Meeting Tristan Tzara
Compiled by Dana Cook, a Toronto collector of literary encounters.
. . . a miscellany of first encounters and initial
impressions.
Not so wicked
Tzara came to the house, I imagine Picabia brought him but I am not
quite
certain. I have always found it very difficult to understand the
stories of
his violence and his wickedness, at least I found it difficult then
because
Tzara when he came to the house sat beside me at the tea table and
talked to me like a pleasant and not very exciting cousin.
(Gertrude Stein, Paris,
1919)
Nursing bleeding trauma
...The Dadaists were rampant and virulent in those postwar years.
Dada's
leader was a Roumanian Jew Tristan Tzara, long a resident of Paris.
Tzara
was a very good poet, whose forte was to be suave in destruction,
urbane
in outrage. Short, slender, dark, with great intelligent eyes, and a
mouth
forever flickering into paradox, Tzara made one think of a well-bred
Jewish
bourgeois boy nursing some bleeding trauma, some shattering
psychosis...some one of the family of Leopold and Loeb, the boy
murderers
of Chicago. Tzara, of course, was in touch with Marinetti, the Italian
Futurist. Less sensitive, less pure, Marinetti worshipped the secondary
traits of the machine: clatter, speed, and force. Tzara, more the poet,
accepted the machine's laceration of human flesh and nerve but voiced
the
human anguish.
(Waldo Frank, Paris, early
1920s)
Quite a wag
...Tzara was a pale, dark-eyed, grey-haired little man, who wore a
monocle; his very intelligent and animated face might have resembled
that
of Leon Trotsky or James Joyce, if each had shaved off his beard.
I had read how Tzara and Dadism, first appearing in combination in
Zürich
in 1916, had come and conquered Paris four years later, and since then
had
carried on a scandalous sort of propaganda aimed at overthrowing all
our
conventional notions of things....
.......
The little monocled Tzara was quite a wag, and often equal to some
outrageous boutade, either improvised or carefully rehearsed, as is
often
the case with men of wit....
(Matthew Josephson, Paris, early
1920s)
Chartered accountant
...We joined Tristan Tzara in a glary café somewhere near the Tour St.
Jacques. He was surrounded by some mighty odd fish. I've forgotten
their
names but it was a prime collection of zanies. Everybody was racking
his
brains to think up something abracadabrating to do. Suddenly Tzara, a
sallow Rumanian who looked like a chartered accountant, rose and cried
"Follow me." The Dadas jumped to their feet leaving half their saucers
unpaid for. Don [a friend] and I, as so often happens to trusting
Americans
in the hands of the European literati, found ourselves settling their
score
with the waiters.
It turned into a game of follow the leader. Tzara, trailed by the rest
in a
solemnfaced cue, marched about the streets executing a number of
idiotic
maneuvers. They had a little chant: Dada, Dada. Any other place we
would
have been arrested but the French in those days were tolerant of
anything
which would pass as a manifestation artistique....
(John Dos Passos, Paris,
1925)
Doctor
...she [Kay Cowan] took me to see Tristan Tzara and his wife. Except
for
his monocle he looked more like a doctor than a Surrealist poet. He had
a
great collection of African masks and artifacts, the like of which I
had
never seen even in a museum.
(Paul Bowles, Paris,
1929)
Charming
Yesterday I had been to tea at Tristan Tzara's, who is charming; his
young
wife even more charming.
(André Gide, Corsica,
1930)
Ghost
Tzara still wandered around the Café de Flore and Deux Magots--a small
white-haired ghost searching for someone he never seemed to find. We
were introduced on three occasions, but he pretended not to know me.
[Allen] Ginsberg fared no better. As we sat together at a terrace table
Allen called, "Tzara! Yoo hoo, Tzara! Hello! It's Ginsberg!" We were
rudely
ignored.
(Harold Norse, Paris,
1959)
Sources
The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas, by Gertrude Stein (Vintage,
1933).
Memoirs, by Waldo Frank (University of Massachusetts Press, 1973).
Life Among the Surrealists, by Matthew Josephson (Holt, Rinehart and
Winston, 1962).
The Best Times: An Informal Memoir, by John Dos Passos (New American
Library, 1966).
Without Stopping, by Paul Bowles (Hamish Hamilton, 1972).
The Journals of André Gide: Volume III, 1928-1939 (Knopf, 1949).
Memoirs of a Bastard Angel: A Fifty-Year Literary and Erotic Odyssey,
by
Harold Norse (Morrow, 1989).
Dana Cook is a Toronto collector of Literary Encounters. His
compilations have appeared in
The Hemingway Review, dharmaBEAT (a Jack Kerouac newszine) and James
Joyce
Literary Supplement, among other publications. A related product of his
mining of
autobiographies and memoirs is StarFirsts (accounts of celebrities
losing virginity), a regular
feature for nerve.com, the literary smut webzine.
_________________________________________________________________________
Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com.
Compiled by Dana Cook, a Toronto collector of literary encounters.
. . . a miscellany of first encounters and initial
impressions.
Not so wicked
Tzara came to the house, I imagine Picabia brought him but I am not
quite
certain. I have always found it very difficult to understand the
stories of
his violence and his wickedness, at least I found it difficult then
because
Tzara when he came to the house sat beside me at the tea table and
talked to me like a pleasant and not very exciting cousin.
(Gertrude Stein, Paris,
1919)
Nursing bleeding trauma
...The Dadaists were rampant and virulent in those postwar years.
Dada's
leader was a Roumanian Jew Tristan Tzara, long a resident of Paris.
Tzara
was a very good poet, whose forte was to be suave in destruction,
urbane
in outrage. Short, slender, dark, with great intelligent eyes, and a
mouth
forever flickering into paradox, Tzara made one think of a well-bred
Jewish
bourgeois boy nursing some bleeding trauma, some shattering
psychosis...some one of the family of Leopold and Loeb, the boy
murderers
of Chicago. Tzara, of course, was in touch with Marinetti, the Italian
Futurist. Less sensitive, less pure, Marinetti worshipped the secondary
traits of the machine: clatter, speed, and force. Tzara, more the poet,
accepted the machine's laceration of human flesh and nerve but voiced
the
human anguish.
(Waldo Frank, Paris, early
1920s)
Quite a wag
...Tzara was a pale, dark-eyed, grey-haired little man, who wore a
monocle; his very intelligent and animated face might have resembled
that
of Leon Trotsky or James Joyce, if each had shaved off his beard.
I had read how Tzara and Dadism, first appearing in combination in
Zürich
in 1916, had come and conquered Paris four years later, and since then
had
carried on a scandalous sort of propaganda aimed at overthrowing all
our
conventional notions of things....
.......
The little monocled Tzara was quite a wag, and often equal to some
outrageous boutade, either improvised or carefully rehearsed, as is
often
the case with men of wit....
(Matthew Josephson, Paris, early
1920s)
Chartered accountant
...We joined Tristan Tzara in a glary café somewhere near the Tour St.
Jacques. He was surrounded by some mighty odd fish. I've forgotten
their
names but it was a prime collection of zanies. Everybody was racking
his
brains to think up something abracadabrating to do. Suddenly Tzara, a
sallow Rumanian who looked like a chartered accountant, rose and cried
"Follow me." The Dadas jumped to their feet leaving half their saucers
unpaid for. Don [a friend] and I, as so often happens to trusting
Americans
in the hands of the European literati, found ourselves settling their
score
with the waiters.
It turned into a game of follow the leader. Tzara, trailed by the rest
in a
solemnfaced cue, marched about the streets executing a number of
idiotic
maneuvers. They had a little chant: Dada, Dada. Any other place we
would
have been arrested but the French in those days were tolerant of
anything
which would pass as a manifestation artistique....
(John Dos Passos, Paris,
1925)
Doctor
...she [Kay Cowan] took me to see Tristan Tzara and his wife. Except
for
his monocle he looked more like a doctor than a Surrealist poet. He had
a
great collection of African masks and artifacts, the like of which I
had
never seen even in a museum.
(Paul Bowles, Paris,
1929)
Charming
Yesterday I had been to tea at Tristan Tzara's, who is charming; his
young
wife even more charming.
(André Gide, Corsica,
1930)
Ghost
Tzara still wandered around the Café de Flore and Deux Magots--a small
white-haired ghost searching for someone he never seemed to find. We
were introduced on three occasions, but he pretended not to know me.
[Allen] Ginsberg fared no better. As we sat together at a terrace table
Allen called, "Tzara! Yoo hoo, Tzara! Hello! It's Ginsberg!" We were
rudely
ignored.
(Harold Norse, Paris,
1959)
Sources
The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas, by Gertrude Stein (Vintage,
1933).
Memoirs, by Waldo Frank (University of Massachusetts Press, 1973).
Life Among the Surrealists, by Matthew Josephson (Holt, Rinehart and
Winston, 1962).
The Best Times: An Informal Memoir, by John Dos Passos (New American
Library, 1966).
Without Stopping, by Paul Bowles (Hamish Hamilton, 1972).
The Journals of André Gide: Volume III, 1928-1939 (Knopf, 1949).
Memoirs of a Bastard Angel: A Fifty-Year Literary and Erotic Odyssey,
by
Harold Norse (Morrow, 1989).
Dana Cook is a Toronto collector of Literary Encounters. His
compilations have appeared in
The Hemingway Review, dharmaBEAT (a Jack Kerouac newszine) and James
Joyce
Literary Supplement, among other publications. A related product of his
mining of
autobiographies and memoirs is StarFirsts (accounts of celebrities
losing virginity), a regular
feature for nerve.com, the literary smut webzine.
_________________________________________________________________________
Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com.