In his Dadaist manifestoes, Tzara outlines a number of ideas
that define the Dada movement, one of which can be found on page eighty. Tzara
writes, “What we need is works that are strong straight precise and forever
beyond understanding. Logic is a complication. Logic is always wrong. It draws
the threads of notions, words, in their formal exterior, towards illusory ends
and centers. Its chains kill, it is an enormous centipede stifling independence”.
Arp’s “The Guest Expulsed”, which can be found on page 52 and 53 of the Richter
text, as well as Ball’s “Gadji Beri Bimba” on pages 42 and 43 are good examples
of what Dada must be according to Tzara.
In both
of these pieces, particularly in “The Guest Explulsed”, the language used is
very strong and precise, following typical grammatical structure (at least in
the English translation provided) but, as Tzara states, it is completely beyond
understanding. While there is a very strong visual element to the piece, the
images do not fit together logically. Likewise, “Gadji Beri Bimba” relies on
very strong sounds, but the piece runs on a sort of made up language with no
semantic content. Combined with the performance aspect of the piece that
Richter describes, a common and powerful aspect of Dadaist art, Ball creates
imagery just as vivid if not more ridiculous than Arp.
While
both of these pieces utilize similar ideas and the strong and precise language,
both literal and figurative, that is described in the Dadaist manifestoes, these
two artists maintain their independence, and the work produced under Tzara’s
principles is completely different.
The Dada artists rejected form and logic in their work. As Grayson says in the above post, for the Dadaists, “logic is always wrong.” Rather, the Dada movement hopes to subvert logic through paradox and nonsense language. This is because Dada art is focused on sound and rhythm than on meaning. Grayson points out in her post that Hans Arp’s poem is “completely beyond understanding.” While “The Guest Expulsed 5” does make grammatical sense, the actual narrative of the poem is nonsensical and does not seem to make much sense. Rather, the words are selected for their sound quality and rhythm. Hugo Ball’s poem, on the other hand, makes no grammatical sense, and in fact, uses no words, but rather combinations of letters that form sounds when read aloud (for example, “gadji beri bimba glandridi”). Thus illustrating that Dada is movement of performance art rather than art of logical meaning.
ReplyDeleteAlthough Andre Breton’s surrealist novel, Naja, makes grammatical sense and is not purely composed of words chosen because of their sound, it is still clear that Breton and the other surrealists were influenced by the Dada movement. For instance, much like Dada is a rejection of logic and conventional meaning, surrealism champions subconscious thought over conscious thought and structure. Nadja, who can be read as a physical manifestation of the surrealism, lets her subconscious rule her life. When Breton asks Nadja where she will eat dinner, she points here and there and replies, “oh, over there, or there (the two nearest restaurants), wherever I happen to be, you know. It’s always this way.” Nadja does not plan ahead; rather she lets life take her where it will. Whenever she decides she is hungry, she will stop and eat dinner at the nearest restaurant. This anecdote illustrates the surrealist emphasis on the subconscious, and letting the subconscious make decisions rather than overthinking things and living an overly structured life. In his Dada Manifestos, Tzara declares that he “is against systems, the most acceptable system is on principle to have none.” Both Tzara and Breton reject systems, though in slightly different ways. Tzara rejects systems and logic through paradox and contradiction. Before declaring that “the most acceptable system is on principle to have none,” Tzara also declares that he is against “principles.” Thus, that he is against the principle of having no systems, yet is against principles is contradictory, thus reinforcing that he is against systems for systems are not contradictory. Rather than twisting and subverting logic like Tzara, Breton’s writing style teeters on stream of consciousness. For instance, when talking of his favorite play Breton says that if the plot is explained, the play “loses almost everything, or at least every character conflict, by not being seen, by not being acted out,” yet despite this, Breton dedicates the next six or so pages relating the reader the plot of said play. This is a contradiction, but not the same kind of calculated, mind bending contradiction that defines Tzara’s Dada manifestos. Rather, it is a natural contradiction. It is as if Breton has just come back from seeing the play, and loves it so much that he wants to tell his friend about it, but his friend has not seen the play, and though Breton does not want to spoil the play for his friend, he is overcome with excitement about the play and explains the plot anyway. Thus, Nadja is more like a free associative conversation that Breton is having with the reader, whereas Tzara is purposefully trying to bend the minds of his readers. However, both Tzara and Breton share a disregard for logic and conventional structure.
You're definitely right about the images not fitting together logically, and, of course, that was the entire basis of dada. Surrealism was born out of dada, and surely both movements are rejections of logic and reason and rigidness, and you rightly conclude that dada is very much a smorgasbord of contradiction, of the self and of the work of others, a rejection of anything and everything all for the purpose of embodying the despair and the cloudiness born out of the first world war. This is, of course, demonstrated by the word salad that is Gadji beri bimba.
ReplyDeleteThat's all been well-established in class ad we further explored the tenants of dada. Surrealism, coming from that, is the same sort of deal, but it's much more structured. It actually reminds me of your blog post. It puts logical things in an illogical context (speaking in generalities, of course), thereby creating a different sort of nonsense, a different sort of rejection. It's much more organized, therefore, in this manner. As the commenter above me said, Nadja has perfectly structured, perfectly fine sentences, but the content itself is all over the place, which aligns with the whole automatic writing, psychoanalytic idea that was blowing up in popularity at the time. The whole point of surrealism was to bridge the dream world, the subconscious, to reality, which thereby threw normal things into crazy-ass contexts. Breton writes in Nadja on page 19 about "petrifying coincidences, and reflexes peculiar to each individual, of harmonies struck as though on the piano..." to use a quote brought up in class. This is but an example of this uninhibited stream of consciousness. We have to think about what he's saying here: everything has to do with everything if it comes from the same mind, of course, and everything compliments one another, as though it were a musical harmony. There is a link, or perhaps a synapse, between what we think and feel and sense and the world around us, and whether or not our senses deceive us, well, that's a different argument entirely. Take it up with Renee Descartes.
I agree, the ideas presented in Dada and Surrealism are, in my opinion, not as similar as they would seem. When thinking of the conditions of its time period, we can see how Dada existed as a revolutionary art form. It was an active protest against the senseless deaths of innumerable innocent people and the seemingly careless behavior of the elite class. In protesting against these structural injustices, the Dada artists banded together, leaderless, and created art which engaged in a veritable "self-indulgence," making commentary about the present state of the world with the genuine absurdity. Like the soldier's lives lost in the war, random occurrences decided the artists' content and drove their work. These ideas are represented in the quotations provided above from Arp and Ball's works. These poems follow no traditional structure and are truly the random occurrences of the author's minds. These works actually stand in stark contrast to the works of Surrealism.
ReplyDeleteSurrealism, unlike the Dada movement, had a clearly defined leader in Andre Breton. Also unlike Dada, Surrealism existed in a time of relative peace, and in an age of scientific and social awakening. Freud's work on the mind was gaining traction and the Surreal has often been said to have much to do with the scientist's findings. In his profound work Nadja, Breton begins to show the clear distinction between the indulgent nonsense of Dada and the careful examination of self and reality presented by surrealism. That is not to say that the work is always written carefully, as often we encounter phrases in Breton's work that can confuse even the most competent reader. Instead, this means to say that the surrealist movement was conscious of the very natural but intentional process of accessing and understanding the unconscious. Tapping into and documenting this, as we see in Breton's signature work, looks very different from the apparent ramblings of the free associative methods of Dada.