Tristan Tzara

Tristan Tzara was born in 1896, in Moineşti, Romania. He is best remembered as a cofounder and theoretician of Dadaism, an intellectual movement of the World War I era whose adherents espoused intentional irrationality and urged individuals to reject traditional artistic, historical, and religious values. Although best known in the English-language world for his Dada manifestos and hijinks, Tzara is esteemed in France for his large and diverse body of poetry, which is unified by his startling use of imagery, poetics of doubt, and cosmic wisdom.

In response to the alienation some writers felt during World War I and the art forms predominant in Europe during that era, Tzara and other European artists sought to establish a new style in which random associations would evoke a vitality free from the restraints of logic and tradition. Tzara articulated the aesthetic theories of Dadaism in his seminal collection Sept manifestes dada (Seven Dada manifestos) (1924). This volume, in which Tzara advocates “absolute faith in every god that is the immediate product of spontaneity,” according to Kathleen Edgar, “represents a chaotic assault on reason and convention.”

Tzara’s first published poetry appeared in a literary review in 1912. Many of these poems, written in Romanian and influenced by French symbolist writers, appear in Les premiers poèmes (Primele poèmes: First Poems)(Seghers, 1965). Tzara immigrated to Switzerland from Romania in 1916. Together with Jean Arp, Hugo Ball, Emmy Hennings, and others, Tzara founded Dadaism and staged Dadaist performances at the Cabaret Voltaire in Zurich. 

Tzara left Switzerland in 1919 and settled in Paris, France, where he engaged in Dadaist experiments with literary figures, including André Breton and Louis Aragon. Serious philosophical differences caused a split between Tzara and Breton in 1921; soon after, Breton founded surrealism, and by 1922, the Dada movement was pronounced dead by several early adherents, who held a funeral in the movement’s honor.

According to Kathleen Edgar, Tzara’s early Dadaist verse, written between 1916 and 1924, uses “obscure images, nonsense syllables, outrageous juxtapositions, ellipses, and inscrutable maxims to perplex readers and to illustrate the limitations of language.” Volumes such as Vingt-cinq poèmes (Twenty-five poems) (1918) and De nos oiseaux (Of our birds) (1923) enact the propositions outlined in Tzara’s manifestos and critical essays, often blending criticism and poetry to create hybrid literary forms.

From 1929 to 1935, Tzara participated in the activities of the surrealist group in Paris. In this environment, he created a more sustained and coherent poetry that places less emphasis on the ridiculous than his Dadaist verse did. Tzara’s works published during this period include L’homme approximatif (Approximate Man and Other Writings)(1931), an epic poem that is widely considered a landmark of 20th-century French literature. This work portrays an unfulfilled wayfarer’s search for a universal knowledge and language. Roger Cardinal asserted, “[In] this apocalyptic explosion of language, Tzara finally approaches the primal seat of creativity, the point where the naked word reveals the naked truth about the world.” This and Tzara’s later surrealist volumes—L’arbre des voyageurs (The tree of travelers) (1930), Où boivent les loups (Where the wolves drink) (1932), L’antitête (The anti head) (1933), and Grains et issues (1935)—reveal his obsession with language and his concern with the struggle to achieve “pure image” and even enlightenment.

By 1936, in another break with André Breton, Tzara had left the surrealists to join France’s communist party. As his commitment to antifascist and leftist politics increased, his poetry included greater political content and stressed revolutionary and humanistic values while redoubling his lifelong commitment to free imagery and linguistic experiment. He resisted the pressure to write “social realist” poetry even as his poetry engaged the horrors of Europe’s midcentury wars in its imagery and, at times, in despair. Midis gagnés (Noontimes won) (1939) focuses on Tzara’s impressions of Spain during the country’s Civil War, while La fuite (The escape) (1947) depicts the frantic evacuation of Nazi-occupied Paris during World War II. The prose poems Terre sur terre (Earth on earth) (1946), Sans coup férir (Without striking a hit) (1949), and À haute flamme (A high flame) (1955) also address political topics related to displacement and World War II.

Tzara was an avid art collector and critic, and he collaborated with many artists to make limited-edition volumes of his poetry that included lithographs, etchings, and other art elements. After World War II, he cocreated several seminal artist books, notably Parler seul (Speaking alone) (1950) with Joan Miró, and Le rose et le chien (The rose and the dog) (1958), a volvelle designed with Picasso, and he published Le fruit permis (The permitted fruit)(1956) and Juste présent (Just present) (1961) with lithographs by Sonia Delaunay.

Written during his Dadaist phase, Tzara’s best-known plays, Le coeur a gaz (The gas heart) (1920) and Mouchoir de nuages (Handkerchief of clouds) (1925), rely on absurdity and wordplay and parody such literary forms as classical Greek and Shakespearean theater and French symbolist poetry. In Essai sur la situation de la poesie (Essay on the situation of poetry) (1931), a collection of critical essays, Tzara celebrates poetry as a liberating force from conventional modes of expression.

Tzara died in Paris on December 24, 1963.