Tristan Tzara (1896-1963) is well remembered as a major cultural figure who acted at the center of Dada and Surrealism. He is also almost entirely forgotten as a writer of poetry, especially that which is written in prose. In this paper I will use the figure and prose poetry of Tzara to perform two tasks relating to questions of remembering and forgetting.

The general basis of my first task is that current forgetfulness of Tzara’s prose poetry has deprived the readers of European verse of a rich body of work. Ironically, however, Tzara’s forgotten texts unexpectedly speak with quiet density and sophistication about a range of questions to do with writing and memory. Indeed, I will argue that certain poems articulate these questions so finely that mnemonic representations are consistently weaved into the various syntactical patterns of Tzara’s prose. Through close textual analysis I will also show that these poems are characterized by a fascinating interplay between notions of memory, appetite and consumption. Toi borrow from Don DeLillo, much of what feeds and troubles Tzara in these poems is the idea that ‘nothing can be said to have happened until I has been consumed’.

My second task relates to cultural literar history. Principally, I shall be asking why it is that the memory of Surrealist writers suchs as Breton, Eluard and Aragon should have been sanctified on the Bible paper of the Bibliothèque de la Pléiade, while the life and works of Tzara are either remembered in highly localized areas or not at all. In responding to this question, I will argue that by reading Tzara closely we can begin to see why cultural consciousness would want ot simply to forget aspects of Tzara’s writing, but to actively repress the memory of it. The arguments that I will put forward in this part of the paper will be broad in their relevance: I will conclude by using the ways in which Tzara remembers and forgets – and is remembered and forgotten – to comment on the Franco-patriarchal memory of the European avant-garde in particular, and on the construction of cultural memory in general.