[DADA] ダダ DADA

LIBROEdizione originale.Copertina originale professionalmente restaurata, con velatura integrale in volta, piccole integrazioni marginali e consolidamento al dorso, brunito e scolorito; per il resto ottimo esemplare, con il previsto timbro editoriale sul colophon (non presente l’astuccio) e una curiosa iscrizione manoscritta, in ideogrammi giapponesi, sulla quarta di copertina: si tratta di un tanka che dovrebbe leggersi «Hokkaidō no kanketsu dada Kitajima Seiun to Ginza wo aruite imasu [Cammino lungo il Ginza con Kitajima Seiun, dada intermittente dello Hokkaidō]».Rarissimo romanzo autobiografico del poeta e scrittore giapponese Takahashi Shinkichi (1901-1987), tra i primi se non il primo dadaista nipponico tout court, autore di componimenti d’avanguardia sicuramente ispirati ai lavori del movimento europeo, che fu divulgato in Giappone a partire dal 1920. -- «It is said that in Japanese writing the word “dada” was used for the first time in an article of the newspaper “Yorozuchoho” of June 27, 1920 (“A Strange Phenomenon in the Art Circle of Germany: Schwitter's Merz Pictures”). At the very same time, the newspaper conducted a short story contest, for which Takahashi Shinkichi won the first prize. With his prizewinning story “Raising a flame” published in the newspaper on August 1, he made his debut as a writer. It is incidental but rather interesting that we can see the first Japanese reference to Dada and the first Japanese dadaist poet’s debut in the same newspaper at the same time. Furthermore, two articles on Dada appeared in “Yorozuchoho” on August 15, soon after the publication of “Raising a flame”. Takahashi continued to read the newspaper even after his winning the prize and later he said himself that he had known Dada through the two articles: “The Latest Art of Epicureanism: Dadaism Becoming Popular in the Postwar Era” by Shiran, and “A view of Dadaism” by Yotosei. Deeply impressed by these passages concerning Dada, Takahashi was urged to write his first dadaist poem, “Ennui” (later retitled as “Dish”), which appeared in the first issue of “Simoon [Shimun]” in April 1922. [.]. While using his illogical style of writing and irregularly arranged typography and selecting subjects, such as sexual desire and madness, which might have been restricted or suppressed in the contemporary discourse in Japan in the 1920s [.] Takahashi wrote his avant-garde poems on the basis of his own mental disorder (as he did in “Poems of Dadaist Shinkichi”, the collection of his early avant-gardem poems, and “Dada”, the autobiographical novel in which he wrote about his experience of madness)» (Masataka Matsuda, «A Study of the Wartime Poems of Takahashi Shinkichi», in: «Cogito» n. 1, 2012, pp. 142-154). -- Fu lo stesso Shinkichi a raccontare di aver «gettato a mare» il suo romanzo appena pubblicato, un gesto simbolico a significare l’abbandono di quella vita; a partire pienamente dal 1927 si dedicò infatti al pensiero zen, rileggendo successivamente il proprio momento Dada come un precorrimento di questa esperienza spirituale: «In July 1924, Shinkichi published a long pseudonarrative entitled “Dada”. But the very next few month, from aboard a boat bound for Korea, he threw the book into the sea as a symbolic act indicating his determination to part with dada. Three years later he did just that» (Makoto Ueda, «Modern Japanese Poets and the Nature of Literature», 1983, p. 339-s; cfr. anche Sheppard, «New Studies in Dada, 1981, p. 188).