ABSTRACT
The unexampled slaughter on the battlefields of World War I, combined with the success of Revolution in Russia after 1917, gave rise to a potent mix of revulsion against existing society and—for some—faith in the possibility of its transformation. The resulting mood had parallels with the period of the 1840s. For many people, the pessimism of the fin de siècle was dissolved by the possibility of new forms of action. Cultural innovation and revolutionary politics were drawn together more powerfully than at any time since the demise of Romanticism. The Dada movement, born in Zurich in 1916, most fully embodied the spirit of unbridled revolt, dramatizing the new animosity toward bourgeois society and culture. Some of that spirit was welcomed into France after the hostilities ended, when the leading Dada figure, Tristan Tzara, arrived in Paris. But the power of Dada in France ebbed by 1922, as many of those who had supported Tzara declared their independence from the movement's undiluted negativism. These French writers, led by André Breton, gathered under the banner of Surrealism.
