Emma Goldman: Anarchist alert! Balkan alert! 1900 period alert!

[kelber at mindspring.com]

Her autobiography, Living My Life, is worth reading -- at least, Vol. 1 was.  It's very personal, not one of those flat, public figure type auto-bio's.

Laura

-----Original Message-----
>From: Glenn Scheper <glenn_scheper at earthlink.net>
>Sent: Jun 12, 2008 2:58 AM
>To: P-List <pynchon-l at waste.org>
>Subject: Emma Goldman: Anarchist alert! Balkan alert! 1900 period alert!
>
>This is a moving text, very P source material, essential ATD background:
>
>  -- http://womenshistory.about.com/library/etext/bl_eg_an0_biographic_sketch.htm
>  Emma Goldman - Biographic Sketch - Anarchism and Other Essays
>
>This selection and the essays below are from Anarchism and Other Essays by Emma 
>Goldman, originally published as a collection in 1917.
>
>• Table of Contents • Biographic Sketch • Preface • Anarchism: What It Really 
>Stands For • Minorities Versus Majorities • The Psychology of Political Violence 
>• Prisons: A Social Crime and Failure • Patriotism: A Menace to Liberty • 
>Francisco Ferrer and The Modern School • The Hypocrisy of Puritanism • The 
>Traffic in Women • Woman Suffrage • The Tragedy of Woman's Emancipation • 
>Marriage and Love • The Drama: A Powerful Disseminator of Radical Thought
>
>
>Propagandism is not, as some suppose, a "trade," because nobody will follow a 
>"trade" at which you may work with the industry of a slave and die with the 
>reputation of a mendicant. The motives of any persons to pursue such a 
>profession must be different from those of trade, deeper than pride, and 
>stronger than interest.
>
>
>The first years of her childhood Emma Goldman passed in a small, idyllic place 
>in the German-Russian province of Kurland, where her father had charge of the 
>government stage. At the time Kurland was thoroughly German; even the Russian 
>bureaucracy of that Baltic province
>
>
>She arrived in America, as four years previously in Russia, at a period of great 
>social and political unrest. The working people were in revolt against the 
>terrible labor conditions; the eight-hour movement of the Knights of Labor was 
>at its height, and throughout the country echoed the din of sanguine strife 
>between strikers and police.
>
>
>Since the publication of Governor Altgeld's reason for his liberation of the 
>three incarcerated Haymarket Anarchists, no doubt is left that a fivefold legal 
>murder had been committed in Chicago, in 1887.
>
>Very few have grasped the significance of the Chicago martyrdom; least of all 
>the ruling classes.
>
>
>Her whole being rebelled against the crime,
>
>
>Anarchist meetings were an almost daily occurrence.
>
>
>	SO WHO IN ATD IS EMMA?
>
>	Here's a Tancredi model:
>
>The Homestead fight, the defeat of the Pinkertons, the appearance of the 
>militia, the suppression of the strikers, and the complete triumph of the 
>reaction are matters of comparatively recent history. Stirred to the very depths 
>by the terrible events at the seat of war, Alexander Berkman resolved to 
>sacrifice his life to the Cause and thus give an object lesson to the wage 
>slaves of America of active Anarchist solidarity with labor. His attack upon 
>Frick, the Gessler of Pittsburg, failed, and the twenty-two-year-old youth was 
>doomed to a living death of twenty-two years in the penitentiary.
>
>	Also an artist:
>
>The artist comrade is now among the well-known illustrators of New York. The 
>suicide candidate
>
>
>	And this is as P involved Dally?
>
>The police exerted every effort to involve Emma Goldman in the act of Alexander 
>Berkman.
>
>	A-and...
>
>Too proud to seek safety in the denial of her identity, she chose to pass the 
>nights in the public parks rather than expose her friends to danger or vexation 
>by her visits.
>
>
>"Ask for work. If they do not give you work, ask for bread. If they do not give 
>you work or bread, then take bread."
>
>
>It was also during this tour that Emma Goldman met that grand old rebel of 
>sexual freedom, Moses Harman.
>
>
>	I admit a mental flaccidity wrt ATD.
>	Who else can you recognize from ATD?
>
>
>	Blond alert!
>
>Few would have identified the "notorious Anarchist" in the small blonde woman, 
>simply attired in the uniform of a nurse.
>
>	Dally:actress::
>
>When Paul Orleneff and Mme. Nazimova arrived in New York to acquaint the 
>American public with Russian dramatic art, Emma Goldman became the manager of 
>the undertaking.
>
>
>It is not generally known that it is the Anarchists who are mainly instrumental 
>in insuring the success, moral as well as financial, of most of the radical 
>undertakings. The Anarchist is indifferent to acknowledged appreciation; the 
>needs of the Cause absorb his whole interest, and to these he devotes his energy 
>and abilities.
>
>
>"It is the harmony of organic growth which produces variety of color and form, 
>the complete whole we admire in the flower. Analogously will the organized 
>activity of free human beings, imbued with the spirit of solidarity, result in 
>the perfection of social harmony, which we call Anarchism. In fact, Anarchism 
>alone makes non-authoritarian organization of common interests possible, since 
>it abolishes the existing antagonism between individuals and classes.
>
>
>In San Francisco, in 1908, Emma Goldman's lecture attracted a soldier of the 
>United States Army, William Buwalda. For daring to attend an Anarchist meeting, 
>the free Republic court-martialed Buwalda and imprisoned him for one year. 
>Thanks to the regenerating power of the new philosophy, the government lost a 
>soldier, but the cause of liberty gained a man.
>
>
>Respectability could easily forgive the teaching of theoretic Anarchism; but 
>Emma Goldman does not merely preach the new philosophy; she also persists in 
>living it,--and that is the one supreme, unforgivable crime.
>
>
>HIPPOLYTE HAVEL.
>
>New York, December, 1910.
>
>  -- http://womenshistory.about.com/library/etext/bl_eg_an0_biographic_sketch.htm
>  Emma Goldman - Biographic Sketch - Anarchism and Other Essays
>
>
>
>Yours truly,
>Glenn Scheper
>http://home.earthlink.net/~glenn_scheper/
>glenn_scheper + at + earthlink.net
>Copyleft(!) Forward freely.
>
>