Henri Chopin: Paul Neuhuys, Ça Ira! and Dada - V

As the review develops, this kind of articles produces answers, to my mind more direct and purer, too, but before coming to them, I can already give a contradiction, from Neuhuys, in a poem called ‘Ambiance’, which, without theories, is much more lucid, since the expression ‘being sentimental’ can be applied to ther whole poem, though it is still true today :

Those who read the financial papers

And have a place in the Stock Exchange.

Some of them are journalists

Waiting for fires in an editorial room

Another roars by on a motorbike

Another fires a revolver at an old cauldron

And orders iced drinks at terraces.

Another goes at 60 m.p.h. in his racing car

He’d rather have a can of petrol

Than the complete works of Chateaubriand.

And it’s the same one

Who goes on the wooden roundabout horses.

Some discuss the pleasures of eating,

They swallow kilometres.

Others hold forth on the pleasures of sex:

Their conversations swing

From Françoise’s tits to Lili’s navel

Which must provide for the necessities of life.

Each one goes his own little way

They get bored...

They’d like to start the war again

And there are some who sail off

To countries where there are earthquakes

Those who have the honour of earning money

Want to be the shah of Persia

They introduce me to their typist:

Ah, if you’d like me to leave her with you

But on condition that you give her back

At the first demand

They’re chaps who interest me

Since for me it’s a phenomenon to have a mistress

What rebounds there are in our relationships

They respect cheek

You have to be an acrobat

If you dont’t want to slip on the lino

To hear them you’d think the object of our generation

Is to climb on a woman and to bring a man down.

From an extract of this long poem, it would deserve a long study; it represents the preparation of our today.

I can’t resist quoting a little more:

To console myself

I think of the defeated countries

Where they haven’t a nail to scratch their backsides.

At each instant, Neuhuys in 1973 remarks that his review will soon reach its climax. Another quotation:

The action of Ça Ira! spread to the field of painting and music, Mesens brought us Georges Auric, Erik Satie. Marlier had become the disciple of two painters, Paul Joostens and Floris Jespers. Among the writers, Charles Plisnier, Léon Chenoy, and Pansaers came to us. Plisnier seemed to have taken over the powerful verbal technique of Verhaeren... and Pansaers, the author of Le Pan Pan au Cul du Nu Nègre was leading us towards total terrorism...

Ça Ira! was going to plunge completely into the absurd and its climax was Number 16: the dada number. Dada: limited society for the exploitation of ideas. Subscribe to Dada, the only investment that pays nothing.

Henri CHOPIN

Collection OU, 7, Ingatestone, Essex, 1977.