Tzara's Cut-up Technique


Tristan Tzara was a leading member of the Dada movement.
Flourishing after the 1st World War, Dada embraced irrationality and and the use of chance.

Tzara cut newspapers into pieces, then selected them randomly from a hat.
The combination of words was then pasted together.
He described this process in the fifth of his Seven Dada Manifestoes (1916-20):


To make a dadaist poem
Take a newspaper.
Take a pair of scissors.
Choose an article as long as you are planning to make your poem.
Cut out the article.
Then cut out each of the words that make up this article and put them in a bag.
Shake it gently.
The take out the scraps one after the other in the order in which they left the bag. Copy conscientiously.
The poem will be like you.
And here you are a writer, infinitely original and endowed with a sensibility that is charming though beyond the understanding of the vulgar.


...the Tzara without the >> combinations.


Wayne Clements.


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