Richter-Minji

Tristan Tzara, who is one of the most influential Dadaists, elaborates what the ideas of Dadaism should be focused on through out his powerful literary work: Seven Dada Manifestoes. In Dada Manifestoes, Tzara emphasizes several principles of Dadaism. One of the key ideas of Dada reflected by Tzara is resistance to logic and traditional systems, regardless of any form of arts such as painting, performing art and poems. For example, in the Dada Manifesto 1918, Tzara insists that he is against systems, and the most acceptable system is on principle to have none. He also argues that logic is always wrong and that it is a total complication. Poems presented by Richter in DADA art and anti-art well illustrate these key concepts of Dadaism by utilizing free association and putting completely illogical words as poetic form.

Poem ANNA BLUME written by Kurt Schwitters is a great example that uses free association as a tool to defy the system traditional poetic structure. For instance the first to third verses of the poem: “ I love your- you ye you your, I your, you my. – We?” Schwitters starts the verse from the word “your” and keeps writing associated words with the word “your” including you, I, and we, which are all grammatical persons. Also another free association that is derived from the idea of color, is shown in the middle of the poem. For example, Schiwitters writes, “Blue is the colour of your yellow hair.” It seems Schwitters puts his thoughts of various random colors that unconsciously come into his mind since the colors he mentions in this verse are not logically connected to each other except the fact that blue and yellow can be categorized as primary colors. Blue is a color but it cannot connect with yellow hair. The final example of free association is prize questions Schwitters asks in this poem: “1) Anna Blume has a bird. 2) Anna Blume is red. 3) What colour is the bird?” Those three sentences somewhat relay each other from a single thought of Anna Blume. The first sentence describes Anna Blume as a bird and the second sentence gets its turn by speaking random thoughts of Anna Blume, which is a color. Finally Shiwitters continues his unconscious relay of thought by asking about the color of bird, which might be derived from the idea of color of Anna Blume from the previous sentence. The use of free association well depicts the Dadaistic principle, which is a refusal to follow consciousness and a traditional system.

            The poem (or more like a chant) of Ball demonstrates another key idea of Dadaism, which is resistance to logic, by putting completely illogical words that do not even exist in the world. Even though words themselves are not logically making any sense, interestingly, there are certain patterns that follow such as alliteration and repetition of words.

              Poems written under the strong Dada era are fighting against the society by defying logic and the traditional system; however, at the same time Dadaist some what follow certain rules such as the use of alliteration and repetition in Ball’s poem and certain words and phrases that let the readers recognize the Schwitter’s poem is a love poem directed towards a girl, Anna Blume.