known as the Balkan Peninsula, is a geographical area in southeastern Europe with various geographical and historical definitions. The region takes its name from the Balkan Mountains that stretch throughout the who ...
provider of interlope odalisques, [together] with narcotics and a sort of scandalous literature."
Himself an adherent to communism, Pandrea grew disillusioned with the ideology, and later became a political prisoner in Communist Romania. Vinea's own grudge probably shows up in his 1964 novel ''Lunatecii'', where Tzara is identifiable as "Dr. Barbu", a thick-hided charlatan.
From the 1960s to 1989, after a period when it ignored or attacked the avant-garde movement, the Romanian communist regime sought to recuperate Tzara, in order to validate its newly adopted emphasis on nationalist and National communism, national communist tenets. In 1977, literary historian Edgar Papu, whose controversial theories were linked to "protochronism", which presumes that Romanians took precedence in various areas of world culture, mentioned Tzara, Urmuz, Ionesco and Isou as representatives of "Romanian initiatives" and "road openers at a universal level." Elements of protochronism in this area, Paul Cernat argues, could be traced back to Vinea's claim that his friend had single-handedly created the worldwide avant-garde movement on the basis of models already present at home.
[Cernat, p.129]
Notes
References
*Alice Armstrong, "Stein, Gertrude" and Roger Cardinal, "Tzara, Tristan", in Justin Wintle (ed.), ''Makers of Modern Culture'',
Routledge
Routledge () is a British multinational publisher. It was founded in 1836 by George Routledge, and specialises in providing academic books, journals and online resources in the fields of the humanities, behavioural science, education, law ...
, London, 2002.
*Philip Beitchman, "Symbolism in the Streets", in ''I Am a Process with No Subject'', University Press of Florida, University of Florida Press, Gainesville, 1988.
*Enoch Brater, ''Beyond Minimalism: Beckett's Late Style in the Theater'', Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1987.
*
Paul Cernat, ''Avangarda românească și complexul periferiei: primul val'', Cartea Românească, Bucharest, 2007.
*Bernard Gendron, ''Between Montmartre and the Mudd Club: Popular Music and the Avant-Garde'',
University of Chicago Press
The University of Chicago Press is the largest and one of the oldest university presses in the United States. It is operated by the University of Chicago and publishes a wide variety of academic titles, including ''The Chicago Manual of Style'', ...
, Chicago, 2002.
*Saime Göksu, Edward Timms, ''Romantic Communist: The Life and Work of Nazım Hikmet'', C. Hurst & Co., London, 1999.
*Dan Grigorescu, ''Istoria unei generații pierdute: expresioniștii'', Editura Eminescu, Bucharest, 1980.
*Marius Hentea, ''TaTa Dada: The Real Life and Celestial Adventures of Tristan Tzara'', MIT Press, Cambridge, 2014.
*Irene E. Hofman
''Documents of Dada and Surrealism: Dada and Surrealist Journals in the Mary Reynolds Collection'' Art Institute of Chicago
Ryerson and Burnham Libraries 2001
*
Irina Livezeanu
Irina Livezeanu (born 1952) is a Romanian-American historian. Her research interests include Eastern Europe, Eastern European Jewry, the Holocaust in Eastern Europe, and modern nationalism. Several of her publications deal with the history of Roma ...
, " 'From Dada to Gaga': The Peripatetic Romanian Avant-Garde Confronts Communism", in Mihai Dinu Gheorghiu, Lucia Dragomir (eds.), ''Littératures et pouvoir symbolique. Colloque tenu à Bucarest (Roumanie), 30 et 31 mai 2003'', Maison des Sciences de l'homme, Editura Paralela 45, Paris, 2005.
*Felicia Hardison Londré, ''The History of World Theatre: From the English Restoration to the Present'',
Continuum International Publishing Group
Continuum International Publishing Group was an academic publisher of books with editorial offices in London and New York City. It was purchased by Nova Capital Management in 2005. In July 2011, it was taken over by Bloomsbury Publishing. , all ...
, London & New York, 1999.
*Kirby Olson, ''Andrei Codrescu and the Myth of America'', McFarland & Company, Jefferson, 2005.
*Petre Răileanu, Michel Carassou, ''Fundoianu/Fondane et l'avant-garde'', Editura Fundației Culturale Române, Fondation Culturelle Roumaine, Éditions Paris-Méditerranée, Bucharest & Paris, 1999.
*
Hans Richter, ''Dada. Art and Anti-art'' (with a postscript by Werner Haftmann), Thames & Hudson, London & New York, 2004.
External links
*
*
''From Dada to Surrealism'', Judaica Europeana virtual exhibition, Europeana database
Tristan Tzara: The Art History Archiveat ''The Lilith Gallery of Toronto''
an
at UbuWeb
{{DEFAULTSORT:Tzara, Tristan
Tristan Tzara,
1896 births
1963 deaths
People from Moinești
Moldavian Jews
Romanian Jews
Romanian emigrants to France
French people of Romanian-Jewish descent
20th-century French poets
20th-century Romanian poets
French male poets
Romanian male poets
Jewish poets
Romanian-language poets
Symbolist poets
Surrealist poets
Dada
Romanian surrealist writers
Romanian writers in French
20th-century French dramatists and playwrights
20th-century Romanian dramatists and playwrights
French male dramatists and playwrights
Jewish dramatists and playwrights
Modernist theatre
20th-century French essayists
Romanian essayists
French male essayists
French art critics
Romanian art critics
French literary critics
Romanian literary critics
Philosophers of nihilism
French humorists
Jewish humorists
Romanian humorists
French magazine editors
French magazine founders
Romanian magazine editors
Romanian magazine founders
Romanian propagandists
20th-century French translators
Romanian translators
20th-century French composers
French male composers
Romanian composers
Jewish composers
French musicians
Jewish Romanian musicians
Noise musicians
Romanian cabaret performers
French performance artists
Romanian performance artists
Romanian film directors
20th-century French diplomats
French film directors
French art collectors
Romanian art collectors
Jewish art collectors
Romanian expatriates in Switzerland
Romanian World War I poets
Romanian anti–World War I activists
French pacifists
Jewish pacifists
Jewish artists
Romanian people of the Spanish Civil War
Jewish Romanian writers banned by the Antonescu regime
Jews in the French resistance
Romanian participants in the French Resistance
Communist members of the French Resistance
French Communist Party politicians
Romanian communists
Communist writers
Jewish socialists
Naturalized citizens of France
People of the Hungarian Revolution of 1956
People of the Algerian War
Burials at Montparnasse Cemetery
People of Montmartre
20th-century French male musicians