To Ludwig the Cocotte and Other Poems

These poems were first published in the volume Phantastische Gebete (Fantastic Prayers) in 1916 (Collection Dada, Zurich), then reissued in 1920 in an expanded edition with illustrations by George Grosz by Malik Verlag, Berlin.

The translation is based on the text of the 1960 edition published by Arche Verlag, Zurich with a new dedication and preface by Richard Huelsenbeck.

Dedication:

I dedicate this book to the generation of terror.

Richard Huelsenbeck
New York, March 1960

From the preface:

More than forty years, almost half a century, have passed since the Fantastic Prayers were first published, and we pinch our noses to verify that we are still alive. A whole world lies between 1916 and 1960, and mankind has turned around twice on its toes and heels since then. From waltzes to rock and roll, from Cabaret Voltaire to Abstract Expressionism, from the Kaiser's mustache to Dewey's republican handlebar mustache, from the corset to the bra, from glory to publicity, from religion to Billy Graham, etcetera, etcetera, a vertiginous game with changed values.

From the depths of my origins in Hesse and Westphalia, where the people ate, slept and loved because they were certain of their purpose and God's protective power, my existence has turned into something panicky, perhaps terrible but also something great. With the train of time I have moved westward from the west, and now I look out of my window at the New York skyscrapers surrounding my house near and far like steel mushrooms of antedeluvian origin burst out of the primary rock. People come and go in masses; this is considered progress; the lunar rocket is about to be launched, the democratic sense of smell is discovering mathematical geniuses among the loafers in doorways and corners; the girls are glad to be as thin as wafers. But you ask yourself: "Where shall we end if half of mankind has dissolved in air, desire and nylon ... ?"
...
As Arp and I are sitting in the large living room of my house on Central Park in November 1958, we try again and again to understand the significance of dadaism for ourselves and for others. Many elements surfaced in me and in the Fantastic Prayers at the same time; resistance against the "civilization" we live in, fury about a purely factual world which leaves out personality and thus creative power, the means of irony and underlying religiousness. Ball turned religious during the times of dadaism, Arp is a religious person today, and I have always been one, without wanting to realize it, perhaps without knowing it.
Religiousness has little to do with faith as it is taught in church. It is no more than the archetypal power of experience surrounding the incisive universal spirit. It is the experience of constructive will in the world which lends wings to the course of the stars despite all the fallen angels and helps man in the course of his life to understand the archetypal symbols of his existence. And deeper than daily thought. The silence behind the noise is the sense of the Fantastic Prayers.
Richard Huelsenbeck - New York, November 1958