tristan tzara's manifesto
by tristan tzara
19th february 1920
Have a good look at me!
I'm an idiot, I'm a practical joker, I'm a hoaxer.
Have a good look at me!
I'm ugly, my face has no expression, I'm small.
I'm like the rest of you!1
But ask yourselves, before you look at me, whether the iris by which you dispatch arrows of liquid sentiments isn't in fact fly-shit, if you belly's eyes are not sections of tumours who looks will at one moment emerge from some part of your body in the form of a blennorrhagic discharge.
You see with your navels - why do you hid from your navels the ridiculous spectacle we offer them? And lower down, women's genitals, love, pure love, naturally - rare steaks and oil painting. Everybody who looks and who understands can easily be classified somewhere between poetry and love, between steak and painting. They'll be digested, they'll be digested. I was recently accused of the theft of some furs. Probably because people thought I should still be classified as a poet. One of those poets who satisfy their legitimate need of cold onania in hot furs. H a H u, I know other, equally platonic, pleasures. Ring up your family on the telephone
and piss down the hole designed for musical, gastronomic and sacred nonsense.
DADA suggests 2 solutions:
NO MORE LOOKS!
NO MORE WORDS!2
Stop looking!
Stop talking!
For I, chameleon alteration infiltration with convenient attitudes - multicoloured opinions for every occasion size and price - I do the opposite of what I recommend to other people.3
I've forgotten something:
where ? why ? how ?
in other words:
the ventilator of cold examples will serve the fragile snake of the procession and I have never had the pleasure of seeing you, my dear, the ear will take itself out of the envelope rigid like all marine equipment and the products of Aa & Co's firm, chewing-gum for example and dogs have blue eyes, I drink chamomile tea, they drink the wind, DADA introduces new points of view, people site down now at the corners of tables, in attitudes which lean a bit to the left and to the right, that's why I've quarrelled with Dada, insist everywhere on the suppression of the Ds, eat Aa, brush yourself with Aa toothpaste, buy your clothes at Aa's. Aa is a handkerchief and genitals blowing their noses rapid collapse - made of rubber - noiseless, needs neither manifestos nor address books, it gives a 25% discount buy your clothes at Aa's he has blue eyes.
1 I wanted to give myself a bit of publicity.
2 No more manifestos.
3 Sometimes.
Badass.
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