We are a mixed race, we English, and perhaps the mixture of which we have most reason to be proud is our strain of Norse blood, our kinship with the Scandinavians. We are accustomed in our childish history books to read of the "Danes" and their continual invasions of England as if these human beings, many of whom came from Norway and not Denmark at all, were a mere swarm of locusts, seeking what they might devour. Certainly their resolute efforts to obtain a share of the soil and wealth of Britain from the earlier settlers were frequently attended with destruction of life and of peaceful industry. Those old Norsemen cared as little for the life of the man or woman of an alien community as their descendant, the fisherman of to-day, cares for... (From : AnarchyArchives.)
St. Tropez, [France,] July 12th, 1936 It is only two weeks since our beloved comrade Alexander Berkman passed away. Yet it seems an eternity to me. The blow his untimely death has struck me has left me completely shattered. I find it difficult to collect my thoughts. But I feel sure you will want to know all about Sasha's end. For have you not loved him all through the years? Sasha left a note which we found after we returned from his last resting place. It reads: "I don't want to live a sick man. Dependent. Forgive me Emmie darling. And you too Emma. Love to All. Help Emmie." signed, Sasha. I have two letters from comrade Berkman dated June 24th and 26th. He wrote while he did not feel strong enough to come to St. Tropez the 27th, my sixty... (From : Anarchy Archives.)
THE SNAKE'S HEAD AND TAIL The Snake's Tail had a quarrel with the Snake's Head about who was to walk in front. The Head said: "You cannot walk in front, because you have no eyes and no ears." The Tail said: "Yes, but I have strength, I move you; if I want to, I can wind myself around a tree, and you cannot get off the spot." The Head said: "Let us separate!" And the Tail tore himself loose from the Head, and crept on; but the moment he got away from the Head, he fell into a hole and was lost. FINE THREAD A Man ordered some fine thread from a Spinner. The Spinner spun it for him, but the Man said that the thread was not good, and that he wanted the finest thread he could get. The Spinner said: "If this is not fine enough, take this!" and she pointed to an empty space. He said that he did not see any. The Spinner said: "You do not see it, because it is so fine. I do not see it mys...
Ivan Mironov's murderers were brought to trial, Stepan Pelageushkine among them. He had a heavier charge to answer than the others, all the witnesses having stated that it was he who had smashed Ivan Mironov’s head with a stone. Stepan concealed nothing when in court. He contented himself with explaining that, having been robbed of his two last horses, he had informed the police. Now it was comparatively easy at that time to trace the horses with the help of professional thieves among the gypsies. But the police officer would not even permit him, and no search had been ordered. “Nothing else could be done with such a man. He has ruined us all.” “But why did not the others attack him. It was you alone who broke his head open.” “That is false. We all fell upon him. The village agreed to kill him. I only gave the final stroke. What is the use of inflicting unnecessary sufferings on a man?” The judges were aston...
I N S T R U C T I O N S TO A S T A T E S M A N. HUMBLY INSCRIBED TO T H E R I G H T H O N O U R A B L E GEORGE EARL TEMPLE. LO N D O N: Printed for J. MURRAY, Fleet-Street; J. DEBRETT, Piccadilly; and J. SEWELL, Cornhill. M.DCC.LXXXIV. TO THE RIGHT HONORABLE GEORGE EARL TEMPLE. MY LORD, THE following papers fell into my hands by one of those unaccountable accidents, so frequent in human life, but which in the relation appear almost incredible. I will not however trouble your lordship with the story. If they be worthy of the press, it is of no great consequence to the public how they found... (From : Anarchy Archives.)
On comparing with the original Russian some English translations of Count Tolstoy’s works, published both in this country and in England, I concluded that they were far from being accurate. The majority of them were retranslations from the French, and I found that the respective transitions through which they had passed tended to obliterate many of the beauties of the Russian language and of the peculiar characteristics of Russian life. A satisfactory translation can be made only by one who understands the language and SPIRIT of the Russian people. As Tolstoy’s writings contain so many idioms it is not an easy task to render them into intelligible English, and the one who successfully accomplishes this must be a native of Russia, commanding the English and Russian languages with equal fluency. The story of “Ivan the Fool” portrays Tolstoy’s communistic ideas, involving the abolition of military forces, middlemen, despotism, and money. Instead...
Suggestions that I write my memoirs came to me when I had barely begun to live, and continued all through the years. But I never paid heed to the proposal. I was living my life intensely -- what need to write about it? Another reason for my reluctance was the conviction I entertained that one should write about one's life only when one had ceased to stand in the very torrent of it. "When one has reached a good philosophic age," I used to tell my friends, "capable of viewing the tragedies and comedies of life impersonally and detachedly -- particularly one's own life -- one is likely to create an autobiography worth while." Still feeling adolescently young in spite of advancing years, I did not consider myself competent to undertake such a task. Moreover, I always lacked the necessary leisure for concentrated writing. My enforced European inactivity left me enough time to read a great deal, including biographies and autobiographies. I discovered, much to my discomf...
The great revolt of the Dock Laborers and other workers of London which for the last two weeks of August and the first two weeks of September absorbed public attention, is one of those incidents in the struggle between the haves and the have-nots which mold thought and influence progress. It originated in the action of a handful of men at the South West India Dock who ceased work on the 13th of August because their very moderate claim for a higher rate of wages and more favorable conditions of working was not granted. In the course of a few days the strike extended to the other docks and then, day after day, the strikers received accessions to their number from the wharf laborers, the lightermen and other kinds of riverside laborers. At the... (From : AnarchyArchives.)
At the entrance to the street the wind still raged and the road was thickly covered with snow, but well within the village it was calm, warm, and cheerful. At one house a dog was barking, at another a woman, covering her head with her coat, came running from somewhere and entered the door of a hut, stopping on the threshold to have a look at the passing sledge. In the middle of the village girls could be heard singing. Here in the village there seemed to be less wind and snow, and the frost was less keen. ‘Why, this is Grishkino,’ said Vasili Andreevich. ‘So it is,’ responded Nikita. It really was Grishkino, which meant that they had gone too far to the left and had traveled some six miles, not quite in the direction they aimed at, but towards their destination for all that. From Grishkino to Goryachkin was about another four miles. In the middle of the village they almost ran into a tall man walking down the...
SEVASTOPOL IN DECEMBER, 1854. The flush of morning has but just begun to tinge the sky above Sapun Mountain; the dark blue surface of the sea has already cast aside the shades of night and awaits the first ray to begin a play of merry gleams; cold and mist are wafted from the bay; there is no snow—all is black, but the morning frost pinches the face and crackles underfoot, and the far-off, unceasing roar of the sea, broken now and then by the thunder of the firing in Sevastopol, alone disturbs the calm of the morning. It is dark on board the ships; it has just struck eight bells. Toward the north the activity of the day begins gradually to replace the nocturnal quiet; here the relief guard has passed clanking their arms, there the doctor is already hastening to the hospital, further on the soldier has crept out of his earth hut and is washing his sunburnt face in ice-encrusted water, and, turning towards the crimsoning east, crosses himself quickly...
GREAT BRITAIN. One remark more on these Irish affairs. All that is required to vote cloture, to vote coercion, is only a hare majority of 10 votes or even of one vote, in the House of Commons. But now were you to demand & change of another kind in the political constitution --- say the abolition of the regal sinecure --- you would be dealt with as a. seditious man proposing to overthrow the very basis of the constitution. Is coercion a less grave alteration in the constitution of a country than the dismissal of a useless but well-paid servant of the people? or the abolition of majority and class rule and the introduction of a better mode of administration of public affairs, than parliamentary humbug and government by cabinet? The distre... (From : AnarchyArchives.)
THOMAS DREW vs. JOHN M. CLARK. ARGUMENT FOR PETITIONER. Lysander Spooner The alleged contempt for which the petitioner was condemned consisted in his refusal to be sworn before a committee of the legislature; not in his refusal to answer questions after he had been sworn, but in his refusal to be sworn. His objection to being sworn did not arise from any conscientious scruples as to taking an oath; nor from any fear of criminating himself; nor from any objection whatever to testifying before a committee of the legislature; nor from any objection to testifying in regard to any subject-matter whatever which the legislature has authority to investigate by compulsory testimony. He concedes fully that, if anybody could be compelled to be sworn i... (From : Anarchy Archives.)
Published Essays and Pamphlets An Unexpected Dash Through Spain by Emma Goldman [Published in The Road to Freedom (New York)] [Part I, Vol. 5, no. 8, April, 1929] SITTING tucked away in quiet St. Tropez, at work on my autobiography, I was as far from the thought of a trip to Spain as if I had been living in Tokio, Shanghai or Kamchatka. I did plan a rest away from my book during the Christmas holidays. One needs a break, even in the most ideal love life, and the process of reliving and writing one's past is anything but ideal. Au contraire, as we say in France! It is very painful, with much of the bitter and nothing of the sweet that love represents. Writing strenuously for five months entitled me to a rest; even my enemies couldn't grudge ... (From : University of Berkeley.)
Translated from the French by Robert Helms "Le Mur" first appeared in L'Echo de Paris on February 20, 1894 Old man Rivoli had a wall. This wall ran along a road, and it was crumbling badly. The rains and the road mender's pickax had undermined the base. The stones, having come loose, hardly held together any longer, and cracks were opening up. It was beautiful, however, having the look of an ancient ruin. Some irises crowned the top, while figworts, maidenhair, and houseleeks pushed their way through the fissures. Some poppies, too, paraded their frail bodies between cracks in the rubble-stones. But Pop Rivoli was not sensitive to the poetry of his wall, and, after examining it at length, and jiggling some of its loose stones like teeth in ... (From : Mid-Atlantic Infoshop.)