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Contr’un collections 6 & 7

September 8, 2017 Shawn P. Wilbur

Corvus Editions made an appearance at the Seattle Anarchist Book Fair last month, and among the new titles were two new collections from the Contr’un blog: Contr’un 6: “God and the State” and the Question of “Legitimate” Authority Contr’un 7: Anarchy and Democracy They are now available online.

Joseph Déjacque, “Scandal” (1858)

September 4, 2017 Shawn P. Wilbur

I have this nagging fear that perhaps readers of the blog have not been reading the translations by Joseph Déjacque. It’s hard for me to imagine any other reason for the failure of at least a minor Déjacque cult emerging. His work strikes me as an exciting amalgamation of revolutionary fervor and socialist social science, with literary qualities which range from the heights to the depths in entirely entertaining ways. This essay is from Le Libertaire No. 4 (August 2, 1858), and is a sort of explanation for his approach to anarchist propaganda. Along the way it includes one of […]

Joseph Déjacque, “The Universal Circulus” (1858)

September 4, 2017 Shawn P. Wilbur

[This remarkable bit of libertarian philosophy by Joseph Déjacque poses all sorts of difficulties for the modern reader, not the least of which is it borrowings from, and reworkings of, the works of Charles Fourier and Pierre Leroux. And there are places where it ha been necessary to translate things rather literally, since terms are used suggestively, according to the established uses of none of the writers or schools that they were drawn from. There are also a couple of times when Déjacque’s enthusiasm clearly ran away with the syntax: where catalogs of conditionals come to abrupt stops, without ever […]

Voltairine De Cleyre, “Mary Wollstonecraft—The Apostle of Woman’s Freedom” (1893)

August 24, 2017 Shawn P. Wilbur

For the Boston Investigator. MARY WOLLSTONECRAFT—THE APOSTLE OF WOMAN’S FREEDOM. — AN ADDRESS Delivered at the International Congress of Freethinkers at Chicago. — By Voltairine de Cleyre. — “Quietly does the clear light, shining day after day, refute the ignorant surmise, or malicious tale, which has thrown dirt on a pure character.”—[Mary Wolstonecraft’s “Vindication of the Rights of Woman,” p. 143, Humboldt Library Edition. — To touch with the commanding fire of the resurrection the crumbling bones of one who rots these hundred years; to call from our her grave in Bournmouth churchyard the form stricken from the passion and […]

Voltairine De Cleyre, “Mary Wollstonecraft” (1894)

August 20, 2017 Shawn P. Wilbur

For the Boston Investigator. MARY WOLLSTONECRAFT. Mr. Editor:—Yourself and readers will be interested to learn that the plan of establishing a “female saint’s day” among freethinkers, by commemorating the birth of Mary Wollstonecraft, proposed by myself at the international congress of freethinkers, last October, has taken practical form in this city. The Ladies’ Liberal League, of Philadelphia, (which is not, by the way, an auxiliary of the Friendship Liberal League, as state by Mr. Charlesworth in a communication last fall, and I correct the error in the interest of both societies, the former being a much more radical group than […]

Voltairine De Cleyre, “Letter from Voltairine De Cleyre” (1891)

August 19, 2017 Shawn P. Wilbur

For the Boston Investigator. LETTER FROM VOLTAIRINE DE CLEYRE. Mr. Editor:—It is so long since I made my bow to the Investigator that I feel somewhat as if an introduction were necessary in order that my friends my recognize me. I went out to the land of reputed grasshoppers and hot winds something like a year ago, to a small retreat among the Kansas prairies called Enterprise, and there resigned myself to poetry in the shape of exquisite sunsets, thrice golden moons and brilliant starts, the vast solemnity of the great waving seas of grass, and the extremely prosaic business […]

Voltairine De Cleyre, “Washington Sights and Sounds” (1890)

August 19, 2017 Shawn P. Wilbur

For the Boston Investigator. WASHINGTON SIGHTS AND SOUNDS. Mr. Editor:—When Charles Dickens visited us in 1842, he wrote that Washington was rather a city that was “going to be,” than an accomplished fact. Choosing between this opinion and that of a personal friend who declares it is the only city in the United States fit to live in, I should award the palm to Dickens. Washington is still a largely “going to be” sort of place, a queer mixture of metropolitan airs and country village smells. I had heard so much of its magnificent distances that I was prepared to […]

Voltairine de Cleyre, “Are they Fallen?” (1902)

August 19, 2017 Shawn P. Wilbur

Are They Fallen? I am not sure that the wisest policy for me, having said my say on the subject of fallen women, would not be to display a “masterly inactivity.” I have little taste for controversy, and generally feel that when one has made a strong statement of a case (at least as strong as the writer’s ability permits) the best thing to do is to let others do the arguing. However, as I feel that the point that I am urging in this discussion is, though the curious bias which the continuously negating attitude gives to the human […]

Emma Goldman, “Walt Whitman” (incomplete manuscript)

August 18, 2017 Shawn P. Wilbur

[two_third padding=”0 10px 0 0px”] WALT WHITMAN Last summer I listened to the reading of a very fine paper on Walt Whitman, at the Public Library of the city. I was struck by what seem[ed] to me a futile attempt on the part of some of the men who participated in the discussion to contrast Walt Whitman with some European poets. Not that Whitman was the greatest of all times or all nations. I even think some of his biographers have rendered the poet of Leaves of Grass scant services when they proclaimed him greater than Homer and Socrates. The […]

L. M. S., “A Word on Martyrs’ Mistakes,” (1888)

August 15, 2017 Shawn P. Wilbur

A WORD ON MARTYRS’ MISTAKES. — A Woman’s Comment on a Man’s Sentimentality and Long-Range Sympathy. There should be no more of mere sentiment and gush concerning the martyrdom of our comrades from writers and speakers who claim to be fighting for freedom and justice. Either they believe in their innocence and the injustice of their sentences or they do not, and beautiful laudations and flowery eulogies do not set well with paltry excuses for their “mistakes” or vague suggestions that justice would have been better attained if their punishment had been a little less severe. What advantage to our […]