La Société mourante et l'anarchie, translated as Moribund Society and Anarchy,[2] is an 1893 book by Jean Grave that argues for the speedy disintegration of moribund societal institutions.[3]
| Author | Jean Grave |
|---|---|
| Original title | La Société mourante et l'anarchie |
| Translator | Voltairine de Cleyre |
| Language | French |
| Publisher | Tresse et Stock |
Publication date | 1893 |
Published in English | 1899 |
| Pages | 298 |
| OCLC | 7289330 |
Original text | La Société mourante et l'anarchie at HathiTrust |
| Translation | Moribund Society and Anarchy at Google Books |
Publication
editGrave first published the book in June 1893 with a preface by Octave Mirbeau.[4]
In London, Grave met American anarchist Voltairine de Cleyre, who agreed to translate the book from French to English[5] at the urging of London anarchists, who offered her a British publisher.[3] She began her translation, Moribund Society and Anarchy, upon her return to the United States in late 1897. Abraham Isaak ultimately published the translation in the United States with the San Francisco Free Society Library in 1899. De Cleyre wrote a preface for the translation.[6]
Moshe Katz translated the book into Yiddish in 1894.[7][8]
Grave quarreled with Stock over the book's second edition. Grave decided to publish instead with the anarchist Jean Tordeur in Belgium in late 1893. This second edition was "cheap and slightly enlarged".[9] Because Grave had added chapter to this edition, the government considered the publication to be new and subject to a fresh December 1893 law (later known as the first of the three "lois scélérates") against publishing "indirect provocation to crime".[10] Grave was ultimately arrested for this second edition in January 1894 and went on trial the next month.[11] He was sentenced to two years in prison and fined 1,000 francs.[12] Grave was also tried in the 1894 Trial of the Thirty later that year, where he was acquitted, but went to prison to serve his prior sentence. Grave was freed with more than 12 months of his sentence remaining when Félix Faure became president in January 1895.[13]
Reception
editHistory professor George Elison called the book "quite possibly the best introduction to anarchism ever written".[14]
Notes
edit- ^ Moore, John (2004). I Am Not a Man, I Am Dynamite!: Friedrich Nietzsche and the Anarchist Tradition. Autonomedia. p. 27. ISBN 978-1-57027-121-2.
- ^ Also translated as The Dying Society and Anarchy[1]
- ^ a b Avrich 1978, p. 122.
- ^ Carr 1978, p. 189.
- ^ Avrich 1978, p. 117.
- ^ Avrich 1978, pp. 121–122.
- ^ Avrich, Paul (1988). "Jewish Anarchism in the United States". Anarchist Portraits. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press. pp. 185. ISBN 0-691-04753-7. OCLC 17727270.
- ^ Falk, Candace, ed. (2008). Emma Goldman: A Documentary History of the American Years, Vol. 2: Making Speech Free, 1902–1909. University of Illinois Press. pp. 529–530. ISBN 978-0-252-07543-8.
- ^ Carr 1978, pp. 196–197.
- ^ Carr 1978, pp. 197–198.
- ^ Carr 1978, p. 197.
- ^ Carr 1978, p. 198.
- ^ Carr 1978, p. 199.
- ^ Elison, George (1967). "Kōtoku Shūsui. The Change in Thought". Monumenta Nipponica. 22 (3/4): 449–450. doi:10.2307/2383076. ISSN 0027-0741. JSTOR 2383076.
Bibliography
edit- Avrich, Paul (1978). An American Anarchist: The Life of Voltairine De Cleyre. Princeton University Press. ISBN 978-0-691-04657-0.
- Carr, R. P. (July 1978). "Anarchism and Literature: Octave Mirbeau and the Second Edition of Jean Grave's La Societe Mourante Et L'anarchie". Quinquereme. 1 (2): 189–199. ISSN 0140-3397. OCLC 827255417. ProQuest 1293538345.
Further reading
edit- Carr, Reg (1977). Anarchism in France: The Case of Octave Mirbeau. Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press. ISBN 978-0-7735-0301-4.
- "Contemporary Literature: Sociology, Politics, Voyages, and Travels (Rev. of La société mourante et l'anarchie)". Westminster Review. 140: 339–340. September 1893 – via EBSCOhost.
- Hamon, A. (June 1894). "Revue des livres: La Société mourante et l'anarchie". La Société nouvelle: Revue internationale (in French) (114): 843–844.
- Herold, A.-Ferdinand (July 25, 1893). "La Société Mourante et l'Anarchie". Entretiens politiques et littéraires (in French). 7 (47): 76–80.
- Patsouras, Louis (2003). "Road to Revolution". The Anarchism of Jean Grave: Editor, Journalist, and Militant. Montreal: Black Rose Press. pp. 124–138. ISBN 978-1-55164-184-3.
- Rouxel, M. (September 1893). "'La Société mourante et l'anarchie', par M. JEAN GRAVE (Book Review)". Journal des Économistes; Paris (in French). 15 (3): 455. ISSN 1149-2368. ProQuest 1311368726.
