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Mistakes have always been made but the greatest mistakes are the poems that have been written. There is but one justification for chatter: rejuvenation and the maintenance of biblical traditions. Chatter is encouraged by the postal administration which, alas! is becoming perfected, encouraged by the tobacco monopoly, the railroad companies, the hospitals, the undertaking establishments, the textile factories. Chatter is encouraged by family culture. Chatter is encouraged by the pope’s pence. Every drop of saliva that escapes from conversation is converted into gold. Since peoples have always needed divinities to maintain the 3 essential laws which are the laws of God: to eat, make love and sugar, since the kings are out of town and the laws are too hard, today it is only chatter that counts. The form in which it most frequently turns up is Dada.
There are people (journalists, lawyers, dilettantes, philosophers) who even regard the other forms–business, marriages, visits, wars, various congresses, joint stock companies, politics, accidents, dance halls, economic crises, emotional crises–as variations of dada. Since I am not an imperialist, I do not share their opinion–I prefer to believe that dada is only a divinity of a secondary order, which must simply be placed beside the other forms of the new mechanism for interregnum religions.
Is simplicity simple or dada?
I consider myself rather charming.
Tristan TZARA