Impressions of the Holidays

FOR FOUR FULL NIGHTS MY NEIGHBORHOOD, ALAS, WAS AFFLICTED WITH POPULAR festivals.

For the custom is, on fixed and traditional dates, to organize public rejoicing. A custom that all parties, without distinction as to class or aspiration, respectfully accept, so true is it that human cretinism is located beyond any quarrels among churches. Through solemn drinking bouts, every year believers commemorate the birth, crucifixion, resurrection and ascension to heaven of the Galilean rebel who their predecessors murdered. Through fabulous feats of imbibing and the countless exploits of the procreating beast, the atheist believers in the idol of the Fatherland commemorate the capture of a Bastille that has since been more solidly reconstructed. And the proletarians who are the future of the world—you certainly don’t doubt this, do you?—also wanted their holiday. At the beginning of each spring they get drunk and knock each other out in chorus in celebration of the dreadful labor that has turned them into animals.

As if that’s not enough, all these charming people choose other, supplementary dates in order to enjoy as a group rutting, stuffing themselves, and drinking themselves into a stupor. The day on which they must be gay is specified well in advance. On that morning the usually sad cretins wake up happy as larks, ready for bawdy remarks and overflowing with sociability. Posters have announced the program of the celebrations. There’ll be half a dozen horrible concerts where fat ladies and clerks dressed in their Sunday best will crush themselves together. In the evening the horrible concerts will be followed by dances, a precious occasion for the merchants of love to exploit their seductive curves. They’ll sing until far into the night on the dark streets, and the hotels preferred for one-night stands will be the theater of much filthiness. Ladies of the streets, ladies of the high class houses popular with princes, will do excellent business. And the goddess of modern love—syphilis—will be paid a substantial tribute.

To rejoice on a fixed date! It’s difficult for me to express something more deliciously idiotic. To be gay because it was decided that everyone would be so from such and such an hour until such and such an hour seems to me to be beyond imbecility. And yet it’s logical. Man, being the most perfect of domesticated animals, wants to see his least acts cataloged in advance. Envying each other, men and women only agree to grant each other the supreme delights after having duly notified their friends and acquaintances. Accomplished without the obscene ceremony of marriage, copulation is impure and its fruit cursed. And so on and so forth. Amorous, laborious, somnolent at certain hours that others designate, man wants to be happy under similar conditions. He asks his masters to order him: “You will rejoice on July 14^th and 15^th. The 16^th you will again become the dreary slave you were the 13^th.” Conscientious, the honest man succeeds in doing this.

I understand that he demands joy. His life is so dull, so pathetic that from time to time he has to find a way to forget himself for a moment and finally know pleasure. And so the need for festivities, so often manifested by the people, proves the ugliness of their existence. And the habit of celebrating in common shows the inability of the individuals who make up the crowd to find joy by themselves and within themselves. Unfortunately, the effort made to artificially create the joy that their gloomy lives lack arrives at poor results. Joy on command is unhealthy, grotesque, and stupid, like those who savor it. We see them happy to become drunk and licentious beasts for a few hours; happy to display bestialities in broad daylight and to make faces that try to look happy, but are only all the more pitiful.

I saw them, these good people, rejoicing four straight days and I’ll long maintain an insurmountable feeling of disgust from it. A noisy crowd hurtled down the streets stinking of bad breath and wine. Raspy voices could be heard from among them, singing “exciting” or patriotic refrains (for the vicinity of brothels and barracks perpetuates itself in people’s mentalities). Thanks to the crush of people the men’s rut was partially satisfied: touching, gestures, words spoke of overexcited and sick sexualities. Every street festival, every festival in a house is in these times of neurotic and insane life a rush of perverted sexes toward pleasures filthy with hypocrisy. And in addition, every festival is an exaltation of conventional falsehoods. Drunks, as well as clerks and students proud to pass for being so though they hadn’t drunk a thing, loudly proclaimed their love of the native soil and their respect for established institutions. Here and there people brawled, for far from making morals gentler, the imbecilic gaiety of the celebrating people increases its brutality. But in general it as a time for embraces, effusions, lying protestations of sympathy, for shows of friendship and the filthy faking of love. All of this amid the filth of a sweaty crowd within the unattractive frame of boulevards and streets on which the only ornamentation was cafes overflowing with people. The masses of the twentieth century rejoice in being set loose for a night: their mugs exult, erections spread far and wide, the universal deceit takes on incredible proportions and the merchants of alcoholic and libidinal felicity make a fortune …

This week the hospitals will turn people away. And so many hands will reach out for the ideal.

Truly, this people in a state of ignoble jubilation is right to hate and despise us. We dream of other joys; we want other festivals that are hardly compatible with theirs.

Instead of this noisy meanness we would like for the life of every man to be a bold and valiant joy; we would like to work freely, cleanly, joyfully, and outside of pestilential cities. All of my desires are aimed at this dream. But we don’t think it necessary to await its realization. Without any further wait, and whatever it might cost, we need the beautiful festivals of life!

(l’anarchie, June 29, 1911)