One of 13 copies from the deluxe issue on vélin pur fil (no. II).
La Fuite was written for the most part in the south of France in 1940 and published only in 1947 by Gallimard. This “dramatic poem in four acts” was performed only twice: first on January 21, 1946 at the Vieux-Colombier (staged by Marcel Lupovici, with music by Max Deutsch), and again in 1964 at the Théâtre Gramont in Paris (staged by Jacques Gaulme and Claude-Pierre Quémy). It nonetheless remains an important work by Tzara, in the line of Le Mouchoir de nuages, standing at the very roots of the theater of the absurd.
“La Fuite strives precisely to draw out the dramatic meaning of the sons’ departure, and of the parents’ nostalgic will to hold them back. But it is in this very instinct of flight in the sons, and in this will in the parents, that the conflict is born. […] It exceeds the individual, for this process of flights and separations, of births and deaths, engages every human life, and not only individuals but also communities. It is through these crises that societies or individuals gradually come to consciousness. […] What matters most always happens outside the intellectual mechanism. Poetry alone gains access to these realms. It is for each of us to let ourselves be carried away by it…” (Michel Leiris, in an interview with Charles Dubreuil, Les Lettres françaises, January 21, 1946).