
Emmy Hennings on stage as “truth-speaking” spider, 1915 [+]
(mention: Nachlass Hugo Ball und Emmy Hennings / Robert Walser-Stiftung Zurich)Hennings was then working with the Maxim vaudeville troupe in Zürich. In her diary, she described a stint as the Greek mythological figure Arachne who was to offer “Eternal Truth, only 20 centimes” :
Eternal Truth comes from me of course and I find it comical. And that it should come so cheap. As if what we demand were not worth much. A theatre death, a real variety death would be the right thing for me. One would really like to be the truth, not only appear to be it, and if I were to be found entangled in my net I would be the truth. Masked to the very last. […] We believe in the proven truth of illusion.
Photo and quote from : Ruth Hemus, Dada’s Women (Yale University Press – New Haven & London, 2009)