1907

poetry

E. Armand, “Un mur pour horizon / A Wall for Horizon” (1907)

April 17, 2020 Shawn P. Wilbur
Un mur pour horizon Un mur pour horizon ! Songeâtes-vous jamais O vous qui me lisez, quelle souffrance c’est D’avoir devant les yeux jusqu’à la nuit profonde Un mur vous séparant, vous isolant du monde ? Est-ce exister cela? Vivre, de ceux qu’on aime Séparé. Ressentir cette douleur suprême De ne pouvoir jamais les étreindre en vos bras ! Pouvoir murmurer ces mots qu’on dit tout bas, La cœur contre le cœur, de la bouche à l’oreille. Dante n’a point conçu de torture pareille ! Dehors, c’est le creuset effroyable où l’on bout Mais d‘où l’on sortira vainqueur, vaincu peut-être. […]
poetry

E. Armand, “Réfractaires! / Refractories!” and Bizeau, “My Desires!” (1907)

April 14, 2020 Shawn P. Wilbur
RÉFRACTAIRES ! J’aime le Révolté qui ne se courbe pas, J’aime le chemineau qui préfère la route Au pain blanc, au foyer, qui s’asseoit les pieds las Sur le bord d’un fossé, dévorant une croûte Que jetterait un chien. J’aime le réfractaire Qui risque et qu’on pourchasse. O héros, nul n’écrit Vos gestes de fierté : vous passez sur la terre Méconnus et pourtant vous incarnez l’esprit. Les repus, les gens d’ordre et de relation sûre Sourient en vous voyant et fuient la haine au cœur; Leur rire est de la crainte. Ils sont la pourriture Et vous êtes le […]
From the Archives

Arturo M. Giovannitti, “The Constructive Side of Syndicalism” (1907)

August 8, 2019 Shawn P. Wilbur
Like all the other new theories that have loomed up in the horizon on the troubled waters of capitalist society, or, for that matter, any society whatever, syndicalism is naturally going to be very much maligned, calumniated, and revolted against, not only by those that are not in sympathy with it from the economic point of view, but also from those that are sincere in their beliefs and earnest in uplifting mankind to the higher plane of civilization. It has been ever so throughout history, and it is so today.

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Working Translations

Paraf-Javal, “Authority” (1907)

January 9, 2019 Shawn P. Wilbur
To date, all societies have been established according the principle of authority. Even what we mistakenly call socialism is as form of this principle. The delegation of its powers to a minority charged with distributing everything in the best interests of the collectivity (collectivism), amounts to an abandonment of its rights. The comrades who distribute will be privileged, governors and oppressors, while the others will be exploited, governed and oppressed.

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fiction

Voltairine de Cleyre, “The Chain Gang” (1907)

July 29, 2017 Shawn P. Wilbur
It is far, far down in the southland, and I am back again, thanks be, in the land of wind and snow, where life lives. But that was in the days when I was a wretched thing, that crept and crawled, and shrunk when the wind blew, and feared the snow. So they sent me away down there to the world of the sun, where the wind and the snow are afraid. And the sun was kind to me, and the soft air that does not move lay around me like folds of down, and the poor creeping life in […]
fiction

Voltairine de Cleyre, “At the End of the Alley” (1907/1911)

July 29, 2017 Shawn P. Wilbur
IT is a long narrow pocket opening on a little street which runs like a tortuous seam up and down the city, over there. It was at the end of the summer; and in summer, in the evening, the mouth of the pocket is hard to find, because of the people, in it and about, who sit across the passage, gasping at the dirty winds that come loafing down the street like crafty beggars seeking a hole to sleep in—like mean beggars, bereft of the spirit of free windhood. Down in the pocket itself the air is quite dead; one […]
The Sex Question

Voltairine de Cleyre, “November 11, Twenty Years Ago” (1907)

July 28, 2017 Shawn P. Wilbur
A PEACEABLE MEETING of protest against a murderous attack of the police on strikers, a meeting already half dispersed because of an approaching storm; an unprovoked attack by two hundred police upon the remnant of the meeting; a sullen glow in the air, a dull and angry roar, wounded and dying police and citizens, terror and consternation, bewildered faces and flying feet, a panic-stricken city full of the savagery of fright! So passed the 4th of May, 1886, into history. A wild and insane spirit of revenge, a determination to hang somebody, as many as possible, a crystallization of that […]
The Sex Question

Voltairine de Cleyre, “McKinley’s Assassination from the Anarchist Standpoint” (1907)

July 28, 2017 Shawn P. Wilbur
SIX years have passed since William McKinley met his doom at Buffalo and the return stroke of justice took the life of his slayer, Leon Czolgosz. The wild rage that stormed through the brains of the people, following that revolver shot, turning them into temporary madmen, incapable of seeing, hearing, or thinking correctly, has spent itself. Figures are beginning to appear in their true relative proportions, and there is some likelihood that sane words will be sanely listened to. Instead of the wild and savage threats, “Brand the Anarchists with hot iron,” “Boil in oil,” “Hang to the first lamp-post,” […]
The Sex Question

Voltairine de Cleyre, “Hugh O. Pentecost” (1907)

July 28, 2017 Shawn P. Wilbur
EIGHTEEN or nineteen years ago, away out in a sleepy little Michigan town, there fell into my hands a tiny bit of a paper “no bigger than a man’s hand”; there were only four sheets of it, but every word was vibrant with life and power. It was written by Hugh O. Pentecost and T. B. McCready, and at this hour I feel my eyes opening wide again as they did that morning with the light and the movement in the swinging lines. They were Single-Taxers then, but with an alarming freedom in their handling of it that must have […]
The Sex Question

Voltairine de Cleyre, “Events are the True Schoolmasters” (1907)

July 28, 2017 Shawn P. Wilbur
I count it as one of the best fortunes of my life that in my early days as an anarchist it was my privilege to know Dyer D. Lum. These thirteen years he is in his grave, and yet whenever editors and contributors of anarchist journals fall to denouncing the actions of the unwise, the ebullitions of the mass, I hear his voice, as yesterday, saying in his short, brusque way: “Events are the true schoolmasters.” There was in his day, as there is now, a certain percentage of propagandists who think that they possess the truth, the whole truth, […]