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to the bodily necessity he has so cleverly understated
and Rabelais, Cervantes, Mark Twain (in „160T‘),
Huysmans and Apollinaire have made varying use of
it, Bray invades subject matter that most people and
most poets would condemn as unsuitable for literature.
Yet Bray saw a certain humorous significance in the
occasion which he conveys to us by rhythms, invent
iveness and adroit evasions. We can perceive his loyalty
to his stimulus, note the manner in which this loyalty
has been made concrete, and experience an esthetic
satisfaction from the solution of his problem.
In sum, criticism says to the other arts: Use any
subject you wish. My concern is in the state of mind
you create with it.
Another poem printed here, that by Tristan Tzara,
will assist in developing this conclusion. (I do not, at
present, vouch for the bulk of Tzara’s activities but
he has written several indubitable poems.) In this poem,
Tzara contrives an abstract* organization. He departs
altogether from conventional coherent intelligible sub
ject material and gives us instead a controlled series
of physical sensations. The effect is as unalloyed with
intellectual and extra-esthetic reactions as those of
music or cubist painting. Yet it cannot be defined in
terms of musical or painting criticism nor very well
by literary criticism since that is lamentably weak in
its own esthetic vocabulary. Tzara’s word arrangement
approaches mathematics. (There is some reason for
believing that the ecstasy arising from the solving of
a complicated mathematical problem is very much akin
to the esthetic emotion.) What he does here is, by
means of words, to make a pattern of sharp arrest,
dead calm, rising motion, developed calm, progress,
spreading out, contraction and final collapse that
leaves us physically satisfied. And emotionally satisfied.
His is an abstractness as devoid of idea-emotions as
music or painting can be but still belonging very <
definitely to words.
Satisfying as this is, it nevertheless causes speculation
upon the depth, solidity and interior organization of
* Abstract, like romantic and realistic, is an indicative finger
for certain readily perceived phenomena, but not a precise de
fining term.