Tristan Tzara citáty

„Princip ´Miluj svého bližního´ je pokrytectví. ´Poznej sebe´ je utopie, ale přijatelnější, neboť obsahuje v sobě zlomyslnost.“

—  Tristan Tzara

„Lidé jsou chudí, neboť jeden druhého okrádá.“

—  Tristan Tzara

„…je to stav mysli…. Dada není vůbec moderní. Je to v podstatě návrat k téměř buddhistickému náboženství lhostejnosti.“

—  Tristan Tzara

Originál: (en) …is a state of mind.... Dada is not at all modern. It is more in the nature of a return to an almost Buddhist religion of indifference.
Zdroj: [Bevis, William W., 1989, Mind of Winter: Wallace Stevens, Meditation, and Literature, University of Pittsburgh Press, 170]

„You'll never know why you exist, but you'll always allow yourselves to be easily persuaded to take life seriously.“

—  Tristan Tzara

„I speak only of myself since I do not wish to convince, I have no right to drag others into my river, I oblige no one to follow me and everybody practices his art in his own way."

- Tristan Tzara "Dada Manifesto 1918“

—  Tristan Tzara

1910s, Dada Manifesto', 1918
Kontext: Dada; knowledge of all the means rejected up until now... Dada; abolition of logic, which is the dance of those impotent to create: Dada; of every social hierarchy and equation set up for the sake of values by our valets: Dada; every object, all objects, sentiments, obscurities, apparitions and the precise clash of parallel lines are weapons for the fight: Dada; abolition of memory: Dada; abolition of archaeology: Dada; abolition of prophets: Dada; abolition of the future: Dada; absolute and unquestionable faith in every god that is the immediate product of spontaneity:* Dada; elegant and unprejudiced leap from a harmony to the other sphere... Freedom: Dada Dada Dada, a roaring of tense colors, and interlacing of opposites and of all contradictions, grotesques, inconsistencies: LIFE.

„Always destroy what is in you.“

—  Tristan Tzara

Zdroj: Oeuvres Completes

„Dada is not at all modern. It is more in the nature of a return to an almost Buddhist religion of indifference. Dada covers things with an artificial gentleness, a snow of butterflies released from the head of a prestidigitator. Dada is immobility and does not comprehend the passions.“

—  Tristan Tzara

1920s, Lecture on Dada', 1922

„Some people think they can explain rationally, by thought, what they think. But that is extremely relative… There is no ultimate Truth. The dialectic is an amusing mechanism which guides us / in a banal kind of way / to the opinions we had in the first place. Does anyone think that, by a minute refinement of logic, he has demonstrated the truth and established the correctness of these opinions? Logic imprisoned by the senses is an organic disease“

—  Tristan Tzara

1910s, Dada Manifesto', 1918

„If I shout:
Ideal, Ideal, Ideal
Knowledge, Knowledge, Knowledge,
Boomboom, Boomboom, Boomboom
I have recorded fairly accurately Progress, Law, Morals, and all the other magnificent qualities that various very intelligent people have discussed in so many books.“

—  Tristan Tzara

As quoted in The Dada Almanac: Berlin 1920, (1983) ed. Richard Huelsenbeck, transl. Malcolm Green, p.127
1920s

„I know that you have come here today to hear explanations. Well, don't expect to hear any explanations about Dada. You explain to me why you exist. You haven't the faintest idea. You will say: I exist to make my children happy. But in your hearts you know that isn't so. You will say: I exist to guard my country, against barbarian invasions. That's a fine reason. You will say: I exist because God wills. That's a fairy tale for children.“

—  Tristan Tzara

1920s, Lecture on Dada', 1922

„You will often hear that Dada is a state of mind. You may be gay, sad, afflicted, joyous, melancholy or Dada. Without being literary, you can be romantic, you can be dreamy, weary, eccentric, a businessman, skinny, transfigured, vain, amiable or Dada… Dada is here, there and a little everywhere, such as it is, with its faults, with its personal differences and distinctions which it accepts and views with indifference.“

—  Tristan Tzara

1920s, Lecture on Dada', 1922

„Dada is the signboard of abstraction; advertising and business are also elements of poetry... I destroy the drawers of the brain and of social organization: spread demoralization wherever I go and cast my hand from heaven to hell, my eyes from hell to heaven, restore the fecund wheel of a universal circus to objective forces and the imagination of every individual.“

—  Tristan Tzara

1910s, Dada Manifesto', 1918

„A manifesto is a communication made to the whole world, whose only pretensions is to the discovery of an instant cure for political, astronomical, artistic, parliamentary, agronomical and literary syphilis. It may be pleasant, and good-natured, it's always right, it's strong, vigorous and logical.
Apropos of logic, I consider myself very likeable.“

—  Tristan Tzara

1920s
Zdroj: 'Dada Manifesto On Feeble Love And Bitter Love', Intro of part II, by Tristan Tzara, 12th December 1920

„Dada belongs to everybody.“

—  Tristan Tzara

As quoted in Dada Art and Anti-art, Hand Richter, Thames & Hudson, London & New York, 2004
Tzara's reaction when in 1921 w:Picabia, Man Ray and Marcel Duchamp jokingly asked to grant them permission to use the name 'Dada' as their own name for Dada in New York.
1920s

„Men are different. It is diversity that makes life interesting. There is no common basis in mens minds. The unconscious is inexhaustible and uncontrollable. Its force surpasses us. It is as mysterious as the last particle of a brain cell. Even if we knew it, we could not reconstruct it.“

—  Tristan Tzara

1920s, Lecture on Dada', 1922

„Nothing is more delightful than to confuse and upset people. People one doesn't like. What's the use of giving them explanations that are merely food for curiosity? The truth is that people love nothing but themselves and their little possessions, their income, their dog. This state of affairs derives from a false conception of property. If one is poor in spirit, one possesses a sure and indomitable intelligence, a savage logic, a point of view that can not be shaken. Try to be empty and fill your brain cells with a petty happiness. Always destroy what you have in you. On random walks..“

—  Tristan Tzara

1920s, Lecture on Dada', 1922

„To make a Dadaist Poem (1920)

Take a newspaper.
Take some scissors.
Choose from this paper an article the length you want to make your poem.
Cut out the article.
Next carefully cut out each of the words that make up this article and put them all in a bag.
Shake gently.
Next take out each cutting one after the other.
Copy conscientiously in the order in which they left the bag.
The poem will resemble you.
And there you are—an infinitely original author of charming sensibility, even though unappreciated by the vulgar herd.“

—  Tristan Tzara

Quote of Tzara's poem from 1920; as cited in Cambridge Introduction to Modernism, ed. Pericles Lewis (Cambridge UP, 2007), p. 107 - online: https://modernism.research.yale.edu/wiki/index.php/To_Make_a_Dadaist_Poem
1920s

„There is a literature that does not reach the voracious mass. It is the work of creators... Every page must explode, either by profound heavy seriousness, the whirlwind, poetic frenzy, the new, the eternal, the crushing joke, enthusiasm for principles, or by the way in which it is printed. On the one hand a tottering world in flight, betrothed to the glockenspiel of hell, on the other hand: new men. Rough, bouncing, riding on hiccups. Behind them a crippled world and literary quacks with a mania for improvement.“

—  Tristan Tzara

1910s, Dada Manifesto', 1918

„Art has not the celestial and universal value that people like to attribute to it. Life is far more interesting. Dada knows the correct measure that should be given to art: with subtle, perfidious methods, Dada introduces it into daily life. And vice versa. In art, Dada reduces everything to an initial simplicity, growing always more relative. It mingles its caprices with the chaotic wind of creation and the barbaric dances of savage tribes. It wants logic reduced to a personal minimum.“

—  Tristan Tzara

1920s, Lecture on Dada', 1922