Paschal Grousset Archives - The Libertarian Labyrinth

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 […]

Paschal Grousset, “The Dream of an Irreconcilable” (1869)

September 21, 2012 Shawn P. Wilbur

[one_third padding=”0 10px 0 0px”] [/one_third][two_third_last padding=”0 0px 0 10px”] I’ve posted a working translation of Paschal Grousset’s 1869 The Dream of an Irreconcilable, an odd little political “utopia” of sorts, which begins with the narrator falling asleep over his newspaper, as he reads the new revisions to the French constitution, explores in a novel fashion some of the details of a rather Paris Commune-like post-revolutionary future, and then ends with one last jab at the current regime. Translation is, in this case, simply the first step in making the work intelligible, since it is full to overflowing with topical […]