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Monsieur Aa The Antiphilosopher Sends Us This Manifesto
(22nd may 1920)

Tristan Tzara



Long live the undertakers of the combine!

Every act is a revolver shot - both the insignificant gesture and the decisive moment are attacks (I open the fan of knock-outs for the distillation of the air that separates us) - and with the words put down on paper I enter, solemnly, into myself.

In the scalp of notions I implant my 60 fingers and brutally shake the curtains, the teeth, the bolts of their joints.

I shut, I open, I spit. Careful! The moment has come when I should tell you I've been lying. If there is a system in the lack of system - that of my proportions - I never apply it.

In other words, I lie. I lie when I apply it, I lie when I don't apply it, I lie when I write that I lie because I do not lie - because I have lived the mirror of my father - chosen from the profits of baccarat - from town to town - for myself has never been myself - for the saxophone wears like a rose the assassination of the visceral car-driver - he's made of sexual copper and leaves of racecourses. Thus drummed the maize, the alarm and pellagra where the matches grow.

Extermination. Yes, naturally.

But doesn't exist. Myself: mixture kitchen theatre. Long live the stretcher-bearers of the convocations of ecstasies!

Lying is ecstasy - which lasts longer than a second - there is nothing that lasts longer. Idiots brood over the century - they start all over again several centuries later - idiots remain within the circle for ten years - idiots hover over the dial of a year - Myself (an idiot) I stay there for five minutes.

The claim of the blood to distribute in my body and my event the accidental colour of the first woman I touched with my eyes in these tentacular times. The bitterest banditry is to finish one's thought-out phrase. The banditry of the gramophone, the little anti-human mirage that I like in myself - because I believe it to be ridiculous and dishonest. But the bankers of language will always get their little percentage on the discussion. The presence of (at least) one boxer is indispensible for a match - affiliated members of a gang of dadaist assassins have signed a self-protection contract for operations of this sort. Their number is extremely limited - the presence of (at least) one singer for a duet, or (at least) one signatory for a receipt, of (at least) one eye for sight, being absolutely indispensible.

Put the photographic plate of the face in the acid bath.

The shocks that have sensitized it will become visible and will surprise you.

Punch yourself in the face and drop dead.




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