Book Description
Included is the only Dada novel, Tenderenda the Fantast, written by the movement’s founder Hugo Ball. sections of which he performed at the celebrated Cabaret Voltaire. It is partially a roman à clef recounting the birth of Dada and the author’s subsequent love-hate relationship with his monstrous creation, and yet is much more besides. Richard Huelsenbeck’s Fantastic Prayers was the first Dada poetry collection, and these precocious "Bruitist" poems clearly illustrate how the absurd elements in early Expressionism evolved into the bizarre eloquence of Dada. Finally, Walter Serner’s Last Loosening manifesto, the first major German manifesto written in Zurich, which provoked numerous brawls at its various performances and yet is hardly known. In fact it was the source for many of Tzara’s future literary provocations and seems to have been deliberately suppressed for this reason.
Three vital texts from one of the most extraordinary manifestations of the avant-garde of this century.
