Chapter 40 II Departure from Montparnasse to join the war (2) Dada Literature Society

I am against the use of force.But I neither disapprove nor approve of the constant contradictions and disputes, which I will not explain, for I am born to abhor doctrinal teachings. Tristan Chara On the other side of the Atlantic far from New York - in war-torn Europe, two men are playing chess.One is 45 years old, high cheekbones, bald, with a small goatee; the other, in his early 20s, has a sallow complexion, nearsightedness, a monocle, and a lock of black hair covering his forehead. The older ones are Russians, the younger ones are Romanians.They were at Voltaire's in Zurich.Romain Rolland, James Joyce and Georges-Louis Borges were also in the city.

The two players who were playing chess had nothing in common other than their mutual love of chess, their distaste for the wars sweeping across the continent, and their use of anonymity.They are the revolutionary Lenin and the poet Chara. One of them went to a city in Switzerland called Zimmerwald. In September 1915, representatives of the Socialists gathered in this village not far from Bern and issued a manifesto.In the declaration, they unanimously and strongly condemned imperialist wars waged by great powers, but far from advocating pacifism. The other was against war from the bottom of his heart, not just the war that was happening in front of him, but all wars.However, he did not participate in groups or parties fighting for peace, and his revolutionary ideas were not as firm and thorough as Duchamp in New York, Breton and Aragon in Paris.Because Tristan Chara's main concern is not politics.During the special period of the war, he also cared a little about politics, but in other periods, his main concern was not politics at all.At the time of their meeting at the Voltaire, Charat was doubtless an undisciplined French lyric poet in love with François Villon. , Francois Sade 1740-1814, French writer. , Lautreamont and Max Jacobs, but he came to Zurich not to disrupt the world, but to pursue his studies.

Dada (Tristan Chara) was born on February 8, 1916 at 6 o'clock in the afternoon. The word "dada" is just a word in French children's language that people randomly point out in the dictionary with a paper knife with their eyes closed, which is why it was chosen.The practice of choosing the names of literary genres so randomly without any tendency reflects the absurdity and comicality of the thought of the founder of the movement.The Romanians Tristan Tzara and Marcel Janco, the Germans Hugo Barr, Christian Schade and Richard Hussenbeck and the German poet and sculptor Jean Arp not only opposed the war, but also Against civilizations that lead to war.They vigorously advocate the pursuit of absolutes and oppose the heavy spiritual shackles of ancestral work, family, motherland and religion.

Founded by Hugo Barr, this literary gang often met at the Voltaire Tavern and included poets, writers, painters and university students, most of them anti-militarists in exile, many of whom were still Revolutionaries: Besides Lenin, Karl Radek and Willy Munzberg frequented the Voltaire tavern. Hugo Barr often organizes new entertainment programs that mix music, painting, poetry, masked dances, and percussion instruments.All activities of the participants must be impromptu, spontaneous, and instinctive.The works they created are as good as or worse than those of Baudelaire, Rimbaud, Jarry and Lautreamont.The poems they recite on the spot do not have to be written, but can also be improvised orally.In their own poems, they add fragments of other poems or fragments of the lyrics of black African songs.The artists beat boxes and boxes with all kinds of tableware and utensils, and shouted at the top of their lungs. Some recited poems and paintings, some sang and danced, and the onlookers were also pulled into their entertainment team to play with them.Chara organizes exhibitions of paintings by Picasso, Matisse and Derain and Arp's paste-ups in the Dada Gallery to conduct comparative studies.

The magazine "Tavern Voltaire" was born in June 1916, with a circulation of 500 copies.The magazine published some illustrations of paintings by Max Oppenheimer, Picasso, Modigliani, Arp and Jeanco, as well as a poem each by Apollinaire and the Italian poet Marinetti, as well as Hussen Baker, Janco and Chara's first co-authored opera "The Admiral Rents a House", which can be sung simultaneously in German, French and English.In the editorial of the magazine, Hugo Barr revealed the news of the publication of an international magazine "Dada". The first Dada evening was held on July 14th.Its program includes: black African songs, Dada music and dance, mixed language dance epics and three-dimensional dance.

A few days later Tristan Tzara read at the Tavern Voltaire the "Mr. Antipyrine's Manifesto," part of "Mr. Antipyrine's First Adventure in Paradise." In 1920, this work was included in the Compendium of Dada Works and published again in Paris, adding some woodcut illustrations by Marcel Jeanco.Chara mailed several compilations to New York.In this way, the Dada movement spread to the United States.Antipyrine is a drug often used by the author to treat neurosis, and Chara published the first manifesto of the Dada movement in the way of heavenly adventure: Dada is our strength, it is the strength that picks the head of a German baby on the point of a bayonet; Dada is art without slippers or anything like that... We know full well that our minds are going to be soft cushions, We are against dogmatism, and we are also against the bureaucracy, and we reject humane preaching.We have no freedom, so we firmly believe that freedom without discipline and moral instigation is very necessary.Dadaism remained within the confines of the European underdog.Although it is still very weak, we hope to make the art zoo colorful and colorful from now on.Bang, bang, bang!Hey bo ha bo!Hey bo ha bo!

[Excerpt from Tristan Tzara's Dada Manifesto quoted in Jean-Jacques Pouvet 1979] In July 1917, the first issue of Dada Magazine "Literature and Art Collection" was published, followed by the publication of the second and third issues of Dada Magazine.Not long after, the power of the "Tavern Voltaire" magazine was greatly weakened due to the departure of its founders, but Tristan Chara still published "1918" with the help of Picabia. Dada Manifesto.Before the two men met in January 1919, they corresponded regularly. This manifesto would have a huge impact throughout Europe, and especially in France, where the future Surrealists would embrace violence, speak out, and destroy the old world, long outdated.

Chara opposes all attempts to use Dadaism to find the cause, reason and explanation of everything.Dadaism is a wooden horse in the eyes of some, and a nanny in the eyes of others.Russians and Romanians affirm it twice, while Africans think it is just the tail of a holy cow... In short, everyone has his own understanding, and everyone has his own understanding. Chara claims that a work of art is not beauty, because "everyone's objective definition of it in textbooks" is dead, and everyone has their own unique understanding and definition of beauty, so there is no need to comment on others' understanding of beauty.Man itself is a chaotic thing, and no one or anything can make it orderly. Loving others is hypocrisy, and self-knowledge is fantasy.Psychoanalysis is "a dangerous disease which paralyzes the anti-reality propensities of man and which portrays the bourgeoisie as a system".Dialectics leads people to agree with other people's opinions, without dialectics people can discover these opinions themselves.Various schools of thought defended themselves, and Chara had no intention of convincing them to agree with him, so he was the first to speak out: "Since people are always suspicious of association and at the same time want independence, it is the The social basis for the birth of the Dada movement." [Excerpt from Tristan Chara's "Dada Manifesto"]

Abolish groups, abolish theory, down on Cubists, down on Futurists, because these are "systematic thinking factories".Cézanne saw the cup he was about to paint from below, the Cubists saw it from above, and the Futurists saw it in motion. "New artists protested, they stopped painting".Society, like the human brain, has some fixed, ancient and antiquated rules and regulations.They must be completely broken, and the only thing that needs to be kept is their "pounding" beating hearts.Speculation and harmonization, which make things orderly, are as useless as all systems, and they are decadent ideas, all of which belong to the list of destruction. "Completing the task of destroying and negating is very heavy, and all of this belongs to the category of cleaning and removal."

Chara's words were not fatal, but they were as powerful as a bullet from a gun. The Dada Manifesto of 1918 was a declaration of war against war or the old world, and it was an infinitely powerful manifesto advocating the creation of a new world for mankind after the massacre.It is like a sharp sword of the Dada movement, they are not isolated, there are many people in New York who care about the same focus as Marcel Duchamp himself: Dadaism was the strongest opposition to tangible painting in the field of painting.This is a metaphysical attitude.Its inner being is really connected with "literature" and is essentially a kind of nihilism... an attempt to escape from the status quo of thought, an attempt to avoid being affected by everything around it or the past: that is, an attempt to escape and get rid of old ideas , the expression of old habits.Dada's perseverance in the pursuit of nothingness is very beneficial.Dada said: "Never forget that you are not as empty and empty as you think!"

[Excerpt from "Symbol Duchamp" by Marcel Duchamp] Those of us who hold orthodox views cannot agree with this point of view at all, whether it is from a literary or other point of view. In September 1919, at the time of its reissue, the editorial board of La Nouvelle de France ruthlessly denounced this new statement from elsewhere: Paris seems to welcome such absurdly boring nonsense from Berlin.Last summer, the German news media reported several times on Dadaism, as well as on the endless repetition of the movement's esoteric syllables "Dada, dada, dada, da" by the genre's faithful. . [Excerpt from La Nouvelle de France, September 1, 1919] A little later, André Gide corrected this statement about Dadaism. He commented more objectively: Dadaism opposes another genre of literature and art - Cubism, and is a kind of "destroying old creations". method of movement".André Gide, who saw the ruins everywhere, also admitted: after the war, "ideology should not lag behind material existence, and it is a matter of course to destroy the old ideological system. Dadaism is about to take on this difficult task. ". [Excerpt from Le Nuevoie de France, April 1920] Then, Dadaism also spread to Switzerland. "391" magazine is published not only in Europe, but also in other places (the first four issues were published in Spain, the next three in the United States, the eighth in Zurich, and the last eleven in Paris), in Paris Two magazines, "SIC" (Son, Ideas, Couleurs, Formes: an acronym for "Sound, Thought, Color and Form") and "North and South" appeared successively.The purpose of these magazines was to fill the gap in the circulation of the daily newspapers, which were almost entirely devoted to reporting on the front lines.The newly launched periodicals also filled the gaps vacated by the many discontinued newspapers and magazines: the French Courier was the only newspaper that survived, but it was too traditional in the eyes of art nouveau enthusiasts And old-fashioned, completely unsuitable for the new situation of development.But in any case, the writers in the literary world always have a dislike for these young poets who are too passionate.And these little-known newcomers, after a few years, will start from some of their works whose value is underestimated, and suddenly become the new stars of the times, becoming the contemporary Hugo, Zola and Flaubert. "SIC" succeeded Ozenfant (1886-1966), a French painter.He signed the Purist Manifesto in 1918.The magazine "Unrestrained" issued in 1915 and 1916.It was a pre-war magazine for the poet and sculptor Pierre Albert-Biro alone.Later Pierre started the postcard business.He printed postcards himself and sold them to soldiers and their families in order to facilitate their correspondence.In order to be able to publish the poems of himself and his friends, Pierre Albert-Biro decided to start a magazine.He registered as unemployed and used the unemployment benefits he received to finance the publication and distribution of the magazine. In January 1916, the first issue of "SIC" magazine was published: 8 editions, 60 centimes each, a total of 500 copies were printed.The magazine was located at the home of the president and editor Pierre Albert-Biro in Tombe-Issoire Street at the time, and he alone edited all the articles and poems published in the first issue.On the front page of the first issue, he wrote: Our purpose is to: Taking the initiative, we cannot wait for the other side of the Rhine to act before us. In order to fulfill the above promise, Pierre Albert-Biro took the first initiative.Alone, without knowing any poets, and having no knowledge or experience in this field, he took decisive and courageous actions when the magazine "SIC" was first published.Before long, his boldness would be rewarded: he met Severini by chance.Introduced by Severini, he met Apollinaire, and Apollinaire agreed to provide him with several of his poems.For the first issue of "SIC", it is more than enough. North and South magazine lacked the unbridled indulgence and passion of its rivals.The magazine takes its name from the metro line that runs north and south of Paris, from Montmartre to Montparnasse.When its first issue came out in March 1917, its founder, the French poet Pierre Levedi, was hardly more famous than the poetic society to which he belonged.A professional proofreader for the Catholic Church, he served in the army and retired at the end of 1914.He is not richer than Albert Biro, but he is very sociable and has a wide network of connections in society: a wealthy Chilean poet gave him the necessary help and greatly promoted the progress of his career; Sai also helped him; after Paul Apollinaire retired due to health reasons, he often advertised in his magazine, which also increased his monthly income; Juan Gris designed the cover for the magazine. The color of "North and South" is charming, the style of writing is beautiful, and the technology of typesetting and printing is superb. If the magazine "North and South" is the mouthpiece of the artistic avant-garde, it can't be seen from the surface of the magazine alone, but people can find it from its content.Pierre Levedi, Max Jacobs, Baroness Odanjean (the two usual aliases: Roque Gray and Lionel Pierre) and Guillaume Apollinaire until Its role as the mouthpiece of the artistic avant-garde was reflected in the articles written for the various issues of North-South magazine during the long years of its last issue in May 1918.Despite differences of opinion between Levedi and Apollinaire (the former criticized the latter for being too much of a journalist), Max Jacobs and Levedi (the latter could not accept the former's self-proclaimed Inventor of Prose Poetry), however, they remained united in helping the magazine. In June 1917, French writer, poet and filmmaker Jean Cocteau, as an external collaborator, often rushed to and fro, helping the Dada movement from the outside.Due to Levedi's distrust of the author of Les Troops, the magazine never published an article signed by Cocteau.Articles by Italian Futurists were very popular with SIC, but they were also repeatedly rejected by North-South magazine, with the exception of Marinetti's work, perhaps in the second issue, where he commented on his Participated in the movement's excesses with reservations (but that didn't stop him a few years later from becoming a friend of Benito Mussolini, head of Italy's fascist government from 1922 to 1945). However, a steady stream of newcomers appeared to write articles for the magazine, and none of them were unknown: In March 1917, André Breton; the next month, Tristan Chara; in August, Philippe Soupeau; March 1918, Louis Aragon; May, Jean Pollen. These same people, they stood on the same front with Tristan Chara: Levedi joined the third branch of the Dada movement, Aragon, Breton and Subo joined the fourth, fourth and third branches of the Dada movement. The fifth branch, later Georges Ribemont-Dessaignes Georges Ribemont-Dessaignes (1884-1974), a French writer, a member of the Dada movement, and later became a surrealist.Also join the branch.All of these writers eventually collaborated with Pierre Albert-Biro, writing articles for his magazine SIC.Raymond Radiguet (1903-1923), a French writer, also appeared in the magazine.And Pierre Drieu La Rochelle Pierre Drieu La Rochelle (1893-1945), French writer and painter.Signed articles. One of the three magazines is published in Zurich, Switzerland, and the other two are published in Paris.At that time, Europe was in a time of chaotic war. How did the articles signed by these pioneers of literature and art appear in these three magazines by accident? There is only one person who maintains all this: the editorial of the first issue of "North and South" magazine respects this person as a person who "opened a new path and opened up a new world", and the magazine has heartfelt admiration and warm gratitude to him.Who is this person?He is none other than Guillaume Apollinaire that we are already familiar with.