Tzara’s
Dada manifestos do very much resonate with Hugo Ball’s Gadji beri bimba. Before any of this can be explored further, I
feel the need to have excerpts from each work accompany each other so that
their particular bond can be more thoroughly discussed. In his second
manifesto, Tzara writes:
“Logic
is always wrong. It draws the threads of notions, words, in their formal
exterior, toward illusory ends and centers. Its chains kill, it is an enormous
centipede stifling independence. Married to logic, art would live in incest, swallowing,
engulfing its own tail... fornicating within itself...”
Ball, in his
poem, writes, “gadjama bimbalo glandridi glassala zingtata pimpalo ögrögöööö/viola
laxato viola zimbrabim viola uli paluji maloo” (11-12). This very well resonates
with Tzara’s manifestos, because it may seem completely illogical the first
time one reads these lines in the poem. There doesn’t seem to be any big
meaning, they argue no point, they are not cryptic in the same way that, for
example, Wordsworthian poetry is. It is possible to argue, however, that there
is indeed logic in everything we do. As we have discovered with Mallarme, we
still in some form control chance if we see fit (e.g. a dicethrow), and it is
the same for what we produce. “Viola” is a word, but that only scratches the
surface of this argument—this poem was written for the sounds it makes, and
because it is a rejection of all of the poetry that came before it. It
resonates with Tzara’s statement of “Logic is always wrong... married to logic,
art would live in incest...” At the same time, through a different lens, there is logic to found here, which in a sense
makes the motivation behind the crafting of this poem self-defeating, and it
contradicts what Tzara had to say. The thing is, this is exactly what Dada is about—it’s a rejection of anything and
everything, growing out of World War I’s chaos. It’s a walking contradiction.
This poem and this manifestos throw us into a semantic spiral, readers never to
really get out completely.
ReplyDeleteAs gadfly points out, there is a deviation from logicality in both Tzara’s and Richter’s texts, which echoes the Dadaist rejection of the conventional and rational traditions of society. This movement arises as a direct response to a seemingly nonsensical war. As the blog writer illustrates with the following quotation: “logic is always wrong. It draws the threads of notions, words, in their formal exterior….” This mirrors the same rejection of logic in surrealist works such as that illustrated in Andre Breton’s “Nadja.” Yet, while a defiance of logic resonates in both Surrealist and Dadaist work, Breton demonstrates a different way to channel this illogicality. He shows an alternate form of logic through a stream of consciousness that blurs the line between dream and reality, thus presenting a form of logic that transcends the rational boundaries that reigns in society. This is demonstrated through his character, Nadja, which he devotes the book to describe the details of their 10 days together. Nadja is portrayed as a living, breathing surrealist figure. She seems to be in touch with the truer reality that is outside of the bounds of the rational world, in which she opens herself up to chance. This can be demonstrated by the following quotation:
“...I ask Nadja where she is having dinner. And suddenly that frivolity which is hers alone, perhaps, to put it precisely, that freedom, flashes out: “Where?” (pointing): “oh, over there, or there (the two nearest restaurants), wherever I happen to be, you know. It’s always this way.’ (71).
This quotation illuminates Nadja’s way of living—a surrealist one—which Breton sees as a more authentic way of living. In a way, she lives as a free spirit of unconscious and lives in such a way that is open to chance. It is a way of living that is both radical and liberating, according to Breton.
The emphasis on chance and randomness through Nadja’s way of living resonates the same theme in Dadaist works. That is, defying conventionalized forms to take on new possibilities of art through the emphasis of randomness. Both Dadaist and Surrealist works views the window of chance as a way to illustrate the role of unconscious. In other words, both try to illuminate a relation between randomness and the unconscious.
Yet we can also observe a point of divergence between Dadaist and Surrealist work. Gadfly used the following quotation to illustrate the nonsensical nature of Dadaist works:
“gadjama bimbalo glandridi glassala zingtata pimpalo ögrögöööö/viola laxato viola zimbrabim viola uli paluji maloo” (11-12).”
It is evident that these ‘words’ were assembled for their sound rather than meaning. This emphasis on sound presents the reader a nonsensical element to the poem since it makes no sense. However, Breton presents a different way of creating nonsense—and arguably, in a way that makes more sense. While Dadaist poets such as that quoted above string together words purely for sound quality, Breton strings together seemingly random moments that at first seem interspersed but are actually being threaded together into a textual web. Despite the nonsensical things that arise from the weird leaps in Breton’s narrative, the textual web serves as a free-association in memory. Through the reconstruction of memory, he associates various moments he spent with Nadja using sharp imagery and rambling. Yet these weird events seem to coincide in a way that memory persists.