Paris Commune Archives - The Libertarian Labyrinth

Voltairine de Cleyre, “The Commune is Risen” (1912)

July 29, 2017 Shawn P. Wilbur

THE COMMUNE IS RISEN By VOLTAIRINE DE CLEYRE. “They say ‘She is dead; the Commune is dead’; That ‘If she were living her earthquake tread Would scatter the honeyless hornets’ hive.’ I am not dead, nor yet asleep; Nor tardy, though my steps seem slow; Nor feeble from the centuries’ sweep; Nor cold, though chill the north winds blow. My legions muster in all lands, From field, from factory, from mine, The workers of the world join hands Across the centuries and brine.” NEVER since those lines were sung by the great unknown poet, whose heart shone red through his […]

Speeches of Paschal Grousset and François Jourde on the Paris Commune (San Francisco, 1874)

April 12, 2014 Shawn P. Wilbur

SPEECHES OF THE CITIZENS PASCHAL GROUSSET AND FRANCOIS JOURDE EX-MEMBERS OF THE PARIS COMMUNE PRONOUNCED AT THE BANQUET OFFERED THEM BY SOME REPUBLICANS OF SAN FRANCISCO MAY 24, 1874 UNDER THE HONORARY PRESIDENCY OF CITIZEN BLANQUI INTRODUCTION Before the banquet offered to the ex-members of the Paris Commune was opened, citizen Mibielle first congratulated those present for the promptness that they had shown in responding to the appeal that had been made to them; he declared, besides, that he was very honored to direct the Banquet, but on the condition that the citizen Blanqui was declared honorary president. That […]

Paschal Grousset, Speech pronounced at the grave of Verdure (1873)

March 23, 2013 Shawn P. Wilbur

Speech pronounced by Paschal Grousset at the grave of Verdure My friends, an awful bit of news came yesterday to strike us with astonishment and sadness. A man that we loved, that we esteemed, that we venerated like a father, had unexpectedly succumbed to the attacks of a sudden illness. Just a few days ago, we greeted him with a friendly word when we met him along this shore that he frequented, calm and smiling in the midst of misfortune, with every appearance of strength and health. Today, we pay our last respects to his corpse: [Augustin] Verdure will […]

Paschal Grousset (1844-1909)

September 29, 2012 Shawn P. Wilbur

Works by Grousset: The Dream of an Irreconcilable (1869) [pdf] Paschal Grousset, Speech pronounced at the grave of Verdure (1873) [text] Speeches of Paschal Grousset and François Jourde on the Paris Commune (San Francisco, 1874) [text] How the Paris Commune Made the Republic (1879) [text] [pdf] Leaves from the Pocket-Book of a State Prisoner (1880-1881) [text] [pdf] I’ve been researching the life and works of Paschal Grousset, the radical journalist, Paris Communard and science fiction writer, whose odd little political utopia-in-a-newpaper, The Dream of an Irreconcilable I recently translated. It’s not everyday that I can indulge both my interest in […]

Paschal Grousset, “Leaves from the Pocket-Book of a State Prisoner” (1880-1881)

September 29, 2012 Shawn P. Wilbur

LEAVES FROM THE POCKET-BOOK OF A STATE PRISONER BY PASCHAL GROUSSET ____ I. L’HEURE DE L’ABSINTHE WELL nigh exhausted with fatigue, I had fallen asleep in an armchair. It was about four in the afternoon of a dull sultry 2d of June. For eight whole days and nights I had not stretched my limbs on a bed, and from the 23d of May I had lived the life of a salamander in the hell of hopeless battle and wholesale murder that Paris then was. Silence at last had succeeded the thunder of five hundred guns—the silence of the grave […]

Paschal Grousset, “How the Paris Commune Made the Republic” (1879)

September 29, 2012 Shawn P. Wilbur

HOW THE PARIS COMMUNE MADE THE REPUBLIC. PASCHAL GROUSSET Ludwig Boerne said once, with reference to the revolution of ‘89, ‘One man only might have prevented it, namely Adam, supposing that he had been drowned previous to his wedding.’ The same remark probably holds good of any great popular movement, and would at all events be especially applicable to the revolution of March 1871. To account for its entangled causes and its dire fatality would be to recite the dark list of unmitigated sufferings which concur in making life a burden to such a large proportion of a so-called […]

Obituary for Emile Digeon, hero of the Narbonne Commune

December 25, 2011 Shawn P. Wilbur

[ezcol_2third] Our Dead EMILE DIGEON Long ago, a young man, who had been a soldier under Digeon at Narbonne, spoke of him in the best possible terms, but I had never seen him, when some years ago—four or five years—I had the occasion to find myself in his company. It was the first and last time—alas!—that I would see him. It was at a meeting, at the Salle de Bretagne, organized, I believe, by the Egalité or the Socialist League founded by that journal. Odin, Zevaco and others were to speak. We were, some friends and I, sitting close to […]

Henri Rochefort and Claude Pelletier in New York, 1874

December 17, 2011 Shawn P. Wilbur

–> ARRIVAL OF ROCHEFORT. A LECTURE IN PLACE OF A BANQUET—HIS PLANS. Henri Rochefort arrived in New-York at 7 p. m. on Saturday by the Hudson River Railroad, with Thomas Pain, a French political prisoner, who had escaped with him from New-Caledonia, end Ollivier Benedic, a French acquaintance whom he bad met at Sydney, New-South Wales. On reaching the Grand Central Hotel he took supper with his friends. After breakfasting yesterday he visited a photographer by invitation, and remained at the rooms until 4 p. m. This engagement caused him to miss an appointment with a committee of the French […]

Jules Allix, a most unusual Communard

April 28, 2011 Shawn P. Wilbur

I’ve been spending a lot of time this month working on the “Black and Red Feminism” project, trying to expand the pilot pamphlet into something a little more broadly representative, for release as a small hardcover volume. That’s meant a lot of exploring, a few new figures of the “usual suspects” gallery here, and a little burst of new translations, like the Séverine story I just posted, and a Paule Mink story I hope to complete tomorrow. While I have not been looking as closely at the male feminists of the 1848 and Paris Commune periods, a few individuals have […]