SOURCE: "Between Dada and Marxism: Tristan Tzara and the Politics of Position," in Cross Currents: A Year-book of Central European Culture, Number 10, 1991, pp. 85-105.

In the following essay, Clej considers the unstable relationship between Tzara's poetry and his political beliefs and finds the source of this increasing conflict in his poetry.

What we call dada is a farce of nothingness in which all higher questions are involved; a gladiator's gesture, a play with shabby leftovers, the death warrant of posturing morality and abundance.

—Hugo Ball, Flight Out of Time

The Romanian-born poet Tristan Tzara had the good fortune, one might say, to achieve an international reputation at the age of twenty-one. This early recognition, which turned out to be his most enduring claim to fame, stemmed from Tzara's contribution to the Dada movement, which he helped kindle and disseminate. The name "Dada" itself is said to have been...