A novel by Hugo Ball, translated by Catherine Schelbert

Flametti, or the dandyism of the poor is a dark satirical comedy about an impoverished vaudeville company and the rise and fall of its director Max Flametti, a figure of tragic proportions entangled in his inescapable self. It is also the story of the allure of the “Fuchsweide, the concert and entertainment quarter of the off-beat, fun-loving crowd,” which is in danger of being “cleansed” by the police. This deceptively straightforward, everyman tale eloquently renders the complex, conflicted, non-professionalized, messy, forgotten humus of a vibrant urban scene that prevailed in Zurich over a hundred years ago.

Hugo Ball wrote his hilarious, provocative, largely overlooked, semi-autobiographical novel in 1916, the same year he, Emmy Hennings, Tristan Tzara, and others founded Cabaret Voltaire in Zurich. Their artist-run nightclub existed for less than a year and gave birth to Dada as a form of artistic protest against the brutality of the First World War raging in Europe. They spread their ideas in absurd, grotesque performances, sound poetry, and manifestos. It is from this cultural and political context that the novel Flamettiemerged.

Content warning: The novel contains historical slang including cultural, racist, and sexist stereotyping.

Catherine Schelbert’s translation of Flametti oder Vom Dandysmus der Armen, the first-ever in English, was published by Wakefield Press in 2014 and awarded the Helen & Kurt Wolff Translation Prize in 2015.