Translated and introduced by Malcolm Green.

The works of Hans Henny Jahnn exploded on to the inter-war literary scene in Germany as a crazed marriage of Gothic Romanticism, modernist literary Expressionism and the experiments of writers such as Döblin and Joyce. Jahnn’s personal cry of existential horror and guilt expresses both a repulsion and fascination for mortality which stemmed from his earliest years; it was subsequently reinforced by his unconventional sexuality and by a philosophy that celebrated life and death in all its aspects — not least in the embrace of eroticism and decay. His narratives, even when rooted in everyday life, burst forth in a wholly intemperate flood of prose, at once lurid and baroque. Little alleviates the apocalyptic fervour and morbid sense of doom in these writings.

Jahnn has been only rarely translated into English, whereas in France translations are many and his works have been compared to those of Antonin Artaud and Georges Bataille. This selection includes three of his 13 Uncanny Tales and the whole of his novella The Night of Lead, which nowadays is without doubt his most renowned work in Germany.

“Dada Means Nothing!” So proclaimed Tristan Tzara, the movement’s tireless publicist. Yet this did not prevent the most fanatical and talented artists and writers across Europe from rushing to join its ranks. Anti-war, anti-art, anti-dada, from its beginnings in Zurich during the first World War the dadas swept aside the cultural, philosophical and political norms of their time. Disgust with a society that had created the war (and were then expected to survive the peace) spurred them to ever greater demonstrations of revulsion and derision. Yet it was not all nihilism: many factions worked within the Dada Movement and it was Huelsenbeck’s intention to embody most of them in the Dada Almanac. This was largest collection of Dadaist texts assembled by the movement, it was originally published in 1920 in a mixture of French and German.

The Dada Almanac was truly international in scope, with substantial sections from the Swiss and French sections of the movement, it embodies Dada’s failings as well as its successes, its excesses, its seriousness, its idiocy, but above all the anarchic vitality which made it such a vital precondition for so much that followed in the fields of art, literature and general cultural terrorism.

The editors of this first English translation have added numerous other relevent texts, documents, portraits etc, as well as explaining contemporary references and events and providing biographies of the numerous personalities involved.

Authors include: Hans Arp, Johannes Baader, Hugo Ball, Paul Citröen, Paul Dermée, Daimonides, Max Goth, John Heartfield, Raoul Hausmann, Richard Huelsenbeck, Vincente Huidobro, Mario D’Arezzo, Adon Lacroix, Walter Mehring, Francis Picabia, Georges Ribemont-Dessaignes, Alexander Sesqui, Philippe Soupault and Tristan Tzara.

Atlas Arkhive 1.

Panizza’s great work, and a landmark in the honorable history of literary blasphemy. God invents syphilis to punish humanity, while his son whimpers in heaven. This play earnt its author 30 years of persecution at the hands of the authorities, both ecclesiastic and secular, and an early death in a mental asylum.

Oskar Panizza (1853-1921) wrote his brilliant satire, The Council of Love, in 1893 as he was working as a psychiatrist and was active in the Munich Modern movement. The play was published the following year across the border in Zurich, but national boundaries did not prevent the Munich authorities trying the author on some 90 accounts of blasphemy (largely involving the Virgin Mary), having the book and the plates destroyed and sentencing Panizza to a year’s imprisonment. He subsequently emigrated to Switzerland, now a full-time writer and publisher, only to be hounded once again by the authorities. After several years in Paris, he finally returned to Bavaria where he was declared incapable of managing his affairs, and placed in a mental asylum in 1905.

The Council of Love not only inspired the turn-of-the-century modern movement, the young Expressionists who went on to create Dada a generation later, and the post-war Surrealists, but also new admirers, directors and would-be censors in recent decades.

This translation is based on the third, revised edition, published in 1897. The illustrations by Alfred Kubin are taken from the nine created specially for a private edition published in 1913.

Atlas Press, The Printed Head II, number 5, 300 numbered copies.