Working Translations

Working Translations

Frédéric Tufferd, “Unity in Socialism” (1887)

June 24, 2012 Shawn P. Wilbur
It’s always fun to be able to add a new name to the list of historical mutualists, and particularly so when the new name comes with articulate writings. Frédéric Tufferd (or Teufferd) is one of those names I have encountered in the lists of French political exiles in the U. S., and as one of the editors of the Bulletin de l’Union républicaine de langue française and Le Socialiste (organs of the French internationalists in the the U. S.), and an associate of Claude Pelletier, Jules Leroux, etc. I hadn’t had a chance to read any of his work until […]
poetry

Eugène Pottier, “Already!” (dedicated to Paule Mink)

June 21, 2012
ALREADY! Eugène Pottier To the citizen Paule Mink. At the break of day, the snow falls, Swirled by the air; A sheet of dove’s feathers Covers the deserted cobblestones. I soon passed that way again, Where wheels and men’s feet floundered; No more snow, alas! but slush!             Already! Was she yet fifteen? Certainly not! Not yet, but at the same time old. With a great tint to her face, But nothing of youth or spring. The dazed look in her eyes Told what vulture gnawed at her; I could sense the corpse in her,             Already! She was filthy […]
The Sex Question

Jenny d’Héricourt, “Appeal to Women” and “Profession of Faith”

June 20, 2012
[I’ve been working on an anthology of Jenny P. d’Héricourt’s works, combining her two-volume Woman Affranchised with an assortment of other works of feminist philosophy. d’Héricourt was, of course, one of Proudhon’s opponents on the question of women’s rights, and her response to him makes up an important part of the first volume of Woman Affranchised, but the second volume (about two-thirds of which was not included in the existing English translation) shows her as an accomplished social thinker and activist. I’ve been revising and completing the translation of the first volume of that work, and hope to have at […]
Proudhon Library

Eugène Stourm, “God, Women and Proudhon”

June 20, 2012
[Slowly, but surely, I’m assembling the various feminist responses to Proudhon. The pages of L’Opinion des Femmes is rich with that sort of thing, since it was Jeanne Deroin’s primary forum at the time she proposed herself for political office, and drew fire from Proudhon and others. In the May, 1849 issue, the following essay, by Eugène Stourm, appeared. I think it’s an interesting mix of fairly accurate critique and misunderstanding. Certainly, the more details emerge, the more interesting the conflict looks. I think this project is going to be a lot of fun.] God, Women, and Proudhon. The enemies […]
Proudhon Library

Désirée Gay in “L’Opinion des Femmes,” August 1848

June 20, 2012
[These two short articles by Désirée Gay (Jeanne Desirée Véret Gay, 1810-1891) appeared in the August 1848 issue of L’Opinion des Femmes, which seems to have been a kind of testing of the waters before the launch of the official “First Year” of the paper. That issue had been preceded by a 4-page “Prospectus,” written by Jeanne Deroin, and the paper was essentially a continuation of La Politique des Femmes, but there was still a certain amount of work to do setting the tone for the project, and Gay seems to have taken on much of that work in the […]
translations

Paule Mink, “The Right of Abortion” (1891)

June 19, 2012 Shawn P. Wilbur
Numerous, very sensational trials for the crime of suppression of children have taken place from the month of August 1891, to the same month in 1892, during one whole year, which we could call the year of abortions. In all the countries of Europe, in Russia, German, England, and France, and everywhere women have been prosecuted, and trials have been brought on these serious grounds. In Russian Poland, twelve women were arrested, and twenty were condemned in London, and in France we have had various legal actions for these heinous acts in Paris, Lyon, Béziers, and Villeneuve-les-Avignon — where the mayor, an imitator of Fourroux, aborted his dear constituents whom he had put at risk — and then that appalling affair in Clichy, in which 53 defendants were brought to the benches of infamy

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Working Translations

Jules Leroux, “What is the Republic?”

June 6, 2012 Shawn P. Wilbur
[ezcol_2third] WHAT IS THE REPUBLIC? CONCERNING MR. LAMARTINE’S CIRCULAR Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, Unity. TO THE MEMBERS OF THE  PROVISIONAL GOVERNMENT. Holy and august Republic, keep your promises; produce Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, and Unity among us; make it so that there are no longer people who live in extreme opulence and those who die in extreme misery; destroy inequality, slavery, and hate, not in some of their effects, but in their deepest roots, or yours is a vain name! Such is, gentleman-agents of the Republic, such is the ardent prayer that the people who suffer, feel, and know, utter each day. […]
Utopian and Scientific

Charles Fourier on Free Will — I

May 26, 2012
[ezcol_2third] FREE WILL ____ NOTICE ON THE TREATISE ON FREE WILL. ____ The Treatise on Free Will does not appear in the first edition of the Treatise on Universal Unity. It is the first of Fourier’s manuscripts delivered for publication since the death of the author. The notebooks left by Fourier are in general only preliminary sketches that he condensed and published when he published then. Quite a number of these manuscripts date from the period prior to the appearance of the first edition of the Treatise on Universal Unity (1822). The Treatise on Free Will is of this number. […]
Utopian and Scientific

Charles Fourier on the Pear-Grower’s Series

May 25, 2012 anarchisms_w4l2ii
This illustration of Fourier’s theory of the play of passional attractions and progressive series is something I have referred to in the past, in “The Lesson of the Pear-Growers’ Series.” Ian Patterson has done a lovely, complete translation of it for the Cambridge edition of The Theory of the Four Movements, but I’ve wanted for some time to spend enough time with the French to work up a usable translation of my own, since I expect to have recourse to the example again in forthcoming work. Working through Fourier’s prose is at once maddening and delightful, since there is frequently […]
Bakunin Library

Bakunin on Hamlet (1837)

May 18, 2012 Shawn P. Wilbur
[two_third padding=”0 10px 0 0px”] Welcome to the Bakunin Library, which is part of a project to translate and publish the work of anarchist Mikhail Bakunin (1814-1876) in English. The blog will feature news about the translation project and the eventual publication by PM Press. It will also feature working translations of previously untranslated works, transcriptions of earlier translations, and material relating to the life and thought of Bakunin. Without further ado, I would like to launch the site with a new, slightly rough translation of an early essay by a young Bakunin on Shakespeare’s Hamlet, an apparently unpublished work […]