Publisher's Synopsis
Hugo Ball (1886-1927) is one of the most enigmatic figures of the Modernist
generation. After an initial immersion in the thought of Nietzsche, he became
intensely involved in avant-garde Expressionism, was attracted to Futurism,
founded Dada and turned towards political journalism, only then to turn his
back on the modern world and retreat into highly-structured Roman Catholic orthodoxy.
This study neither attempts to reconcile Ball's earlier, 'anarchistic' life
with his later, gnostic, Roman Catholicism, nor does it concentrate solely on
his Dada years (1916-1917) to the neglect of what preceded and succeeded them.
Instead, it attempts to look at Ball's life and works as a whole and to show
how the works point beyond themselves, throwing much light on the wider problematic
of European Modernism. The study reveals how the common factor underlying works
as disparate as Nietzsche in Basel (1910) and Byzantinisches Christentum
(1923) is Ball's continuing debate about the ontological nature of the Heraclitean
flux which he perceived beneath the surface of contemporary culture.
