Tzara Blog

“In principle I am against manifestos, as I am also against principles.”  It is not hard to tell that Tzara’s aim is to create carefully calculated contradictions throughout his “nonsensical” work.  A member of a certain society whose members are hardly united, the author writes, from what we can understand, to make a statement about the social world in its present state.  As mentioned in class, Tzara’s goal may not have been to obfuscate or confuse, but simply to stimulate thought in the minds of his readers.  Stimulate he certainly does, with a careful use of language and meaning that leave the layman’s head in a tizzy. 

One passage which struck me as entirely perplexing is as follows:

           

            “We are in search of

the force that is direct pure sober

UNIQUE we are in search of NOTHING

we affirm the VITALITY of every IN-

STANT”

Several elements of writing are at play in the short stanza, including the author’s use of paradox, and capitalization.  First and most notably, Tzara uses capitalization in a way similar to Mallarme.  A word presented in capital letters stands out from the rest, providing a guiding force for the reader’s perception of the work.  For example, when reading the series of words “direct pure sober UNIQUE” the reader senses an intuitive climax upon the last word and begins to understand the next word as the beginning of a new idea.  So it happens, the next phrase “we are in search of NOTHING” also seems self-contained and seems to have its own independent meaning.  When exploring meaning, these two short phrases present a very interesting paradox with one-another.  “We are in search of the force that is direct pure sober Unique”—this phrase seems (to me) to outline the human experience.  After all, over the span of our lifetimes it seems that the common denominator between all men is our search for meaning.  This idea, however, is followed by another that contradicts it entirely, insisting instead that what we search for is actually nothing.  I understood this passage to have two possible meanings.  The first of these two is the possibility that the word “NOTHING” describes the author’s understanding of the “force” for which we all search—as if to say that he has identified the force, and that it is nothing.  On the other hand, the statement could be taken to exist as a direct contradiction of the first phrase, explaining that we do not search for a force at all, but instead actually search for nothing.  Either way, Tzara, in true Dada fashion, presents the reader with several possible understandings of the work and leaves the ultimate meaning up for interpretation.