Tzara, Tristan
(b. 1896, Moinesti, Romania - d. December 1963, Paris, France)
Romanian-born French poet and essayist known mainly as a founder of Dada,
a nihilistic revolutionary movement in the arts.
The Dadaist movement originated in Zürich during World War I; Tzara
wrote the first Dada texts - La Premiére Aventure cèleste de
Monsieur Antipyrine (1916; "The First Heavenly Adventure of Mr.
Antipyrine") and Vingt-cinq poémes (1918; "Twenty-Five Poems")
- and the movement's manifestos, Sept manifestes Dada (1924; "Seven
Dada Manifestos"). In Paris he engaged in tumultuous activities with
André Breton, Philippe Soupault, and Louis Aragon to shock the public
and to disintegrate the structures of language. About 1930, weary of
nihilism and destruction, he joined his friends in the more constructive
activities of Surrealism. He devoted much of his time to the reconciliation
of Surrealism and Marxism and joined the Communist Party in 1936 and the
French Resistance movement during World War II. These political commitments
brought him closer to his fellow human beings, and he gradually matured into
a lyrical poet. His poems revealed the anguish of his soul, caught between
revolt and wonderment at the daily tragedy of the human condition. His
mature works started with L'Homme approximatif (1931; "The Approximate
Man") and continued with Parler seul (1950; "Speaking Alone") and
La Face intèrieure (1953; "The Inner Face"). In these, the
anarchically scrambled words of Dada were replaced with a difficult but
humanized language.
Works by Tzara:
- Manifest des Herrn Antipyrine
- Manifesto of Mr. Antipyrine
- Proclamation without Pretension
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