SOURCE: An introduction to Flight Out of Time: A Dada Diary, by Hugo Ball, edited by John Elderfield and translated by Ann Raimes, University of California Press, 1996, pp. xiii-xlvi.

In the following introduction to Ball's journals, originally published in 1974, Elderfield details Ball's life, explores his relationship to the Dada movement, and evaluates his prose works.

Die Flucht aus der Zeit, Hugo Ball's diaries for the years 1910-21, has long enjoyed the reputation of one of the seminal documents of the dada movement. Hans Richter has written that of all the dadaists only Ball has so precisely expressed the inner conflicts of that period, and that he knows “of no better source of evidence of the moral and philosophical origins of the Dada revolt.”¹ And Hans Arp noted that “in this book stand the most significant words that have thus far been written about Dada.”² Ball is widely acknowledged...