For Madmen Only

[AlfredJPruffock]

Curiouser and Curiouser !

Curiouser and Curiouser !

How the Devil are you all ... you missed me ZeitGhost . well thats very kind of you to say but Im quite fine altough a little shaken.

Good to see all you again , I have had the strangest dream I was a prisoner in this ghastly room and... oh well never mind I must have had too much to dream last night.

They do say its all in the mind.

Perhaps we are living in self made prisons of our fears ...

But its a lovely afternoon and its nearly time for Tea ...



Children yet, the tale to hear,
Eager eye and willing ear,
Lovingly shall nestle near.

In a Wonderland they lie,
Dreaming as the days go by,
Dreaming as the summers die:

Ever drifting down the stream --
Lingering in the golden gleam --
Life, what is it but a dream?

[Francko]

Hello mr AJP! Good to see you back. I plan to read this post during my next holiday, Easter period. So, looking forward to reply to you.

Cheers,

Long life to AJP Tobacco and Grey Slates empires

[AlfredJPruffock]

Well Hello my esteemed Francko jolly good to hear from you !


But I don't want to go among mad people," Alice remarked.

"Oh, you can't help that," said the Cat:

"we're all mad here. I'm mad. You're mad."

"How do you know I'm mad?" said Alice.

"You must be," said the Cat, "or you wouldn't have come here."

[sasguru]

Mad is a such a 19th Century word.
Forget it and float free as a bird!
All it means is different to the norm.
And given the norm, who would want to conform?

[Dundeegeorge]

Hello Alf, and how are?

And have you got any spare of whatever it is you're on, because I want some too!

[AlfredJPruffock]

Aye DG

Im happy hope youre happy too Old Bean

As to your query ...

Round the neck of the bottle was a paper label, with the words “DRINK ME” beautifully printed on it in large letters.

It was all very well to say “Drink me,” but the wise little Alice was not going to do that in a hurry.

“No, I'll look first,” she said, “and see whether it's marked "poison" or not'; for she had read several nice little histories about children who had got burnt, and eaten up by wild beasts and other unpleasant things, all because they would not remember the simple rules their friends had taught them:

such as, that a red-hot poker will burn you if you hold it too long;
and that if you cut your finger very deeply with a knife, it usually bleeds;
and she had never forgotten that,

if you drink much from a bottle marked “poison,” it is almost certain to disagree with you, sooner or later.

However, this bottle was not marked “poison,” so Alice ventured to taste it, and finding it very nice, (it had, in fact, a sort of mixed flavour of cherry-tart, custard, pine-apple, roast turkey, toffee, and hot buttered toast,) she very soon finished it off.

“What a curious feeling!” said Alice; “I must be shutting up like a telescope.”

[darmstadt]

Art as Anarchy

With Dada modern poetic feeling comes to a head. As I have
already said rather jokingly, Dada consists of putting down
in writing things that cannot stand on their own feet. Dada
sets up a powerful negative logic. It radically reverses
the direction of intelligence. Dada has nothing in common
with anything you may think about it, as Dada cannot be
thought. Don't shrug it off. The very power of its negation
gives the Dada scandal a most far-reaching meaning.
Apparently it is a movement created by universal minds.
Today Pic de la Mirandole would probably be Dada. Dada is
not a phenomenon. It answers the philosophical requirements
of the age. It endeavours to ignore objective reality in
order to plunge into the ultra-realistic depths of the
unconscious. However negative the Dada movement may appear,
it is certainly born of transcendent investigations of the
human mind.

We have only to remember the mathematician Henri Poincare,
whose renowned theory of convenience puzzled the scientific
world. According to Henri Poincare, what appears to the
human mind to be most essentially true is what is most
eminently expected.

So mathematics and particularly Euclidian geometry can have
no meaning from an absolute point of view.

Our most rigorously accurate conceptions are in reality
approximate. The shortest path from one point to another is
not, if we examine it closely, the straight line. Similarly,
it is debatable whether the earth is a polyhedron rotating
around the sun. Certainly it is the most convenient thing
imagined by our senses, but we might possibly be motionless
with objective reality moving around us. Evidently we tend
to choose the principle that best corresponds with the
delicate disposition of our organs, and all our thoughts are
inevitably posed on our absurd conception of space.

Similarly, Bergson's philosophy is bound to the criticism of
the idea of time. Dada is a result of intuitive philosophy.
Bergson represents intelligence as strictly adapted to
matter and, therefore, incapable of perceiving duration and
extension as pure quality.

Only intuition is likely to resolve these paradoxes by
ignoring intelligence and preferring instinct.

As the brain cannot envisage time and space outside the
limits of matter, it is essential not to bow to the facts of
the tangible world, but to rely on what Bergson calls "the
immediate data of consciousness". It is by obeying this
deep-seated impulse that we can escape from the crude
concepts of human reason. Instead of being satisfied with
the common vision of the world, we should proceed to an
exploration of the unorganised world where everything is in
constant creation.

According to Bergson's philosophy, the individual is the
"variable combination of the past". The principle of
identity must give way to the "vital impulse", which
reflects the increasing changing of the universe and which
defies any attempt to canalise it.

Briefly, this is the philosophy compared with which so many
previous systems lose most of their meaning.

So Dada is simply this effort to free oneself from the
relative concepts of human reason. It intends to abolish
categories. That is why Dada wants to clear nothing up. All
it wants is occasional glimpses of the far-off glimmers of
the absolute in the moving wreckage left by the impulse of
life.

More recently still, Einstein's theories have aimed a final
blow at the philosophy of facts.

Einstein identifies the old entities of space and time in a
four dimensional conception of the universe, i.e. time is
only a fourth dimension of space.

The study of luminous radiations suggested to him unhoped
for results. The idea of infinity, which has tormented
human reason throughout all eternity, for the first time
perhaps seems to subside in the Einsteinian axiom: "Nothing
is faster than light". The existence of an absolute speed is
not beyond our understanding.

Einstein's mathematical research brings to science bases
that are less approximate than rectilinear geometry. The
straight line does not exist. Our error lies in taking the
geodesic line for one. Light is not propagated in a straight
line. We must endeavour to understand the universe as a
curve "that is infinite, but not without limits".

We are accustomed to envisaging only restricted space. In
the same way, the time we can imagine is a local time. "The
passing of time", said Einstein, "is not always the same".
The speed of light is an absolute speed, i.e. independent of
time, and Einstein's calculations lead to the result that,
if man could reach the speed of light, he would not grow
old.

"We record", says Einstein again, "only variations". Reality
is hidden from us by the intervention of our senses. We can
only judge movement with regard to a point that we suppose
to be fixed. So all movement is relative.

Einstein concludes that there exists a field of gravitation
where nothing is propagated in the void, but where
everything exists by reciprocal correspondences. He reduces
all phenomena to electro-magnetic laws.

The initial matter is identical; the bodies vary according
to the situation occupied by the other bodies in the
universe. Therefore all energy contains a sum of inertia,
and the ether, which for the modern philosopher represents
an imponderable milieu implying complete lack of motion, is
for Einstein an abolished postulate.

[darmstadt]

_But to come back to literature_-

Dada undoubtedly counts among its forerunners Alfred Jarry.
The creator of Pere Ubu shows a radical inadequation to the
common adhesiveness. He invented petaphysics, the science
of the particular. His object, he said, was "to study the
laws that govern exceptions".

In skirting the extreme limits of fantasy, Alfred Jarry
overtook the most lucid suggestions of abstract philosophy.
In the novel, we would recall the first style of Andre Gide.
The characters of the philosophical short stories, such as
"Paludes", singularly prepare the bent of mind proper to
Dada.

In "Paludes" Andre Gide represents life as a bog where we
wear ourselves out in useless efforts without being capable
of a completely independent action.

He understands the vanity of all construction and, to
sidetrack the surfeit of human semblances, he escapes into
the absurd and decides to take from each of our actions only
the obscure part of unconsciousness that it reveals to us.

This "absence of a smile" so peculiar to Andre Gide, which
however gives the worrying feeling of comedy, can be found
in Dada, and so can the neutral atmosphere where thought
evolves like a time-coloured bird.

Finally in poetry, besides Mallarme, who was the first to
try to achieve the freedom of words, should we mention the
rebel Rimbaud? And nearer to us the work of Guillaume
Appolinaire who, by his aspiration towards an intangible
reality, is the instigator of the worst literary impudence.
All forms of Dada can claim kinship with Appollinaire,
particularly phonetic Dada, whose bases he established in
the last poems of "Calligrammes", entitled "Victory".

O mouths man is searching for a new language
Where the grammarian of any language will have nothing to say
And these old languages are so close to death
That it is only out of habit and lack of daring
That we still use them in poetry
We want new sounds new sounds new sounds
We want vowel-less consonants
Consonants that fart loudly
Imitate the sound of the humming top
Let a continuous nasal sound crackle
Click your tongue
Use the champing sound of the ill-mannered eater
The aspirated rasping of spitting would make a fine sound
The different labial farts would trumpet out your speeches
Get accustomed to belching at will
Speak with your hands snap your fingers
Tap your cheek as if it were a drum
The word is sudden and it's a trembling God
Advance and bear with me up I regret the hands
of those who held them out and worshipped me together
What an oasis of arms will welcome me tomorrow
Do you know the joy of seeing new things.

Moreover the dreadful upheavals of recent years have
sufficiently enlightened us on the incalculable folly
engendered by the minds of reasonable men. And if these men
consider the attempt to upset the meaning of things is
insanity, Dada can answer them: "Take hold of the end of
your nose".

[darmstadt]

+++

Tristan Tzara must be quoted first of the group Dada, a
movement that has taken on an international aspect. Dada
does not pursue any form of art. Dada lays claim to pure
idiocy. We must not forget that the Dadas stripped words of
their usual character, and therefore they could not have a
disparaging meaning. This means that Dada does not proceed
along the usual paths of reason. Dada is a radical
disorientation of common sense. In this respect Dadas
display a veritable ingenuity in being idiots.

They carefully avoid everything that is not directly the
inverse of what we are used to considering morally as
values. Getting rid of every intellectual acquisition so s
to be no longer one's own dupe is the object pursued by
Dada. To upset our manner of seeing, the Dadas modify our
method of speaking. They want to detach the words that have
agglutinated by custom and which attract each other like
filings adhere to a magnet.

Tristan Tzara offers to shake all the words of the
vocabulary in a hat and to pick them out at random. In this
process the words will have acquired an intrinsic value. New
relation-ships will have formed between them. You will have
created the void and you will more easily find the part of
the unconscious that determines your actions. All writers
who have wanted to re-create a vocabulary for themselves
corresponding to their intimate vision of the world have
mentally practised this operation.

But Dada has a more general meaning. There is no field where
its negative influence does not extend. In reality, Dada is
an absurd state of mind that nobody escapes. "The real Dadas
are against Dada", and in fact who is not capering on his
dada - his hobbyhorse - at the moment? Francophilia,
Germanophilia are simply variations on Dada in the positive
state. Dada has tried everything and nothing has been able
to satisfy its need for diversity.

Dada is a virgin germ
Dada is against the high cost of living
Dada
Limited company for the exploitation of ideas
Dada has 391 different attitudes and colours according to
the sex of the
president.
It changes - affirms - says the opposite at the same time
- of no importance - shouts - goes fishing.
Dada is the chameleon of rapid and selfish change.
Dada is against the future. Dada is dead. Dada is idiotic.
Long live Dada. Dada is not a literary school yell.
_Tristan Tzara_

Pure idiocy is the universal panacea. Reasonable acts can
procure only disadvantage. This is what allows Tristan Tzara
to conclude: 'Subscribe to Dada the only investment that
pays nothing.'

[darmstadt]

Andre Breton is another theoretician of Dada. For him Dada
corresponds to a need for liberty. He revolts against any
resignation. Any conviction seemed to him to be a form of
renouncement. By exploring the unconscious, he has obtained
the most disconcerting findings. He says: "Innocence is
tolerated only in its passive form." And, in fact,
innocence, which is a virtue in a virgin, is a crime in the
murderer. Andre Breton can no longer understand. And he
feels at ease only in the atmosphere of annulment created by
Dada. "What is beautiful, ugly, big, strong, weak, don't
know, don't know. What is Carpentier, Renan, Foch, don't
know, don't know."

The "Magnetic Fields" written in collaboration with Philippe
Soupalt, is in this respect a strange book. In spite of the
radical lack of coordination in the ideas, the Magnetic
Fields leaves a general impression that cannot be doubted.
Andre Breton no longer feels attracted to anything. Words
have rusted and things have lost all power of attraction for
him. He represents the world as a "waste land". He no longer
hungers for the "rotting sweetmeats" that life offers him.
Custom stales. He is weary of considering the universe
according to categories that lie, and takes refuge in the
absurd.