See the PDF of the article published in Les Nouveaux Cahiers

As far as I recall, it was Jacques Lebar (1911-2004), the Secretary General of the new journal of the Alliance Israélite Universelle, who asked me for this article. He was also a contributor to the weekly Le Nouvel Observateur, which Jean Daniel had launched under that title in 1964. Since its inception, I sometimes contributed anonymous notes there concerning performances and cultural events. It was in that capacity that, at the end of June 1965, I reported on Michel Sanouillet’s PhD defence at the Sorbonne on “Dada in Paris” (for which I had supplied the title). Thus, Lebar and I were neighboring columnists without knowing each other! He explains the reasons why he asked me for this article, which at first glance might seem out of place in a publication devoted to Jewish thought. Beyond the interest I have always shown in Dada, having founded the Association for the Study of Dada,_ I had a more personal reason to collaborate with this journal, insofar as my father had been a student in Istanbul at one of the schools established by the Alliance, where he learned French, a language which I then taught to foreigners_...

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Xenophobia, racism, and antisemitism have always found excuses to rage. This was the case when Dada burst onto the Parisian scene shortly after the Great War. The Dada movement was born exactly half a century ago, on February 6, 1916, at the Café Voltaire in Zurich. The Romanian poet Tristan Tzara, of Jewish origin, was one of its principal leaders. On the occasion of this fiftieth anniversary, we asked Henri Béhar, secretary of the Review of the Association for the Study of the Dada Movement, to recall how some elements of the French public opinion—especially the self-righteous—received manifestations of a virulent nonconformity that was to mark an entire era.

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“They should all be burned in the public square, set fire to their exhibitions and disrupt their sessions of unhealthy ramblings... The people who lead this Dada movement are merchants of madness, entrepreneurs of folly (1).” Thus spoke Georges Courteline in 1920, in a major literary newspaper, about the Dada Movement, which one would have expected him to appreciate for its humor, innovative spirit, and at least anticonformist attitude. But his reaction is typical of many writers or scribblers who, seeing a spirit of Terror descending on Paris, pointed their right index finger to their temples while the left indicated the way to Charenton. And even this reaction was among the most simplistic and least harmful. The press available from 1920 to 1922, that is from Tristan Tzara’s arrival in Paris until the last major Dada event, the Trial of Maurice Barrès, constitutes one of the greatest collections of foolishness ever provoked by a spiritual movement in France, offering abundant material for historians and sociologists alike. It should be noted that Dada came to Paris burdened with a past full of consequences in the eyes of journalists inclined to be suspicious of anything originating beyond our borders. Was not Dada born in Zurich, in German-speaking Switzerland, on February 8, 1916, in the midst of war, as its putative founders Tristan Tzara and Marcel Janco (Romanians), Hugo Ball (German), and Hans Arp (Alsatian) claimed? Though Switzerland was neutral, nonetheless fear abounded over anything that might sow discord in the clear French spirit. Such was also Guillaume Apollinaire’s reaction, initially favorable to anything expressing novelty as long as it did not cast doubt upon his patriotic feelings. To Tzara, who invited him to collaborate on the Dada magazine, he wrote on February 6, 1918:

“[-] As for me, although I am a soldier and wounded, a volunteer, I am a naturalized citizen, hence bound to great circumspection. I believe it could be compromising for me, especially at this stage of the multifaceted war, to collaborate on a magazine, however excellent its spirit, which counts among its collaborators Germans, however pro-Entente they may be...” (2).

Yet the first two issues of that magazine held nothing to truly frighten a discerning reader. But to be truthful, in those troubled times censorship was particularly suspicious of correspondence from abroad. Did those truncated phrases, those typographical variations so proudly displayed by the Zurich review contain a coded message? Did these “literary and artistic collections” serve as means of communication between secret agents for the enemy? Some officers of the French military intelligence service came close to suspecting so, and even launched an investigation into Apollinaire himself, who had been attached to Censorship and took his duties seriously enough to suppress a book by Louis Delluc deemed defeatist. Amusedly, Tzara later recalled a comic scene between Apollinaire and Reverdy regarding his poems!

“... Rumors circulated in Paris that I was ‘on the blacklist’ (sold out to the Germans, spy, whatever...), Apollinaire and Reverdy, fearing each other, accused one another—quite violently—of having asked me to collaborate for Nord-Sud. These rumors were most probably spread by L’Intransigeant...” (3). All of this, ultimately, can be attributed to the anxiety of minds during wartime. Yet, in 1920, with Germany defeated, one might have supposed that the French intelligentsia had nothing left to fear from abroad and would lend their support to France’s tradition of hospitality, especially in the case of a Romanian writer from a friendly country. One quickly detected, however, behind Tzara’s rolled R’s and “Levantine pidgin,” the indirect and no less harmful presence of the “Boche.” We cannot resist quoting here, almost in full, Jean Lefranc’s somewhat lengthy article, one of the first to detect the “Pickelhaube,” reporting on one of the grandest Dada evenings at the Maison de l’Œuvre, during which the audience and the impromptu actors alike had great fun: “... It seemed that the French were few among the initiated. From their accents, one easily recognized natives of this ‘Near East’ who today console themselves in Paris for the penance imposed by the war...”

Nevertheless, there is nothing specifically Romanian or Balkan in Dada. This monstrous muse comes from less far afield. Mr. Henri Albert, who has long been attentive to the movement of “German Letters,” recently wrote in Mercure: “If the Germans admit that they took the word ‘Expressionism’ from France, though they diverted its meaning, they can rightfully claim the paternity of Dadaism. Dadaism was invented in 1917 by Germans who fled to Zurich to escape the multiple discomforts of the war — unfit or insubordinate, with unhinged nerves — and who wished to regain health by imitating the babbling of early childhood. Apollinaire, who had a taste for mystification, enjoyed these eccentricities and supported them. Recent attempts to import it into France were received with the sympathy we reserve for all innovators. Yet Dadaism had something too Germanic and pedantic to please our snobs, who were enamored of primitive art and sentimental poetry. Thus the business name had to be changed. Just as the ‘Allgemeine Electricitäts Gesellschaft,’ when it created a subsidiary in France before the war, called itself the ‘Société Française d’Électricité,’ so too, when Dadaism settled here, it became the Mouvement Dada...” Then, in his analysis, he separates French well-born youth from the “germans” troublemakers: “... One might well believe they are infected by German degenerates. We have been told that in Berlin the most shameful initiatives were openly pursued and that petitions in favor of ‘the right to vice’ were distributed on the streets. Intellectual decay is one of the effects of war. War has strengthened the strong, corrupted the perverse, and dumbed down the fools. Yet even the defeated protect themselves against these unhealthy influences. It is peculiar to see that in France some young people inhale them with satisfaction, and that there are even older ones who encourage this attempt at poisoning... ” (4). Rachilde, the chronicler of Mercure, amplified and reinforced her colleague’s arguments when she threw her own name into the controversy. Arguing that the Dadaists sent their invitations on letterhead listing their different centers of activity, headed alphabetically by Berlin, she denounced the conspiracy and invited her peers to express their contempt with a “silent laugh”: “... The Dada Movement is not French. It was born in Switzerland to neutral German parents. (Evidence provided.) The motive of this crazy contraption is to disrupt French art — because those miserable people imagine that one crow, only one crow can make winter in France — and to darken our skies.” To this, another Dadaist, Picabia, rightly replied that the Germans had shown interest in Dada, as they had—fruitfully for the artists—with Impressionism, Symbolism, and Cubism, whereas the poor French had let the most beautiful discoveries born in their own country slip away. Moreover, Picabia, French by birth, was not immune to xenophobic attacks since Le Merle Blanc (our Minute) headlined on January 29, 1921: “We demand that Picabia be sent back across the Spanish border.”

One could endlessly cite similar articles taking up, more or less gracefully, Rachilde’s theme. However, the following excerpt deserves special mention as it comes from a newspaper with the gentle title Liberté: “... The real problem is that these poor gentlemen are mostly undesirable foreigners and bear names that are astonishing, with two billets de logement (residence permits)...” (5). Behind these elegant epithets such as “foreigners” and “rastaquouères” lie chauvinism, traditionalism, latent antisemitism—all the passions of the French to which Dada joyfully served as a scapegoat. For of course, while the Dadas were indulging in their madness, there was a paper shortage; while they publicly performed their antics, talented young writers were starving, students were abandoning their studies—and the Dadas, for their part, had the audacity to bring Maurice Barrès, such a French writer, to trial and condemn him! They pushed their insolence as far as desecrating the Unknown Soldier. Well, it was high time for the brave veterans to give them a good lesson!

Lenin, That Attila...

Just as in America recently McCarthyism hunted down “un-American ideas,” it was soon argued that Dadaist destruction stemmed from a foreign, if not Bolshevik, conception and, in any case, was meant to delight the Germans: “Such thoughts are not French. Our clear and logical mind, our constructive temperament could not have generated them, nor will it accommodate them. The theory of the tabula rasa is nihilistic: it is an Asiatic theory, not a European one. It is hatred of our civilization; it is the horror the Barbarian of old felt for Greek culture…” (6).

Don’t beat around the bush recalling your school lessons about Attila’s invasions—here the reference is clear, at the moment Bolsheviks were seizing power in Russia! Marcel Boulanger, who in the beginning had advised sending the Dadas to preach their religion in India, soon realized this was no joke. The traditional French logic, the universality of our language, its “genius,” the influence of our country, its measure, its good taste—all this was being overturned, destroyed, in favor of an ideology long familiar since Marx: “… And it is the unworthy pleasure of upheaval and anarchy that hides behind these masks, garishly painted by madmen. Just like in Petrograd (sic), in Moscow, in Berlin, in the underworld. “A sudden offensive of disorder against order—that is the Dada Movement. Judge whether the Bolsheviks of the East, and also the infamous maniacs of Germany, should not shout enthusiastic ‘Hoch…’ when they see the cream of Paris crowding the shows and manifestations organized by these new Vandals, Scythians, Goths, and Alamans…” (7).

Finally, the great fear of everything new, of anything that exceeds or disrupts established values, gripped the commentators, especially since the most horrible rumors circulated about the Spartacist Revolution in Berlin and the Soviet one in Moscow. It was known that indeed Berlin Dadaists had taken up arms in the German capital, that Lenin had stayed in Zurich at the same time as Tzara, on the very street where Dada had established its quarters, at the famous Cabaret Voltaire. To link aesthetic revolutions to social events became a necessity:

“Believe me, Lenin and Trotsky are neither admirers of Bouguereau nor readers of René Bazin. Wells states that official art in Russia is Futurist. It cannot be otherwise. It is because Lenin and his comrades saw, as you did, our Fauvist paintings, read our Fauvist books, that the greatest empire in the world is now crumbling under the assault of a few wild beasts…” (8).

But all these attempts at explanation did not account for the most pernicious ferment at the origin of every intellectual revolution: the Jewish spirit. Following André Gide, several engaged in this discourse. Did he not indicate, in an ironic but rather sympathetic study of Dada, some of the defects of its progenitor: “… They tell me he is a foreigner — I easily believe it — Jewish — I was about to say so. “They say he does not sign with his real name; and I willingly believe that Dada is likewise just a pseudonym…” (9). It was after reading these perfidious lines that Picabia wrote: “If you read Gide aloud for ten minutes, you will smell bad from the mouth.” The crown of idiocy undeniably goes to the columnist of La Libre Parole (oh! The irony of the title), who had the luxury of falling into a trap deliberately set by an avant-garde journal, La Revue de l’époque, which, taking up a recent inquiry on whether the Louvre should be burned down, asked its readers whether Dadaists should be executed. All the famous writers who responded understood the humorous ulterior motive of the investigators—except the inimitable Jean Drault: “... According to René Benjamin, who wrote in Le Figaro an article that Urbain Gohier would not have disowned, it would be far more urgent to burn the Sorbonne than the Louvre—and with it certain Sorbonne professors who make themselves accomplices of the worst enemies of France: Seignobos, Aulard, the Jew Victor Basch, and some other 'smug-types' (the expression is René Benjamin’s). “(...) The real master of Dadaism is the Jew Bronstein, called Trotsky. That is why I reserve my opinion about what fate awaits the Dadaists. Will Trotsky end up shot or hanged? His disciples must follow the fate of their master...” (10).

Though inadmissible, such opinions and calls to crime can be explained by the blindness, ignorance, or misunderstanding of their authors. This was not so, however, for one of the Dadaists we now want to speak of. It was at the beginning of 1922 that André Breton, perhaps weary of seeing Dada 陷 into mechanical repetition of the same scandals, instigated the formation of a “Congress for the determination of guidelines and the defense of Modern Spirit,” where representatives of various avant-garde tendencies were to meet. Tzara was therefore invited, but he had taken care since Dada’s inception to declare “Dada is not modern,” meaning that Dada should not be identified with any literary movement classifiable like all the others after use. Very courteously, Tzara declined. Breton, then realizing that his initiative would fail in Dada’s absence, obtained approval from the Congress’s Organizing Committee for a press release warning “opinion against the actions of a figure known as the promoter of a ‘movement’ originating in Zurich”… Breton later admitted the “unfortunately ambiguous” wording (11) of this phrase, to say the least. The founder of Surrealism’s whole attitude contradicts the accusations of “nationalism” and “xenophobia” leveled against him by Tzara and his friends. Even if the interpretation given served only to thwart the Congress project, it must be recognized that the expression highlighted deep feelings which education and intellectual formation attempt to repress in most French people. But it takes little irritation for us to betray ourselves, despite ourselves, with words that perhaps exceed our real thought but are nonetheless significant!

Whatever esteem one may have for the Dada Movement, it cannot be denied that the state of exasperation it stirred during its brief existence in Paris revealed the true nature of certain French people. On one side, we could see the pettiness of André Gide, the congenital stupidity of several journalists; but on the other, perceptive authors like Georges Casella, Henri Bidou, Jacques-Émile Blanche, and above all Jacques Rivière demonstrated the full nobility of their thought. It is their voices which, all considered, will count for posterity.

Henri BEHAR.

See the PDF of the article published in Les Nouveaux Cahiers

Read also:
Henri Béhar, Study on Dada and Surrealist Theatre, Gallimard, Les Essais, 1967

Michel Sanouillet, Dada in Paris, Pauvert, 1965, latest edition: CNRS, 2005.

Henri Béhar, Catherine Dufour, Dada, total circuit, L’Age d’Homme, 2005.

(1) G. Courteline. Interview with d’Esparbès (Comoedia).
(2) Apollinaire. Letter to T. Tzara, cited in the Guillaume Apollinaire 1964 files, Paris, Minard, p. 9.
(3) Letter from T. Tzara to J. Doucet, held at the Jacques Doucet Literary Library, reproduced in: Michel Sanouillet, Dada in Paris, 1965, p. 570.
(4) Jean Lefranc. The Dada Crisis (Comœdia illustré, November 30, 1920).
(5) Anonymous, Liberté, May 19, 1920. Is this fear of pauperization? My sergeant spoke of a single billet.
(6) Maurice Schwob. “The Dada of the Boche, Modern Trojan Horse,” Le Phare (Nantes), April 26, 1920.
(7) Marcel Boulanger, “Herr Dada,” Le Gaulois, April 26, 1920.
(8) Anonymous. “The Great Madness.” Figaro, January 28, 1921.
(9) André Gide. “Dada,” N.R.F, April 1, 1920, p. 177.
(10) Jean Drault. “Should One Burn Some and Shoot the Others?” La Libre Parole, March 3, 1921.
(11) André Breton, Interviews, Gallimard 1952, p. 70.