4 Dada Suicides

[Patrick Murtha]

This is a fascinating book of texts by and information about four “mysterious” writers associated to some degree with the Dada movement:

Arthur Cravan (1887-1918?)
Jacques Rigaut (1898-1929)
Julien Torma (1902-1933?)
Jacques Vaché (1895-1919)

 

[Liam]

Is it known why they chose to kill themselves?

 

[Patrick Murtha]

This is complicated - the “Suicides” in the title is open to some interpretation.

Rigaut planned his suicide years in advance, announced it, and carried it out precisely.

Vaché died of an opium overdose. André Breton stated it was a suicide.

Torma disappeared in the Austrian mountains. His was a pen name - no one knows who he really was. His “existence” has been questioned because of a lack of much documentary evidence - but someone wrote “his” books.

Cravan disappeared off the coast of Mexico (where better? Everyone disappears here), and “it is presumed that he capsized and drowned in a storm raging at sea.”

One reason I was first drawn to this book many years ago is that I just love this kind of spooky stuff. ?