SOURCE: "Adventuring into Language," in The Times Literary Supplement, No. 3,993, October 13, 1978, p. 56.

In the following review of Oeuvres complètes, Cardinal praises the "wild and nihilistic glitter" of Tzara's Dada poems and identifies his primary poetic accomplishment as the passionate and direct expression of his personality.

It is a tried irony of French literary life that those who most violently attack the conventions of the cultural estab lishment should in due time achieve cultural security themselves by virtue of the careful collation and publication of their Oeuvres complètes. It is now the turn of Tristan Tzara: the extremist leader of that movement of cultural terrorism known as Dada is now publicly honoured by a monumental edition, complete with detailed scholarly apparatus. What would Monsieur Antipyrine have said?

These first two bulky volumes of Tzara's prolific life-work take us from the poems of his adolescence in Bucharest, through...