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Approximate Man and Other Writings
This major anthology of writings by legendary poet Tristan Tzara (1896-1963) is the only English language source for a complete version of Tzara's epic Approximate Man now widely regarded as the poetic masterpiece of Surrealism. Included is a critical introduction, an account of variants, and an essay setting the context for the poem. Completely revised, updated edition of this now classic survey.
290 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1931
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About the author
Tristan Tzara
137 books188 followersRomanian-born French poet and essayist known mainly as a founder of Dada, a nihilistic revolutionary movement in the arts.
The Dadaist movement originated in Zürich during World War I; Tzara wrote the first Dada texts - La Premiére Aventure cèleste de Monsieur Antipyrine (1916; "The First Heavenly Adventure of Mr. Antipyrine") and Vingt-cinq poémes (1918; "Twenty-Five Poems") - and the movement's manifestos, Sept manifestes Dada (1924; "Seven Dada Manifestos").
In Paris he engaged in tumultuous activities with André Breton, Philippe Soupault, and Louis Aragon to shock the public and to disintegrate the structures of language. About 1930, weary of nihilism and destruction, he joined his friends in the more constructive activities of Surrealism. He devoted much of his time to the reconciliation of Surrealism and Marxism and joined the Communist Party in 1936 and the French Resistance movement during World War II. These political commitments brought him closer to his fellow human beings, and he gradually matured into a lyrical poet. His poems revealed the anguish of his soul, caught between revolt and wonderment at the daily tragedy of the human condition.
His mature works started with L'Homme approximatif (1931; "The Approximate Man") and continued with Parler seul (1950; "Speaking Alone") and La Face intèrieure (1953; "The Inner Face"). In these, the anarchically scrambled words of Dada were replaced with a difficult but humanized language.
The Dadaist movement originated in Zürich during World War I; Tzara wrote the first Dada texts - La Premiére Aventure cèleste de Monsieur Antipyrine (1916; "The First Heavenly Adventure of Mr. Antipyrine") and Vingt-cinq poémes (1918; "Twenty-Five Poems") - and the movement's manifestos, Sept manifestes Dada (1924; "Seven Dada Manifestos").
In Paris he engaged in tumultuous activities with André Breton, Philippe Soupault, and Louis Aragon to shock the public and to disintegrate the structures of language. About 1930, weary of nihilism and destruction, he joined his friends in the more constructive activities of Surrealism. He devoted much of his time to the reconciliation of Surrealism and Marxism and joined the Communist Party in 1936 and the French Resistance movement during World War II. These political commitments brought him closer to his fellow human beings, and he gradually matured into a lyrical poet. His poems revealed the anguish of his soul, caught between revolt and wonderment at the daily tragedy of the human condition.
His mature works started with L'Homme approximatif (1931; "The Approximate Man") and continued with Parler seul (1950; "Speaking Alone") and La Face intèrieure (1953; "The Inner Face"). In these, the anarchically scrambled words of Dada were replaced with a difficult but humanized language.
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Displaying 1 - 18 of 18 reviews
November 19, 2024
Who is Approximate Man? Approximate Man is you; Approximate Man is me; Approximate Man is all and sundry.
Every one of us is a sketch of an ideal human being but some sketches are more detailed, some less…
And Tristan Tzara tries to explain this to us in his surreal poetical language.
Somehow, trying to explain the order of things, Tristan Tzara manages to make everything seem much more complicated. But isn’t it a true poet’s real task to make simple things appear more complex, however?
In whom the bell tolls? The bell tolls in thee.
Every one of us is a sketch of an ideal human being but some sketches are more detailed, some less…
And Tristan Tzara tries to explain this to us in his surreal poetical language.
…lives are repeated endlessly until the atomic thinness
and up so high that we cannot see
and with those lives next to us that we do not see
the ultraviolet of so many parallel paths
those we could have taken
those by which we could not come into world
or already be gone so long
that we would have forgotten and the time and the ground which world have sucked our flesh
salts and liquid metals clear and the end of wells…
Somehow, trying to explain the order of things, Tristan Tzara manages to make everything seem much more complicated. But isn’t it a true poet’s real task to make simple things appear more complex, however?
…the bells ring for no reason and we too
ring bells for no reason and we too
we rejoice at the sound of the chains
that we set ringing in us with the bells…
In whom the bell tolls? The bell tolls in thee.
April 16, 2023
who will tell us the bitter hour when the thyme dies of trickery
its color melting in the tender water of mocking kisses
on the tree the fruits range in tiers their visual stammering
outside is white
white is your smile also sign of your body whiter than all
experience
rubbing the teeth of the sky beating the linen at the river
if I steel myself at the precise sources of iron dragonflies
it is that I
and if I wander it is that I
straddler of waterfalls time has run its risks and the premiums
I was stronger and the long ago was my marble companion
the fists of dead trees rise up again
and wage against the autumn of the firmament
it is my hope
its color melting in the tender water of mocking kisses
on the tree the fruits range in tiers their visual stammering
outside is white
white is your smile also sign of your body whiter than all
experience
rubbing the teeth of the sky beating the linen at the river
if I steel myself at the precise sources of iron dragonflies
it is that I
and if I wander it is that I
straddler of waterfalls time has run its risks and the premiums
I was stronger and the long ago was my marble companion
the fists of dead trees rise up again
and wage against the autumn of the firmament
it is my hope
December 4, 2019
{[(Apollinaire + T.S.Eliot) - Breton]+ (½ Rimbaud × ¼ Baudelaire)²} = Tristan Tzara
November 1, 2023
Honnêtement j'ai passé tellement de temps à essayer de comprendre certains poèmes et j'en ai apprécié certains qui étaient extrêmement difficile à analyser. Quand j'ai découvert qu'en fait Tzara ne les composait pas mais qu'il s'agissait d'extraits qu'il a aléatoirement assemblé, j'ai été un peu déçue. Depuis je n'ai pas pu trouver la motivation pour réendosser le travail de lecture...
Read
October 31, 2022Reading this on tour while sitting in green rooms, wearing noise canceling headphones and blasting Tim Hecker to block out everything around me, allowing me to remove myself from reality seems like the only way to take in this material. Multiple times while reading, I’d stop in awe of some beautiful passage (and listed some below).
There’s the impossibility of talking about art, the ineffable nature of it and its effect. And as with all surrealist/dada literature, you’re enjoyment of this will depend entirely on how much you love language and new combinations of words and phrases. I love this kind of thing a whole lot, and the title work is some of the best I’ve come across. I know I’ll be able to return to this work time and time again and find new things.
“nerves nourished on leisurely faithfulness the dampness of living stars
sees the evil from the root to the stone
the wind reaps the tresses of our hopes” (41)
“…the faultless amber of your majestic torment” (38)
“we are made of mirrors and air” (44)
“I sing the incalculable alms of bitterness
hurled at us by a sky of stone —food of shame and death-rattle
in us laughs the abyss
that no moderation penetrates
that no voice ventures to brighten” (65)
“hope is healed on the sadness of cleared consciousness
a sickness like another a habit to develop
consolation” (84)
“age is ready to take you in its artful net
from which escape is difficult and memories sift painfully” (85)
“in each pore of the skin
there is a garden and all the fauna of pains” (86)
There’s the impossibility of talking about art, the ineffable nature of it and its effect. And as with all surrealist/dada literature, you’re enjoyment of this will depend entirely on how much you love language and new combinations of words and phrases. I love this kind of thing a whole lot, and the title work is some of the best I’ve come across. I know I’ll be able to return to this work time and time again and find new things.
“nerves nourished on leisurely faithfulness the dampness of living stars
sees the evil from the root to the stone
the wind reaps the tresses of our hopes” (41)
“…the faultless amber of your majestic torment” (38)
“we are made of mirrors and air” (44)
“I sing the incalculable alms of bitterness
hurled at us by a sky of stone —food of shame and death-rattle
in us laughs the abyss
that no moderation penetrates
that no voice ventures to brighten” (65)
“hope is healed on the sadness of cleared consciousness
a sickness like another a habit to develop
consolation” (84)
“age is ready to take you in its artful net
from which escape is difficult and memories sift painfully” (85)
“in each pore of the skin
there is a garden and all the fauna of pains” (86)
July 20, 2023
Tzara lamentablemente es más recordado por sus manifiestos dadaístas que por El hombre aproximado. Este es un poema poco accesible, por no decir hermético.
El hombre aproximado ya no es dadaísta, quizá se encuentra a medio camino con el surrealismo, pero llevándolo a un nivel muy elevado. El poema nos habla con un lenguaje totalmente desafiante del tema más importante que puede tocar la literatura: la humanidad del ser humano (valga la redundancia).
Muchas veces la vanguardia dio a luz experimentos vacíos, obras que bajo el rótulo de experimentales solo son juegos tontos. Sin embargo, Tzara construye una obra maestra y quizás una de las mejores obras de la Vanguardia y de la historia de la literatura.
El hombre aproximado ya no es dadaísta, quizá se encuentra a medio camino con el surrealismo, pero llevándolo a un nivel muy elevado. El poema nos habla con un lenguaje totalmente desafiante del tema más importante que puede tocar la literatura: la humanidad del ser humano (valga la redundancia).
Muchas veces la vanguardia dio a luz experimentos vacíos, obras que bajo el rótulo de experimentales solo son juegos tontos. Sin embargo, Tzara construye una obra maestra y quizás una de las mejores obras de la Vanguardia y de la historia de la literatura.
January 24, 2024
incroyable !
Du début à la fin ce livre reste incroyable. Je n’ai jamais autant eu soif de poésie, autant eu soif d’images. Je n’ai jamais autant été pris par un monde poétique d’une telle façon. Je n’ai jamais tant eu envie de relire un livre à peine l’avoir fini. Je garderai ce livre dans un coin de mon cœur pour le restant de ma vie. Je le pense.
Peut-être est-ce mon attirance pour le surréalisme qui est la source de ce bouleversement. Alors, toi, amateur du surréalisme, je t’invite à dévorer ce livre. Alors, toi, lecteur éternellement curieux, je t’invite à dévorer ce livre.
Du début à la fin ce livre reste incroyable. Je n’ai jamais autant eu soif de poésie, autant eu soif d’images. Je n’ai jamais autant été pris par un monde poétique d’une telle façon. Je n’ai jamais tant eu envie de relire un livre à peine l’avoir fini. Je garderai ce livre dans un coin de mon cœur pour le restant de ma vie. Je le pense.
Peut-être est-ce mon attirance pour le surréalisme qui est la source de ce bouleversement. Alors, toi, amateur du surréalisme, je t’invite à dévorer ce livre. Alors, toi, lecteur éternellement curieux, je t’invite à dévorer ce livre.
Read
July 21, 2011"homme approximatif comme moi comme toi lecteur
tu tiens entre tes mains comme pour jeter une boule
chiffre lumineux ta tête pleine de poésie"
tu tiens entre tes mains comme pour jeter une boule
chiffre lumineux ta tête pleine de poésie"
August 3, 2020
Note: I’ve read the original in French.
In this long poem, each line is like a dust ball of thoughts that connect to everything and go everywhere. Language is broken and reconstructed according to a mysterious logic full of holes for the reader to fill with whatever impression the text creates. There are some repeating patterns from time to time, used seemingly whenever the author felt like it, but nothing systematic I could notice. It’s to be expected with the importance Dada and surrealism gave to randomness at that time. In all those aspects—creating a new language, alluding to the everything, relying on randomness—Tzara’s Approximate Man goes several step further than every other surrealist authors did at the time.
This poem also magnifies what I think are recurring issues in the average surrealist text:
- lack of structure beyond a rather small scale; usually that scale is the paragraph, but here it’s that of a few lines
- impression of pointlessness once you get used to the text’s style, though here it takes much longer than usual if you engage seriously with the text
- a somewhat disappointing gap between the complexity of the text and its underlying logic once you start to analyze it; I don’t really want to do it because I don’t want to break the magic, but a few things are obvious, like the value attributed to love, how machinery and cities are almost synonymous with evil, and the mix of admiration and fear created by the ocean (like in the Songs of Maldoror)
It’s still an awesome and exceptional read.
In this long poem, each line is like a dust ball of thoughts that connect to everything and go everywhere. Language is broken and reconstructed according to a mysterious logic full of holes for the reader to fill with whatever impression the text creates. There are some repeating patterns from time to time, used seemingly whenever the author felt like it, but nothing systematic I could notice. It’s to be expected with the importance Dada and surrealism gave to randomness at that time. In all those aspects—creating a new language, alluding to the everything, relying on randomness—Tzara’s Approximate Man goes several step further than every other surrealist authors did at the time.
This poem also magnifies what I think are recurring issues in the average surrealist text:
- lack of structure beyond a rather small scale; usually that scale is the paragraph, but here it’s that of a few lines
- impression of pointlessness once you get used to the text’s style, though here it takes much longer than usual if you engage seriously with the text
- a somewhat disappointing gap between the complexity of the text and its underlying logic once you start to analyze it; I don’t really want to do it because I don’t want to break the magic, but a few things are obvious, like the value attributed to love, how machinery and cities are almost synonymous with evil, and the mix of admiration and fear created by the ocean (like in the Songs of Maldoror)
It’s still an awesome and exceptional read.
December 22, 2022
"mains incendiaires
les seules qui brillent"
༄⋆
"homme à voiles déployées par le vent lancé dans l'embarras des pièges"
-- une collection démesurée d'extraits sans quoi je ne sais pas m'exprimer...
"la pluie rompant des ailes grises et des prismes
de courtes volontés phosphorescentes perdues parmi les hachures du rire"
"nous avons déplacé les notions et confondu leurs vêtements avec leurs noms
aveugles sont les mots qui ne savent retrouver que leur place à leur naissance
leur rang grammatical dans l'universelle sécurité
bien maigre ets le feu que nous crûmes voir couver en eux dans nos poumons
et terne est la lueur prédestinée de ce qu'ils disent"
"l'espoir se cicatrise sur la tristesse des consciences déboisées"
"les ampoules électriques sous la carapace de tortue couvent les grains de sable et de beauté"
"la pluie échevelée lézarde nos conversations"
"en nous rit l'abîme
que nulle mesure n'entame
que nulle voix ne s'aventure à éclairer"
les seules qui brillent"
༄⋆
"homme à voiles déployées par le vent lancé dans l'embarras des pièges"
-- une collection démesurée d'extraits sans quoi je ne sais pas m'exprimer...
"la pluie rompant des ailes grises et des prismes
de courtes volontés phosphorescentes perdues parmi les hachures du rire"
"nous avons déplacé les notions et confondu leurs vêtements avec leurs noms
aveugles sont les mots qui ne savent retrouver que leur place à leur naissance
leur rang grammatical dans l'universelle sécurité
bien maigre ets le feu que nous crûmes voir couver en eux dans nos poumons
et terne est la lueur prédestinée de ce qu'ils disent"
"l'espoir se cicatrise sur la tristesse des consciences déboisées"
"les ampoules électriques sous la carapace de tortue couvent les grains de sable et de beauté"
"la pluie échevelée lézarde nos conversations"
"en nous rit l'abîme
que nulle mesure n'entame
que nulle voix ne s'aventure à éclairer"
June 21, 2023
peut-être la meilleure façon d’entrer dans l’été
May 5, 2024
Pas d'attentes particulières mais très agréable lecture, beau et poétique
July 28, 2024
Gobbledygook.
May 18, 2025
la condition humaine in a nutshell
December 23, 2010
Mary Ann Caws delivers the best English translation of Tzara's poetry and writing to date, including the great long poem "Approximate Man". Marvelous.
August 14, 2016
Important and worthwhile- his style- always poorly emulated, seems somewhat dated.
September 11, 2021
Bon llibre per descobrir Tzara, però aquest tipus de poesia no és per mi.
September 22, 2023
«Pienso en el calor que arruga la palabra / alrededor de su hueso el sueño que se llama nosotros»
Displaying 1 - 18 of 18 reviews