Month: August 2018

Working Translations

Maurice Imbard, “O Anarchy!!!” (1928)

August 18, 2018 Shawn P. Wilbur
Ah! that word anarchy appeared to me for a long time, in the days of my youth, as a sort of myth.

The change that has occurred in my mindset has not changed my opinion on the grandeur of the word and the beauty of the thing. My aim is still and always to work, to struggle, to hasten the coming of the anarchist life—a life without authority, without obligation, without brutality; a gentle, tolerant, normal, natural life, where people will learn to understand one another.

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poetry

Eugène Bizeau, “Anarchist Individualist Initiation” (1924)

August 17, 2018 Shawn P. Wilbur
My dear Armand, your book is a book of ideas, which is why those who wish to reign by the sword or by the power of their fists do not value it. I, preserving the ideal of my younger years, I like its dawn-air, which breaks as if to illuminate the helpless vessels that the surf carries off … And, fleeing the ebb of human stupidity, endlessly multiplied, how many sailors lost on the granite rocks, how many tormented minds and hearts full of sorrow, will one day to “put in at the port,” if by you aid their “compass” once again finds the north!

[…]

Working Translations

Albert Soubervielle, “Hope” (1924)

August 15, 2018 Shawn P. Wilbur
[one_half padding=”0 10px 0 0px”] ESPOIR Nous nous berçons — ou parfois nous nous grisons — de mots trompeurs qui ne représentent que de vagues abstractions. Nous prétendons ainsi que l’espérance est notre soutien, sinon notre guide, dans l’âpre lutte que nous menons au cours de notre éphémère existence. Et ceux-là mêmes qui considèrent l’espérance comme une chimère ne sont parfois que des désabusés qui, après maints espoirs déçus, doutent de tout et d’eux-mêmes. Mais, à part ces désenchantés de la vie, tous les êtres humains ne voient-ils pas en l’espérance le phare lumineux qui les guide et vers lequel […]
progress reports

Gaston Leval, “The Path of Anarchism” (1924)

August 15, 2018 Shawn P. Wilbur
[one_half padding=”0 10px 0 0px”] Le chemin de l’anarchisme L’ami Content se livre à la révision de certaines questions concernant l’anarchisme. L’état plutôt languissant de notre mouvement lui inspire une foule de réflexions sur l’orientation qu’il faut lui imprimer, et il les expose avec sincérité, soucieux de rendre service à la diffusion et au triomphe die nos idées, et par conséquent, à la cause de tous les hommes. Cet état d’inquiétude dans lequel il se trouve est partagé sans doute par bien des camarades, et je suis un de ceux-là. Mais, précisément, je suis arrivé, quant à ce que l’intérêt […]
progress reports

Claude Journet, “Anarchy and the Anarchists” (1924)

August 14, 2018 Shawn P. Wilbur
[one_half padding=”0 10px 0 0px”] L’Anarchie et les Anarchistes L’idéal anarchiste n’est certes pas nouveau ; mais combien d’individus osèrent s’en réclamer ? Il fut d’ailleurs toujours dangereux de prendre cette étiquette. Les précurseurs, par l’exemple, puis les propagandistes, par la parole et l’écrit, tentèrent de diffuser les nobles vérités de cette philosophie réellement humaine : l’anarchie. Mais ces hommes ne furent jamais appréciés à leur juste valeur ; ils furent, comme tous les sincères, victimes de la haine aveugle de la foule. Mais malgré les calomnies et les persécutions, l’Idée survécût, toujours plus vivace en sa constante lutte contre l’autorité. En certaine période—que […]
Featured articles

J. K. Ingalls, “Reminiscences of an Octogenarian” (1897)

August 14, 2018 Shawn P. Wilbur
These Reminiscences, which largely refer to parties no longer dwellers of our sphere, are mainly the personal recollections of the author, who has never kept any regular diary. Where periodicals and books have been referred to, the memory has been relieved; but otherwise, it has been wholly relied upon. The motive leading to their publication, has been the request of friends, to have them put in readable form; but in addition to that, there are certain ideas I desired to put before the world in as familiar a form as possible.

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Featured Projects

PROJECT: The Tools in the Tradition

August 14, 2018 Shawn P. Wilbur
[one_third padding=”0 10px 0 0px”][/one_third][two_third_last padding=”0 0px 0 10px”] In my years as a university instructor, I assembled a number of documents on research skills for my students. And I’ve been considering putting together something similar, bit specifically adapted for to anarchist topics, for the use of would-be scholars with no institutional support or access. Over the last decade, I’ve worked through an awful lot of the problems likely to be faced by independent scholars trying to work at a high level without the tools that students and university-based scholars can often take for granted. And perhaps some of what […]
From the Archives

Joshua King Ingalls among the Universalists (1840–1847)

August 13, 2018 Shawn P. Wilbur
[one_third padding=”0 10px 0 0px”] [IN-PROGRESS] For the early reformers who would eventually find their way in the anarchistic camp, the path was often long and winding. For Joshua King Ingalls, the journey brought him into contact with nearly all of the reform movements of his era, but the beginning stages were in the Universalist milieu, where he began to develop his ideas about reform—and where he met the group of like-minded reformers with whom he would collaborate through much of his career. These pages will collect information about Ingalls’ career as a universalist minister, along with the sermons, speeches […]
From the Archives

Joshua King Ingalls in “The Univercœlum” (1847–1849)

August 13, 2018 Shawn P. Wilbur
[two_third padding=”0 10px 0 0px”] ☞ An interesting article, entitled “A Religion of Progress,” from J. K. Ingalls, (one of the editors of this paper) is in type, but is unavoidably, with several other articles, crowded out. It will be given in our next number. ⁂ Univercœlum and Spiritual Philosopher 1 no. 1 (December 4, 1847): 16. A RELIGION OF PROGRESS. “Reform, for the kingdom of Heaven is at hand.”—Jesus. Like all earthly forms, establishments of religion are subject to constant change; and their number and variances should be accounted for, upon the ground of a gradual development of the […]
mutualism

“The Mutualist” (1826)

August 11, 2018 Shawn P. Wilbur
[one_third padding=”0 10px 0 0px”] What Mutualism Was: An Incomplete History of Mutualist Tendencies What Mutualism Was: Coming to Terms with Our Past ⁂ The Mutualist—at once the name of the tract and its author—appeared in five installments, starting in the summer of 1826. The first 24 Remarks are practical in nature and, while the author is definitely critical of the New Harmony settlement and elements, they are presented in a much more conciliatory tone than those written some months later, after criticism of the first three installments had been published in the Gazette. The later Remarks focus on the […]