Voltairine de Cleyre 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 […]

Voltairine de Cleyre, “Kate Austin” (1902)

June 23, 2018 Shawn P. Wilbur

[one_third padding=”0 10px 0 0px”][/one_third][two_third_last padding=”0 0px 0 10px”] Kate Austin “It’s aw a muddle.” That’s how I feel, thinking of the death of her. Why should she have died, she who was so full of energy and purpose, and so many to live on who are not now, and never were, and never will be anything but aimless, listless, useless, lumps of organized dust! The old, old question,—as senseless and as useless as aught a human being can ask, and bound to beget the answer, “There is no sense at all in anything. ‘It’s aw a muddle.’” I never […]

Voltairine de Cleyre, “Relation of Sex in Humanity” (1894)

April 7, 2018 Shawn P. Wilbur

[two_third] RELATION OF SEX IN HUMANITY. By Voltairine de Cleyre. A Lecture Delivered before the Ladies Liberal League, Philadelphia, Pa., Dec. 12, ’93, in Reply to Professor Cope. Before proceeding to state my own position on the subject of the relation of sex, I will very briefly restate the principal points of Professor Cope’s argument. He viewed the question from the two standpoints of biology and sociology, beginning with the former which, he declared, furnishes the foundation facts from which sociological conclusions are to be drawn. And having done so, arrived at the conclusion that the natural position of woman […]

Voltairine de Cleyre in “Lucifer the Light-bearer”

April 7, 2018 Shawn P. Wilbur

[ A FIRST LETTER TO “LUCIFER” ] Phila., March 5, ’90. Dear Sir: I have for some time contemplated sending you a line, to let you know that I, at least, do not belong to that ultra-fine class of reformers who are afraid of facts. Certainly I do not make the sex question the prime issue, for the reason that I believe sexual freedom to be impossible short of economic independence; nevertheless I honor you for your fearlessness in fighting the battle which you believe to be most necessary; and certainly any one who takes the slightest pains to […]

Voltairine de Cleyre, “The Gates of Freedom” (1891)

April 6, 2018 Shawn P. Wilbur

[two_third] The Gates of Freedom [Address delivered before the Liberal Convention at Topeka, Kan., March 15, `89`.] “They have rights who dare maintain them.” This is my text. And the purpose of my lecture is threefold. First to state the facts concerning the actual status of woman in relation to society as a whole—what position she really holds in human economy. Not, mind you, what classes of men regard her, not how “she is considered by the law,” not what she herself imagines, but the bald fact of what she is. Second—to show upon what ground we demand certain “rights” […]

Voltairine de Cleyre, “Justice is Blind” (1891)

April 4, 2018 Shawn P. Wilbur

Aye, and deaf and dumb in Kansas! For what, save utter deafness to all justice, could lead a judge to so far forget the dignity of authority as to sentence any living being without first asking the question: “Have you anything to say which sentence should not be pronounced against you?” True, the question is often a farce. I venture to say that not once in five hundred times is the sentence altered thereby; but true also we are treading upon dangerous times when judges no longer respect even the form of justice.

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Voltairine de Cleyre, “Courting” (1890)

April 4, 2018 Shawn P. Wilbur

[two_third] COURTING Philadelphia, Pa., Sept. 15, ’90. A friend and myself undertook that serious affair the other day, and the results being peculiar I want to take the public into my confidence. People usually prefer privacy on such occasions, but we got into a roomful all intent on the same errand. Specified, the errand was this: The famous “Kreutzer Sonata” was to be tried. Tolstoi, voice by Robert Arundel, was to justify himself before Judge Arnold; the prosecuting attorney, over the heads of a few poor itinerant booksellers, was to tear the asceticism of Galilee in rags, and the public […]

Voltairine De Cleyre, “Mary Wollstonecraft—The Apostle of Woman’s Freedom” (1893)

August 24, 2017 Shawn P. Wilbur

For the Boston Investigator. MARY WOLLSTONECRAFT—THE APOSTLE OF WOMAN’S FREEDOM. — AN ADDRESS Delivered at the International Congress of Freethinkers at Chicago. — By Voltairine de Cleyre. — “Quietly does the clear light, shining day after day, refute the ignorant surmise, or malicious tale, which has thrown dirt on a pure character.”—[Mary Wolstonecraft’s “Vindication of the Rights of Woman,” p. 143, Humboldt Library Edition. — To touch with the commanding fire of the resurrection the crumbling bones of one who rots these hundred years; to call from our her grave in Bournmouth churchyard the form stricken from the passion and […]

Voltairine De Cleyre, “Mary Wollstonecraft” (1894)

August 20, 2017 Shawn P. Wilbur

For the Boston Investigator. MARY WOLLSTONECRAFT. Mr. Editor:—Yourself and readers will be interested to learn that the plan of establishing a “female saint’s day” among freethinkers, by commemorating the birth of Mary Wollstonecraft, proposed by myself at the international congress of freethinkers, last October, has taken practical form in this city. The Ladies’ Liberal League, of Philadelphia, (which is not, by the way, an auxiliary of the Friendship Liberal League, as state by Mr. Charlesworth in a communication last fall, and I correct the error in the interest of both societies, the former being a much more radical group than […]

Voltairine De Cleyre, “Letter from Voltairine De Cleyre” (1891)

August 19, 2017 Shawn P. Wilbur

For the Boston Investigator. LETTER FROM VOLTAIRINE DE CLEYRE. Mr. Editor:—It is so long since I made my bow to the Investigator that I feel somewhat as if an introduction were necessary in order that my friends my recognize me. I went out to the land of reputed grasshoppers and hot winds something like a year ago, to a small retreat among the Kansas prairies called Enterprise, and there resigned myself to poetry in the shape of exquisite sunsets, thrice golden moons and brilliant starts, the vast solemnity of the great waving seas of grass, and the extremely prosaic business […]