Excerpt from the original Dada Movement Manifesto. DADA EXCITES EVERYTHING DADA knows everything. DADA spits everything out. BUT . . . . . . . . . HAS DADA EVER SPOKEN TO YOU: about Italy about accordions about women's pants about the fatherland about sardines about Fiume about Art (you exaggerate my friend) about gentleness about D'Annunzio what a horror about heroism about mustaches about lewdness about sleeping with Verlaine about the ideal (it's nice) about Massachusetts about the past about odors about salads about genius, about genius, about genius about the eight-hour day about the Parma violets NEVER NEVER NEVER DADA doesn't speak. DADA has no fixed idea. DADA doesn't catch flies. THE MINISTRY IS OVERTURNED. BY WHOM? BY DADA The Futurist is dead. Of What? Of DADA A Young girl commits suicide. Because of What? DADA The spirits are telephoned. Who invented it? DADA Someone walks on your feet. It's DADA If you have serious ideas about life, If you make artistic discoveries and if all of a sudden your head begins to crackle with laughter, If you find all your ideas useless and ridiculous, know that IT IS DADA BEGINNING TO SPEAK TO YOU cubism constructs a cathedral of artistic liver paste WHAT DOES DADA DO? expressionism poisons artistic sardines WHAT DOES DADA DO? simultaneism is still at its first artistic communion WHAT DOES DADA DO? futurism wants to mount in an artistic lyricism-elevator WHAT DOES DADA DO? unanism embraces allism and fishes with an artistic line WHAT DOES DADA DO? neo-classicism discovers the good deeds of artistic art WHAT DOES DADA DO? paroxysm makes a trust of all artistic cheeses WHAT DOES DADA DO? ultraism recommends the mixture of these seven artistic things WHAT DOES DADA DO? creationism vorticism imagism also propose some artistic recipes WHAT DOES DADA DO? WHAT DOES DADA DO? 50 francs reward to the person who finds the best way to explain DADA to us Dada passes everything through a new net. Dada is the bitterness which opens its laugh on all that which has been made consecrated forgotten in our language in our brain in our habits. It says to you: There is Humanity and the lovely idiocies which have made it happy to this advanced age DADA HAS ALWAYS EXISTED THE HOLY VIRGIN WAS ALREADY A DADAIST DADA IS NEVER RIGHT Citizens, comrades, ladies, gentlemen Beware of forgeries! Imitators of DADA want to present DADA n an artistic form which it has never had CITIZENS, You are presented today in a pornographic form, a vulgar and baroque spirit which is not the PURE IDIOCY claimed by DADA BUT DOGMATISM AND PRETENTIOUS IMBECILITY Paris January 12, 1921 E. Varèse, Tr. Tzara, Ph. Soupault, Soubeyran, J. Rigaut, G. Ribe- mont-Dessaignes, M. Ray, F. Pi- cabia, B. Péret, C. Pausaers R.Hülsenbeeks, J. Evola, M. Ernst, P. Eluard, Suz. Duchamp, M. Du- champ, Crotti, G. Cantarelli, Marg. Buffet, Gab. Buffet, a. Breton Baargeld, Arp., W. C. Arensberg, L. Aragon

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