Dada East : the Romanians of Cabaret Voltaire

457 Pages·2006·35.905 MB·English

by  Sandqvist, Tom, Segal, Arthur, Tzara, Tristan, Janco, Marcel

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© 2006 Massachusetts Institute of Technology
All rights reserved.No part of this book may
be reproduced in any form by any electronic
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This book was set in Caecelia by Graphic
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication
Data
Sandqvist,Tom.
Dada East : the Romanians of Cabaret
Voltaire / Tom Sandqvist.
p.cm.
Includes bibliographical references and
index.
ISBN 0-262-19507-0 (hc : alk.paper)
1.Arts,Romanian—20th century.2.Avant-
garde (Aesthetics)—Romania—History—20th
century.3.Dadaism—Romania.4.Jewish
artists—Romania—History—20th century.
I.Title.
NX569.A1S26 2006
709.49809′041—dc22
2005054459
CONTENTS
Introduction 1
In Romania and Switzerland 15
In Central and Eastern Europe 45
Marcel Iancu Becomes Marcel Janco 65
Little Paris of the Balkans 101
Samuel Rosenstock Becomes Tristan Tzara 123
The Symbolist and Dadaist from Moines¸ti 141
Aron Sigalu Becomes Arthur Segal 171
Symbolists,Absurdists,and Futurists 195
In the Romanian Village 247
In Yiddishland 271
Ex Oriente Dada 289
Back in Bucharest 339
Selected Chronology 381
Notes 393
Index 425

I N T R O D U C T I O N
Dada was a curious movement.Early in the last century the dadaists were shouting
and yelling,roaring and bawling,standing on the tiny platform of the restaurant
Meierei in Zurich trying to carry out a global revolution in art and culture.They
recited so-called simultaneous poems,poèmes simultanés,totally incomprehensible
verses of nonsense.Often dressed in grotesque costumes and mostly in funny,
ridiculous,but occasionally dreadful masks as well,they performed equally absurd,
idiotic,“meaningless”small plays,hit both small and big drums and lids of saucepans
and frying pans,gave deafening hissing-concerts,and sang howling “negro songs.”
The dadaists mocked the audience as much as they could,stamped on the floor,
roared and yelled,tore to pieces conventional poetry,tore into rags syntax and gram-
matically correct constructions of verbal meaning,turned upside down both particu-
lar words and language itself,the letters,the sentences,formerly well-organized
and architecturally well-composed meanings.Everything was spread out on the same
flatsurface or was thrown into the same boiling,bubbling,babbling pot.
Most reference works for both art and literature,but also more specialized
studies,claim that Dada was born on 5 February 1916 when Hugo Ball and Emmy
Hennings opened the literary cabaret that they had named Cabaret Voltaire at the
restaurant Meierei on Spiegelgasse in Zurich.This is only partly true,since giving
thisexact moment of birth and the exact spot of the “delivery of the child”doesn’t
take into account any possible moments of conception or,for that matter,any proper
cultural and historical settings,beyond the acknowledgment of those scattered artis-
tic and literary impulses,mainly in Germany,that might have affected the dadaist
activists during or just before the outbreak of World War I.Certainly there are faith-
ful mentions of both Tristan Tzara and the three brothers Marcel,Jules,and Georges
Janco having been born in Romania,even though it is often forgotten that one more
artist born in Romania took part in the scandalous activities of the Cabaret Voltaire
from the first evening,namely Arthur Segal.It is certainly true that hundreds of
artists,writers,actors,journalists,and other intellectuals from all over Europe were
living and working in the small Swiss city at the same time,together with almost as
E
N
many political refugees,professional revolutionaries,and anarchists,among them
O

R a certain Vladimir Ilich Ulyanov,who just one year later staged the Bolshevist coup
E
T
P d’état in Petrograd and thus became known worldwide as Lenin.But the fact that
A
H
C
halfthe first dadaist group was Romanian is nevertheless remarkable enough that
this fact needs an explanation beyond what can be labeled merely a coincidence.
What did they do in Zurich,those five Romanian intellectuals? Who were they,
why did they choose Zurich of all cities in Europe,and what had they done before
they decided to settle down in that town on the shore of Zürichsee? And in what way
was their dadaism at the stage of Cabaret Voltaire influenced by their Romanian
background,if it was at all?
According to the American art historian S.A.Mansbach,1muchof modernism
was undeniably born on the eastern margins of industrial Europe—constructivism
in the tsarist Empire,uniquely creative forms of cubo-expressionism in Habsburg Bo-
hemia,and dadaism in royal Romania.Moreover,it was in the immense geographical
swath from the Baltic to the Balkans that aesthetics of progressive character and in-
sistent social applicability were articulated—philosophies that would fundamentally
define the modernist mission universally.Western scholars have long viewed the 1916
display of dadaism at the Cabaret Voltaire as an original event,indeed as a defining
phenomenon in the evolution of modernism.Yet,says Mansbach,though failing to
giveany substantial evidence of his arguments,this milestone may be interpreted
otherwise from the perspective of Romania.Bucharest and Ias¸ihad for several years
witnessed a form of Dada avant la lettre,been amazed by Dada poetry and prose,and
been provoked by Dada visual spectacle,although these manifestations went under
other names.Thus,when a group of Romanian modernists traveled to Switzerland,
they,according to Mansbach,transposed to the stage of the Cabaret Voltaire a
“dadaism”that was already an important and publicly manifested form of artistic
engagement in their homeland.Furthermore,says Mansbach,what Western artists
and audiences—and a succession of historians—witnessed as authentically
novel inZurich was actually an intermediate stage in the history of Romanian mod-
ern art.Further,dadaism was a form of radical expression that would later attain
some of its most imaginative actualizations in Bucharest (and Ias¸i)—as well as power-
fully expressive variants in Zagreb and Belgrade—rather than in Berlin,Hannover,
Rotterdam,or New York,where its development has been primarily chronicled.
Why is it like this? Can we trace any patterns of influences back to their own,
not yet discovered cultural origin?
3
(cid:2)
INTRODUCTION 2