Hugo Ball and the “Poems without Words”: On the Birth of Dadaist Art from the Spirit of Dissonance
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.26485/AI/2025/27/10Keywords:
Hugo Ball, Dadaism, dé-coïncidence, dissonance, phonetic poetry, performance, primordial language, divine languageAbstract
This article offers a reinterpretation of Hugo Ball’s creative work through the lens of dé-coïncidence, understood not as an isolated concept but as part of a broader semantic constellation –including dissonance, dissensus, Zerrissenheit and shevirat ha-kelim – that finds its culmination in Dadaism as an art born of discordance. The analysis unfolds in three main sect-ions. The first one examines Ball’s 1916 performance at the Cabaret Voltaire, focusing on his recitation of the Six Sound Poems and the appearance of the “magical bishop,” interpreted as an echoed liturgy. The second one explores Ball’s notion of “flight out of time” (Flucht aus der Zeit) in relation to the kairotic temporality of performance and the sonorous medium as a site of primeval memory. The third one turns to his critique of instrumental language, which gives rise to an aesthetic alternative grounded in childhood and the playful handling of linguistic remnants. Ultimately, Ball’s work is presented as one of the earliest and most original artistic forms born from the spirit of dissonance. His Dadaist practice emerges as a poetic and philosophical response to the collapse of modernity, fusing linguistic mysticism with both theological reflect-ion and political critique.
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