“I have invented [c. 1915-1916] a new series of verses, verses without words, or sound poems, in which the balancing of the vowels is gauged and distributed according to the value of the initial line... With these sound poems we should renounce language, devastated and made impossible by journalism. We should withdraw into the innermost alchemy of the word, and even surrender the word, thus conserving for poetry its most sacred domain. We should refuse to make poems second-hand; we should stop taking over words (not to mention sentences) which we did not invent entirely anew for our own use. We should no longer be content to achieve poetic effects which, in the final analysis, are but echoes of inspiration..”

— Hugo Ball

as quoted by Carol Rumens in her article 'Poem of the week: 'Gadji beri bimba' by Hugo Ball' https://www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/2009/aug/31/hugo-ball-gadji-beri-bimba in 'The Guardian', Monday 31 August 2009
1916

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Hugo Ball 19

German author, poet and one of the leading Dada artists 1886–1927

Related quotes

“In these phonetic poems we the Dadaist artists totally renounce the language that journalism has abused and corrupted. We must return to the innermost alchemy of the word, we must even give up the word too, to keep for poetry its last and holiest refuge.”

Hugo Ball (1886–1927) German author, poet and one of the leading Dada artists

as cited by Steve McCaffery, in The Darkness of the Present: Poetics, Anachronism, and the Anomaly; publ. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2012, p. 16
1916

“In 1916 at the 'Cabaret Voltaire', Ball presented six poems, which he described as 'Verse ohne Worte' (Poems without words) or 'Lautgedichte'(Sound poems); 'Gadji beri bimba' was one of them.”

Hugo Ball (1886–1927) German author, poet and one of the leading Dada artists

1916, Gadji beri bimba (c. 1916)

“The unit of significance in the poem is not the word but the phrase or sentence…a poet should consider the effect of the whole poem, not its local felicities.”

T. E. Hulme (1883–1917) English Imagist poet and critic

Lecture on Modern Poetry (1914)

“A verse translation should be faithful to the original, less in form than in sense. Or in other words, a poetic translation should be as beautiful as the original in sense, in sound and, if possible, in form.”

Xu Yuanchong (1921) Translator of Chinese poetry

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“We do not write poems with ideas, but with words.”

Stéphane Mallarmé (1842–1898) French Symbolist poet

Ce n'est pas avec des idées qu'on fait des vers, c'est avec des mots.
A remark reported in Psychologie de l'art (1927) by Henri Delacroix, p. 93; as translated in Literary Impressionism (1973), Maria Elisabeth Kronegger, p. 77.
Observations