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Short Dada Writings SHORT DADA WRITINGS by TRISTAN TZARA, RICHARD HULSENBECK, PAUL DERMEE, CLUB DADA, HANS ARP, WALTER SERNER, GEORGES RIBEMONT-DESSAIGNES, VINCENTE HUIDOBRO, WALTER MEHRING and BENJAMIN PERET JUST SOME WRITINGS AND POEMS COLLECTED BY RICHARD FOR ANYONE WHO IS LOOKING FOR MATERIAL TO PERFORM 1 DADAIST DISGUST Every product of disgust that is capable of becoming a negation of the family is: DADA; protest with the fists of one©s whole being in destructive action: DADA; acquaintance with all the means hitherto rejected by the sexual prudishness of easy compromise and good manners: DADA; abolition of logic, dance of those who are incapable of creation: DADA; every hierarchy and social equation established for values by our valets: DADA; every object, all objects, feelings and obscurities, every apparition and the precise shock of parallel lines, are means for the battle of: DADA; the abolition of memory: DADA; the abolition of archaeology: DADA; the abolition of prophets: DADA; the abolition of the future: DADA; 2 the absolute and indisputable belief in every god that is an immediate product of spontaneity: DADA; the elegant and unprejudiced leap from one harmony to another sphere; the trajectory of a word, a cry, thrown into the air like an acoustic disc; to respect all individualities in their folly of the moment, whether serious, fearful, timid, ardent, vigorous, decided or enthusiastic; to strip one©s church of every useless and unwieldy accessory; to spew out like a luminous cascade any offensive or loving thought, or to cherish it -- with the lively satisfaction that it©s all precisely the same thing -- with the same intensity in the bush, which is free of insects for the blue-blooded, and gilded with the bodies of archangels; with one©s soul. Liberty: DADA DADA DADA; -- the road of contorted pains, the interweaving of contraries and of all contradictions, freaks and irrelevancies: LIFE. --TRISTAN TZARA 3 SOUND AND FURY The lofty Dadaist in his Sunday suit Is playing once more upon the flute The cricket chirps by the riverside And moon asks night to be its bride, Trumpety-tee. O, the soul is as dry as dust, and the mind is quite nonplussed, Gruesome birds are flitting about In the sky, where the clouds hang out, Trumpety-tee. Yes, I©m playing an adagio for a wife who©s now quite dead, Call it melancholy, call it bunk,--O Man, you©re wrong as long as you eat bread, Trumpety-tee. She floats off to the spirit parnassia, Then up to the dawn she climbs And ends up stuck to a glacier Like one of old Goethe©s rhymes Trumpety-tee. Dadaistic is this ditty, Which I sing to you with gusto, May it rise up slowly like a pretty Fly upon two tiny wings-o. Trumpety-tee. Think of Tzara, think of Arp, And think of the great Huelsenbeck! --ALEXANDER SESQui (Richard Hulsenbeck) 4 OCTOBER 12 A cold snake reins of steel Hang from your trembling arm Shake your branches o poplar The leaves depart and the birds Skeleton ... Your smile becomes fixed lips anxious A cloak about your shoulders a letter It is a gallop among the firs Does your heart beat rapidly my hands are moist Pale regard from high in the sky See my tender breast my crumpled tulips I have filled my mouth with honey Golden spurs well-shod horse In the autumn winds the leaf trembles HISS hiss steel snake I have a hatred of metal and I admire it Faithful emissary of the canon You carry death in the vibrating air You make as stiff and crumpled as beams those who like under your foul kiss winged viper of ardent flight I shiver the rain falls O Mother of seven sufferings Here is my heart Still streaming with the world©s pity 5 A tree dies in the forest ... Deliverance Arise then in this rainy twilight PRIDE LOVE Unappeasable flames A tower rises in your life AHOY The weeping chevron glimmers Here the oblivion of days numb with cold A bright fire in the chimney THE SNAKES BEAT AGAINST THE WINDOW PANE --PAUL DERMEE 6 A DECLARATION FROM CLUB DADA Dada is the chaos from which a thousand regulations are made, which in turn entangle to form the chaos of Dada. Dada is simultaneously the course and the content of world history in its entirety. Club Dada invites the foremost representatives of the peak of the German intelligentsia to argue over the following Dada tenets: People are angels and live in heaven. They and all the bodies which surround them are cosmic accumulations of the greatest magnitude. Their chemical and physical changes are magical processes which are greater and more mysterious than every creation and every extinction of a planet in the realms of the so-called stars. Every expression and perception of the soul or mind is more miraculous than the most incredible event described in the tales of the Thousand and One Nights. Everything that people and all other bodies do and do not do is a diversion for heavenly amusement, a game of highest order which is seen and experienced in as many different ways as there are units of consciousness to behold them. Not only is a person a unit of consciousness, but also all the orders of universal form of which he consists, and in whose midst he dwells as an angel. Death is a fairy tale for children and belief in God was a rule of the game of human consciousness during that period in which man was unaware that earth is a part of heaven, like everything else. 7 Universal consciousness has no need of God. Club Dada urgently requests everyone©s opinions on these tenets and will set them before the public in the fifth issue of its review. --CLUB DADA 8 THE SWALLOW©S TESTICLE 1. oh no our good old kaspar is dead who will now wear the burning flag in his pigtail who will turn the coffee grinder who will bait the idyllic doe he confused the boats at sea with that little word parapluie and he named the winds bee-master oh no oh no oh no our good kaspar is dead hell©s bells kaspar is dead the crayfish clatter in the chimes when one says his first name and so I keep sighing kaspar kaspar kaspar why have you become a star or a chain of water on a hot whirlwind or an udder of black light or a transparent brick on the groaning drum of the craggy being now our tops and toes are drying up and the fairies lie half-charred at the stake 2. now the black skittle alley rumbles behind the sun and no one winds the compasses or the wheels of the barrows any more who will eat now with the rat at the secluded table 9 who will chase off the devil when he wants to lure the horses who will explain to us the monograms in the stars his bust will adorn the mantelpieces of all truly noble people but that is no consolation and snuff for a death©s head 3. the cascadeuses waved their little flags on the water turrets as shown in figure 5 the adventurers with their false bears and diamantine hooves mounted the rostrum snowingly with the help of inflated whale skins the great spirit-lion harun al-raschid viz harpoon a radish yawned thrice and revealed teeth blackened by tobacco the mercerised rattlesnakes uncoiled from their spools mowed their corn and locked it away in stones the eyes of the young stars stepped forth from the seam of death the donkey©s hooves danced on bottlenecks after being scourged on the sun©s cheek the dead fell like flakes from the leather towers how many skeletons turned the wheels of the gates once the waterfall had crowed thrice its wallpaper faded to the marrow and the sailor-stencil shattered the cupboards rose from the depths and spread out their anchors 10 at last the ocean risked the impotency of the bitter compasses the glittering angels swing on their hinges the glassy owls handed round death from beak to beak the birds hung their glass tails like waterfalls from out of the rocks the farmwives wore burnt-out taxidermied suns in their hair only the farmwives were allowed to plant wax dolls but only in their craws only in their nictating membranes only in their dear little town jerusalem 4. the noblewoman ceremoniously pumps clouds into sacks of leather and stone giant cranes hoist warbling larks silently into the sky the sand-towers are stuffed full with cotton wool dolls ammonites discuses and mill-stones get jammed in the sluices the boats are called hansel and gretel and steam along unsuspecting the dragon bears the inscription cunigundula and is lead on a leash the towns have had their feet sawn off the church spires filled solely with leg-room have been placed in the cellars thus we are also not obliged to clean the claws, horns and weather-vanes 11 5. although the moon hangs before me like a mirror the angel gives me a pain in the eye the seeds sprout on the tables and if you give a rap on the plants their flowers leap forth the lions perish before their sentry boxes with watering cans full of diamonds between their claws the leaders wear aprons of wood the birds wear shoes of wood the birds are full of echoes the eggs roll incessantly from their little hearts their crown bears the heavenly mast their soles stand on striding flames burst the snow-chain, the call to the dear lord if the celestial wheel sinks their hooves will step on black grains in january graphite snows into the goatskin in february the bouquet of chalk-white light and white stars reveals itself in march the exterminating angel ruts and the stars sway in their rings and the portico-blossoms rattle in their chains and the princesses sing inside their mist-pots Who©s that hurrying after the morning winds on little fingers and wings --HANS ARP 12 THE ELEPHANT STYLE VERSUS THE BIDET STYLE Rational architecture was repressed aesthetics.
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