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Hugo Ball Quotes

1886–1927 Germany

Hugo Ball (22 February 1886 – 14 September 1927) was a German author, poet and one of the leading Dada artists; he founded in Zürich the 'Cabaret Voltaire'. He wrote also the 1916 Dada Manifesto.

Germany
Authors
Playwrights
Poets

Also known as: Ball, Hugo

Random Hugo Ball quote

7 quotes

The war [World War 1.] is founded on a glaring mistake, men have been confused with machines.

That is the meaning of the coming of Christ.. ..that the word becomes flesh and man is saved from abstraction.

Our cabaret 'Cabaret Voltaire' is a gesture.. .Every word that is spoken and sung here says at least this one thing: that this humiliating age has not succeeded in winning our respect.

It is a mistake to believe in my presence.. .If I take a seat at a party, I can see, even from afar, that only a ghost is sitting there.

I have examined myself carefully. I could never bid chaos welcome, blow up bridges, and do away with ideas. I am not an anarchist.

We have now driven the plasticity of the word to the point where it can barely be surpassed.. .We have loaded the word with strengths and energies that have allowed us rediscover the evangelical concept of the 'word' (logos) as a magical complex image.

In these phonetic poems we the Dadaist artists totally renounce the language that journalism has abused and corrupted. We must return to the innermost alchemy of the word, we must even give up the word too, to keep for poetry its last and holiest refuge.

Attribution

Quotes and notes from Wikiquote: Hugo Ball (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0.