Blog - Page 148 of 287 - The Libertarian Labyrinth

Louise Michel, “Memories of Caledonia” (1887)

July 4, 2016 Shawn P. Wilbur

[A Final Thought] [one_half padding=”0 10px 0 0px”] MEMORIES OF CALEDONIA (SONG OF THE CAPTIVES) Here the winter has no hold, Here the woods are always green; From the Ocean, the fresh breeze Blows over the dreary deserts, And so profound is the silence That the insect which sways Alone troubles the calm of the air. Evening, on these remotes shores, Sometimes rises a sweet song: It is some poor shellfish Which murmurs while it opens. In the forest, the oleanders, The newly blooming flowers Quiver with love in the wind. See, from the starry waves, Breaks a wandering whiteness! […]

Louise Michel, “Old Abraël” (1888)

July 4, 2016 Shawn P. Wilbur

LE VIEIL ABRAEL LEGENDE DU VINGTIEME SIECLE Le vingtième siècle allait finir. Les nations, à l’étroit dans le froide Europe, avaient largement essaimé sur le globe. Partout s’élevaient de nouvelles villes, grandissaient de jeunes peuples, se retrempaient les anciennes races. Les émigrés sur les chauds continents avaient recouvré, avec un climat sans hiver, l’énergie de leur origine, il n’y avait plus de place pour le désert. En Afrique, les sables avaient fait place à une vaste mer renversée artificiellement dans son lit primitif et qui rafraîchissait l’air, l’emplissant de vie, au lieu d’y répandre des souffles desséchants ; des canaux l’unissaient […]

Louise Michel, “The Clavier of My Over-Dream” (1867)

July 4, 2016 Shawn P. Wilbur

[one_half padding=”0 10px 0 0px”] The Clavier of My Over-Dream A few days ago, I slept in a lovely dream. I was free, in a boundless space, where I ascended as easily as one follows the paths of our valleys. I found myself in a monument, so vast that its edges seemed like a distant horizon. Silence filled the vaults, but I sensed their incredible resonance. I sat down at an instrument whose keyboard included so many rising and so many descending notes, that it must include many sounds indistinguishable to the human ear. When I put my hands on […]

Louise Michel, “Today or Tomorrow” (1893)

July 4, 2016 Shawn P. Wilbur

[ezcol_1half] Today or Tomorrow. Everything is good that strikes or stings. [1] So much the better if these bandits have finished their work. The scaffold has started the party, and the fire will beat its wings over the apotheosis. The blood of Ravachol splashes, from his false collar to his cuffs, the cold man of the Élysée. The Élysée! That’s the spot that draws the looks! From it the grand finale, the final bouquet will rise into the air, and the cross of Our Lady of the Slaughter will be the streetlamp. [2] The sun has risen red in the […]

Louise Michel, “The Claque-Dents,” Ch. I

July 4, 2016 Shawn P. Wilbur

[Prologue] I A whole unhinged crowd jostled, for one dizzy day, at the division of spoils, accomplished at the Hôtel des Ventes, of the furniture of Lucrèce Milot, a madwoman of the best class, now tragically dead. The distracted, daft, and jaded vied for the smallest of trinkets. A blood-soaked rag was sold for the price of an objet d’art. Those things touched by the crime were worth their weight in human folly. Little Muscadet had spent the last bits of his wife’s dowry there; young Madulphe had taken “an enormous toll” on his expectations, his parents not being very […]

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 […]