
Month: April 2019






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

Sylvain Maréchal, “The Golden Age” (1782)
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 […]


Sylvain Maréchal anticipates the “general strike”?
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: These are familiar elements in Maréchal’s works, so perhaps there […]

Sylvain Maréchal, “The Last Judgment of Kings” (1793)
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. […]