#julien torma

[uispeccoll]

A Dada Moment

Perhaps the most elusive of the dadaists, Julien Torma supposedly lived from 1902 to 1933 and published four books during his purported lifetime. However, there is no firm documentation of his life, and it is widely assumed that he never in fact existed.

Around 1952 the College of Pataphysics, a tongue-in-cheek institution founded in 1948, issued a broadside offering all four of Torma’s books for sale in honor of the 50th anniversary of his “birth,” caling him “the greatest pataphysician of the XXth century.”

We have recently acquired the complete set of four, and the inclusion of the broadside in one of the books strongly suggests that our copies came from the “Collège de Pataphisique.”

--Curator Tim Shipe

[tom-isaacs]

Even more important as a nonsense dramatist among the pataphysical heroes is Julien Torma (1902-33), another poetic vagabond and poete maudit who drifted through life with sovereign unconcern until he disappeared in the Austrian Alps, walking out of his hotel never to return.

From The Theatre of the Absurd by Martin Esslin

[pataphysicsdublin]

 Putting metaphysics behind ‘Pataphysics is like making a belief into a mere façade. When in fact the real nature of ‘Pat. is to be a façade which is only a façade, with nothing behind it. 

Julien Torma in a letter to Rene Daumal, Pataphysical Essays p. xvi

[entreletrasycafeina]

Lo hermoso debe ser incongruente

Julien Torma

[copubu]

Pataphysical Letters

correspondence between Rene Daumal & Julien Torma 

[xjxsxcx]

Es ist falsch, sich vor bestimmten Verheerungen des Denkens nicht in Acht zu nehmen. Ich halte es für gewiss, dass ein glückliches Ereignis sich nur dann einstellt, wenn man am wenigsten daran denkt und weil man am wenigsten daran denkt. Der Gedanke daran tötet das Ereignis und vom totgeborenen Ereignis gehen tödliche Wirkungen aus. Handeln, das heißt die Schöpfung, bewirkt genau das Gegenteil des bewussten Denkens. In dieser Sekunde töte ich etwas in mir, was tausendfach mein Denken aufwiegt. Denken wir nicht mehr, verausgaben wir uns.

- J. Torma