been brought to these activities previously in â¦
(
The appropriate flags start coming out of the hat
.)
⦠Barcelona, New York, Paris, Rome and St Petersburg by, for example, Picabia, Duchamp, Satie, Marinetti, and Mayakovsky who shouts his fractured lines in a yellow blazer with blue roses painted on his cheeks?
TZARA : The word Dada.
JOYCE : Describe sensibly without self-contradiction, and especially without reference to people stuffing bread rolls up their noses, how the word Dada was discovered.
TZARA : Tristan Tzara discovered the word Dada by accident in a Larousse Dictionary. It has been said, and he does not deny, that a paper-knife was inserted at random into the book. Huelsenbeck recounts how
he
discovered the word one day in Hugo Ballâs dictionary while Tzara was not present. Hans Arp, however, has stated, âI hereby declare that Tristan Tzara found the word Dada on February the 8th 1916 at six oâclock in the afternoon.â
JOYCE : Were there further disagreements between Tzara and Huelsenbeck?
TZARA : There were.
JOYCE : As to?
TZARA : As to the meaning and purpose of Dada.
JOYCE : Huelsenbeck demanding, for example?
TZARA : International revolutionary union of all artists on the basis of radical Communism.
JOYCE : As opposed to Tzaraâs demanding?
TZARA : The right to urinate in different colours.
JOYCE : Each person in different colours at different times, or different people in each colour all the time? Or everybody multi-coloured every time?
TZARA : It was more to make the point that making poetry should be as natural as making water â
JOYCE (
Rising: the conjuring is over
): God send you donât make them in the one hat.
(
This is too much for
TZARA .)
TZARA : By God, you supercilious streak of Irish puke! You four-eyed, bog-ignorant, potato-eating ponce! Your art has failed. Youâve turned literature into a religion and itâs as dead as all the rest, itâs an overripe corpse and youâre cutting fancy figures at the wake. Itâs too late for geniuses! Now we need vandals and desecrators, simple-minded demolition men to smash centuries of baroque subtlety, to bring down the temple, and thus finally, to reconcile the shame and the necessity of being an artist! Dada!
Dada! Dada!! (He starts to smash whatever crockery is to hand; which done, he strikes a satisfied pose
. JOYCE
has not moved
.)
JOYCE : You are an over-excited little man, with a need for selfexpression far beyond the scope of your natural gifts. This is not discreditable. Neither does it make you an artist. An artist is the magician put among men to gratify â capriciously â their urge for immortality. The temples are built and brought down around him, continuously and contiguously, from Troy to the fields of Flanders. If there is any meaning in any of it, it is in what survives as art, yes even in the celebration of tyrants, yes even in the celebration ofnonentities. What now of the Trojan War if it had been passed over by the artistâs touch? Dust. A forgotten expedition prompted by Greek merchants looking for new markets. A minor redistribution of broken pots. But it is we who stand enriched, by a tale of heroes, of a golden apple, a wooden horse, a face that launched a thousand ships â and above all, of Ulysses, the wanderer, the most human, the most complete of all heroes â husband, father, son, lover, farmer, soldier, pacifist, politician, inventor and adventurer ⦠It is a theme so overwhelming that I am almost afraid to treat it. And yet I with my Dublin Odyssey will double that immortality, yes by God
thereâs
a corpse that will dance for some time yet and
leave the world precisely as it finds it â
and if you hope to shame it into the grave with your fashionable magic, I would strongly advise you to try and acquire some genius and if possible some subtlety before the season is quite over. Top oâ the morning, Mr Tzara!
(
With
(
The appropriate flags start coming out of the hat
.)
⦠Barcelona, New York, Paris, Rome and St Petersburg by, for example, Picabia, Duchamp, Satie, Marinetti, and Mayakovsky who shouts his fractured lines in a yellow blazer with blue roses painted on his cheeks?
TZARA : The word Dada.
JOYCE : Describe sensibly without self-contradiction, and especially without reference to people stuffing bread rolls up their noses, how the word Dada was discovered.
TZARA : Tristan Tzara discovered the word Dada by accident in a Larousse Dictionary. It has been said, and he does not deny, that a paper-knife was inserted at random into the book. Huelsenbeck recounts how
he
discovered the word one day in Hugo Ballâs dictionary while Tzara was not present. Hans Arp, however, has stated, âI hereby declare that Tristan Tzara found the word Dada on February the 8th 1916 at six oâclock in the afternoon.â
JOYCE : Were there further disagreements between Tzara and Huelsenbeck?
TZARA : There were.
JOYCE : As to?
TZARA : As to the meaning and purpose of Dada.
JOYCE : Huelsenbeck demanding, for example?
TZARA : International revolutionary union of all artists on the basis of radical Communism.
JOYCE : As opposed to Tzaraâs demanding?
TZARA : The right to urinate in different colours.
JOYCE : Each person in different colours at different times, or different people in each colour all the time? Or everybody multi-coloured every time?
TZARA : It was more to make the point that making poetry should be as natural as making water â
JOYCE (
Rising: the conjuring is over
): God send you donât make them in the one hat.
(
This is too much for
TZARA .)
TZARA : By God, you supercilious streak of Irish puke! You four-eyed, bog-ignorant, potato-eating ponce! Your art has failed. Youâve turned literature into a religion and itâs as dead as all the rest, itâs an overripe corpse and youâre cutting fancy figures at the wake. Itâs too late for geniuses! Now we need vandals and desecrators, simple-minded demolition men to smash centuries of baroque subtlety, to bring down the temple, and thus finally, to reconcile the shame and the necessity of being an artist! Dada!
Dada! Dada!! (He starts to smash whatever crockery is to hand; which done, he strikes a satisfied pose
. JOYCE
has not moved
.)
JOYCE : You are an over-excited little man, with a need for selfexpression far beyond the scope of your natural gifts. This is not discreditable. Neither does it make you an artist. An artist is the magician put among men to gratify â capriciously â their urge for immortality. The temples are built and brought down around him, continuously and contiguously, from Troy to the fields of Flanders. If there is any meaning in any of it, it is in what survives as art, yes even in the celebration of tyrants, yes even in the celebration ofnonentities. What now of the Trojan War if it had been passed over by the artistâs touch? Dust. A forgotten expedition prompted by Greek merchants looking for new markets. A minor redistribution of broken pots. But it is we who stand enriched, by a tale of heroes, of a golden apple, a wooden horse, a face that launched a thousand ships â and above all, of Ulysses, the wanderer, the most human, the most complete of all heroes â husband, father, son, lover, farmer, soldier, pacifist, politician, inventor and adventurer ⦠It is a theme so overwhelming that I am almost afraid to treat it. And yet I with my Dublin Odyssey will double that immortality, yes by God
thereâs
a corpse that will dance for some time yet and
leave the world precisely as it finds it â
and if you hope to shame it into the grave with your fashionable magic, I would strongly advise you to try and acquire some genius and if possible some subtlety before the season is quite over. Top oâ the morning, Mr Tzara!
(
With
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