~warming my toes by the fires of dada~

February 14th, 2009

How does one achieve eternal bliss? By saying dada. How does one become famous? By saying dada. With a noble gesture and delicate propriety. Till one goes crazy. Till one loses consciousness. How can one get rid of everything that smacks of journalism, worms, everything nice and right, blinkered, moralistic, europeanised, enervated? By saying dada.
Dada is the world soul, dada is the pawnshop.

Hugo Ball, ‘Dada Manifesto‘ (read at the first public Dada soiree, Zurich, July 14th 1916)

We took a Valentine trip to a new city: Zurich. It was colder than a witch’s tit (-4 °C) and snowed non-stop. We are still broke (by Suisse standards) and so we stayed in a friend’s apartment and cooked for ourselves and had a lovely time.

click to enlarge image

We saw the view from the Lindenhof in the old town of Zürich–the historical site of the Roman castle, and the later Carolingian Kaiserpfalz. We saw the Lindenhof fountain statue commemorating the 1291 defense of the town by the women of Zürich against Albert I of Germany, and the Limmat River below.

My boots soaked through to my bones, but I warmed them by the fire of Cabaret Voltaire, birthplace of Dada (and its descendant, Surrealism). Dadaism sprung from the minds of expat refugees of World War I and onto the stages of this little venue.

Jean Arp described the scene back in the day thusly, Total pandemonium. The people around us are shouting, laughing, and gesticulating. Our replies are sighs of love, volleys of hiccups, poems, moos… 2009 brings a cappuccino and a place to dry ones socks sans mooing. I’m not certain how I feel about the loss.

We also visited art nouveau Odeon Cafe, serving champagne brunch to the likes of Lenin,Trotsky, Mata Hari, Thornton Wilder, Mussolini, and James Joyce since 1912. And the Volkshaus Cafe, which served Tainted Love with our breakfast. It was a cafe-ish trip, with lovely architecture and warm, quirky people. A very fine city indeed.