>
>
>Bertrand--vous avez bien raison--your "remembers are good":
>
>
> have just been rereading for the manyth time DADA ART AND ANTI-ART
> by Hans Richter and POEMS PERFORMANCES PIECES PROSES PLAYS
> POETICS by Kurt Schwitters for an essay i am working on.
> (& usually anyway reading both as part of daily life and
> work)
the incident Bertrand speaks of did indeed take place, in 1918.
it is briefly dexcribed on pp. 137-8 of Richter's book
in PPPPPP, Schwitters makes a distincton between "kernel" Dada--which is in
the Tzara/abstract line and "will live as long as art itself"--and "husk
Dada"-- which he quotes (I believe from Huelsenbeck) as "forsee(ing) its own
demise and laugh(ing) about it"
(Philadelphia: Temple U Pres, 1993; 216-7)
Schwitters' distinction is made in an a piece called "Merz", written in
1920.
Schwitters' appelation "husk Dada" plays on the German "hulse", meaning
"husk"--and refers to Huelsenbeck's "inconsequential and dilettantish views
on art".
Thank you Bertrand for bringing this up.
In Richter's version it is Raoul Hausmann" recounting of the events in his
"Courier Dada" that is used--Hausmann stating that he met Schwitters--then
unknown to him--in the Cafe des Westens and Schwitters after much
conversation--asked to join the Club. Hausmann said that he had to bring it
before a general meeting. There, Hausmann discovered that Huelsenbeck and a
few others already knew of Schwitters and that Huelsenbeck had taken an
aversion to him and said that not every Tom, Dick and Harry could be
admitted to the club.
"In short, he did not like Schwitters"(138).
The allusion to Schwitters' "bourgeois face" according to Richter occurs in
a book written by Huelsenbeck forty years after the event, even after the
two had been reconciled before Schwitters' death.
I think that Schwitters may have appreciated this, as it illustrates the
differences between "husk" and "kernel" Dada.
Forty years later, husk Huelsenbeck is still hanging on to an event, an
impression--a dislike as an act of "reason".
Meanwhile, Schwitters, a great many of whose works were destroyed by war
and peacetime disasters--as well as banned--worked on--the once wanted Club
Card not needed for any such sanction regarding the activity of Merz--or
art.
(It should be noted though that Huelsenbeck's dislike of a bourgeois face
is in keeping with the powerful anti-bourgeois stance of Berlin Dada and its
Bolshevik tendencies; it is not founded on a mere whim alone).
As Schwitters notes: "Eternal last longer".
--dave baptiste chirot
>
>
>
>
>
>On Sat, 24 Jun 2000, Bertrand et Claudia CLAVEZ wrote:
>
> > I don't think the Dadaists felt themselves
> > > privledged, i.e. "card-carrying members of the Dada Club," to be able
>to
> > do
> > > such things
> > You might be right, even though there use to be a real club Dada, in
>Berlin
> > I think, as far as someone like Kurt Schwitters was clearly refused to
>enter
> > in in 1919 -because of Huelsenbeck, if my remembers are good, who found
>him
> > to much "petit-bourgeois" and in despite of the good will of Tristan
>Tzara.
> >
> > Bertrand
> >
> >
>
>
>
>
>
>
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