Month: April 2019

Blazing Star Library

William B. Greene to D. B. Whittier, September 4, 1873

April 30, 2019 Shawn P. Wilbur
[one_third padding=”0 10px 0 0px”] “In 1838 or 1839, or thereabouts, I met schoolmaster [Joshua] Coffin on a Mississippi steamboat, near Baton Rouge. … I was on the boat as a military man, and in uniform.” [/one_third][two_third_last padding=”0 0px 0 10px”] Turn we now to the maternal ancestry of Whittier. In 1873 the poet wrote to Mr. D. B. Whittier, of Boston, as follows:— “My mother was a descendant of Christopher Hussey, of Hampton, N. H., who married a daughter of Rev. Stephen Bachelor, the first minister of that town. ”Daniel Webster traces his ancestry to the same pair, so […]
Proudhon Library

PROJECT: Proudhon’s Essays in Popular Philosophy

April 28, 2019 Shawn P. Wilbur
The centerpiece of Proudhon’s mature work is almost certainly the 1860 second edition, in six volumes, of his longest published work: Of Justice in the Revolution and in the Church. First published in 1858, with the subtitle “New Principles of Practical Philosophy,” it was substantially revised and expanded for the new edition, which was presented as a series of “essais d’une philosophie populaire” — and we should probably allow the French term essai its full range of possible meanings: essay, but also trial, attempt, etc., to capture the experimental element in Proudhon’s work. The twelve studies in the work on […]
Proudhon Library

Notes on “What is Property?” (2019)

April 20, 2019 Shawn P. Wilbur
Commentary on What is Property? These notes are from a group reading of the book on Reddit. While fragmentary, they do raise a number of questions that I haven’t had a chance to raise elsewhere. If nothing else, I’m archiving them to use in a future revision of Tucker’s translation. CHAPTER ONE: Think of this work specifically as a product of the French June Monarchy and as a prize essay, written as a kind of “open letter” to a panel of judges at the academy where he had been studying. It actually became a regular feature of many of Proudhon’s […]
Proudhon Library

P.-J. Proudhon, “Le droit au travail et le droit de propriété” (1848)

April 16, 2019 Shawn P. Wilbur
[one_third padding=”0 10px 0 0px”][/one_third][two_third_last padding=”0 0px 0 10px”] LE DROIT AU TRAVAIL ET LE DR0IT DE PROPRIÉTÉ PAR P. J. PROUDHON REPRÉSENTANT DU PEUPLE PARIS 1848 —- PROLOGUE Il est deux points sur lesquels j’ai besoin d’édifier mes lecteurs, et qui motivent cette publication. 1° Je n’ai pas pris la parole sur le droit au travail, lors de la discussion du préambule de la Constitution, d’abord parce que le droit au travail, tel qu’il m’est donné de le comprendre, étant repoussé par tout le monde, par la gauche révolutionnaire comme par la droite conservatrice, je n’avais rien de mieux […]
Sylvain Maréchal

Sylvain Maréchal: Pastoral Simplicity and Patriarchal Government

April 15, 2019 Shawn P. Wilbur
SYLVAIN MARÉCHAL TRANSLATIONS: Dieu et les prêtres, Fragments d’un poème moral sur Dieu (1780) Le livre de tous les ages: ou, Le Pibrac moderne; quatrains moraux (1781) L’Âge d’Or (1782) Livre échappé au déluge (1784) Apologues modernes, à l’usage d’un dauphin (1788) Dame Nature à la barre de l’Assemblée nationale (1791) Jugement dernier des rois (théâtre, 1793) Corrective à la révolution (1793) Culte et lois d’une société d’hommes sans Dieu (1798) Pensées libres sur les prêtres (1798) Manifeste des Égaux (1801) Projet d’une loi portant défense d’apprendre à lire aux femmes (1801) De la Vertu (1807) I’ve found myself perhaps […]
Working Translations

Sylvain Marechal, “A Book Escaped from the Deluge” (1784)

April 15, 2019 Shawn P. Wilbur
A BOOK ESCAPED FROM THE DELUGE, OR, NEWLY DISCOVERED PSALMS; Composed in the primitive language BY S. AR-LAMECH, Of the Family of Noah the Patriarch; TRANSLATED INTO FRENCH BY P. LAHCERAM, Parisipolitan. —– AT SIRAP Or at PARIS. [TRANSLATION IN PROGRESS] […] A BOOK ESCAPED FROM THE DELUGE. PSAUME I. Le Psalmiste annonce sa mission, & prédit les suites qu’elle aura. Dieu de Vérité ! délie ma langue ; je veux t’annoncer aux hommes. Qu’ils ne disent pas de moi : l’Apôtre de la Vérité bégaye. A l’âge où le Christ prêche sur la montagne ; longtemps avant lui, humble Disciple du plus modeste […]
Working Translations

Sylvain Maréchal, “The Golden Age” (1782)

April 13, 2019 Shawn P. Wilbur
The Golden Age consists of roughly thirty “pastoral tales,” touching on subjects that will be familiar to readers of almost any of Maréchal’s work. I’ve begun at the end of the collection, with “The Just Man,” and will add others as time allows. On dit qu’il fut un Temps appelle l’âge d’or, Où l’on sacrifioit à la Vérité nue, Où marchoit d’un pas sûr l’Innocence ingénue : Pour les cœurs Vertueux ce Temps existe encore. They say there was a Time called the Golden Age, When sacrifices were made to the naked Truth, When artless Innocence walked with a sure step: […]
Working Translations

Sylvain Maréchal, “Modern Apologues for the Use of the Dauphin” (1788)

April 11, 2019 Shawn P. Wilbur
[one_third padding=”0 10px 0 0px”] When available, parallel French/English texts are linked below the lesson. Related Texts: The Last Judgment of Kings (1793) Posts with commentary: “The Desert Island“ Sylvain Maréchal anticipates the “general strike”? [/one_third][two_third_last padding=”0 0px 0 10px”] MODERN APOLOGUES, FOR THE USE OF THE DAUPHIN. First Lessons for the Elder Son of a King. —– FIRST LESSON. PROMETHEUS. Thus far, the mythologists have misreported the allegorical history of Prometheus. Here are the facts: that ingenious artist of antiquity, having kneaded clay in water, made from it several figures of men, which he animated with the elemental fire. […]
Working Translations

Sylvain Maréchal anticipates the “general strike”?

April 11, 2019 Shawn P. Wilbur
In an article on “Precursors of Anarchism” in the Encyclopédie Anarchiste, E. Armand gave an account of the career of Maréchal, including the following remarks: [one_half padding=”0 10px 0 0px”] En 1788, ses Apologues modernes à l’usage du dauphin. C’est là que se trouve l’histoire du roi qui, à la suite d’un cataclysme, renvoie chacun de ses sujets chez lui, en prescrivant que, désormais, chaque père de famille sera roi dans son foyer. C’est là que se trouve énoncé le principe de la Grève générale, comme moyen d’instaurer une société où la Terre est propriété commune de tous ses habitants, […]
drama

Sylvain Maréchal, “The Last Judgment of Kings” (1793)

April 5, 2019 Shawn P. Wilbur
No, no, no! we want no more prayers from a priest: the God of the sans-culottes is liberty, it is equality, it is fraternity! You do not know and you have never known those gods. Go instead and exorcise the volcano which must soon punish you and avenge us. Crowned monsters! You should each have died a thousand deaths on the scaffold: but where could we have found the executions who would consent to soil their hands with your vile, corrupted blood? We abandon you to your remorse, or rather to your helpless rage.

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