Working Translations

Saint Ravachol

The Interview of the Two Brothers (April 18, 1892)

July 11, 2015 Shawn P. Wilbur
THE RAVACHOL CASE Publication of the indictment. — Proceedings against “La Lanterne.” In our issue bearing the date of April 16, we published the indictment against Ravachol. For that, our manager today received a summons to appear, Wednesday, April 20, before the 8th district court. We will, moreover, have lots of company; for, as we have informed our readers, we have sent that subpoena to the Temps, and many of our colleagues have done as we have. ________ THE ANARCHISTS INTERVIEW OF THE TWO BROTHERS Henri Kœnigstein and Ravachol. — In the visiting room of the Conciergerie. — Attitude of […]
Saint Ravachol

Errico Malatesta, “A Little Theory” (August 17, 1892)

July 10, 2015 Shawn P. Wilbur
A LITTLE THEORY Revolt rumbles everywhere. Here it is the expression of an idea, and there the result of a need; most often it is the consequence of the intertwining of needs and ideas which mutually generate and reinforce each other. It fastens itself to the causes of evil or strikes close by, it is conscious or instinctive, it is humane or brutal, generous or narrowly selfish, but it always grows and extends itself. It is history which advances: it is useless to take time to complain about the routes that it chooses, since these routes have been marked out […]
Saint Ravachol

Paul Adam, “Eulogy for Ravachol” (July 1892)

July 10, 2015 Shawn P. Wilbur
[one_third padding=”0 10px 0 0px”] [/one_third][two_third_last padding=”0 0px 0 10px”] EULOGY FOR RAVACHOL Paul Adam In these times, miracles and saints seem set to disappear. We can easily believe that the souls of contemporaries lack the spirit of sacrifice. The martyrs of this century have always been obscure citizens, maddened by the din of political words, and then gunned down without mercy, in 1830, 1848, and 1871, for the benefit of certain parliamentary situations arranged by a few violent and shifty advocates. And it would even be imprudent to claim that no wish of individual interest committed these unfortunate combatants […]
Saint Ravachol

Letter to Constant Martin, April 11, 1892

July 10, 2015 Shawn P. Wilbur
A letter from Ravachol One of our colleagues publishes a letter from Ravachol, communicated to him by an anarchist, Mr. Constant Martin, to whom it had been addressed. Here is the text of that letter:   Conciergerie, Cell 4, April 11, 1892.             Dear friend, I thank you for the feelings of gratitude and for your desire to see the trial go in my favor. I am not deluding myself. I am waiting to be sentenced to death. It is what I want, for live without liberty is too sad when one has the idea but cannot give it vigor. […]
Saint Ravachol

Letter to the Police Prefect

July 10, 2015 Shawn P. Wilbur
Paris, March 30, 1892       Monsieur Lozé I learn from the newspapers that you are sure of catching me. Well, let me tell you that you will not take me alive at least; dead, it is possible, I am throwing myself in the Seine in [   ] I have had enough of life. Do not look for the guilty ones in the explosions of the Blvd. St. Germain and the rue de Clichy, for you will not find them. I am the guilty party. It is the magistrates I wanted [to strike]. But pardon me, for I am going to […]
poetry

Albert Millaud, “Ravachol” (March 30, 1892)

May 18, 2015 Shawn P. Wilbur
[one_half padding=”0 10px 0 0px”] RAVACHOL Ravachol? Who knows Ravachol? Who knows how He is made? Is he a being? Is he a myth? Is he a man? Is he blond as honey, brown as a Spaniard? Is he small? average? stocky? short? tall? superb? Fat? lean? a bit of both? long-haired? bald? beardless? Alas! who will tell me how Ravachol is made? Ravachol? Where does he lie? Is he in France? in Asia? In Senegambia? or in Polynesia? Of what gulf, isle or cape does he tramp the soil? In what wood? on what mount ? in what virgin forest? […]
Working Translations

Max Nettlau, The three worlds we all live in

May 16, 2015 Shawn P. Wilbur
[ezcol_1half] We all live in these three worlds: a world of friends and libertarian comrades; a world of unsociable authoritarian enemies, present and future rulers; and that great world of men who do not know one another, the suspicious, seeing only the hardness and cruelty of men and feigning indifference in order to protect themselves from torment. There is also the world of the past and the future, memories, dreams, hopes and the daily effort to contribute a bit. To set aside, finally, the unsocial, and thus sterile and purely parasitical, world of authority and to awaken, encourage, and inspire […]
anarchism without adjectives

Ricardo Mella, Free Cooperation and Communities (1900)

May 5, 2015 Shawn P. Wilbur
[two_third padding=”0 10px 0 0px”] FREE COOPERATION AND COMMUNITIES BY RICARDO MELLA (Temps Nouveaux, Literary Supplement, October, 1900) I mean by “free cooperation” the voluntary contribution of an indeterminate number of individuals to a common end, through a system of community, every social arrangement resting on common property in things. Each time that I use the expression “systems of community,” it will be to designate some or all of the plans for community that are preconceived or, what amount to the same thing, determined a priori. Among us anarchists, there are communists, collectivists and anarchists without any qualifying term. Under […]
Proudhon Library

From “The System of Economic Contradictions”

March 29, 2015 Shawn P. Wilbur
[I discovered that one section of the chapter on property did not appear among the translations I have posted online. After some searching, however, it did appear among my working files.] II The subject and object of science are found; the truth of thought and being are authentically established: it remains for us to find the method. Philosophy, in it more or less deep researches on the object and legitimacy of thought, has not been slow to perceive that it followed, without knowing it, certain forms of dialectic which recurred unceasingly, and which, studied more closely, were soon recognized as […]
Working Translations

Ernest Lesigne, Socialistic Letters — IX (1887)

January 30, 2015 Shawn P. Wilbur
SOCIALISTIC LETTERS IX Ten years ago, I wrote a study from which emerged the somewhat unexpected conclusion that every error is, as well as every truth, the product of experiment. In the case of error, the experiment is incomplete. That is all. But as those who are mistaken have seen, or what is called seeing, we mustn’t be surprised to see so many of them become hot and bothered when one assures them that they are mistaken. So I simply say this to the collectivists: You have concluded without having seen enough. It is always the story of that Englishman […]