Tristan Tzara
Romanian-born French poet and essayist known mainly as a founder of Dada, a nihilistic revolutionary movement in the arts.
The Dadaist movement originated in Zürich during World War I; Tzara wrote the first Dada texts - La Premiére Aventure cèleste de Monsieur Antipyrine (1916; "The First Heavenly Adventure of Mr. Antipyrine") and Vingt-cinq poémes (1918; "Twenty-Five Poems") - and the movement's manifestos, Sept manifestes Dada (1924; "Seven Dada Manifestos").
In Paris he engaged in tumultuous activities with André Breton, Philippe Soupault, and Louis Aragon to shock the public and to disintegrate the structures of language. About 1930, weary of nihilism and destruction, he joined his friends in the more constructive activities of Surrealism. He devoted much of his time to the reconciliation of Surrealism and Marxism and joined the Communist Party in 1936 and the French Resistance movement during World War II. These political commitments brought him closer to his fellow human beings, and he gradually matured into a lyrical poet. His poems revealed the anguish of his soul, caught between revolt and wonderment at the daily tragedy of the human condition.
His mature works started with L'Homme approximatif (1931; "The Approximate Man") and continued with Parler seul (1950; "Speaking Alone") and La Face intèrieure (1953; "The Inner Face"). In these, the anarchically scrambled words of Dada were replaced with a difficult but humanized language.
“The rest, called literature, is a dossier of human imbecility for the guidance of future professors.”
“and on the other side for lack of sun there is death perhapswaiting for you in the uproar of a dazzling whirlwind with a thousand explosive armsstretched toward you man flower passing from the seller's hands tothose of the lover and the lovedpassing from the hand of one event to the other passive and sad parakeetthe teeth of doors are chattering and everything is done withimpatience to make you leave quicklyman amiable merchandise eyes open but tightly sealedcough of waterfall rhythm projected in meridians and slicesglobe spotted with mud with leprosy and bloodwinter mounted on its pedestal of night poor night weak and steriledraws the drapery of cloud over the cold menagerieand holds in its hands as if to throw a ballluminous number your head full of poetry”
“Morality is the infusion of chocolate into the veins of all men”
“Dada is not modern at all, it is rather a return to a quasi-Buddhist religion of indifference. Dada puts an artificial sweetness onto things, a snow of butterflies coming out of a conjurer's skull. Dada is stillness and does not understand the passions.”
“Any work of art that can be understood is the product of journalism. The rest, called literature, is a dossier of human imbecility for the guidance of future professors.”
“I speak only of myself since I do not wish to convince, I have no right to drag others into my river, I oblige no one to follow me and everybody practices his art in his own way." - Tristan Tzara "Dada Manifesto 1918”
“Thought is made in the mouth.”
“There is a literature that does not reach the voracious mass. It is the work of creators, issued from a real necessity in the author, produced for himself. It expresses the knowledge of a supreme egoism, in which laws wither away. Every page must explode, either by profound heavy seriousness, the whirlwind, poetic frenzy, the new, the eternal, the crushing joke, enthusiasm for principles, or by the way in which it is printed. On the one hand a tottering world in flight, betrothed to the glockenspiel of hell, on the other hand: new men. Rough, bouncing, riding on hiccups. Behind them a crippled world and literary quacks with a mania for improvement.”
“Always destroy what is in you.”
“The summit sings what is being spoken in the depths.”
“Art needs an operation”
“You'll never know why you exist, but you'll always allow yourselves to be easily persuaded to take life seriously.”
“Not the old, not the new, but the necessary.”