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Olchar E. Lindsann

 
 
Translations of Four Dada Poems
The Devil’s Tail’s a Bike by Tristan Tzara the equatorial bite mark in the rock blruises swamps the night cozy fragrance of cradles ammoniac the bloom is a streetlamp poopet’s heeding the mercury that’s mounting that’s mounting the windmill hooks up with the viaduct the day before yesterday’s not the ceramics of chrysanthemums that turn cold and the noggin the time has chimed in the gob yet again a broken angel that tumbles like buzzard poop unfurls the hug upon the flaccid desert ear flaps munched away leprosy iron from Dada, No.7: Dadaphone. March 1920. Au Sans Pareil: Paris. np. Portrait Dedicated to the Spanish by Gabrielle Buffet So here’s the write-up about three days. No. 1 the jet of water vanished far too flabby or too gangly busts of anonymous people lacking zeal to play heads or tails time passes No. 2 eye of blue glass the other in form of microscopic mushrooms sentimental syntax of the bride who weeps between the discs of gramophones and the culinary smells, she yells with you “yes, yet why not speak more clearly am I not close to receiving the provisions; I think of biscuits in form of sphere No. 3 The dolorous fissures are growing in contact with tender glances Pole star heliotrope to force the occasion exceeding all limits which way pressure and regular destruction in the delight of symmetrical simulacra. from 391, No. 10, Dec. 1919. n.p. from Tournevire by Céline Arnauld Matachin Songs1 HARLEQUIN Reed flicked toward the azure Weeping willows Ecstatic mortician Kinks your back A ball shoots right through you The rainbow threw the lions into panic And the tamer with her lost expression Is dangling from the light of the moon Peace-pipe on fire Sissy of shitty omen The shreds of thine attire And the crucifix you carry Have set the sky ablaze Reed hovering in the azure The mountain has alighted into the twilight In the mirror’s depths – a surreal world is impelled toward an unknown point.2 But Matachin never sees it, for when he sang everything grew cloudy. The struggle of two bodies was imprinted upon the haze. The fay turned toward the ogre – and it was hers. from Tournevire. 1919. Éditions d’Esprit nouveau: Paris. n.p. Zut3 by Paul Dermée Zim ba da boom ought to be oracles It’s a nose fin Crookes tube4 Zinc altar lightning black screeds Ibidem on the gut in blooms Of all floods save the Certa5 Fete in mute carrousel Pater God Dura mater6 conundrum At the eyebrows done for the sulphur ink Dominates the yardarm ventriloquist André Gide has pituita7 from Dada, No.7: Dadaphone. March 1920. Au Sans Pareil: Paris. np.
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1 Matachin, a 16th Century form of popular comedic dance, performed in fake military gear.
2 This use of “surreal” (suréel, based upon réel, a variant form of réal which would become the stem of Surrealisme three years after the publication of this text. Apollinaire had coined the term a couple years earlier.
3 Literally ‟drat”, or ‟dang”, the title also evokes the bohemian Zutist group before and during the Paris Commune, gathered around Charles Cros, François Copée, Arthur Rimbaud, and others.
4 Crookes tube: An experimental device, somewhat resembling a modern fluorescent bulb, in which cathode rays were first identified. Named after its inventor William Crookes (Dermée misspells it Crooks), who famously inspired passages in Jarry’s Dr. Faustroll, to which this can be assumed to be an indirect reference – Jarry was a favourite playwright of the creator of the character ‟Zizi of Dada”, Georges Ribemont-Dessaignes.
5 A favourite meeting-place and performance venue for the Paris Dada group; thanks to Mark Young for tracing this reference.
6 Membrane surrounding the brain and spinal cord.
7 Medical term for snot.





Olchar E. Lindsann has published over 40 books of literature, theory, translation, and avant-garde history including The Ecstatic Nerve and five books of the ongoing series Arthur Dies. His poems, essays, and translations have appeared in The Lost & Found Times, Brave New Word, Fifth Estate, The Black Scat Review, BlazeVox, No Quarter, and elsewhere, and he has performed and lectured extensively in the US and the UK. He is the editor of mOnocle-Lash Anti-Press, whose catalog includes over 175 print publications of the contemporary and historical avant-garde, and of the periodicals Rêvenance, The in-Appropriated Press, and Synapse.
 
 
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