Working Translations

Bakunin Library

Bakunin — Article for “Il popolo d’Italia” (1865)

April 8, 2022 Shawn P. Wilbur
A letter from Paris, published in your newspaper on September 2, contains a serious attack against a little paper by the name of Candide, written by young Parisians, whose publication was immediately interrupted by order of the imperial censor. Your correspondent, who does not seem to be an enthusiastic admirer of the illustrious exterminator of thought and freedom who reigns over France today, takes his side this time to the point of almost congratulating him on having avenged religion and public morals by suppressing a newspaper written by young people “uneducated or unexperienced, who, impelled by base culpable vanity, have dared to calmly affirm things that will sow eternal doubt in the minds of all decent people.”

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Working Translations

E. Armand — misc. translations

October 22, 2021 Shawn P. Wilbur
To restrain the passions! To narrow the horizon of the enjoyment of living? Christianity has attempted it and failed. Socialism will try to reduce humanity to a similar denominator of necessities and it will fail. Fourier saw clearly when he coined this masterful expression: “the use of passions.”

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Working Translations

Sylvain Maréchal, “Cult and Laws of a Society of Men without God” (1797)

October 11, 2021 Shawn P. Wilbur
CULTE ET LOIS D’UNE SOCIETE D’HOMMES SANS DIEU. L’an Ier de la Raison. VI de la République Française. EXTRAIT Du Discours prononcé par le Président du Conseil des Cinq-Cents, sur la fête du premier Vendémiaire, an VI. … Les Philosophes n’ayant plus à subordonner leurs méditations au jugement des censeurs royaux, peuvent indiquer les Institutions capables d’étendre et de perfectionner la morale publique… Tous peuvent, sans obstacles, substituer dans leurs écoles les éléments de Socrate* et de Platon, à ceux de la Sorbonne… * Les choses saintes ne sont point saintes à cause de Dieu, disait Socrate. Vid. l’Euthyphro de […]
Working Translations

Gabriel in “l’en dehors” (1922-1925)

September 15, 2021 Shawn P. Wilbur
—   Pour faire réfléchir Parce qu’un littérateur, un philosophe, un savant s’expriment avec clarté et simplicité, de façon à être compris du plus grand nombre possible d’individus, il n’y à pas pour ça abaissement, diminution de sa personnalité. Je me méfie toujours des phrases amphigouriques ; elles sont généralement comparables à ces papillotes des fêtes qui flattent les yeux des badauds par leur volume et leurs teintes vives, et ne contiennent rien au milieu de leurs tortillons de papier. Zola, Flammarion sont des auteurs de valeur et pourtant leurs ouvrages sont, même pour les sujets les plus ardus, d’une […]
Working Translations

Catherine Campoursi / Campoursy

August 15, 2021 Shawn P. Wilbur
To appreciate life, to taste with joy, even with delight all of the infinitely brief and fleeting moments, the succession of which forms the weft of our existence, to feel a pleasure in starting each new day; this is the only way of being desirable for an individual who has killed in themselves every germ of mysticism, and who scoffs at all forms of asceticism — holding this practice to be contrary to healthy equilibrium, as the prerogative of nervous temperaments and weak stomachs. If they do not possess this fund of optimism, life, for the free individual, has no reason to exist.

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Featured articles

Alceste, “Louis Moreau, Engraver” (1923)

July 28, 2021 Shawn P. Wilbur
A serious or charming illustrator of daily labor, wanting to bring into the life of the humble a little hope and a bit of the ideal, Louis Moreau, with a big heart overflowing with kindness and justice, strives to stylize in a few sober notations the touching environment where the workers work and live.

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