Olchar E. Lindsann
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.
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.
____________________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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