ARTIFICIAL HELLS

notes to pages 63– 9
82 Kerzhentsev, cited in Leach, Revolutionary Theatre, p. 24.
83 See Amy Nelson, Music for the Revolution: Musicians and Power in Early
Soviet Russia, University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press,
2004, Chapter 7. ‘Without the visual image of the conductor’s interpretative
directions, performers and audiences alike experienced the music
more directly, focusing more completely on the auditory element of
musical performance’ (p. 193).
84 Stites, Revolutionary Dreams, p. 136. Persimfans was dissolved by Stalin
in 1932.
85 See Fülöp- Miller, The Mind and Face of Bolshevism, p. 179.
86 Ibid., p. 182.
87 Ibid., p. 184.
88 Exceptions would be T. J. Demos, ‘Dada’s Event: Paris, 1921’, in Beth
Hinderliter et al. (eds.), Communities of Sense: Rethinking Aesthetics and
Politics, Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2009, and Matthew
Witkowsky, ‘Dada Breton’, October, 105, Summer 2003, pp. 125– 36.
89 Louis Aragon, Projet d’histoire litteraire contemporaine, Paris: Marc Dachy
1994, p. 103, my translation.
90 Ibid., my translation.
91 André Breton, ‘Entretiens Radiophoniques, IV’ (1952), in Oeuvres
Complètes, Vol. 3, Editions Gallimard, 1999, p. 462, my translation.
92 André Breton, cited in Hans Richter, Dada: Art and Anti- Art, London:
Thames and Hudson, 1965, p. 174.
93 See Victoria Nes Kirby, ‘Georges Ribemont- Dessaignes’, TDR, 16:1,
March 1972, p. 106.
94 Richter, Dada, p. 174. Thanks to Germán García for this reference.
95 Ibid., p. 176.
96 Richter, Dada, p. 183.
97 Georges Hugnet, L’aventure Dada, 1916– 1922, Editions Seghers, 1971
(first published 1957), p. 97, my translation. He noted that the excursion
did not aim to find the tomb of Julien and Marguerite de Ravalet (a
brother and sister sent to the block for their incestuous love), which
would have been an obvious point of attraction for Breton.
98 Aragon records that the group took their inspiration for the strategy
of the Grande Saison Dada from the menace and terror of the French
Revolution, which they felt to be a good comparison with their intellectual
state. Aragon, Projet d’histoire litteraire contemporaine,
pp. 103– 4.
99 Richter, Dada, p. 184.
100 Breton, ‘Artificial Hells’, p. 141.
101 For the event at Théâtre de l’Oeuvre on 27 March 1920, Tzara
claimed that even after 1,200 people were turned away, there were
three spectators to every seat. See Tristan Tzara, ‘Some Memoirs of
Dadaism’, in Vanity Fair, July 1922, p. 91 (published in French as
301