Tristan Tzara
Tristan Tzara was a Romanian-French poet and performance artist who founded Dada, the early twentieth-century avant-garde movement that rejected logic, reason, and aesthetic conventions in favor of absurdity and chance.
His manifestos and provocative performances in Zurich during World War I made him a central figure in modernist art.
The poem read like something Tristan Tzara might have assembled from newspaper clippings drawn from a hat.
Rejection of conventional aesthetics
- Cabaret VoltaireAvant-garde Zurich venue
- ZurichSwiss financial center
- nonsenseMeaningless words or actions
- absurdityWildly illogical quality
Marcel Duchamp · readymades · collage · montage · anti-bourgeois · randomness · manifestos · provocation
Avant-garde Zurich venue
- recitationOral delivery from memory
- provocationAct that triggers response
- spectacleVisually striking event
- audienceGathered viewers collectively
costume · improvisation · stage · theatrical · declamation · masks · noise music · scandal
Text produced unconsciously
- unconsciousNot awake or aware
- dreamsInvoluntary sleep visions
- juxtapositionAdjacent contrasting placement
- ParisFrance's chief city
Max Ernst · Man Ray · surrealist movement · exile · collaboration · expulsion · reconciliation
Metered poetic passage
- free versePoetry without fixed structure
- automatic writingText produced unconsciously
- sound poetryVerse emphasizing phonetics over semantics
- manifestosPublic declarations of principles
recitation · typography · wordplay · symbolism · experimental poetry · multilingual · French poetry · literary journals
Opposed to armed conflict
- anti-establishmentOpposing dominant institutions
- anarchismPhilosophy rejecting state authority
- subversionUndermining established authority
- iconoclasmAttacking revered traditions
provocation · nonconformism · World War I · exile · political engagement · French Resistance · communism
anti-art
Rejection of conventional aesthetics
- Cabaret VoltaireAvant-garde Zurich venue
- ZurichSwiss financial center
- nonsenseMeaningless words or actions
absurdity · Marcel Duchamp · readymades · collage · montage · anti-bourgeois · randomness · manifestos · provocation · nihilism
Cabaret Voltaire
Avant-garde Zurich venue
- recitationOral delivery from memory
- provocationAct that triggers response
- spectacleVisually striking event
audience · costume · improvisation · stage · theatrical · declamation · masks · noise music · scandal · happenings
automatic writing
Text produced unconsciously
- unconsciousNot awake or aware
- dreamsInvoluntary sleep visions
- juxtapositionAdjacent contrasting placement
Paris · Max Ernst · Man Ray · surrealist movement · exile · collaboration · expulsion · reconciliation
verse
Metered poetic passage
- free versePoetry without fixed structure
- automatic writingText produced unconsciously
- sound poetryVerse emphasizing phonetics over semantics
manifestos · recitation · typography · wordplay · symbolism · experimental poetry · multilingual · French poetry · literary journals
anti-war
Opposed to armed conflict
- anti-establishmentOpposing dominant institutions
- anarchismPhilosophy rejecting state authority
- subversionUndermining established authority
iconoclasm · provocation · nonconformism · World War I · exile · political engagement · French Resistance · communism
- avant-gardeDada, Dadaism, Futurism, Constructivism, Cabaret Voltaire
- Experimental WritersSamuel Beckett, Jorge Luis Borges, Borges, William Burroughs, Gertrude Stein
- french language poetsCharles Baudelaire, Victor Hugo
- RomaniansNadia Comaneci, Vlad the Impaler
- Avant-Garde PoetsGertrude Stein, E.E. Cummings, John Cage
- SurrealistsSalvador Dali, Rene Magritte, Max Ernst, Joan Miro, Man Ray
Tristan TzaraT.S. Eliot
formalism · classicism · traditionalism · neoclassicism · W.B. Yeats
Tristan TzaraLeo Tolstoy
Fyodor Dostoevsky · Goethe · transcendentalism · Ralph Waldo Emerson · religious art