Flight Out of Time to the ‘Fundamental’ [zum Grunde]: Hugo Ball’s Diaries (1910-1921

Hugo Ball’s "Flight Out of Time" (published in 1927) offers a revised account of the personal diaries the author kept for the years 1910-21. Although the book provides one of the most relevant documents on the birth of the Dada movement in 1916, Hugo Ball’s aim was to outline his own shift from a commitment to an activist aesthetic, deeply indebted to Nietzsches Kulturkritik, towards a new awareness of spiritual authenticity based on a mystical and ascetic interpretation of Catholicism. As a result of the adoption of the diary format, the book is very closely connected to the issues of time and temporality. Ball, in fact, does not dwell on personal and background details; his aim is to provide a depiction of the “unity” of his life and intellectual struggles, as he is convinced that