note: i plan to flesh this outline out, but for now listen to the deep dive conversation.

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Outline of Dadaism by Tristan Tzara

I. The Nature of True Literature

• A. Literature for the self, not the masses
  • Created from necessity, not utility
  • Anti-establishment and ego-driven
• B. Each page must explode
  • Through seriousness, absurdity, or print itself
• C. Two opposing worlds
  • A crumbling old order vs. rough, chaotic “new men”

II. Dada as Cataclysm and Carnival

• A. Dada as destructive force
  • Furious wind, spectacle of disaster
  • Replacing mourning with joy and chaos
• B. Poetry as advertising and disruption
  • Blending abstraction, business, and absurdity

III. Rejection of Systems and Rationality

• A. Attacking philosophy and logic
  • Dialectics mocked as haggling and fried potatoes
  • Truth as illusion, logic as disease
• B. Psychoanalysis and science rejected
  • Psychoanalysis seen as bourgeois sedation
  • Science viewed as speculative and spiritless

IV. The Pathology of the Modern Mind

• A. Observing without understanding
  • Observation as proof of impotence
• B. Experience and science as relative
  • Harmony and objectivity rejected as greasy, false idols

V. The Dada Position

• A. Dada stands against all systems
  • The only acceptable system: no system at all
• B. Dada is total negation
  • Against family, logic, memory, archaeology, prophets, the future
• C. Dada embraces the irrational and spontaneous
  • Poetry as screeching record, faith in the spontaneous god
• D. To live intensely and foolishly is Dada
  • Exuberance, folly, contradiction, grotesquery, and LIFE itself

VI. Anti-Explanation and the Absurdity of Existence

• A. No explanations offered
  • Challenges the audience to explain their own existence
• B. Dada as Buddhist-like indifference
  • Underneath violence lies exhausted indifference
• C. Self-expression as the only truth
  • Nothing has meaning outside the individual utterance

VII. On Intelligence and Human Nature

• A. Intelligence as a social tool, not truth
  • Compared to bank systems or polite tea-time chatter
• B. True pleasure lies outside intelligence
  • Beyond systems, beyond categories
• C. Reject “the Beautiful,” “the Good,” and “Freedom”
  • These are hollow capital-letter words with shifting meanings

VIII. The Dada Stance on Art and Spontaneity

• A. Art is not sacred
  • Life > Art; Dada interweaves them both
• B. Art should be simplified and personal
  • A reduction of logic to a personal minimum
  • Expression of personality > technique

IX. Language and Meanin

• A. Words have weight and mystery
  • Dada questions meaning before usage
• B. No concern with formal renewal
  • Style and period fashion seen as superficial
• C. Dada is not a modern school
  • Even ancient philosophers like Chuang-Tzu were Dada

X. Dada as Mood, Condition, and Spirit

• A. Dada is not an aesthetic—it’s a state of mind
  • One can be Dada without being an artist or writer
• B. Over time, Dada will become a character type
  • Just as Romanticism became codified

XI. Embracing Incoherence

• A. Incoherence as reality, not insult
  • All human action is illogical and idiotic
• B. Simplicity and idiocy as Dada’s domain

XII. The Origins of Dada: Not Art, But Disgust

• A. Rejection of:
  • Philosophers and their endless explanations
  • Artists as false prophets
  • Morality, categories, domination
  • Artistic commodification and hypocrisy
• B. Dada’s disgust draws no conclusion
  • It doesn’t seek to win or convert—only to be

XIII. Dada’s Secret: It Is Nothin

• A. Dada is transformation through Nothingness
  • The place where all opposites meet
• B. Dada is street-corner metaphysics
  • Mundane, irreverent, ordinary yet profound

XIV. The Final Words on Dada

• A. Dada is a virgin microbe
  • It fills gaps where logic and reason fail
• B. Dada is useless
  • And in that uselessness, it is free
• C. Dada is like life: incoherent, absurd, and precious
  • Without pretension, and needing no justification