Octave Mirbeau Archives - The Libertarian Labyrinth

Jean Grave, “Moribund Society and Anarchy” (1893)

February 24, 2019 Shawn P. Wilbur

[one_third padding=”0 10px 0 0px”][/one_third][two_third_last padding=”0 0px 0 10px”] MORIBUND SOCIETY AND ANARCHY TRANSLATED FROM THE FRENCH OF JEAN GRAVE BY VOLTAIRINE DE CLEYRE [With a Preface from the French edition by Octave Mirbeau] [English translation published 1899] —– PREFACE. “Moribund Society and Anarchy” first appeared in France about a decade since, published by P. V. Stock, printer of numerous works pertaining to Anarchy. The conscience (?) of the French army, which the Dreyfus affair has since revealed in all its delicate scrupulosity, was immediately incensed by the chapter entitled “Militarism,” and the author was speedily arrested, tried, and sentenced […]

Octave Mirbeau, “Ravachol” (May 1, 1892)

July 10, 2015 Shawn P. Wilbur

Ravachol by Octave Mirbeau Translated and introduced by Robert Helms Francois-Claudius Koeningstein (Oct. 14, 1859 — July 11, 1892), known to posterity as Ravachol, was born to Dutch and French parents at Saint-Chamond, near St. Etienne in Eastern France. He was angered by two actions taken by the French government on May 1, 1891. One was at Fourmies, where the newly designed Lebels machine gun was used against a peaceful May Day rally at which women and children were carrying flowers and palms. Casualties there numbered 14 dead and 40 wounded. The other incident was at Clichy, where police attacked […]

Working Translations

Octave Mirbeau, Preface to Moribund Society and Anarchy

May 25, 2011 Shawn P. Wilbur

[ezcol_2third] Voltairine de Cleyre translated Jean Grave’s Moribund Society and Anarchy (1899; first published in French in 1893 as La Société mourante et l’Anarchie), though she admitted she was not in complete agreement with it. “As to the principal object of the work,” she said in her Preface, “that of furnishing an inclusive criticism of the institutions of our moribund society and the necessity of its speedy dissolution, I think any fair-minded reader will be convinced that it has been pretty thoroughly done. As to the “What next?” it is far less certain. With this, however, Jean Grave,—sturdy, patient, indomitable […]