For the second time I think of John Henry Mackay , the German-Scottish popularizer of individual anarchism, who was in his lifetime (1964-1933), a very successful novelist and poet. One of the better-known novels Mackay is partly autobiographical text The Anarchists: Culture paintings from the late 19th century, first appeared in 1891 in Zurich, in which Mackay's experience with the anarchist milieu of the late 1880s in London processed. Here, the introduction of the novel (after the "popular edition" 1893, S.XIII-XVI):
Introduction
The work of art has for the artist to say who created it, the work of the observing scientist, who resigned after it allowed him to say what drove him to express himself. not
The charge of the work I finish, the only allowed me, but wants me to accompany them with a few words.
*
Previously the one: who does not know me and in the following pages some sensational revelations in the style of those false speculation on the Urtheilslosigkeit the public expects from which this all his knowledge draws the anarchist movement, which does not give the bothered to read about this first page out.
In no area of social Life there is now a healing looser confusion, a more naive superficiality, a gefahdrohendere ignorance, than to that of anarchism. The pronunciation of the word is already like the waving of a red cloth - in a blind rage overthrow the most going to the same, without time to allow testing and quiet reflection. They will also tear up the work, without understanding it. Me will not make their impact.
*
London and the events of late 1887 have served me as the background of my painting.
When I was in the beginning of the next year again for several weeks returned to the scene, mainly in order to complete my East-end studies, I had no idea that just would be from me to more detailed description of selected area by the murders of women Jack "of slitting" soon after everyone's lips.
The chapter on Chicago was not complete without my even the big picture book for older kids, which has since sought the police Captain Michael Schaack to justify the infamous murder of his government: " Anarchy and Anarchists " (Chicago, 1889 ) would undergo a review. There is nothing more than a - not unimportant - Patent stupid brutality, both as refined vanity.
The names of survivors are known to me in a conscious intention of nowhere, and the bystanders is still seen almost everywhere easily the trains that I have been role models.
* between the writing of the first and the last chapter there are three years. Always forced newly emerging doubt me again and again, often on long beyond the cessation of work. I started maybe too early, too late I finish them.
Not every aspect of the question I was exhausted, usually it was not permitted to give more than the closing lines are often long lines of thought. The total incompatibility of anarchist and communist Belief, the futility and harmfulness of violent tactics, and the impossibility of any "solution of the social question" by the state, I hope I have proved.
* The nineteenth century gave birth to the idea of anarchy. In his forties, the boundary stone between the old world of slavery and the new freedom has been set. For it was during this decade that PJ Proudhon with the titanic work of his life: "Qu'est-ce que la propriété " (1840) began and Max Stirner his immortal work, "The Ego and his property" (1845) wrote.
She could be buried under the dust temporary regression in the culture. But it is everlasting.
It comes to life again.
fighting for ten years in Boston, Massachusetts. My friend Benj. R. Tucker with the invincible weapon of his "Liberty " for anarchy in the New World. I have often in the lonely hours of my fights directed my gaze on the sparkling light that begins from there to brighten the nights ...
* When I gave three years ago now, the poems of my "storm" of the public, friendly voices greeted me as "the first singer of anarchy."
I'm proud of that name.
But I'm too the conviction reached that today not so much matter, to arouse enthusiasm for freedom, economic rather than by the absolute necessity of independence, without which they will forever remain unsubstantial dream of enthusiasts to convince.
In these days of growing reaction that will achieve the victory in the state socialism of its peak, the demand has become undeniable to me to be here also the first advocate of the anarchist idea.
I hope I have not yet broken my last blow for freedom.
Bonus: further setting of a poem by Mackay- Richard Strauss : seduction , sung by the tenor Peter Anders accompanied by the Berlin Philharmonic under Wilhelm Furtwängler (1942).
0 comments:
Post a Comment