Blog - Page 148 of 286 - The Libertarian Labyrinth

Louise Michel, “The Claque-Dents”

July 4, 2016 Shawn P. Wilbur

THE CLAQUE-DENTS [ Claque-dents: the chatter of teeth in unheated rooms, the wretches who live there, the hovels and brothels where they live, the vampires in human guise who keep them there in order to drain the life from them, the clank of gold and, finally, the gnashing of teeth in the death throes. The word itself chatters. How would we choose just one meaning, when all of these, together with the event they signal—the final exhaustion of the Old World—are so obviously the composite protagonist of Louise Michel’s tale? ] [one_half padding=”0 10px 0 0px”] The claque-dents: these are the death […]

New home for Working Translations

July 4, 2016 Shawn P. Wilbur

Most of my old blogs have been integrated into the new Libertarian Labyrinth site over the last couple of years, but my translations have remained scattered in various places. I’m finally starting to remedy that situation, with the launch of a new Working Translations site, attached to the Labyrinth archive. The Index page there contains a recently updated list of translations archived throughout the Labyrinth, and the blog itself features side-by-side dual-language presentations of selected works. Gradually, I’ll revise everything and pair it with the text in the original language. So if you are here and not there, you are […]

An appealing, but apocryphal tale

July 1, 2016 Shawn P. Wilbur

“So you see those fellows yonder?” said a man to me in a Russian village in 1871, pointing to a group of sallow, bearded, low-browed peasants, who were slouching past in their ragged frocks of sheepskin. “These are the men who carry all Russia on their backs, and the moment they find out how much they have to bear, down we all go together; but they endure it because they don’t know how ill off they are!” Few more striking truths have ever been uttered, and the utterer could hardly be accused of speaking without experience, for he was no […]

The Anti-Anarchist Bomb-proof Clockwork Substitute Ruler (1898)

June 30, 2016 Shawn P. Wilbur

Punch (October 29, 1898): 203. IN the gallery of the Fine-Art Society may be seen a number of drawings made in Spain by Mr. E. George, the able architectural etcher and draughtsman. As might be anticipated, they are almost entirely architectural. They are brilliant and broad, limpid in their tones and pure in their tints, but somewhat hard and over-defined even for sunlit Spain. The most artistic of them seem to be No. 10, ‘The City Gate, Salamanca’; ‘A Convent, Salamanca’ (17); ‘San Pedro, and Old Houses, Vitoria’ (21); and ‘The Golden Tower, Seville ’ (44). In the same place […]

One for the road?

June 29, 2016 Shawn P. Wilbur

I’m contemplating a research “tour” in the fall, gathering up some missing pieces for various current projects and surveying the possibilities for some longer-term work. By that time, I will have at least Anarchy and the Sex Question to promote—and my publisher would certainly like me to take the opportunity. But as I have been thinking about what I really have to offer in the way of presentations that might themselves be taken out on tour, it strikes me that telling folks about what Emma Goldman is going to tell them in a book we hope they’ll buy might not […]

The Three Lives of “God and the State”

June 29, 2016 Shawn P. Wilbur

I have been thinking about “God and the State” in terms of a choice between two texts: the fragment, “God and the State,” and the incomplete work from which it was drawn, “The Knouto-Germanic Empire and the Social Revolution.” This is the choice proposed by James Guillaume, when he suggested that the publication of the latter should be the occasion for no longer publishing in the former. But, if Guillaume’s suspicions were correct and Reclus and Cafiero knew what they were publishing, and engaged in a bit of “literary artifice” when they presented it as a fragment, what we have […]

Leon de Tinseau, “A Beautiful Nihilist” (fiction, 1892)

June 27, 2016 A Beautiful Nihilist

A BEAUTIFUL NIHILIST. From the French of Leon de Tinseau; V.E.T., Chateau Bange, Bordeaux. In 187-, somewhat before the tragic death of the least Czar, one of the most notable men of the Russian Empire was Prince Michael ——-, whose family name, an illustrious one, reasons of the highest importance forbid our giving. During a visit to France after the war, while at one of the receptions of the Princesse Lise, he met that superb daughter of General de Contremont, whom the Parisian world, springing to life again from its ashes, knew already as “la belle Madeleine,” a girl as […]

Gesya Gelfman (1852-1882)

June 27, 2016 A Beautiful Nihilist

[aka Jessy Helfman, Hessy Helfman, Hesse Helfman, Hesia Helfman] Gesya Gelfman at Wikipedia “A Horrible Story” (1881) JESSY HELFMAN, THE HUMBLE MARTYR [From Stepniak’s Underground Russia] There are unknown heroines, obscure toilers, who offer up everything upon the altar of their cause, without asking anything for themselves. They assume the most ungrateful parts; sacrifice themselves for the merest trifles; for lending their names to the correspondence of others; for sheltering a man, often unknown to them; for delivering a parcel without knowing what it contains. Poets do not dedicate verses to them; history will not inscribe their names upon its […]

Cruel Punishments (Goukoffski, 1979)

June 26, 2016 A Beautiful Nihilist

The St. Petersburg correspondent of the Daily Telegraph says that official details now published confirm the astonishment which has been felt at the terrible severity of the sentences on the Odessa political convicts. The official publication states that all the 28 prisoners were found guilty of having belonged to an illegal society, which called itself the Social Revolutionary party. No further accusation was brought against Lissogoub, a gentleman aged 29, who had already been hanged; against Bolomeze, aged l8, condemned to 20 years’ hard labour; against the lady Levandovski, aged 25, and condemned to 15 years hard labour; or against […]

Russian Revolutionary Heroines (Sophia Bardina, 1881)

June 26, 2016 A Beautiful Nihilist

RUSSIAN REVOLUTIONARY HEROINES THE weight of a woman’s brain in Slavonic races is greater than that of a man’s. Among the Germanic peoples the brain weight of the sexes is equal, and in the Latin nations the brain of the man is heavier than that of the woman. Quantity does not necessarily imply quality, but in this case worth follows weight. “For intelligence and resolution,” says M. Anatole Leroy-Beaulieu, the most recent and; the most fascinating of writers on Russia and the Russians, “as well as for education, and the rank she holds in the family, the Russian woman is […]