LITERARY DADAISM: BEGINNINGS, CHARACTERISTICS AND REPRESENTATIVES - LITERATURE - 2024

The literary Dadaism was part of an artistic movement born in Europe during the First World War. It was characterized by calling itself a non-movement and by its anti-art realization.

This was due to the fact that its authors were opposed to the development of the First World War and blamed the customs and the future of bourgeois society for said war. For this reason they proposed a movement that criticized society from its foundations.

Portrait of Tristan Tzara, representative of Dadaism

This criticism included artistic traditions, so they opposed structures, genres, and meter. For this reason, this artistic movement became a questioner of artists, as well as of art and its role within society.

the beginning

Because of the war, several writers, especially French and German, found themselves in the refuge offered by Zurich, in neutral Switzerland.

This group was angry about the war, so they took on the task of developing a new artistic tradition aimed at protest.

These authors used their works and any public forum to challenge nationalism, rationalism, materialism and other absolutisms that, according to them, had caused the war.

The Dadaists were tired and angry. They thought that if the social order had caused the war, they did not want to participate in it or in their traditions. They even considered it necessary to also divorce the old artistic traditions.

For this reason, they did not see themselves as a movement or as artists. They argued that their productions were non-art, since not even art had meaning for them.

This non-movement spread from Zurich to other parts of Europe and to New York. And as this movement began to be seen as a serious artistic trend, it faded, around 1920.

characteristics

Dadaism was the first artistic and literary movement that did not have as its objective the elaboration of aesthetically pleasing objects, but quite the opposite.

The Dada writers had the purpose of opposing all the norms that governed the bourgeois culture of the time. Even to the point of being critical of themselves and their artistic productions.

His works were written in such a way that they did not fit the established canons. But on top of that, they used to be uncomfortable for bourgeois sensibilities, they raised difficult questions about society, the role of the artist and the purpose of art.

Name's origin

The Dadaist writers did not agree on their ideals and even had trouble agreeing on the name of the movement. For this reason, there are different and contradictory versions about the origin of the name.

According to some versions, the name arose during a gathering at the Voltaire cabaret in Zurich, when a paper knife inserted in a Franco-German dictionary pointed to the word “dada”, which in French means “battle horse”.

For some people, this concept served to express the purpose and non-aesthetics proposed by the Dadaists.

However, other versions simply explain that "dada" is meaningless language for babies, a message without any content that for the same reason was welcomed by the Dadaists.

Topics and techniques

This non-artistic current proposed an early form of shock art. They used mild obscenities, eschatological humor, and texts presented in visual games to represent their rejection of war and bourgeois values.

The public reaction, of course, was one of controversy and rejection, which meant more motivation for the Dadaists.

The forms of written production in Dadaism were consistent with its contempt for all established orders. These favored group collaboration, spontaneity and creation games based on chance.

This possibility of creation from chance was opposed to the demands of traditional genres and metrics in literature and poetry.

Therefore, it was another way of challenging established artistic norms and questioning the role of the artist, within the creative process and within society itself.

Three main representatives

1- Tristan Tzara

Tristan Tzara, also known as Izara, was born in Romania in April 1896, and died in Paris in December 1963. He is considered one of the fathers of literary Dadaism and one of its main representatives.

Tzara wrote the first texts attributed to Dadaism: La Première Aventure céleste de Monsieur Antipyrine ("The first heavenly adventure of Mr. Antipyrina"), published in 1916; and Vingt-cinq poèmes ("Twenty-five Poems"), published in 1918.

Furthermore, it was Tzara who drew up the manifesto of this movement, titled Sept manifestes Dada ("Seven Dada manifestos"), published in 1924.

2- André Breton

André Bretón was born in Tinchbray, France, in February 1896, and died in Paris in September 1966. After the First World War he moved to Paris and joined the artistic avant-garde that was then developing in the city.

In 1916 he joined the group of artists who at that time were developing Dada in its written and plastic manifestations, including Marcel Duchamp and Man Ray.

He was interested in symbolist poets such as Arthur Rimbaud and Charles Baudelaire, in the psychoanalytic theories of Freud and the political theory of Karl Marx.

Thanks to all these influences, in 1920 he wrote the surrealist manifesto, in which he encouraged free expression and the liberation of the subconscious. After that he published his novel Nadja and other volumes of poetry and essays.

3- Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven

Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven was born in Germany in July 1874 and died in December 1927. She was known as the Dadaist baroness and, although she studied art in Munich, the main development of her work began in 1913, after moving to New York.

His poems were published from 1918 in The Little Review magazine. Her poetry was rich in sound resources and onomatopoeia; that is why it is considered a precursor of phonetic poetry. She also created free verse poems, a characteristic of Dada writing.

However, most of her poems remained unpublished until 2011, when the book "Body Sweats: The Writings of Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven Uncensored" was published.

References

1. Biography. (SF). André Breton. Recovered from: biography.com
2. Esaak, S. (2017). What is Dada? Recovered from: thoughtco.com
3. The Art History. (SF). Dadaist. Recovered from: theartstory.org
4. The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica. (2016). Dadaist. Recovered from: britannica.com
5. University of Maryland. (SF). Baroness Elsa Biographical Sketch. Recovered from: lib.umd.edu