Chanson Dada

Roman S. Struc is a professor in the Department of Germanic and Slavic
Studies at the University of Calgary.

The war of 1914 was an outrage against mankind. Nonetheless, initially at least, it was generally greeted with enthusiasm, music, and parades. Thus the war eventually became the “normal” state of affairs, to be capped by victory for “us” and defeat for “them.” Even those who considered themselves pacifists were at first swept up by the hysterical euphoria, and only well into the war did the respected voices of pacifism become more vociferous, if not more effective.

The aim of poetry has always been to shock readers out of their complacency, to show them the world in a different light, to force them to listen and see in a new way. Thus, in 1916, a small group of artists, poets, and conscientious objectors in Zurich — in neutral Switzerland —instigated a number of “happenings,” with the aim of shocking, exposing, ridiculing, and outraging the proponents of war. These young artists and intellectuals called themselves and their activity “Dada.” Dada started out with an inherent paradox; it opted for the total negation of all conventions in art and poetry, for uncompromising anarchy, for the denial and destruction of all rules and traditions, and yet, in practice, it was obliged to rely in many ways on publicity, production, and distribution in order to reach its intended audiences. Further, Dada did not want to be “political,” but in effect found itself on the far left of the political spectrum.

Purely spontaneous phenomena necessarily have a short life span. Dada is accepted as having survived from 1916 to 1923. At the same time “branches” of Dada — especially after the war, when travel across borders became easier — sprouted in Munich, Berlin, and Cologne, as well as in Paris, where it later joined forces with Surrealism.

Among the founders of Dada was the young Romanian student, Tristan Tzara (pseud. Samuel Rosenstock, 1896-1963), whose selected poems are rendered in elegant English translation by Lee Harwood. The poetry of Tzara ranges from the “programmatic” nonsense poetry characteristic of Dada to tender, lyrical poetry, and also encompasses elegaic motifs, as in the poem “the death of guillaume apollinaire.”

Dada is history now. Its art and poetry no longer shock and outrage the reader as they must have done seventy years ago. At the same time, along with Expressionism, from which it derived, and Surrealism of the twenties, Dada left a legacy of modernism perceptible to this day to the historian of art and literature.

The obvious value of this volume is the collection of Tzara’s poetry in English; its value is considerably enhanced by an introductory sketch of the poet’s life and his role within Dada, but also by the concluding essay, “Dada / My Heart Belongs to Dada,” which provides an informative and empathetic guide to a movement full of youth, idealism, fire, and iconoclasm.