Grains et Issues (Grains et Issues (Grains and Chaff))

The book Grains et Issues – subtitled Rêve Expérimental – by the Romanian poet Tristan Tzara (1896–1963), one of the founders of the Dada movement, was published in Paris by Les Éditions Denoël et Steele. According to the colophon, the book was printed on 20 February 1935, at the Imprimerie Charles Bulens. The volume includes a frontispiece by Salvador Dalí, reproduced in rotogravure and etching on the first fifteen copies, and a dedication on the half-title page to Louis Broder, a prominent figure in the publishing world of the time. Analogous to Dalí’s paranoiac-critical method, Tzara proposes that delusional activity should consciously replace poetic inspiration. (1) In his narrative, the author describes ‘a lyrical superstructure, whose elements derive from the structure itself and which, as soon as it is realised, acts upon this from the height of its newfound power. It knows how to develop its virulence at times, to the point of undermining the meaning of this structure, corrupting it, raising it up, and destroying it in its essence’. (2) Tzara’s text finds its visual counterpart in Dalí’s print, whose accelerated rhythm recalls the drawings he made during his first visit to the United States in November 1934. However, the destructive undertone perceived in the work is consonant with the European climate of the time, to which Tzara also alludes in his text. __________ (1) See p. 213. (2) “Rêve Expérimental, est ‘une superstructure lyrique, dont les éléments dérivent de la structure même et qui, aussitôt réalisée, agit sur cette dernière du haut de sa nouvelle puissance. Elle sait à l’occasion développer sa virulence, au point de miner la signification de cette structure, de la corrompre, de la soulever et de l’anéantir dans son essence.”, p. 210.