Selected Works of Voltairine de Cleyre
- Language:
- English
- Status:
- Complete work
- Authorship:
- Written by the author
- Condition of the text:
- Some scanning errors (automatic measure over the whole text, not checked by hand) · 1 illegible passage, excluded from answers
- Extent:
- ~150,000 words · 723 passages
Cite this work
- APAVoltairine de Cleyre. (n.d.). Selected Works of Voltairine de Cleyre. Digital reproduction: SigPhi. https://sigphiai.com/en/works/voltairine-de-cleyre/selected-works-of-voltairine-de-cleyre
- MLAVoltairine de Cleyre. Selected Works of Voltairine de Cleyre. Digital reproduction, SigPhi, https://sigphiai.com/en/works/voltairine-de-cleyre/selected-works-of-voltairine-de-cleyre.
- ChicagoVoltairine de Cleyre. Selected Works of Voltairine de Cleyre. Digital reproduction, SigPhi. https://sigphiai.com/en/works/voltairine-de-cleyre/selected-works-of-voltairine-de-cleyre.
Reference to the edition that SigPhi reproduces: SigPhi is its digital reproduction, not its publisher. The edition's year is not in the metadata (hence "n.d."), and the translator appears only when recorded.
What it is about
The posthumous collection, edited by Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman in 1914, of Voltairine de Cleyre's essays, lectures and poems.
Context and history
The most quoted piece is 'Anarchism without Adjectives', which argues that there is no need to decide in advance whether a free society will be communist, mutualist or individualist: experience should settle that, and insisting on it divides the movement prematurely. There are also 'Sex Slavery', on marriage as an economic institution, and 'Direct Action', which examines the question of violence. De Cleyre came out of freethought, became an anarchist after the execution of the Haymarket men, and lived poor and ill until she was forty-five. Goldman called her the most gifted woman American anarchism had produced; both are in the corpus, and reading them together repays the effort, because they did not think alike.
Editorial context, not a citable source: unlike the passages of the work itself, these statements cannot be checked against the corpus.
Grand eye of Liberty, light up my page! Like promised morning after night of age Thy dawning youth breaks in the distant east! Thy cloudy robes like silken curtains creased And swung in folds are floating fair and free! The shadows of the cycles turn and flee; The budding stars, bright minds that gemmed the night, Are bursting into broad, bright-petaled light! Sweet Liberty, how pure thy very breath! How dear in life, how doubly dear in death! Ah, slaves that suffer in your self-forged chains, Praying your Christ to touch and heal your pains, Tear off your shackling irons, unbind your eyes, Seize the grand hopes that burn along the skies! Worship not God in temples built of gloom; Far sweeter incense is the flower-bloom Than all the fires that Sacrifice may light; And grander is the star-dome gleaming bright With glowing worlds, than all your altar lamps Pale flickering in your clammy, vaulted damps; And richer is the broad, full, fair sun sheen, Dripping its orient light in streams between The fretted shafting of the forest trees, Throwing its golden kisses to the breeze, Lifting the grasses with its finger-tips, And pressing the young blossoms with warm lips, Show'ring its glory over plain and hill, Wreathing the storm and dancing in the rill; Far richer in wild freedom falling there, Shaking the tresses of its yellow hair, Than all subdued within the dim half-light Of stained glass windows, drooping into night. Oh, grander far the massive mountain walls Which bound the vista of the forest halls, Than all the sculptured forms which guard the piles That arch your tall, dim, gray, cathedral aisles! And gladder is the carol of a bird Than all the anthems that were ever heard To steal in somber chanting from the tone Of master voices praising the Unknown.…