Our Candide Against The Times

Hugo Ball

 

     ”The ideals of culture and of art as a program for a variety show,” Ball said, “that is our kind of Candide against the times.” He was referring to the book Candide written by the Enlightenment-era satirist, Voltaire.   
     Ball was fascinated with Voltaire’s skeptical slant on society. He named the Dadaist venue, Cabaret Voltaire, in the author’s honor.
     Ball’s clownsick Cabaret was a milestone for the Dada movement.  Complete with polka-dot hats and pin the moustache on the Mona Lisa, the party Dada, like a pie in the face, confronted the world with nursery-rhyme impudence.
     At the beginning of WWI, before founding Cabaret Voltaire, Hugo Ball was a patriot, eager to defend his country. After being denied military service three times, he trudged to the Belgian front for an unauthorized visit that would last several months.
     During these months Ball was confronted with the horrors of trench warfare and newly developed weapons such as tanks and poison gas.  

The Western Front

     Ball returned home in the sour depths of depression. After overcoming the most delbilitating aspects of this personal crisis, Ball moved with his wife, Emmy Hennings, to Zurich, Switzerland.

     An introspective man before the war, once in Zurich, Ball decided to harness his newly-embraced anarchic passions and those of his fellow refugee artists. He sent out notices inviting interested artists to arrive at Spiegelgasse on February 5th 1916, and to perform various declarations of nonsense. This became the Cabaret Voltaire, one of the earliest Dada coteries. 

Spiegelgasse -- home of Cabaret Voltaire

     “The most obscure of streets in the shadow of architectural ribs, where you will find discreet detectives amid red street lamps,”  was how Tristan Tzara, a fellow Dadaist, described Spiegelgasse.
     It was a dirty, sleazy corner in a notorious amusement district. There was night-time curfew and a vice squad patrolled the streets.

     In this grimy venue, four years after the outbreak of WWI, Cabaret Voltaire debuted: a rowdy, vaudevillian production.
     At one point, the audience attacked the stage.

    War had not won their respcect.