Vol. 38 No. 1 1971 - page 21

PARTISAN REVIEW
21
Enter a group of writers and artists
-
regulars at the public house
at the corner of the Spiegelgasse, founders of the Cafe Voltaire
and the Dadaists:
EMMY HENNINGS, HUGO BALL, TRISTAN TZARA,
MARCEL JANCO, RICHARD HUELSENBECK
and their protegee
ANNA
BLUME.
HENNINGS: All the rebels gathered in our little saloon. Radek, Lenin.
And Trotsky. I hear you're sti11living opposite, Monsieur Lenin. Be–
cause your landlady said the soldiers must now tum their guns on
their own governments. The news has got around.
BALL: Do you still believe in European culture, Trotsky? Your harmo–
nious arches, your idealistic steeples? I've read all your edicts on art
and poetry. Haven't you seen yet that all the splendid facades are
cracking and crumbling?
TZARA:
Tristan Tzara, that's me, and Janco, and Emmy Hennings and
Hugo Ball, and Richard Huelsenbeck, and Anna Blume, the street–
walker from the corner, and Max Ernst, and Duchamp in New York.
Remember these names. An International. We'll go down in history
too, like you. You say bourgeois values must be destroyed, we don't
want to keep any of them, they must disappear, we'll begin again.
That's our program too. We shall smash everything they built up.
Down with the Venus de Milo. Down with the Sistine Madonna.
Down with statues, temples, libraries, museums. Down with all this
muck on pedestals, in frames, in glass cases. All lies. All hypocrisy.
The real voice, that is heard in the clatter of the tanks, the rattle of
shrapnel, the throbbing of airplanes. Groans, death rattles, farts,
belches, howls. That is our language. Music? Is there still a place for
music? Who listens to music with a knife in his ,ribs, a bullet in his
guts?
HUGO BALL
climbs on a chair.
BALL: You must join hands with us, you rationalists, you revolutionary
technicians. You bring down the despots, the bloodsuckers in the
banks and factories. We bring down the bosses who keep our im–
pulses, our imagination, under lock and key. From the ruins the
downtrodden working slave, the starved court jester will rise and
generate an almighty force. We must unite. We, the unpredictable,
emotional artists and you, the planners, the designers. Undivided. Or
our revolution will trickle away into the sand. New man must be a
creator. New art is life. Breathing is art. Movement is art. We swim
in
the air. We fly. Life is flying.
He jumps from the chair with outstretched arms and falls flat.
He is helped to his feet amid laughter.
TROTSKY
rises from the
camp bed.
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