Primele Poeme: First Poems

by Tristan Tzara

Poems of Dadaist Tristan Tzara.

Genres: Poetry, Romanian Literature

82 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1971

About the author

Romanian-born French poet and essayist known mainly as a founder of Dada, a nihilistic revolutionary movement in the arts.

The Dadaist movement originated in Zürich during World War I; Tzara wrote the first Dada texts - La Premiére Aventure cèleste de Monsieur Antipyrine (1916; "The First Heavenly Adventure of Mr. Antipyrine") and Vingt-cinq poémes (1918; "Twenty-Five Poems") - and the movement's manifestos, Sept manifestes Dada (1924; "Seven Dada Manifestos").

In Paris he engaged in tumultuous activities with André Breton, Philippe Soupault, and Louis Aragon to shock the public and to disintegrate the structures of language. About 1930, weary of nihilism and destruction, he joined his friends in the more constructive activities of Surrealism. He devoted much of his time to the reconciliation of Surrealism and Marxism and joined the Communist Party in 1936 and the French Resistance movement during World War II. These political commitments brought him closer to his fellow human beings, and he gradually matured into a lyrical poet. His poems revealed the anguish of his soul, caught between revolt and wonderment at the daily tragedy of the human condition.

His mature works started with L'Homme approximatif (1931; "The Approximate Man") and continued with Parler seul (1950; "Speaking Alone") and La Face intèrieure (1953; "The Inner Face"). In these, the anarchically scrambled words of Dada were replaced with a difficult but humanized language.

Reviews

[Bill Kerwin · Rating 3 out of 5]

I often lump Dada together with its daughter Surrealism, and associate both with Paris. I often forget that Dada was more of a continental movement, and that it began—if it can be said to have begun in any one time, in one place—in 1916, in Zurich, the creation of a handful of artist refugees, many of them Eastern European Jews displaced by the upheavals of World War I. The most influential of the early literary Dadaists (there were of course painters and sculptors too), and author of the first Dada manifesto, was the Romanian Sami Rosenstock, better known as “Tristan Tzara.” This is his first book of poems.

One of the interesting things about this book is that some of the poems included here were written prior to the Dadaist movement, a few are Symbolist works dating from as early as 1912 (when Tzara was 16), and all of them were originally written in Roumanian. There are provocative illogical juxtapositions to be found here, of course, but there is also a fierce hatred of war, a love for his sister, and a nostalgia for the pretty girls and innocence of small Romanian villages.

None of these poems—at least in this translation—possess even a fraction of the power of Neruda’s early work, poems they in many ways resemble. Still, they are poignant, surprisingly earnest even in their experimental outrageousness, and they helped me experience the legendary Dadaist “Tzara” as a real poet with a real history and a real heart.

DOUBT

I’ve taken the old dream from its box as you’d take out your hat
When you put on that coat of many buttons
As you’d pick up a hare by its ears
When you return from the hunt
As you’d choose the flower from among the weeds,
And a friend from among courtiers.

Look what happened to me
When evening came slow as a beetle
When I lit a fire of verses in my soul—
Good enough cure for some—
I went to bed. Sleep is a garden bordered by doubt
You think you see a hief and shoot
later you learn it was a soldier
That’s exactly how I felt
So I called you to tell me for certain
What is true and what is not.


INSCRIPTION ON A GRAVESTONE

And I felt your pure sad soul
Just as you feel the moon drifting silently
Behind drawn curtains.
And I felt you poor shy soul,
Like a beggar, with hand outstretched before the door,
Not daring to know and enter,
And I felt your soul damp and gripped in pain
Like a handkerchief in a tear-stained hand,
Whilte today, when my soul wishes to lose itself in the night,
Only your memory holds it
With a phantom’s unseen fingers

[Iulian · Rating 5 out of 5]

Triumf al creației fără barierele conformismului - exprimă împletirea simbolismului cu dadaismul printr-o încărcătură de alienare şi versuri cu joc vag aleatoriu, ce au înțelesuri deosebite.

[Ramona Arsene · Rating 4 out of 5]

Si simțeam sufletul tău curat și trist
Cum simți luna care plutește tăcută
După perdelele trase
Și simțeam sufletul tău sărman și sfios
Ca un cerșetor cu mâna-ntinsă-n fața porții,
Neîndrăznind să bată și să intre,
Și simțeam sufletul tău plăpând și umil
Ca o lacrimă ce nu cuteză a trece pragul pleoapelor,
Și simțeam sufletul tău strâns și umezit de durere
Ca o batistă în mâna în care picură lacrimi,
Iar astăzi, când sufletul meu vrea să se piardă în noapte,
Doar amintirea ta îl ține
Cu nevăzute degete de fantasmă.

[Ionela · Rating 5 out of 5]

O amintire plăcută și delicată a cât de frumoasă și artistică este româna ca limbă. După părerea mea, nu există alta care să se compare cu ea; o melodie de parcă ar fi miere scrisă pe hârtie de un mare artist ca Tzara.

[Cătălina Andreea · Rating 3 out of 5]

,,În mine se rup trestii cu foșnet de hârtie
Vreau să mă sfârșesc încet de-alungul țării
Și să-mi ezite sufletul ca dansatorul pe frânghie”.

[Andrew · Rating 5 out of 5]

This edition is the translation done by Michael Impey and Brian Swann back in 1976. This translation is very smooth, and the poems being translated are beautiful.

This early work has more in common with Laforge than Picabia or Hugo Ball. The poems are often imagistic in a late Symbolist mode, are sometimes sentimental, and are often driven by emotion. It is thread that Tzara picks up again in the mid-20's after Dada has had its meltdown.

This is not to say that his Dada poems completely break with these poems. There is, in fact, a great deal of continuity, but I know of no English translation of Tzara's Dada poetry that has a lengthy enough selection of his Dada books to show this continuity.

This book, perhaps more than any other translation of Tzara, shows the emotional depth that is present in virtually all of his poems when read in French.

[Äshley Krälin · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is Tristan Tzara's greatest work.

[Abelia · Rating 5 out of 5]

Mamie, n-o să înțelegi
Dar e lucru frumos să fii într-o poezie
Ai intrat insectă înflorită în
Trupul meu cu mucezeală și instalații de fierărie