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IMA 10 109-120 Goldman Ida.Indd BATSHEVA GOLDMAN-IDA SERENDIPITY: ALCHEMY OF WORDS: ABRAHAM ABULAFIA, DADA, LETTRISM TEL AVIV MUSEUM OF ART (16 JUNE–19 NOVEMBER 2016) Abstract the graphic elements leads the way to exploration and “Museum Musings” relates to the exhibition Alchemy of Words: later to synthesis. Abraham Abulafia, Dada Lettrism (Tel Aviv Museum of Art, In the case of the exhibition Alchemy of Words: 16 June–19 November 2016), discussing the connections made, Abraham Abulafia, Dada, Lettrism, which I curated at discoveries, and considerations on what lay behind the unique the Tel Aviv Museum of Art, it was the graphic quality of constellation of the show. Abulafia’s written permutations (figs. 1a and 1b) that con- vinced me to present them in the context of Dada and The Aramaic phrase “simana milta hi” (“a [visual] signi- Lettrist artists. Only later did it become apparent that fier is real”) carries crucial implications for the study there was a real connection between Abulafia and mod- of art.1 For me, it means to begin, as Abbaye suggests, ern artists (fig. 2). The poet Yvan Goll, associated with by seeing: “le’mehazei”—“to behold.”2 The curator must Dada from its beginnings, and the leader of Lettrism, first confront the material. The visual perception of Isidore Isou, became aware of Abulafia and his mystic Fig. 1a. Abraham Abulafia (1240–ca. 1292), “72-Letter Name,” Hayyei ha-Olam ha-Ba (Life of the World to Come), 1280, late fourteenth–fifteenth century, Italy, ink on parchment. Manuscript copy: 18.7 × 13.7 cm. The Braginsky Collection, Zurich, folio 7v–8r. (Photo Ardon Barhama). 1 Translation for “simana milta hi” is my own. beans, leeks, beets and dates on Rosh Hashanah.” (Babylonian Talmud, Horayot 12a). This is the origin of the custom of holding אמר אביי: ״השתא דאמרת ,סימנא מילתא היא, ]לעולם[ יהא רגיל 2 .a Seder Rosh Hashana with symbolic foods למיחזי בריש שתא קרא ורוביא כרתי וסילקא ותמרי.״ Abbaye said, “Now that you have said that ‘a sign is a [correct] matter,’ truly a man should accustom himself to looking at squash, © Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2017 IMAGES Also available online—brill.com/ima DOI: 10.1163/18718000-12340081 Downloaded from Brill.com10/09/2021 06:18:29AM via free access 110 Batsheva Goldman-Ida Fig. 1b. Rendering of Abraham Abulafia, illustration from Abraham Abulafia, Or Ha’Sehel (Light of the Intellect), ca. 1285, 15th century Italy, illustration on paper. Manuscript copy: Rome, The Vatican Library, Vat. Ebr. 597, fol. 133r. Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticanna (2016). Downloaded from Brill.com10/09/2021 06:18:29AM via free access Serendipity 111 Fig. 2. Abraham Pincas (1945–2015), Untitled [Abraham Abulafia, Or ha’Sekhel (“Light of the Intellect”)], ca. 1980, Israel, gall-nut ink, water-based pigments, and varnish on parchment, 41.5×32 cm. Courtesy of Shoshana and Moshe Idel, Jerusalem. © Estate of the Artist. (Photo © Tel Aviv Museum of Art by Elad Sarig). permutations in the early 1940s, very possibly through nected to the exhibition title. In this case, I chose the publication of Gershom Scholem’s Major Trends in “Alchemy of Words” as a common denominator. The Jewish Mysticism, in which the fourth chapter is devoted Symbolist poet Arthur Rimbaud was the first to coin to “Abraham Abulafia and the Doctrine of Prophecy.”3 the term “l’Alchimie du verbe.”4 Hugo Ball referred to One challenge in regard to any new exhibition is him when he prefaced his iconic Dada performance to determine the concept, which is often then con- of Karawane at the Cabaret Voltaire in Zurich in 1916 3 Gershom C. Scholem, Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism (Jeru- 4 Arthur Rimbaud, “Second Delirium: The Alchemy of the Word,” salem: Schocken Publishing House, 1941), 119–152. Sixth Season: A Season in Hell, in Complete Works, trans. Paul Schmidt (New York: Harper Perennial, 2000), 232–237. Downloaded from Brill.com10/09/2021 06:18:29AM via free access 112 Batsheva Goldman-Ida Fig. 3. Gabriel Pomerand (1925–1972), Saint Ghetto des Prêts / Saint Ghetto of the Loans, grimoire (book of spells), 1950, 47 metagraphic plates in gibberish and French equivalent. With a preface by Jacques Baratier (Paris: POL). The Letaillieur Collection, Paris. (Photo: Courtesy of the Letaillieur Collection and Gallery 1900–2000, Paris). by saying: “We must return to the innermost alchemy certain permutations with body organs, affecting them of the word.”5 directly. Umberto Eco reiterated the concept in his For Rimbaud, language could be made “virtually novel Foucault’s Pendulum (1988): consubstantial with Consciousness.”6 This also relates to the concept “simana milta hi,” or, in its German For months, like devout rabbis, we uttered differ- equivalent, “Ding an sich” (“the thing in itself”). The ent combinations of the letters of the Book. GCC, phrase was used by Immanuel Kant to distinguish CGC, GCG, CGG. What our lips said, our cells between the noumenon—the “thing per se”—and the learned. What did my cells do? They invented a phenomenon—its perception. However, for Goll, as different Plan, and now they are proceeding on well as the Lettrist artists, “poetry must emanate the their own, creating a history, a unique, private his- thing in itself, the ‘Ding an sich.’ ”7 These artists chose tory.… And they have learned to do this now with to override rationality and present random words and my body. They invert, transpose, alternate, trans- letters as well as hyper- or metagraphics (fig. 3) to con- form themselves into cells unheard of, new cells vey an immediate experience; in Isou’s terminology, a without meaning, or with meaning contrary to the sense of immanence.8 Abulafia went so far as to equate right meaning.…. It’s the temurah. [permutation].9 5 Notation of June 23–24, 1916, Hugo Ball, Flight Out of Time: A 9 Alongside the use of Gematriah (assigning numbers to the Dada Diary, ed. John Elderfield, trans. Ann Raimes (Oakland, CA: Hebrew letters) and Notarikon (forming new words by the first or University of California Press, 1996), 70–71. last letters of a word), Temura or permutation forms an anagram 6 Alan Bacher Williamson, Introspection and Contemporary Po- by rearranging the order of the letters in a word. These methods etry (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1984), 4. were used by Abulafia in his writings to find new meanings for 7 Yvan Goll, “Le Réisme” (Reism), in Quatre études, ed. Jules biblical phrases and names of the Divine. Abraham Abulafia, Romains (Paris: Pierre Seghers, 1956), 206. “To the domain of the Hayyei ha’Olam ha’Ba (Life of the World to Come), written in 1280 transcendent belongs also the Ding an sich, i.e., a ‘thing’ which (Jerusalem: Amnon Gross, 2009), 19–20 (in Hebrew); Umberto exists independently of the form of experience.” Erik Stenius, Eco, Foucault’s Pendulum (New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, Wittgenstein’s Tractatus: A Critical Exposition of Its Main Lines of 2007), 550. See exhibition catalogue, Batsheva Goldman-Ida, Thought (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1960), xi. editor, Alchemy of Words: Abraham Abulafia, Dada, Lettrism, 8 Sami Sjöberg, “Mysticism of Immanence: Lettrism, Sprachkritik, Hebrew-English edition (Tel Aviv: Tel Aviv Museum of Art, 2016), and the Immediate Message,” Partial Answers: Journal of Literature 157–158. and the History of Ideas 11.1 (January, 2013): 63 Downloaded from Brill.com10/09/2021 06:18:29AM via free access Serendipity 113 Figs 4–9. Installation Photos. Alchemy of Words: Abraham Abulafia, Dada, Lettrism, June 16–November 19, 2016, Ruth and Bruce Rappaport Sculpture Gallery, Main Building, Tel Aviv Museum of Art. (Photos Tel Aviv Museum of Art by Elad Sarig). Part of the challenge of the exhibition was to find Kabbalistic drawing of the letter aleph, the first letter Abulafian ideas in modern and contemporary literature in the Hebrew alphabet (fig. 10).10 and art to supplement the Dada and Lettrist works The assemblage Le Vaisselle du poète (The Poet’s and provide a contemporary context for the medieval Dishes, 1970) by Christian Tobas (fig. 11) was shown mystic endeavor. The result may be seen in the instal- near a quote from Rabbi Nahman of Bratslav’s “Story lation photographs (figs. 4–9).The quotations were not of the Bread,” recounted in 1800–1802, wherein Rabbi didactic. For example, the story “The Aleph” (1945) by Jorge Luis Borges, which focuses on the multifold 10 Jorge Luis Borges, El Aleph (“The Aleph,” 1945), trans. Norman meanings of the letter aleph, was placed alongside a Thomas di Giovanni in collaboration with Borges, accessed July 4, manuscript of a student of Abulafia that featured a 2017, http://web.mit.edu/allanmc/www/borgesaleph.pdf. Downloaded from Brill.com10/09/2021 06:18:29AM via free access 114 Batsheva Goldman-Ida Fig. 10. Natan ben Sa’adia Harar, Sha’rei Tzedek, Messina, Sicily, ca. 1285, fifteenth century, Italy. Manuscript copy: ink on parchment, 20 × 14.9 cm. From the collections of the National Library of Israel, Jerusalem, Ms. Heb. 8˚148, folio 35r. (Photo: Courtesy the National Library of Israel, Jerusalem). Nahman comes down to breakfast only to find that the loaf of bread has become a pile of letters, all jum- bled up.11 An excerpt from The Manuscript Found in Saragossa, written by the Polish Count Jan Potocki between 1805 and 1814, which reads “In Hebrew every letter is a number,” was placed alongside The Tape Measures (1923–1925) by Francis Picabia (fig. 12) and La Rose mathématique (Mathematical Rose, 1963) by Ladislav Novák (fig. 13).12 Lamellae from the fourth to the seventh century that were utilized as amulets, with a mystical use of the twenty-two letters of the Hebrew alphabet (fig.
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