In documenting art on the basis of the supreme
simplicity: novelty, we are human and true for the sake of amusement, impulsive, vibrant to
crucify boredom. At the crossroads of the lights, alert, attentively awaiting the years, in the
forest. I write a manifesto and I want nothing, yet 1 say certain things, and in principle I am
against manifestoes, as I am also against principles (half-pints to measure the moral value of
every phrase too too convenient; approximation was invented by the impressionists). I write
this manifesto to show that people can perform contrary actions together while taking one
fresh gulp of air; I am against action; for continuous contradiction, for affirmation too, I am
neither for nor against and I do not explain because I hate common sense. […]
Dada Means Nothing
If you find it futile and don't want to waste your time on a word that means nothing ... The
first thought that comes to these people is bacteriological in character: to find its
etymological, or at least its historical or psychological origin. We see by the papers that the
Kru Negroes call the tail of a holy cow Dada. The cube and the mother in a certain district of
Italy are called: Dada. A hobby horse, a nurse both in Russian and Romanian: Dada. Some
learned journalists regard it as an art for babies, other holy jesusescallingthelittlechildren of
our day, as a relapse into a dry and noisy, noisy and monotonous primitivism. (...)
And so Dada was born of a need for independence, of a distrust toward unity. Those who
are with us preserve their freedom. We recognize no theory. (...)
Every product of disgust capable of becoming a negation of the family is Dada; a protest with
the fists of its whole being engaged in destructive action: Dada; know ledge of all the means
rejected up until now by the shamefaced sex of comfortable compromise and good
manners: Dada; abolition of logic, which is the dance of those impotent to create:
Dada; of every social hierarchy and equation set up for the sake of values by our
valets: Dada: every object, all objects, sentiments, obscurities, apparitions and the Tzara, “Dada Manifesto 1918”
precise clash of parallel lines are weapons for the fight: Dada; abolition of memory:
Dada; abolition of archaeology: Dada; abolition of prophets: Dada; abolition of the
future: Dada; absolute and unquestionable faith in every god that is the immediate
product of spontaneity: Dada.