The Posthuman Dada Guide: Tzara & Lenin Play Chess

The Public Square

by Andrei Codrescu

This is a guide for instructing posthumans in living a Dada life. It is not advisable, nor was it ever, to lead a Dada life."--The Posthuman Dada Guide

The Posthuman Dada Guide is an impractical handbook for practical living in our posthuman world--all by way of examining the imagined 1916 chess game between Tristan Tzara, the daddy of Dada, and V. I. Lenin, the daddy of communism. This epic game at Zurich's Cafe de la Terrasse--a battle between radical visions of art and ideological revolution--lasted for a century and may still be going on, although communism appears dead and Dada stronger than ever. As the poet faces the future mass murderer over the chessboard, neither realizes that they are playing for the world. Taking the match as metaphor for two poles of twentieth- and twenty-first-century thought, politics, and life, Andrei Codrescu has created his own brilliantly Dadaesque guide to Dada--and to what it can teach us about surviving our ultraconnected present and future. Here dadaists Duchamp, Ball, and von Freytag-Loringhoven and communists Trotsky, Radek, and Zinoviev appear live in company with later incarnations, including William Burroughs, Allen Ginsberg, Gilles Deleuze, and Newt Gingrich. The Posthuman Dada Guide is arranged alphabetically for quick reference and (some) nostalgia for order, with entries such as "eros (women)," "internet(s)," and "war." Throughout, it is written in the belief "that posthumans lining the road to the future (which looks as if it exists, after all, even though Dada is against it) need the solace offered by the primal raw energy of Dada and its inhuman sources.

Genres: Art, Philosophy, Fiction, Essays, Romania, Literature, Politics

248 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2009

About the author

Andrei Codrescu is a poet, novelist, essayist, and NPR commentator. His many books include Whatever Gets You through the Night, The Postmodern Dada Guide, and The Poetry Lesson. He was Mac Curdy Distinguished Professor of English at Louisiana State University from 1984 until his retirement in 2009.

Reviews

[Matt · Rating 4 out of 5]

"With a sound of gusting wind in the branches of the language trees of Babel, the words gave way like leaves, and every reader glimpsed another reality hidden in the foilage." -pp. 182-183

Wow, what a great little book. Codrescu manages to pack so much information into this slim volume. It reads interchangably like a historical piece, a primer for Dada, and also a manifesto for a modern Dadaist movement. At times it felt like Codrescu had written this book solely for me. Many of my obsessions are given a passing nod, including Arthur Cravan (makes sense as he was a Dadaist), Burroughs, and Battlestar Galactica (new school, thank you very much). Did any other readers feel the same way? It is also very interesting that such subversive thought is presented to the reader in the format of a glossary.

Some things that had not occurred to me before reading this book:
1. The similarities between an art/literary movement and a political movement.
2. The rise of the art market, or how art went from being paintings and sculptures to becoming a business industry.
3. The surprising number of Dadaists who were Jewish, and Codrescu's assertion that the Jewish people have played a major role in nearly all of the outsider art movements.

Someday when I finally get that time machine built, its maiden voyage will be to the opening night of the Cabaret Voltaire, February 5, 1915. Here is a description of the events towards the end of the evening:

Emmy Hennings performed again, to a much drunker and more emotionally fragile audience, and then betook her sweaty body from table to table lasciviously distributing pictures of herself. Suddenly, nonsense noises, whistling, and shrieks were heard behind the curtain, and the lights went out. A green spotlight revealed four masked figures on stilts, each hissing a different sound: ssssss, prrrrr, muuuuh, ayayayayay. The figures alternated their sounds and began a crazy dance. While the grotesques flailed and stomped, one of them tore open his coat to reveal a cuckoo clock on his chest. The audience stomped and shouted, and soon got into the act, rhythmically joining in by making the sounds, too. At a frenzied point when the shouting reached its most feverish pitch, Tzara reappeared onstage dressed in tails and white spats, shooed away the dancers, and started to recite nonsense in French. The performance ended with Tzara unrolling a roll of toilet paper with the word "merde" written on it.

Whoa. Every party that I have ever been to was merely a baptist ice cream social by comparison.

Codrescu's portrayal of Lenin and his cronies was that they were as dry and humorless as one would typically imagine. It has been over two weeks since I have finished this book and i'm still pondering whether the chess match referenced in the title was corporeal or metaphorical. One of the major characteristics of Dada in my mind is the art of playful leg-pulling, so neither would surprise me and it really does not matter. Tristan Tzara is one of my newest heroes, as he can sow the seeds of artistic subversion while keeping his monocle firmly in place. When was the last time that we had a good art riot?

[Bryan · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book could never be successful if it was actually what it purports to be.

It's a meditation on the successes and failures of the interwebs, and an appreciation of Romanian Jews' impact on the international avant-garde. On both fronts the book is a huge success.

Codrescu's truefanism for Tzara rings clear. Lenin is obviously the villain, but Codrescu concedes at the beginning he was right about everything. The matter at hand is what do about it. Tzara had the right idea. He did the best he could.

After an explosive poem-theory opener, there is one rough passage of boring history that anyone who is reading the book probably already knows. Soon enough Codrescu brings it back around with bits of biography, Romanian history, political & social analysis, in jokes, linguistics, and mysticism. Dada triumphant indeed. For added glee he throws in some stunning misinformation. Facts are facts, don't be a lazy reader.

I can't agree with all his insights but if I did the text would have been boring. Beware of claims of authenticity. Beware of massaging the palm that feeds. Devilish darlin, I love you. I was laughing out loud at many points.

He has the decency not to diss Stoppard, but perhaps he should have. Perhaps he should have shouted him down in a paper hat. I enjoyed this book far more than I did Travesties.

My library classifies it as "fiction."

[Arman · Rating 5 out of 5]

1.
در شبی از شب های اکتبر 1916 تریستان تزارا (بابای جنبش دادا) و لنین (بابای کمونیسم) بی آنکه در آن روزها شناخته شده باشند، در کافه ای سراسر ازدحام و پر از جاسوسان و بی خانمان ها و بیکاره ها، روبروی هم قرار گرفته و بازی شطرنجی را شروع می کنند.
این بازی، رقابت بین دو مسیر متفاوت برای پیشرفت آدمی بود. یکی برای هرج و مرج، خلاقیت، لیبیدو و پوچی بازی می کرد و دیگری برای تعقل، نظم، یک طبقه بندی اجتماعی قابل درک، ساختارهای پیشبینی پذیر و خلق "انسان نوین" صف آرایی کرده بود.
2.
نویسنده ی این کتاب می کوشد تا با پرده برداری از جزئیاتی جالب و ناگفته شده از تاریخچه ی جزئیات جنبش دادائیسم، و تصویر کردن شرایط انسان هزاره ی جدید که در محاصره ی تکنولوژی های نوین، اینترنت، اتومبیل ها، داروها و اندام های مصنوعی الکترونیکی قرار گرفته است، تا به زعم خود از دل این اهداف و اسلوب و روش های رهبران این جنبش، راهنمایی محیر العقول و هیجان انگیز بیرون بکشد برای رهایی این موجودی که خود آن را "پسا-انسان" می نامد.
3. ساختار کتاب:
نویسنده ابتدا در مقدمه پساانسان را تصویر می کند و چرایی اهمیت دادائیسم در زمانه ی ما.
سپس در متن کتاب، در قالب مدخل هایی الفبایی، سرگذشت افراد، تاریخ ها، و مکان های تأثیرگذار بر و پدید آورنده ی جنبش دادارا روایت می کند. و همه ی این روایت ها و مطالب پاره پاره را "شاه روایت" شطرنج بازی کردن تزارا و لنین جوان به هم متصل کرده اند، و شرح آن دقیقا تا صفحه ی آخر کتاب ادامه پیدا می کند.

[Stela · Rating 4 out of 5]

Some quotes from a very witty, very dada-in-spirit book 😊:

Dada is a tool for removing parenthesis and removing the world from between quotes with the forceps of inspiration.

Today, almost everything you’re wearing or thinking that gives you the slightest bit of subversive pleasure comes from a dead Dadaist.

Sartre’s public profile has dimmed since the mid-20th century, partly because his fame and politics reduced him to caricature. As the Fugs’ Tuli Kupferberg put it in a 1967 song, “Jean Paul Sartre/ that old fartre.” In 1967 when the Fugs sang Sartre out of relevance, Sartre was already a Maoist, while the hippies were just starting their dada existence in America.

They [the Iron Guard] butchered Jewish families in Bucharest and would have taken over the state if a slightly more ferocious King had not drown them in their own blood, an inelegant but effective way to stop Romania from outgoing Nazi Germany in racist fanaticism. And this was another thing about the colorful, Levantine capital of the country so many foreign commentators found either exotically disgusting: it hid a constant threat of violence under the ribbons and the chocolates of its gilded cafes and whorehouses.

Tristan Tzara, born Samuel Rosenstock in Moinesti, Romania, on April 16, 1896, changed his name to Tristan Tzara while still in his teens, and wrote, “life is sad, but it’s a garden still”. Tristan Tzara means trist in tzara in Romanian, meaning “sad in the country”. (…) The Rosenstocks were Jews in an antisemitic town that to this day (2007) does not list on its website the founder of Dada among notables born here.

[Lee Foust · Rating 3 out of 5]

Well, this is a fun little book, quite witty and choc full of interesting information.

Only three stars because it's a bit neither fish nor flesh. There's a certain amount of Dada spirit, but it's still, in the end, really only a kind of rambling, eclectic essay juxtaposing artistic revolution (a celebration of chaos) and political revolution (a gesture towards order and organization) in post-WW I Europe. The dictionary format doesn't really add anything--it only gives Codrescu a sort of excuse for a lot of digression--sometimes really interesting (the role of Eastern European Jews in the avant-garde of the period for instance) sometimes useless dead ends, and sometimes just too much of a good thing. I would have preferred an attempt to say all this in a more actual Dada setting or simply in a more tightly organized essay with about 50 pp trimmed from the whole. As is there are a few useless repetitions, some unfocused rambling, non-sequitur, and no extra formal perks to make these flaws feel worthwhile. Still, it wasn't dry like a lot of essays and, as I said, I got a lot of interesting historical information and some interesting things to think about from it so I'm quite content.

Also I'm traveling to Romania tomorrow for the first time and will be taking this Tzara along with me! Nice to have this background on the verge of actually seeing Tzara's country of origin. Can't wait!

[Raul Popescu · Rating 5 out of 5]

http://www.litero-mania.com/dadaism-c...

[Tuck · Rating 4 out of 5]

andrei codrescu is so damn smart that you become smarter just by reading his histories and stories, except when you are saying what the FUCK is he talking about. but of course he is a professor so knows whereof he speaks. in fact, he is probably the only redeeming factor of lousiana usa aside from oyster po boy sandwiches. and well, music and Cajuns and all that.
anyway, it appears this book is true, its all true. and reading this will help one understand most of our earth history from 20th century and into the 21st. oh sure, you will have to spend many years haunting libraries and book stores tracking down all his facts, quotes, threads, and cites. but you can also break up the monotony of that by hanging out in cheap cafes that can many times be found near those libraries, so its not all drudgery and study, understanding our so-called-world via andrei codrescu. and these cafes are a main tenet of being a dada, and now posthuman dada; you'll need to hang and talk to a lot of the denizens of cafes anyway. so in order to more perfectly "get" this book hanging out in cafes is a must. and talking. (caveat, if you DO start hanging out in cheap cafes, try to avoid those in usa bible belt, as they do not carry non-alcoholic drinks, just coffee and iced tea. and while the benefit of smoking a cigarette indoors while musing over your posthuman existence is quite evident, doing that and only drinking sweet tea just isn't in the spirit of dada. thus, cafes in spain are preferable, you can do all of the above AND have vino tinto too)
this book is four stars also because of its handy size, 21 X 10 cm., so you can easily have it at hand in your pocket or satchel.

[Laçin Tutalar · Rating 5 out of 5]

Simply beautiful.

So much beautiful that it even supports my hypothesis that the best books I read are the ones that accidentally fall into my hands. The book's (or the author's, I should say, but who knows and who cares; authors hide behind the books) understanding of European history, of Dada, of war and art and identity are just beyond normal boundaries. It uses a number of anthropologically meaningful concepts, like time, technology, borders, body (or e-body. Don't forget the vampire-bodies too) and religion. Then, you read about these concepts as they are magically embedded in a discussion of Dada and avant-garde art and history. Codrescu has a way with definitions and sharp adjectives. Adjectives as sharp and funny as Codrescu's voice. This becomes even clearer if you watch and listen to a public talk given by him on the book -the video of the talk was broadcasted on http://fora.tv.

This is one of the most magical books I've ever read. But again, who knows, this was perhaps mainly because of the humor in Codrescu. It was beautiful because, in the book, knowledge and humor came together and they both turned Dada.

[Grant · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book has it all: Asides about boxing and shtetls, a surprisingly thoughtful look at chess, the best and most Dada summation of Dada I have found so far, and as an added bonus: half the length is taken up by the glossary of terms, which are part of the narrative (such as it is.) 5/5, would read again.

[Drgnkingdom · Rating 4 out of 5]

A reasonably straightforward and funny book about Tristan Tzara, Lenin, the Internet, Jewish history, Art, Russia, and posthumans everywhere. Codrescu published this in 2009, and it reads as if he was aware we were careening towards the horrors of today. Time to go read some of Mina Loy’s poetry.

[Ali · Rating 4 out of 5]

"To future humans in the grip of inevitable crisis, Dada has answers every time: it creates time by agitation, humor, self-humor, and revelation of absurdity. Dada is a time-making device, a balloon-popper, and an udder. What does a posthuman need? Time. Udder time. Any kind of time. Dada is charged with creating an antiworld, a communication that exposes the fallacy that language exists in order for people to communicate with one another. Birds communicate just fine without words. Dada is against communication. Words are part of the substance out of which Dada makes worlds, not in order to communicate, but to dis-communicate, to disrupt, to make time where the communication was interrupted.

The job of poetry is to carve its own time out inside the maelstrom of posthuman timesuck. It does this by dissolving the ligaments of linearity and making counterswoosh, but not necessarily by making such neat sentences. Still, it builds the words in a way that provides shelter from the machinery of one’s body, especially the crowded, buzzing e-body. All words are Dada if they are correctly misused.

Tzara also means “land,” which is the one thing Jews couldn’t have. They were hired to manage the estates of the boyars, but they could not own land. Tristan Tzara’s first pseudonym was S. Samyro, which was apt for a symbolist, but too wispy for the fierceness rising in him: in 1915 he became Tzara, meaning land, country, the thing that nationalists and the traditionalists held most dear. This is what soldiers died for: their tzara.. ..and then became someone whose name declared his defiance of the law (he didn’t have to own land now, he was the land)"

[Ellen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Written as a dictionary of Dada players and principles, this book proclaims Dada as the triumphant art form of the twentieth century and beyond. Ideologies come and go, but Dada's revolutionary insolence has endured.The Posthuman Dada Guide speaks with credible authority about its subject, yet its language is poetic, polemic, and fictionalized. (The central conceit is a chess game between Tzara and Lenin that may or may not have actually occurred.) Like many self-help manuals, the book opens with direct advice to the reader: "This is a guide for instructing posthumans in living a Dada life. It is not advisable, nor was it ever, to lead a Dada life...because a Dada life will include by definition pranks, buffoonery, masking, deranged senses, intoxication, sabotage, taboo breaking, playing childish and/or dangerous games, waking up dead gods, and not taking education seriously." Slim and narrow as a tour guide, the book invites the reader to jump in and out. Codrescu, who is a frequent NPR commentator as well as a poet, novelist, and critic, succeeds in merging popular communication with scholarship. Closely tuned to the short duration of the posthuman attention span, he is a consummate entertainer, both at the podium and on the page.

[Tosh · Rating 5 out of 5]

A much needed and fresh look at the DADA movement of the early 20th Century via the eyes of Andrei Codescu. The author doesn't see it as a movement of the past, but rather as a living statement on the aesthetics and affairs of the world today. Interesting comparisons between Lenin's world and the world of Tristian Tzara. The book is both a dictionary of DADA terms and personalities and a series of essays by one of the great cultural critics/novelist/poet Codrescu.

[Alvin · Rating 4 out of 5]

This mind-bendingly clever meditation on the contradictions between Dada and communism is intimidatingly erudite, sometimes bafflingly opaque, frequently witty, and basically right about everything.

[Gregory Fischer · Rating 5 out of 5]

Andrei Codrescu is a national treasure. His presence helped make LSU’s creative writing department one of the best in the world. It took me a long time to finish this guide (over the past 10 years, kept putting it down and picking it up later, in between shifts at the various restaurants I worked at, pages stained to prove it) even though I was allowed to study all Allen Ginsberg for my senior poetry workshop with Codrescu way back in 2008. I was a party animal. It was hard to wrap my head around the amount of artists and poets that are referenced casually in this book. Mostly Romanians and Jewish artists that have stayed off to the side here in my Baton Rouge periphery. I still feel like I have so many new poets to read because a. I took notes while reading this time and b. want to be friends with more dead poets. The book is funny. And, if not hopeful, proud of people who have accomplished so much in the face of so much revolutionary blood and madness throughout history, to find god, to make art and to make sense of horrific things.

[Galatea · Rating 5 out of 5]

An exceptionally tragic, triumphant laugh at absurdity.

This is not at all a guide, not even a history of Dada (not even a history of Dada pre-WW2)

what it is, is a deep, deep dive into the effects of war and oppression, and the human response to it, set within the context of WW1, starting from a fictional chess match between two people who might have met in real life, expanding from that into a deeper and deeper web of context, detail, beauty, and tragedy.

This isn't very Dada, but I sincerely enjoyed it very much. Learned a bit of history too.

Also, the physical book has an aspect ratio of 2:1, which I found neat. It was like reading the world's most interesting flyer.

[Christina · Rating 2 out of 5]

I feel unqualified to comment. Beyond my pay grade.

[J.Istsfor Manity · Rating 3 out of 5]

Dada deserves the Codreascu treatment. Nice approach to the topic, appropriately absurd and an extensive history of the movement, especially its Romanian roots. An illustrated version would have been excellent.

[Andrei · Rating 3 out of 5]

Things that are Dada: Punk, the unconscious, Discordianism, the internet, hippies, nonsense.

Things that are Leninist: order, the conscious collective ego, bureaucracy, History, nonsense.

Who really won the chess game: the materialists/capitalists who sold them the chess set.

[Carolyn Best · Rating 5 out of 5]

Thank goodness this was mis-shelved at the used book store. Fair warning, despite its nonthreatening size, this book (especially the introduction) is DENSE. There is a ton of information, and the balance of notes is perfect. I found the glossary format perfectly dada. Learned a lot about how essential Jewish and Romani artists were to this period, and also on the flip side, some less than palatable aspects of this art movement. There's also an interesting 2009 Microsoft talk Condrescu did that feels like a harrowing museum artifact, given how incipient technological advances were at that time. The discussion of the singularity in this video is particularly interesting.

[David Williamson · Rating 3 out of 5]

The Posthuman dada guide another guide to dada, another guide that doesn't really work. The book deploys some dada tactics with the book consisting of the text, quasi-glossary and notes, which creates the reader to continually flip back and forth through the book. A mixture of grand and micro histories. The question of history. Play. Nonsense. Etc.
It all feels a little dull.

The book could and should talk more on its ideas of the Posthuman, and how dada can infiltrate today. It just seems that whenever these books on dada seem to be saying something, or is asked something, it recoils into nonsense, which is a part of dada, but it gets repetitive and apparently intentional evasive (ie predictable, which is apparently anti-dada). If dada truly has only nothing to say, why is there so many books about it? This is the problem, I can't help thinking that dada is a cultural chimera, a dead end.

The use of subversion, even absurdity can be meaningful, or at least powerful (Camus, Derrida, Duchamp, etc) and the self destructive nature of dada are all valid or essential responses to the 'modern' world, but perhaps dada can not be translated into any theory, or just plain translated outside of poetry and anarchy.

[James Henderson · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a small book that provides a lot of information and good reading. The author, Andrei Codrescu, has created a book that traces the history of the Dada Non-Art Movement from its beginnings during WWI to the present. But it is also a work of sardonic humor following its themes across almost an entire century. The author shows how Dada, which eschewed the future and art, had the unintended impact of begetting all manner of art movements, from Surrealism to Abstract Expressionism to the literary style wrongly known as "post-modernism" -- Vonnegut, Barth, Heller, Barthelme, etc. In the end, Codrescu assures us, art can remain a redemptive force in a world in which the Posthuman has overtaken all other movements and philosophies. As we watch our world steadily become digitized, the general stance of Dada might be exactly what we need.

[Dylan · Rating 4 out of 5]

The opener is Verbal metaphoric pun-heavy historic-anecdotish whirligig-pop-scholarly gymnastics: thoroughly entertaining and deserves a 5. Then it becomes more regular somewhat. Only if he could keep it up for the whole book it'd be pure Dada mixed postmodern/posthumanism
"Paris in 1900 had two thousand cafés, one thousand of which had been frequented for at least one absinthe by Baudelaire"
"It is now said that with the banning of cigarettes and the increasing costs of overhead, French cafés are disappearing to make room for cheaper American chains. The mushrooming of Starbucks in the US has not so far produced many intellectuals."

[Andrew · Rating 3 out of 5]

There are some parts that are awfully clever, and a fun play of ideas. A good showplace for the power of satire and some (post)modern dada play.

Then there's a lot of really trivial history of the Dadaist and related movements. Where did they hang out? Who knew whom? A bit tabloid-ish.

Call it a 3-star worth reading.

[kate · Rating 4 out of 5]

I liked this a lot. It was a sort of slow start, laying down the historical background of dada, Zurich during WWI and then the dada movement in NYC. Halfway through it got more interesting and there are several really good philosophical gems in there.

[Shanley Marie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Best book to ever understand what "Dada" is, which is everything and nothing, for all causes and against all causes, "i am human and i contradict myself." Written by a "dadaist" and the language is as chaotic as the subject matter

[Prooost Davis · Rating 4 out of 5]

Excellent history of dada, some European cultural history. One point off for Codrescu's use of the phrase "scientific priesthood." Of course, dada is about "taboo breaking" and "not taking education seriously," among other things.

[Stuart · Rating 4 out of 5]

The story of dada told in dada to dada for dada's sake. Like dada itself this book is a hot mess, but Codrescu's wit, scholarship, and playfulness make it a page-turner.

[Amanda]

i've just started this and it's really great.
Andrei Codrescu is a very interesting writer.
http://www.codrescu.com/livesite/

[Bruce · Rating 5 out of 5]

The most amazing, if slightly impenetrable, book about theories of modern (and - yes - postmodern) art. I keep re-reading this again and again. Somebody stop me...