A Review of 4 Dada Suicides Part Four – An Editor of Do Not Submit
December 23, 2025
Part Four: Jacques Vaché
Jacques Vaché was born September 7, 1895 in Lorient, France and died by his own hand January 6, 1919. He was conscripted into the French army in 1914 and served as an artilleryman until he was wounded. He then served as an English interpreter.
While Vaché was recovering from shrapnel wounds he met André Breton, who was a medical student serving as a nurse. Vaché became Breton’s avant-garde “mentor,” introducing him to concepts such as “inner desertion,” and life’s inherent inutilité théâtrale (theatrical uselessness).
Vaché was an uninvolved soldier playing at war… shaped by chaos, confusion, and carnage…a game that allows him to dress up in uniforms within the roles delineated by military ranks…
Vaché maintained a meticulous and polished look in his horizon blue single-breasted tunic, with stand-up collar and five front buttons; matching horizontal breaches tucked into boots; a red peaked cap with visor or Adrian helmet for shrapnel; ankle boots with leather leg wraps wound from ankle to knee; a whole host of accessories and insignia: a long wool overcoat, crossed cannon insignia on his collars, etc.; with standard issue gas mask and bayonet.
Vaché saw reality itself as a game; it was all a question of style.
Conscripted and thrust into the trenches, his “comatose apathy” allowed him to perform his “disservice with diligence,” gamifying his role as cannon fodder. His wartime letters observed the ridiculous performance of a grotesque costume party.
Described as “the most elegant terrorist of the new persuasion,” his vapidness was not a biproduct of his dissociative games but the deliberate end goal. Vaché prioritized stylistic detachment over substantive engagement. Nonchalance masquerading as profundity. Possibly more madness than mastery. Even a shallow evasion. But never a means to an end.
Vaché grew tired of the games and overdosed on opium in 1919. His surviving output is minimal. War Letters, a few drawings and fragmentary texts were published posthumously.