ABSTRACT
Andre Gide’s pages, which appeared in the April 1920 issue of the N.R.F., constituted the most impressive avuncular encouragement the young revolt received. Very few among the older writers looked upon the revolutionary artistic movement known as Dada with anything but horror. Founded in Zurich by Tristan Tzara in 1916 as a systematic negation of all intellectual and literary values, Dada shocked by its scandalous excesses. The great misfortune for the inventor of Dada is that the movement he started upsets him and that he is himself crushed by his machine. In that single word “Dada” they expressed all at once everything they had to say as a group; and since there is no way of going further in absurdity, they must either mark time, as the mediocre will continue to do, or else escape. He hoped to have more fun and that the Dadas would take more abundant advantage of the public’s artless amazement.
