Critiques and Caricatures

Anarchist Beginnings

P. R. Bennett, “The Anarchist” (1912)

November 7, 2017 Shawn P. Wilbur
[From P. R. Bennett, Ducdame; a book of verses. 1912.] The Anarchist [A critic in the New Age suggests that modern thought can submit no longer to the tyranny of rhyme and metre.] Ravachol Needham was a man of letters, Who refused to submit to the wretched fetters That sought by rules of rhyme and scansion To prevent his soaring soul’s expansion. He had languished long on a dismal sonnet And wasted his eagle spirit on it, Till the poor old bird had been imprisoned So long that it grew depressed and wizened, Drooped its feathers and nearly moulted, Could […]
Anarchist Beginnings

“Anarchy and How To Overcome It” (1901)

November 7, 2017 Shawn P. Wilbur
ANARCHY AND HOW TO OVERCOME IT. Following the intense excitement that prevailed at the time of the death of the President, many theories have been advanced concerning the meaning of the term “anarchy,” and each one has had as its accompaniment a plan for the suppression of the anarchist At the present the definition given by Webster suits the popular idea better than anything that is offered, and it is: “Absence of government; the state of society where there is no law or supreme power; a state of lawlessness; political confusion; disorder in general.” The blatant type of anarchist best […]
Anarchist Beginnings

Solomon Something, “Some Account of Mr. Anything” (1840)

November 7, 2017 Shawn P. Wilbur
To the Editor of the Christian Observer. Should your observing eye, in the course of its comprehensive range, have lighted on any character in the religious world at all resembling the picture I am about to exhibit; I shall depend on the insertion of this paper for the benefit of the present generation of professed Christians. Mr. Anything, an acquaintance of mine, is a man blameless in his morals, and amiable in his disposition. His views of religious truth so nearly coincide, as to all material points, with my own, that I have no difference with him on the subject […]
Critiques and Caricatures

The Feuding Brothers (1850)

February 22, 2012 Shawn P. Wilbur
I ran across this one-act parody of French socialism in the January 5, 1850 issue of La Mode, a popular magazine, and was nearly finished with this (rough) translation before I realized that most of the dialogue was lifted straight from the debates between Proudhon, Blanc and Leroux. Indeed, most of the details may have come from a single source, a pamphlet, Actes de la Révolution: Résistance, which reprinted Proudhon’s essays “What is Government? What is God?” and “Resistance to the Revolution.” The second installment of the latter essay is, of course, the source of two partial translations, by William […]
Contr'un

Responses to Anarchism: the Rhyme of Ravachol Needham

August 10, 2010 Shawn P. Wilbur
[From P. R. Bennett, Ducdame; a book of verses. 1912.] The Anarchist [A critic in the New Age suggests that modern thought can submit no longer to the tyranny of rhyme and metre.] Ravachol Needham was a man of letters, Who refused to submit to the wretched fetters That sought by rules of rhyme and scansion To prevent his soaring soul’s expansion. He had languished long on a dismal sonnet And wasted his eagle spirit on it, Till the poor old bird had been imprisoned So long that it grew depressed and wizened, Drooped its feathers and nearly moulted, Could […]