Jed Rasula

This was an unexpected book. I literally found it on our porch, a gift from Joel. The subject itself was a fuzzy footnote of European history and even that was largely Tzara, who I always imagined in some abstract cafe hectoring the somber Lenin and perhaps buying a drink for James Joyce.

I stepped aside from my Greek Project and plunged within. The initial Dadaist episode in Zurich is remarkable as an event but I am less convinced as a movement. One member quipped in a manifesto, I am opposed in principle to manifesto. I am also opposed to principles.

I admit I learned a great deal about figures like Duchamp. I enjoyed the spectacle of Eluard punching Tzara. I did grow weary of the incessant pillow talk. Was Dada a typographical movement rather than a torque of poetry, music and painting? Dada began midway through the Great War in the shrieking silence of Switzerland. There is difficulty in gauging the ultimate effect of these aggregate activities: sound poetry, atonal music, found object collages, image montage. I can always speculate but without much purchase. Surrealism and Constructivism are obviously linked not specifically in a causal way. One can rhapsodize about Borges and predecessors. One can remain anxious about any influence.

While I enjoyed the book, this was largely because of my unfamiliarity with certain figures. I fear the absence of a thesis or metric would’ve been problematic otherwise.… (more)