22
PETER WEISS
ANNA BLUME: I don't know what he means. Vladimir Ilyich told me
that after the revolution the libraries and museums will belong to
us, and the palaces and the theaters. So why should they be destroyed?
Then they won't be any use to us any more.
JANCO: We don't need them. They were made only for the people up
top, those who spit on your head. To whom you sold yourself by the
hour.
As
we all do.
ANNA BLUME: But I want to see them. I want to go inside.
LENIN: Yes. These things have split society. Yes. They have served the
ruling class. But we have learned to make use of them. We have gained
knowledge from them. They have helped us to develop skills. To go
beyond our limits. The pseudorevolutionaries, they can afford to
destroy our cultural heritage. They have had more than their fill of
it.
But we, we still need it. We wish to take it over whole. The people
who have so far been cut off from it, they shall decide what is to be
thrown out, what can still be used.
HENNINGS: Nothing. Nothing can still be used. Not even by you, Anna.
We must learn everything afresh. Bla bla bla. Da da da. Dada. That's
what the new art will be called. Antiart. Born in the Spiegelgasse in
Zurich. In the Cafe Voltaire. In the year of blood. In the month of
the spilling guts. On the day of the death scream. To the world. To
the public of the world. The new culture, Dada, is born. Da da. Da
da da. To the people of the future. To the visionaries. Let your
clothes rot on your bodies. Dress yourselves in your own hair. Corne
and go like rain and fog. Da da. Da da da.
ANNA BLUME: What's she talking about, Inessa? Has she gone off her
head?
BALL: No. She is the mouthpiece of the higher reason. Reason freed
from the yoke of precedents and laws.
TROTSKY: We imagined once that the world would be governed by
conscious knowledge, by critical thinking. But throughout history con–
sciousness has tottered along behind the facts. To that extent you are
right.
LENIN
is
suddenly violently angry. All turn to him in concern.
LENIN: And just because human intelligence is so puny, for the very
reason that it is so puny, that is why I shall never permit its weak
glow to be extinguished.
A moment of silence.
LENIN
walks agitatedly to and fro.
TROTSKY: All these great happenings everywhere. These shocks and
upsets. They must produce a new form of art. A change in the social
pattern must free the artist too from his old restraints.
