Tristan Tzara, a nihilist Romanian10.0102

Who is Tristan Tzara? Tristan Tzara is the artist who comes back to life in each moment of revolt, each time we escape from this so called rational world. Tristan Tzara is the Romanian who answered all the horrors during the First World War with total disconnection to the rules.

I first heard about him at the Art class during high-school, while the teacher was telling us that his pseudonym means “Sad in his own country”. Since then, my curiosity god bigger and bigger  like a sloping snow ball . Tristan Tzara is the initiator od the dada movement, manifested both in literature and in painting.

He was born in 1896 in Moinesti. His real jewish name was Samuel Rosenstock. Confronted with the curse of the First World War, he moved to Switerland, which was a neutre country, and launched the dada movement. His first creations is called „Prima aventură cerească a domnului Antipyrine” and opeens the door to the later called „dadaism”.

The “dada” termn doesn’t characterize the movement. The only thing they have in common is the way they have been created, with an unconventional method. The word “dada” was chosen with the help of a knife ( or pencil, in another alternative), which stopped in front of the term in the Larousse dictionary. Being a French termn, it means “ wood horse” in children’s language.

The movement is characterized, as Marcel Iancu ( a big name in dada painting) said, by the fact that the artist wanted to shake “the ideas, public opinions, education, institutions, museums, common sense as it was seen at that time, more shortly, everything that has to do with the old system”.

Influenced by the enthusiasm of youth, the young Tristan Tzara makes this clear in every creation. Apparently, a children’s play but in reality having deep roots in revolt and maybe home sickness, the poem “Dada song” emphasizes well the characteristics of the movement and the state of the artist:

„cântul unui dadaist

care avea dada de dor

istovea al său motor

care avea dada de dor.

cântul unui biciclist

ce era dada de dor

ce era deci dadaist

ca toţi dadaii de dor.

beţi apă de rândunel

spălaţi-vă acadelele-n cişmea

dada

dada

mâncaţi viţel.”

Tristan Tzara released the spirit, chained by war, in a uncensored way, without the fear of being judged as superficial, unrealistic and childish. He maintained his spirit young until his last moments. Madeleine Chapsal, from L’Express, took his interview, a month before his death. She declared that, altough he was phisically weak, he was connected to the actual problems and they talked about the african problems, the american type consumption society. This proves that the dada movement didin’t come from the imagination of some artist who were chained into their own universes, but from the reinvention of the perception of this world.

Tristan Tzara died in 1963, leaving Romania an important name to be proud of, leaving a spiritual and artistic legacy to all the people around the world, stimulating us to understand the world in his purest state.

Source: Wikipedia, Atelier LiterNet