In Episode 7 of the journey through Romanian Poetry in English we will mee the poet, and cultural revolutionary Tristan Tzara. Born Samuel Rosenstock (16 April 1896 in Romania – 25 December 1963 in Paris) – Tzara is arguably the initiator, or at least a most important catalyst, leader, and practitioner of the anarchist anti-establishment DADAism movement. Along with Hugo Ball, Tzara wrote one of two important manifestos, and was a most vigorous proponent and practitioner of it through his art. And art Tzara did plenty. He was a poet, essay-writer and performance artist. journalist, playwright, literary and art critic, composer and film director. Tzara’s influence reached well beyond the literary field – he is credited with initiating the true-avant-garde movement, which in turn influenced connections to Futurism, the Beat Generation, Situationism, various currents of Rock-music, and is even the precursor of the Post-Modern nonsense… errrr… sorry… Post-modern art, should I say.
Now, the poems I will recite from you of Tristan Tzara are: 1. „How to make a Dadaist poem.” 2. „Legume Swallow” (no, it is not what you think….). And finally an excerpt of his famous poem „The Approximate Man.” I did not include this last one in Testament-400 Years of Romanian Poetry, as Tzara wrote it in French, and did not translate it himself into Romanian – one of the rules of representing Romanian poetry in my project was that the authors either wrote their poems in Romanian or translated it themselves),.The translation – from the French, is a very good one, and belongs to Professor Ion Pop, from the University Babeș-Boilay in Cluj, Romania. Sursa: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jh1c0N4cA1E
