FERENZ RENYI, Hungary, 1848 This is the story of Renyi - And when you have heard it through, Pray, God be send no trial like his To try the faith of you. And if his doom be upon you, Then may God grant you this: To fight as good a fight as he, And win a crown like his. He was strong and handsome and happy, Beloved and loving and young, 'With eyes that men set their trust in, And the fire of his soul on his tongue. He loved the spirit of Freedom, He hated his country's wrongs, He told the patriots' stories, He sang the patriot's songs. With mother and sister and sweetheart His safe glad days went by, Till Hungary called on her children To arm--to fight--and to die. "Goodbye to mother and sister, Goodbye to m... (From : AnarchyArchives.)
Why do you clothe me with scarlet of shame? Why do you point with your finger of scorn? What is the crime that you hissingly name When you sneer in my ears, "Thou bastard born?" Am I not as the rest of you, With a hope to reach, and a dream to live? With a soul to suffer, a heart to know The pangs that the thrusts of the heartless give?" I am no monster! Look at me -- Straight in my eyes, that they do not shrink! Is there aught in them you can see To merit this hemlock you make me drink? This poison that scorches my soul like fire, That burns and burns until love is dry, And I shrivel with hate, as hot as a pyre, A corpse, while its smoke curls up to the sky? Will you touch my hand? It is flesh like yours; Perhaps a little more brown and gr... (From : Anarchy Archives.)
A Tale of 1852The male population of the village spend their time on military expeditions and in the cordon—or 'at their posts', as the Cossacks say. Towards evening, that same Lukashka the Snatcher, about whom the old women had been talking, was standing on a watch-tower of the Nizhni-Prototsk post situated on the very banks of the Terek. Leaning on the railing of the tower and screwing up his eyes, he looked now far into the distance beyond the Terek, now down at his fellow Cossacks, and occasionally he addressed the latter. The sun was already approaching the snowy range that gleamed white above the fleecy clouds. The clouds undulating at the base of the mountains grew darker and darker. The clearness of evening was noticeable in the air. A sense of freshness came from the woods, though round the post it was still hot. The voices of the talking Cossacks vibrated more sonorously than before. The moving mass of the Terek's rapid brown waters contrasted more vividly with its motionless ba...
Note: Godwin wrote this piece, according to a note in the manuscript, "while the Enquirer was in the press, under the impression that the favor of the public might have demanded another volume." The study of history may well be ranked among those pursuits which are most worthy to be chosen by a rational being. The study of history divides itself into two principal branches; the study of mankind in a mass, of the progress the fluctuations, the interests and the vises of society; and the study of the individual. The history of a nation might be written in the first of these senses, entirely in terms of abstraction, and without descending so much as to name one of those individuals to which the nation is composed. It is curious, and it is impo... (From : Anarchy Archives.)
Mr. Seymour Deming follows his eloquent Message to the Middle Class with an assault upon the colleges. His book he calls a profane baccalaureate, and it rips along as from one who is overturning the altars of Baal. No one has a style quite like this, with its mixture of Greek classicism and Broadway slang, with its cheap sardonic kicks and its sudden flashes of insight. Mr. Deming moves you, but he leaves you in the end more entertained than persuaded. His prophetic fire is so much fire and so little light. The first part of the book is devoted to picturesque denunciation of the colleges for not training a man to make a living. The second glorified the radical as the man who scorns success, and has turned from everything which the world thi... (From : Anarchy Archives.)
BOTH of them deaf and close on eighty years old -- She stone-blind, and he nearly so-- Side by side crouching over the fire in a little London hovel--seven shillings a week-- Their joints knotted with rheumatism--their faces all day long mute like statues of all passing expression--(no cloud flying by, no gleam of sunshine there)--lips closed and silent : But for that now and then taking his pipe out of his mouth, He puts his face close to her ear and yells just a word into it, And she nods her blind head and gives a raucous screech in answer. Freedom: A Journal of Anarchist Socialism Vol. 1 -- No. 3, DECEMBER, 1886 Source: http://dwardmac.pitzer.edu/anarchist_archives/journals/freedom/freedom1_3.html... (From : AnarchyArchives.)
“Is this the second battalion of the M—— regiment?” asked Praskukhin, hastening up to the spot, and running against the soldiers who were carrying earth in sacks. “Exactly so.” “Where is the commander?” Mikhaïloff, supposing that the inquiry was for the commander of the corps, crawled out of his pit, and, taking Praskukhin for the colonel, he stepped up to him with his hand at his visor. “The general has given orders ... that you ... are to be so good as to go ... as quickly as possible ... and, in particular, as quietly as possible, to the rear ... not to the rear exactly, but to the reserve,” said Praskukhin, glancing askance at the enemy's fires. On recognizing Praskukhin and discovering the state of things, Mikhaïloff dropped his hand, gave his orders, and the battalion started into motion, gathered up their guns, put on their cloaks, and set out. No one who ha...
On the Case of Ettor and Giovannitti Coooper Union, New York Dedicated to the World's Workers, In Behalf of Ettor and Giovannitti, By the Speaker PRICE FIVE CENTS Published By The ETTOR-GIOVAKNITTI DEFENSE COMMITTEE NOBLE FIGHTERS FOR THE WORKERS' CAUSE The pathway to civic liberty and Industrial freedom is marked with blood, its miles are the cross, stake, gibbet, guillotine, scaffold, and the firing squad. Shall the electric chair be added to that bloody list.- ARTURO GIOVANNITTI JOSEPH J. ETTOR In a prison cell, accused by capitalists' agents of a crime committed by a policeman. Ettor and Giovannitti organized the 85,000 Lawrence textile workers, whose wages averaged less than six dollars per week. The bosses were defeated, the mill work... (From : Archive.org.)
Summons, by Nestor Makhno
This poem by Nestor Makhno was written when he was 23 years old and had been in prison for two years for "illegal subversive association." Summons. Let us rise in revolt, brethren, and with us the people Beneath the black flag of Anarchy will revolt. We will surge boldly forward, under the fire of enemy bullets in the battle for faith in libertarian communism, Our just regime. We shall cast down all thrones and bring low the power of Capital. We will seize the gold and purple scepter And pay no more honor to anything. Through savage struggle We shall rid ourselves of the State and its laws. We have suffered long under the yoke Of chains, prisons and teeming gangs of executioners. The time has come to rise in rebellion and close ranks. Forwa... (From : LibCom.org.)