rorroH ehT/ The Horror
by Heather Einhorn
“Dada is a religion, dada is a poem, dada is a spirit, dada is skeptical, dada is magic.” Dadaism was an artistic and cultural movement which started in the early twentieth century. It first appeared in Germany in the early twentieth century as a reaction to the demand by the German government for conformity. Dadaists believed that reality could be discovered through the abolition of traditional culture and ideas. Dadaists believed that expression did not have limited a coherency to traditional ways of writing and communicating
Creating a Dadaist poem reflects this rejection of these antiquated writing
rituals. In order to create a Dadaist poem, all one has to do is take an article
of any kind cut out all the words, and then randomly place them back together
in anyway one chooses. Putting a hyphen, capital letter, number, semi-colon
anywhere one chooses adds to the creative madness that is Dadaism. It is for
this reason that I chose a Dadaist poem as being something monstrous.
It is because Dadaism does not fit neatly into any category; artistic or poetic
that it is monstrous. As said by Jeffrey Jerome Cohen, “The monster
is the harbinger of category crisis,” and so it would seem Dadaism shares
in this trait. Additionally, the chaotic nature of the Dadaist poem adds another
dimension of monstrosity to it. Containing fragmented words, randomly placed
numbers, and symbols strewn throughout it, the sheer randomness of the Dada
poem creates anxiety.
The comfort that is felt when one reads a poem, thinks about it, then understands
it, is missing from the Dadaist poem. Instead, readers are left feeling unfulfilled
and confused by the enigma that is the Dadaist poem. Essentially, it is because
the Dadaist poem takes something which is familiar, the poem, and makes it
strange and unfamiliar to readers that it is “uncanny,” and therefore
monstrous.
Crying at her the point
Whisper Conrad persistent whisper
Dusk-SWELLS menacingly
?Heart broken Joseph rising WIND
Around them it seemed ALL around
Don’t we (163), they, I hear!
Horror/repeating/repeating/horror (164
In making this Dadaist poem my intentions were simple: create
chaos and confusion. Using an excerpt from Joseph Conrad’s story, Heart
of Darkness, I began to create a chaotic and incoherent poem just as Dadaists
had done all those years ago. Placing question marks where I pleased and the
page numbers of the quote where I felt they should go, I attempted the same
random chaos as a true Dadaist would. The repetition of the word “repeating”
and the word “horror” on the last line add a final emphasis of
monstrosity to this chaotic form of artistic expression.
Exclamation points, capitalized words, and slashes create individual meanings
for individual readers. The reader can either take the poem for what it is;
a random dispersal of words and symbols, or they can read deeper into the
poem and interpret it on a more profound level. Seeing the poem not as mere
randomness on a page, but as the representation of chaos and madness is essential
to understanding Dadaism.
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The idea, that what we are afraid of what is unfamiliar and what we cannot understand, was utilized when I created the “Wingdings” version of this Dadaist poem.. Although the poem is essentially saying exactly the same thing as the Dadaist poem, written in English, preceding it; upon viewing the “wingdings” version, a state of bewilderment befalls readers. Having no clue how to read or understand what the “wingdings” version is attempting to say, and fearing that the poem is trying to convey something perhaps secretive or grotesque creates fears within the reader. It is not only because of the fear that the “wingdings” version is saying, in what appears to be a secretive and coded manner, but also because of the fear that is felt due to the reader’s lack of understanding which accounts for the monstrous nature of this “wingdings” version of the poem.
461) rorroh\gnitaeper\gnitaeper\rorroH
!raeh I, yeht, (631) ew t’noD
dnuora LLA demees ti meht dnuorA
DNIW gnisir hpesoJ nekorb traeH?
Ylgnicanem SLLEWS-ksuD
Repsihw tnetsisrep darnoC repsihW
Tniop eht reh ta gniyrC
It is these same fears of things that we cannot understand which were also
utilized when creating the mirror image version of this Dadaist poem. Exploring
not only Freud’s idea that mirrors are monstrous because they represent
repetition, but also Carl Jung’s Shadow Archetype which states that,
mirrors give us, “…the potential of experiencing the unconscious
side of our unique personalities, ” creating a mirror image of the poem
encompassed the very essence of Freud’s Doppleganger doppelganger; someone
who looks like us, but does not have the same characteristics. It because
the doppelganger is present within this mirror image poem of backwards chaos
that this mirror image poem is also monstrous.
“I was on the point of crying at her, ‘Don’t you hear them?’
The dusk was repeating them in a persistent whisper all around us, in a whisper
that seemed to swell menacingly like the first whisper of a rising wind. ‘The
horror! The horror!’” (Conrad 163-174)
The Initial Dadaist poem which I composed for my final project
was based upon this excerpt from Joseph Conrad’s story, Heart of Darkness.
In Heart of Darkness, Conrad explores many of the monstrous qualities not
only of outside world, but of humans themselves. He compares the darkness
of the jungle, where the story is set, to the darkness of the human heart.
The monstrous qualities that humans posses, whether they make the conscious
decision to become monstrous, or whether their environment invokes within
them these frightening characteristics, nevertheless show that humans can
be just as monstrous as any fictional creature from beyond the grave.
Throughout Heart of Darkness, the monstrous nature of humans can be seen in
many different ways. Firstly, Conrad depicts the colonization of the African
Jungle tribe by the white man as monstrous. The destroying of one people’s
culture and society, for the proliferation of one’s own is, in fact
monstrous. Mirroring the plan that Dracula attempted to implement in Dracula,
destroying the British so that the vampires may be all powerful, the colonization
that appears throughout not only Heart of Darkness, but even in today’s
world is a testament to the monstrous characteristics that humans posses.
Throughout Dracula, feelings of anger and hatred are felt when Dracula attempts
to, destroy the human race by turning everyone into vampires. Why then, do
we not experience these same feelings when the white men in Heart of Darkness
force the members of the African tribe into servitude against their will,
essentially destroying there an existence which they had lived for generations?
The act of conquering a defenseless people and imposing foreign beliefs and
customs them by the white man can, therefore, be compared to Dracula’s
attempted conquering of the defenseless human race and imposing vampire traditions
and customs upon them. It can be concluded, that humans do, in fact, share
many of the same characteristics as a creature which is considered to be one
of the most frightening monsters of all time, Dracula.
Works Cited
1) Conrad, Joseph. “Heart of Darkness.” Heart of Darkness and
The Secret Sharer. New York: Signet Classic, 1997.
2) Stoker, Bram. Dracula. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1997.
3) Jung, Carl. The Nature of the Archetypes. 15 Dec. 2003 <http://acs.appstate.edu/~davisct/nt/jung.html#shadow.
4) Freud, Sigmond. Writings on Art and Literature. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1997.
5) Cohen, Jeffrey Jerome. Monster Culture (Seven Thesis)
6) Tzara, Tristan. “Dada Manifesto on Feeble & Bitter
Love.” One More Revolution!: Poetry of the Outsiders. Ed. Dan Palazuelos.
Yale University: 2002
