1In 1920, when a collection of texts by a who’s who of Dadaism appeared in the Berlin-based publication Dada Almanach, readers had their first encounter with a short, anonymous text that would later be recognized as a canonical work of sound poetry and an important work by Dada co-founder Tristan Tzara (1896–1963): “Toto-vaca” (Huelsenbeck 1920, 51–52). Written in a language unintelligible to the reader and inserted among several other poems—including Hugo Ball’s “Karawane,” regarded in Germany as a paradigmatic work of sound poetry—the text also reads as a sound poem. It consists of verses of varying lengths, is divided into three numbered stanzas, and follows a variety of repetitive patterns; semantically, however, it is impenetrable, and its poetic quality lies solely in the sound and rhythm of its language.
2And yet, although Tristan Tzara even claimed two years later that “Toto-vaca” consisted of “sons purs inventés par moi”—henceforth publishing the poem under his own name—his editor Henri Béhar was already certain by 1975 that “Toto-vaca” was in fact a text by the Māori, the indigenous population of New Zealand (cf. Tzara 1975, 715). In Tzara’s estate, Béhar found a German translation of the alleged sound poem, as well as a fragment of a translation by Tzara into French. To make matters even more complicated, these documents were part of a larger collection of texts of African and Oceanic origin that Tzara had compiled in 1916/17 during his time in Zurich; seeing as Béhar had managed to trace the potential sources for some of these texts—ethnographic monographs and journal articles—he was as good as certain that none of them was “le fruit d’une supercherie dadaïste” (Tzara 1975, 715). Tzara’s narrative of the “sons purs inventés” was thus hardly tenable.
Fig. 1. Tristan Tzara, about 1917.
Kunsthaus Zürich, Bibliothèque, Dada VI : 9.
- 1 Similarly, Thiérard 2016, 23.
3Although it was apparent at an early stage that Tzara had copied “Toto-vaca” from somewhere, it took a long time until researchers developed an interest in the actual origin of the text. Instead, other questions took center stage. For example, in his early study of Tzara’s primitivism, Jean-Claude Blachère undertook “une analyse de la vitalité d’un ‘esprit’ dada qui récupère un thème d’inspiration” (Blachère 1981, 118). He was interested in Tzara’s relationship to the “monde noir”: his image of it, his motivation for exploring it, as well as how he engaged with its cultural creations. In Blachère’s view, Tzara’s “découverte” of the “valeurs culturelles du monde noir” (Blachère 1981, 138) brought him into contact with a new, completely different form of poetry, which he regarded as a positive counter-project to the European literature that had fallen into crisis. African and Oceanic texts such as “Toto-vaca” were—in Tzara’s mind—firmly anchored in the fabric of the everyday life of those societies and were thus to serve as role models for the radical revitalization of (his own) literature, which he felt to be functionless and thus politically ineffective. Existing scholarship, not only that of Blachère, has repeatedly emphasized Tzara’s important role in the revaluation of poetry from Africa and Oceania as literature, which had previously been held in low esteem. For example, Béhar argued that by taking texts from “des recueils scientifiques où ils sont enfermés,” publishing them in avant-garde journals, or reciting them in front of audiences, he had proven “que ce sont des œuvres artistiques, au-delà de leur valeur performative en contexte” (Béhar 2018).1 Tzara’s preoccupation with non-European poetry is viewed by art historian Cécile Bargues as consistent with the context of artistic primitivism at the time and described as an effect “d’une curiosité et d’une ouverture qui ont transformé notre manière de voir, élargi nos horizons et notre culture” (Bargues 2015, 34). Philippe Dagen criticizes such characterizations originating from art-historical research on primitivism as a “récit habituel, prononcé sur un mode épique ou héroïque, celui des avant-gardes.” He also argues that the constant repetition and circulation of this narrative has helped to ensure that non-European objects remain “sous l’autorité de la culture occidentale, à laquelle ils doivent d’avoir été promus au rang artistique en Occident et qui conditionnerait leur perception” (Dagen 2019, 11).
- 2 A relatively early exception is an analysis by Walter F. Veit (2009), in which the source texts—son (...)
4Remarkably, many of these studies mention the texts that Tzara found and copied from ethnographic literature and even use them to support their theses about Tzara’s working methods and interests. Still, there is a lack of deeper engagement with these texts in their own right—that is, not only as Tzara’s source material, but also as pre-existing texts possessing meanings, independent of those Tzara imparted.2 In the case of “Toto-vaca,” Tzara’s source remained undiscovered for a long time and was therefore not available for further analysis; however, a lack of knowledge of the source material did not, for example, stop Blachère from comparing the publication of the poem in the Dada Almanach to a ready-made à la Marcel Duchamp (also Cunière 2023, 86). Duchamp, he argues, had the idea “d’exposer des objets détournés de leur usage normal, se contentant, par sa signature et l’acte même de les donner à voir, de les promouvoir au rang de l’objet d’art” (Blachère 1981, 158). As interesting as this comparison is, it suggests that the (as yet unidentified) text on which “Toto-vaca” is based is a kind of industrially produced commodity with no artistic value prior to Tzara’s intervention.
- 3 The reason why the spelling of the title “Toto-vaca” changes frequently in my paper is that I alway (...)
5In 2015, the source of Tzara’s “Toto-vaca” was finally uncovered in the context of the exhibition Dada Afrika – Dialog mit dem Fremden (Zurich/Berlin): the fourth edition of Karl Bücher’s 1909 economic anthropological study Arbeit und Rhythmus (see Kaufmann 2016, White 2016). It contains not only the German translation of the song called “Toto-waka”3 that Tzara copied, but also the Māori-language “original,” which is featured in the Dada Almanach as an alleged sound poem.
- 4 An almost complete overview of the works used by Tzara was finally supplied by Florian Cunière (202 (...)
- 5 “La trajectoire de ces objets poétiques passe donc de l’oral (les arts verbaux extra occidentaux) à (...)
- 6 On their blind spots, see the article by Erhard Schüttpelz in this volume.
- 7 Carole Maccotta (2011), on the other hand, researches the colonial provenance of another collection (...)
6The works that Jehanne Denogent has published since 2021 extend previous research on Tzara’s collection of texts by presenting for the first time the bulk of the ethnographic sources (Denogent 2021b)4 and by looking more closely at how Tzara handled the texts he used (Denogent 2021a, 2023). Although Denogent adds new concepts such as trajectoire into the debate and addresses the medial and cultural transformations that the texts underwent5 before being included in Tzara’s collection, she still largely subscribes to an art-historical conception of primitivism:6 on the one hand, Tzara’s interest in non-European verbal arts was “d’une volonté de décentrement”—in other words, placing oneself at the edge of one’s own culture and provoking it with the products of another culture; on the other hand, it served the “éloge des arts extra occidentaux,” albeit at the cost of the cultural “assimilation” of the translated texts (Denogent 2021a). However, Denogent does not explore the exact provenance of these texts any further—except as Tzara’s sources—nor does she elaborate on whether his use of foreign texts “comme une forme de dépossession ou d’appropriation culturelle” (Denogent 2023) needs to be problematized.7
7In what follows, I will trace the history of the text that became known as “Toto-vaca” with the method of philological provenance research, which combines the concepts of trajectoire and appropriation (Albers/Schmid 2023). Since Tristan Tzara played an important role in this history, my discussion begins with his efforts to interpret the text and the Western circulation influenced by it. It is just as important, however, to retrace the text’s circulation historically—going back, in this case, to the first handwritten record in New Zealand—and to describe the uses and reinterpretations that the text was put through before it reached Tzara.
8As soon as philological provenance research seeks to consider more than just the Western—and that almost always means: written—reception of a text that was originally passed down orally, it encounters practical and epistemic limitations. The second part of my paper presents the results of collaborative research on “Toto-vaca,” before the third part discusses the possibilities and limitations of new provenance-conscious editions of texts such as “Toto-vaca.”
9The fact that “Toto-vaca” is still associated with the name Tristan Tzara—at least in Western editions and literary histories—was by no means foreseeable in 1920, the year of its first publication. The text was published anonymously in the Dada Almanach, without any mention of its publisher or editor. Instead, a sort of signature can be found at the very end of the text, which even refers explicitly to its actual collective authors, the Māori. The question of authorship, one might suppose, should have been settled once and for all. In fact, the ensuing confusion surrounding “Toto-vaca”—not untypical for Dada—only began two years later. In a letter to the Parisian autograph collector Jacques Doucet, Tzara described the origin of the text as follows:
En 1914 déjà, j’avais essayé d’enlever aux mots leur signification, et de les employer pour donner un sens nouveau, global au vers par la tonalité et le contraste auditif. Ces expériences prirent fin avec un poème abstrait ‘Toto-Vaca,’ composé de sons purs inventés par moi et ne contenant aucune allusion à la réalité (Tzara 1975, 643).
Fig. 2. « Toto-vaca », in Dada Almanach. Berlin, Erich Reiss Verlag, 1920.
Collection particulière.
Fig. 3. Letter by Tristan Tzara. Jacques Doucet, October 30, 1922, 3rd sheet.
Paris, Bibliothèque littéraire Jacques Doucet, cote 1032 (3). Photo Suzanne Nagy.
10As accurate as the last sentence is in describing the function of the poem in terms of reception aesthetics—as a Māori-language text, “Toto-vaca” is even more impenetrable than real sound poems, which always unconsciously reflect the language and thus the reality of their creator—his comments are wrong in terms of the history of the poem’s creation. “Toto-vaca” is neither a creation of Tristan Tzara, nor does it consist of made-up sounds devoid of semantic meaning, as a glance at the volume Arbeit und Rhythmus, Tzara’s presumed source, verifies.
11In this work, the economist Karl Bücher explores the connection between human labor and music. He presumes that in all societies, physical labor is accompanied by rhythm and song in order to structure movements and work processes. While a fixed beat enables individuals to perform their work with rhythmic regularity, thereby increasing efficiency, rhythm in collective work serves to coordinate the movements of all participants. As evidence for this thesis, Bücher provides several hundred examples of songs sung during a wide variety of activities. Citing an earlier source, he explains the “Totowaka of the New Zealanders”:
Even though they are of no musical value, these songs nevertheless correspond wonderfully to the purpose for which they are intended, namely to put a number of people into a state by which they can simultaneously apply force while hauling heavy logs or canoes over land (Bücher 1909, 172).
12After further remarks, including on the way it is performed, the text of the song follows: in the left column the “original” Māori wording, with the German translation on the right. It proves that “Toto-vaca” is by no means “un poème abstrait [. . .], composé de sons purs inventés.” The text does contain short onomatopoeic passages such as “Hihi, e! Haha, e!” etc. in the middle section. For the most part, however, the antiphonal song consists of the lead singer giving commands (“Haere i te ara!” / “Keep to the path!”) and words of encouragement (“Kauaea!” / “Cheer up, everyone!”) to the group, coaxing the canoe being transported (“Turuki, turuki!” / “Slide on, slide on!”), and—apparently—making various references to Māori mythology (“Ko te hao-tane.” / “It’s the man-catcher.”). Of course, these culturally specific aspects of the song held no importance for Bücher, nor did its poetic form. His sole interest lay in its function as a work song. As such, it takes on a purely evidentiary purpose in Arbeit und Rhythmus—the “Toto-waka” is meant to be proof of Bücher’s theses.
- 8 On this note Tzara wrote in 1918: “La poésie vit d’abord pour les fonctions de danse, de religion, (...)
13Tzara most likely consulted the extensive volume in the Zentralbibliothek Zurich in 1917 in his search for poetic texts from Africa and Oceania. During this time he compiled a collection of more than a hundred songs and poems, proverbs, and a few prose texts, which he copied from—in the most general sense of the term—ethnographic works, translating some of them into French. Although only a few of these texts were published or performed at Dadaist events, the collection that has survived in his estate attests to his strong fascination with African and Oceanic poetry at the time. The songs in Arbeit und Rhythmus likely intrigued him particularly because of how they were functionally embedded in everyday social reality—a model of literary heteronomy that must have appealed to the Dadaists, given how little impact they felt their own works had on society.8
- 9 A copy of the German translation can be found in Tzara’s estate (Bibliothèque Littéraire Jacques Do (...)
14This context makes it all the more surprising that Tzara’s edition of the song omitted all references to the non-literary purpose and manner in which “Toto-waka” was sung. Not only were the accompanying annotations removed, but also the information about the speaker of each verse, making it impossible to recognize the song as antiphonal. The footnotes and editorial remarks were also omitted, along with the short prelude called “Puwha” or “Hari,” which Bücher describes as a summons for the men to work. All that remained in the Dada Almanach as a result of this “purification” was the raw wording of “Toto-waka”—the Māori version, of course, not the German translation.9 What was added were paratexts common in literature: the title “Toto-vaca”—with a French spelling, albeit no less cryptic—and the signature “Maori,” which can be read as an ethnicization of the author and lends the text an aura of authenticity.
- 10 The idea of a spiritual kinship with non-European or ancient cultures was especially invoked by the (...)
- 11 “Toto-vaca” is thus an excellent illustration of the “irreducible foreignness of oral texts and cor (...)
15It is this signature in particular that suggests that in 1920 Tzara had not yet intended to present the text as his own creation. It is more likely that he had something else in mind: by placing the canoe song alongside other, genuine sound poems, positioning it as an avant-garde sound poem itself, he wanted, first, to emphasize the poetic and musical qualities of the Māori song (its literariness, so to speak, which was only achieved through Tzara’s decontextualization). Second, its appearance in the Almanach was meant to illustrate a kind of artistic or spiritual kinship between modern Dadaist poetry and the supposedly timeless, pre-modern “poem” of a “primitive” non-European culture.10 Thus, the aesthetic revaluation that primitivism scholarship is keen to highlight as a merit of such actions not only applies to the “foreign” texts or objects, but also and especially to the modern works. The “cost,” if you will, of making literature out of “Toto-waka” was that it made a hermeneutic understanding of the text impossible, and most importantly, it almost completely erased the entirety of the cultural context that Bücher had at least partially provided. Treating “Toto-vaca” as a literary ready-made overlooks the crucial difference that—unlike the urinal in Duchamp’s Fountain—the original function of the pseudo sound poem remains hidden.11
16This is even more true of the subsequent appearance of “Toto-vaca” in Eugene Jolas’s transatlantic literary journal transition in 1930 (Jolas 1930, 184). While Tzara had previously claimed authorship only in a private letter in 1922, he now asserted it publicly: with the reference to the Māori removed, the name “Tristan Tzara” appeared above the poem for the first time. For readers unfamiliar with the Māori language, the provenance of the text was thereby no longer discernible. Ironically, “Toto vaca” (now without the hyphen) appeared in transition in a section with the programmatic title “Revolution of the Word.” In his introductory essay, editor Jolas made the case for a creative approach to language unrestricted by grammatical rules and semantic comprehensibility: “The creative writer does not convey information for just any audience. His chief aim is to express himself regardless of the consequences” (Jolas 1930, 143). In these terms, “Toto vaca” might seem a perfect example of the “revolution of the word” that Jolas was calling for, as the poem could scarcely have been more incomprehensible. The text, however, had nothing to do with self-expression: the (alleged) author had merely borrowed “his” words.
17The poem then reappeared under Tzara’s name in a similar context in 1949. As part of a group of sound poems, it was included in the anthology transition workshop (Jolas 1949, 178–79), which brought together selected contributions from Jolas’s journal, which had ceased publication in 1938. This section, titled “Sonorists,” was again introduced by one of Jolas’s programmatic texts.
18Just how widespread the idea had become that “Toto-vaca” was a sound poem written by Tzara is further illustrated by its publication in a second anthology that appeared in 1949 (Iliazd 1949, 25). Although Poésie de mots inconnus—an artist’s book that combined sound poetry with avant-garde graphic art and typography—cited the Dada Almanach as its source, Tzara is once more credited as the author of “Toto-vaca.” One modification from all previous publications was the inclusion of the year 1916, presumably to indicate the year the text was created. By this addition, the text is, once again after the letter to Doucet, biographically situated within Tzara’s literary oeuvre.
Fig. 4. Text by Tristan Tzara illustrated with a color lithograph by Joan Miró, in Iliazd (Ilia Zdanevitch), Poésie de mots inconnus. Paris, L’Imprimerie Union, Roger Lacourière, Mourlot Frères, 1949, folio 25.
© Joan Miró : Poésie de mots inconnus, 1949. Fundació Joan Miró, Barcelona © Successió Miró, 2024.
19After Tzara’s death in 1963, it took several years for “Toto-vaca” to reappear in new, sometimes surprising contexts. One important mediating factor in this regard was the edition of Tzara’s collected works published in 1975. It was in this context that editor Henri Béhar published for the first time the other transcriptions and translations of African and Oceanic texts that Tzara had made around 1917. Presented within this framework, the impact of “Toto-vaca” was naturally different from that in transition or the 1949 anthologies. It now belonged to a group of texts all copied from ethnographic literature. Moreover, the reference “Maori” reappeared once again above the title, making it more difficult to read the work as a sound poem, as had previously been the practice and the intention of Tzara.
20Even though Tzara’s original source for “Toto-vaca” had not yet been found by the mid-1970s, the revelation as to the poem’s origin aroused interest from new quarters. The American writer and anthologist Pierre Joris published Tzara’s complete collection of texts in English translation in alcheringa, the first “magazine of the world’s tribal poetries,” according to its imprint (Tedlock/Rothenberg 1976, 76–114). He reproduced the Māori text of “Toto-vaca” unchanged from Béhar’s edition of Tzara’s works, adding only a reference to the poem’s geographical origin: “New Zealand.” For the alcheringa editors Dennis Tedlock and Jerome Rothenberg, both important figures in the ethnopoetry scene, the universal poetic significance of oral literatures was paramount (cf. Tedlock/Rothenberg 1975, 2–3). The principle of publishing Western and non-Western works on an equal footing served as a conceptual link between their magazine and Tzara’s own collection project, which resulted in the publication of “Toto-vaca” in the Dada Almanach.
- 12 On Rothenberg and Technicians of the Sacred see Déléage 2016.
21Rothenberg was also responsible for the next publication of the text in another volume of ethnopoetry.12 In the expanded edition of the anthology Technicians of the Sacred, he included “Toto Vaca” in the section of texts from Oceania (Rothenberg 1985, 414–16). Extraordinarily, for the first time since 1920, the text was not published under Tzara’s name, but as a presumably authentic example of Māori oral poetry. Although the commentary in the appendix makes it clear that Rothenberg used Tzara’s version of the chant, this reproduction represents the first attempt to once again treat “Toto-vaca” as a Māori text.
22In the new millennium, the text has so far appeared only in new editions of Tzara’s complete collection of African and Oceanic poems (Tzara 2005; Tzara 2011) as well as in a German-language anthology of sound poetry (Scholz/Engeler 2002). The fact that “Toto-vaca” is still closely associated with the Dadaist’s name is evident in the many performative interpretations that can be found on video platforms such as YouTube. They range from traditional readings to thoroughly staged spoken-word performances for multiple voices. One well-known name nearly always appears below the videos: Tristan Tzara.
23Given the continued dominance of his “Toto-vaca” in today’s media, it might seem absurd to suggest that there were other, independent versions of the text in circulation prior to, or perhaps even parallel to, Tzara’s version or his source, Bücher. In any case, no one researching the pseudo-sound poem has yet tried to trace the song’s provenance prior to Bücher, nor has its earlier—perhaps even present-day—meaning for the Māori been discussed anywhere.
24And yet the first link in the chain of transmission preceding Bücher is easily established. The economist himself cites the work from which he took the text of the “Toto-waka” and the corresponding explanation: the second edition of the ethnographic study Traditions and Superstitions of the New Zealanders by Edward Shortland (1856, 162–65), first published in London in 1854. A comparison of the two publications shows that Bücher quotes the wording of the Māori “Toto-waka” to the letter, while carefully translating Shortland’s English version into German. The only notable difference is the title above the text: Shortland’s version reads “He Toto-waka” or, in English, “A Canoe-dragging.”
Fig. 5. “He Toto-waka” in Edward Shortland, Traditions and Superstitions of the New Zealanders. Londres, Longman, Brown, Green, Longmans & Roberts, 1856, pp. 162–63.
25Shortland’s characterization of the text as a purely utilitarian work song was certainly the reason why it later aroused the interest of the economist Bücher. That said, its argumentative role in Traditions and Superstitions is different from that in Arbeit und Rhythmus. Shortland includes the “Toto-waka” at the beginning of a larger selection of Māori poetic texts. According to him, these texts were meant to illustrate the “general state of civilization of the New Zealanders” as well as “their social condition, as it was at the period of our early intercourse with them” (Shortland 1856, 161). On the one hand, his interest is clearly in the documentation of conventional ethnographic evidence; while, on the other hand, an element of advocacy for the Māori is also apparent—an effort to arouse sympathy and recognition in his readers for the indigenous population of New Zealand. For even although Shortland considers “Toto-waka” in particular to be the “most rude and simple” of Māori poetry (Shortland 1856, 162), he highly values their overall poetic and compositional achievements. His highest praise is reserved for the Māori’s oratorical skills, while among the poetic genres, his preference is for the one most closely corresponding to European notions of poetry: the waiata, “the song of love, or hatred, or grief, or any other sentiment with which the poet is inspired” (Shortland 1856, 177).
- 13 The office of the Protector of Aborigines existed in the New Zealand administration beginning in 18 (...)
- 14 In addition to Traditions and Superstitions, in particular The Southern Districts of New Zealand (1 (...)
26In order to better understand Shortland’s intentions, which from today’s perspective seem strangely paternalistic and indicative of a Eurocentric sense of superiority, it is important to consider the historical and biographical background against which his book was written. The descriptions in Traditions and Superstitions were largely based on “the author’s personal observations and inquiries” (Shortland 1856, vi), which the physician had made during his first visit to New Zealand from 1840 to 1846. In a country only recently brought under formal British colonial rule before his arrival, he held various administrative positions, including that of sub-protector of the Aborigines13 at Maketu on the North Island. In this capacity, his duties involved settling disputes between Māori and European settlers, usually over land use rights. As his biographer Marjan Lousberg (2007, 63–68) writes, Shortland encountered the Māori from the beginning with great curiosity and quickly developed a profound knowledge of their language and culture. This knowledge was a prerequisite for fulfilling his duties in the New Zealand colonial administration, yet it was also guided by an ethnographic interest documented in several extensive publications on the Māori.14 Traditions and Superstitions, published only after his return to Britain, should be read in the context of the debates that began around 1846 about New Zealand self-government and Māori political representation in a future parliament (cf. Lousberg 2007, 244–46). Although Shortland never questioned colonization itself or the Christianization of the Māori, he believed that the indigenous inhabitants of New Zealand “must always have a political weight in their own country” (Shortland 1851, vi). His praise of their rhetorical prowess and his efforts to portray them as comparatively “civilized” should therefore be understood as an argument supporting Māori political competence and participation. Even if Shortland uses “Toto-waka” here only as a negative example of Māori poetry, its function as a foil to the other, more highly valued text genres still makes it a relevant part of his overall political-ethnographic argumentation.
- 15 On his approach, Lousberg writes: “Shortland collected sayings, poetry, and songs, by attending Mao (...)
- 16 There under the title “He to-waka” (Shortland 1842, 12–14).
27But where did Shortland get the text of the song and his information about its use and performance? Traditions and Superstitions offers no answers to these questions. Shortland does not explain who, when, or where the text was documented, nor who performed or dictated it. However, as he cites no secondary literature, it can be assumed that Shortland heard the song’s lyrics himself during his travels and wrote them down.15 In fact, a handwritten version of the “Toto-waka” exists within the papers of his estate, held at the Hocken Library in Dunedin, New Zealand.16 It is written down in a notebook containing diary entries from a trip in 1842 along with a number of examples of texts in Māori, including several titled “He to waka,” “He toto waka,” or “He Tōtō Waka.” This finding seems to confirm what Shortland mentions in his publication but illustrates with only one text example: that “Toto-waka” is not one song with a specific text but rather a genre of songs. Shortland was apparently able to note down several of them, even though the notebook contains absolutely no information about the circumstances of their documentation. It is striking that while many of the other “Toto-wakas” appear to have been written down hastily, some of them containing corrections, the text of the example published later looks very neat. Presumably, this was not the first time it was written down, but was rather a clean transcription of earlier notes. Somewhat surprisingly, this handwritten version contains—neither details on the performance of certain verses, as is described later in Traditions and Superstitions, nor is it divided into three parts, as it is in the publication. Could Shortland have simply added this information to the book from memory some ten years after recording the chant? There is something else that casts doubt on the authenticity of his claims: the published text’s middle section contains fourteen verses that do not appear in the version found in the notebook—instead, those were taken from a different “Toto-waka” (Shortland 1842, 4). For the book edition, Shortland seems to have created a synthesis from (at least) two of the texts he recorded. It would appear that the song presented by Karl Bücher as a paradigmatic work song, and characterized by Tristan Tzara first as a Māori poem and later as his own work, never actually existed in the form that has now survived.
Fig. 6 and 7. The first two pages of “He to waka”, in Notebook comprising a journal of a journey to Matamata, Tauranga and Waikato and common-place book A, New Zealand, 1842, Edward Shortland Papers. Hocken Library, University of Otago, Dunedin, New Zealand, MS 22w – MS-0022.
Fig. 8. Page from Shortland’s notebook with other “Toto-waka” examples, including the “lost” verses from Traditions and Superstitions, in Notebook comprising a journal of a journey to Matamata, Tauranga and Waikato and common-place book A, New Zealand, 1842, Edward Shortland Papers. Hocken Library, University of Otago, Dunedin, New Zealand, MS 22w – MS-0022.
- 17 Ruth Finnegan (1988), among others, has shown that the fluidity or stability of oral texts varies a (...)
- 18 In extreme cases, the selection and documentation of an oral utterance by an ethnologist is enough (...)
28Surprising as it may be that “Toto-vaca” is ultimately the work of an ethnographer’s handicraft, one might still have expected that research into the song’s provenance would lead us to more than just one “original text.” After all, for orally created texts—Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o (1998, 103–28) speaks of orature as opposed to literature, which is tied to the medium of writing—the distinction made in philology between an “original” and an “edited” version proves useless. The wording of an oral text is not set until the moment it is spoken, meaning each concrete realization can, in principle, differ from all previous ones.17 It depends on factors as diverse as the speaker’s or singer’s memory, their desire to contribute creatively to the memorized versions, or even their interaction with the audience. Shortland reports that the “Toto-waka” was spontaneously modified according to the demands and progress of transporting the canoe, for example in the event of delays along the way (cf. Shortland 1856, 162). As such, the version written down by an ethnographer essentially represents only a snapshot of the multitude of existing versions of the text (including those long since forgotten, altered, or simply faded away); the documentation of orature is to a considerable extent shaped by chance and arbitrariness.18
29Therefore, the goal of philological provenance research cannot be to find an “original text.”19 Rather, it is about providing critical means to engage with the versions in circulation. In addition to establishing as complete a record of provenance as possible, this includes clarifying the—often violent or asymmetrical—conditions of documentation, identifying any inconsistencies in transmission, and describing the various ways a text has been used in the course of its circulation. The necessary next step is to look for alternative, especially local, chains of transmission that can be contrasted with the often purely Western appropriations. As these local transmissions are not necessarily in written form and are rarely available in European languages, it becomes imperative—at this point at the very latest—to consult local experts who are themselves at home in the culture in question. While such collaborative (provenance) research with source communities has long been practiced in ethnological museums20, opening up the way to reverse the ethnographic gaze in the form of a contre-enquête,21 to my knowledge nothing comparable has been attempted in literary studies. The aim of philological collaboration is not only to provide each other with new approaches to a text, whether they be individual or cultural, but also to multiply perspectives. It is about freeing the appropriated texts from their present confinements by juxtaposing alternative versions and interpretations with those circulating in Western literature.
- 22 An abridged version of the article entitled “Tōtō Waka” was presented in the exhibition “Literature (...)
- 23 Te Kahautu Maxwell’s article on “Tōtō Waka” and its significance for the Māori is due to be publish (...)
30It was for this reason, as well as to learn more about the local circulation and meaning of the “Toto-waka” popularized by Shortland, that Irene Albers, Andreas Schmid, and I contacted Te Kahautu Maxwell, associate professor of Māori Studies at the University of Waikato in New Zealand. In addition to studying the language, culture, and history of his people, Maxwell practices and teaches both the writing of Māori poetry and kapa haka, the traditional performance arts. Prior to our first videoconference, we provided him with our collected material on the Western circulation of “Toto-waka,” of which he was previously unaware. In personal conversations, a written contribution to the exhibition “Literature as Colonial Loot?”22, and a yet unpublished book chapter,23 he then went on to critically examine the European appropriation of “Tōtō Waka.” He describes this as a “misrepresentation and appropriation of Māori literature” and views it as an example of intellectual property theft against which the Māori still have to defend themselves today (cf. Kapa-Kingi 2020; Wilson 2020). Referring to contemporary misappropriations of the song as a sound poem, he writes: “‘Tōtō Waka’ continues to be performed by various groups who have little understanding if any of this creative writing [. . .].” What’s more, Maxwell notes, even Edward Shortland’s earliest transcription and translation—despite his evident expertise in the Māori language—suffers from “his lack of knowledge of the Māori culture and holistic worldview”; he often provides merely a rough, literal translation that ignores “the origin, and the cultural narratives that would contextualize the true meaning and the purpose that this composition was originally intended for.” In particular, Maxwell argues, Shortland failed to capture the religious dimension of “Tōtō Waka.” For example, he translated the fourth verse of the preceding “Pūwhā” (similar versions of which, according to Maxwell, are still used today for the ceremonial launching and naming of a boat) literally as “thunder falling hitherward,” failing to recognize that Whaitiri-mātakataka (“crashing thunder”) also refers to the goddess of thunder. Thunder or lightning during the launching of a new boat would be interpreted as a divine sign expressing the importance of the event. Consequently, Shortland’s translation of the preceding and subsequent verses is incorrect or merely literal. For our exhibition, Maxwell produced two alternative English translations designed to more accurately reflect the cultural meanings conveyed in the “Pūwhā.”
- 24 The first chapter of Traditions and Superstitions, however, does contain two narratives that deal w (...)
- 25 This is consistent with some of the place names Shortland mentions in the same notebook in which he (...)
31Shortland also fails to elaborate on the genealogical information found in the “Pūwhā.” Traditionally, Māori tribes trace their origins back to one or more canoes with which their ancestors once traveled from the mythical land of Hawaiki to New Zealand. Two of these canoes are mentioned in the very first verse, Tainui and Te Arawa.24 According to Maxwell, this means that the text originates from the central part of the North Island, where the descendants of the Tainui and Te Arawa crews still live.25 Therefore, he asserts, they have ownership of the song.
- 26 Best, for his part, cites John White, the author of The Ancient History of the Maori (1887–1890), a (...)
- 27 Another example of the adoption of the “Toto-waka” song into traditional Māori historiography is D. (...)
32Moreover, Te Kahautu Maxwell drew our attention to the fact that the text version published by Shortland has been part of Māori historiography since at least the mid-twentieth century. In Tuwharetoa: The History of the Maori People of the Taupo District (1959), John Te H. Grace describes the history of the Ngati Tuwharetoa, who also trace their origins back to a crew member of the Arawa. Grace’s account, which is based on written records and the stories of elders (cf. Grace 1959, 17), begins with the construction of the Arawa on Hawaiki. After two trees were felled and carved into a magnificent double canoe, the warriors of the tribe gathered to pull the boat out to the sea with ropes. At this point, the chief stepped forward and began a song, subsequently quoted by Grace, which is identical to Shortland’s “Toto-waka” apart from minor differences and the absence of the middle section (Grace 1959, 32–33). As the source of the text, Grace cites The Maori Canoe (1925) by New Zealand ethnologist Elsdon Best, who quotes Shortland’s version in full as an example of a canoe-hauling chant (Best 1976, 109–10)26; but Grace also refers to Te Kapooterangi, one of his oral informants—which could explain the textual discrepancies between Shortland and Best.27
Fig. 9. Drawing by A. H. Messenger in Elsdon Best, The Maori Canoe. Wellington, Dominion Museum, 1925, p. 64.
Collection particulière.
33Through interviews with experts and elders from various Māori groups, Maxwell also learned of other contemporary uses of “Tōtō Waka.” For example, professional orators employ the song (or an abridged version of it) to warm up in preparation for their appearances and to gather listeners to the marae, the community’s ceremonial square, creating the atmosphere for the debate to come. By comparing the assembled people to the “giant trees of the great forests,” a symbolic connection is made to the song’s original purpose.
34Maxwell’s research demonstrates that “Tōtō Waka” has not only existed in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries as the purported sound poem of a European Dadaist, but has also continued to circulate in the country of its origin. Here, it has been recited, adapted, and interpreted, all of which has taken place completely independently of Tzara’s appropriation and subsequent publications—mirroring, as it were, the European failure to notice the Māori circulation of the text. Our collaboration with Te Kahautu Maxwell brought together these previously unconnected trajectories, at least at certain points. The exchange of textual versions and analytical approaches offered him (and potentially other interested Māori) the opportunity to respond to the Western uses of “Tōtō Waka,” be that through commentary, correcting transcriptions and translations, or by writing back (cf. Thieme 2002) and thereby subverting the European appropriation of the text. All of this can contribute to dismantling the now canonical, effectively “frozen” allochronic28 reception of the text in Europe—as a primitivist sound poem, as a Tzara work, as a literary ready-made—and countering it with alternative, local perspectives.
35Decentering the versions of the text in circulation on the literary market and breaking them out of their philological “ossification” should also be the goal of future literary editions that seek to anthologize orature. Given the great variety of publications of Tzara’s “Toto-vaca” over the past 105 years, what would a contemporary edition of this text look like that makes its provenance visible? What version(s) of the text should it present? How should the text be framed, i.e., surrounded by what kinds of paratexts? What information should be provided about the edited text? And, fundamentally, to whom should such an edition be addressed?
- 29 The tendency toward decontextualization also basically includes making the authors or narrators ano (...)
36As observed previously, past editorial practices have generally privileged European editors over the indigenous “authors.” To this day, “Toto-vaca” is still perceived more as a poem by Tristan Tzara than as what it actually is: a Māori song appropriated by Tristan Tzara. Moreover, one can observe how the text’s origins and its original contexts were gradually erased with each successive translocation and republication—until the text could finally appear in avant-garde journals and literary anthologies as an autonomous, largely decontextualized work of art. While Shortland and Bücher did at least supply some information about the meaning of “Tōtō Waka” for the Māori, once Tzara had “purified” the text for its 1930 publication in transition, it could be read as nothing more than a semantically meaningless sound poem.29 Denogent (2023, 183) rightly points out that later editors further decontextualized Tzara’s collection of texts and transformed them into literature by choosing not to publish bibliographical references and other traces of his work found in the manuscripts. Only through this decontextualization did the bundle of more or less heavily edited transcriptions appear as a coherent collection of “poems.” The collection’s uniform presentation was aided not least by the posthumous translation of all the German texts into French that Tzara had left behind—constituting around two thirds of the collection—including Tzara’s German version of “Toto-vaca” (e.g. Tzara 1975, 488–89).
- 30 Such an edition of Tzara’s collection of texts is currently being prepared and is expected to be pu (...)
37Insofar as a new critical edition30 is concerned only with the text versions created by Tzara, it should therefore present the wording of the manuscripts and typescripts in their respective languages. This also necessitates publishing the previously unpublished working notes in the manuscripts to reveal the collection’s fragmentary and work-in-progress nature, which has been obscured in previous editions. For our case study, this would require editing not only the Māori-language “Toto-vaca” from the Dada Almanach, but also the typewritten version prepared for publication in German and the aborted French translation, including Tzara’s handwritten changes and annotations found therein.
Fig. 10. Partial translation of the poem “Toto-waca” by Tristan Tzara.
Paris, Bibliothèque littéraire Jacques Doucet, Fonds Tzara, cote TZR 568. Photo Suzanne Nagy.
38It would seem to me, however, that providing a reliable Tzara text is just as important as juxtaposing his versions with the ethnographic sources from which they derive. Such a synoptic edition would not only enable a direct comparison of the texts and illustrate how the “liberation” from their earlier publication contexts influenced their reception. By presenting the sources, it could also restore—at least partially—the contexts of the earlier oratures that were lost in the process of transmission. As limited, imprecise, or outdated as the ethnographic accounts are in many cases, they still contain clues to the meanings that the songs and other texts once had in their places of documentation. Moreover, presenting the sources provides an opportunity to identify the names of the creators, most of whom were later kept anonymous, and to credit them for their texts. Where this is not possible, as with “Tōtō Waka,” publishing the ethnographic source would at least pave the way for further research—including, crucially, collaborative research. What a new edition, as outlined here, cannot achieve is the decentering of the heretofore dominant Western perspectives on the texts. That requires local counter-investigations and other forms of re-appropriation by the respective source communities themselves; for such endeavors, a provenance-conscious edition, however, could provide the textual basis.