(Avant-Garde Critical Studies, 38) Carolin Kosuch - Anarchism and The Avant-Garde - Radical Arts and Politics in Perspective-Brill Rodopi (2019)

Anarchism and the Avant-Garde
Avant-Garde Critical Studies
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Klaus Beekman
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Willem G. Weststeijn
volume 38
The titles published in this series are listed at brill.com/agcs

Anarchism and the Avant-Garde
Radical Arts and Politics in Perspective
Edited by
Carolin Kosuch
leiden | boston
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Contents
List of Illustrations VII
Notes on Contributors X
Introduction 1
Carolin Kosuch
Part 1
Frictions: Aesthetics or Politics
1 The Symbolist Movement: Anarchism and the Avant-Garde in Fin de

Siècle France 13
Richard Shryock
2 Egoism, Homosexuality, and Joie de vivre: Jacob Epstein’s Tomb of Oscar

Wilde 37
Mark Antliff
3 A Politics of Technique: Fauvism and Anarchist Individualism 70

Patricia Leighten
4 Anti-Art? Dada and Anarchy 99

Daniela Padularosa
Part 2
Fractions: Declining – Pioneering − Redeeming
5 Decadent Anarchism, Anarchistic Decadence: Contradictory Cultures,

Complementary Politics 129
David Weir
6 ‘We Are Too Far Ahead to be Understood’: Vanguard Creation in Fin de

Siècle Anarchism 153
Carolin Kosuch
vi Contents
7 ‘Theocratic Anarchism’? Walter Benjamin and Gershom Scholem in

Switzerland: Anarchism, Messianism and the Avant-Garde 177
Gabriele Guerra
Part 3
Focal Points: Art and Education in Local and Transnational
Settings
8 Syndicalism and Art in France before 1914: Propaganda and

Prefiguration 197
Constance Bantman
9 Anarchism, Geography and Painting: Élisée Reclus and Social

Art 223
Federico Ferretti
10 Teaching Revolution through Arts? Anarchism, the Avant-garde and

Education Critically Revisited 250
Piotr Laskowski
Index 275
Illustrations
2.1 Jacob Epstein, Photograph of the Tomb of Oscar Wilde, Père Lachaise Cemetry
Paris. n.d. Photographer: Jacqueline Hide. Henry Moore Institute and Leeds Mu-
seums & Galleries. Estate of Jacob Epstein. 38
2.2 Carolyn Gould, Photograph of Robert Ross, c. 1916. 41
2.3 Photographic Portrait of the Sculptor Jacob Epstein, 1911 in Epstein 1940 [1955]:
n.p. 42
2.4 Jacob Epstein, “We Two Boys together Clinging”, based on Walt Whitman’s Cala-
mus series in Leaves of Grass, c. 1902. Pen, ink, and wash, 35.8 × 23 cm. Private
Collection. Estate of Jacob Epstein. 43
2.5 Emil Otto Hoppé, Jacob Epstein in his Studio with the Tomb of Oscar Wilde, 1912.
New Art Gallery Walsall. 45
2.6 Photograph of the Tomb of Oscar Wilde in The New Age (June 6, 1912): n.p. 46
2.7 Photograph of Louis Lépine with a cane, 20 January 1907 in Berelière 1993:
50. 47
2.8 Antonin Mercié, Monument funéraire de Paul Baudry (Monument to Paul
Baudry), 1890. 48
2.9 Denys Puech, Monument aux travailleurs municipaux, victimes de leur devoir
(Monument to Municipal Workers killed in the Line of Duty), 1899. 49
2.10 “Monument du poète Oscar Wilde” in Supplément à l’action d’art (March 15,
1913): n.p. 50
2.11 Photograph of the Tomb of Oscar Wilde in Epstein’s Studio, 1912. Henry Moore
Institute and Leeds Museums & Galleries. Estate of Jacob Epstein. 51
2.12 Jacob Epstein, In the Offices of Vorwärts in Hapgood 1902 [1965]: 183. 54
2.13 Jacob Epstein, Four Studies for the Tomb of Oscar Wilde, 1908−1910. Pencil. 50.8 ×
35.6 cm. Private Collection. Estate of Jacob Epstein. 57
2.14 Napoleon Sarony, Photograph of Oscar Wilde, 1882. 58
2.15 Contemporary Photograph of the Tomb of Oscar Wilde, c. 1912. Père Lachaise
Cemetery, Paris, France © Clement Guillaume/The Bridgeman Art Library. Es-
tate of Jacob Epstein. 66
3.1 Maurice de Vlaminck, Maisons à Chatou (Houses at Chatou), 1905–1906. Oil on
canvas, 81.3 × 101.6 cm. Art Institute of Chicago, Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Maurice E.
Culberg. © 2019 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/ADAGP, Paris. 75
3.2 Camille Pissarro, La Cueillette des pommes à Éragny-sur-Epte (Apple Picking at
Éragny-sur-Epte), 1888. Oil on canvas, 85.09 × 73.98 cm. Dallas Museum of
Art. 76
viii Illustrations
3.3 Maurice de Vlaminck, Paysage d’automne (Autumn Landscape), c. 1905. Oil on

canvas, 46.2 × 55.2 cm. Museum of Modern Art, Gift of Nate B. and Frances Spin
gold. © 2019 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/ADAGP, Paris. 77
3.4 Maurice de Vlaminck, André Derain (Portrait of Derain), 1905. Oil on cardboard,
26.4 × 21 cm. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Jacques and Natasha Gel-
man Collection. © 2019 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/ADAGP,
Paris. 82
3.5 Jules-Félix Grandjouan, cover for ‘The Strike’ in L’Assiette au beurre (May 6,
1905): n.p. © 2019 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/ADAGP, Paris. 83
3.6 André Derain, Bal des soldats à Suresnes (Soldier’s Ball at Suresnes), 1903,
St. Louis Art Museum. © 2019 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/ADAGP,
Paris. 85
3.7 Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Cirque Fernando (At the Cirque Fernando), 1887–
1888. Oil on canvas, 100.3 × 161.3 cm. Art Institute of Chicago, Joseph Winterbo-
tham Collection. 86
3.8 Henri Evenepoel, Fête aux invalides (Veterans’ Festival), 1898. Oil on canvas,
80 × 120 cm. Musée d’art moderne, Brussels. 87
3.9 Photograph of André Derain in his studio, c. 1905. Private Collection. 88
3.10 Kees van Dongen, “J’suis ni musicien, ni chanteur ... Je suis crève-faim!” (“I’m not
a musician or a singer ... I’m starving!”) in L’Assiette au beurre 12 (June 20, 1901):
n.p. © 2019 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/ADAGP, Paris. 90
3.11 Kees van Dongen, “Le Péril Blanc” (The White Peril) in Les Temps nouveaux,
supplément littéraire (September 30, 1905): n.p. © 2019 Artists Rights Society
(ARS), New York/ADAGP, Paris. 91
3.12 Kees van Dongen, Autoportait fauve (Self-Portrait), 1908–1909. Oil on canvas,
55 × 38 cm. Private Collection. © 2019 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New
York/ADAGP, Paris. 93
3.13 Kees van Dongen, Modjesko, chanteur soprano (Modjesko, Soprano Singer),
1907. Oil on canvas, 100 × 81.3 cm. Museum of Modern Art, New York, Gift of Mr.
and Mrs. Peter A. Rübel. © 2019 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/ADAGP,
Paris. 94
4.1 Hugo Ball, Totentanz (Dance of Death) in Der Revoluzzer 2.1 (1916): 1. 104
4.2 Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, Zang tumb tuuum 1912 (1914): n.p. 114
4.3 Jedermann sein eigner Fußball (Everyone his own Football), 1919, ed. Wieland
Herzfelde/John Heartfield: n.p. 120
8.1 Grandjouan, “Cheminots, syndiquez-vous” (“Railway workers, Unionizeˮ), 1910,
<https://www.histoire-image.org/etudes/syndicats-cheminots-greve-1910?lan
guage=fr>. 210
8.2 Paul Poncet, Réduisons les heures de travail (For the reduction of working hours),
1912, s.l. 211
Illustrations ix
9.1 “L’Homme est la nature prenant conscience d’elle-même” (“Nature Self-

Consciousness”) in Reclus 1905 s.l.: 1. 231
9.2 Henri Edmond Delacroix, drawing in Grave 1903: n.p. 243
Notes on Contributors
Mark Antliff
is Anne Murnick Cogan Professor of Art History & Visual Studies at Duke Uni-
versity. He received his Ph.D. from Yale University and is author of numerous
works focusing on twentieth-century art and ideology, including Inventing
Bergson: Cultural Politics and the Parisian Avant-Garde (Princeton University
Press, 1993) and Avant-Garde Fascism: The Mobilization of Myth, Art and Culture
in France, 1909−1939 (Duke University Press, 2007). In 2010 he co-curated The
Vorticists: Rebel Artists in London and New York, 1914–1918, which opened at the
Nasher Museum of Art and then traveled to the Peggy Guggenheim Collection
in Venice and to Tate Britain in 2011. His new book project, Sculpture against
the State: Anarchism and the Cosmopolitan Avant-Garde (London-Milan-Paris),
examines three major innovators in the history of modern sculpture, Umberto
Boccioni, Jacob Epstein, and Henri Gaudier-Brzeska, and addresses such
complex issues as homosexuality, prison reform, aestheticized violence, anti-
colonialism, and pacifism.
Constance Bantman
is a Senior Lecturer in French at the University of Surrey. She studied Modern
Languages and History at the École Normale Supérieure, Paris 3 and Paris XIII
Universities in France, and the University of Oxford. Her fields of expertise are
French and British political and social history between 1880 and 1914. In her
research she focuses on the history of French political exiles in Britain and
anarchist transnationalism in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Her re-
cent publications include The French Anarchists in London, 1880–1914: Exile and
Transnationalism in the First Globalisation (Liverpool University Press, 2013),
and (with Bert Altena) Reassessing the Transnational Turn: Scales of Analysis in
Anarchist and Syndicalist Studies (Routledge, 2015). She is currently working on
a biography of the French anarchist writer and newspaper editor Jean Grave, to
be published by Palgrave in 2020.
Federico Ferretti
is a Lecturer in Human Geography at University College Dublin. After complet-
ing his studies in Italy, he obtained a doctorate in 2011 from the University of
Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne, with a dissertation on Élisée Reclus’s New Univer-
sal Geography supervised by Marie-Claire Robic and Franco Farinelli. He took
up his current position after three years of postdoctoral research in Switzer-
land on the exile networks of Reclus and the anarchist geographers in the Age
Notes on Contributors xi
of Empire, and having gained teaching experience in Verona, in Geneva, and in

Brazil at the International University of Latin-American Integration, Foz do
Iguaçu. His current research interests focus on early anarchist, critical and
anti-colonialist geographies, the international and transnational circulation of
geographical knowledge, and non-institutional scientific networks in the nine-
teenth and twentieth centuries. He is also interested in the broader field of
contemporary anarchist and radical geographies and geopolitics, with a spe-
cial focus on Latin America. Among his publications are Élisée Reclus, pour une
géographie nouvelle (Édition du CTHS, 2014), and Anarchy and Geography. Éli-
sée Reclus and Pyotr Kropotkin in the UK (Routledge, 2018).
Gabriele Guerra
is Assistant Professor at the Department of European, American and Intercul-
tural Studies at La Sapienza University of Rome. His research, conducted,
amongst others, at the Free University of Berlin, the ZfL Berlin, and University
Ca’ Foscari in Venice, is centered on German-Jewish literature, Ernst Jünger’s
conservative revolution, and the aesthetical, political and religious dimensions
of the avant-garde. He is co-editor of Links. Rivista di letteratura e cultura ted-
esca. Zeitschrift für deutsche Literatur- und Kulturwissenschaft. His numerous
publications comprise Das Judentum zwischen Anarchie und Theokratie. Eine
religionspolitische Diskussion am Beispiel der Begegnung zwischen Walter Benja-
min und Gershom Scholem (Aisthesis, 2007), and Spirito e storia. Saggi
sull’ebraismo tedesco 1918−1933 (Aracne, 2012).
Carolin Kosuch
graduated from Leipzig University with an M.A. degree in history and religious
studies. She received her Ph.D. in 2014 at the Simon-Dubnow-Institute for Jew-
ish History and Culture at Leipzig University. In 2014 she joined the German
Historical Institute in Rome as Research Associate. Her research areas include
the history, philosophy and phenomenology of classical anarchism; European
cultural history with an emphasis on the life reform movement and religious
nonconformist groups; Jewish history and culture, and nineteenth/twentieth
century German and Italian history. Among her publications are Missratene
Söhne. Anarchismus und Sprachkritik im Fin de Siècle (Vandenhoeck & Rup
recht, 2015), and (ed.) Die letzten Tage der Menschheit. Schriften aus dem Großen
Krieg (Simon Dubnow Institute Yearbook 13, [2014]).
Piotr Laskowski
(Ph.D. University of Warsaw) is Assistant Professor at the Institute of Applied
Social Sciences at the University of Warsaw. He cofounded the multicultural
xii Notes on Contributors
humanist lyceum in Warsaw where he worked as director (2006–2010) and still

teaches general history. As a committed historian, philosopher and political
scientist Laskowski deals with the history of political thought and social and
political philosophy of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Besides, he co-
edited two volumes of the Warsaw Ghetto underground press and collaborates
with a research group editing the Ringelblum Archive. He has published wide-
ly on both education and anarchism, as in his book Szkice z dziejów anarchizmu
(Wydawnictwo MUZA SA, 2006), and Maszyny wojenne: Georges Sorel i strategie
radykalnej filozofii politycznej (Wydawnictwo Czarna Owca, 2011).
Patricia Leighten
is Professor Emeritus of Art History & Visual Studies at Duke University, and
received her Ph.D. from Rutgers University. Her field of research is late nine-
teenth/early twentieth-century art and politics in France, and the history of
photography. She has won numerous awards and fellowships and published
extensively on visual culture and anarchism in Paris. The first art historian to
publish a study of the importance of the anarchist movement for the develop-
ment of twentieth-century modernism, in Re-Ordering the Universe: Picasso
and Anarchism, 1897−1914 (Princeton University Press, 1989), she extensively
expanded on this subject in The Liberation of Painting: Modernism and
Anarchism in Avant-Guerre Paris (Chicago University Press, 2013). She is also
co-author, with Mark Antliff, of A Cubism Reader: Documents and Criticism,
1906–1914 (Chicago University Press, 2008), and Cubism and Culture (Thames &
Hudson, 2001) (Cubisme et culture, 2002). She is currently working on a study of
anarchism and the photography of Henri Cartier-Bresson.
Daniela Padularosa
Cultural and literary scientist Daniela Padularosa is a Research Associate at the
Department of European, American and Intercultural Studies at La Sapienza
University Rome. After studies in Brussels, Rome, Vienna and Freiburg she re-
ceived her Ph.D. in comparative literature from the Universities of Bonn, IV
Sorbonne Paris, and Florence in 2013. Padularosa is interested in literary criti-
cism, German literature, and literary theory. Her book Denken im Gegensatz:
Hugo Ball Ikonen-Lehre und Psychoanalyse in der Literatur der Moderne was
published in 2016 (Peter Lang). In 2018, her second book, Il principe delle nubi.
Hugo Ball e le forme dell’avanguardia, (Mimesis) was released. Her current
project entitled ‘Common and/or alien: toward a literary revision of cultural
paradigms’ deals with a semantic re-definition of a series of notions and
categories – i.e. multiculturalism and hybridization, hegemony and subordina-
tion, community and difference.
Notes on Contributors xiii
Richard Shryock
is an Associate Professor of French at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State
University (Virginia Tech). He is the author of a series of articles on nineteenth-
and twentieth-century writers. As well, he wrote a book on embedded narra-
tive (Tales of Storytelling: Embedded Narrative in Modern French Fiction, Lang,
1993) and a collection of correspondence received by the writer and art critic
Gustave Kahn (Lettres à Gustave et Rachel Kahn, Nizet, 1996). In 2005–2006 he
co-curated with Françoise Lucbert an exhibition on Gustave Kahn at the Mu-
sée d’art et d’histoire du Judaïsme in Paris. Gustave Kahn was also the topic of
a collection of articles he co-edited with Lucbert (Gustave Kahn: Un Écrivain
engagé, Presses universitaires de Rennes, 2013). A book manuscript on the poli-
tics of the French Symbolist movement is nearing completion.
David Weir
is Professor Emeritus of Comparative Literature at the Cooper Union for the
Advancement of Science and Art in New York City. He is the author of nine
books, including two on the topic of anarchism – Anarchy and Culture: The
Aesthetic Politics of Modernism (University of Massachusetts Press, 1997) and
Jean Vigo and the Anarchist Eye (On Our Own Authority, 2014) – as well as three
on decadence: Decadence and the Making of Modernism (University of Massa-
chusetts Press, 1995), Decadent Culture in the United States (State University
Press of New York, 2009), and Decadence: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford
University Press, 2018).
Introduction
Carolin Kosuch
The idea for this book dates back to September 2016, when a group of scholars,
meeting for a three-day international workshop funded by the German Re-
search Foundation, gathered at the German Historical Institute in Rome to dis-
cuss ‘Anarchism in Culture’ using a broad, interdisciplinary approach. Follow-
ing our meeting, we decided to deepen and enhance the focal points our
conference had centered on. Additional authors where invited to join our en-
terprise and enrich our perspective. With the present volume, we aim to con-
tribute to the continuing debate on the encounter of the classical anarchisms
(1860s−1940s) and the artistic and literary avant-gardes of the same time peri-
od, probing its dimensions and limits. (Fähnders 1987, 1998; Drijkoningen/
Gevers 1989; Berghaus 1996; Weir 1997; V. d. Berg 1999; Antliff 2007; Roslak 2007;
Gurianova 2012; Leighten 2013) This volume brings together scholars from Eu-
rope and the U.S. from a range of disciplines, such as art history, geography,
history, Jewish studies, literature, and philosophy, adding a new depth to a
flourishing field of research.
Although this book expands upon the work of a number of existing publica-
tions that have already discussed the interactions of anarchism and avant-
garde movements, in writing this volume we hoped to achieve a broader goal.
First, we wanted to contribute to current research by studying the influence
anarchism had on avant-garde movements, such as Dadaism, decadence, fau-
vism, neo-impressionism, and symbolism; but we also strove to take into con-
sideration avant-garde tendencies within anarchism itself, and to include this
reverse inspiration in the volume, asking what impact the arts and the avant-
garde artists had on anarchism. Through this dual focus, we intend to lay a
foundation for a richer examination of anarchism and the avant-gardes, and to
complement the discourse with theoretical tools to better assess the aesthetic,
social, and political cross-pollination that took place between the avant-gardes
and the anarchists of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
This volume not only considers the overlaps but also the divergences of an-
archism and the avant-gardes. Nineteenth- and twentieth-century anarchism
was a political philosophy with strong leanings towards practical implementa-
tions directed against the status quo of heteronomy, be it in a monarchical
state, a highly regulated and unjust political system, a bourgeois culture, or in
party politics. The avant-gardes, on the other hand, strove for a new art that
merged with life and was conceived as a revolutionary act. Both anarchists and
© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ��20 | doi:10.1163/9789004410428_002

2 Kosuch
avant-gardists converged around a revolutionary moment, shared a desire to

stir up rebellion, and cherished hopes of instigating fundamental changes in
society. Much of their mutual attraction was based on the wish to stand out, to
pioneer, and to take the lead in an individualizing culture. The political radical-
ism and critical authority of individual anarchists such as Félix Fénéon, Gustav
Landauer, Stéphane Mallarmé, Camille Pissarro, Élisée Reclus, Oscar Wilde
and others met with a related destructive, creative, and innovative attitude
within the avant-gardes. Yet, as the chapters of this volume reveal, it is exactly
in their greatest proximity that the limits of the encounter between anar-
chisms and avant-gardisms become evident: the pursuit of agitation required a
target, and both currents could not always reach an agreement on what their
goals should be. While the case studies in this book by Mark Antliff, Patricia
Leighten, Daniela Padularosa, Gabriele Guerra, and Federico Ferretti demon-
strate that anarchists and avant-gardists gradually came to terms with each
other and that they worked towards a shared objective, the essays by Richard
Shryock, David Weir, Carolin Kosuch, Constance Bantman, and Piotr Laskows-
ki point to the limitations of this encounter. The latter authors show that anar-
chists and avant-gardists could attract and affect each other without necessar-
ily pursuing the same aim or without finding a common language. The political
and artistic avant-gardes had essentially different objectives. The former pos-
sessed a socialist-proletarian or libertarian-humanist orientation, with the arts
as means of education; whereas the latter entertained revolutionary artistic
aspirations that were coupled with anti-bourgeois sentiments in the social and
political fields. These limits of convergence seem vital for the study of both
movements, and defining those boundaries enhances our understanding of
both currents. The encounter of anarchism with the avant-garde was not sim-
ply an affirmative merger but a multidimensional relation, with dead ends sit-
ting right next to productive interchanges in the age of modernity – by itself a
time of radical change, clashes, and contradictions. (Meecham/Sheldon 2000)
In recent decades a shift in focus has changed anarchism’s status, turning it
from a somewhat exotic, politically charged area of research to an integral ele-
ment in the fields of political, cultural, gender identity, religious, and global
studies. (Bantman/Berry 2010; Van der Walt/Hirsch 2010; Ferguson 2011; Levy/
Newman 2017) Tracing its roots back to the Enlightenment and radical liberal-
ism, to early socialist utopian theories, and to romantic influences, classical
anarchism covers a broad range of subject matter, from pacifism to street bat-
tles and terrorist actions, from radical atheist individualism to religiously
based communitarian social visions and syndicalist networks. (Levy 2010) The
heterogeneity of the concept is best conveyed by its plural: anarchisms. This
term has been (and still is) used as a pejorative by critics, as an analytical
Introduction 3
d escriptor by researchers, and as a positive self-description by adherents. Its

complexity stems from a mix of politics, political action, and movements, with
the last generally aligned against coercion, the modern state and its institu-
tions, social democracy and Marxism, and in favor of libertarian notions, a cer-
tain set of values and convictions, and a way of teaching, thinking and even
living. In this respect, ‘anarchism’ implies
a heterodox and diffuse assemblage of ideas, theories and modes of prac-

tice, which are nevertheless united around what might be called a liber-
tarian impulse – the ethical and political horizon of a nti-authoritarianism,
a conviction about the moral inadmissibility of state coercion, and the
general belief that the less life is governed the better.
newman 2011: 239
It is this “libertarian impulse” with its creative, utopian and individualist lean-
ings that distinguishes anarchisms from the socialisms of the time which were
generally veering more towards political order and hierarchy. By contrast, anti-
authoritarianism was one of the decisive intersections between the anarchisms –
studied in our volume through a cultural lens − and the avant-garde move-
ments. (Poggioli 1962 [1968]: 97) Examining the interplay between anarchists
and avant-gardes, the chapters of our book aim to critically reevaluate Poggio-
li’s supposed ‘antipolitical’ libertarianism. They build upon Peter Bürger’s no-
tion of the avant-gardes as unorthodox social critics responsible for triggering
innovation, and seeking to trace possible political stances within the intermin-
gling of ideology and art. (Bürger 1974 [1984]) In addition, we take a critical lens
to David Weir’s thesis that anarchism’s impact on the cultural avant-gardes
arose from its failure to achieve political influence. (Weir 1997) The single
chapters discuss and question, and sometimes reject, various t heories of the
avant-garde reaching from Bürger’s diagnosed failure of the avant-garde to
Poggioli’s description of the avant-garde as a vital element of modernity. Not-
withstanding these theoretical approaches, the main focus of our book re-
mains a historical one providing an in-depth analysis of European case studies
of the late nineteenth and the first half of the twentieth centuries, the heyday
of the anarchist – avant-garde encounter.
Throughout the chapters, various, yet complementary notions and concepts
are at play helping the reader to access and analyze the book’s key issues. These
include anarchism(s) and anarchy, the former pointing to the political move-
ment of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the latter referring to a rather
transtemporal libertarian idea of political philosophy which, nevertheless, also
lies at the core of political anarchism; moreover the broad and heterogeneous
4 Kosuch
literary-artistic movement of the avant-garde(s) augmented terminologically

by the ‘vanguard’, a concept characterizing the pioneering role of the political
radical and revolutionary; and finally, the notion of modernism that is deeply
interwoven with the idea of the avant-garde and comprises the cultural, reli-
gious and philosophical novelties generated by modernity at the turn of the
century decisive for the formation of avant-garde art. (Eysteinsson 1990) This
rather inclusive terminological and theoretical frame arises from the difficulty
of finding undisputable, solid definitions and common grounds for multifold
phenomena such as the avant-gardes and the anarchisms in a vibrant time of
change and transition in Europe, (Asholt 2014) a challenge the chapters meet
with critical openness. The study of the anarchisms and the avant-gardes pro-
vides a deeper understanding of modernity’s conflicts that mirrors the clash of
tradition and radical economic, social and cultural changes. (Bauman 1990;
Giddens 1990; Gay 2008) Many chapters of this volume touch upon these con-
flicts, which, to a certain extent, frame the book’s three subsections. The
themes that emerge include aesthetics and politics, with a special emphasis on
their apparent contradictions; the various, sometimes seemingly conflicting
concepts of time present in the anarchist – avant-garde interplay, such as mes-
sianism and decline; and finally, facets of education and anarchist – avant-
gardist networks embedded in a transnational flow of ideas.
The first section discusses the intermingling of ideology and art. Anarchists
struggled with the constraints imposed by society, the laws and the state, and
tried to overcome these by means of boycotts, propaganda, and political ac-
tion. Avant-gardists, similarly sought to challenge and tear down the restric-
tions contemporary cultural norms set for art. Despite this directional conver-
gence, the essays included in this section reveal contradictions and limits to
the interactions between anarchists and the avant-gardists, and ask where art
ends and policy starts, and to what extent an artist creating a radical new style
of art is engaging in political radicalism. To put it differently, these essays ex-
amine whether the avant-garde and the political rebellion were really inter-
twined or if they only influenced each other superficially. The writers’ attempts
to reveal (or disprove) any actual convergences between art and anarchism
enriches our understanding of the specifics of both the anarchisms and the
avant-gardes.
Drawing on anarchism and symbolism as two incarnations of the avant-
garde, the first essay by Richard Shryock analyzes the asymmetrical nature of
their encounter. While symbolists’ attraction to anarchism held even in the
face of severe political violence, furthering the anarchists’ positions in society
and enhancing their overall acceptance, anarchism, with its naturalist and re-
alist approach, contributed little to the aesthetics of the symbolists. Yet the
Introduction 5
political radicals were not without influence on the artistic avant-gardes, as the
essay emphasizes. They provoked writers such as Mallarmé and De Gourmont
to prioritize transcendental imagery in their artistic productions, and specify
their positions towards social issues critically and explicitly.
In the following chapter, Mark Antliff’s narrative ties in with the question of
aesthetics and politics raised in the previous essay and points out a substantial
interaction. His chapter examines the work of sculptor Jacob Epstein whose
Tomb of Oscar Wilde at Père Lachaise cemetery provoked widespread concern
thanks to its uniquely modeled male features. Antliff explores how both avant-
garde art and anarchism dealt with and incorporated homosexuality and con-
cepts of virility. As he illustrates, Epstein’s notion of sexual liberation was
shaped by anarchist theorists such as Goldman and Kropotkin and their depic-
tion of Oscar Wilde (who himself had strong anarchist leanings), as well as
their ideas concerning sexual freedom. A group of international anarchist
individualists – adherents of Stirner and Bergson – supported Epstein’s sculp-
ture in the face of censorship imposed by the French authorities. They ad-
vanced Stirner’s concept of ‘egoism’, combining it with Bergson’s idea of joie de
vivre and pioneering a defense of homosexuality.
Patricia Leighten’s essay centers on anarchism, neo-impressionism, and fau-
vism during the fin de siècle and the pre-war era in France. Her work combines
the French perspective of the first and the focus on visual arts of the second
chapter. Leighten stresses the growth of antimilitarism in the course of the
Dreyfus Affair, and underlines anarchism’s importance in the evolution of po-
sitions critical of war and colonialism in a politically charged cultural environ-
ment. Vlaminck, Van Dongen, and Derain – all informed by anarchism, and
some even self-declared anarchists – expressed their political stances through
their art, their colors, their motifs, and their techniques. But the politicized
aesthetics of the pre-war era were buried under layers of nationalism and apo-
litical formalism after the First World War, leaving modernism in a state of am-
bivalence between conformist ideology, consumption, and social criticism.
The relationship between anarchism and Dadaism is scrutinized in Daniela
Padularosa’s chapter, in which she traces the origins of Dadaism as a sort of
‘anti-art’. Her essay takes the same direction as the previous ones, asking how
art and politics intermingle in a pressing atmosphere of warmongering but it
also stretches out into the immediate post-war time. Padularosa underlines
that Dada was not as apolitical as its adherents often claimed. In fact, many of
them held antimilitarist positions during the pre-war years, connecting them
to anarchist circles such as that of Swiss physician and anarchist Fritz Brup-
bacher. The political energy of anarchism later made its way to the area of lin-
guistic aesthetics, building on Bakunin’s notion of creative destruction to
6 Kosuch
propagate a new spirituality based on ‘primitivism’ and anarchism. Citing

Mauthner, Nietzsche, and futurism, the Dadaists worked towards the libera-
tion of language, and thereby emerged as prophets of a new era of social and
aesthetic freedom.
The next two units tie in to the main topic of the first section in many ways,
and go deeper into the conflict between aesthetics and politics present in all
the chapters. Section two offers a special focus on temporality as part of anar-
chist and avant-gardist concepts. The ‘avant-garde’ is, by nature, in conflict
with its time period; the term is meant to invoke an army’s vanguard, in this
case pressing forward not just in space but in time as well. But the avante-garde
did not always opt to push forward; it also comprised nostalgic moments, ele-
ments of weariness with the modern world, and a longing for a future that re-
lied on a glorified past, on religion and the appeal of historical personalities.
Fin de siècle, neo-romanticism, and decadence may seem like the polar oppo-
sites of political messianism and utopianism, but they were connected by a
multi-directional pioneering tendency characteristic of the avant-gardes and
of the anarchists.
As David Weir points out in the first chapter of this section, anarchists and
decadents were united by their shared feeling of living at the end of an era and
their strong anti-bourgeois stances. Yet the two groups expressed this common
conviction in contrasting ways, and addressed completely different audiences.
While the anarchists entertained the hope that they could alter the status quo
through the ascendance of anarchism and the proletariat, decadents sympa-
thized with the declining aristocracy of their time. That being said, decadents
such as Anatole Baju, Octave Mirbeau, and Oscar Wilde had strong affinities
with anarchism. The essay makes clear, however, that the decadent elitist-
individualist aesthetic dominated over the collectivist socio-political ambi-
tions of anarchism, setting limits to their interplay.
Carolin Kosuch’s chapter discusses the vanguard character of anarchism as
conceived by the German-Jewish anarchist Gustav Landauer at the turn of the
century. Like the decadents, he and his fellows felt as if they were living at the
end of an era; yet they were hopeful of starting a new age once the revolution
had torn the current order apart. The chapter debates the role Landauer attrib-
uted to arts and the artist in the coming revolution, and points to an alternative,
non-linear concept of time at the core of his theory. Landauer expanded upon
a temporal bipolarity caught between nostalgia and forward-looking moments
in his future work; the political philosopher described the present as merely a
transition, originating in the past and continuing into the future. The chapter
analyzes those thoughts on a circular notion of time in the context of anar-
chism, a Jewish-messianic renewal, and Berlin’s literary-political avant-garde.
Introduction 7
A Jewish perspective in the anarchist – avant-gardist interplay is also ad-

opted in Gabriele Guerra’s essay which reflects on the idea of ‘theocratic anar-
chism’, a concept Walter Benjamin and Gershom Scholem discussed during
their years in Swiss exile. Guerra’s chapter elaborates on the history of the con-
cept, which together with the two writers’ anarchist convictions and romantic
longings indicates the influence of a Jewish renewal underway and includes
connections to the artistic avant-gardes. Both philosophers build upon
paradoxes in their works – Benjamin in particular, who focused on the anti-
authoritarian significance of the notion of theocracy. Connecting that line of
thought with the creative destruction set into motion by avant-garde art, he
concluded that the heart of theocracy was composed of philosophical, politi-
cal, and aesthetical acts of rejection of the ordered world, an idea that brought
his concept into relation with the avant-gardes of the time.
The last section of this volume touches upon educational and trans-border
aspects that are broadly helpful in describing the connections and demarca-
tions between the anarchisms and the avant-gardes in the time period under
consideration. Its chapters include a varied group of spatial and educational
concepts: the company, the world without frontiers, the global, and the trans-
national flow of ideas, as well as political education through the arts − and the
avant-garde related to such endeavors. With them our picture of the anarchist –
avant-gardist encounter is extended to oft-neglected fields of research within
this broader area such as geography and syndicalism.
Constance Bantman opens this section with a chapter on the relationship
between syndicalism – taken as a branch of anarchism – and the arts. While
investigating the avant-garde character of their interaction, she highlights the
educational aspect of the arts, which is crucial to pre-1914 syndicalist propa-
ganda and practice in transnational terms as well. As the essay reveals, the role
of the arts divided the syndicalist movement from anarchism. With its stronger
bonds to the arts and radical intellectual goods, anarchism can appear closer to
‘high culture’ whereas syndicalism has a reputation for producing art for more
practical purposes, using symbolic representations to engender worker unity.
This reading, however, misses the vanguard and radical tendencies within syn-
dicalisms’ project of social emancipation and democratization, as this chapter
clarifies.
The arts as a means of education were also a fundamental concern of anar-
chist geographers such as Élisée Reclus, who used them to popularize their
political visions of beauty, justice, and a future free of social and aesthetical
constraints, as explored in Federico Ferretti’s chapter. Reclus knew the educa-
tive and illustrative capacity of the arts, and co-operated with various avant-
garde artists to advance his goals. At the same time, he and the transnational
8 Kosuch
network of his anarchist fellows influenced the artists they collaborated with.
This essay demonstrates that for anarchist geographers, artistically designed
reliefs and globes, along with the visual arts in general, were never ends in
themselves, but rather served social and pedagogical means. Reclus used them
to further his own view of the world as the true artwork, hoping to bridge the
gap between nature and culture.
Anarchist educational initiatives and their relation to the avant-gardes are
also studied in Piotr Laskowski’s chapter. He emphasizes the common conflict
between anarchist philosophy and its ambivalent, inconsistent attitude to-
wards ‘high culture’, literature, and the arts. While Bakunin mistrusted the arts,
other branches of anarchism pinned their hopes on them, working for libera-
tion and the improvement of the world through education. Efforts were made
to open up the traditional ways of reading the classical canon and to merge art
with the more common processes of everyday life. Some anarchist individual-
ists, such as Will Durant, even considered art revolutionary for its own sake, yet
they remained a minority. This essay examines avant-gardist educational pro-
grams, as implemented in New York’s Ferrer Center, and sheds light on a par-
ticular vanguard setting influenced by the Spanish anarchist Ferrer and his
‘Modern School’.
With the present volume, we hope to contribute to the ongoing discourse
on the avant-gardes, emphasizing the interdependency of politics, philosophy,
and the arts. The specific range of questions raised in this book made it impos-
sible to include every paper presented at the preceding conference. Our deep-
est gratitude goes to all of our colleagues and the anonymous reviewers of this
volume, who collaborated with us, developed ideas and viewpoints, and shared
their expertise as they helped us realize this undertaking.
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Part 1
Frictions: Aesthetics or Politics
∵
Chapter 1
The Symbolist Movement: Anarchism and the

Avant-Garde in Fin de Siècle France
Richard Shryock
Abstract
The relationship of the French symbolist movement in literature to anarchism has

been the subject of numerous studies. This chapter examines the two movements
in fin de siècle France as two avatars of the avant-garde: one political and the other
aesthetic, each representing the most ‘advanced’ positions in their respective fields.
Although the ideological role of the symbolist writers has often been questioned, their
participation in the dialogue on avant-garde politics and aesthetics was a part of the
fabric of the time and drew the attention not only of the anarchists, but the press and
the police as well.
In the contact between anarchism and symbolism, the flow of ideas went in both
directions but the impact of each group on the other was largely asymmetrical. Sym-
bolism as an avant-garde literary movement may have enhanced the cultural standing
of anarchism and potentially its force in society by broadening its acceptability. The
attraction of these pure poets to a political movement that preached revolution and
even carried out acts of physical terror to achieve its ends contributed to naturalizing
anarchism as being more acceptable to a larger number of people in France. Mak-
ing anarchism appear less threatening to those outside of the movement also made it
more threatening to the government.
The cultural benefit to symbolism was limited because of the aesthetic limits of the
anarchists. Anarchism did not contribute at all to the aesthetic practices of the sym-
bolists because it had nothing innovative to contribute. If anarchism had an influence
on symbolism, it is not in the aesthetic itself but in the discourse on the aesthetic. The
influence of anarchism caused the symbolists to articulate exactly how it might influ-
ence society, how this esoteric poetry could have a social role.
The anarchist movement in France and the symbolist movement in French lit-
erature represented some of the most radical positions in their day: each at-
tempting to dissolve the boundaries of their respective areas in order to open up
society and literature to new possibilities. Both were products of the 1880s and

14 Shryock
1890s, but their precursors existed prior to this time. Based on the works
of Pierre-Joseph Proudhon (1809–1865), Mikhail Alexandrovich Bakunin (1814–
1876), and Max Stirner (1806–1856) (among others), anarchism developed in
France during the 1880s through the writings of Piotr Alexeyevich Kropotkin
(1842–1921), Élisée Reclus (1830–1905), and Jean Grave (1854–1939). Its support-
ers faced severe police repression that closed journals and arrested people for
non-violent acts of propaganda by the word as well as violent acts of propagan-
da by the deed. Symbolism faced resistance in the literary and cultural world
that made its emergence as a movement difficult. Despite their struggles with
dominant culture, the two seem like odd bedfellows. The foundations of the
symbolist aesthetic are often traced to Charles Baudelaire (1821–1867) in the
1850s. The aesthetic was developed through the poetry of Stéphane Mallarmé
(1842–1898) and Paul Verlaine (1844–1896) in the 1860s and 1870s although their
writings at the time were most closely associated with the art for art’s sake Par-
nassians in whose collections they repeatedly published. In the early to mid-
1880s, a new generation of writers – including Gustave Kahn (1859–1936), Paul
Adam (1862–1920), Jean Moréas (1856–1910), Francis Vielé-Griffin (1864–1937),
Henri de Régnier (1864–1936), Adolphe Retté (1863–1930), Stuart Merrill (1863–
1915), Rémy de Gourmont (1858–1915), André-Ferdinand Herold (1865–1940),
Camille Mauclair (1872–1945), Bernard Lazare (1865–1903), Pierre Quillard
(1864–1912), Saint-Pol-Roux (1861–1940), Édouard Dubus (1864–1895), and Félix
Fénéon (1861–1944) took inspiration from Mallarmé’s and Verlaine’s poetry and
ideas. It was not until 1886, when Jean Moréas published a symbolist manifesto
that the aesthetic took on a name and began to define itself. Symbolism had
many forms but it sought to renew poetic language often through obscure lexi-
cal choices and complex syntax. Everyday reality was ignored in favor of depic-
tions of legends, dreams, impressions and sensations in an attempt to attain a
transcendental reality. This hermetic poetry was not easily accessible to large
numbers of readers placing it at odds with many dimensions of anarchism.
The scholarship on the relationship of these two avatars of the avant-garde –
one political and the other aesthetic – has produced a wide variety of
interpretations. It is necessary to understand first the historical context of the
term ‘avant-garde’ when applied to literature in the nineteenth century. I next
examine the emergence of these two movements in the 1880s and early 1890s
leading up to the embrace of anarchism by most symbolists during the wave of
anarchist attacks in the 1890s. The symbolists’ involvement with politics is
placed in the political field of the time. With some exceptions, a significant
number of scholars have considerable reservations about the nature of sym-
bolism’s ties to anarchism. This paper argues that the symbolists saw them-
selves as participating in a dialogue of what constituted the limits of a narchism.
Anarchism and the Avant-Garde in Fin de Siècle France 15
Others at the time, including the press and the police, viewed the interactions
between the two movements as having a potential impact on society. Symbol-
ism’s involvement in anarchism had beneficial dimensions for each of these
avant-gardes.
1 Theories of the Avant-garde
The notion of the avant-garde as it applies to late nineteenth-century French

literature involves multiple dimensions. Much of the theory of the avant-garde
was developed in the twentieth century through critics such as Renato Poggio-
li, Matei Calinescu, and Peter Bürger. (Poggioli 1962 [1968]; Bürger 1974 [1984];
Calinescu 1987) They focused primarily on twentieth-century artistic manifes-
tations. One potential drawback with these theories is that the mechanisms
that were part of the formation of the avant-gardes in the twentieth century
may not have had the same importance in the late nineteenth century. The
historical notion of the ‘avant-garde’ as having a meaning other than military
and describing the role of artists1 was developed in Saint-Simon’s 1825 Opinions
littéraires, philosophiques et industrielles (Literary, Philosophical and Industrial
Opinions) which argued for artists to spread new ideas.2 Nicos Hadjinicolaou
makes an exceptionally important point about this text that is frequently
overlooked:
For the Saint-Simonians, there is no artistic avant-garde, for them art it-
self and by definition is located at the social avant-garde since it is the
destiny of ‘art to have a positive effect on society’. Among Saint-Simonians
the idea of an artistic avant-garde, which is separate from other artistic
tendencies of its time, does not exist.
hadjinicolaou 1978: 523
The Fourierist Gabriel-Désiré Laverdant expanded upon the Saint-Simonian

notion at mid-century in De la mission de l’art et du rôle des artistes (On the
Mission of the Arts and the Role of the Artists, 1845) in which he sees artists as
1 I am using ‘artists’ or ‘art’ as a shorthand for the arts in general which would include
literature.
2 Although the dialogue that is usually quoted was written either entirely or partially by Olinde
Rodrigues, I will refer to this as a Saint-Simonian notion.
3 Readers should also consult an excellent discussion of the development of the avant-garde in
Cottington 2012, to whom I am indebted for our discussions and for multiple references on
the topic. All translations from French to English are my own.
16 Shryock
taking a leading role in the direction of society.4 As Hadjinicolaou indicates,

Laverdant does not contradict the Saint Simonian notion but clarifies it: “only
art which expresses the most advanced social tendencies is at the avant-garde
of society”. (Hadjinicolaou 1978: 53) The suggestion is that a parallel exists be-
tween, on the one hand, the message or the aesthetic, and, on the other, the
direction society should move. Although the term ‘avant-garde’ was not gener-
ally used then to describe this association in the fin de siècle,5 and the notion
did not have much theoretical articulation beyond the Saint-Simonian or Fou-
rierist writings, the paradigm was nevertheless a part of how many people
viewed the relationship between literature and politics. For example, Lucien
Muhlfeld discussing the interest of new writers for anarchism in 1892 wrote:
“Il y a la tradition, la tradition qui conseille à la littérature d’avant-garde
l’opposition le plus à gauche. Les romantiques saluaient d’avance la chose nou-
velle de [18]48.” (“There is the tradition, the tradition that recommends to the
literature of the avant-garde to be the most far-left opposition. The Romantics
greeted in advance the new phenomenon of [18]48.”) (Muhlfeld 1892: 2)
An important dimension often not discussed in the context of the avant-
garde is that if artists and writers are among those who lead society, they have
to have a means to communicate with society. While a painting hung on the
artist’s wall or an unpublished manuscript in a writer’s drawer may have aes-
thetic qualities that set it apart from the cultural field of the day, these artefacts
cannot have the effect on society that Saint-Simon and Laverdant express.
The symbolist movement in literature is frequently referred to unproblem-
atically as a manifestation of the avant-garde. This is the case in Julia Kristeva’s
La Révolution du langage poétique (1974) or Christophe Charle’s Naissance des
intellectuels (1990) to name just two of the better-known examples. However,
often the concept of the avant-garde is left undefined. The present study is
grounded in an historical understanding of the avant-garde. My work is also
informed by Bourdieu’s notion of the field elaborated in Les Règles de l’art. Ge-
nèse et structure du champ littéraire (1992). He argues that society is composed
of various cultural, artistic, and political spaces in which individuals situate
themselves relative to each other. The avant-garde is a position of new art in
4 A number of scholars have detailed the development of the term ‘avant-garde’ in

nineteenth-century France. Readers unfamiliar with this history may want to consult the
Hadjinicolaou article cited above or Egbert 1970, especially 75–77. Egbert also explains how
the Saint-Simonian legacy often led to artists making their message subservient to social con-
siderations and tended to fit in ultimately with Marxist ideas on art whereas the Fourierist
model provided a more open paradigm privileging individual expression that better fit with
anarchism.
5 See the work of Estivals/Gaudy/Vergez 1967 for information on the expression ‘avant-garde’.
the cultural field that exists in relation to other positions. The interrelations of
these positions depend on not only how individual artists saw themselves but
also how others perceived them at the time. (Bourdieu 1992)
2 Two Movements Developing at the Same Time

and a Brief Encounter
Although the intellectual foundation of anarchism goes back much further,

Jean Maitron points out that anarchism was born in 1881 “as a distinct and in-
dependent current from other forms of socialism”. (Maitron 1975 [1983]: 9)
Many seminal works of anarchism were published or translated into French in
the 1880s and 1890s as this relatively new ideology developed. From the mid to
late 1880s, Paris increasingly became an important center for anarchism in
France after police repression in Lyon pushed a number of militants to the
country’s capital. In 1885, Jean Grave moved the leading anarchist journal Le
Révolté (which became La Révolte from 1887 to 1894 and Les Temps nouveaux
beginning in 1895) to Paris. As a new movement, anarchism occupied a unique
space in the political field. In many ways, it was a still developing ideology dur-
ing the fin de siècle. This fact certainly added to its allure as the manifestation
of the socio-political avant-garde in France.
Symbolism had to present itself and be readable as a new and serious move-
ment for it to occupy the place of the avant-garde in French society. This situa-
tion was exceptionally difficult in the 1880s with layers upon layers of literary
groups using fanciful and confusing names – Les Hydropathes (‘The Hydro-
paths’), Les Hirsutes (‘The Hirsutes’), Les Jemenfoutistes (‘The Don’t-give-
a-damn group’), Les Fumistes (‘The Jokers’) – as well as the art expositions of
Les Incohérents (‘The Incoherents’).6 The setting was complicated further by
Paul Bourget’s 1881 article on Baudelaire (and reprinted in his book in 1883)
which laid out a theory of decadence. His work inspired many journalists and
critics to begin labeling new tendencies in the arts as ‘decadent’. Gabriel Vic-
aire and Henri Beauclair added to the muddle with their parody of decadent
poetry Les Déliquescences d’Adoré Floupette (The Corruption of Adoré Flou-
pette, 1885). In April 1886, Anatole Baju embraced the negative epithet and
started the decadent movement around his journal Le Décadent, which at-
tempted to be a serious venue for new literary tendencies. Many symbolists
compounded the problem by publishing in Baju’s journal muddying the line
6 Daniel Grojnowski (1981) makes an interesting argument that many of these groups share
qualities that would, in the twentieth century, become part of what defines the avant-garde.
18 Shryock
between ‘decadent’ and ‘symbolist’. Symbolist literature also appeared in 1886

in journals with neutral names such as La Pléiade, started in March, and La
Vogue, begun in April,7 but until Moréas’s manifesto in Le Figaro of September
18, 1886, the label ‘symbolist’ was not used in any systematic way. In early
October, Kahn, Adam, and Moréas founded a short-lived but significant jour-
nal Le Symboliste which further attached the label to this aesthetic.
It took very little time for some anarchists to take note of what was happen-
ing in the literary field and to attempt to create ties. Within a few weeks of
symbolism emerging as a movement, an anarchist group in Paris called Les
Décadents: Groupe politique et littéraire (The Decadents: Political-Literary
Group)8 organized three literary lectures (‘conférences’) in October and De-
cember 1886 that included the famous Communarde Louise Michel. The first
item of the agenda of one of the meetings was: “L’École décadente ou symbol-
iste, sa raison d’être, sa philosophie, sa portée sociale.” (“The decadent or sym-
bolist school, its reason for being, its philosophy, its social significance.”)
(Chaville 1973: 620) Numerous writers were invited, among them symbolists
such as René Ghil, Mallarmé, and Moréas. This means that the organizers were
most likely aware of Ghil’s Traité du verbe (Treatise on the Verb, 1886) and
Moréas’s manifesto. Although La Pléiade had published Ghil’s treatise on his
theory of literary instrumentation in July and August 1886 in the journal, it was
not until September 22 that it appeared in book form with an Avant-dire by
Mallarmé. For those attending these lectures and for the press, the writers were
not able to distinguish themselves from the image of the fumiste groups and, as
a result, they were not taken seriously nor were the anarchists’ efforts to bring
the two into dialogue successful. If anything, the association of these two ex-
treme elements in French society made the undertaking appear even more
absurd.
It is significant that anarchists took the initiative and saw interest in sym-
bolism and its social impact. They contacted Mallarmé, for example, not once
but at least twice. This can be seen as a manifestation of how the leading edges
of art and politics were assumed at the time to have some connection. While
this group disappeared almost as quickly as it appeared, several of its members
were involved with various anarchist groups in the following years. Many re-
mained interested in the impact of literature and education as tools for ad-
vancing society. Perhaps stung by the media fallout from these encounters,
neither the anarchists nor the symbolists reached out to each other for a p eriod
7 Le Scapin (begun in December 1885) also published a few symbolists.

8 See my article on this topic (Shryock 2000). Les Décadents (The Decadents) was the name of
an anarchist group with no ties to Baju or his journal.
of several years. Through the end of the 1880s, symbolism continued to develop
independently of anarchism.
3 Symbolists and the Political Field
For the symbolists, politically and culturally speaking, the republicans repre-
sented the heart of what was wrong in society. During the 1880s, without
changing its aesthetic, symbolism began to occupy an increasingly opposition-
al position relative to bourgeois norms. (Shryock 2005) This cultural shift
accompanied a political shift. In 1879, the republicans gained an absolute ma-
jority in parliament and began to use the state to promote practices aligned
with bourgeois ideology. The government increasingly supported art forms
that reflected republican values such as harmony, order, clarity. A main ele-
ment of this edifying art was that it would be accessible to all. Journalists and
critics magnified these values in their articles. In addition, as Charle points out,
the Third Republic in the 1880s and 1890s was becoming increasingly hostile to
new writers because of censorship trials. (Charle 1990: 110–111) Both legally and
aesthetically, the symbolists were seeing that literature and writers were less
and less safe under the Third Republic. However, the political field presented
no alternatives: the royalists were too conservative and wanted a return to the
past; the socialists favored a form of realist art that was very much the opposite
of symbolism. One brief exception to this situation was the rise of Boulangism
from 1887 to 1889 that attracted at least half of the symbolists.9 This populist,
anti-parliamentary movement drew supporters from the right and the left to
coalesce around General Georges Boulanger (1837–1891). Boulanger was able
to gain the support of Maurice Barrès who called on his fellow young writers to
support the General. (Barrès 1888: 58)
For writers who felt that the current regime was unsupportive of them and
the importance of their literature, such a position was highly attractive. Some
of Boulanger’s vague statements allowed people to read into them what they
wanted to see. What many at both ends of the political spectrum saw in Bou-
langism was a possible way to remove the Third Republic from power. In addi-
tion to Barrès being elected as a Boulangist candidate, one symbolist, Paul
Adam, ran (unsuccessfully) as a Boulangist candidate. Yet another, Adolphe
Retté, was ready to take to the streets in support of a coup for Boulanger. (Retté
1913: 224–249)
9 One convenient overview of Boulangism can be found in Garrigues 1992.

20 Shryock
The Third Republic was able to stop Boulanger in the 1889 election. The gov-
ernment accused him of election fraud causing him to go into exile. For those
dissatisfied with the Third Republic and the democratic process as it was prac-
ticed, the 1889 election had two effects: First, it removed the strongest anti-re-
publican candidate leaving no one behind him; and second, it showed that the
republicans were willing to use the tools of government to influence an elec-
tion and keep a candidate from gaining legitimate electoral support. The elimi-
nation of Boulangism also left those opposing the Third Republic with little
other choice within the established field of politics.
4 The Symbolists Embrace Anarchism
In the two years following the 1889 election, a number of new journals arose
with a symbolist orientation. In each case, these journals published articles
not only about literature but also about the current intellectual, social and po-
litical trends of the day. In 1890, Le Mercure de France, L’Ermitage, Les Entretiens
politiques et littéraires started publication alongside La Plume (1889) and were
joined by La Revue blanche which moved to Paris in 1891. These journals hoped
to provide another voice in French society: on the one hand, they expressed
the ideas of the new generation; on the other hand, they offered a counter
balance to the mainstream press. For example, in the inaugural issue of Le Mer-
cure de France, the director, Alfred Vallette, described its goals: “Œuvre de dé-
molisseurs, soit; mais quand l’écroulement final de la maison n’est plus qu’une
affaire d’heures, n’y point aider prouverait qu’on n’en désire point la recon-
struction prochaine.” (“The work of demolitionists, certainly, but when the de-
finitive collapse of the house is just a matter of hours, not furthering it would
prove that we do not desire the forthcoming reconstruction.”) (Vallette 1890: 3)
Beginning in 1890 and 1891, these journals often opened the door to anarchist
ideas. One of the most significant was Les Entretiens politiques et littéraires,
founded by three symbolists who were former supporters of Boulanger: Adam,
Vielé-Griffin, and Régnier. For Adam, the most openly political of the three,
this shift was natural:
In the Boulangist platform, therefore, nothing reactionary, nothing but

progressive and anarchist ideas. The evolving of parallel forces in a free
context is the essential theory of ANARCHISM, the theory of autonomous
groups pursuing their own destinies without a central government to
bother them. It is easy to conceive how revisionist socialists, such as me,
for example, previously enlightened by the articles of La Révolte, were,

following the failure of Boulangism, committed to Kropotkin’s theory.
adam 1914: xvi
This journal became a platform both for symbolists and their allies making
statements about anarchism but also for anarchists such as Reclus, Bakunin,
and Grave.
Of particular significance in the context of the avant-garde where politics
and aesthetics come together was the creation in 1891 of L’Endehors, an anar-
chist journal that attracted approximately ten symbolist writers. After its edi-
tor in chief, Zo d’Axa (1864–1930), fled into exile to avoid prosecution, Félix
Fénéon, who was involved with symbolist journals and close friends with many
symbolists, secretly took over the administration of the journal. The subversive
intent of L’Endehors was such that possessing a collection was used as evidence
against Auguste Vaillant, (Lefrère/Oriol 2013: 163) who threw a bomb into the
chamber of parliament while in session. Publishing in La Révolte and L’Endehors
was also one of the items the government used to convict some in the 1894
anarchist trial called ‘Le Procès des Trente’ (Trial of the Thirty). (Lefrère/Oriol
2013: 193) Police informants also took note in their reports of when this journal
was sold at anarchist meetings.10
This evolution of many young (and not just symbolist) writers toward anar-
chism and the changes in their journals caught the attention of the police as
early as 1891:
It is not in the working class that you will find the new anarchists but
among young writers and even those of a more mature age: Octave Mir-
beau’s articles are more dangerous than Père Peinard himself! Paul Adam,
George Darien and company, you could name more than 20, have be-
come literary anarchists. […] The literary journals, the books published
are full of the expansion of anarchist ideas, these developments will bear
fruit in a few years. The working class has not been very interested in an-
archy until now because they did not understand it and they were fright-
ened by what has been presented as anarchist; but by allowing these
ideas to expand, to move beyond the false appearances that yesterday’s
10 “Yesterday afternoon, […]. A large meeting organized by anarchists. […] In the room, they
were selling these journals: L’Endehors, La Révolte, Le Riflard and le Pot à Colle.” (Archives
de la Police de Paris, B/a 77, report, November 30, 1891.)
22 Shryock
anarchists attached to it [,] we will see the working class come to tomor-
row’s anarchy because it will be presented by the bourgeois youth.11
The spread of anarchism to even a relatively small number of writers could

create a major attraction for a large proportion of the working class. The report
placed the locus of power in the workers, but it portrays the writers as possibly
having a similar leadership role as described in the works of Saint-Simon and
Laverdant.
Between 1892 and 1894, Paris was wracked by a series of anarchist attacks,
most of which were committed using bombs, concluding with the assassina-
tion of the French President Sadi Carnot. Jean Maitron calls this the Ère des
attentats (the Era of the attacks) that represents the most intense period of vio-
lent anarchist propaganda by the deed. As the bombs continued to explode,
Mauclair, Gourmont, Retté, and Quillard, among others, wrote articles explain-
ing the relationship between the symbolist aesthetic and anarchism. Mallarmé
compared the power of writing to the explosions of bombs. (Opinions Diverses
1893: 2) The sometimes stunning formulations of these articles attracted con-
siderable attention both at the time and among those who study the relation-
ship between symbolism and anarchism. The most provocatively titled (and
frequently quoted) is Quillard’s Anarchie par la littérature (Anarchy by Litera-
ture, 1892):
Thus, consciously or not – what difference does it make? – whoever com-

municates to his brothers in sufferance the secret splendor of his dream
acts on the surrounding society like a dissolvent, and those who under-
stand him, are made, often without their knowing it, into outlaws or
rebels. You have to admit that the explosion of a few dynamite bombs
terrorizes some ordinary minds. But this surprised panic is short lived,
just long enough to provide a pretext for reprisals from the police and the
courts; […] the destructive power of a poem does not dissipate all at once:
it is permanent and its blast is certain and continuous; and Shakespeare
or Aeschylus prepare the destruction of the old world just as surely as the
boldest anarchist comrades.
quillard 1892: 151
Gourmont’s Le Symbolisme (Symbolism, 1892) established a fundamental

equivalence between symbolism and anarchism: “le Symbolisme, qui, lavé des
outrageantes signifiances que lui donnèrent d’infirmes court-voyants, se traduit
11 Archives de la Police de Paris, B/a 77, “Les Anarchistes: Bulletin de quinzaine”, November
5, 1891 signed ‘4’: 3–4.
littéralement par le mot Liberté et, pour les violents, par le mot Anarchie”
(“Symbolism, washed of its outrageous meanings that disabled, near-sighted
people attribute to it, is translated literally by the word Liberty and, for violent
people, by the word Anarchy”). (De Gourmont 1892b: 322) Later he referred to
this argument as “la rénovation du mot Symbolisme” (“the renovation of the
word symbolism”). (De Gourmont 1892a: 4) Among the statements Mallarmé
made about anarchism, his response to a journalist’s question concerning the
recent bombing of parliament by the anarchist Vaillant has attracted the most
attention: “Je ne sais pas d’autre bombe qu’un livre.” (“I do not know of any
bomb other than a book.”)12 This small and very incomplete sample provides
an idea of the nature of these declarations.
The shared foundation between symbolism and anarchism, as those on the
symbolist side saw it, had to do with certain aesthetic features that had their
reflection in social matters. For example, in a July 1893 letter to La Plume, Retté
articulated these dimensions:
[…] defending the notion of Beauty, in other words, of the Absolute, I was
advocating the anarchist IDEA toward which all of the youth moves con-
sciously or not, because this Idea means an absolute of beauty. […] We
want neither determining rules or laws – other than the eternal law of
rhythm, the free expansion of the instinct of Beauty. We are […] ‘free Spir-
its freely using a personal means of expression’. […] Why not define [sym-
bolism]: anarchist Art? Our art is essentially anarchist, because it is
individualist and in solidarity and this is its grandeur and its beauty.
retté 1893: 343
For many critics, such as Richard Sonn, this is merely an aestheticization of

politics. (Sonn 1989: 234)13 Even so, if such statements did not link symbolism
to anarchism, they certainly contributed to the public perceptions that these
two avant-garde formations were moving in tandem.
Prior to the beginning of the Ère des attentats, many symbolists had already
shown an interest in or an openness toward anarchism. The fiasco that oc-
curred in 1886 with the three anarchist/decadent lectures revealed that there
was a potential ‘cost’ for the symbolists if they tried to align themselves with
the anarchists. The same was true for the anarchists. The price would be a loss
12 “Opinions Diverses” in Le Journal (10 December 1893): n.p.

13 Laurent Tailhade famously said after the bombing of the parliament, “So much for the
victims if the gesture is beautiful. So much for the death of some unknown people (vagues
humanités), if, through them, the individual is affirmed.” Although his literature was on
the margins of symbolism, he circulated in the same circles. The remark is often taken as
a reflection of an aestheticization of politics shared by symbolist writers.
24 Shryock
in the fragile recognition the symbolists were seeking to build in order to be

taken as a serious, avant-garde literary movement whose values reflected the
leading edge in society. Keeping their distance from any political grouping was
probably in their best interest or at least would have been the safest move to
make. However, when anarchism became associated with violence and death,
the response of many symbolists was not to back away from anarchism, but to
embrace it even though they did not condone the acts of violence. They did
not modify their aesthetic to make it correspond to anarchism but wrote a se-
ries of critical articles to explain the connections. Their reaction to anarchism
was part of a larger generational response of les jeunes (the young) which ex-
pressed support for anarchist, radical ideas. Other authors, such as Georges
Darien or Octave Mirbeau, also wrote fiction that was openly compatible with
anarchism.14 It may seem implausible that a group of largely esoteric poets
would align their literature with those practicing the first iteration of modern
terrorism in France. Yet, this shift to propaganda by the deed represented a
shift from anarchism being an ideology of words to one of actions. Terrorism,
it should be noted, does not ‘win’ by gaining control over physical territory. Its
immediate victims are those who suffer the physical violence of the attacks,
but the ultimate battlefield is people’s minds and emotions − precisely the area
the symbolists wanted to affect.
The support among symbolists for anarchism created confusion at the time
and since. Although some of their statements of support were unequivocal,
they did not change their literary practices. Many wrote articles favorable to
anarchism that were republished in La Révolte/Les Temps nouveaux’s literary
supplement, but this same supplement only published three pieces of symbol-
ist literature,15 the contents of which were compatible with other literary piec-
es published by anarchists. Once the Ère des attentats ended, the interest
among many symbolists for anarchism seemed to wane or at least fell silent.
5 Framing the Symbolists’ Interest in Anarchism
Understanding the nature, the motivations, and the impacts of this connec-
tion is central for making sense of symbolism’s relationship to anarchism as
14 Mirbeau and Darien’s involvement with anarchism through their realist literature pro-
vides further evidence that the aesthetics of symbolism combined with its ideological
position helped to place this movement at the fore culturally unlike these other writers.
15 A poem by Verlaine was also published (Verlaine 1893) but it did not reflect the symbolist
aesthetic.
manifestations of the avant-garde. This topic has been the subject of much
debate. Some post-Second World War era studies have focused on Mallarmé in
particular. Kristeva calls him the “anarchiste prudent” (“the cautious anar-
chist”). (Kristeva 1974: 428) For Sartre he represents “le terrorisme de la poli-
tesse” (“terrorism of politeness”). (Sartre 1986: 151) Such readings are testimony
to the importance of Mallarmé’s writing and how it is continually reinscribed
into new critical approaches. However, they fall outside the historical scope of
the present study. Jean-François Hamel analyzes such readings in Camarade
Mallarmé and emphasizes: “Mallarmé was more a contemporary of the twen-
tieth century than his own century.” (Hamel 2014: 9)
Among the scholars who have studied the symbolist movement in relation
to anarchism, many point to shared ideas especially in the realm of revolt, in-
dividualism, and the refusal of authority.16 Dick Gevers claims that the symbol-
ists and those who practiced propaganda by the deed shared a search for the
ideal, which was also the source of the dream of the absolute. (Gevers 1989: 22)
He connects the two closely and sees the anarchist and symbolist dreams as
“interchangeable”. (Gevers 1989: 27) Historian Richard Sonn analyzes the rela-
tionship arguing that “[t]he Symbolists’ relation to anarchism [was] doubly
determined by their perception of formal homologies17 between their art and
elements of anarchist ideology, and by the sense of opposition they felt be-
tween their transcendental pretentions and the anarchists’ social concerns”.
(Sonn 1989: 220) He adds: “Not only did rebellion against aesthetic orthodoxy
within the literary field have political connotations, but the autonomy of the
field itself was homologous with the anarchists own fiercely maintained inde-
pendence.” (Sonn 1989: 209)
Other scholars, such as Eugenia Herbert, have attempted to disassociate
symbolist literary writings from the actions and articles of the writers. She ar-
gues that the writers were political in the non-literary sphere but apolitical in
their literature. (Herbert 1961) The statements the symbolists made criticizing
various social phenomena or the government do seem to be contradicted by
their literary production in which society’s problems remain invisible. Virtu-
ally nothing justifies associating symbolism with political literature as the lat-
ter is usually conceived.
A strong current of interpretation dating from the late nineteenth century
to present holds that the links between symbolism and anarchism were not
particularly significant. One former symbolist claimed that the attraction to
16 These include Monférier 1965; Aubery 1969; Gevers 1989. Two more recent studies worth
noting (and reading) are Roger 2014, and McGuinness 2015.
17 McGuinness 2015: 92 points out that these are often analogies rather than homologies.
26 Shryock
anarchism was just snobbery. Writing about his fellow symbolists, Mauclair
noted, “Pourtant, ils écrivaient tous dans les feuilles anarchistes. Il était très
chic d’être compromis, et recevoir la visite d’un commissaire de police était un
honneur convoité” (“However, they all published in anarchist journals. It was
very chic to be compromised, receiving a visit from the police was a badge of
honor. The ivory tower was a livable reality”). (Mauclair 1922: 47) Contempo-
rary Ernest Raynaud presented his account of the relationship between the
two in La Mêlée symboliste:
The symbolists had inherited from the generation of Second Empire writ-
ers an indifference to public matters. They did not feel the urge to go into
the streets to take part in strikes, uprisings or riots. However, they invited
Louise Michel and anarchists to their meetings and it is to this anarchist
influence that one must attribute their scorn of rules and masters as well
as their insistence to only avail themselves, concerning all questions of
meter and form, to their own whim.
raynaud 1971: 236–237
These views of the superficiality of the ties between the symbolists and the
politics of their time were quite common. While this perspective existed be-
fore Raynaud wrote his history of the period, it became magnified as Raynaud’s
work is cited in nearly every history of the movement. Indeed, Mauclair and he
had a considerable influence on those who examined this dimension of sym-
bolism after them.
Several critics hold a position compatible with Mauclair’s. Thierry Mari-
court takes a nuanced position and sees definite limits on the intermingling of
symbolism and anarchism:
Their ‘anarchism’ was based on a misunderstanding and thumbed its

nose at economic, political, and social problems that would have to be
settled before establishing an anarchist society. […] Their approach was
essentially intellectual, aesthetic, doomed to, as Camille Mauclair wrote,
a groping toward abstract beauty. […] Anarchism, as they conceived of it,
possessed no political character.
maricourt 1990: 85
For Maricourt, the symbolists’ intellectual interest in anarchism did not cor-
respond to the kinds of actions the militants were taking and their approach
was ultimately not headed in the same direction. Two more recent (and
thorough) studies echo aspects of Maricourt’s argument. Thierry Roger (2014)
describes it as: “rencontre de surface; écart en profondeur” (“surface encoun-

ter, [a] deep division”) and he dismisses literary anarchism as unserious. For
him, Mallarmé’s statements comparing the book and a bomb are an aesthetic
displacement into the political context of anarchism. Patrick McGuinness
wonders if “the crisis in Symbolist politics is not in fact political at all but is
merely a poetic crisis that has found a different language − that of politics”.
(McGuinness 2015: 150−151) Consistent in all of these perspectives is the lack of
genuine or informed political involvement for these writers. If these critics are
correct, the social element of symbolism as an avant-garde movement is very
limited and largely superficial as its social dimension is not to be taken
seriously.
6 Another View of Symbolism’s Connection to Anarchism
The accusations leveled against the symbolists both by their contemporaries

and by scholars comes from a certain understanding of what anarchism is or
what it means to be an anarchist or what makes a literary text anarchist. As is
true for any political formation, the anarchists often did not agree with each
other on a variety of basic questions not only on how the revolution was to
come to pass but also what would take place afterwards. Like any other ideol-
ogy, anarchism was not delimited by just a single set of doctrines and specific
tactics on which all its adherents agreed but by a series of socio-political-
cultural positions in society. Marc Angenot confronts this problem in the con-
text of socialism in 1889–1890:
[the socialist movement] should be examined as a space of polemical

confrontations, a circle of which the periphery is everywhere and the
center is nowhere, an interdiscursive topography whose interrelations
appear that they can be stabilized by choosing a particular point of view.
angenot 2006: 8
One can certainly judge the sincerity of the symbolists or their understanding
of the doctrines as most critics have, but another way to analyze the connec-
tions between symbolism and anarchism is to look at the symbolists as partici-
pating in a dialogue on what anarchism is and on the relationship between
anarchism and the arts. In any exchange, one can be mistaken about the ac-
curacy of what one says, but the back and forth itself is a reality. This dialogue
about their relationship to anarchism was taken seriously by symbolists, by the
public, by the police. When Mallarmé declared “Je ne sais pas d’autre bombe
28 Shryock
qu’un livre” (“I do not know of any bomb other than a book”) in response to
Vaillant’s bombing of the parliament, this can be understood as an aesthetici-
zation of ideology or as ‘merely’ a metaphor, but the statement itself is part of
this dialogue as it serves to situate the writer and writing relative to the acts
and goals of the anarchists. It is possible to characterize the relationship be-
tween symbolism and anarchism through this statement in multiple ways, but
a fundamental dimension is that Mallarmé is connecting the two and, signifi-
cantly, is not using this act of violence to condemn anarchism.
Anarchism in France had multiple tendencies in the 1880s and early 1890s
including anarcho-communism (Kropotkin and Grave), anarcho-syndicalism
(Bakunin and Émile Pouget) and individualism (Stirner). The anarchist group
that organized the lectures was most likely individualist as was Zo d’Axa whose
anarchist journal L’Endehors was the most welcoming to symbolists. This cur-
rent was sometimes in conflict with the type of anarchism represented by
Grave and La Révolte. A September 30, 1892 police informant report, talks about
the tensions:
[…] it is probable that we are going to see a separation into two factions
of the anarchists. On one side the moderates (workers who work), and on
the other, the violent people, those who do nothing. In the middle, the
skeptics, literary writers of the ‘Endehors’ ilk and others. The former
group does not seem to want to follow La Révolte.18
The tensions between the two factions can be seen publicly in, for example,
the La Révolte’s book review of Zo d’Axa’s 1895 Le Grand trimard (The Great
Route) that criticized him for the name of his (then defunct) journal: “Etre ‘en
dehors’ n’est, au fond, qu’une attitude, une pose, et non un fait.” (“Being ‘out-
side’ is fundamentally an attitude or a pose and not an action.”) (Vindex 1895: 4)
It would not be accurate to infer, however, that all tendencies of anarchism in
the 1880s and 1890s were equal: some currents had a greater presence than oth-
ers. The anarcho-communist strain was one of the strongest through most of
this period and is often used as a point of reference for many of the critics who
study anarchism. It is represented by La Révolte/Les Temps nouveaux as well as
the majority of anarchist theoreticians published in symbolist-oriented jour-
nals. Even so, the metaphor of the dialogue is perhaps useful: some currents
had a louder voice and commanded more respect but they were not the only
voices that had an impact.
18 Archives de la Police de Paris, B/a 77, report dated September 20, 1892, signed ‘4’: 2.
During the 1880s and 1890s, anarchism was still being defined through the
publication of seminal texts. The symbolist-oriented journals participated in
this debate. To cite just one example in late 1892, Les Entretiens politiques et lit-
téraires published an article by Charles-Albert19 entitled Aux anarchistes qui
s’ignorent (To those who are unaware they are anarchists) (Charles-Albert 1892:
272–277) and was soon reprinted in La Révolte’s literary supplement. (La Ré-
volté 1893) The purpose of the article was to “grossir l’avant-garde” (“expand the
avant-garde”) – here meant in broad terms – “pour assurer le succès de la Révo-
lution prochaine” (“to insure the success of the next Revolution”). (Charles-
Albert 1892: 272) Charles-Albert was not a symbolist but Les Entretiens was run
by three symbolists. The article also defines anarchism very broadly: “le défini-
tif triomphe de l’individualité, notre seule maxime l’inviolabilité de la Dignité
humaine.” (“The definitive triumph of individuality, our only motto [is] the
inviolability of human Dignity.”) (Charles-Albert 1892: 277) The suggestion is of
course that it is possible to be an anarchist without knowing it and the article
urges readers to accept the idea that they may already have values that corre-
spond to anarchism. Not only was this article reprinted in La Révolte, but it was
republished separately no less than seven times between 1895 and 1927.20 This
active participation of the small literary journals in the discussions of what
was anarchism attracted significant attention.
Beginning in 1891 and continuing through the mid-1890s, most of the liter-
ary journals of the avant-garde included a number of articles or book reviews
favorable to anarchism. As was true with the example cited above for Charles-
Albert, this support was not limited to the symbolists and included many of
the young literary writers, critics and artists of the time. This shift was visible
to the public. For example, the Parisian daily L’Éclair remarked in late 1893:
The literary youth, which shows a certain sympathy for anarchism, had
L’Endehors disappear and whose editorial staff is now in prison or in ex-
ile. We would not be able to categorize under this label − other than La
Revue anarchiste − the independent journals open to extreme ideas: Les
Entretiens politiques et littérarires, L’Art social, La Revue blanche, the very
serious Mercure de France, weighty, sober periodicals that anarchists en-
joy following and that they are pleased to have in the personal libraries,
but they are not waiting for any pleasing apologies. Above all, one should
not misunderstand and see in this classification anything other than the
19 Pseudonym of Charles Victor Albert Fernand Daudet (1869–1957).

20 According to the website @narlivres.
30 Shryock
desire to show the floating and imprecise boundaries that separate these
paradoxical philosophies and audacious art theories from anarchy.21
The blurring of the lines between literary groups and anarchism reflected the
debates, discussions and redefinitions of the time.
As I have argued elsewhere (Shryock 2005), the symbolist aesthetic gradu-
ally became political relative to the cultural norms of the Third Republic. Their
aesthetic dimensions were also linked to anarchism and to social implications
at the time. Gustave Lanson famously attacked Mallarmé because “son art est
l’équivalent littéraire de l’anarchie” (“his art is the literary equivalent of anar-
chy”). He saw the potential cultural impact of the symbolist aesthetic: “sa doc-
trine représente le dernier terme où l’individualisme esthétique puisse aboutir,
comme l’anarchie est le terme extrême que l’individualisme social puisse at-
teindre.” (“Its doctrine represents the endpoint of aesthetic individualism,
since anarchy is the extreme limit that social individualism can attain.”) (Lan-
son 1893 [1965]: 473) While Lanson is making a comparison, his 1893 article
written during the Ère des attentats underscores the perception that boundar-
ies were dissolving. Many have associated the use of free verse, introduced into
the movement in 1886, as being inspired by anarchism. This superficial con-
nection was made between the lack of rules of free verse and the anarchist goal
of a society without laws, but it was certainly not the intent when free verse
was first developed in the 1880s. (Shryock 2009: 101–108) Moreover, if somehow
this technique expressed some dimension of anarchism, we would expect to
find anarchists use it: with extremely few exceptions, poetry written by anar-
chists follows the rules of prosody. Nevertheless, the contemporary perception
of anarchist ideas spreading into the poetry of young writers adds to the idea
that somehow symbolism is a culturally dangerous (or at least deleterious) ex-
pression of anarchism.
The police too recognized the evolution of the spread of anarchism outside
its initial bounds, as one informant reported:
You can see that the extreme current is moving, and that the anarchist
movement, shifting more and more, is going to escape completely from
the anarchists of yesterday, too centered in the working class, to pass to
the anarchists of tomorrow, who will come from the upper classes. The
beginning of that was L’Endehors, and then Les Coulisses [de l’Anarchie],
just as the end of working-class anarchy had been Le [Père] Peinard.22
21 L’Eclair 1893. Press clipping found in APP B/a 78 1893.

22 Archives de la Police de Paris, B/a 77, report dated September 29, 1892 of ‘Jules’.
The shift of anarchist ideas into the bourgeoisie may have been considered
heresy for some anarchists who viewed the bourgeoisie as the primary source
of the inequalities in France (even if the main anarchist theoreticians were
from the middle class or higher). However, from a police perspective this in-
creased the potential danger of the movement’s spreading and was taken seri-
ously. This phenomenon was amplified when Émile Henry, who was highly
educated and came from a well-to-do family, was tried in 1894 for multiple
bombings including the deadly attack at the Café Terminus. His brother Jean-
Charles Fortuné Henry collaborated on L’Endehors (directed by Fénéon) and
Émile may have been involved with the production of the journal as well. Fé-
néon was arrested in 1894 for possession of bomb-making materials similar to
those used by Henry. Indeed, to at least a limited extent, anarchism had made
inroads into social classes other than the proletariat.
One way to measure the impact of the potential of anarchist ideas spread-
ing outside of the ideology’s working-class base is to see the government’s re-
sponses to the attacks. A series of three laws were passed in 1893 and 1894
which were labeled Lois scélérates (Villainous Laws). They clamped down on
the press, made associating with criminals (association de malfaiteurs) a
crime, made it illegal to defend anarchism, and even made it illegal to commu-
nicate certain ideas in private. A significant dimension of the law had to do
with the flow of ideas and with, not only what could be printed, but also what
could be said. Part of the law was applied in the major anarchist trial of 1894:
Le Procès des trente (Trial of the Thirty). Among those put on trial was Fénéon
for possessing bomb-making materials. The focus of the trial, however, was the
associating of criminals. Fénéon’s acquittal may have stemmed in part from
Mallarmé and others coming to Fénéon’s defense in the press and during the
trial to undermine the association argument.
7 Conclusion
In the contact between anarchism and symbolism, the flow of ideas went in
both directions but the impact of each group on the other was largely asym-
metrical. Symbolism as an avant-garde literary movement may have enhanced
the cultural standing of anarchism and potentially its force in society by broad-
ening its acceptability. The attraction of these pure poets to a political move-
ment that preached revolution and even carried out acts of physical terror to
achieve its ends helped to naturalize anarchism as being more palatable to a
broader number of people in France. One view was that this could influence
the members of the working class who did not accept anarchism because of its
32 Shryock
violence or extreme goals. It also suggested that anarchists were making in-
roads among other social classes. This spread or the potential for the spread of
ideas outside of the ordinary pockets of support for anarchism posed a signifi-
cant threat to the Third Republic, so much so that the laws they passed to stop
anarchism were mostly aimed at impeding the dissemination of ideas. Making
anarchism appear less threatening to those outside of the movement also
made it more threatening to the government as it suggested that the movement
was not limited to criminals or people who are somehow moral ‘degenerates’.
When poets with their esoteric poetry were drawn to this ideal, it was a sign
that the appeal was quite broad.
In some ways, the cultural benefit to symbolism was restricted because of
the aesthetic limits of the anarchists. Their literature did not challenge aes-
thetic norms and has never been considered avant-garde. As Wolfgang Asholt
remarks “neither identity nor homologous structure exists between the social
anarchist movement and aesthetic modernity, as André Reszler suggested in
his Esthétique anarchiste”. (Asholt 1999: 499) On an aesthetic level, anarchists
did not contribute at all to the aesthetic practices of the symbolists because it
had nothing innovative to contribute.23 Their aesthetic (if a truly anarchist
aesthetic even does exist) reflected naturalist or social realist norms of repre-
sentation. In some cases, as Vittorio Frigerio notes, anarchist short stories can
even have a deliberately excessive negative nature to some of the situations
when they present slice of life situations. One small area where we can find
aesthetic parallels is in the use among some anarchist and some symbolist
writers of an allegorical mode of narrative with highly symbolic characters.
(Frigerio 2014: 116) In fact, of the three pieces of symbolist literature repro-
duced in La Révolte/Les Temps nouveaux’s literary supplement, two take this
form. Poetically, as mentioned above, anarchists tended to respect the rules of
prosody and did not venture into free verse or any other aesthetic innovation.
In some ways, anarchist literature went against the freedom its own ideology
promised. Unlike symbolist literature that was open to interpretation, anar-
chist literature’s didactic dimension provided the reader with a clear message.
Many anarchists, especially those represented in La Révolte/Les Temps nou-
veaux did not see symbolist literature as being progressive because it did not
support the message of anarchism. The book review of Vielé-Griffin’s La Che-
vauchée d’Yeldis (The Ride of Yeldis, 1893) captures this perspective: “It’s art for
art’s sake: the work of a dilettante who only interests people with time to lose
23 One small exception are the few pieces of symbolist literature that have references to so-
cial or political matters, such as Kahn’s Le Roi fou (The Mad King, 1896) or some of Retté’s
poetry, all while maintaining the same aesthetic as prior to this period.
and income to waste.” (Bibliographie 1893: 3) This was written about a symbol-
ist who supported anarchism through his work on Les Entretiens politiques et
littéraires. As the review notes, there is no content in La Chevauchée d’Yeldis
that supports anarchism and such literature is not directed to the working
class.
The response of the symbolists was not to change their aesthetic but to de-
velop an explanatory discourse on their aesthetic to link it to anarchism and to
what was happening in society. If anarchism had an influence on symbolism, it
is not in the aesthetic itself but in the discourse on the aesthetic. The influence
of anarchism helped the symbolists to articulate exactly how it might influ-
ence society, how this esoteric poetry could have a social role. This was an ef-
fect that was largely absent prior to the Ère des attentats. In part, the resistance
of many anarchists and the incredulity from society (that these bourgeois writ-
ers could have anything to do with working-class anarchists) may have created
the conditions that pushed the symbolists to articulate their position relative
to society and to amplify this Saint-Simonian/Fourierist notion of the avant-
garde in which art had a specific social impact.
Some of the social impact of symbolist literature derived from its incompat-
ibilities with the cultural norms promulgated during the Third Republic. These
aesthetic norms of clarity, coherence and order also represented social values.
One reason for the government to promote such literature was that it helped to
have an effect on people. In many ways, the Althusserian notion of interpella-
tion can explain this phenomenon in which the values of this literature are
designed to call subjects into place. Because of its highly individualistic nature
and its quest of beauty, symbolist literature did not produce the utilitarian di-
mension found in republican or anarchist art. Quillard formulated a manner in
which this symbolism creates a position of reception that is inherently com-
patible with anarchism without being in its service: “whoever will have been
free for an instant by the word heard lifts his head and wants to remain free”.
(Quillard 1893: 260) This type of articulation of the social power of the symbol-
ist aesthetic may have come about on its own due to other socio-political
factors than the symbolists’ associating themselves with anarchism but the in-
teractions with anarchism certainly intensified the creation of this dimension
of symbolist literature in the 1890s.
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Chapter 2
Egoism, Homosexuality, and Joie de vivre:

Jacob Epstein’s Tomb of Oscar Wilde
Mark Antliff
Abstract
This essay will consider the impact of anarchist ideology on the design and reception
of sculptor Jacob Epstein’s famous Tomb of Oscar Wilde, which became the center of a
public scandal when it was censored by the French state following its installation at
Père Lachaise cemetery in September 1912. Having charted the influence of the anar-
chists Emma Goldman’s and Piotr Kropotkin’s views on Oscar Wilde and sexual libera-
tion on both the youthful Epstein and Wilde’s executor and former lover Robert Ross,
I will then analyze Ross’ and Epstein’s collaboration in designing the Tomb following its
commissioning in December 1908, and their successful attempt to rally support among
the anarchist community in Paris and London when the monument was officially cen-
sored in 1912. The latter campaign was led by a group of anarchist individualists, who
drew on the thought of Max Stirner and Henri Bergson to associate Wilde’s aestheti-
cism and Epstein’s ‘orientalist’ design and virile iconography for the Tomb with a
celebration of sexual difference grounded in Stirner’s notion of ‘egoism’ and Bergson’s
concept of ‘intuition’ and joie de vivre. By reconsidering the Tomb of Oscar Wilde in
light of Wilde’s own anarchist allegiances and the confluence of anarchist networks
from New York City, to Paris to London, I will underscore the cosmopolitan nature of
the anarchist movement and its pioneering role in the defense of homosexuality in the
early twentieth century.
In the spring of 1913, an amazing instance of international solidarity occurred

when a sizable cross-section of the London and Paris-based avant-garde signed
a public petition protesting the Paris Municipal government’s official censor-
ship of Jacob Epstein’s (1880−1959) Tomb of Oscar Wilde (1914), newly installed
at the Père Lachaise cemetery. (Illustration 2.1) Published as a broadside in
mid-March of 1913 by the journal Action d’art the petition was forgotten until

38 Antliff
Illustration 2.1
Jacob Epstein, Photograph of the
Tomb of Oscar Wilde, Père Lachaise
Cemetery Paris. n.d.
Photographer: jacqueline
hide. Henry Moore Institute
and Leeds Museums & Galler-
ies. Estate of Jacob Epstein
Epstein highlighted it in his 1940 autobiography (Epstein 1940 [1955]: 253);1 but
scholars have yet to analyze the document’s contents or its relation to the ide-
ology of the radicals who launched it. As I will demonstrate, the Action d’art
group’s defense of Epstein’s Tomb was premised on a theory of anarchist indi-
vidualism espoused by the journal’s founder, the self-styled philosopher, poet
and cultural impresario, André Colomer (1886−1931). Colomer had first an-
nounced his doctrine of anarchist art action in the ephemeral Les Foire aux
chimères (1907−1908); this publication was then followed by a flurry of related
journals culminating in Action d’art (January−December 1913). (Maitron 1984:
102−104) Other core members of the Action d’art collective included the group’s
elder statesman, the philosopher of ‘artistocracy’, Gérard de Lacaze-Duthier,
the artist Dr. Atl (Gerardo Murrillo) who later helped found the Mexican
1 The Tomb, which was deemed to be offensive to public taste, was finally unveiled in August
1914 after Oscar Wilde’s literary executor Robert Ross consented to have a fig leaf applied
to cover the sculpted genitals over Epstein’s objections. For more on this scandal, see
below.
Egoism, Homosexuality, and Joie de vivre 39
muralist movement,2 the avant-garde writer, critic and future Dadaist, Paul
Dermée, and the neo-Malthusian, Manuel Devaldès. Despite Action d’art’s
short life, the movement itself proved a success, resulting in the establishment
of a bookstore, a theater, and an art gallery, and the forging of strong ties be-
tween anarchist poets, writers and artists and the broader avant-garde com-
munity, including symbolists, cubists, and futurists.3
Published bi-monthly as a folio-sized journal, Action d’art was headquar-
tered initially at 138 Avenue du Maine in the fourteenth arrondissement, but in
the summer of 1913 the offices moved to 25 rue Tournefort in the heart of the
Latin Quarter. Subscription numbers for the journal are unknown, but its read-
ership extended well beyond Paris. Action d’art had a list of correspondents
throughout France and in Brussels (Abel Gerbaud); Rome (Giosi); New York
(Dr. Lara Pardo); Guadalajara, Mexico (Cirilo Murillo); Rabat, Morocco (Jean
Suzy); Barcelona (B. Gili Roij), and London (Eugène Bévant); moreover, it was
circulated through a network of bookstores and radical study groups in such
locales as Lyon, Châteauroux, Bordeaux, Marseilles, Brussels, Tunis, and Mu-
nich. In London Action d’art was distributed by the Groupe d’Études sociales
(Social Studies Group) which was headquartered out of Bévant’s home at 19
Manette Street near Charing Cross Road, West London (Manette Street was a
well known center of anarchist activity).4
Following the journal’s demise, Colomer continued to uphold his radical ver-
sion of anti-militarist anarchism, which led him to leave France for neutral Italy
after the outbreak of the First World War in August 1914. When Italy entered the
war in May 1915, Colomer made a failed attempt to flee to Switzerland and was
forced to go underground in Genoa. He briefly tried to resurrect Action d’art in
1919 following his return to France and then began a slow evolution away from
his earlier espousal of extreme individualism, a trajectory that culminated in
2 The Mexican muralist movement developed in the 1920’s with Dr. Atl, Diego Rivera, José
Clemente Orozco and David Alfaro Siqueiros as its main theorists and practitioners.
The movement called for the creation of large-scale public art devoted to revolutionary
themes.
3 For an analysis of the Action d’art movement, see Antliff 1998: 99−120. Theresa Papanikolas
and Richard Sonn have both charted the later history of key figures associated with Colomer’s
circle. See Papanikolas 2010, and Sonn 2010.
4 For a list of authorized ‘correspondents’ as well as agents distributing the journal, see
“Les Correspondants de l’action d’art” and “Nos Dépositaires” in L’Action d’art (May 10, 1913):
4. For a brief history of anarchist activities on Manette Street, dating back to the 1880’s,
see Heath <http://libcom.org/history/a-rose-any-other-name-radical-history-manette-street
-london>.
40 Antliff
his defection to the Communist Party in 1927. Colomer’s conversion was a seri-
ous blow for the perception of his idealism, which, combined with his
philosophical and literary pedigree, had attracted many artists and activists,
including such luminaries as André Breton, to the anarchist movement.5
Colomer’s reason for taking up Epstein’s cause in this public petition
stemmed from his complex synthesis of Oscar Wilde’s (1854−1900) famous
tract The Soul of Man under Socialism (1891), with the theory of ‘egoism’ es-
poused by the radical individualist Max Stirner (1806−1856) and the philoso-
phy of Henri Bergson (1859−1941). Colomer’s interest in the Anglo-Irish poet
and playwright is not surprising given the veneration for Wilde among anar-
chists throughout Europe and the United States before and after his infamous
trial in 1895, punitive two-year sentence to hard labor, and his tragic exile and
death in Paris in late 1900.6 David Goodway, Erin William Hyman, Patricia
Leighten, and Richard Sonn have documented Wilde’s extensive ties with the
anarchist community in Paris and London in the 1890’s, a link attested to by
Wilde himself who announced his dual status as an artist and anarchist −
“je suis artiste et anarchiste” − in the French journal L’Ermitage and in the Eng-
lish press in 1893−1894. Two years previously an abridged version of Wilde’s
Soul of Man under Socialism had been translated into French under the title
Individualisme in the anarchist journal Le Révolté, and scholars have pointed to
the widespread identification of that text as anarchist by key figures in the
movement.7 L’Action d’art in turn published extracts from Wilde’s essay from
April to June 1913, and it served as the basis for Colomer and his colleagues’
advocacy of an anarchist aesthetic of contagious joy.8 This doctrine was
5 For a biographical summary of Colomer’s life and political trajectory, see Sonn 2010: 198−204.
For analyzes of André Breton’s exposure to Colomer and anarchist individualism, see Papan-
ikolas 2010: 105−107, and Sonn 2010: 72−87.
6 For a biography of Wilde, see Ellman 1988.
7 Wilde’s French declaration of his anarchist allegiances was made in the symbolist journal
L’Ermitage in the summer of 1893. L’Ermitage had canvassed artists and writers on whether “a
free and spontaneous organization or a disciplined and methodical one” was the best guar-
antee for “social well being”. Wilde was one of a selected number “to group themselves as the
partisans of absolute liberty and anarchy”, in responding to the survey. (L’Ermitage [July
1893]: 4, 7, 13, cited in Sonn 1989: 186−188) For Wilde’s declaration of his anarchist allegiance
in the English press, see Almy 1979: 232. Patricia Leighten references the abridged translation
of Wilde’s Soul of Man under Socialism published as “Individualisme” in Le Révolte in 1891, in
her book. (Leighten 1989: 46) For compelling interpretations of the anarchist valences of
Wilde’s own writings and his impact on anarchists in the United States and Europe, see
Goodway 2006: 62−92; Hyman 2008: 96−109, and Kissack 2008: 43−68.
8 Installments were published under the title ‘Individualisme’. (Wilde 1913)
integrally related to the anarchists’ defense of sexual freedom and their prin-
cipled opposition to the concept of centralized government; thus Action d’art’s
defense of Epstein’s Tomb of Oscar Wilde was part of a broader ethical, aes-
thetic and political program premised on anarchist precepts.
To understand the circumstances that led to the Tomb’s censorship and the
prominent role played by Action d’art in public debates over the monument,
I will first outline the history behind the commission itself, the iconography of
the Tomb, and its reception in Britain and France following its initial unveiling
in Epstein’s London studio in June 1912. Consideration will be given to the role
Epstein and Wilde’s executor and former lover Robert Ross (1869−1918) may
have played in the Action d’art campaign, and why it is that Epstein and Ross
were sympathetic to the political ideals upheld by Colomer and his colleagues.
I will chart Ross’s and Epstein’s own contacts within the anarchist community,
and how that movement may have affected Epstein’s early artistic production
in the years leading up to the Wilde commission. I will then analyze the import
of Wilde’s own theory of art for these anarchists who regarded the scandal pro-
voked by the Wilde monument at Père Lachaise as a cause célèbre tailor-made
for the dissemination of their anarchist precepts to a broader public, including
the Parisian and London-based avant-garde.
Illustration 2.2
Carolyn Gould, Photograph of Robert Ross,
c. 1916.
42 Antliff
Illustration 2.3
Photographic Portrait of the Sculptor
Jacob Epstein, 1911 in Epstein 1940
[1955]: n.p.
1 Jacob Epstein and the Tomb Project
The initial commission for the Tomb was announced by Wilde’s literary execu-
tor Robert Ross at a gala dinner held in December 1908 to mark the eighth an-
niversary of the poet’s death. (Illustrations 2.2 and 2.3)9 At the time, the youth-
ful Epstein had gained notoriety as a result of another public scandal caused by
the series of naked figures he had sculpted in 1908 for the façade of the newly
constructed British Medical Association Headquarters designed by the archi-
tect Charles Holden.10 Epstein was a native New Yorker of Jewish descent who
had arrived almost penniless in London in the winter of 1905 after two years of
art study in Paris, first at the École des beaux-arts and then at the Académie
Julian under the tutelage of Jean Paul Laurens. (Epstein 1940 [1955]: 14−15)11
Epstein also visited the sculptor Auguste Rodin who generously wrote a letter of
9 For analysis of the Tomb project, see Pennington 1987, and Silber 1989: 124−130.
10 On Epstein’s sculptures for the British Medical Association Building and the ensuing con-
troversy see Cork 1985: 9−60. For a biographical study of Charles Holden, see Karel 2007.
11 Also see Silber 1986: 9−14, and Gilboa 2009: 15−62.
Illustration 2.4 Jacob Epstein, “We Two Boys together Clinging”, based on Walt
Whitman’s Calamus series in Leaves of Grass, c. 1902. Pen, ink, and wash,
35.8 × 23 cm.
Private Collection. Estate of Jacob Epstein
introduction for Epstein when the latter decided to leave Paris for London in
late 1904. (Silber 1986: 14)12 Upon arrival in London Epstein won the support of
the prominent artist and critic William Rothenstein, the artist Francis Dodd
and writer George Bernard Shaw, all of whom admired Rodin and moved in
Ross’s circle. It was Rothenstein and Dodd who helped Epstein gain the com-
mission from Holden in 1907, and Rothenstein likely persuaded Ross to choose
Epstein to carve the Tomb in 1908. (Pennington 1987: 10−15) Shaw had first in-
formed Ross (who was director of the Carfax Gallery) about the talented young
sculptor in a letter dated to March 1905 in which he praised Epstein’s series of
Rodinesque drawings inspired by Walt Whitman’s (1819−1892) Calamus poems
from the 1860 edition of Leaves of Grass. Epstein had worked on the drawings,
which focused on the theme of same-sex male friendship, from 1902 to 1904
and he hoped to exhibit the whole portfolio in London.13 (Illustration 2.4)
12 The commendation from Rodin was mentioned in a letter from George Bernard Shaw to
Robert Ross, dated 13 March, 1905, recommending Epstein. See Ross 1952: 111−112.
13 Shaw’s letter, dated 13 March, 1905 is reproduced in Ross 1952: 111−112. On the Calamus
drawings, see Silber 1986: 14−15, and Gilboa 2009: 57−61.
44 Antliff
Whitman was a lifelong touchstone for Epstein who first read Leaves of Grass
as a young art student in New York (Epstein was buried along with a first
edition of the book). Whitman’s ecstatic ode to male comradeship in the Cala-
mus series was widely appreciated within avant-garde circles in England and
Epstein’s choice of this subject matter, combined with Shaw and Rothenstein’s
backing, evidently left an impression on Ross, though he did not exhibit the
drawings at the Carfax Gallery. (Silber 1986: 14; Pennington 1987: 9−15)
Having received the commission Epstein experimented with a number of
preliminary studies before he set about carving a twenty ton block of Hopton
Wood stone which he worked on for nine months. (Epstein 1940 [1955]: 51)
Between 1909 and 1911 he developed designs based on Greek precedents, but he
then broke with the European tradition to arrive at his final conception. Ep-
stein’s sculpture of what he called a “flying demon-angel” (Epstein 1931: 19−20)
was inspired by Wilde’s description of the winged Egyptian god Ammon in his
1894 poem The Sphinx, and Epstein further underscored the ‘oriental’ source of
his imagery by modeling the figure after the Assyrian man-headed bull relief
carvings on display in the British Museum and portrait busts of the Egyptian
Pharaoh Akhenaten (Amenhotep iv) which he had seen in the Louvre. (Ep�-
stein 1940 [1955]: 51−52; Silber 1986: 22−23; Silber 1989: 124−125; Arrowsmith
2011) Epstein’s winged figure, which included a headdress containing figures
symbolizing Intellectual Pride, Luxury and Fame, appears to hover above a
base designed by Epstein’s friend and patron, the architect Charles Holden,
who shared Epstein and Ross’s enthusiasm for Walt Whitman. (Cork 1985: 53)14
Michael Pennington has shown that Epstein’s choice of pagan imagery derived
from Assyria and Egypt parted ways with the Catholic and Christian import of
Wilde’s Sphinx, perhaps “to point up the secret, ‘sensual life’ that Wilde had
lived” (in the poem itself the protagonist recoils from an unwanted temptation
conjured up by the “loathsome mystery” of the sphinx). (Pennington 1987:
36−37) The monument also bore an inscription, carved by Joseph Cribb (an
assistant to Epstein’s close friend sculptor Eric Gill) which included an epitaph
chosen by Robert Ross from Wilde’s last great poem, The Ballad of Reading
Gaol (published in 1898). In the poetic stanza chosen for the monument Wilde
identified his future mourners as society’s outcasts, with an implied inclusion
of homosexuals: (Pennington 1987: 50)
14 Holden was also an admirer of the socialist homosexual Edward Carpenter who likewise
championed the American poet. See Karel 2007: 85−89, 203−204, and Rowbotham 2008:
38−41, 338.
Illustration 2.5
Emil Otto Hoppé, Jacob Epstein in
his Studio with the Tomb of Oscar
Wilde, 1912.
New Art Gallery Walsall
And Alien tears will fill for him

Pity’s long broken urn,
For his mourners will be outcast men,
And outcasts always mourn.
wilde 1905 [1986]: 248
A feature of Epstein’s work that would subsequently prove problematic for his
French audience was the sculpting of the winged demon-angel’s genitals,
which were highly legible and positioned just above the sight line for viewing
the work. (Illustration 2.5) Such frank subject matter, when combined with the
sensual charge of his Calamus drawings and Epstein’s plans with fellow direct
carver Eric Gill for the creation of an erotic ‘Secret Temple’ in 1907, points to
Epstein’s ecumenical views on these matters.15 Epstein’s radicalism undoubt-
edly played a role in Ross’s decision to award this important commission to the
15 For an excellent analysis of Epstein’s relations with Gill, see Cork 2009: 19−41, 60−63.
46 Antliff
Illustration 2.6
Photograph of the Tomb of Oscar
Wilde in The New Age (June 6,
1912): n.p.
young sculptor, and Epstein himself was evidently sympathetic to Wilde’s trag-
ic imprisonment and persecution at the hands of a state eager to police
sexuality.
Much to Epstein’s delight, his bold undertaking met with an overwhelm-
ingly favorable response when he opened his London studio to the press in
June 1912 to advertise the work. Main-stream newspapers such as the Evening
Standard and Pall Mall Gazette praised Epstein’s monument, describing the
sphinx-like winged angel as a dignified and innovative approach to mortuary
sculpture.16 Concurrently the avant-garde journal, The New Age celebrated
Epstein’s achievement by publishing a full page reproduction of the work in a
special supplement to its June edition. (Illustration 2.6) Given the public scan-
dal over the nudity of his statues for the British Medical Association in spring
1908, Epstein had undoubtedly anticipated the worst; thus it must have been
all the more surprising when puritanical protests over the Wilde monument
emerged in Paris and not in London.
16 These reviews are reproduced in Epstein 1940 [1955]: 250−251.

Illustration 2.7
Photograph of Louis Lépine with a cane,
20 January 1907 in Berelière 1993: 50.
2 Scandal and Censorship in Paris
The controversy over the Tomb first developed in early September 1912 when
Epstein was at work on the detail of the angel’s headdress in Père Lachaise.
Epstein apparently arrived one morning to find the statue covered by a tarp,
with a gendarme on guard who informed him that the Tomb had been banned
by the Préfet de police, Louis Lépine (1846–1933) (Illustration 2.7) at the behest
of the cemetery conservator.17
In response Epstein immediately began exploiting his Parisian contacts
among the literary and artistic community in Paris, asking all artists “who val-
ue the freedom of their conceptions” to “protest against the tyranny of petty
officials” who had condemned his work as “immoral”.18 Lépine, having con-
sulted the keeper of the École des beaux-arts, had additionally ordered that the
Angel’s genitalia be temporally covered in plaster, and that the statue be cas-
trated or that a fig-leaf be applied. This sorry state of affairs was compounded
on the 10th of February 1913, when an appointed Comité d’esthétique (Aes-
thetic Committee of the Prefecture of the Seine) upheld Lépine’s accusation
that the work was an affront to public morals, and requested that the offending
parts be altered or covered up, a demand the sculptor rejected.19 When Action
d’art published their broadside defending Wilde’s monument they pointedly
listed the profession of every member of this committee, so as to publically
17 On Lépine, see Berelière 1993, and Porot 1994.

18 Jacob Epstein to H.P. Roché 14 September 1912, quoted in Silber 1989: 131. The Roché cor�-
respondence is at the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, University of Texas at
Austin.
19 These events are detailed in Georges Bazile’s articles of October 9th, 1912 and 21 March
1913 published in the French journal Comaedia; both are reproduced in Epstein 1940
[1955]: 251−253.
48 Antliff
Illustration 2.8 Antonin Mercié, Monument funéraire de Paul Baudry

(Monument to Paul Baudry), 1890.
shame the artists who had endorsed the verdict. The members included none
other than Jean Paul Laurens, who had trained Epstein at the Académie Julian
as well as prominent academic sculptors Antonin Mercié (1845−1916) and De-
nys Puech (1854−1942). (Epstein 1940 [1955]: 15)20 All three artists were scions
of the cultural establishment in France who had garnered lucrative commis-
sions from the state: Laurens had painted decorative panels for the apse of the
Panthéon and for the Paris Hôtel de Ville; Mercié’s sculpture graced the façade
of the Palais du Louvre and the Palais du Trocadéro; while Puech had been
commissioned to create a relief sculpture for the offices of the Prefecture of
20 The Action d’art broadside is the only document to list all the members of the Comité
d’esthétique. See “Monument du poète Oscar Wilde” in Supplément à l’action d’art (March
15, 1913), reproduced in Antliff/Leighten 2008: 524−525.
Illustration 2.9
Denys Puech, Monument aux travailleurs
municipaux, victimes de leur devoir (Monu-
ment to Municipal Workers killed in the Line
of Duty), 1899.
the Seine, the very institution that formed the Comité d’esthétique that would
condemn Epstein’s monument.21 Laurens had been appointed professor at the
École des beaux-arts and a member of the Académie des beaux-arts in 1886;
Mercié was elected to the Académie in 1889 and awarded a professorship at the
École a year later; and Puech was elected to the Institut de France in 1905. In
addition Puech and Mercié had sculpted a number of funerary monuments at
Père Lachaise, including Mercié’s winged victory for the monument to aca-
demic painter Paul Baudry and Puech’s 1889 memorial to the municipal work-
ers of Paris killed in the line of duty. (Illustrations 2.8 and 2.9)22 For the Action
d’art group, the role played by these beneficiaries of state patronage in censor-
ing Epstein’s work would have been ripe for an anarchist critique, since anar-
chists condemned the very concept of centralized government as a plutocratic
21 For biographical information on these sculptors, see Oxford Art Online (www.oxford
artonline.com). For additional information on Puech’s career, see Gaich/Chevillot 1993.
Puech’s relief sculpture for the offices of the Préfet de la Seine at the Paris Hôtel de ville,
focused on the theme of the City of Paris protecting Poetry, Science and Labor. See Gaich/
Chevillot 1993: 124.
22 On Mercié’s monument, see Bauer 2006: 88; on Puech’s monument, see Gaich/Chevillot
1993: 145.
50 Antliff
Illustration 2.10 “Monument du poète Oscar Wilde” in Supplément à l’action d’art

(March 15, 1913): n.p.
Illustration 2.11
Photograph of the Tomb of Oscar
Wilde in Epstein’s Studio, 1912.
Henry Moore Institute and
Leeds Museums & Galleries.
Estate of Jacob Epstein
institution that suppressed individual freedom and upheld a capitalist system

that fomented social and economic inequality.
Epstein stayed in Paris for extended periods between January and August,
1913, seeking to rally support for his cause, and he evidently met with his great-
est success on encountering the anarchists affiliated with Colomer’s movement.
(Silber 1986: 23) In March 1913 writer Georges Bazile had informed readers of
the French journal Comædia that a certain number of writers and artists, con-
tributors to Action d’art, have just proposed a great petition to be drawn up by
workers with the pen, brush and chisel as a protest against the outrage on the
liberty of art contained in the decision of the Prefect of the Seine and the Aes-
thetic Committee.23
The petition, (Illustration 2.10) which was published as a broadside by the
Action d’art group in mid-March, condemned the Aesthetic Committee not
23 Georges Bazile’s article announcing “A Petition by artists for the Liberty of Art”, was pub-
lished in the 21 March 1913 issue of Comædia and is reproduced in Epstein 1940 [1955]:
153−154.
52 Antliff
only for threatening “le principe même de la liberté dans l’art qui est menace”
(“the principle itself of the freedom in art”), but for their puritanical attack on
“la dignité de l’homme sain” (“on the dignity of healthy men”) − a reference to
male sexuality, including that of Wilde. The Action d’art group underscored
their case with a full size photograph of the monument in Epstein’s studio.
Unlike the reproduction in the New Age (Illustration 2.6) the Action d’art pho-
tograph shows the work at a moment when there is still a noticeable gap sepa-
rating the stone plinth and the statue itself. A period photograph now in the
Epstein archive (Illustration 2.11) shows the sculpture in this exact condition
from a slightly different angle, thus it seems likely that Epstein was the source
for the photograph used in the broadside. Robert Ross then went further by
providing Action d’art with the official letter of sanction sent to him by the
Aesthetic Committee, which the anarchists duly published in the March issue
of their journal. (Atl 1913a: 1)24 Rather than being scandalized by the public
intervention of these anarchists, Epstein and Ross seemed to relish the oppor-
tunity to lend their support to the group’s polemical campaign.
3 Epstein, Ross and Wilde Among the Anarchists
I would argue that Epstein’s and Ross’s enthusiasm for this anarchist campaign
stemmed not only from their own anti-establishment views on sexuality, but
from their familiarity with the longstanding admiration and defense of Oscar
Wilde within anarchists circles in the United States, France and Britain. As
I previously noted Wilde’s own declaration of his anarchist affinities in
1893−1894, combined with the widespread identification of his Soul of Man un-
der Socialism (1891) as an anarchist tract, assured that his prison sentence for
committing ʻacts of gross indecency with menʼ galvanized the anarchist com-
munity. Terrence Kissack in his study of anarchism and homosexuality has
identified Wilde’s trial “as a critical turning point” (Kissack 2008: 45) in anar-
chist views on same-sex relations. In the wake of the Wilde trial many anar-
chists, by virtue of their support for unregulated sexual freedom, identified
homosexuality as simply another variation on their doctrine of free love. The
fact that the state condemned such practices and aggressively prosecuted ho-
mosexuals led such anarchists to declare their solidarity with Wilde regardless
of their own sexual orientation.25 Ross first became aware of such progressive
24 See Antliff 1998: 109−112.

25 For discussion of the Wilde trial and its impact on the anarchist movement, see Kissack
2008: 43−68.
views through his contact with the prominent anarchist Piotr Alexeyevich
Kropotkin (1842−1921), who, in a letter dated May 6, 1905, informed Wilde’s
executor of the “deepest interest and sympathy” for the poet and playwright
among the anarchist community in Europe, and of his admiration for Wilde’s
prison letter De Profundis (1897, published 1905). In that text Wilde described
Kropotkin as an exemplary individual and “beautiful” soul who had been im-
prisoned for upholding his anarchist ideals.26 In the same letter Kropotkin
lauded Wilde’s a rticle “on Anarchism” − a reference to Soul of Man Under So-
cialism − as containing sentences “worth being engraved”, while praising The
Ballad of Reading Gaol for the poem’s remarkable transformation of human
suffering under the iron heel of the prison system into a “vital force” to be
wielded against the injustice perpetrated by the State.27 Thus Ross’s choice of
a stanza from The Ballad of Reading Gaol as an epitaph for the writer’s tomb
was made in full knowledge of the anarchists’ identification with Wilde, and of
Wilde’s own sympathetic views of the movement. The anarchists’ status as
marginalized radicals repeatedly subject to police surveillance, forced exile
and imprisonment (Kropotkin had experienced all three), made them ideal
candidates for inclusion in that group of mourning “outcast men” honored in
Wilde’s poem.
For Epstein, awareness of Wilde’s importance in anarchist circles came
through his contacts in New York and Paris, well before his move to London
and receipt of the Oscar Wilde commission. Speaking of his early life among
the Jewish community in New York, Epstein in his memoirs recalled that the
locals included “socialists, anarchists, freethinkers and even free lovers” − a ref-
erence to the anarchist doctrine of free love, unencumbered by moral codes or
legalization by the State. (Epstein 1940 [1955]: 3) Although Epstein described
himself as “an observer” rather than participant in these circles he did note
that such observation included his attendance of a series of lectures by Kro-
potkin, which were organized by the American anarchist Emma Goldman
(1869−1940) in March−April, 1901. (Epstein 1940 [1955]: 9; Gilboa 2009: 29) The
American writer and social reformer Hutchins Hapgood (1869−1944) has
provided historians with a rich portrait of the radical milieu in which Epstein
first emerged as an artist in his description of the Jewish community on the
26 Piotr Kropotkin to Robert Ross, May 6, 1905 in Ross 1952: 112−113. Kropotkin was writing to
Ross on behalf of Hedwig Lachmann, the wife of anarchist Gustav Landauer who was
working on a book on Wilde’s poetry and had translated numerous texts by Wilde,
including his Soul of Man under Socialism in 1904. See Waltz 1993: 284−300, 521. De Profun-
dis, written from Wilde’s jail cell in 1897, was published by Ross in 1905 and contained a
memorial tribute to Kropotkin as a “beautiful” soul who had likewise been imprisoned by
the state. See Wilde 1905 [1986]: 180.
27 Piotr Kropotkin to Robert Ross, May 6, 1905 in Ross 1952: 112−113.
54 Antliff
Illustration 2.12 Jacob Epstein, In the Offices of Vorwärts in Hapgood 1902 [1965]: 183.
Lower East Side titled The Spirit of the Ghetto. (Hapgood 1902 [1965]) Hapgood
had asked Epstein to illustrate his projected book in 1898 after seeing work by
the young artist at an exhibition of Jewish artists Epstein had organized at the
Hebrew Institution. Scholars have noted that Epstein, together with Abraham
Cahan the editor of the radical Yiddish daily Vorwärts (Forward) served as
Hapgood’s guide to the Lower East Side, which included a thriving anarchist
community. (Gilboa 2009: 26) In his book Hapgood sympathetically described
the anarchist cause as non-violent and idealistic, gave biographical sketches of
key figures among the Jewish anarchists, and numbered Epstein as a potential
recruit. Epstein, Hapgood informs us, “belongs to a number of debating societ-
ies and is now hesitating in his mind on whether to become a socialist or an
anarchist”. (Hapgood 1902 [1965]: 191, 248) Hapgood devoted whole sections of
his book to the anarchist milieu, with biographies of “Katz” the anarchist liter-
ary editor for the “socialistic” Vorwärts; the anarchist Saul Yanovsky who edited
the anarchist Freie Arbeiter Stimme, and the editors of the anarchist monthly
Freie Gesellschaft, whose headquarters were in the Hebrew Institution where
Epstein held his 1898 exhibition. (Hapgood 1902 [1965]: 191−198) Freie Arbeiter
Stimme published translations of Wilde, a sure indication of his prominence
within this Jewish anarchist community. (Falk 2005: 551) Epstein provided
Hapgood with sketches of Janowsky, Katz and the offices of Vorwärts, (Illustra-
tion 2.12) and his illustrations were executed in a style Evelyn Silber rightly
identifies as reminiscent of the French anarchist Théophile Steinlen. (Hap-
good 1902 [1965]: 194−195; Silber 1986: 12)
For our purposes Epstein’s most telling contact within this anarchist milieu
was with Emma Goldman, whom I would argue shaped Epstein’s views not
only on Wilde but also Walt Whitman, another writer championed by
anarchists. In The Spirit of the Ghetto, Epstein portrayed Goldman with the
identifying caption “A Russian Student” in a section of the book devoted to the
emergence of the progressive ʻNew Womanʼ within the Jewish society. In his
text Hapgood did not mention Goldman by name, preferring instead to de-
scribe her as a highly educated proselytizer of “anarchistic teaching” who had
rejected “Orthodox religion” and was then “practicing dentistry in the Ghetto”.
(Hapgood 1902 [1965]: 84−86)28 This reticence related directly to Goldman’s
controversial status at this historical juncture. Following the successful assas-
sination of President McKinley by the anarchist Leon Czolgosz in Buffalo in
September 1901, Goldman had been briefly arrested on circumstantial evi-
dence linking her to the plot. Upon her release she wrote a widely circulat-
ed article defending Czolgosz in the October edition of the English lan-
guage anarchist journal Free Society which provoked further controversy.29
The assassination also led to reprisals against the anarchist community in
New York − following McKinley’s death the offices of Freie Arbeiter Stimme
were attacked despite Saul Yanovsky’s denunciation of Czolgosz’s act, and in
1902 the State of New York passed the Criminal Anarchy Act making advocacy
of the doctrine that organized government should be overthrown by force or
violence, or by assassination as a criminal offense. (Falk 2003: 475; Gilboa 2009:
41) In response Goldman sought to conceal her identity while continuing to
work for the anarchist cause, which accounts for the veiled reference to her
presence in New York in The Spirit of the Ghetto.
Epstein’s aunt later recalled that Goldman visited the family home in April
1902 to summon the young artist “to some kind of anarchist meeting”, and
when Epstein decided to move to France in the fall of 1904 it was Goldman who
provided him with a letter of introduction to the Belgian anarchist Victor Dave
28 Gilboa discusses Epstein’s relation to Goldman, and his drawing of the “Russian Student”
in the section of her book devoted to Epstein’s drawings for Hapgood, see Gilboa 2009:
41−42.
29 Goldman, Emma. 1901. “The Tragedy at Buffalo” in Free Society (6 October), reproduced in
Falk 2003: 471−478.
56 Antliff
(1845−1922), then living in Paris. (Gilboa 2009: 41−42) Goldman had met Dave in
1900 when she spent a prolonged period in Paris familiarizing herself with the
anarchist community in anticipation of an International Anarchist Confer-
ence that was suppressed by the police. The fact that Goldman would intro-
duce Epstein to Dave is indicative of the artist’s high standing in her eyes and
of Epstein’s own eagerness to further develop his left-wing contacts following
his move to Europe. In his memoir Epstein described Dave as a former associ-
ate of the anarchist Mikhail Alexandrovich Bakunin and “a publisher and anar-
chist who had suffered imprisonment for two years for activity in anarchist
propaganda”, a reference to Dave’s imprisonment in Germany in 1880. (Epstein
1940 [1955]: 45; Maitron 1973: 315) Indeed it was through Dave that Epstein met
his future wife, Margaret Dunlop whom historian Raquel Gilboa describes as a
radical who frequented London’s “anarchist-socialist milieu”. (Gilboa 2009:
46−47) Thus Emma Goldman evidently helped Epstein gain further exposure
to the international anarchist community during his years in Paris, where he
continued to work on his Calamus drawings.
This connection is significant, for Goldman numbered Walt Whitman, along
with Oscar Wilde, as proponents of the values and ideals central to anarchism.
Goldman viewed Whitman’s celebration of embodied pleasure, “turbulent,
fleshy, sensual, eating, drinking and breeding” to quote Whitman in Leaves of
Grass, as akin to the anarchist call for unfettered sexual freedom, unregulated
by moral prohibitions and judicial, religious or governmental authority. (Kiss-
ack 2008: 69−95) Her enthusiasm for Whitman was such that Goldman origi-
nally intended to name her anarchist journal, Mother Earth (founded in 1906),
‘The Open Road’ in honor of Whitman (she declined to do so because another
journal had already adopted the title). In an early edition of Mother Earth,
Goldman instructed her readers to follow Whitman “on the open road, strong
limbed, child like, full of joy of life, carrying the message of liberty, the gladness
of human comradeship”.30 As Terrence Kissack has demonstrated, Goldman
did not interpret Whitman’s writings on comradeship as indicative of sup-
pressed homosexuality until the 1920’s when her reading of sexologists and
psychologists transformed her interpretation of the poet. (Kissack 2008: 92) By
contrast, before the war Goldman drew a sharp distinction between Whitman
and Wilde, identifying the former as a liberator of human sensuality, and the
latter as a victim of homophobic persecution.
I would argue that Epstein’s own enthusiasm for Whitman and his creation
of illustrations for the Calamus poems (Illustration 2.4) while in New York and
Paris should be interpreted in light of Goldman’s earlier thinking. Comradeship
30 Goldman, Emma. 1907. “On the Road” in Mother Earth (April), cited in Kissack 2008: 67.
Illustration 2.13 Jacob Epstein, Four Studies for the Tomb of Oscar Wilde, 1908−1910.
Pencil. 50.8 × 35.6 cm.
Private Collection. Estate of Jacob Epstein
for Whitman did not entail any forthright notion of homoeroticism, and Ep-
stein’s drawings certainly adhered to Whitman’s vision, but for fin de siècle an-
archists, the Calamus poems were not seen in isolation but as part of the
broader ode throughout Leaves of Grass to bodily pleasure, free of the taint of
Christian notions of morality and sin. (Kissack 2008: 70−71) Such affinities may
also have a bearing on Epstein’s initial design for the Wilde monument (Illus-
tration 2.13) which portrayed willowy figures clearly modeled after his Calamus
drawings in symbolic postures of grief resting on an oblong column with the
inscription “ave atque vale” (hail and farewell). (Pennington 1987: 17−18; Silber
1989: 124−125) It could be that Epstein’s recourse to his early style was meant to
carry with it some of the anarchist (and Dionysian) spirit he may have associ-
ated with Whitman as an ode to sexual freedom regardless of gender
orientation.
While Whitman stood for bodily liberation in Epstein and Goldman’s eyes,
Wilde exemplified the tragic price paid by an individual who embraced a spe-
cific kind of sexual freedom in a society held captive by an oppressive moral
and judicial order. (Illustration 2.14) Throughout her early career Goldman fre-
quently drew on Wilde’s writing and poetry to either affirm her own theory of
anarchism or to draw parallels between Wilde’s unjust punishment at the
58 Antliff
Illustration 2.14
Napoleon Sarony, Photograph of Oscar
Wilde, 1882.
hands of the State and that of contemporary anarchists. (Kissack 2008: 63−64)
In her famous essay Anarchism. What it Really Stands For (1910) Goldman cited
Wilde’s Soul of Man under Socialism as attesting to the viability of anarchism,
referring to Wilde’s assertion that the “perfect personality” could only emerge
in a society unencumbered by government. (Goldman 1910: 55, 61) On this ba-
sis she argued that anarchism “really stands for the liberation of the human
mind from the domination of religion; the liberation of the human body from
the domination of property; liberation from the shackles and restraints of gov-
ernment” and the “full enjoyment of the necessities of life, according to desires,
tastes and inclinations”. (Goldman 1910: 68) To Goldman’s mind, bisexual and
homosexual desire and the practice of sex for pleasure rather than procreation
constituted examples of such “desires, tastes and inclinations”. (Kissack 2008:
5) Thus Wilde’s breaking of sexual taboos was regarded by Goldman as integral
to her theory of anarchism, and his imprisonment and persecution by the State
for reasons of his sexuality made him a martyr to the anarchist cause. Appro-
priately Goldman’s journal Mother Earth advertised Wilde’s Soul of Man under
Socialism and his prison-related writings De Profundis and The Ballad of
Reading Gaol, all of which were available through the Mother Earth Publishing
Association. (Falk 2005: 45; Kissack 2008: 63)
Such sympathy with Wilde’s plight not only led Goldman to attempt to meet
with the ailing poet during her sojourn to Paris in 1900; (Goldman 1931 [1934]:
269; Kissack 2008: 43−44) it inspired her to quote frequently from Wilde’s Bal-
lad of Reading Gaol in texts protesting the imprisonment of anarchists, includ-
ing Goldman herself. In 1901 in the wake of the McKinley assassination,
Goldman published a spirited defense of Czolgosz in Free Society, in which she
described his action as a desperate act of resistance in the face of the multiple
forms of violence committed against the working poor by the capitalist State,
culminating in that enacted by the prison system. It is in this context that she
opened and closed her article with stanzas from Wilde’s Ballad of Reading Gaol
which she described as giving poetic voice “to all those victims of a system of
inequality” and state oppression.31 Goldman cited Wilde’s poem in other texts
detailing the plight of anarchists incarcerated under the prison system, includ-
ing an essay of 1908 recounting her own experience in the custody of the Chi-
cago Police department.32 In this manner Wilde was folded into the broader
community of anarchists subjected to persecution by the State, a discourse
that surely would have resonated with Epstein as he witnessed Joseph Cribb
carving Wilde’s epitaph from The Ballad of Reading Goal on his tomb in Père
Lachaise.
4 Action d’art: the French Anarchist Celebration of Oscar Wilde
Epstein’s previous exposure to Goldman’s views on Wilde, sexuality and anar-

chism evidently prepared him for Action d’art’s promulgation of similar views
in that journal’s promotion and defense of Epstein’s sculpture. The political
and moral policing of sexuality was at the heart of the Action d’art group’s cri-
tique of the government’s Aesthetic Committee in their polemical broadside
defending the Tomb of Oscar Wilde. (Illustration 2.10) In their commentary on
the Committee’s demand for “certaines modifications” (“certain modifica-
tions”) to the statue for matters of morality and decorum, the Action d’art
group mocked the government’s claim that the monument had the potential
31 Goldman, “The Tragedy at Buffalo” in Falk 2003: 471−478.

32 Goldman, Emma. 1908. “En Route” in Mother Earth (April); reproduced in Falk 2005:
300−302. Goldman also cited Wilde’s poem in her 1910 essay “Prisons” in Goldman 1910:
115−132. There she referred to Wilde’s poem as his “great masterpiece”. (117)
60 Antliff
“à froisser les susceptibilités de certain familles” (“to offend the sensibilities of

certain families”) entering the cemetery, concluding that these same families
would undoubtedly break out into fits of hysteria if confronted with Michelan-
gelo’s famous fresco of God and Adam in the Sistine Chapel. In response,
the anarchists called on the public to join them in defending freedom in the
arts as well as the dignity of the nude human body, including the contested
“symbole de la virilité” (“symbol of virility”) sculpted on Wilde’s tomb. (Atl
1913a: 1) The success of their campaign can be measured by the partial list of
respondents, contained in the April 1913 issue of Action d’art. Those who de-
clared themselves “pour liberté de l’art” (“for artistic freedom”) included such
avant-garde luminaries as the writers Guillaume Apollinaire, Paul Fort, Max
Jacob, Olivier-Hourcade, Louis Mandin, Jean Muller, and Alexandre Mercereau.
Prominent cubists and futurists also supported the protest, most notably Alex-
ander Archipenko, Albert Gleizes, Pierre Dumont, Francis Picabia, Félix-Elie
Tobeen, and Gino Severini. The list even included artists and writers from Eng-
land, such as the art critics Frank Rutter and Horace Holley, and artists Wynd-
ham Lewis, William Roberts, Charles Ginner, and Spencer Gore. (Atl 1913b: 1)
L’Action d’art had a London distributer located on Manette Street near Charing
Cross; moreover Colomer’s campaign was subsequently taken up by an English
anarchist counterpart to Action d’art, The New Freewoman (1913) which pub-
lished a defense of Epstein’s monument in July of that year (written by petition
signatory Horace Holley). (Holley 1913: 30−31)33 Thus the Action d’art petition
numbered Epstein’s allies in London among its public supporters.
5 André Colomer’s Anarchist Aestheticism
What made that campaign unique was its basis in the theory of anarchist indi-
vidualism developed by André Colomer, the philosophical voice for Action
d’art. As I previously noted, Colomer’s theory of anarchism was premised on
a complex synthesis of Wilde’s Soul of Man under Socialism, with the thought
of the French philosopher Henri Bergson and that of Max Stirner, author of
the individualist manifesto Der Einzige und sein Eigentum (The Ego and His
Own, 1844).34 Stirner’s theory of radical nominalism condemned Cartesian
33 “Les correspondents de l’action d’art” in Action d’art (May 10, 1913).

34 Stirner 1844 [1993]. For an analysis of Stirner’s philosophy, see Clark 1976. Stirner’s book
was published in French under the title, L’Unique et sa propriété in 1900, and it is included,
alongside Wilde’s Intentions (containing his essays on The Decay of Lying, Pen, Pencil, and
Poison, The Critic as Artist, and The Truth of Masks) and the writings of Henri Bergson
among the volumes gathered under the subsection ‘Philosophy-Aesthetics-Combat’ in
r ationalism, scientific discourse and what he called ‘fixed ideas’ as pernicious

abstractions, constructed by vested interests to divert us from an ‘egois’ focus
on the cultivation of our own personalities, free of all societal constraint. These
abstractions in Stirner’s view posited an artificial division between mind and
body to fabricate an ethereal realm of ‘pure spirit’ composed of general ideas
and concepts divorced from the temporal world of our corporeal being. Stirner
identified this nominal or ‘egoist’ self as the ‘unique one’, calling on us to b ehave
solely in response to our embodied interests; but he also argued for the poten-
tial existence of a ‘union of egoists’ conjoined in a contingent alliance.
Colomer reconfigured Stirner’s thesis by aligning his condemnation of ab-
stractions with Bergson’s critique of the intellect and identifying Bergson’s
concept of intuition as the means by which an anarchist perceived and devel-
oped his or her nominalist self, the ‘unique one’. Colomer also claimed that
intuition facilitated the establishment of the ‘union of egoist’ called for by
Stirner and most importantly, that in plumbing the depths of personality
through intuition the egoist was able to augment and cultivate the creative vi-
tal impulse coursing through his or her very being. Stirner’s egoist self is here
made synonymous with Bergson’s conception of our personality − it is ever
changing, qualitatively distinct, and described by Colomer in terms of Berg-
son’s own metaphors for our duration including references to rhythm, melody,
harmony and color. The latter metaphors are classified as beautiful by virtue of
their qualitative character, thus to cultivate the self was to engage in an act of
artistic creation. This is what Colomer meant by an action d’art − our very lives
were considered by him to be works of art. As we shall see Wilde’s art theory
and self-fashioning were integral to Colomer’s vision, but to understand the
full import of this aspect of his anarchism we must begin by examining Stirn-
er’s The Ego and His Own.
Stirner’s book is divided into two sections, the first part ‘Man’ focuses on the
ideological means through which individuals are coerced by social forces to
deny their own self-interest; the second part ‘I’ seeks to define ‘owness’, the
condition of freedom from such pernicious influences. Throughout the book
Stirner repeatedly defines the self as embodied, as motivated by irrational sen-
sations of physical desire, and as a temporal being undergoing constant
change, both physical and psychological. This “egoist” self is described as “the
unique one”, a particular being unlike any other. (Stirner 1844 [1993]: 362−366)
Thus our ego is a “corporeal ego” and self-realization can only be achieved
the list of books available through the Action d’art bookstore at 25 rue Tournefort, Paris.
See “A notre librairie” in Action d’art (August 25, 1913): 4. I have analyzed Colomer’s theory
at greater length in my article on Stirner, Bergson and Colomer. (Antliff 2015)
62 Antliff
when the individual “has fallen in love with his corporeal self and takes a plea-
sure in himself as a living flesh-and-blood person”. Likewise the unique one’s
actions and demeanor should be wholly concerned with “a personal and egois-
tic interest, [a desire for] total satisfaction”. (Stirner 1844 [1993]: 13, 363)
The enemy of this heterogeneous self is any institution or belief system,
whether religious or secular, that directs the individual away from their own
embodied interests and desires. This process of individual self-delusion occurs
when we swear allegiance to abstract ideas and concepts declared to be eternal
truths that transcend the material world. Among ancient civilizations such ab-
stractions took the form of spectral Gods, soon to be reduced under Christian-
ity to a single “God”; but following the rise of Cartesianism in the seventeenth
century human faith in an absolute, eternal “pure spirit” was equated with a
fetishized veneration of rationalism. (Stirner 1844 [1993]: 85) Other such tran-
scendental “essences” include “Morality”, the “State”, the rule of “Law”, “Justice”,
“Man”, “Humanity”, the “Citizen” and the “Fatherland”. (Stirner 1844 [1993]: 26,
29, 32, 44, 46−48) All are characterized as “fixed ideas”, mere words divorced
from the temporal flow of our embodied individual existence. Stirner argues
that such ideas are invariably deployed by vested interests to encourage us to
subordinate our self-interest to those abstract principles. He also instructs us
to ignore concepts of good and evil and related notions of “illegality” as moral
categories inhibiting “self-ownership” and the freedom to respond “to the full
energy of the will”. On this basis the individual should be free to engage not
only in “unwedded cohabitation” but also in a full blown “insurrection” against
the State. (Stirner 1844 [1993]: 54−55, 316)
6 Bergson, Wilde and Contagious Joy
For André Colomer a creative reading of Stirner’s egoism through the lens of
Bergson’s metaphysics and Wilde’s aestheticism proved especially compelling
as justification for anarchist individualism. Colomer’s key innovation was to
interpret Stirner’s notion of the unique as synonymous with what Bergson de-
scribed as the durational nature of our ‘inmost’ self, our personality in all its
particularity. Colomer then followed Bergson in claiming that artists were es-
pecially privileged in their ability to grasp this inner duration by means of in-
tuition, a form of willed empathy.35 Intuition reportedly enabled the egoist to
35 On Bergson’s theory of intuition, see Bergson 1903 [2007], for Bergson’s correlation of in�-
tuition with artistic perception, see Bergson 1907 [1931]: 176−185.
discover his or her uniqueness, and in so doing revolutionize consciousness by

augmenting individual creative capacities. This cultivation of the self amount-
ed to a form of artistic creation, for such intuitive self-consciousness gave
birth to sensations of intensity, rhythm, harmony and vitalist exuberance. An
artistic sensibility, as the most unique and individual of our faculties, is de-
scribed by Colomer as integral to duration itself and thus able to translate
these sensations into forms of self-representation saturated with these same
durational qualities. According to Colomer “c’est justement parce que le senti-
ment du beau est le moins fixe, le moins rationnel, le moins réglé, le plus vari-
able des sentiments humaine que je le choisis comme base de ma philosophie,
comme principe de mon action” (“it is precisely because the sensation of the
beautiful is the least fixed, the least rational, the least regulated, the most
changeable of human emotions that I choose it as the basis of my philosophy,
as the principle of my action”). (Colomer 1913c: 1) Following Stirner, Colomer
dismissed moral and ethical criteria for behavior as abstractions, but unlike
the former, “[l]e beau ne risqué pas de créer une Loi pour les hommes, une Loi
immutable, il ne peut que m’accorder une loi individuelle − c’est à dire mon
harmonie, le sens de l’accord dans mes sentiments. Il est le rythme de ma vie,
la synthèse de mon être” (“aesthetic discernment does not risk creating a Law
for humankind, a common Law, an immutable Law; it can only accord with
my individual law − that is my harmony, the feeling of accord in my emotions.
It is the rhythm of my life, the synthesis of my being”). “La beau” (“the beauti-
ful”), we are told, is “la synthèse des élans d’une personalité à la recherche de
son harmonie” (“the synthesis of the élans of a personality in search of its har-
mony”) and as such it not only expresses individual “freedom” but the life
force itself, what he called an individual’s “joie de vivre”. (Colomer 1913c: 1)
Colomer cited Bergson’s Essai sur les données immédiates de la conscience
(Time and Free Will, 1889) as seminal to this theory of “individualisme
héroïque” (“heroic Individualism”), (Colomer 1913b: 1) and it is in that text that
Bergson first analyzed the import of this particular emotion. Bergson de-
scribed our experience of joy as instigating qualitative alterations in the whole
of our psychic states, and in the case of extreme joy, an astonishment to sim-
ply be alive. (Bergson 1889 [1960]: 10−11) He further underscored the signifi-
cance of this qualitative emotion by noting that aesthetic pleasure yields a
feeling of inner joy by virtue of our empathetic reaction to sensations of grace,
rhythm and harmony that are integral to artistic expression, thus positing a
theory of intersubjectivity that accounted for the profound impact of art on
the individuals who experience it. (Bergson 1889 [1960]: 11−15) Bergson argued
that such joyful pleasure arose through our sympathetic response to a dancer’s
64 Antliff
movements; for Colomer joie de vivre emerged when we experienced the ac-
tions of an anarchist animated by intuition. As we have seen Colomer thought
that our intuitive grasp of the inner harmony of our being made our very lives
a work of art; but he additionally asserted that such aesthetic self-fashioning
awakened a sympathetic response in others. Colomer claimed that individuals
animated by this life-affirmative joy would spontaneously attract like-minded
souls to join them in the formation of a contingent grouping akin to what
Stirner described as a ‘union of egoistes’. What united these radical individual-
ists was an “intuitive sympathy” and mutual enthusiasm that enabled them to
delight in each other’s radical difference. (Colomer 1913a: 2) In sum Colomer’s
theory of art identified joie de vivre as an emotional and intuitive response to
sensory embodiment, while exalting all cultural manifestations of novelty, in-
tensity, rhythm, and harmony as fundamentally anarchist by virtue of their
durational and life-affirming properties.
For Colomer and his fellow individualists, these precepts were affirmed in
Wilde’s own strident individualism as outlined in The Soul of Man under Social-
ism. Concurrent with their campaign in favor of Epstein’s Tomb, they pub-
lished a series of extracts from Wilde’s tract which they declared to be among
“les plus belles lignes qui aient été écrites sur l’individualisme” (“the most
beautiful lines that have ever been written on individualism”). (Wilde 1913: 2)
These excerpts were carefully chosen to highlight paradigms fundamental to
the Action d’art group’s own definition of anarchist individualism. Foremost
among them was Wilde’s claim that the true individualist cultivated his or her
artistic sensibility and personality in opposition to social mores and all forms
of governmental and religious authority. Wilde claimed that every individual
should pursue “the full realization of his personality” as did all artists, but that
governmental authority and the unequal distribution of wealth under capital-
ism prevent most of us from achieving this life-affirmative goal. Thus Wilde
bluntly concluded that “the government most suitable to the artist is no gov-
ernment at all” and that only by converting “private property into public
wealth and substituting co-operation for competition” would we “restore soci-
ety to its proper condition of a thoroughly healthy organism”. (Wilde 1905
[1986]: 20, 46) Such tenets were fundamental to anarchist ideology, which
called for the destruction of government and capitalism in favor of a decentral-
ized, equitable social order structured around Kropotkin’s concept of mutual
aid. Wilde also condemned ethical or moral precepts that acted to prop up the
socio-economic status quo − thus Christian charity is dismissed by Wilde as
“sentimental dole” only serving to justify private ownership (Wilde 1905 [1986]:
22). Likewise he instructs individualists to reject all notions of civic duty,
“which merely means doing what other people want because other people
want it”. (Wilde 1905 [1986]: 22) This dismissal of forms of behavior dictated by
governmental or religious a uthority fit well with Stirner and Colomer’s con-
demnation of moral certitudes dictated by God and the State. Wilde describes
the poor who actively resist State capitalism as latent individualists − to quote
Wilde, “disobedience in the eyes of anyone who has read history, is man’s origi-
nal virtue” and “a poor man who is ungrateful, discontented and rebellious […]
is probably a real personality, and has much in him”. (Wilde 1905 [1986]: 22)
Rebellion therefore is a prerequisite for the full flowering of individualism, a
position fully endorsed by the Action d’art collective.
The most striking correspondence between Wilde and Colomer concerned
a possible ‘union of egoists’. Drawing on Bergson, Colomer claimed that indi-
viduals would spontaneously form communities by virtue of their intuitive
sympathy with each other, which resulted in a celebration of difference, and
contagious joie de vivre that would guide their interaction. Wilde anticipated
this thesis, but without Colomer’s metaphysical gloss. According to Wilde,
“when man has realized Individualism he will also realize sympathy and exer-
cise it freely and spontaneously”. The individualist will sympathize “with the
entirety of life”, including “life’s joy and beauty and energy and health and free-
dom”. Moreover true individualism “requires unselfishness” since sympathy
will guide one’s relations with others. (Wilde 1905 [1986]: 48) In contrast to
selfishness “which always aims at creating around it a uniformity of type”, the
unselfish individualist “recognizes infinite variety of type as a delightful thing,
accepts it, acquiesces to it, enjoys it”. “Man”, states Wilde “will have joy in the
contemplation of the joyous life of others” for “sympathy with joy intensifies
the sum of joy in the world”. (Wilde 1905 [1986]: 50−51) Wilde’s text prefigured
Colomer’s Bergsonian blueprint for a ‘union of egoists’ founded on intuitive
sympathy and a life-affirming joie de vivre. Thus Oscar Wilde’s own self-
fashioning as an ardent individualist and aesthete made him exemplary of
the contagious exuberance Colomer and his colleagues wished to cultivate.
(Illustration 2.14)
7 Conclusion: Epstein’s Tomb and Art for Insurrection’s Sake
In sum, the Action d’art group’s campaign on behalf of Epstein’s Tomb of Oscar
Wilde was more than an effort to uphold artistic freedom; it was part of a de-
fense and celebration of anarchism itself. Wilde’s Soul of Man under Socialism
was rightly perceived by the Action d’art collective as affirming their anarchist
individualism; moreover the pariah status bestowed on Wilde as a result of his
homosexuality, and his suffering at the hands of the State judicial and prison
system, made him a victim of a code of ethics and governance these anarchists
actively opposed. The fact that the legacy of such persecution would re-emerge
66 Antliff
Illustration 2.15
Contemporary Photograph of the Tomb of
Oscar Wilde, c. 1912.
Père Lachaise Cemetery, Paris, France
© Clement Guillaume/The Bridgeman
Art Library. Estate of Jacob Epstein
under the auspices of the French Government’s official censorship of Epstein’s

Tomb, made this case the perfect platform with which the Action d’art group
could publicize their theory of revolution. Moreover Epstein and Ross were
fully cognizant of Wilde’s impact in anarchist circles and the prominence Ep-
stein gave to the ‘symbol of virility’ in his Tomb design, coupled with Ross’s
chosen epitaph from The Ballad Reading Goal, was arguably calculated to reso-
nate with those anarchists who joined in the more general campaign for sexual
liberation and artistic freedom. In this manner the Action d’art collective was
able to integrate Wilde’s legacy into a broader call for an anarchist insurrec-
tion, premised on a merger of art into life and a contagious joy. Thus it is all the
more fitting that the Tomb of Oscar Wilde has become a shrine to love itself,
covered with lip-stick traces and festooned with flowers by those inspired by
Wilde’s joyous spirit and perhaps, even his anarchism. (Illustration 2.15)
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Chapter 3
A Politics of Technique: Fauvism and Anarchist

Individualism
Patricia Leighten
Abstract
The importance of anarchism for the fauvist movement at the start of the twentieth
century needs recognition. This paper explores the significance of distinctions within
anarchist theory between anarchist communism (which informed the majority of the
neo-impressionists) and the anarchist individualism that inspired those members of
the fauve movement self-identified as anarchist: Maurice de Vlaminck and Kees Van
Dongen. The more tangential and temporary relations of other fauvists − Henri Matisse
and André Derain − to the anarchist movement are explored as well. Growth of anti-
militarism throughout the long Dreyfus Affair (1894−1906) equally distinguishes the
late nineteenth century from the early years of the twentieth, deeply engaging the later
artists, especially Vlaminck and Derain.
These painters embodied their political refusal of the status quo in a style that
broke all the rules of academic painting. Their choice of pure unmixed color, applied
straight from newly available manufactured tubes of paint in thick additive touches,
with only approximate nods to readable form, constituted abstract techniques signify-
ing spontaneity and direct expression predicated on their uniqueness as radical indi-
viduals. With a parallel technique, Van Dongen expressed his celebration of sexual
liberationism and outsiderhood as radical individuality for both artist and sitters.
Whether such maneuvers furthered political goals or only positioned the artists in
a critical relation to bourgeois norms is one of the great questions of such manipula-
tions of modernist language. Recognizing the discursive distinctions between these
two aspects of anarchism and the centrality of antimilitarism helps in understanding
the importance of anarchist thought for the development of modernism in twentieth-
century art.
Anarchist ideology and its significance for numerous modernist movements

has been well studied by historians and art historians since about 1990. We
now grasp how anarchist ideas that were embedded in symbolism,
neo-impressionism, cubism, Italian futurism and the Russian avant-garde were

A Politics of Technique 71
entwined with aspects of these radical movements. Yet the importance of an-
archism in the development within early twentieth-century Parisian modern-
ism of the ‘fauve’ movement remains to be understood.
The centrality of anarchism in the neo-impressionist movement has been
well established in the literature of art history by Robert and Eugenia Herbert,
Robyn Roslak, John Hutton, Joan Halperin and others. (E. Herbert 1961; Reszler
1973; Halperin 1988; Sonn 1989; Hutton 1994; Roslak 2007) In a series of ground-
breaking publications, Roslak demonstrated that key neo-impressionists drew
analogies between their scientifically based brushwork − individual touches of
paint subsumed into a visual whole when viewed from a calculated distance −
and the positivist assumptions informing Piotr Alexeyevich Kropotkin’s
(1842−1921) anarchist communist theory. (Roslak 1991a, b) As Roslak revealed,
the anarchist influence on the neo-impressionists was thus deeply encoded in
their technique. Fitting with this concept, both Paul Signac (1863−1935) and
Camille Pissarro (1830−1903) rejected the obligation to depict subjects with a
social message (though they both practiced it many times, especially in prints
destined for the anarchist press) in favor of an art expressive of the artist’s in-
dividual sensibilities. Signac’s famous dictum negotiates this dichotomy nice-
ly: “Justice en sociologie, harmonie en art: même chose.” (“Justice in sociology,
harmony in art: same thing.”)1 Thus, as in Kropotkin’s ‘scientific’ theory of mu-
tual aid, the freedom of the individual (person or touch) is voluntarily bal-
anced with the needs of the whole (community or image).
This article explores the significance of distinctions within anarchist theory
between the anarchist communism that informed the majority of the neo-
impressionists of the 1880s and ‘90s and the anarchist individualism that
inspired those members of the fauve movement self-identified as anarchist:
Maurice de Vlaminck (1876−1958) and Kees Van Dongen (1877−1968). The
growth of antimilitarism throughout the long Dreyfus Affair also distinguishes
the fin de siècle from the pre-First World War period, deeply engaging the later
artists, especially Vlaminck and his close friend André Derain (1880−1954).
1 Quotation cited in Roslak 1991b: 384. Signac also published an article on Impressionnistes et
révolutionnaires, in which he developed his view of the relations between art and anarchism:
“It would therefore be a mistake, into which the most well-intentioned revolutionaries, such
as Proudhon, have fallen too often, to systematically demand a precise social aim in works of
art, because this aim will find itself again much more strong and eloquent among pure aes-
thetes, revolutionaries by temperament, who depart from the beaten track, paint what they
see, as they feel it, and give unconsciously, very often, a solid blow of the pick to the old social
edifice, which cracks and crumbles, as worm-eaten as an ancient deconsecrated cathedral.”
(Signac 1891: 3–4) All translations are the author’s unless otherwise noted. See also Brettell/
Pissarro 2017.
72 Leighten
These painters expressed their political refusal of the status quo in a style that
deliberately broke the rules of academic painting. Their choice of bright satu-
rated color − straight from newly available manufactured tubes of paint −
applied in thick additive touches, with only approximate nods to readable
form, constituted a spontaneous abstract technique signifying direct e xpression
predicated on their uniqueness as radical individuals. Recognizing the discur-
sive distinctions between these two aspects of anarchism and the role of anti-
militarism in the works of key fauves helps in understanding the importance of
anarchist thought for the development of modernism in twentieth-century
art.2
1 The Fauvists
The fauvist movement began in the early years of the new century, receiving its
name from a hostile critic who referred to an academic sculpture that ap-
peared in the same room with these startling paintings as “Donatello parmi les
fauves” (“Donatello among the wild beasts”). (Vauxcelles 1905) Early friend-
ships between Vlaminck, Derain and Henri Matisse (1869−1954) initiated their
showing at the Salon d’automne (Autumn Salon) as a group in 1905, and gradu-
ally numerous other artists participated.3 For several in this later generation of
fauves, who rejected the rationalist underpinnings of the anarchist theory em-
braced by the neo-impressionists, other forms of anarchist individualism
proved more compelling. Basing their ideas on the irrationalism of Friedrich
Nietzsche, Henri Bergson and Max Stirner (the godfather of ‘egoism’), these
artists set out to politicize aesthetics and aestheticize politics in a new way.4 In
contrast to anarchist communists such as Signac, Pissarro, or Kropotkin, these
radicals held out less hope for a harmonious society and instead celebrated the
unfettered expression of their subjectivity as a sign of their ongoing revolt
against existing state institutions and social norms. Their revolt went hand in
hand with the emergence of the antimilitarist movement, which was given a
huge impetus by the Dreyfus Affair. Lasting from 1894 to 1906, this controversy
dramatically split French society in the 1890s and threatened the stability of
the Third Republic. (Birnbaum 1994) Anarchists saw the military’s vilification
of Dreyfus as indicative of the Third Republic’s corruption, and they used the
2 This article expands on material that appeared in my book, The Liberation of Painting
(Leighten 2013), Chapter 1.
3 Including Charles Camoin, Henri-Charles Manguin, Othon Friesz, Jean Puy, Louis Valtat, and
Georges Rouault, joined in 1906 by Georges Braque and Raoul Dufy.
4 These three thinkers were often discussed in journals occupying the extreme individualist
end of the anarchist spectrum; see Sonn 1989, and Antliff 1998.
Affair to promote a broader revolt condemning the military as a tool of the

government for propping up the capitalist state system. Artists within this rad-
ical milieu rejected academic art and theory as well as state-sanctioned art in-
stitutions that promoted academic art as yet another manifestation of such
bourgeois corruption. Their stylistic vanguardism signified a rejection not only
of the bourgeois commodification of art, but also of a set of values and institu-
tions implicated in bolstering a Republic that deployed the military to attack
striking workers and maintained gross economic inequalities.
2 Vlaminck
Vlaminck represents one of the best exemplars of this strategy, openly pro-
claiming his avant-garde style as an expression of anarchist antimilitarism. For
him, anarchism directly influenced his paintings, which he exhibited in alter-
native salons as a provocative rejection of tradition and good taste.5 Though
Vlaminck’s anarchism is frequently acknowledged in scholarly discussions, his
art has largely been discussed independently from his stated politics as moving
a step toward abstraction in the name of ‘feeling’.6 Fundamentally this is cor-
rect: subjectivity was unquestionably central to fauvist discourse. But the po-
litical importance of theorizing ‘feeling’ in the name of extreme individualism
needs to be recognized. When Vlaminck developed his fauve style, he articu-
lated it as a programmatic violation of inherited forms reflecting an unjust and
militarized state apparatus, created with an anti-establishment audience in
mind.
5 In reaction against the restrictive ‘official’ salons, the Salon des indépendants (Salon of Inde-
pendent Artists) was the vehicle of the Société des artistes indépendantes (Society of Inde-
pendent Artists), a group spearheaded by the anarchists Signac, Pissarro and their fellow
neo-impressionists; see Ward 1996: 49–63. As the only juryless salon, this venue was based on
the concept of artistic freedom and independence and thus threatened the institutional sta-
tus quo. In 1903, a middle ground was struck between the juried salons and the unjuried Sa-
lon des indépendants with the founding of the Salon d’automne, which became an avant-
garde venue, juried by a group of artists elected annually by their peers.
6 On fauvism, see Elderfield 1976; Oppler 1976, and Musée d’art moderne de la Ville de Paris
1999. J. Herbert (1992: 55, 46–55) took up the question of the politics of fauvism only to dismiss
it, looking instead to the ways various fauvists engaged in market practices and at how their
paintings “constituted a powerful tool for constructing a hegemonic manner of viewing the
world”. Regarding Vlaminck, he denies the artist’s stated anarchism and parallel devotion to
‘feeling’ in his art in favor of a complicit Vlaminck, whose stylistic innovations instead corre-
late with “bourgeois individualism” and whose expressionism is substituted by a politically
emptied form of “neo-naturalism”, Herbert’s ahistorical neologism for all forms of fauve paint-
ing. As paying attention to anarchist thought reveals, not all individualism is ‘bourgeois’.
74 Leighten
While doing his compulsory military service from 1897 to 1900, Vlaminck
became a confirmed antimilitarist and anarchist.7 Through a fellow soldier,
Fernand Sernada, he was introduced to anarchist leaders Sébastien Faure,
Charles Malato, Albert Libertad, Miguel Almereyda, Zo d’Axa, and Laurent
Tailhade, the last a prominent Dreyfusard polemicist. (Vlaminck 1929 [1966]:
74) Still in the military and now a self-described “Dreyfusard enragé” himself,
Vlaminck attended the Rennes retrial of 1899, which found Captain Dreyfus
guilty for a second time. (Vlaminck 1929 [1966]: 63−65) During this period and
continuing into his later life, Vlaminck published what he called “papiers révo-
lutionnaires” (“revolutionary writings”) in anarchist journals, including
L’Anarchie and Fin de siècle. In 1900 and 1901 he contributed to Le Libertaire,
edited by leading anarchist polemicist Sébasien Faure, and from this period to
1939 he also donated paintings to that journal’s annual fundraiser. (Oppler
1976: 194−195) While in the army he studied the works of Émile Zola, Karl Marx,
Kropotkin, and Félix Le Dantec, (Vlaminck 1929 [1966]: 61) whose writings
combined Stirner’s egoism with scientific determinism. A fiercely and openly
anarchist artist who exclusively chose a path of avant-gardism, Vlaminck ex-
hibited only in the alternative salons. His political choices went hand in glove
with aesthetic ones: the development of formal innovations in his painting
were unacceptable within the parameters of the Beaux-Arts tradition and con-
stituted a deliberate affront to critics. In his fauve period, he employed a fero-
cious form of painting as ‘propaganda of the deed’.
As an artist Vlaminck was self-taught, differing in this regard from those
with whom he was most closely involved: Matisse, who had studied at the
École des beaux-arts and in the ateliers of William-Adolphe Bouguereau and
Gustave Moreau from 1889 to 1898, and Derain, who left his engineering stud-
ies in 1898 to attend the Académie Carrière. Vlaminck and Derain shared a
studio in Chatou in 1900−1901, and that year Derain introduced him to Matisse
at the Vincent Van Gogh exhibition at Galerie Bernheim-Jeune; all three were
deeply moved by the show. (Lee 2017) Exhibiting together at the Salon des in-
dépendants in 1905, Vlaminck, Matisse, Derain, and others came to be called
les Fauves − the wild beasts − for the rough and open brushwork, antinaturalis-
tic color, and lack of formal structure in their paintings. (These other artists,
however, did not fully agree with Vlaminck’s politics; Derain shared Vlaminck’s
antimilitarism for only two or three years, and the nature of Matisse’s political
leanings remains an unsettled question.8)
7 Discussed at length in Vlaminck’s memoir. (Vlaminck 1929 [1966])

8 Spurling has discussed Matisse’s relationship to anarchism; (Spurling 1998: 208–209, 291–293,
328) she quotes Claude Duthuit to the effect that circa 1900–1902, when he was close to
Illustration 3.1 Maurice de Vlaminck, Maisons à Chatou (Houses at Chatou), 1905–1906.

Oil on canvas, 81.3 × 101.6 cm.
Art Institute of Chicago, Gift of Mr. and Mrs. maurice e.
culberg. © 2019 Artists Rights Society (ars), New
York/adagp, Paris
Vlaminck obliquely confronted political subjects in his art. His concentration

on kitchen gardens and the outskirts of Paris, rural labor, and the industrial life
of the Seine, as in Maisons à Chatou (Houses at Chatou, 1905−1906; Illustration
3.1), suggests a rejection of bourgeois urban culture.
a narchists Maximilien Luce and Mécislas Golberg, “Along with a great many other artists,
Matisse contributed funds he could ill afford to support prisoners and their families at a time
when anarchists were under constant pressure from the French police. Each year he had a
secret rendezvous with an anonymous contact to whom he handed over five francs for politi-
cal escapees.” (Spurling 1998: 209) Matisse spent time in Saint Tropez in the summer of 1904
painting alongside Henri-Edmond Cross and Signac, with whom he and his wife stayed; he
would have been very familiar with their ideas at this time. (Watkins 2017) Mark Antliff also
documents Matisse’s donation of works of art for a raffle in support of the jailed anarchist
satirist Aristide Delannoy’s destitute family in 1911. (Antliff 2010: 154) These may well, how-
ever, evince personal, rather than strictly political, sympathies.
76 Leighten
Illustration 3.2 Camille Pissarro, La Cueillette des pommes à Éragny-sur-Epte (Apple

Picking at Éragny-sur-Epte), 1888. Oil on canvas, 85.09 × 73.98 cm.
Dallas Museum of Art
This is consistent with choices he made in his own life and with subjects cho-
sen by other anarchist artists of the previous generation, including Signac,
Henri-Edmond Cross, and Pissarro, whose neo-impressionist paintings such as
his La Cueillette des pommes à Eragny-sur-Epte (Apple Picking at Éragny-
sur-Epte, 1888; Illustration 3.2), were well known. (E. Herbert 1961; Hutton 1994;
Ward 1996; Roslak 2007; Brettel/Pissaro 2017) But most significantly, his anar-
chism was invested in his style. Houses at Chatou borrows Van Gogh’s expres-
sive brush strokes and outlining of forms in black, but goes well beyond him in
its use of antinaturalistic color for the writhing forms of the trees and the radi-
cal shifts of color along their trunks, from blue to pink to green to ochre to red.
None of this is meant to convey the way light falls on the tree, but rather the
way the artist’s feelings inform his perceptions. The most antinaturalistic color
in the work is the red and blue rectangle of the garden itself in the center; the
forms of the figure tending this kitchen garden behind the row of houses share
the expressive touches of the landscape, with which he is so in contact. K itchen
Illustration 3.3 Maurice de Vlaminck, Paysage d’automne (Autumn Landscape), c. 1905.

Oil on canvas, 46.2 × 55.2 cm.
Museum of Modern Art, Gift of nate b. and frances
spingold. © 2019 Artists Rights Society (ars), New
York/adagp, Paris
gardens were viewed by anarchists as important for their contribution to both

food and labor, and they allowed individuals to remain in harmony with the
organic rhythms of nature. In another work from the same period, Paysage
d’automne (Autumn Landscape, c. 1905; Illustration 3.3), directional dashes of
red, blue, and green enact nature literally flaming its forces skyward in an or-
chard and kitchen garden. The surrounding fields, mountains, trees and clouds
embody more the energy of growth and the power of weather than recogniz-
able landscape forms.
The interpretation of Vlaminck’s work, like that of Picasso and so many oth-
er abstractionists, has been subject to a passionate attachment to the idea of
the ‘autonomy’ of art. Since the 1920s and up to the advent of the social history
of art in the 1970s, critical discourses on art constructed a version of modern-
ism at once detached from life − or all but the intimacies of personal life − and
focused on supposedly purely formal issues of line, color, and form. Artists
78 Leighten
oliticizing their work by virtue of style clearly run the risk of being misunder-
p
stood by later generations who are unable to share the values encoded in their
violation of inherited forms, that Bakhtinian counter-discourse which their art
spoke. How many times were the seats of the Théâtre-Français or the Théâtre
de l’ɶuvre reportedly torn up by crowds outraged at the violation of an Alexan-
drine meter, the introduction of a rhymeless expletive, or the dancing of an
antinarrative ballet? In the next century, we may find it hard to appreciate this
crowd’s anger at the transgression of interiorized nineteenth-century rules, yet
we must accept the conditions of these artists’ choices. This was the shockable
audience for Vlaminck’s transgressive paintings, whose theory and practice
developed in specific relation to his involvement with the anarchist and anti-
militarist movements, especially focused on the Dreyfus Affair.
3 The Dreyfus Affair and Antimilitarism
The Affair, which inaugurated the new century and helped to create a powerful
antimilitarist movement, was a political crisis that began in 1894, lasted until
1906, and revolved around the guilt or innocence of army captain Alfred Drey-
fus (1859−1935), accused of treason. When evidence came to light in 1896 point-
ing to another French officer, public opinion diverged between supporters of
the army − whose leaders covered up the new evidence and in 1898 even forged
a document implicating Dreyfus − and those willing to believe in the innocence
of a French Jew, calling for the case to be reopened. The controversy and public
debate dramatically split French society in the 1890s into anti-Dreyfusards
and Dreyfusards. The case politicized and polarized a generation. Everyone
was e ither for or against the army; for or against the Catholic Church, which
supported the army; for or against Jews; or, for or against the government.9
These issues were far-reaching, with important implications for the success of
the Third Republic and the very foundation of republicanism. Many Dreyfu-
sards subsequently mistrusted the army, and for the next decade the French
military had to work hard to reestablish its prestige and position in the public
sphere. The impetus to antimilitarism and anticlericalism spurred by the Drey-
fus Affair is well known, as is the involvement of artists and writers of the pe-
riod in its visual and verbal polemic. (Kleeblatt 1987: 100–107)10 The exposure
9 The literature on this period and on the Dreyfus Affair is enormous and well known; here
I will simply point the reader to Mayeur/Rébérioux 1984.
10 The Ligue internationale pour la défense du soldat (International League for the Defense
of the Soldier), for whom the anarchist modernist František Kupka made a propaganda
of collusion between army and church, both under the auspices of the state,
contributed to the anticlericalism of subsequent radical governments, leading
to a formal declaration of the separation of church and state in 1905.
An even larger antimilitarist movement was sparked in the following de-
cade by the threat of a pan-European war; the movement − a loose alliance of
pacifists, socialists, and anarchists − gained traction during the First and Sec-
ond Balkan Wars of 1912–1913, a preliminary to the outbreak of the First World
War a year later. In 1904, a congress in Amsterdam founded the International
Antimilitarist Association, advocating international brotherhood and insur-
rection as the right response to any mobilization orders. Before the war, the
French anarcho-syndicalist union, La Confédération générale du travail (Gen-
eral Confederation of Labor [CGT], 1895), published a Soldier’s Manual to
spread revolutionary propaganda in the barracks, advocating desertion.11 At
their congress in 1908, the delegates agreed to proclaim a general strike at any
declaration of war. Desertion from the French army grew at an extraordinary
rate: six t housand in 1902, fourteen thousand in 1907, and thirteen thousand in
1912. (Goldberg 1968: 351) Socialists, who had garnered ten million votes in the
1910 election, also met to consider pacifist tactics. After 1907, socialist leader
Jean Jaurès became famous for his speeches throughout France against the
coming war. His following became so great that one antiwar speech he gave in
a working-class district of Paris − Pré-Saint-Gervais − in May 1913 was orga-
nized in only two days and drew over one hundred thousand people. (Gold-
berg 1968: 382–383, 442)
Anarchist writers and artists, including modernists like Vlaminck, Van Don-
gen, Juan Gris and František Kupka, among many others, contributed articles
and satire to anarchist journals such as Le Libertaire, Les Hommes du jour, Les
Temps nouveaux, and L’Assiette au beurre, while their socialist counterparts
published in antimilitarist journals ranging from the revolutionary La Guerre
sociale to Jaurès’ pacifist L’Humanité. (Leighten 2013: chapter 1) Such mass an-
timilitarism charged the atmosphere for a generation of artists and writers
who lived through the prewar period and were forced to make a choice in Au-
gust 1914 to fight or declare their pacifism. (Grossi 1994; Miller 2002) One wit-
ness is Picasso’s dealer Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler. He wrote in his memoirs:
postcard, was an antimilitarist group that flourished around 1902–1903, later merging into
the Association internationale antimilitariste (International Anti-Militarist Association,
1904); see Miller 2002: 38–40.
11 “When they send you to the border to defend the coffers of the capitalists against other
workers, abused as you are yourselves, you will not march. All war is criminal. At the mo-
bilization order, you will answer with an immediate strike and with insurrection.” (Mai-
tron 1951: 349–350)
80 Leighten
As for my political ideas, I was a leftist. [In 1902] I took part in a demon-
stration on the grave of Zola, who had just died. I was still a very young
man, so the only way I could show my interest was to participate in dem-
onstrations and meetings, which I did. I heard Jaurès, [Francis] Pressen-
sé, all the great socialists of the day. The Dreyfus case was fairly recent,
and the political atmosphere was unsettled. The right wing was very rest-
less, and the left wing was full of enthusiasm.
kahnweiler 1961 [1971]: 23
In this environment of increasing militarization and political crises, the struc-

ture of alliances and treaties across Europe made clear the pattern of opposing
forces that would act as allies on the declaration of war. The results were accu-
rately foreseen in the broad range of the press, though few conceived of the scale
of its actual destruction and virtually none that it would last four long years.
During the period when the government increasingly employed the army
against strikers, workers doing their temporary compulsory army service
looked past their bayonets at workers on the factory line. Vlaminck was alert to
this class irony and to the political problem of the army’s role in strike-breaking;
while in the army, he heard speeches including the following, delivered to men
being sent to a strike: “Les grévistes! Ce sont de sales gens. S’ils font des histo-
ries, faut tirer dessus!ˮ (“The strikers! These are filthy people. If they make trou-
ble, shoot them!”) (Vlaminck 1929 [1966]: 62) Vlaminck decided to take action
against the captain who gave this particular directive. Noting down the exact
words, Vlaminck mailed them, with incriminating details, to Urbain Gohier,
a leading Dreyfusard, at L’Aurore, whose article on the subject resulted in this
captain’s transfer to a distant frontier. (Vlaminck 1929 [1966]: 62−63) As
Vlaminck noted in his memoirs, “Je n’étais ni bon ni mauvais soldat: je n’étais
pas soldat. Je ne prenais pas du tout mon rôle au sérieux.” (“I was neither a
good nor bad soldier: I was not a soldier. I did not at all take my role serious-
ly.”) (Vlaminck 1929: 57−58) Thus there is no question of Vlaminck’s anti-
authoritarianism and antimilitarism at this time and during the First World
War, in which he refused to serve as a combatant. He was nonetheless required
to serve as a noncombatant, and the state punitively assigned him to the as-
sembly line of a bomb factory. In an article of December 1900 in Le Libertaire,
Vlaminck wrote:
And yet the truth is flagrant: it is the worker always anxious not to starve,
though dying of work, it is the homeless, the destitute, who find them-
selves obliged to undergo three years of military service in order to d efend
the property of others, those who possess: the Rich! the rich who believe
that their money honestly belongs to them, the rich who have honor, in-
tegrity, fatherland, religion, the rich who give charity, oh irony! […] Why
doesn’t an alliance exist? […] The fault is in the enormous number of the
disinherited who do not wish to admit the state in which they vegetate
and perish indifferent; they do not wish to comprehend the absurd and
wretched nonsense of their alcoholic chauvinism which they howl in
cries of ‘Long Live the Army!’, not realizing that they likewise prop up
capital, and that the enemy for them is neither the German, nor the Jew,
but to the contrary the possessors of whatever nationality and whatever
religion they are.
vlaminck 1900: 2−3
In another article in Le Libertaire in July 1901, Vlaminck bitterly defined anar-

chism in terms of his own army experience: “L’anarchie, c’est l’aspiration de
tout être vers un absolu de justice qui condamne la soumission et la lâcheté,
l’ignominie de l’esprit de commandement formant de pareils chiens couchants
appelés ‘soldats’.” (“Anarchy is the aspiration of every being toward an absolute
of justice that condemns the submissiveness, the cowardice, the ignominy, of
the spirit of command forming those hunting dogs called ‘soldiers’.”) (Vlaminck
1901: 2−3)
Far more serious than being a “good soldier” for Vlaminck was the question
of his politics and his art. After leaving the army he continued to frequent the
Libertaire circle, (Vlaminck 1929 [1966]: 74−75) and when he began to paint it
was with a virulent anti-traditionalism. His anarchism was translated into an
art theory based on spontaneity, primitivism, and extreme individualism. As
he put it:
With my cobalts and vermilions, I wished to burn down the École des
Beaux-Arts and to render my impressions without any thought for what
was achieved in the past. […] I wanted to revolutionize habits and con-
temporary life, to liberate nature, to free it from the authority of old theo-
ries and classicism, which I hated as much as I had hated the General or
the Colonel of my regiment. […] I felt a tremendous urge to recreate a
new world seen through my own eyes, a world which was entirely mine.
[…] I was a tender barbarian, filled with violence. I translated what I saw
instinctively, without any method and conveyed it truly, not so much ar-
tistically as humanely.
vlaminck 1929 [1966]: 11−12
82 Leighten
Illustration 3.4
Maurice de Vlaminck, André Derain (Portrait
of Derain), 1905. Oil on cardboard, 26.4 × 21
cm.
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New
York, Jacques and Natasha Gelman
Collection. © 2019 Artists Rights
Society (ars), New York/adagp, Paris
In his fauve paintings of 1905, these anarchist ideas rooted in antimilitarism

were translated into abstract form. In André Derain (Portrait of Derain, Illustra-
tion 3.4), color is not only heightened but arbitrarily violates all sense of natu-
ral color. Just as the applied paint refuses to describe the ordinary tones of skin,
so the absence of light and shadow and the thick, indelicate slabs outlining the
head refuse to articulate three-dimensionality of form. This ‘portrait’ thus re-
duces itself to a caricature of a likeness by virtue of a cartoonlike simplicity
and childlike directness, bespeaking the spontaneity and honesty of the ‘prim-
itive’ Vlaminck aspired to become. His style presents a purposely naive and
direct antinaturalism that rejects all conventions of academic painting except
that of relative scale: we can see that it is a portrait, but one transformed into a
visionary otherness justified by the artist’s anarchist individualism.
4 André Derain
André Derain met Vlaminck in 1900 and so was exposed to Vlaminck’s anar-
chist and antimilitarist thought before he was required to begin his own army
service in 1901. (Oppler 1976: 45) When Derain arrived at his unit, he found that
many of his comrades were already of an antimilitarist persuasion. (Derain
1955: 48)12 Derain himself was sent against striking workers, and he wrote to
12 Oppler dates this comment to January 1902. (Oppler 1976: 187)

Vlaminck: “Je suis aux grèves. Vois-tu un Derain, jugulaire au menton, m aintenir
les grévistes. Suprême ironie!” (“I was at the strikes. Behold a Derain, strap on
chin, keeping the strikers in order. Supreme irony!”) (Derain 1955: 121) And
more bitterly later − probably autumn 1903 − he wrote: “Il arrive des regiments
tous les jours et les officiers excitant les hommes contre les grévistes. […] Les
mineurs crèvent la faim et ils s’aperçoivent que c’est pour la peau. Tout cela
devient très, très vilain, quoique l’on n’en parle pas dans les journaux.” (“Regi-
ments come every day and the officers incite the men against the strikers. […]
The miners are starving and they perceive that this is life or death. All this be-
comes very, very villainous, although no-one is talking about it in the newspa-
pers.”) (Derain 1955: 132−133)
The awareness among engagé modernists of such increasingly routine
events was acute, further evidenced by numerous cartoons published in the
anarchist press. A special issue of L’Assiette au beurre of May 6, 1905 devoted to
‘The Strike’ repeatedly acknowledged this military policy and pointed out its
ironies, well known to the soldiers. Jules Grandjouan (1875−1968), the most pro-
lific anarchist satirist − who also published cartoons in Le Libertaire and the
official anarcho-syndicalist journal, La Voix du peuple − depicts on the cover a
soldier fully equipped and beating a drum, followed by the shadowy mass of a
regiment, bayonets at the ready, led by a figure with epaulettes. (Illustration 3.5)
Illustration 3.5
Jules-Félix Grandjouan, cover for ‘The
Strike’ in L’Assiette au beurre (May 6,
1905): n.p.
© 2019 Artists Rights Society
(ars), New York/adagp, Paris
84 Leighten
The drummer is the only soldier fully depicted and is thereby individualized in
facing down the mass of angry workers beyond. Two cartoons within this spe-
cial issue suggested the soldier’s grasp of the link to his counterpart. In Mirage,
also by Grandjouan, a soldier mistakes himself briefly for a worker, crying
“Tiens, cette gueule d’exploité! […] Mais nom de Dieu, c’est la mienne!” (“What
an exploited face! […] But, my God, it’s mine!”) (Grandjouan 1905: 86) In the
reflection, the soldier’s képi appears as a worker’s slouch hat. In the other, Riot,
live ammunition, Bernard Naudin depicts two soldiers just starting their com-
pulsory service who stand in a line of bayonets facing a barricade manned by
striking workers; one says “Dire que dans deux ans, on sera peut-être à leur
place.” (“To think that in two years, one could perhaps be in their place.”)
(Grandjouan 1905: 93)
The antimilitarism expressed in such cartoons is visible in an ambitious
work by Derain, painted in 1903 while still in the military: Bal des soldats à
Suresnes (Soldier’s Ball at Suresnes, 1903; Illustration 3.6). Artists customarily
submitted such large-scale works to the annual state-sponsored salon; in so
doing, Derain indicated his public ambition for this painting. He treats the sol-
diers in a comic manner, focusing on the central joke of the small soldier danc-
ing with a much larger woman. The perspective exaggerates this effect since
our viewpoint is from above; we look down at the floor and at the dancing
soldier, although we look up into the woman’s grimly stoic face. The soldier’s
white gloves, which should suggest the rigor of army dress, evoke rather the
gesturing clown, with an unmodulated starkly white silhouette reminiscent of
works of the previous decade. For example, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec’s Cirque
Fernando (At the Cirque Fernando, 1887–1888; Illustration 3.7) employs a simi-
larly silhouetted white-gloved hand on the red-haired clown. Georges Seurat’s
La Cirque (The Circus, 1891) doubles this play with both hands of the clown
behind the ringmaster and counterpoint hands of another acrobat to his left.
The iconography of the clowns’ and acrobats’ invariably henna-red wigs is sub-
tly echoed in the buffoonish soldier’s red hair and mustache, which in turn
reinforces his coloristic incarnation en tricouleur. His grave and anxious con-
centration on the task of grasping and moving this woman is equally comic,
partly for being so closely watched from behind by his taller fellow soldier, who
looks on with some combination of envy and amusement. The two Hussards
with their sabers and boots ceremonially frame the dancing pair; their bore-
dom and embarrassment at his lustful embrace and his comic inability to han-
dle her add a salacious note to the awkwardness of the social interaction. The
Illustration 3.6 André Derain, Bal des soldats à Suresnes (Soldier’s Ball at Suresnes),
1903. Oil on canvas, 180 × 145.1 cm.
St. Louis Art Museum. © 2019 Artists Rights Society (ars),
New York/adagp, Paris
86 Leighten
Illustration 3.7 Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Cirque Fernando (At the Cirque Fernando),
1887–1888. Oil on canvas, 100.3 × 161.3 cm.
Art Institute of Chicago, Joseph Winterbotham
Collection
caricatural treatment of their bodies and uniforms, all in the prosaic setting of
a cheap ballroom, undercuts the military myth of soldierly virility.13
There was a long nineteenth-century painting tradition glorifying the mili-
tary, from Antoine-Jean Gros to Jean-Louis Ernest Meissonier, while Nicolas
Poussin’s style remained a classicizing ideal. But the Dreyfusard Derain,
through his simplification of form and rough brushwork, instead stylistically
invoked modernism, folk art, and the cartoon − inescapably evocative of satire
and propaganda − all of which were read as a calculated insult to the army at a
time when the Dreyfus Affair was still grinding through the inquiries. This
work purposely echoed a painting by his friend Henri Evenepoel (1872−1899),
Fête aux invalides (Veterans’ Festival, 1898; Illustration 3.8), which was e xhibited
13 Derain’s regiment was the 195th infantry regiment; the main figure’s uniform and the one
of the central soldier behind him − who looks very much like Derain himself − is “soldat
du 8e régiment d’infanterie. Grande tenue, (1900)” (“soldier of the 8th Infantry Regiment.
Full-dress uniform [1900]”) and the two outside soldiers are “Hussard du 10e régiment.
Grande tenue (1895)” (“Hussars of the 10th Regiment. Full-dress uniform [1895]”), repro-
duced in Musée de l’armée/Hôtel des invalides 1991: 90–92 (nos. 12 and 22). The painting
was based on a photograph of Derain and friends; see Derain 1994: 436; on Derain’s un-
happiness in the army, see ibid.
Illustration 3.8 Henri Evenepoel, Fête aux invalides (Veterans’ Festival), 1898. Oil on
canvas, 80 × 120 cm.
Musée d’art moderne, Brussels
at the salon at the height of the Affair in 1899 and created a storm in the anti-
Dreyfusard press, particularly Le Progrès militaire. (Kleeblatt 1987: 257) Evene-
poel was passionately Dreyfusard, and his work not only treated figural form
with modernist simplification − an insult in itself − but confronted the military
figures with an angry working man in the center. The anti-Dreyfusards under-
stood this work, correctly, to be an attack on the army; the language of style
had become finely tuned in this discourse. Indeed, Derain intensified his anti-
militarism in a work only recorded in a little-known photograph of 1904–1905:
Derain in his Chatou studio, armed with his palette and brushes, in front of a
crude painting of a crucifixion. (Illustration 3.9) The figure on the cross, though,
is not Christ but a soldier, dressed identically to the figure in his Soldier’s Ball,
with his cap, jacket, epaulettes, belt, striped trousers, spats and, above all,
white gloves. The cartoonlike exclamatory marks around the figure emphasize
the source of this treatment in political cartoons, such as Van Dongen’s White
Peril (see below, Illustration 3.11). It is telling that this work is lost to the Derain
canon. (Bachelard 1994: 18)
In 1905, Derain wrote to Vlaminck that he had become bored with anar-
chists. Though his anarchist antimilitarist period was short-lived, Derain,
88 Leighten
Illustration 3.9 Photograph of André Derain in his studio, c. 1905.

Private Collection
like Vlaminck, nonetheless formed his aesthetics in response to it, calling his
colors in these early years “sticks of dynamite”. (Duthuit 1950: 27, 29) Need-
less to say, this was the weapon of choice for anarchist propagandists of the
deed, m etaphorically linking Vlaminck’s and Derain’s art in this period with
acts of anarchist violence. Such radicalism encouraged these artists to push
their painting toward outrages on traditional treatment of form and color
that were received by hostile art critics as “primitive”, “anti-aesthetic”, “anar-
chist”, and “anti-French”: “a challenge to good sense and judgment”. (Charles
1905 [1991]: 42; see also Benjamin 1990) In his fauve works, Derain’s meta-
phor of explosion works less within the frame of a painting than in relation
to its academic or even impressionist precursors. As with Vlaminck, the
color and brushwork signify spontaneity of execution, connoting direct
emotion and uniquely individual vision. The way the marks of paint refuse
description speaks of the artist’s refusal to employ the tools of bourgeois
illusionism.
5 Kees van Dongen
The work of Dutch artist Kees van Dongen, another key fauvist and avowed
anarchist, reinforces this point. Van Dongen was already a member of anar-
chist and symbolist circles as a young man in Rotterdam, and in 1896 he illus-
trated the cover of the Dutch translation of Kropotkin’s L’Anarchie, sa philoso-
phie, son idéal (Anarchism: Its Philosophy and Ideal, 1896). (Capra 2008;
Hopmans 2008: 86−87) He made his first trip to Paris in 1897–1898, when he
met the influential critic Félix Fénéon through anarchist contacts. As Van Don-
gen later recalled, “I had met a curious gentleman named Félix Fénéon. I had
met him because he was an anarchist. We were all anarchists without throwing
bombs; we had those kinds of ideas”. (Egbert 1970: 254) In 1900, he moved to
Paris, where he became close friends with the most committed anarchists
among the neo-impressionists: Maximilien Luce, Signac, and their major sup-
porter Fénéon.
Van Dongen was himself a declared anarchist and self-conscious ‘primitive’,
who published satirical prints based on his political convictions.14 For anar-
chist and left-wing journals such as Cri de Paris, Les Temps nouveaux, and
L’Assiette au beurre (where he was introduced by the leading anarchist artist,
printmaker and cartoonist Théophile Steinlen), he consistently hammered on
political subjects critical of bourgeois society and the Third Republic − poverty,
prostitution, colonialism, and militarism − while he celebrated bohemian sex-
ual liberationism, the theme that he took with him into his later work.
(Melas-Kyriazi 1971: 51; Capra 2008: 5) With a technique parallel to Vlaminck
and Derain’s, Van Dongen expressed his sexual liberationist convictions and
outsiderhood as radical individuality for both artist and sitters.
Like the anarchist artists/printmakers Bernard Naudin and František Kup-
ka, he went through a period in which he disavowed painting to practice the
democratic art of prints, writing to a friend in Rotterdam in 1901:
What is one doing turning out paintings, serving luxury, and this at a time
when one is surrounded by poverty everywhere? I thought it would be
better to work as much as possible for the common good, for the people
as a whole and not for a few deliberate or unwitting rogues. This is why
14 Satire also sometimes helped him make needed money, but − as with all these graphic
artists − most of his income came from selling innocuous drawings to more purely
‘humoristic’ magazines like Frou-Frou, Le Rab’lais, Le Rire, and L’Indiscret.
90 Leighten
I draw in magazines and have abandoned painting; I just do a bit now and
then for myself.
hopmans 2008: 11215
Anita Hopmans has pointed out that, for his retrospective exhibition at Galerie
Vollard in 1904, there were virtually no paintings dating from 1896 to around
1903, when Fénéon introduced him at La Revue blanche. (Hopmans 2008: 85)
A cartoon of 1901 for L’Assiette au beurre depicts a ragged and bony street musi-
cian, who bluntly confesses, “J’suis ni musicien, ni chanteur… Je suis crève-
faim!…” (“I’m not a musician or a singer … I’m starving!”) (Illustration 3.10) The
caption is written in the same transliterated ‘argot’ in which Émile Pouget
wrote his famous and popular anarchist journal, Le Père peinard, eliding the
vowels to approximate underworld and street slang. (Sonn 1989: Chapter 4;
Lay 1999) Thus the crude pictorial form, the ‘argotique’ caption, and the politi-
cal message are all of a piece, communicating that identification with the
Illustration 3.10
Kees van Dongen, “J’suis ni musicien,
ni chanteur … Je suis crève-faim!”
(“I’m not a musician or a singer …
I’m starving!”) in L’Assiette au beurre
(June 20, 1901): n.p.
© 2019 Artists Rights Society
(ars), New York/adagp, Paris
15 Hopmans cites this letter in the correspondence between Van Dongen and H.C. van
Hanswijk Pennink, Netherland Institute for Art History, The Hague.
Lumpenproletariat − the marginal, the starving, and the unemployed − that

was the special focus of the anarchists.
Van Dongen condemned militarism and colonialism through his attack on
Christianity and its missionaries. In his cartoon for the anarchist newspaper
Les Temps nouveaux, Le Péril blanc (The White Peril, 1905; Illustration 3.11),
Christ stands proudly and possessively over cities, factories, armies, cannons,
and ships sailing off to exploit exotic lands. Van Dongen’s blunt line caricatures
the holy figure as a drunken vainglorious fool, in whose name evil deeds are
perpetrated and in which he takes an idiot pleasure. The primitivism of the
drawing here signifies brutality as much as spontaneity, and its message could
not be clearer or more effective.
Illustration 3.11 Kees van Dongen, “Le Péril Blanc” (The

White Peril) in Les Temps nouveaux,
supplément littéraire (September 30, 1905):
n.p.
© 2019 Artists Rights Society (ars),
92 Leighten
Among all the artists of this period, Van Dongen goes further than anyone in
his stark simplicity of line, form, and spatial setting for their crudely expressive
power, focusing attention on the offensively blasphemous main figure. The
thick black strokes of ink of his cartoons evoke an aspect of his later painting
that offended, or in some cases pleased, Van Dongen’s critics. The anarchist
politics of the cartoons and the style Van Dongen developed to serve them are
continuous with what critics called his “audacious and violent” painting, ex-
hibited in the Salon des indépendants and the Salon d’automne annually be-
ginning in 1904. (Pagé 1990: 237−247)16 In that year, he also became friendly
with Guillaume Apollinaire, Pablo Picasso, Vlaminck, and Derain, and in 1906
he moved for a year to 12, rue Ravignan in Montmartre, a locus of anarchism
under police surveillance that housed several in the Picasso circle. (Leighten
1989: 71−72) Here Picasso drew his friend’s portrait in his most outrageous Afri-
canist style, nicknaming him the “Kropotkin of the Bateau-Lavoir”. (Capra
2008: 5) Van Dongen’s fauvism was equally outrageous, as in his Autoportait
fauve (Fauve Self-Portrait, c. 1908–1909; Illustration 3.12), with its extreme an-
tinaturalist color, lack of clear three-dimensional form and suggestion of the
artist’s nudity, stripped free of social status or pretention. His devotion to sex-
ual liberationism also appears in works such as Modjesko, chanteur soprano
(Modjesko, Soprano Singer, 1907; Illustration 3.13), which exhibits crude simpli-
fication, stark contrasts, and abstract and amorphous shadows thoroughly
comparable to his most extreme cartoons, with the addition of arbitrary and
vividly garish color. Marius-Ary Leblond − two cousins, Georges Athénas and
Aimé Merlo, who jointly wrote art criticism − provided a preface for Van
Dongen’s exhibition at Bernheim-Jeune (where Fénéon was in charge) in 1908,
in which Modjesko appeared. (Hopmans 2008: 109) They reveled in the
artist’s coloring as expressive of a new modernist primitivism, describing
“acidités vertes, des rouges de mandarine sanguine, des jaunes phosphoreux,
des lilas vineux, des bleuités électriques”. Making the connection between this
primitivist sensibility and the cults of African and child art, they call the figures
of such women “idoles européennes”.17 Modjesko, Soprano Singer depicts a
16 To get his start, his friend the anarchist neo-impressionist Maximilien Luce paid Van Don-
gen’s entrance fee and the costs of framing. (Hopmans 1996: 59)
17 Marius-Ary Leblond, preface to Exposition van Dongen (Bondil/Bouhours 2008): “We ex-
perience it mostly before several of his nudes, at once very Parisian, even Baudelairean,
and very wild, primitive, Oceanian, through simplistic line and distribution of color. He
seeks and breaks down the harmonies of the rosy skin where he discovers green acidities,
reds of blood orange, phosphorous yellows, winey lilacs, electric blues […]. Another − a
portrait of a Dutch actor − Modjesco soprano singer, models the singing and desexualized
silhouette in a barbarity of saffron and pomegranate: here, painting condenses into poster
Illustration 3.12
Kees van Dongen, Autoportait fauve
(Self-Portrait), 1908–1909. Oil on
canvas, 55 × 38 cm.
Private Collection. © 2019
Artists Rights Society (ars),
opular Romanian transvestite singer who performed in Paris and Rotterdam

p
around 1905 to 1907; this subject suggests Van Dongen’s interest not only in the
music hall but also in the socially marginalized sexuality of this figure. (Hop-
mans 1996: 238; Hopmans 2008) The offense of such works − fauve in style and
all the more offensive by virtue of an application to the human figure − resides
not only in the obsessive repetition of marginal subjects such as the prostitute,
the transvestite, and the poor, but in their ever more cartoonlike treatment.
These works evidence how Van Dongen was guided by an anarchist rhetoric
that encouraged sensitivity to the plight of those on the social margin and in
art; the character is himself a poster, howling in red. […] these are European idols, these
women of our waxed and theatrical civilization.” Marius-Ary Leblond (Georges Athénas)
and Saint-Georges de Bouhélier founded the Collège d’esthéthique modern (School of
Modern Aesthetics) in January 1901; Le Blond, in “Collège d’esthéthique moderne” in La
Revue naturiste: 27, called for the transformation of art from “a luxury for the privileged”
into a “joy for all”. (See Hopmans 2008: 89−90)
94 Leighten
Illustration 3.13
Kees van Dongen, Modjesko, chanteur
soprano (Modjesko, Soprano Singer),
1907. Oil on canvas, 100 × 81.3 cm.
Museum of Modern Art, New
York, Gift of Mr. and Mrs.
peter a. rübel. © 2019 Artists
Rights Society (ars), New
York/adagp, Paris
which artistic daring was seen to parallel propaganda; he inhabited a milieu in

which political cartoons themselves could suggest the formal means with
which to t ransform painting into a weapon of avant-gardism. As with Vlaminck
and Derain, such works were as outrageous an act against painting traditions
as were yet conceived within the history of the medium.
6 Conclusion
For these fauve artists, the anarchist individualist, antimilitarist and anticolo-
nial movements constituted the cultural environment that inspired their work.
Anarchism thus fostered a version of radical subjectivity different from, but
equal to, anarchist communism for the previous generation. The artists’
heteroglot responses to the deeply politicized culture of prewar France − as
manifest in topical cartoons, forms of primitivism, and avant-garde art − made
political statements of their own and must be seen as often purposely provoking
negative critical reactions. Modernists such as Matisse (certainly no anar-
chist despite his period at the side of anarchist neo-impressionists Signac and
Henri-Edmond Cross) may have attracted a form of criticism both dismaying
to the artist and based on genuine misunderstanding. Openly anarchist artists
like Vlaminck and Van Dongen were neither naive nor unprepared for politi-
cized criticism of this sort.
.
Whether such maneuvers furthered political goals or only positioned the

artists in a critical relation to bourgeois norms, however, is one of the great
questions we must ask of the language of modernism. Fauvism, cubism, and
orphism radically altered the art of the twentieth century, yet the mingled so-
cial and aesthetic theories that fostered these movements were all but lost
from view after the First World War. The artists’ politicized aesthetics were dis-
credited by the disarray of the anarchist, socialist, and antiwar movements
with the onset of war; by the overpowering dominance of nationalist discourse
during and after the war; by the rise of Marxism and the unrelenting hostility
of its adherents to anarchism following the war; and by the postwar advent of
a resolutely apolitical formalist art criticism following from disillusionment
created by war trauma. In the postwar era such formalist language lived on
while the politicized context that gave birth to this art was willfully forgotten,
hence the ease with which modernism became a bourgeois commodity in the
1920s and after. The subsequent denial of the political and anarchist valences
integral to modernism’s development before 1914 by many of its practitioners
served as a protective lie and perhaps a way of rethinking modernism’s con-
tinuing value to postwar culture. In short, ideology saturated the development
of modernism, whose artists grappled with the pressing social issues of their
society and invented a new art in response. The final ambivalence of this
history offers a disturbing precedent for our own society, stuck now in a loop of
‘avant-gardism’, commodified before it is made, no matter how critical its ex-
pression of the market that consumes it.
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Chapter 4
Anti-Art? Dada and Anarchy

Daniela Padularosa
Abstract
Although Dadaism often appeared apolitical, it was closely linked to the political
thought of its time. During the pre-Dada period, some important Swiss socio-political
and literary magazines, such as Der Revoluzzer, Der Mistral, and Sirius, provided a safe
haven for alternative artists and intellectuals opposing the First World War. Most of
them engaged in political activities and joined clubs with clear anarchist leanings.
Yet, with the foundation of Cabaret Voltaire, Dadaist artists became dissociated
from any political activity and transformed the political concept of anarchy into aes-
thetic and linguistic practices while stressing its spiritual and moral importance. Based
on the ‘destruction’ of the traditional work of art and the ‘re-montage’ of a new one,
Dadaist aesthetic principles and artworks put into practice Bakunin’s notion of a new
society emerging from the enthusiastic destruction of the former order. On the one
hand, Dadaists – above all Hugo Ball – followed this ubiquitous stylistic concept of
anarchy by renouncing traditional forms of art and by mocking them in the name of a
new artistic and linguistic freedom. On the other hand, they were looking for an uncor-
rupted art which was supposed to be closer to the spiritual sense of life. As a result of
this relationship between anarchist thought and a new spirituality, some Dada artists,
through their language experiments, discovered a new bond between political (or so-
cial) freedom and spiritual (or internal) freedom within language itself.
In Dadaism such freedom was accompanied by Dionysian elements inducing ecsta-
sy and rapture. But the absurd and the nonsensical were also integral parts of Dadaism
which oscillated between a political anarcho-libertarian gesture and a religious event.
Hence, the artist became the herald of new linguistic and social values, an avant-garde
prophet boosted by anarchic notions.
1 The Origins of Dada: ‘bevor dada da war, war dada da’
Dadaism could be defined as an archaic, yet always present stage of art.1 It

equals romanticism – a literary and artistic movement and a spiritual category,
1 Avant-Garde art, and particularly Zurich Dadaism, invokes ‘archaic’ or ‘primordial’ forms of
art and refers to ‘primitive’ cultures. Starting from Picasso, whose Demoiselles d’Avignon (The

100 Padularosa
and it shares characteristics with expressionism, “a recurring and eternal mood

of the Spirit”. (Chiarini/Gargano 1997: 9) As Marcel Janco (1895–1984) put it:
“Dada was not a fiction or an absurd phantasy; its traces can be found in the
depths of human history. Dada is a stage in the development of the modern
spirit, a ferment, a productive and virile energy. Dada is unlimited, illogical,
and eternal.” (Janco 1958 [1965]: 24)2 The origins of Dada date back to the First
World War. It arose from the cooperation of different personalities and artists
and from the felt necessity to break with the values of modern society. Those
artists strove to regress to an earlier ‘primitive’ stage of humanity they believed
would have preceded the political and social corruption modernity had in-
duced. Dada combined contradictions: it was an artistic movement but also
‘anti-art’; it was political and apolitical, international and polyglot, as well as
ancestral and adamitic.
Most intellectuals and artists supported the war enthusiastically not least
due to the crisis of moral, aesthetic and political values in Europe epitomized
by Nietzsche and fin de siècle culture. In his Le Futurisme (Futurism, 1909),
Marinetti summarized the war as the “world’s only hygiene” (Marinetti 1909) –
an extreme and provocative reaction to the general crisis of his age. In G
ermany,
in particular, the First World War was perceived as a revolt against the ‘fathers’,
namely against the old society, the Wilhelmine authoritarianism, and against
patriarchal norms. The young generation of artists hoped it would initiate a
cultural rebirth. Thus, many young poets responded to the furor bellicus with a
similar furor poeticus – a copious but largely irrelevant poetical production.
The artists such as Hugo Ball (1886–1927), Richard Huelsenbeck (1892–1974),
Emmy Hennings (1885–1948), Hans Arp (1886–1966), Marcel Janco, and Tristan
Tzara (1896–1963), who, in 1916, gathered in Zurich, struggled with the existing
militarist society they held responsible for the global catastrophe and the mor-
al decline of Europe. Zurich became their safe haven, a melting pot of rebel
Young Ladies of Avignon, 1907) enabled African art to enter modernity, up to Carl Einstein’s
important study about Negerplastik (Negro sculpture, 1915), Tristan Tzara’s Negerlieder (Negro
Songs, 1920), Marcel Janco’s Negermasken (Negro Masks), or Dadaist ‘bruitist’ performances,
which involved stilts and drums, avant-garde art constantly refers to stages of art perceived
as archaic. The affinities between ‘primitive’ and modern forms of art have been already ob-
served and analyzed by Wilhelm Worringer in his well-known work Abstraktion und Einfüh-
lung (Abstraction and Empathy, 1908), and some years later by Wassily Kandinsky in Über das
Geistige in der Kunst (Concerning the Spiritual in Art, 1911). Furthermore, Hugo Ball, in his
diary, often asserts the purpose to find “archetypal images” and to regress to an original and
“uncorrupt” stage of art and language. (Ball 1927 [1974]: 41, 115)
2 Unless otherwise indicated, the translations are my own.
Anti-Art? Dada and Anarchy 101
spirits from all over Europe, “Heimat für Dichter und freiheitsliebendes
Vagabundentum” (“homeland for poets and vagabonds, loving freedom”). (Jan-
co 1958 [1965]: 25) To those artists, Swiss society offered an alternative, a social
oasis in an otherwise war-driven Europe, where they hoped to start a new com-
munity, based on pacifism and antiwar sentiments. Accordingly, Hugo Ball pre-
sented Switzerland as a “natural paradise”, “the refuge of everyone who has a
new vision” for the revitalization of Europe. (Ball 1927 [1974]: 126)
Against this backdrop, Dadaism was conceived as an international, apoliti-
cal movement mocking politics as well as the arts. However, in spite of profess-
ing to be nothing but an ‘anti-art’ movement, its apolitical credo was clearly
political. In an interview Marcel Janco asserted:
At the beginning, we had no political ideas. But the war made us under-
stand the importance of brotherhood among men. We considered the
war between France and Germany to be a crime. They were fighting like
animals, like beasts. Just a few steps away from Zurich we could hear gre-
nades. And finally, we felt guilty for the drama of Verdun and for all the
crimes committed around us. We brought the collapse and bankruptcy of
European culture – two causes of the war – on the stage of Cabaret Vol-
taire. The war – the worst crime against humanity – was the reason for
our battle over the destruction of old art and the creation of a new art,
which was intended to found friendship between men and nations.
cited in schrott 2004: 38
Thus, while Lenin organized his October Revolution in a house just a few steps
away from Cabaret Voltaire in Zurich’s frivolous Niederdorf district, Richard
Huelsenbeck sketched Dadaism as a radical form of protest, as a “deutscher
Bolschewismus”, a German Bolshevism. (Janco 1958 [1965]: 12) Hugo Ball,
contrariwise, wondered whether Dadaism “as sign and gesture” could be un-
derstood as “the opposite of Bolshevism”: “Does it contrast the completely
quixotic, inexpedient, and incomprehensible side of the world with destruc-
tion and consummate calculation?” (Ball 1927 [1974]: 117) Several German and
Swiss magazines such as Der Mistral, Sirius, and Der Revoluzzer played leading
roles in both the circulation of the new aesthetics and the development and
discussion of revolutionary political ideas. Artists and philosophers primarily
looking for answers to the social and historical crises of their times were
led, through these magazines, to reflect on capitalism, ‘false’ journalism, the
commodification of the arts and, lastly upon the war itself. In this light, the
artistic revolution carried out by the historical avant-gardes, in their longing
102 Padularosa
for a political revolution, also pursued social targets. Within this setting of
linguistic-artistic and ideological-political avant-gardism, Dadaist experiments
mirrored traces of an aesthetic anarchy. (Sanguineti 1965 [2001])
The purpose of this chapter is to examine the interrelation and mutual in-
fluence of anarchism and Dadaism. As a first step, the lasting impact of anar-
chist thought on Zurich Dadaism will be analyzed; secondly, the essay tracks
the ‘Marxist’ turn that Berlin Dada took later on. Special attention will be paid
to Hugo Ball, the founder and most important exponent of Zurich Dada, and
his diary Flucht aus der Zeit (Flight out of Time, 1927). The chapter also dis-
cusses the literary manifests of Dada artists, interviews and magazine articles
together with the works of anarchist thinkers. In particular, it aims at investi-
gating Dada language, poetry and art experimentation in its relationship with
Fritz Mauthner’s (1849–1923) Beiträgen zu einer Kritik der Sprache (Critique of
Language, 1901/1902), inspired by anarchist positions. Finally, Dadaism will be
contextualized within a wider intellectual movement to confront traditional
interpretations of Dada art as ‘foolish’ experimentation or ‘childish’ distrac-
tion. In contrast to these readings, this essay evaluates Dada’s radical artistic,
philosophical, and political implications in response to the perceived decline
of Western society and the crisis of modernity.
The relationship between Dada and anarchism has already been studied by
several scholars. (Lemoine 1986; Van den Berg 1999; Sheppard 2000; White 2013;
Papanikolas 2017) However, some rebalancing would be helpful. This chapter
adopts a wider approach vital to understanding the rich, heterogeneous spirit
of Dadaism which cannot be studied without considering the philosophical,
political, and nonconformist background of its development. To put it differ-
ently, this essay attempts to examine European history from an ‘underground’
perspective, linking art and politics in the pursuit of a new and manifold
culture.
2 Avant-garde, Dada, and Anarchism
Dadaists openly professed their political atheism. To express their aversion to-
wards the politics of their epoch, the artists resorted to unbridled irony with
which they strove to overturn every current artistic and moral value. This sub-
versive tendency was part of the existential nihilism which Dada artists articu-
lated in their being ‘against’: against institutional art, against the war, against
the bourgeoisie, against a language of militarism. In their Literarisches Manifest
(Literary Manifest, 1915) Richard Huelsenbeck and Hugo Ball confirmed those
anti-ideals:
Expressionism, colorfulness, sense of adventure, Futurism, activity, stu-

pidity (against intellectuality, against Bebuquins, against all the smart-
asses). We want to excite, to knock down, to bluff, to tease, to tickle to
death, confused, without coherence, daredevils and negationists. […] We
always will be ‘against’.
ball/huelsenbeck 1915 [1985/86]: 633
The link between avant-garde art and politics, therefore, seems much more
substantial than Dadaists would have us believe. It resonates with the connec-
tion between art theory and practice and, and between art and ideology dis-
tinctive of the arts at the beginning of the twentieth century. Avant-garde art
oscillated between creative originality and the resurgence of ancient forms,
between the utopian need of a total work of art and the fragmentary character
of modern art. In response to Jürgen Habermas (1990), who stressed the failure
of the avant-garde ‘project’, Walter Fähnders, by resorting to the fragment the-
ory of early romanticism, underscored the anticipatory and prophetic aspects
of avant-garde art with its iconoclastic elements forming a prelude to progress
and unity. (Asholt/Fähnders 1997) This utopian dimension is associated with
an increased interest in alternative philosophies and with the revival of classi-
cal or oriental philosophies intending to widen the human perception of the
world while overcoming the traditional dualistic opposition between spirit
and matter, art and politics. (Ball 1919 [2005]: Preface; Sheppard 2000) ‘Anti-art’,
in these realms, was a kind of political opposition, an anti-politics inspired by
anarchic ideas.
Switzerland, especially in Ticino, the southernmost canton, had been the ad-
opted home for anarchists such as Mikhail Alexandrovich Bakunin (1814–1876)
and Piotr Alexeyevich Kropotkin (1842–1921). During the nineteenth and early
twentieth centuries it also hosted alternative artists and adherents of the Le-
bensreform movement. This tradition lived on in Zurich where some of the fu-
ture Dadaists gathered at various literary magazines and clubs with anarchist
leanings. Moreover, during the years 1914−1915, they took part in discussion soi-
rées and political meetings, for example in Fritz Brupbacher’s (1874–1945) cir-
cle. Every Monday, Brupbacher, a famous psychiatrist and anarchist, organized
political debates in the ‘Weisses Schwänli’ restaurant to discuss social p
roblems
3 The German original is: “Expressionismus, Buntheit, Abenteuerlichkeit, Futurismus,

Aktivität, Dummheit (gegen die Intellektualität, gegen die Bebuquins, gegen die gänzlich Ar-
roganten). Wir wollen: Aufreizen, umwerfen, bluffen, triezen, zu Tode kitzeln, wirr, ohne
Zusammenhang, Draufgänger und Negationisten sein. […] Wir werden immer ‘gegen’ sein.”
104 Padularosa
Illustration 4.1 Hugo Ball, Totentanz (Dance of Death) in Der Revoluzzer 2.1 (1916): 1.
with intellectuals, artists and workers.4 In the course of these meetings Hugo
Ball, the founder of Zurich Dadaism, was drawn to classic and more contempo-
rary writers on anarchist principles, such as Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, Bakunin,
Kropotkin, Gustav Landauer (1870–1919), Max Stirner, and Erich Mühsam. He
started to work on a Brevier, a handbook, on Bakunin; however, it was never
completed. (Ball 1917 [2010]; Steinbrenner 1983: 57−91) It was Brupbacher who
introduced Ball to the socialist magazine Der Revoluzzer, from January 1915 to
August 1916 the organ of the Zurich radical left. There, Ball published his fa-
mous poem Totentanz (Dance of Death, 1916, Illustration 4.1) and the essay Die
junge Literatur in Deutschland (The Young Literature in Germany, 1915), in
which he condemned the German political elite and polemicized against the
commercialization of literature and arts in modern society.
According to Ball, the ‘young’ German literature had to express
Opposition against the bourgeoisie, which is here more powerful than in

any other country, opposition against the extreme materialism in life, art,
politics, press; opposition against the official opposition party (the social
democracy): these are the tasks that today’s young literature has to
address.
ball 1915 [1984]: 325
Ball aligned his considerations with the romantic critique of the deutsche
Misere, the political and intellectual misery in Germany. This contemporary
term captures the felt absence of any coherence between thought and action
and bemoans the missing link between ideology and political activity in Ger-
man society. At the dawn of the new century it seemed to fit more than ever:
instead of furthering the spiritual and artistic aspects of life or work for the
cultural development of the society, the intellectuals supported the war. Disap-
pointed about the direction taken by his coevals, Hugo Ball together with
4 Fritz Brupbacher was a radical leftist psychiatrist active in the revolutionary circles in Zurich.
His followers, Russian students, workers, and intellectuals, were called ‘Schwänlianer’ after
their meetingplace, the restaurant ‘Weisses Schwänli’ (Little White Swan). Brupbacher had
studied Bakunin and lent his works to Hugo Ball, whom he hosted for some time. Brupbacher
was also the co-publisher of the magazine Der Revoluzzer widely read among socialist think-
ers and artists during the war, such as Ball, Emmy Hennings, Richard Huelsenbeck, and Max
Oppenheimer. (Lang 1976) See also Hugo Ball’s letters to Brupbacher. (Ball 2003)
5 The German original reads: “Opposition gegen die hier wie in keinem Lande allmächtige
Bourgeoisie; Opposition gegen den krassen Materialismus in Leben, Kunst, Politik, Presse;
Opposition gegen die offizielle Oppositionspartei (die Sozialdemokratie): das sind die Aufga-
ben, die sich die junge Literatur von heute mehr und mehr zu Bewußtsein bringt.”
106 Padularosa
several other German artists turned to Russian tradition and philosophy.

(Marks 2003) To them, Russia seemed to offer an alternative to the German
culture of the Wilhelminian Era and – later – of the Weimar Republic per-
ceived as decadent, warmongering, militarized and therefore anti-spiritual. In
these realms, especially Bakunin’s ideas about combining physical and intel-
lectual work were appealing.6
Anarchism could be characterized as an alternative to socialism, or even as
a ‘heresy of socialism’. In line with this, Hugo Ball, in his pamphlet, Zur Kritik
der deutschen Intelligenz (Critique of the German Intelligentsia, 1919), con-
trasted Thomas Müntzer with Martin Luther, and Wilhelm Weitling with Karl
Marx. With this he campaigned for a different, ‘heretic’ interpretation of Ger-
man history and philosophy based on the activity of marginalized personali-
ties who had been excluded and alienated from the predominant system, as
well as from the prevailing socialist and revolutionary culture. In line with this
reading, Hugo Ball not only cherished the religious background of Russian an-
archists, but chiefly their ‘rural’ origin. In Flight out of Time he emphasized
that: “Finally, the spokesmen of anarchy (I do not know about Proudhon, but it
is certainly true for Kropotkin and Bakunin) have all been baptized Catholics,
and in the case of Russians, they have been landowners too; that is, they have
been rural creatures, opposed to society.” (Ball 1927 [1974]: 19) This rather ro-
mantic idea of Russia as a “fantastic land” opposed to the “Americanized” West-
ern culture was a figure of thought Ball shared with Brupbacher. (Ball 1927
[1974]: 18) But Ball was also inspired by Gustav Landauer’s anarcho-socialism,
in which the spiritual and pacifistic elements of commonality echoed the de-
sire to return to an ‘authentic’, peasant-like, rural way of life. (Lunn 1973; Lan-
dauer 1995; Gambone 2001; Landauer 2010: 188−217) In December 1914, a few
months after the outbreak of the First World War, Ball encountered Landauer
describing him as an “elderly, emaciated man with a floppy hat and a sparse
beard”. Yet, he was especially impressed by Landauer’s “air of pastoral gentle-
ness”. Reflecting on Landauer’s Aufruf zum Sozialismus (Call to Socialism, 1912),
Ball stressed that “socialist theories” had become “a refuge for noble minds”.
(Ball 1927 [1974]: 15) And he continued: “Under these circumstances, what can
we expect from a proletarian revolution? Primitivization, at least. L. [Landauer]
6 See particularly Bakunin 1869. In his essay on education, Bakunin argued that unequal grades
of education would deepen class differences. In contrast he stressed that everyone – whether
bourgeois, petit bourgeois, or proletarian – should receive the same education, and that the
intellectual gap which separated the working masses from the privileged classes must be
abolished, because “it is natural that he who knows more will dominate him who knows less”.
votes in paradise for settledness (peasantry, housing development, field com-

mune).” (Ball 1927 [1974]: 17)
Anarchist writings such as those of Landauer and Bakunin not only fur-
thered new social ideals but also inspired new avant-garde aesthetics. One
common denominator of anarchism and Dadaism was their constant longing
for ‘spiritual freedom’ as Hugo Ball’s reading of Bakunin’s political theory indi-
cates. He conceived it as spiritual and somehow religious. In the essay Die
Reaktion in Deutschland (The Reaction in Germany, 1842) republished by Ball
in April 1918 in the Swiss political magazine Die Freie Zeitung, (Ball 1918) young
Bakunin declared: “Wir müssen nicht nur politisch, sondern in unserer Politik
auch religiös handeln, religiös in dem Sinne der Freiheit, deren einzig wahrer
Ausdruck die Gerechtigkeit und die Liebe ist.” (“We must not only act politi-
cally, but also religiously in our politics, religiously in the sense of freedom ex-
pressed purely in justice and love alone.”) (Bakunin 1842)7 In the same essay,
Bakunin stressed that a political action is “religious” when it is permeated by
its own principles in “thought and reasoning” but above all in “real life”. In oth-
er words, to “act religiously” meant to establish harmony between thought and
political reality. (Bakunin 1842)
Hugo Ball’s Critique of the German Intelligentsia (Ball 1919 [2005]) echoed
Bakunin’s ideas, although Ball did not embrace Bakunin’s philosophy entirely
and refrained from calling himself an anarchist. Rather, his essay invoked crit-
ics of the German society such as Heinrich Heine, Friedrich Nietzsche, and
André Suarès who were against the dominant German ‘culture’.8 To be a con-
vinced anarchist for Ball implied “to abolish rules in every connection and
case”, since – following Rousseau – anarchists believe “in the natural goodness
of man and in an immanent order of primitive nature left to its own resources”.
(Ball 1927 [1974]: 19) In addition, he seems to have shared anarchism’s outlook
on life and its critique of the rational, mechanized and materialistic modern
culture when he underscored: “As long as rationalism and its quintessence, the
machine, continue to make progress, anarchism will be an ideal for the
catacombs and for members of an order, but not for the masses.” (Ball 1927
[1974]: 20)
To draw a first conclusion, we might state that Bakunin’s writings deeply
influenced parts of the cultural scene in Zurich and Bern. However, the impact
of Bakunin and other anarchist writers was most substantial in Hugo Ball’s
Dada art. Since he emphasized the religious and orthodox background of
7 See also Dolgoff 1972.

8 See also Thomas Mann’s notion of German culture as demoniac in contrast to his idea of civi-
lization. (Mann 1914 [2002]: 27–46, 1918 [1991])
108 Padularosa
akunin’s thought he and some of his colleagues considered the very idea of
B
anarchy first and foremost an ethical and spiritual concept they strove to
transform into an aesthetic and linguistic practice.
3 Dada Zurich: Art or ‘anti-art’? Or: How to Free

Humanity Through Art
Although Cabaret Voltaire was apolitical at first sight, the deeper purpose of its
art practice was revolutionary. Dada artists not only aimed at breaking with
modern society but also intended to propose a new, different and alternative
way of approaching politics. This goal was furthered by new aesthetic values
and a new and unconventional art practice. What Dadaists claimed to be the
rebirth of art took place in a ‘Tingel Tangel’, a popular cabaret, and followed
aesthetic principles based on insecurity, disorientation, and provocation. With
them, they intended to undermine all kinds of bourgeois confidence in order
to show the vanity and inconsistency of those moral, linguistic, and artistic
convictions of the present society responsible for the war, the modern ‘necro-
philia’ and the loss of a ‘spiritual’ sense of life.
Following these observations, Dada art debuted with a strong revolutionary
potential directed not only towards the traditional forms of art, but also pri-
marily towards society and its institutions. The new languages and forms of art
made fruitful use of montages, artistic tomfoolery, irreverent and sacrilegious
performances, as well as caricatural poses to answer the crisis and the politics
of the First World War, and above all, the conservative traditions and culture of
the bourgeoisie Dada blamed for this crisis. The opening of Cabaret Voltaire
thus marked the constitutive act of a new understanding of art and life. Al-
though at its beginning it was just one of the many nightclubs in Zurich, it
quickly evolved into an experimental art center and soon gained recognition as
a laboratory of revolutionary and pacifist political ideals. Marcel Janco con-
firmed this aspect of their Künstlerkneipe: “Not only artists, students and jour-
nalists visited [Cabaret Voltaire], but also spies. It was a spying center, because
there spies had the possibility to exchange their opinions about the war be-
tween France and Germany. We had there a common field to discuss about
peace.” (cited in Schrott 2004: 38) Dadaism’s works of art and performances
rose from this lively and exciting scene and, despite their ostensible foolish-
ness, were deeply intertwined with the place’s cultural and intellectual setting.
The artists of Cabaret Voltaire belonged to an artistic bohemia; they sought
to stimulate their audience with irony and astonishment and aspired to create
a state of inebriation and elation. Dada performances included Dionysian
e lements evoking ecstasy and rapture by mingling a political gesture with a

religious event. Their source of inspiration both artistically and politically was
Russia: Starting from Wassily Kandinsky’s (1866–1944) spiritual theory of the
abstract ‘total work of art’ and his assumption that art is nothing but perfect
anarchy, Dada performances destroyed the traditional work of art and created
a new one by putting together different forms and genres, such as music, paint-
ing, dance, masked play, and various languages. In this, they followed the prin-
ciple of destroying to create, of shattering works of art into a thousand
fragments prior to merging them again to form a new piece of art. They bor-
rowed this principle from Bakunin’s theory of anarchy: “Laßt uns darum dem
ewigen Geist vertrauen, der nur darum zerstört und vernichtet, weil er der un-
ergründliche und ewig schaffende Quell alles Lebens ist. Die Lust der Zer-
störung ist eine schaffende Lust!” (“Let us therefore trust the eternal Spirit
which destroys and annihilates, because it is the unfathomable and eternally
creative source of all life. The passion for destruction is a creative passion,
too!”) (Bakunin 1842) With his idea of the creation of a new society that would
be possible only after an enthusiastic and fruitful destruction of the old one
Bakunin’s anarchism turned out to be the aesthetic principle of Dadaist art
practice which was based on the ‘destruction’ of the traditional work of art and
the ‘re-montage’ of a new one. (Ball 1926 [1984]: 293) This principle answered
the c risis of values in art, society and language. Besides their critical impulses,
however, avant-garde movements such as Dadaism also offered a positive and
practice-oriented approach mediated through art, as Hubert van den Berg has
noticed. (Van den Berg 1989, 1999; Ponzi 2005)
Dadaism also took seriously Nietzsche’s nihilistic call to ‘transvaluate the
values’ in order to transform life, namely, to poetize reality and improve society
through poetry by a new, creative approach towards language and art. “Let us
be thoroughly new and inventive. Let us rewrite life every day”,9 Ball claimed:
“It is necessary for me to drop all respect for tradition, opinion, and judgment.
It is necessary to erase the rambling text that others have written.” (Ball 1927
[1974]: 35) Many of Ball’s diary entries echo Nietzsche’s voice in this way. Par-
ticularly in Über Wahrheit und Lüge im außermoralischen Sinn (On Truth and
Lies in a Nonmoral Sense, 1873) Nietzsche compared the words of language –
turned into outdated, conventional, and anonymous signs – to old and
corroded coins, rusted metal pieces with a blurred image and no real value. In
his Dadaistisches Manifest (First Dada Manifesto, 1916) Hugo Ball cited the
9 Ball 1927 [1974]: 56. In the German original the verb for ‘rewrite’ is ‘umdichten’, literally ‘to
transform through poetry’. (“Seien wir neu und erfinderisch von Grund aus. Dichten wir das
Leben täglich um.”)
110 Padularosa
same coin-metaphor to explain the decline of modern language and to legiti-

mize Dada experiments: “A line of poetry is a chance to get rid of all the filth
that clings to this accursed language, as if put there by stockbrokers’ hands,
hands worn smooth by coins. I want the word where it ends and begins. Dada
is the heart of words.” In his struggle to abolish every linguistic form and to
delete every word of modern language, Ball invented his “verses without words”
and practiced a real “transvaluation”, an overturning of all traditional values.
(Ball 1927 [1974]: 221)
Peter Bürger averred that avant-garde artists and particularly Dadaists strove
to re-integrate life into art by transferring everyday life and culture into the
very inside of the work of art. (Bürger 1974 [1984]) In this sense, the artists did
not simply break with the art movements preceding Dadaism; rather, they re-
fused art as an institution and, at the same time, hoped to initiate a new “Le-
benspraxis”, a “new life practice”, (Bürger 1974 [1984]: 8) namely, a new way to
understand reality in its relation to human life. With their artistic ideal they
revolted against the notion of ‘autonomous’ art – such as fin de siècle aestheti-
cism or, in a broader sense, the arts in the bourgeois-capitalist society in
general – with the objective of creating a culturally effective, politically influ-
ential art closer to reality. As Bürger affirmed, bourgeois art was ‘autonomous’
and had no social consequences because it was directed towards an ‘autono-
mous’ reception and a pure individual aesthetic delight.10 By contrast, Dadaism
as an avant-garde movement was based on a ‘collective’ creation process and a
‘collective’ reception modality; its revolutionary intent involved the spectator
and integrated everyday life into art practice. In his journal, Hugo Ball outlined
this socio-critical artistic idea:
It can probably be said that for us art is not an end in itself – more pure
naivety is necessary for that – but it is an opportunity for true perception
and criticism of the times we live in. […] Our debates are a burning
search, more blatant every day, for the specific rhythm and the buried
10 For a definition of ‘bourgeois art’ in relation to ‘avant-garde art’, see Bürger 1974 [1984],
1988. See also the intense debate György Lukács and Bertolt Brecht had on realism and
formalism in the 1920s. Although both authors shared a Marxist point of view, their un-
derstanding of realism and bourgeois literature differed. While Lukács underlined the
clear social intent of bourgeois literature, especially the bourgeois novel, like French or
Russian nineteenth-century novels, Brecht argued that realism was not a mere question
of form. He denied that realist literature – namely, the bourgeois novel – had social con-
sequences and practical value in modern society. See Lukács 1916 [2009], 1955 [1971], and
Brecht 1966. See also Benjamin 1934 [1966], and Chiarini 1970.
face of this time – for its foundation and essence; for the possibility of its
being stirred, its awakening. Art is only an occasion for that, a method.
ball 1927 [1974]: 58−59
Ball was convinced that the experiments with these new aesthetic principles
and the shaping of new political ideas, in other words, the artistic and the
social revolution, were not distinguishable processes but parts of a single para-
digm. After having moved to Berlin, Richard Huelsenbeck answered the ques-
tion: “What then is DADAISM?” in his Dadaistisches Manifest [Dada Manifesto,
1918]:
The word Dada symbolizes the most primitive relation to the surround-
ing reality […]. Life appears as a simultaneous whirl of noises, colors, and
spiritual rhythms. […] By tearing to pieces all the platitudes of ethics,
culture, and inwardness, which are merely cloaks for weak muscles, Da-
daism has for the first time ceased to take an aesthetic position towards
life.
huelsenbeck 1918 [1920]: 3811
However, this destruction is only a momentary negation in a two-staged pro-

cess. The destructive nihilism is followed by a joyful, childish and fantastic vi-
talism as in Hugo Ball’s sound poetry, in Tristan Tzara’s plays, or in Marcel Jan-
co’s African masks. On the one hand, avant-garde art was permeated with an
apocalyptic sense of ending, while on the other it strove for the renewal and
revival of the whole society. In this manner, the new art oscillated between de-
struction and production, between the utopian claim to totalize the work of art
and the sheer impossibility of achieving artistic totality. Those polarities can be
considered the two decisive moments of the whole epoch of modernity.
Richard Sheppard distinguished between “modernism as diagnosis” and
“modernism as response”, (Sheppard 2000: 31, 71), a differentiation dating back
to the nineteenth century, its rapid industrialization and the rise of the mod-
ern capitalist society. Part of this diagnosis was the perception of modern soci-
ety and art as insane and neurotic which included moments of their own
repeal. Against this background, Dadaism proved to be a peculiar and extreme
11 The German original is: “Das Wort Dada symbolisiert das primitivste Verhältnis zur umge-
benden Wirklichkeit, mit dem Dadaismus tritt eine neue Realität in ihre Rechte. Das
Leben erscheint als ein simultanes Gewirr von Geräuschen, Farben und geistigen Rhyth-
men, […] Der Dadaismus steht zum erstenmal dem Leben nicht mehr ästhetisch ge-
genüber, indem er alle Schlagworte von Ethik, Kultur und Innerlichkeit, die nur Mäntel
für schwache Muskeln sind, in seine Bestandteile zerfetzt.”
112 Padularosa
response to modernity. With Nietzsche’s cultural ideal in mind, Hugo Ball, for
example, was convinced that politics should answer to ‘cultural’ purposes and
to the spiritual rebuilding of modern society. Art was conceived as a medium
to reach this goal: Dada performances, such as Ball’s famous presentation of
his ‘cubistic costume’ or the collective show, known as Ein Krippenspiel Bruitis-
tisch (A Nativity Play. Bruitist, 1916), staged a superimposition of spiritual art
with political and revolutionary overtones in line with the Stationendramen of
German expressionism.
The provocative artistic performativity and internationality of Dada and its
‘artistic bolshevism’ displayed a striking continuity of the social and often an-
archist pre-Dadaist activity. Cabaret Voltaire’s ‘anarchist’ art and language ex-
periments did not simply deny modern society and institutional art; they also
harked back to an imagined uncorrupt and anti-capitalist world, an envisioned
sacred and holy sphere of poetry and art, and to ‘primitivism’ and the arche-
typal images of mankind. At this point, the ‘spiritual’ side of art no longer con-
flicted with its ‘material’ side, the subject with the form, or the transcendental
essence with its physical appearance. The spiritual and intellectual impulses
united and embraced their respective opposites. Thus, Dadaism answered the
modern distinction of spirit and matter, subject and form, positivism and ni-
hilism, politics and spirituality, art and ‘anti-art’ with an ironic reformulation
of this dualist thinking. Dada artists considered those ambiguities as an active
and dynamic ferment, a creative energy constantly inspiring new and non-
conventional forms of art and thought. That is why Dadaists were fascinated
with ‘primitive’ art, infantilism, and the mentally ill and their artworks. They
pictured the divergence from social and political conventions or from artistic
norms as key element for the reconstruction and cultural rebirth of the coun-
try. French poet Arthur Rimbaud’s (1854–1891) principle of the “dérèglement
de tout les sens” (“the disorganization of all the senses”), (Rimbaud 1871 [2008]:
116) was a source of inspiration for this. Only by revolutionizing each and every
form of art and by ‘dissolving’ or ‘disorganizing’ any artistic genre, the modern
artist was able to transcend his reality, depreciated as decadent, militarized,
and sick. He became the explorer of new worlds, reached the realm of the un-
conscious, and found his way back to the dawn of art. With his famous Lettre
du voyant (Letter of the Visionary, 1871) Rimbaud meant to overturn human
senses along with artistic genres. By becoming a ‘visionary’ or a ‘seer’, the
poet – a ‘word artist’ – chooses a different medium of expression – the ‘visual’
one – and, in doing so, merges word and image, poetry and painting. Zurich
Dadaism grounded in this principle of ‘dissolution’ and perpetuating the mon-
tage of words and images grasped visual art and poetry as two opposite parts of
a totality. While Kandinsky’s paintings withdrew from the image and turned to
poetry, Dadaist’s enriched their poetry with images drafted more and more
visually.12
Dada artists thought of themselves as Gesamtkünstler, ‘total’ or ‘doubly tal-
ented’ artists, and assigned to themselves the role of prophets. Due to complete
dissolution, artistic anarchy, and the refusal of every social norm the artist
touched upon a sense of deep wisdom and the unknown. He stepped up to
explore the unexplored:
I say you have to be a visionary, make yourself a visionary. A Poet makes

himself a visionary through a long, boundless, and systematized disorga-
nization of all the senses. All forms of love, of suffering, of madness; he
searches himself, he exhausts within himself all poisons, and preserves
their quintessence. Unspeakable torment, where he will need the great-
est faith, a superhuman strength, where he becomes among all men the
great invalid, the great criminal, the great accursed - and the Supreme
Scientist!
rimbaud 1871 [2008]: 116
Dada artists seem to have taken Rimbaud’s exhortation literally: The fool or
lunatic artist, the ‘anarchist’ thinker and activist transgressing every social con-
vention or artistic tradition are turned into wise prophets: “Der Kranke belehrt
die Gesunden.” (“The sick instructs the healthy.”) (Ball 1926 [1984]: 118−119)
Thus, the ideas of anarchic destruction, illness and nihilism went hand in hand
with a longing for renovation and artistic creativity. This twofold tendency, the
Zerrissenheit (disruption) of European modernity, lived out in the twentieth
century where the polarity between an apocalyptic feeling of crisis and the
cathartic need of individual and social freedom was intensified. To the end of
art as predicted by Hegel and sealed with the outbreak of the First World War,
avant-garde artists responded with a reformulation of aesthetic thought. Their
search for a completely new art led them to the absurd ‘insanity’ and ‘non-
sense’, to mocking, frivolous, and almost childish humor, to derisory attacks of
bourgeois ethics and aesthetics. When faced with the decay of the world, Dada
artists campaigned for overcoming this situation by artistic creation. Zurich
12 In a lecture held in Zurich in 1917, Hugo Ball affirmed that Kandinsky had deeply influ-
enced Dada art and its language experiments. The way he spoke of Kandinsky made him
almost appear as a forerunner of Dada sound poetry: “The whole secret of Kandinsky is
his being the first painter to reject […] everything representational as impure, and to go
back to the true form, the sound of a thing. […] In Der gelbe Klang [The Yellow Sound] he
was the first to discover and apply the most abstract expression of sound in language,
consisting of harmonized vowels and consonants.” (Ball 1927 [1974]: 226, 234)
114 Padularosa
Illustration 4.2 Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, Zang tumb tuuum, 1912 [1914]: n.p.
Dadaism yielded the most bizarre and extreme consequences of this tendency,
as in the case of Hugo Ball’s diagnosis of the Western society:
Standardization is the end of the world. […] The modern necrophilia. Be-
lief in matter is a belief in death. The triumph of this kind of religion is a
terrible aberration. The machine gives a kind of sham life to dead matter.
It moves matter. It is a spectre. It joins matter together, and in so doing
reveals some kind of rationalism. Thus it is death, working systematically,
counterfeiting life. It tells more flagrant lies than any newspaper that it
prints. And what is more, in its continuous subconscious influence it de-
stroys human rhythm. […] All the sense focused on what is bestial,
monstrous, and yet unreal. Form from the spiritual world a living organ-
ism that reacts to the slightest pressure.
ball 1927 [1974]: 4
4 Critique of Language
Ball’s critical stance towards modern society found its most vivid expression in
his critique of language which he articulated through sound poetry. In addi-
tion to Landauer’s writings with their strong spiritual and mystic leanings, the
blueprints for this aesthetic revolution were Kandinsky’s spiritual and icono-
clastic art and Marinetti’s paroliberismo (words-in-freedom), as in the poem
Zang tumb tuuum (Illustration 4.2) imitating the sounds of bombs and gre-
nades.13 (Landauer 1903; Marinetti [1912] 1914; Van den Berg 1995; Hinz 2000)
On the one hand, the design of these artworks followed a radical stylistic
anarchy by renouncing traditional forms of art and mocking them in anticipa-
tion of a new artistic and linguistic freedom. On the other hand, they strove for
an authentic and uncorrupted art which was supposed to be closer to the spiri-
tual and ‘holy’ sense of life. With the intermingling of anarchist thought and a
newly discovered spirituality, the language experiments of some Dada artists
evoked a link between political (or social) freedom and spiritual (or internal)
freedom within language itself. The presumed decadence of modern language
and the necessity to re-discover its metaphorical sense, as in Nietzsche’s theo-
ries, further added to this. (Nietzsche 1873 [1999]: 873−890) Hugo Ball, for ex-
ample, destroyed syntax and grammar, then, starting from a blank slate, he
created a new language composed of sounds, noises, and onomatopoeias,
strongly reminiscent of child babbling. He also included his adaption of Afri-
can and Indonesian dialects:14
jolifanto bambla o falli bambla

großiga m’pfa habla horem
egiga goramen
higo bloiko russula huju
hollaka hollala
anlogo bung
blago bung blago bung
bosso fataka
13 Zang tumb tuuum was taken from a two-chapter prose work describing battle scenes in
the style of parole-in-libertà. One of the chapters was turned into a poem and published
seperately.
14 In his Commentary to Ball’s collected poems, Eckhard Faul states that many of the ‘words’
invented by Ball in his sound poems echo African, Swahili, and Indonesian languages. Jan
Ephraim, the owner of the rooms in which Dadaists founded Cabaret Voltaire, was a
Dutch sailor and could have imparted to Hugo Ball some of the words that he had taught
himself during his journeys. (Faul 2007: 181−325)
116 Padularosa
ü üü ü
schampa wulla wussa olobo
hej tatta gorem
eschige zunbada
wulubu ssubudu uluwu ssubudu
tumba ba-umf
kusa gauma
ba – muf.
ball 1920 [2007]: 68
With his poetry, Ball raised hopes to return to the “innermost alchemy of the
word” and to preserve for poetry and language their “last and holiest refuge”.
(Ball 1927 [1974]: 71) His thought reveals several analogies to Mauthner’s writ-
ings on the essence of language. (Kühn 1975; Kosuch 2015) Mauthner starts his
Critique of Language quoting the first verse of Saint John: “In the beginning
was the Word”, which is also the starting point of Ball’s reflection on art and
language. Mauthner’s Critique of Language – “the most important business of
thinking mankind” – aims to “destroy the language […] step by step”, in order
to “free humanity”15 from the “Wortaberglaube” (“word superstition”) and the
“Tyrannei der Sprache” (“tyranny of language”). (Mauthner 1901/1902 [2008]:
78) The same concept inspired the foundation of Cabaret Voltaire and Ball’s
Klang- or Lautgedichte. In his First Dada Manifesto Ball emphasized:
I shall be reading poems that are meant to dispense with conventional

language, no less, and to have done with it. […] I don’t want words that
other people have invented. All the words are other people’s inventions.
I want my own stuff, my own rhythm, and vowels and consonants too,
matching the rhythm and all my own. […] A line of poetry is a chance to
get rid of all the filth that clings to this accursed language […]. Each thing
has its word, but the word has become a thing by itself. Why shouldn’t I
find it? Why can’t a tree be called Pluplusch, and Pluplubasch when it has
been raining? The word, the word, the word outside your domain, your
stuffiness, this laughable impotence, your stupendous smugness, outside
15 The German original is: “Will ich emporklimmen in der Sprachkritik, die das wichtigste
Geschäft der denkenden Menschheit ist, so muß ich die Sprache hinter mir und vor mir
und in mir vernichten von Schritt zu Schritt, so muß ich jede Sprosse der Leiter zertrüm-
mern, indem ich sie betrete.”
all the parrotry of your self-evident limitedness. The word, gentlemen, is

a public concern of the first importance.
ball 1916 [1974]: 221
Dada’s skepticism had a destructive character but it also exhibited positive,

idealistic and utopian thoughts resembling Mauthner’s philosophy of lan-
guage. In his Critique of Language Mauthner used the same word ‘tree’ to ex-
plain the metaphoric and arbitrary sense of language: language is made of
sounds, of sound-symbols, which are metaphors of the material world itself.
Revisiting Nietzsche, Mauthner stated “that language arose from metaphors
and that it grows by way of metaphors”. (Mauthner 1901/1902 [2008]: 103)16 Ac-
cording to Mauthner, it is only through poetry and ‘poetic imagination’ that
language is truly created and renovated. And just like Mauthner, who believed
in the power of poetic language, Dada poetry served a creative, liberating and
almost therapeutic purpose. Although Dadaism was meant to be absurd
and nonsensical – an ‘anti-art’ movement – it heralded the new artist: a poly-
glot jongleur, a revolutionary demiurge.
After some time, Ball decided to leave the Zurich Dada group. He moved to
Bern to collaborate with the political magazine Die freie Zeitung. Unabhängiges
Organ für demokratische Politik, an important organ of European and Swiss
left-wing intellectuals such as Ernst Bloch, Iwan and Claire Goll, and Auguste
Forel. The magazine advocated peace, democracy, and political emancipation
for Europe’s nations. Ball’s reflections on the years following the First World
War are mirrored in his most controversial work, Critique of the German Intel-
ligentsia. Therein, he focused on the German ‘guilt’ and on the problem of the
responsibility of intellectuals, who, in support of the war, signed the Manifesto
of the Ninety-Three17 instead of opposing war and all kinds of violent aggression.
Other Dada artists remained in Zurich and founded the Galerie Dada – an
exposition and conference art gallery. Later on, they moved to Berlin to
16 The German section reads: “Unsere Sprache wächst durch Metaphern. Und zwar kann
man sagen, daß jede Metapher zuerst bewußt gebraucht wird und in den Organismus der
Sprache, als Zuwachs, erst dann eingetreten ist, wenn man sie nicht mehr als Metapher
fühlt.”
17 In 1914, ninety-three famous German scientists, scholars, and artists signed the Manifest
der Dreiundneunzig (Manifesto of the Ninety-Three) in support of the German mili-
tary interventions. In his writings, Hugo Ball frequently refers to Thomas Mann, whose
Gedanken im Kriege (Thoughts in Wartime, 1914) or Betrachtungen eines Unpolitischen
(Reflections of an Unpolitical Man, 1918) deeply affected both the popular and intellec-
tual opinion concerning the legitimacy of the war.
118 Padularosa
introduce Dada outside Switzerland. Yet, the established intimate link be-
tween radical left-wing orientation, aesthetics, and spirituality lived on and
also determined the characteristics of Berlin Dada.
As already mentioned, Dadaist performances and artworks were never de-
tached from political thought; on the contrary, the artists mediated between
art, politics, and spiritual ambitions. In 1921, after returning to Catholicism and
Christian spirituality, Hugo Ball confessed in Flight out of Time: “The socialist,
the aesthete, the monk: all three agree that modern bourgeois education must
be destroyed. The new ideal will take its element from all three.” (Ball 1927
[1974]: 197) This note illustrates the intermingling of anti-bourgeois socialist
thought, avant-garde aesthetics, and spirituality, and at the same time it sub-
stantiates the endurance of the pre-Dada period in post-war times. Conse-
quently, Hugo Ball abandoned the avant-garde scene in the 1920s and retired to
a kind of mystic isolation and asceticism.
5 Dada Berlin
Dada’s first artistic manifestation at Cabaret Voltaire was a short-lived and

strong eruption of ideas and energies still echoing in current poetry and art
projects.18 In its succession to Zurich Dadaism, Berlin Dada was even more
politically engaged. Except for Raoul Hausmann (1886–1971) with his strong
affiliation to anarchism, Berlin Dadaists mostly shared the revolutionary ideals
of the Marxist Spartakusbund (Spartacus League, 1914/1916). Despite all its
internal tensions, the First German Republic had the support of many intel-
lectuals and artists. Their position within the Weimar political and cultural
organizations was ambiguous and almost servile. (Gay 2002) Bertolt Brecht
picked up this situation some years later in his Tui-Roman (Tui-Novel, published
posthumously in 1968), criticizing with irony and humor the corrupt role of the
elite during the Weimar Republic. Brecht particularly decried their reduction
18 Dadaism’s influence on art, literature and music is manifold and boarder-transcending.

Examples are the New-Dada movement which developed between Italy and the United
States in the 1950s and 1960s in anticipation of Pop Art, or the international group Fluxus.
Also more recently musicians and poets have been inspired by Zurich Dadaism and Hugo
Ball, such as The Talking Heads. The Cabaret Voltaire in Zurich still serves as literary café
and library. It regularly organizes shows and exhibitions commemorating its founders. In
2010, e.g., the contemporary art group irwin performed a ‘Retro-Garde’ exhibition Was ist
Kunst Hugo Ball (What is Art Hugo Ball). On the centenary of its foundation Cabaret Vol-
taire arranged the travelling show Dada on Tour, while the Arp-Museum at Bahnhof Ro-
landseck set up the exhibition Genesis Dada. 100 Years Dada.
to instruments of those in power and their degradation to mere market ob-

jects. (Brecht 1968 [1973]).
Berlin Dadaists rebelled against this artistic and cultural decline of the new
republic. They carried forward many tendencies and practices from their Zu-
rich predecessors at Cabaret Voltaire, yet, their revolutionary magazines dis-
seminated strong political messages besides aesthetic ones. Wieland Herzfelde
(1896–1988) and John Heartfield (1891–1968), for example, released the jour-
nals Jedermann sein eigner Fußball, a very sarcastic magazine (Illustration 4.3),
and Die freie Straße, leaning towards anarchist positions. They published some
of the most important Berlin Dadaists, including Johannes Baader (1875–1955).
Their magazines stood out because of the montage of drawing and poetry as
well as the new technique of photomontage applied to express political mes-
sages and to criticize – harshly but always ironically – Weimar Germany.
While Richard Huelsenbeck transferred Dadaism from Zurich to Berlin in
1917 and held the first Dada speech in Germany in February 1918, most of his
followers spread their artworks through a magazine, the Manifesto, (Asholt/
Fähnders 1997) or resorted to public performances, illustrating their new con-
cept of ‘anti-art’. This idea turned, somewhat paradoxically, against both insti-
tutionalized art as bourgeois ideology and against ‘autonomous’ art. (Bürger
1974 [1984]) The ‘politicization’ of art in Berlin was executed by Johannes Baad-
er, who carried out a truly revolutionary and anarchic act that he declared to be
the founding moment of his new ‘government’. During the first inaugural As-
sembly of the Weimar Republic in 1919, Baader, as ‘Oberdada’ and ‘president’
dressed in a bizarre red coat strongly reminiscent of a shaman’s or minister’s
mantle and evoking the cubistic costume Hugo Ball had worn three years ear-
lier, proclaimed a Dada-Government.
With the works of George Grosz, Otto Dix, John Heartfield, Raoul Haus-
mann, and Hannah Höch, the years 1919−1920 are arguably the most important
for Dada. During the first Dada-Fair in 1920 the ‘death of art’ was officially an-
nounced: “Die Kunst ist tot. Es lebe die Maschinenkunst Tatlins.” (“Art is dead:
Long live Tatlin’s new machine art.”) The end of art paralleled the decadence of
society and the loss of its spiritual, artistic and cultural principles. Dada artists
felt those values were replaced by a strong ‘mechanization’ and ‘dehumaniza-
tion’ of the individual and the worker. Therefore, the politicization of Berlin
Dada focused on the new, depressing realities of work and the precarious sta-
tus of the proletariat, comprised of women and war survivors. Many Dada
artworks – drawings, paintings, photomontages, or installations – accordingly
were based on the metaphorical contrast of the ‘mechanized’ brain and the
body of the individual. (Raoul Hausmann, Mechanischer Kopf, oder Der Geist
unserer Zeit [Mechanical Head, The Spirit of our Age], 1919, or George Grosz,
120 Padularosa
Illustration 4.3
Jedermann sein eigner Fußball (Everyone his own Football) 1919, ed.
Wieland Herzfelde/John Heartfield: n.p.
Daum heiratet ihren pedantischen Automaten George im Mai 1920 [Daum mar-
ries her pedantic automaton George in May 1920], 1920) Also, they used the
stitched and patched figures of the survivors, ready and able to go back to
work. (Otto Dix, 45% Erwerbsfähig – Die Kriegskrüppel [45% Fit for Service –
War Cripples], 1920), or the crumbling and creased silhouettes of prostitutes.
(Biro 2009; White 2013)
Zurich Dadaists shared their strong utopian background as well as their
spiritual, cultural and moral values with anarchist thinkers and activists. This
is because Zurich and Switzerland were neutral places allowing the develop-
ment of such ideals even during the dark years of war. When Dada moved to
Berlin, it lost its idealistic outline and adopted a more pragmatic and Marxist
stance in its struggle against post-war hardships and the defective p
redominant
culture. Consequently, its artworks or performances were intended to incite
the spectator politically and to carry out revolutionary acts. Notwithstanding
its anarchic or Marxist leanings Dadaism, together with many other contem-
porary art movements, was condemned as ‘degenerate art’ during the years of
Nazism. Its devaluation and persecution coincided with the death of any liber-
tarian ideal.
6 Conclusions
Anarchist thought is multifaceted and compatible with different intellectual

traditions. The same can be said about Dadaism with its complexity and vari-
ous stages of development, its heterogeneous and uneven movements. Dada-
ists and anarchists were driven by the same urge to rebel against an abstract
counterpart – bourgeois society – and they felt the same need to disobey soci-
ety’s mores and free humanity. The principle of ‘artistic freedom’, pursued by
Dadaists in their art and language experiments, simultaneously perpetuated a
form of ‘social freedom’, a freedom from every kind of traditional value and
from political authoritarianism. Quoting Bakunin, Hugo Ball stated in his dia-
ry: “The only freedom is the one that … will establish and organize a new world
after the collapse of all divine and worldly idols – the world of mankind in soli-
darity.” (Ball 1927 [1974]: 13) In line with this, Zurich Dadaists put Fritz Mauth-
ners philosophy of language into practice. They followed his finding that
language mirrors society and, consequently, considered it mandatory to get rid
of all current norms and conventions in language to redeem society from its
moral decline.
Hugo Ball’s Dadaism owes its ideological background to anarchist thought,
especially to Russian anarchism as well as to Russian tradition which he
122 Padularosa
a ppreciated as a pre-capitalist and pre-industrial alternative to Western bour-

geois culture. Zurich Dadaism, in particular, was influenced by Ball’s affiliation
with Landauer, Mauthner, and Brupbacher, and through propaganda maga-
zines and anarchist discussion circles it gained in popularity during the First
World War. In Berlin Dadaism, the ideological, visionary, and utopian elements
of the art movement gradually disappeared and were replaced by a rather ma-
terialistic politicization of art leading to the sarcastic proclamation of its death.
After the war, Dadaists were faced with the problems that came along with the
Weimar Republic, the reconstruction of the country, the war survivors, the ef-
fects of industrialization and the dehumanization of the individual in the city,
and finally the automatism of factory work, administration and prostitution.
Thus, Berlin Dadaism leaned towards the political ideas of the Spartacus
League led by Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht, which turned into the
Communist Party of Germany (kpd) in 1918; its members also sympathized
with the short-lived Bavarian Council Republic. Berlin Dada’s aesthetics, there-
fore, seems to have been more influenced by Marxist-Leninist thought than by
anarchism. After the experiences in Zurich and Berlin, Dadaism reached Paris
and New York. There, particularly for French Dadaism, it tended to evince a
psychoanalytic nature already inherent to Zurich and Berlin Dada. (Padularosa
2016) Even though Dada never lost its connections to anarchism, it was
during the 1960s in France that the arts again took on strong political anarcho-
socialist positions with the movement Situationist International – heir of the
historical avant-gardes.
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Part 2
Fractions: Declining – Pioneering − Redeeming
∵
Chapter 5
Decadent Anarchism, Anarchistic Decadence:

Contradictory Cultures, Complementary Politics
David Weir
Abstract
Decadents and anarchists moved in some of the same cultural circles in the late nine-
teenth and early twentieth centuries: two notable examples are the anarcho-decadent
figure Octave Mirbeau and the less programmatic Oscar Wilde. Decadents and anar-
chists shared a sense of discontent with the liberal, bourgeois modernity of the late
nineteenth century, but the two groups expressed their discontent in radically differ-
ent, but complementary, ways. Ideologically, anarchists conceive of themselves as liv-
ing at the end of an era, with anarchism itself as the means of renewal. Decadents,
likewise, regard history as a form of decline, but see themselves not as agents of renew-
al but as evidence for the very decadence they decry. This kind of self-loathing leads
decadents to identify themselves with the declining aristocracy, whereas anarchists
put their hope in an ascendant proletariat.
Both decadents and anarchists share a sense of loathing for the urban bourgeoi-
sie, and both groups imagine themselves as ‘internationalist’ (the decadents are really
trans-nationalists and the anarchist anti-nationalists, but both groups are basically
anti-statist). But these ideological overlaps are not always reflected in the kind of cul-
ture each group espouses. While writers and artists (Pater, Wilde, Huysmans, Mallar-
mé, Moreau, Beardsley) identified with decadence may treat the aesthetic concept of
artistic autonomy as cognate with the anarchist principle of political autonomy, for the
most part decadent culture finds its audience outside the realm of anarchist circles,
while anarchist culture tends toward the ephemeral and vernacular. These divergent
cultural directions reflect the class-consciousness of each group, with the decadents
cultivating a type of elite, rarified culture that the bourgeoisie cannot appreciate, and
the anarchists promoting forms of popular culture beneath the interests of the bour-
geois audience they despise. Despite these differences, the complementary nature of
decadence and anarchism resulted in a certain transformation of anarchistic political
values into decadent aesthetic expression.

130 Weir
Decadence and anarchism both come to maturity with the parallel growth of
liberal modernity in the nineteenth century, gaining traction as responses –
the one cultural, the other political – to the strengthened position of the urban
bourgeoisie in the aftermath of the 1848 revolutions across Europe. The failure
of those revolutions to produce the kind of society decadents and anarchists
desired is crucial to the development of both groups. Not that both groups de-
sired the same kind of society: decadents allied themselves with at least the
idea of the aristocracy, whereas anarchists owed allegiance to the working
class, whether urban or rural. Where the culture of decadence and the ideology
of anarchism overlap is in a shared horror of the bourgeoisie, the social class
that had the most to benefit from political structures based on constitutional
monarchy and from commercial arrangements grounded in capitalist eco-
nomics. The question before us now is whether a shared antipathy to bour-
geois institutions and conventions is a sufficient reason for the alignment of
decadence and anarchism on the basis of either politics or culture. The rather
disappointing answer to that question is, unfortunately, ‘yes and no’. Both dec-
adents and anarchists shared a sense of discontent with the liberal, bourgeois
modernity of the late nineteenth century, but the two groups expressed their
discontent in radically different, albeit complementary, ways. Ideologically, the
anarchists conceived of themselves as living at the end of an era, with anar-
chism itself as the means of renewal. Decadents, likewise, regarded history as
a form of decline, but limited their interest in renewal to the aesthetic arena
alone. Indeed, most decadents identified with the declining aristocracy, where-
as anarchists put their hope in an ascendant proletariat. This key ideological
difference notwithstanding, a number of well-known anarchists – such as
Emma Goldman and Gustav Landauer – sought to make common cause with
prominent decadents such as Oscar Wilde (1854−1900), who gravitated to that
individualist strain of anarchism best known as egoism. The fact that the deca-
dent egoist’s elitist position outside and above the mass of society drew the
attention of socially-minded anarchists such as Goldman and Landauer re-
veals what is perhaps the most abiding conflict in anarchism itself: the prob-
lem of reconciling individual autonomy with the social collective.
The argument here is that anarchist interest in decadence and decadent in-
terest in anarchism highlight this fundamental problem, which becomes all
the more intriguing in light of the decadent’s alliance with the literary and ar-
tistic avant-garde and the anarchist’s gravitation toward more traditional and
familiar forms of art and literature. An investigation of the contradictory yet
complementary relation of anarchism and decadence requires, first, some
clarification of the key terms ‘decadence’ and ‘anarchism’ and a discussion of
both the specific cultural manifestations of decadence and its general theory;
Decadent Anarchism, Anarchistic Decadence 131
second, a consideration of the differences between the aesthetic rebellion dec-

adence entailed and the social revolution anarchism advocated; and, finally, a
demonstration of the difficulty of reconciling the aesthetic individualism of
decadence and the collectivist ideology of anarchism through an examination
of three case studies of major figures in the decadent movement: Anatole Baju
(1861−1903), Octave Mirbeau (1848−1917), and Oscar Wilde. Each of these men
exemplified decadence in different ways, and all three were drawn to anar-
chism. But in each case decadent sensibility overwhelmed whatever anarchist
aspirations they might have had.
1 Decadence and Anarchism
In one sense, decadence and anarchy are the same thing. As a description of
social conditions, decline (decadence) and disorder (anarchy) are comple-
mentary, and, given certain historical contexts, synonymous: “anarchy simply
is decadence, nihilism, chaos, dissolution”. (Cohn 2006: 152) At this point any
reader sensitive to the nuances of political history will be quick to point out
that ‘anarchy’ and ‘anarchism’ are hardly synonymous. The first term desig-
nates a condition of disorder while the second describes an anti-statist ideol-
ogy that, depending on the variety, might well involve a high degree of order.
Indeed, the foundational thinkers of anarchism, such as William Godwin (who
did not use the term ‘anarchism’) and Pierre-Joseph Proudhon (1809–1865)
(who ameliorated the term anarchiste) were men of reason whose arguments
for a stateless society are systematic in the extreme, and the kinds of societies
they envisioned are utterly removed from “decadence, nihilism, chaos, dissolu-
tion”. This terminological discussion is necessary because the negative and
positive connotations of, respectively, ‘anarchy’ and ‘anarchism’ are matched
by a similar but more complicated ambiguity in the term ‘decadence’. The com-
plications follow from the fact that, where we have two terms that distinguish
between a negative social condition of lawlessness (‘anarchy’) and a positive
political condition of autonomous liberty (‘anarchism’), the single term ‘deca-
dence’ does double duty as both a negative descriptor of a socio-historical con-
dition (decay, decline, degeneration, and so on) and a positive designation for
cultural activities (mostly literary) that seek to register, express, or otherwise
respond to conditions of social decay, historical decline, personal degenera-
tion, and the like. In the case of decadence, the terminological ambiguity
might be resolved by the use of the term ‘decadentism’ to describe the kinds of
cultural practices decadence involves, namely, the things that decadents do.
But this usage has not really caught on (with the partial exception of French
132 Weir
décadisme, of which more presently), and besides, the kinds of things deca-
dents do is not limited to cultural practices.
In the development of decadence as a cultural movement, a certain blurring
of art and life became evident from the first. Charles Baudelaire’s (1821−1867)
Les Fleurs du mal (The Flowers of Evil, 1857) is perhaps the key foundational
text of this canon, but so is the biography of Baudelaire himself. Baudelaire’s
involvement with his mulatto mistress Jean Duval and his need to escape from
the oppressive nature of modern life by means of opium and hashish express a
transgressive attitude toward bourgeois norms that is about as foundational to
the establishment of decadent culture as his poetry was. Baudelaire’s literary
disciple Paul Verlaine (1844−1896) likewise embraced and cultivated forms of
behavior marked by excess and immorality, even as he gave voice to a sense of
historical decline and personal degradation in his languid, crepuscular poetry.
The opening line of his sonnet Langueur (Languor, 1883) – “Je suis l’Empire à la
fin de la décadence” (“I am the Empire at the end of decadent days”) –
personifies the decadent sensibility of the Roman Empire at the moment of its
destruction by “les grands Barbares blancs” (“the pale tall Barbarians”). This
fraught historical moment, however, is not the occasion for anxiety or panic;
instead, the speaker of the poem expresses only weariness, ennui, and diffi-
dence as a once-great civilization comes to its inglorious end. (Verlaine 1883
[1951]: 250) This poem helped establish decadence as a literary movement in
France, a movement certified by Joris-Karl Huysmans’s (1848−1907) À rebours
(Against the Grain, 1884), a novel cataloging the decadent tastes of its inert
protagonist, the Duc Des Esseintes, the last, degenerate scion of an aristocratic
family. The English poet Arthur Symons called the novel “the breviary of deca-
dence”, (Symons 1899 [1919]: 265) and the ecclesiastical term aptly conveys the
idea that À rebours served as a veritable compendium of ‘appropriate’ taste and
behavior for later decadents, such as Oscar Wilde and many others.
The ambiguities that attach to ‘decadence’ and ‘anarchism’ do not entirely
disappear if we focus now on decadents and anarchists, the respective repre-
sentatives of those two conditions, but they perhaps become more manage-
able. For decadents and anarchists were both antagonistic to the times in
which they lived and tried to imagine an alternative to their own age. The very
title of Huysmans’s seminal novel captures the sense of social and political
contrariety that decadents and anarchists share: ‘à rebours’ means something
like ‘againstness’ – a common translation of the title is Against the Grain. Near
the end of the narrative, the aristocratic protagonist Des Esseintes expresses
extreme alienation with the commercial and social arrangements of the Third
Republic: “[W]hat point of contact could there possibly be between him and
that bourgeois class which had gradually climbed to the top, taking advantage
of every disaster to fill its pockets, stirring up every sort of trouble to command
respect for its countless crimes and thefts.” (Huysmans 1884 [2003]: 202) It is
hard to imagine any anarchist anywhere disagreeing with the social assess-
ment of bourgeois capitalism that this most typical of fictional decadents
makes. Like Des Esseintes, any number of real-life anarchists set themselves
against the bourgeois class and the economic arrangements that sustained
them: here, both anarchism and decadence work against the grain (‘à rebours’)
of the modern world of the late nineteenth century.1
But the title À rebours has also been translated as Against Nature, and with
good reason: in aesthetic terms, what marks decadence off against romanti-
cism is the appeal of artificiality. Indeed, the decadent harbors a disrespect for
nature that borders on abhorrence. Des Esseintes, for example, believes that
Nature […] has had her day; she has finally and utterly exhausted the pa-
tience of sensitive observers by the revolting uniformity of her land-
scapes and skyscapes. After all, what platitudinous limitations she im-
poses, like a tradesman specializing in a single line of business; what
petty-minded restrictions, like a shopkeeper stocking one article to the
exclusion of all others; what a monotonous store of meadows and trees,
what a commonplace display of mountains and seas!
huysmans 1884 [2003]: 23
Although nature is here described in economic terms borrowed from bour-

geois consumerism (“like a tradesman”, “like a shopkeeper”, “a monotonous
store”, “a commonplace display”), that dimension of the denigration of nature
does not make it any more appealing to the anarchist sensibility, for the very
good reason that, regardless of whatever form it might take, the denigration of
nature is simply not part of the anarchist portfolio. On the contrary, anarchism
usually finds in nature a positive ideal, a model for society. As Richard Sonn
explains, most late nineteenth-century anarchists “harbored an image of the
ideal society that was simpler, more personal, and somehow more ‘natural’
than contemporary urban society”. (Sonn 1989: 290−291) Concrete proof of this
point exists in all those utopian, anarchist communes established in the late
1 As numerous historians of anarchism have demonstrated, the ideology owes much of its ori-
gins to the peasant class that Marx dismissed as mere Lumpenproletariat and to the indepen-
dent artisans extolled by Proudhon. Both these social types are removed from the kind of
industrialized modernity that produced the factory workers and other proletarian types that
Marx and Engels sought to mobilize and that led them to denigrate anarchists as “antedilu-
vian”, (Avrich 1992: 30) that is, as living in a world prior to the age of modernity.
134 Weir
nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, a common feature of which was

physical removal from the corrupt metropolis to the wholesome countryside.2
Decadent de-idealization of nature and anarchistic re-idealization have
strong cultural implications. The decadent rejection of nature led to a cult of
artifice manifested in life as well as art. As Wilde wrote in 1894: “The first duty
in life is to be as artificial as possible. What the second duty is no one has yet
discovered.” (Wilde 1894 [1989]: 1205) The obligation to cultivate artificiality in
life is an expression of the idea of the dandy, whose most important expositor
(though not originator) was Baudelaire. In Le Peintre de la vie moderne (The
Painter of Modern Life, 1863), Baudelaire described the dandy as someone with
“no other calling but to cultivate the idea of beauty”, because dandyism is a
“cult of the self”, a “kind of religion”. Crucially, the dandy “appears above all in
periods of transition, when democracy is not yet all-powerful, and aristocracy
is only just beginning to totter and fall”. For Baudelaire, the dandy’s sympathies
lie with the tottering aristocracy; indeed, dandyism “is the last spark of hero-
ism amid decadence”, the lone, melancholy bulwark against “the rising tide of
democracy”. (Baudelaire 1863 [21995]: 27, 28−29) The sense of aesthetic indi-
vidualism expressed here may harmonize with the concept of anarchist au-
tonomy, but Baudelaire’s antagonism to the common man and his hatred of
democracy are social attitudes that find no place in anarchist ideology. True,
anarchist thought is opposed to democracy when it is the product of a political
process in service to the state, but not when it is the expression of communal
will in some kind of self-governing, autonomous collective.
The dangers of extreme individualism of the sort represented by Baude-
laire’s dandy is the subject of an important social theory of decadence promul-
gated by Paul Bourget (1852−1935), a psychological novelist known today not so
much for his novels as for his criticism, notably a collection published in two
volumes in 1883 and 1885: Essais de psychologie contemporaine (Essays on Con-
temporary Psychology). The theory appears in an essay on Baudelaire, the key
paragraph of which must be quoted in full:
The word ‘decadence’ is often used to designate the state of a society that
produces too few individuals suited to the labors of communal life. A so-
ciety is comparable to a living organism: like an organism, it consists of a
collection of lesser organisms, which in turn consist of a collection of
cells. The individual is the social cell. For the whole organism to function
energetically, the lesser organisms must function energetically, but with a
lesser energy; and, for these lesser organisms to function energetically,
2 See, for example, Lunn 1973; Green 1986, and Berry 1992.
their component cells must function energetically, but with a lesser en-
ergy. If the cells’ energy becomes independent, the organisms that make
up the total organism similarly cease subordinating their energy to the
total energy, and the subsequent anarchy leads to the decadence of the
whole. The social organism does not escape this law: it succumbs to deca-
dence as soon as the individual has begun to thrive under the influence
of acquired well-being and heredity. The very same rule governs the de-
velopment and the decadence of another organism, language. A deca-
dent style is one in which the unity of the book falls apart, replaced by the
independence of the page, where the page decomposes to make way for
the independence of the sentence, and the sentence makes way for the
word. There are innumerable examples in current literature to corrobo-
rate this hypothesis and justify this analogy.
bourget 1881 [2009]: 98
Bourget’s theory linking social anarchy to literary decadence on the basis of

organic unity disrupted by a breakdown in the relationship of part to whole
found validation the year after he put forth the theory in Huysmans’s novel of
1884, which provided a social example in the character of Des Esseintes, who
lived apart from society and did not participate in ‘communal life’, and an aes-
thetic example of the style of decadence, whereby excessive stylistic attention
to finely-wrought phrases and rarefied diction rendered the unity of plot and
other would-be indicators of artistic integration secondary or even irrelevant.
Bourget uses the word anarchy to describe this condition of decadent disag-
gregation, a negative usage that captures the unnatural propensity of “cells”,
whether social (“the individual”) or literary (“the word”), to function in a
healthy, organic, and unified fashion. An obvious point to be made about the
style of decadence as Bourget describes it is that there is a blurring or merging
of cultural and political language. Decadence involves anarchy, individualism,
and independence, to name a few of the terms of this dual language, but in
every case, the meaning is ambiguous and subject to revalorization. What the
conservative critic Bourget describes as the negative effect of aesthetic and
social breakdown might well acquire affirmative import given a shift in ideo-
logical emphasis. Sure enough, aesthetic individualism came to be regarded as
a positive value among critics sympathetic to decadence as a literary style. To
cite again the highly influential À rebours, those writers and artists who have
the most appeal to the decadent sensibility are those whose style is absolutely
unique. A volume of Baudelaire is “incomparable”, Stéphane Mallarmé’s lan-
guage is “unique, hermetic”, and the artist Gustave Moreau “had no real ances-
tors and no possible descendants”, remaining “a unique figure in contemporary
136 Weir
art”. (Bourget 1881 [2009]: 56, 132, 181) To be clear, such figures are individualis-
tic not only because they employ the decadent style, but also because their art
emerges independently of prior traditions and conventions. They are, in short,
revolutionary.
2 Rebellion and Revolution
But what is the relationship between artistic rebellion and social revolution?
That question is complicated in the present instance because both the theore-
ticians of decadence and the apologists for anarchism invoke the same organic
metaphor to describe the relationship of individual part to collective whole.
For Paul Bourget, society is an organism that functions best when the individ-
ual cells are subordinated to the broader goals of society. When those cells be-
gin to separate from the whole, the result is anarchy, which leads to decadence.
The social argument is reinforced by the artistic analogy: the same process of
disaggregation of part from whole is readily observable in contemporary litera-
ture, in ‘le style de la décadence’. Curiously, Piotr Alexeyevich Kropotkin
(1842−1921) employed the same organic metaphor to describe the anarchistic
society that Bourget used to describe a decadent society. In L’Anarchie. Sa phi-
losophie, son ideal (Anarchism. Its Philosophy and Ideal, 1896), Kropotkin takes
the same scientific, positivistic line of argument Bourget did, beginning with
the same physiological observation that organic life functions through an ag-
gregation of smaller units in relation to a larger whole:
[W]hen a physiologist speaks now of the life of a plant or of an animal, he

sees an agglomeration, a colony of millions of separate individuals rather
than a personality, one and indivisible. He speaks of a federation of diges-
tive, sensual, nervous organs, all very intimately connected with one an-
other, each feeling the consequence of the well-being or indisposition of
each, but each living its own life. Each organ, each part of an organ in its
turn is composed of independent cellules which associate to struggle
against conditions unfavorable to their existence.
kropotkin 1896 [1993]: 101–102
Same metaphor, different meaning: here, the individual cells, or “cellules”, re-
main independent, but associate with other cells in order to survive unfavor-
able conditions. The sense of the passage, and others like in Kropotkin’s anar-
chistic argument, is that the independence of the individual part is somehow
necessary to the proper functioning of the whole. The argument, in other
words, is ultimately anarcho-communistic, with anarchism and communism

forming “a necessary complement to one another”, since, Kropotkin avers,
“[c]ommunism is the best basis for individual development and freedom”.
(Kropotkin 1896 [1993]: 119) Kropotkin, in short, uses the organic metaphor to
make a positive argument for a society that allows for the independence of the
individual cells, whereas Bourget makes a negative argument about the dan-
gers of social disruption those individual cells represent. The negative anarchy
Bourget describes led to the positive decadence of aesthetic individualism, but
the positive anarchism Kropotkin details does not point in any aesthetic direc-
tion at all. The anarcho-communist social revolution, in short, does not in-
clude or require a parallel aesthetic revolution.
Certainly, the kind of culture the saintly Kropotkin advocated ‘in the service
of the revolution’ is not itself revolutionary in an aesthetic sense. In Aux jeunes
gens (An Appeal to the Young, 1880), one of the best known of the so-called
editorials he wrote for his anarchist journal Le Révolté, Kropotkin inveighs
against the kind of decadent realism associated with Émile Zola’s naturalistic
novels when he decries minutely descriptive representations of “the suffocat-
ing filth of a sewer” or “the boudoir of a whore of high degree”. (Kropotkin 1880
[1975]: 19) Kropotkin may in fact have had Zola’s naturalism in mind when he
urged young writers to respond to human sorrow and oppression – “these peo-
ple dying of hunger, […] these corpses piled up in these mines, […] these mu-
tilated bodies lying in heaps on the barricades” – only without Zola’s artistic
detachment or objective treatment: “you cannot remain neutral”. (Kropotkin
1880 [1975]: 19) There follows the famous call to “poets, painters, sculptors, mu-
sicians” to “[p]lace your pen, your pencil, your chisel, your ideas at the service
of the revolution”. But there is nothing about this call to service that asks the
artist to engage in an aesthetic revolution while serving the social one: “Figure
forth to us, in your eloquent style, or your impressive pictures, the heroic strug-
gle of the people against their oppressors, fire the hearts of our youth with that
glorious revolutionary enthusiasm which inflamed the souls of our ancestors.”
(Kropotkin 1880 [1975]: 23) This call to collective artistic action could not be
further from the aesthetic individualism decadence entails. Moreover, the few
aesthetic terms in Kropotkin’s appeal are either traditional (“eloquent”) or
vague (“impressive”), and there is no escaping the sense that, for Kropotkin,
both the form and the content of artistic expression are set down in advance.
Kropotkin’s endorsement of artistic tradition does not by itself prove the
case that the kind of individualist aesthetics decadence involves points to a
larger problem in anarchist ideology. But Kropotkin is not an isolated instance
of anarchist unease with the place of aesthetic rebellion in the broader social
revolution. The great anarchist is not an exception to some general rule; on the
138 Weir
contrary, the general rule appears to be that the revolutionary ardor of anar-
chism in the social world does not necessarily extend into the cultural domain.
This does not mean that it cannot be extended – as in the well-known
twentieth-century instance of Dada, where Mikhail Alexandrovich Bakunin’s
(1814−1876) doctrine of creative social destruction found aesthetic expression
as anti-art. But Bakunin himself, like other foundational figures in the history
of anarchism, seems not to have entertained any but the most traditional aes-
thetic conceptions, and had, at best, rather limited ideas about the potential
role of art and literature in the anarchist revolution.3 The same holds for
Proudhon, despite – or possibly because of – his support of the artist Gustave
Courbet, who seemed to have interested the anarchist mainly for his ability to
represent social ills in a realistic style. It is not hard to find in Proudhon’s volu-
minous writings numerous passages dismissive of the arts as ‘feminine’ or
irrelevant to the larger social struggle. Some of his criticism is directed at pre-
cisely the kind of ‘art for art’s sake’ sensibility so closely identified with
decadence.4 Even the literary school of symbolism, whose practitioners,
notably Mallarmé, thought of their art as a form of aesthetic anarchism do not
always have their interest in anarchism reciprocated by the anarchists them-
selves. A case in point is Édouard Rothen’s entry on Littérature in Sébastien
Faure’s (1858−1942) Encyclopédie anarchiste (The Anarchist Encyclopedia,
1925−1934), where the author bemoans “the ‘complete deterioration of style
[deliquescence]’ resulting from Symbolism and ‘the decadent schools’, a discur-
sive decay that only serves to prevent the formation of ‘collective, popular, and
human thought’”. (Cohn 2006: 154) Not only do the major theoreticians of an-
archism not envision revolutionary value in the kind of aesthetic i ndividualism
3 In Dieu et l’état (God and the State), Bakunin allows that art has “the power to create [and]
recall to our minds the living, real individualities which appear and disappear under our
eyes”. (Bakunin 1882 [1970]: 61) Such mimesis, it seems, might have a social purpose in mak-
ing permanent in art individuals and actions that have ceased to exist in reality, but the con-
ception is hardly revolutionary as an aesthetic postulate. Elsewhere, in L’Instruction intégrale
(All-Round Education), Bakunin asks, “Don’t artistic creations ennoble everyone’s life?” and
provides this answer: “No, not at all. And our greatest criticism of science and the arts is pre-
cisely that they spread their good deeds and exercise their beneficial influence over a very
small portion of society.” (Bakunin 1869 [1992]: 112)
4 In his Système des contradictions économiques ou philosophie de la misère (System of Eco-
nomical Contradictions, or, The Philosophy of Misery), Proudhon rejects the notion of “labor
for labor”, that is, the idea that work is its own reward, or is somehow noble in itself, by argu-
ing that labor can never be separated from “the motive of utility”. On the same basis, he
rejects “style for style, love for love, art for art”. (Proudhon 1846 [1888]: 227) Elsewhere, Proud-
hon declares that the role of art “is one of an auxiliary; it is a faculty more feminine than
virile, predestined to obedience, and whose development must in the last analysis be deter-
mined by the legal and scientific advancement of the species”. (Quoted in Cohn 2006: 165)
decadence involves, they also seem to be models of moral rectitude who would
hardly approve of the sensual indulgence and personal depravity that celebrat-
ed decadents such as Paul Verlaine and Oscar Wilde exemplify. And yet a num-
ber of well-known decadents – such as Wilde – found anarchism appealing,
but it is hard to imagine that Wilde was drawn to anarchism for the same
reasons that Kropotkin, Jean Grave (1854–1939), Faure, or any of the other an-
archists who were Wilde’s contemporaries were. In fact, it is hard to find a con-
sistent rationale for the interest shown in anarchism – aside from a shared
discontent with the bourgeois establishment – on the part of those most iden-
tified with decadence.
The discord between the kind of aesthetic individualism the decadents
practiced and the sort of social collectivism the anarchists promoted is no
doubt clearer today than it was in the late nineteenth century. Perhaps such
discord was less apparent at the time because both groups existed well outside
the mainstream of both politics and culture; often a sense of kinship emerges
among those who are relegated to the margins of society and share outsider
status. Another likely explanation for a sense of disjunction more evident now
than then is the common refusal on the part of decadents and anarchists alike
to conform to convention. But surely it makes a difference that the conven-
tions in each case are not the same. The decadents scorned aesthetic conven-
tions to work outside of established traditions; the anarchists eschewed social
conventions to live outside the law. But, as we have seen, most anarchists were
generally content with conventional forms of art, and many decadents would
have preferred to live in an aristocratic society. These general observations are
borne out by particular cases, albeit in rather different ways, as the examples of
Anatole Baju, Octave Mirbeau, and Oscar Wilde show.
3 Baju and Décadisme
Anatole Baju was a professional decadent. In the late 1880s, he tried to capital-
ize on the recent fashion for decadence in literary circles following the publica-
tion of Langueur, since Verlaine’s poem about the twilight of the Roman
Empire contained an implicit commentary about the perceived decline of the
French Republic. Baju’s efforts to make a career of decadence led him in 1886
to establish décadisme as a progressive counter to conventional literature and
traditional values. Baju had some interaction with living anarchists who were
likewise discontent with French society, but discontent alone was not suffi-
cient to form any lasting or substantial connection. A case in point is a pair of
literary soirees held in Paris in October 1886, when the anarchist Louise Michel
140 Weir
(1830–1905), a living witness to the Commune of May 1871, addressed an audi-

ence of symbolists and decadents at a time when decadence was the more as-
cendant of the two closely related schools. Like most social radicals, Michel
favored naturalistic fiction that represented the problems faced by the working
class in a realistic way. She also advocated universal languages such as Volapük
(created 1879) and Esperanto (created 1887), a position contrary to the kinds of
stylistic refinements bordering on opacity cultivated by symbolists and deca-
dents alike. After her second talk, Baju announced in the 30 October 1886 issue
of his journal Le Décadent that Michel “sadly does not understand symbolism”.
Baju also objected to “any mix of politics and literature”, adding that literature
must be “imposed” on the public, not subjected to its collective influence or
taste. (McGuinness 2015: 52–54) Baju’s elitist rejection of the common reader
is a crucial point of aesthetic difference from much anarchist writing, which
tended toward the vernacular and the kind of popular slang that permeated
anarchist magazines such as Émile Pouget’s Le Père peinard.5 In addition, Ba-
ju’s comment about the necessity of keeping politics and literature separate is
odd, because comingling the two seems to have been what his entire literary
career was about.
Baju and the handful of writers affiliated with Le Décadent understood their
décadisme as politically progressive. As Patrick McGuinness explains, it was
“an oppositional response to the decadence of contemporary society, to the
ruling class and its bourgeois ideology, and to the corruption of the republican
body politic, with its militaristic posturings and sleazy authoritarianism”. (Mc-
Guinness 2015: 34) This oppositional mélange would seem to make the deca-
dent a ready candidate for the anarchist ranks, but Baju’s politics were nothing
if not scattershot and, like many others during the period, he put political dis-
course in the service of literary, not social, revolution. The mission of the deca-
dents “is not to found”, Baju says in one manifesto, “but to destroy, to pull down
the old, and prepare [for] the great literature of the twentieth century”. In an-
other he makes clear that the target of all his hyperventilating revolutionary
ardor is not social injustice, but antiquated art: “We will be the stars of an ideal
literature, the precursors of the latent transformism [sic] that erodes the su-
perimposed strata of classicism, Romanticism, and Naturalism. In a word, we
will be the mahdis calling out eternally the elixirized [sic] dogma, the
quintessentialized word of triumphant decadism [décadisme].” (McGuinness
2015: 47, 49)
5 For a discussion of this dimension of anarchist culture, see Sonn 1989: 115–140 (Chapter 5:
‘The Oral Culture of Anarchism’).
Baju went on to summarize the aesthetic frictions between décadisme and

other literary schools during the 1880s in L’Anarchie littéraire (1892), a pam-
phlet whose title capitalized on the recent upsurge in anarchist activities in
the early 1890s in France and elsewhere.6 By that time the ever-changeable
Baju had come to advocate socialism; moreover, he doubled-down on his ear-
lier identification of decadence with progressive ideology. “Le Décadent est un
homme de progrès” (“The decadent is a man of progress”), he declares, adding
that the progressive decadent is “careful, economical, workmanlike and regu-
lated in all his habits”. In social terms, most would agree that Baju’s description
encapsulates everything that a decadent is not. But Baju seems to be speaking
in aesthetic terms, describing the decadent writer as a diligent workman be-
cause he now thinks of decadence as aesthetically compatible with socialism.
As such, the decadent finds beauty in goodness (“il a pour idéal le Beau dans le
Bien”) and “il exprime sa pensée en phrases irréductibles et ne voit dans l’art
que la science du nombre le secret de la grande harmonie” (“he expresses his
thoughts in polished sentences, seeing in art the science of number, the secret
of the grand harmony”). Perhaps there is a bit of Edgar Allan Poe in these for-
mulations, but what Baju says also sounds suspiciously like classicism, the his-
torical contrary of decadence. Baju’s remodeled decadent circa 1892 certainly
has the personal qualities associated with the classical temper: he is calm, pos-
sessing “le calme, la placidité d’un sage et la vertu d’un stoïcien” (“the serenity
of a sage and the virtue of a stoic”). It is hard to believe that Baju is not being
ironic in his description of the new decadent, but he may not be, because the
purpose of the description is to denigrate the symbolists, whose character is
said to be the exact opposite of the decadents’ (“Les Symbolistes, en general,
ont un caractère absolument opposé”). (Baju 1904: 7–10)
Even though Baju is making some crude and contradictory distinctions
here, his decadent-socialist critique of the symbolist school makes sense, given
the tendency of a number of symbolist poets to associate themselves with an-
archism. That is, if décadisme and symbolisme are rival literary schools, their
divergent political associations, respectively, with socialism and anarchism re-
inforce the aesthetic rivalry with an ideological one as well. It also makes sense,
then, that Baju would take a dim view of anarchism, which he does in another
section of L’Anarchie littéraire. Anarchists are identified as “those who preach
6 In 1891, the military attack on a May Day demonstration in Fourmies, France, spurred interest
in both social and literary anarchism, the most significant response being the vengeful action
of the anarchist François Ravachol, who in 1892 planted bombs in the homes of the judge and
prosecutor responsible for the sentences leveled against the May Day demonstrators. See
Sonn 1992: 51.
142 Weir
the right to existence and to idleness for all”. Most of their number, according
to Baju, are discontented bourgeoisie whose idea of liberty is “the right to op-
press others in their turn”. They are extreme individualists “who refuse to ac-
knowledge that the egalitarian society of the future must be a machine where
everything will be regulated like the movements of a clock”. So far, the anar-
chists “have made more noise with their cartridges of dynamite than with their
literary works”. That last sentence is remarkable for the way Baju assumes that
anarchism is some kind of unified socio-aesthetic movement whose members
direct their ideological energies to the same goal, achievable either by dyna-
mite or by literature. Baju then offers a list of the best-known anarchists, which
likewise mixes activist anarchists such as Louise Michel and Sébastien Faure
with literary figures mainly affiliated – at the time – with symbolism, such as
André Gide and Zo d’Axa.7 It is a strange list: Baju names forgotten figures on
the margins of anarchism alongside the more considerable Kropotkin and Éli-
sée Reclus; the list also includes some apparent jokes, such as the name ‘Guil-
lame Le Rouge’, who was, as near as I can determine, a Burgundian cleric and
composer of the fifteenth century!8
4 Mirbeau and Masochism
One of the more compelling figures named on Baju’s list is Octave Mirbeau, an
author with clear ties to both decadence and anarchism in the 1890s. The now-
socialistic but still decadent Baju must have considered Mirbeau the wrong
kind of decadent, not only because of Mirbeau’s interest in anarchism, but also
because of his character – since Mirbeau hardly possessed those qualities Baju
7 The complete entry for Anarchistes in Baju 1904: 24–25 is as follows: “Ceux qui prêchent le
droit à l’existence et à la paresse par tous les moyens sont les Anarchistes. La plupart sont des
bourgeois mécontents qui ont plus de rancunes à assouvir que de convictions à faire prévaloir.
Ils demandent la Liberté, c’est-à-dire le droit d’opprimer à leur tour. Individualistes à out-
rance, ils ne veulent pas admettre que la société égalitaire de demain soit une machine où
tout sera réglé comme les mouvements d’une horloge. Jusqu’à présent ils ont fait plus de
bruit avec des cartouches de dynamite qu’avec leurs œuvres littéraires. Les plus connus sont
Louise Michel, Kropotkine, Sébastien Faure, Charles Malato, Paterne Berrichon, Henri Cho-
lin, Octave Mirbeau, Élisée Reclus, Pouget, Veidaux, Émile Gautier, Chincholle, Ernest
Gégout, Alexandre Tisserand, Lucien Mühlfeld, André Gide, Zo d’Axa, Guillaume Le Rouge,
Alain Desveaux, La Purge, chansonnier plein de verve, Michel Zévaco, Hamon.”
8 But Strohm 1993: 425, says that questions persist about “the nationality and even identity” of
this Guillaume Le Rouge. Possibly, the name was a pseudonym of some now-forgotten anar-
chist of the 1890s, although we should not forget that l’esprit de blague was characteristic of
French decadence.
claims for the ‘workmanlike’ socialist-decadent: serenity and stoic virtue. On

the contrary, Mirbeau seems to have been something of a pervert in the mas-
ochistic mold, having “apparently a real need […] for a dominatrix as a psycho-
sexual companion”, according to Emily Apter. Apter understands Mirbeau’s
decadence largely as the product of two vectors, the one sexological, the other
parodic. (Apter 1998: 962, 965, 972) Indeed, the preoccupations of Mirbeau’s
fiction are similar to those of his sexologist contemporaries, Richard von Krafft-
Ebing in particular. As for the parodic dimension, it is hard to tell to what de-
gree Mirbeau, as a second-generation decadent, means to parody such great
precursors as Baudelaire and Huysmans, but there is no question that his work
seems not only second-generation but also second-hand, a kind of decadent
decadence.9 His anarchist sympathies had become well established by the
1890s, despite Mirbeau’s earlier career as a right-wing journalist writing for
anti-Semitic and Bonapartist papers. What prompted the political volte-face
from reactionary nationalism to radical anarchism is not entirely clear, but
even as a rightist Mirbeau abhorred bourgeois values, held anti-clerical views,
and took anti-militaristic stances – all of which would certainly have found
favor among the anarchists. (Apter 1998: 966−967)
Mirbeau’s support of anarchism was certified in 1893 when he authored the
preface to Jean Grave’s La Societé mourante et l’anarchie (The Dying Society
and Anarchy). The title of Grave’s book obviously includes the concept of deca-
dence in the assessment of contemporary society as “dying” or “moribund”. In
addition, the argument that Grave makes depends on the idea that bourgeois
institutions such as property and the family have ceased to develop, and, as
such, “they must be very near their decadence. For it is a law of life that that
which no longer advances perishes and disintegrates in order to give birth to
other organisms having a period of evolution to run through”. Grave even em-
ploys that most classic of decadent formulations based on the example of an-
cient Rome, namely, that a society in decay risks being overrun by barbarians
beyond its borders:
Today we witness the beginning of the decadence of the Latin races,

which will shortly become a death-agony unless a social transformation
occurs in time to rejuvenate the physical and moral decay entailed by the
capitalistic system. Perhaps if the nations continue to intrench them-
selves behind their frontiers our prestige may be taken from us by the
9 For an exploration of “the decadence of decadence” that includes Mirbeau, see Stableford
1990: 43–50.
144 Weir
Slavic races, which appear younger to us having more lately come into the
current of European civilization.
grave 1893 [1899]: 39, 109
The formulation includes the common notion that the role of the barbarian
races, here played by the Slavs, is to rejuvenate the decadent society. Two things
are novel about Grave’s use of the trope: his identification of capitalism as the
cause of both “physical and moral decay”; and his plea for an ideological re-
newal from within in the form of anarchism, rather than a racial rejuvenation
from without in the form of barbarism.
Mirbeau sought to convey this idea of anarchism as a revivifying force for
social renewal in his preface to Grave’s book. He did so by imagining a dialogue
between himself and an imaginary friend who does not understand anarchism
and needs to have the ideology explained to him. Perhaps the most interesting
point of explanation concerns the paradox of anarchism as a humanitarian
ideology whose practitioners sometimes resort to violence against others to
achieve their ends. Mirbeau compares such violence to a terrible rainstorm
that, despite its destructiveness, brings the parched land back to life.10 The
metaphor is simple and straightforward: just as the rainstorm revives the
parched earth, so anarchism restores social justice to a world parched by bour-
geois capitalism. The neo-romantic conception of nature as a revivifying force
is hardly a decadent idea; in fact, the notion illustrates the compromised char-
acter of Mirbeau’s latter-day, second-hand decadence. Huysmans, for instance,
would never think of nature in that way, nor would Baudelaire, for whom
nature was the basis of both evil actions and bad art. Of course, Mirbeau is
speaking as an anarchist in his preface to Grave’s book, which only makes the
present point in a different way: that the anarchist and the decadent may urge
the same social destruction of the bourgeois world, but they diverge in their
cultural preferences. In the case of Mirbeau, there is another decadent, anti-
anarchist element that makes him a most unlikely advocate for social reform,
namely, his psychological predisposition toward sexual perversion.
10 Octave Mirbeau, preface to Jean Grave 1893: vi: “Et puis! … voulez-vous que je vous fasse
une comparaison classique? La terre est desséchée; toutes les petites plantes, toutes les
petites fleurs sont brûlées par un ardent par un persistant soleil de mort; elles s’étiolent,
se penchent, elles vont mourir … Mais voici qu’un nuage noircit l’horizon, il s’avance et
couvre le ciel embrasé. La foudre éclate, et l’eau ruisselle sur la terre ébranlée. Qu’importe
que la foudre ait brisé, çà et là un chêne trop grand, si les petites plantes qui allaient
mourir, les petites plantes abreuvées et rafraîchies, redressent leur tige, et remontent
leurs fleurs dans l’air redevenu calme? … Il ne faut pas trop, voyez-vous, s’émouvoir de la
mort des chênes voraces …”
Like many anti-militaristic anarchists in the last decade of the nineteenth

century, Mirbeau was energized in his opposition to the bourgeois social order
by the Dreyfus Affair. He gave expression to his Dreyfusard sympathies in an
extremely satirical and extremely decadent novel of 1899, Le Jardin des sup-
plices (translated into English as Torture Garden in 1931). Satire is a bit of a
problem for the decadent sensibility anyway, for the very good reason that ef-
fective satire requires the author to take a moral position that serves as the
criterion against which the object of the satire is judged, ridiculed, and under-
mined. A decadent satirist is something of an oxymoron, since decadence
involves an extreme removal from moral norms. That basic problem is com-
pounded in the case of Le Jardin des supplices because the narrator is a de-
praved pervert whose moral compass spins wildly out of control in his pursuit
of both political and sexual satisfaction. Indeed, most critics regard the novel
as a kind of non plus ultra of decadence.11 The decadent narrative begins in
earnest following a ‘frontispiece’ that serves as an authentication device in
which the narrator presents his adventures in the form of a manuscript to an
audience of “moralists, poets, philosophers, and doctors”. This refined group of
men (and they are all men) hold forth on the necessity of murder as the basis
for civilization: without murder, they say, “we would live in complete anarchy”,
since murder is an institution that owes its validity to “the cultivation of laws”.
Granted, sometimes the murderous inclination of men is sublimated or atten-
uated, as when it is given “a legal outlet – whether through industry, colonial
trade, war, hunting, or anti-Semitism – because it is dangerous to abandon
oneself to it immoderately, outside the law”. An “excellent example” of a civi-
lized sublimate of murder is “the Dreyfus affair”: never has “the passion of mur-
der and joy in the manhunt [been] so completely and cynically demonstrated”.
(Mirbeau 1899 [1995]: 18–19, 20, 24) Such passages show why Dreyfus himself
took an interest in Mirbeau’s novel, which he read at Rennes in 1899 while
awaiting his second trial. (Carr 1977: 106)
So far, so good: the anarchist satire of a political system based on laws is
clear and effective, and effective because the anarchist perspective thus far is
not compromised by the decadent sensibility. The status of the satire begins to
change, however, in the first section of the novel proper with the introduction
of the political adventures of the unnamed narrator, when he becomes a pawn
in a political game masterminded by one Eugène Mortain, a government min-
ister who manipulates the narrator into conducting a losing political campaign
solely to advance the career of a more favored and more corrupt candidate.
The narrator responds to the deception by “spending the next three days in the
11 See, for example, Stableford 1990: 48–49.

146 Weir
grossest of debaucheries” (Mirbeau 1899 [1995]: 42) before confronting Mor-

tain, whereupon we learn that our anti-hero is driven less by moral outrage in
his response to his political master than by masochistic attraction: “Faced with
his self-assurance, I gradually lost mine. Rather than what I had vaingloriously
expected, Eugène recovered all his authority over me. […] That was when he
had a sort of imperious charm, a magnetic force which it was difficult, even
when forewarned, to resist.” (Mirbeau 1899 [1995]: 60) Regardless of whether
the narrator’s masochistic sensibility is attributable to some psychopathology
on the part of the author himself (and it likely is), it undermines the political
satire by providing a less-than-moral basis for the narrator’s actions and com-
mentary. This dimension of the narrative is only heightened when Mortain
sends his political protégé on a ‘scientific’ mission to the Far East to get him out
of the way and ensure that he does not expose the rampant corruption of the
French government.
On board the ship to Ceylon the narrator comes under the spell of a woman
named Clara, a monster of depravity by any measure who is precisely the kind
of dominatrix the narrator desires: “For the first time a woman possessed me.
I was her slave, I desired only her.” (Mirbeau 1899 [1995]: 90) The couple even-
tually wind up in China, where, we are informed, the ancient state has devised
methods of torture that far surpass those of the supposedly civilized West, tor-
ture being one measure – like murder – of a civilized society based on law.
Clara delights in feeding prisoners rotten meat, sold by vendors outside the
prison walls who hawk their wares by equating rankness and rank: “You’ll not
find anything better anywhere. […] No one has anything more rotten!” (Mir-
beau 1899 [1995]: 112) If Mirbeau means to satirize the treatment of Dreyfus
and other political prisoners in this section, that meaning is all but undetect-
able because the action is so layered with sadism and other forms of perver-
sion. A good example of the way the satire is overwhelmed by perversity is the
Chinese torture master’s explanation of the “extremely beautiful” death expe-
rienced by prisoners who undergo the same rat-torture that one of Sigmund
Freud’s patients so memorably described, (Freud 1909 [1955]: 166) whereby a
kind of pot containing a rat is strapped to the buttocks of a prisoner; when the
rat is threatened with a hot iron it seeks escape by burrowing into the prison-
er’s anus. The Chinese torture-master describes the punishment as a “return to
the classical tradition”, and when the judges reject it he says their action
amounts to a “characteristic symptom of our decline”. (Mirbeau 1899 [1995]:
157, 158) Here, the most brutal form of sadism is subjected to the conventional
antinomy of classicism and decadence, and while there is undoubtedly some
anarchist satire at work involving the arbitrary ruthlessness of justice systems
in general, that dimension is hardly the first thing the reader notices. On the
contrary, there is a real delectation of decadent sexuality here, a sense of per-

version for perversion’s sake that undermines and overrides the moral critique
of government and renders the anarchist satire moot.
5 Wilde and Aristocracy
While Mirbeau may be an extreme case, his work illustrates the problem of
reconciling anarchist politics and decadent culture. The life and work of Oscar
Wilde, likewise, illustrate that problem in a different way – less extreme, cer-
tainly, but no less insistent. Like Mirbeau, Wilde maintained an interest in an-
archism, but he did not have the kind of day-to-day contact with his anarchist
contemporaries that Mirbeau assuredly did. The reason for Wilde’s relative
lack of involvement with actual anarchists, and what complicates his interest
in anarchism generally, is his removal from the working class. Despite his po-
litical status as an Irishman (or perhaps because of it), Wilde was profoundly
attracted to the British aristocracy. His interest in the working class seems to
have been limited to occasional sexual encounters with bootblacks, stable
hands, and other proletarian types, behavior that is itself a variant of aristo-
cratic taste. Such behavior led to his undoing when the threatened testimony
of lower-class rent boys caused Wilde to withdraw his libel suit against the
Marquess of Queensberry – who had left a card at Wilde’s club reading: “For
Oscar Wilde, posing Somdomite [sic].” The Marquess took action against Wilde
to protect his son Lord Alfred Douglas, with whom the aesthete had engaged in
a long-running homosexual affair.12 Many ambiguities attach to Wilde’s class-
consciousness, to be sure, but his love for the spoiled aristocrat, his member-
ship in gentlemen’s clubs, and other forms of social behavior that Wilde
evinced are hardly consonant with the kind of working-class allegiances that
inform the anarchist movement in the late nineteenth century. That said, there
is no question that the faux-aristocratic Wilde found anarchism attractive.13
12 For an account of Wilde’s trials, see Ellmann 1988: 435–478.

13 In 1886 Wilde signed a letter of support for the anarchists wrongly accused in the Haymar-
ket Bombing in Chicago. In 1892 he posted £100 bail for the Scottish poet John Barlas, who
had been arrested for firing a revolver outside the Speaker’s House in the Palace of West-
minster, claiming anarchism as his motivation. In 1893 Wilde responded to a ‘Referendum
artistique et sociale’ in a French magazine by saying, enigmatically, “Autrefois, j’etais
poète et tyran. Maintenant je suis artiste et anarchiste.” (“Once I was a poet and a tyrant.
Now I am an artist and an anarchist.”) The following year he told an interviewer, “We are
all of us more or less Socialists now-a-days […]. I think I am rather more than a Socialist.
I am something of an anarchist, I believe, but of course, the dynamite policy is very absurd
148 Weir
In a way, the conflict of aristocratic and anarchistic sentiment is on display

in Wilde’s very first play, Vera, or The Nihilists (published 1880, premiered 1883).
Vera Sabouroff, the title character, is based on one Vera Zassoulich, who in 1878
tried to assassinate the police chief of St. Petersburg for imprisoning her nihil-
ist lover. The story was widely reported in the British press and evidently
furnished Wilde with inspiration for the play, (Ellmann 1988: 122) set in an ill-
defined period of nineteenth-century Russia. The drama concerns the efforts
of a group of nihilists to assassinate the oppressive czar and establish a repub-
lican (!) form of government. These nihilists recite an oath of allegiance that
appears to be partly based on Bakunin’s Catéchisme révolutionnaire (Revolu-
tionary Catechism, 1866), and Vera, the peasant woman who is one of the lead-
ers of the nihilists, expresses the kind of pan-Slavic solidarity identified with
Bakunin. This is not to say that there is anything like a consistent sense of an-
archism or of any other political ideology in the play, and the reason for this
ideological confusion inheres in the role the aristocracy plays in the nihilist
revolution. Indeed, one of the members of the nihilist band is none other than
the czarevitch Alexis, son of the czar and heir to the throne. When his father is
assassinated by his fellow nihilists, Alexis assumes the crown so he can insti-
tute republican reforms. For fear of these reforms, the new czar’s Prime Minis-
ter, the decadent aristocrat Prince Paul Maraloffski, switches sides and offers
his services to the nihilists, who draw lots to determine who will be charged
with murdering the new czar. The task falls to Vera, who was in love with Alexis
when he was a nihilist, but now that he is the czar she is bound by her nihilist
oath to stab him to death – a conflict, to be sure, which she resolves by stabbing
herself instead. She dies in the arms of Alexis, proclaiming with her dying
breath, “I have saved Russia!” (Wilde 1880 [1989]: 688) Any reader of the play
might be forgiven for wondering, ‘How, exactly?’
The wildly improbable plot of the play follows from its wildly improbable
politics, wherein both nihilists and czarists entertain the prospect of republi-
can government. The sense of ideological confusion is encapsulated by the
claim that “in good democracy, every man should be an aristocrat”. (Wilde 1880
[1989]: 665) The words are put into the mouth of a character, of course, but
such paradoxical usage of political terminology is also typical of Wilde himself,
and never more so than in his 1891 essay, The Soul of Man under Socialism.
There, Wilde seems to understand socialism as a precondition for anarchism,
though he does not use the term, opting for ‘individualism’ instead. In any
indeed.” See Ellmann 1988: 290; Holland/Hart-Davis 2000: 511–512; “Referendum artistique
et sociale” in L’Ermitage (July 1893): 20, quoted by McGuinness 2015: 133, and Ellmann
1988: 290–312.
event, the essay was regarded as broadly anarchistic in spirit by well-known

anarchists such as Emma Goldman and Gustav Landauer (who translated the
essay into German in 1904), (Rose 2002: 39; Ferguson 2011: 191) even though that
spirit is compromised by Wilde’s persistently aristocratic sensibility. Wilde
does sound the anarchistic note when he says that “[t]he form of government
that is most suitable to the artist is no government at all”, but in the same para-
graph he reveals a certain aristocratic disdain for any member of the public
who is not an artist, a sentiment expressed in various formulations, such as:
“One who is an Emperor and King may stoop down to pick up a brush for a
painter, but when the democracy stoops down it is merely to throw mud.” (Wil-
de 1891 [1989]: 1098–1099) Elsewhere, Wilde sounds the artist-aristocrat note
when he observes that “art should never try to be popular. The public should
try to make itself artistic”. (Wilde 1891 [1989]: 1090) The sentiment obviates the
kind of vernacular art that working-class anarchists relished; indeed, the soci-
ety Wilde imagines seems to be an aristocratic utopia populated by artists
alone where the working class has ceased to exist. Instead, Wilde envisiones a
world where machines, not laborers, do all the useful work on which a func-
tioning society depends, thereby ensuring individuals the freedom they re-
quire to make beautiful art. Moreover, while the ideological basis for this world
may be anti-government, it is not anti-statist. Wilde’s anarcho-artistic utopia
depends upon the administrative operations of a state devoted entirely to serv-
ing the practical needs of the individual: “The State is to make what is useful.
The individual is to make what is beautiful.” (Wilde 1891 [1989]: 1088) How
much of this sort of political fantasizing is deliberately playful on Wilde’s part
is hard to say, but my claim that the anarchistic sentiments of this most famous
of all decadents is compromised by an aristocratic sensibility finds support
elsewhere in Wilde’s work, notably in The Rise of Historical Criticism (1908),
where we read that “landed aristocracy and moneyed interests” are “institu-
tions in which the vulgar see only barriers to Liberty but which are indeed the
only possible defenses” against tyranny. (Wilde 1908 [1989]: 1130) Granted, this
apology for aristocracy occurs early in Wilde’s career (the essay was probably
written in 1879), but for that very reason it serves as a forecast of one of Wilde’s
more persistent political attitudes.
That attitude became unsustainable in 1895, when the Crown convicted
Wilde of the charge of ‘gross indecency’ for engaging in sexual relations with
other men and sentenced him to two years hard labor in Reading Gaol, the
maximum sentence for that particular crime. It is this terrible fact more than
any other that resulted in the retrospective assessment of Wilde’s political at-
titudes as anarchistic. Here was a man who had expressed an interest in anar-
chism and had written an essay advocating the abolition of government for the
150 Weir
sake of art, and was now imprisoned by the state. As Deaglám Ó Donghaile
explains, Wilde’s “persecution was interpreted by anarchists as an example of
state oppression”. And just as “his plight in court seemed to them to mirror
their own political struggle”, his “rebellious individualism was read by
anarchists as a model for their own anti-authoritarianism”. (Ó Donghaile 2011:
164–165) Imprisonment, in other words, served as validation of Wilde’s anar-
chistic inclinations and made it easier for later anarchists to claim the deca-
dent as one of their own, once he joined the ranks of Jean Grave, Alexander
Berkman, Miguel Almereyda, and countless other anarchists who had been
incarcerated by the state for their political actions or beliefs.
6 Conclusion
Each of these three cases confirms the difficulty of reconciling decadence and
anarchism. Baju used the language of radical politics to promote a cultural
agenda even as he denigrated political radicals – such as Louise Michel – who
did not share that agenda. Mirbeau attempted to use decadence in support of
anarchism, but the intensely perverse and immoral nature of that decadence
ultimately defeated the attempt. Wilde imagined an extremely egoistic form of
anarchism that never quite escaped from his decadent attachment to the Brit-
ish upper class. Baju’s literary careerism, Mirbeau’s sexual depravity, and
Wilde’s aristocratic posturing are all easily adaptable to the kind of aesthetic
individualism that decadence involves. And, yes, Baju, Mirbeau, and Wilde
maintained an elitist distance from the norms and values of the bourgeois
world that may well have harmonized with the more populist disdain for that
same world on the part of the anarchists; but, no, the kind of reactionary, anti-
democratic, faux-aristocratic values the decadents defended in their art proved
to be the obverse of anarchism. And while it may be true that the aesthetic
individualism decadence entails harmonizes with the egoistic strain of anar-
chism, the point only reinforces a major conflict in the ideology of anarchism
itself, namely, the problem of reconciling individual needs with collectivist
goals. Despite its aesthetic appeal, decadence only makes this problem more
acute. In the end, the decadents and the anarchists were not really speaking
two different dialects of the same cultural language: they were speaking two
different languages to two vastly different audiences. However complementary
their politics might have been, their respective critiques of the bourgeois order
proceeded from different social assumptions that found expression in clearly
divergent cultural forms.
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Chapter 6
‘We Are Too Far Ahead to be Understood’: Vanguard

Creation in Fin de Siècle Anarchism
Carolin Kosuch
Abstract
This chapter examines German-Jewish anarchist Gustav Landauer’s social critiques

and his anarchism, which grew in part from artist associations such as the Poet’s Circle
of Berlin-Friedrichshagen and the Neue Gemeinschaft (New Community). They expe-
rienced a heyday during the last few decades of the nineteenth century just like many
other artistic and social reform movements across Europe. The New Community in
particular combined elements of the life reform and garden city movements, along
with Nietzschean philosophy and its own independent strand of socialism. In the few
years of its existence, it became a meeting place for poets, vanguard artist-anarchists,
and bohemians. Landauer adopted the community’s mix of nostalgia and eager antici-
pation of the future, which shaped its philosophy, festival culture, and everyday life. He
expanded upon this twofold longing in his future political works, many of them also
influenced by Fritz Mauthner’s philosophy of language. Landauer’s notion of revolu-
tion, his theories on libertarian socialism, and his Sozialistischer Bund (Socialist
League, founded in 1908) grasped the present as merely transitional: to him, it meant a
time of new beginning, yet this beginning originated in the past and was directed to-
wards the future. Hence the vanguard somewhat paradoxically stretched out in two
contradictory temporal directions. The chapter attempts to understand this specific
concept of time in Landauer’s writings, which included his thoughts on anarchism,
Jewish revival, messianism, and the artistic avant-gardes.
Following a series of revolutionary uprisings in Germany at the conclusion of

the First World War, a short-lived anarchist Bavarian Council Republic was
founded in Munich in early April 1919. (Linse 1969a; Grunberger 1973; Mitchell
2015) Among its leading members were the well-known political writer and
philosopher Gustav Landauer (1870−1919), the bohemian and author Erich
Mühsam (1878−1934), and the future playwright Ernst Toller (1893−1939) – all
three German Jews, political radicals, and anarchists. (Angress 1971; Kosuch
2014) The new republic’s situation was certainly peculiar since none of the

154 Kosuch
leading anarchist insurgents of 1919 possessed sufficient political experience to

guide it. The 49-year-old Landauer in particular, with his famously elaborate
writing style and his sophisticated treatises on libertarian socialism and the
anarchist revolution, was faced with political realities he was not prepared for
when he was appointed provisional people’s delegate for public enlighten-
ment. Still, he was convinced he would work “für das Heil und die Rettung der
Menschheit” (“for the salvation of mankind”) in this fateful historical moment.
(Buber 1929, vol. 2: 414−415)1 “The minister of culture”, one of Landauer’s adher-
ents wrote in an apologetic tone, “has duties that differ from those of the free-
lance writer and opposition politician. The more ambitious his visions, the
more obvious his (temporary) concessions stand out in the political day-to-
day”. (Fidelis 1920: 581)2
Landauer’s program for a radical redesign of Bavaria’s educational and cul-
tural landscape mandated the immediate separation of church and state in its
first paragraph, with the following section dedicated to the arts. According to
Landauer, architecture, monuments, and public buildings, complemented by
paintings and sculpture, should depict the new era mankind had reached. Art
should be brought closer to the people with the help of state acquisitions of
art, new museums, and touring exhibitions, along with a national theater
(which would be under the supervision of an academy and offer free admis-
sion to the public) and a number of cooperatively organized private theaters
throughout the country. (Fidelis 1920) Art was a crucial element in Landauer’s
vision for a revolutionized society; he also emphasized the role drawing would
play in primary education in the third section of his manifesto. Yet there was
no time to specify or finalize these thoughts on art’s role in a post-revolutionary
world. The Council Republic was smashed, and Landauer’s violent death in
May 1919 prevented any further discussion of that particular topic, let alone
steps towards its political realization.
Against the backdrop of such a radical attempt to redesign the existing poli-
tics of culture, this chapter aims to shed light on the character of Landauer’s
anarchism, its relationship to art in a wider sense and in particular the claims
made by the avant-gardes of his time. It will trace how Landauer’s theories in-
terwove writing and revolution, art and anarchism, and culture and politics,
1 Unlike Mühsam and Landauer, the young Ernst Toller had been a soldier and therefore had
faced the realities of the war on the front. His duties during the Bavarian Council Republic
included the building of a Red Army; he was also appointed Chairman of the Council. Erich
Mühsam, head of the division for Hungary and Russia, had already been arrested on April 13,
1919, and thus was cut off from any further direct political influence early on.
2 If not indicated otherwise, all translations are the author’s.
We Are Too Far Ahead to be Understood 155
and look for the influences and the peculiarities of the vanguard3 in his anar-
chist philosophy, building upon seminal works on the study of the avant-garde.
(Poggioli 1962 [1968]; Bürger 1974 [1984]; Asholt/Fähnders 2000) In doing so,
this chapter will begin by examining Landauer’s early social critiques and his
budding anarchism, planted and nourished by artistic associations such as the
Poet’s Circle of Berlin-Friedrichshagen, which formed around 1890, and the
Neue Gemeinschaft (New Community). (Bruns 1998; Cepl-Kaufmann/
Kauffeldt 1998) The latter, founded in 1900 by naturalist writers and literary
critics Heinrich and Julius Hart, combined elements of the life reform and gar-
den city movements, along with Nietzschean philosophy and an independent
take on socialism. In the few years of its existence, it became a meeting place
for poets, artist-anarchists, and bohemians. Landauer adopted the communi-
ty’s mix of nostalgia and eager anticipation of the future, which shaped its phi-
losophy, festival culture, and everyday life. As the following passages under-
line, he expanded upon these contradictory longings in his future political
works: His notion of revolution, his theories on libertarian socialism, and his
Sozialistischer Bund (Socialist League, founded in 1908) characterized the
present as merely transitional: to him, it meant a time of new beginning, yet
this beginning originated in the past and was directed towards the future.
Hence the vanguard somewhat paradoxically stretched out in two contradic-
tory temporal directions. This chapter attempts to understand this specific
concept of time in Landauer’s writings, which included his thoughts on anar-
chism, Jewish revival, messianism, (Löwy 1992; Marchand 2010; Dubbels 2011)
and the artistic avant-gardes.
1 Radical Poets, Socially Critical Literature
It is often overlooked that the political anarchist Gustav Landauer started as a

writer and literary critic.4 Coming from a bourgeois German-Jewish family that
attached great importance to education and literature, he was already drafting
literary works as an adolescent, with titles such as Sei ein Mensch (Be a Human,
1885) and Kain (Cain, 1885). In both of these early attempts, the young L andauer
3 The notion ʻvanguardʼ is used throughout this chapter, describing and concretizing Landau-
er’s conviction to actually be a pioneer himself initiating a revolutionary change with his
trailblazing anarchism. It is a term with a dynamic, awakening and political connotation he
introduced in his writings at the turn of the century to epitomize a moving principle of
the radical new, not restricted to the arts.
4 On Landauer as a writer, see, e.g., Witte 1997, and Kaiser 2014. For his book reviews, see Lan-
dauer 2013.
156 Kosuch
elaborated on his source material − which he borrowed from Schiller, Goethe,

and other classical sources − with radical implications. His Cain, for instance,
challenges God-given values and norms, along with those of his family. He
breaks with conventions and reclaims Paradise from God, walking the earth as
a lonesome rebel. Sei ein Mensch questions the necessity of authority for the
functioning of society and broaches the topic of tyrannicide; one of its central
themes is freedom’s role as a cornerstone for human existence.
This period of sociocritical literary production continued during the years
of Landauer’s studies of German philology, English, philosophy, and econom-
ics in Heidelberg, Berlin, and Strasbourg. Lost plays such as Hilde Hennings
(1890) attack the bigoted morals of the petty bourgeoisie and celebrate urban
liberalism, while Ein Knabenleben (A Boy’s Life, 1891), based on Landauer’s
diary entries, blames disingenuous bourgeois Christian morality and the sen-
sationalism of the media for the fate of an unmarried pregnant maid. In Die
Geschwister (The Siblings, 1890), Landauer even went so far as to depict inces-
tuous love between siblings, who commit suicide due to the social constraints
placed upon them. “Im übrigen bin ich nicht mehr imstande, die Litteratur zu
betrachten ohne das übrige Gesamtleben der Menschen, vor allem das öffentli-
che Leben” (“I’m no longer capable of grasping literature without considering
human existence in its entirety, especially the public life”)5 he confessed to a
friend on his critical stance. His view of literature exceeded any mere aesthetic
approach; rather, it revealed the influence of Ibsen, just as Landauer’s novels
Der Todesprediger (Preacher of Death, 1893) and Arnold Himmelheber (1903)6
show obvious signs of his reading of Nietzsche and Schopenhauer. (Kaiser
2014; Kosuch 2015: 80−111)
The protagonist of his Preacher of Death, a man named Karl Starkblom who
has become disillusioned by both social democracy and his fellow human be-
ings, was a manifestation of Landauer’s own views when he gave up his studies
in search of a way to have a greater social impact that paralleled the anti-
academic, anti-institutional stance of the avant-gardes of his time. (Delf 1994:
1−2)
Today I turn to a different audience, today I speak to the most dubious

and questionable kind of people, to the dreamers and thinkers of the
bourgeois world. They don’t spearhead the bourgeoisie, they are just
isolated beings who stand apart, here and there, […] I call upon this
youth − self-declared rubbish and fin de siècle − but I see a lot worth
5 International Institute of Social History Amsterdam, Landauer Papers, no. 100, ‘Jugend-
schriften’, letter of Landauer to his friend Alfred Moos, January 25, 1892.
6 ‘Himmelheber’ literally means ‘elevate the sky’.
s aving in them; I’d like to collect them in the field of future; in the camp
of the proletariat; I want to wed the highest, almost decadent culture
with the young, powerful force of a storming forward recovery.
landauer 1893 [2014]: 140−141
The presence of an “aesthetics of resistance” (Cepl-Kaufmann/Kauffeldt 1998:

115) in Landauer’s early literary works was no accident. While studying in Ber-
lin, he encountered influential members of the Friedrichhagener poet’s circle,
such as Wilhelm Bölsche, Bernhard Kampffmeyer, John Henry Mackay, Wil-
helm Spohr, and Bruno Wille. These thinkers advocated a naturalism that com-
bined radical socialist and anarchist positions, neo-romantic anti-capitalism,
and a critical (though ambiguous) view of modern civilization with unconven-
tional forms of cohabitation and science-based literary production. They dis-
cussed authors such as Nietzsche, Wagner, and Max Stirner, and studied and
emulated contemporary approaches of community-building, such as the gar-
den city movement, an attempt to overcome the narrowness, dirt, traffic, and
pace of the modern metropolis. (Kampffmeyer 1907) The circle hoped to form
an alliance between workers and poets, free the people through education, and
guide them towards self-emancipation with the help of reason, individuality,
and the development of their own skills unrestrained by the norms of author-
ity. (Wille 1894: 395−399; Bölsche 1909: 245−259) These goals furthered the role
of the poet in politics: the artist would stand by the proletariat, but remain in-
dependent. With the specific responsibilities foreseen for these artists, they
hoped to re-establish their privileged status, lest they lose influence to the ris-
ing capitalist bourgeois culture. (Fähnders 2000)
Landauer moved to Friedrichshagen in 1897 after staying for extended peri-
ods of time with the poets and anarchists who gathered there. He had studied
Stirner and highly appreciated Proudhon for his economic theory, which was
based on mutualism, association, and federalism, assuring the individual
worker a legitimate role in a decentralized society. (Lunn 1973: 216−222) Fried-
richshagen seemed a laboratory to promote these ideas.7 Looking back on his
youth, Landauer concluded:
The reason for my opposition to society, as well as the reason for my con-
tinued dreams and my outrage, was not class identity or even compas-
sion, but the permanent collision of romantic desire with philistine
7 Landauer founded the cooperative society Befreiung (Liberation) to organize workers’ con-
sumption outside the capitalist system in an autonomous, self-determined way. See Landau-
er 1895b.
158 Kosuch
limitation. This is why I was (without knowing the word at the time) an
anarchist before I was a socialist […]. In our times, an artist is defined as
someone who has a vision; someone with visions and rhythms that form
a separate inner world; someone who can manifest this world on the out-
side; someone who can create a new, an exemplary, his own world
through imagination and creative force; someone whose ideas leave his
inner being like Pallas Athena left Jupiter’s head, someone who then, like
an Italian trader of plaster figures, packs the result in a basket and hawks
it in ‘the other world’, ordinary reality, where he sells the figures of his
dreams and sacred desires to the goblins and caricatures of his artistic
mind, all the while advertising, calculating, haggling, arguing, cheating.
This is the contemporary artist’s mixture of detachment and participa-
tion. But mine is another: I want to use reality to create; I want art to be
the process of imaginative and communal social transformation, rather
than the expression of individual yearning.
landauer 1913c [2010]: 64−658
From this passage and his own literary oeuvre, it is clear that Landauer thought
of art in social dimensions. Art, in his view, must not serve merely itself, and
the artist was advised to avoid the capitalist system of producing, advertising,
and selling. Creativity should work to change social realities, transforming the
culture into a new, less constrained one. (Grimminger 2000) In Landauer’s
opinion, art should by all means evoke aesthetic impressions; but it should not
simply entertain, nor distract the audience from life’s contradictions and hard-
ships; on the contrary, art should reveal life’s difficulties and depth. (Landauer
1889/1890 [2013]: 70−71)
With this particular understanding of art, Landauer criticized bourgeois so-
ciety and attributed to the arts a wider sphere of influence, believing them to
have a closer connection to life and its realities. His claims, to a certain extent,
echoed those of the avant-gardes of his time:
The European avant-garde movements can be defined as an attack on the

status of art in bourgeois society. What is negated is not an earlier form of
art (a style) but art as an institution that is unassociated with the life
praxis of men. When the avant-gardistes demand that art become practi-
cal once again, they do not mean that the contents of works of art should
be socially significant. The demand is not raised at the level of the con-
tents of individual works. Rather, it directs itself to the way art functions
8 See also Poggioli 1962 [1968]: 30.

in society, a process that does as much to determine the effect that works
have as does the particular content.
bürger 1974 [1984]: 49
Like the contemporary avant-gardes, Landauer was passionately in favor of sci-

entifically based innovation, intertwined with an anti-traditional and anti-
bourgeois attitude. As with the avant-garde artists, he longed for a constant
protest that would extend into everyday life and lead to a revolution, destroy-
ing the old and making way for the new. And like many contemporary avant-
garde movements, Landauer’s anarchism was permeated by a certain elitism,
driven by the idea that geniuses (the chosen few) would guide the masses.
(Poggioli 1962 [1968]: 39, 137−140; Böhringer 1978: 98)
Thus, avant-gardists and anarchists such as Landauer were in many ways
closely aligned in terms of their aims and focal points. (Poggioli 1962 [1968]: 56)
Yet as Bürger’s observation on the social significance of art in the avant-gardes
suggests, Landauer had a different set of priorities: while art could provoke and
shock, it also had to take a stand against social injustice and oppression. In
Landauer’s view, art was intended to educate and politicize the audience, and
to inspire the spectator to work for a higher and better vision of human society.
In short, while the artist did not necessarily have to become a political
revolutionary, (Poggioli 1962 [1968]: 127) the revolutionary writing about the
arts – without making use of aesthetical tools such as playfulness, humor or
irony – certainly had to. (Grimminger 2000: 440) However clear Landauer’s
preferences seemed, he never decided entirely for one possibility or the other,
political revolution or art, for his persona or in his oeuvre. Both remained part
of his anarchism, and were sometimes closely linked, sometimes more sepa-
rated. This is strikingly illustrated by the fact that, before following Kurt Eis-
ner’s call for the “Umbildung der Seelen” (“change of souls”) in the Bavarian
revolution, (Buber 1929, vol. 2: 296) Landauer had already packed his things to
move to Düsseldorf. Having accepted an invitation to become editor of the
theater magazine Masken, he was also going to work as dramatic adviser of the
modern experimental theater. In that particular and crucial moment, he opted
for political revolution, but the arts, as we have seen, continued to play a major
role in his life.
During his Berlin years, Landauer was already active in both politics and
arts. It was his belief that social questions should be cultural and not material,
that art needed to become a part of life and shock with its imagery. In line with
his core belief that the artist was required to become a prophet for the coming
generation, (Landauer 1892) he got involved with the Freie Volksbühne (the
People’s Theater, founded in 1890). Its major goal was to bring socially critical
160 Kosuch
theatrical material (Büchner, Hauptmann, Holz, Ibsen, and Tolstoy) closer to

the people, regardless of their income and status – and not only through per-
formances, but also by introductions, public lectures, and annotations.9 He
joined an exodus from this enterprise when radicals such as Wille decided the
People’s Theater was not revolutionary enough, and a New People’s Theater
(1892) needed to be started, one more seriously committed to the truth and
even more focused on addressing workers, their needs, and their emancipa-
tion. (Sprengel 1990; Davies 1999)
The political branch of the people’s theater initiative, the Association of In-
dependent Socialists (1891), adopted a confrontational attitude towards the
German Social Democratic Party, its attempt to merge parliamentarianism and
socialism, and its efforts to anchor socialism within the center of society fol-
lowing the annulment of Bismarck’s Anti-Socialist Laws. (Bock 1971; Scherer
1974; Müller 1975; Kosuch 2015: 152−174) Landauer, together with Kampffmeyer,
Wille, and others, stood in the vanguard of the new association and supported
the Manifesto that was made public by its adherents. (Siebener Kommission
1891; Van den Berg/Fähnders 2009: 2−3) The Association of Independent So-
cialists would be formative for him, offering him the opportunity to practice
delivering lectures and political speeches, as he did as the delegate for the Lon-
don International Worker’s Day of 1893 and in the anarchist branch of Zurich’s
International Socialist Congress the same year. It also increased his opportuni-
ties to write political essays by granting him editorship of the monthly Der So-
zialist, where he dealt with the foundations of anarchism − a biased and
charged term he frequently replaced by ‘socialism’10 − and published works by
Proudhon, Marx, Stirner, Kropotkin, and other seminal theorists. His affiliation
with the radical opposition pushed him further into anarchist positions, and
furnished him with a rebellious stance that would win him two prison sen-
tences: “Anarchism is the goal that we pursue: the absence of domination and
of the state; the freedom of the individual. Socialism is the means by which we
want to reach and secure this freedom: solidarity, sharing, and cooperative la-
bor.” (Landauer 1895a [2010]: 70)
But Landauer’s anarchism was not confined to the political or cultural
sphere. At the turn of the century he became acquainted with Fritz Mauthner
9 The People’s Theater was organized as a closed society to circumvent strict Prussian cen-
sorship. A leading group (comprising Landauer) made decisions concerning the reper-
toire. Members could acquire season tickets at a low price (50 Pfennigs per performance),
even while the theater operated without a building of its own in order to save on ex-
penses; each member obtained tickets for three performances. Thousands of subscribers
provided the theater’s financial foundation.
10 See also Landauer 1895a [2010].
(1849−1923), Berlin’s renowned theater and literature critic and the author of
numerous novels, as the latter was in a state of crisis over the supposed shal-
lowness of his previous belletristic works and about to write his magnum opus,
an explication of his philosophy and a critique of language. Mauthner sup-
ported the young and impetuous Landauer, offering him the editorship of his
Beiträge zu einer Kritik der Sprache (Critique of Language), which would be
published in three extensive volumes from 1901 to 1902.
Landauer viewed the society, culture, and political landscape of the Wilhel-
minian Era as deficient and in urgent need of improvement, and Mauthner
leaned in a similar direction while focusing on language. Its grammar, its words
and structure, he complained, would hinder true understanding of the world
and of human nature, as they inevitably carried outdated meanings and thus
filtered and limited human perception. The structure of human reality, its no-
tions of time, space, and existence, Mauthner (who was close friends with the
philosopher and physicist Ernst Mach) emphasized, is based completely on
false assumptions, as it relies on building blocks that stem from language. Man
created language, but eventually forgot the artificial origin of that creation.
Now language is taken for something given and eternal; and in continuously
using language as the foundation of the experienced world, people perpetuate
the power of its terms, structure, and conventions. Caught in tautologies and
condemned to perceive the same thing again and again in an everlasting pro-
cess, Mauthner prescribed radical steps to relieve mankind: Language had to
be freed from its burden, broken up, and through poetry and contemplation in
mysticism and silence, undergo a rejuvenation beyond words and syntax, be-
yond laws, rules, and inherited meanings. (Mauthner 1901/1902; Kosuch 2015)
Mauthner’s work was vividly echoed in Landauer’s own reasoning. For the
anarchist, the basic assumptions of the Critique of Language were an inspira-
tion, restarting him creatively and allowing him to build something new out of
the smashed reality he wished to alter no less than Mauthner. In his treatise
Skepsis und Mystik. Versuche im Anschluss an Mauthners Sprachkritik (Skepti-
cism and Mysticism, 1903), he stated:
Language and intellect won’t bring the world closer to us, won’t transform
the world in us. But as a speechless part of nature man will be transformed,
because he will touch upon everything. Here lies the starting point of mys-
ticism […] Past, present, and future as well as here and there are just one
eternal stream flowing from infinity to infinity. […] there are no isolated
bodies, […] no division between cause and effect. […] Art […] has to re-
place science and its so-called positive achievements. We can’t search for
the eternal truth anymore since we have realized the impossibility of
162 Kosuch
c onquering the world with words and abstractions. […] The intermin-
gling of the unspeakable streaming from different directions right to us −
the rhythm of time, the impression of space − the liquidation of every-
thing real in elements of a dream: […] this is the spirit in which the critique
of language leads a new path to word art.
landauer 1903 [2011]: 46−87
While working on Mauthner’s manuscript, Landauer linked the temporal and

spatial concepts present in the Critique of Language to his own anarchic vision
of community, and gave them a positive direction.11 But Skepticism and Mysti-
cism also revealed the impact of the Neue Gemeinschaft (New Community), in
which Landauer was an active member for some time around 1900. Due to
these influences and because of the heavy police suppression of the anarchist
landscape, Landauer drifted away from the proletariat as the target for his lib-
erating credo. Instead, he turned to the circle of artists and philosophers sur-
rounding him, who were like him in search of a complete cultural and lifestyle
reform. The socio-critical and politicized ‘pushing into life’ anarchist stance
now took an inward direction, turning towards the self and a rather abstract,
generalized need for liberation. Heinrich and Julius Hart, naturalist poets, liter-
ary critics, and the founders of the community, preached a new esoteric,
aestheticized religiosity in which the artist appeared as a quasi-divine, avant-
gardist herald. Their house was an open space for artists and bon vivants: they
conceptualized it as a community united by cooperative consumption and a
unique festival culture that celebrated Giordano Bruno, Goethe, and Shake-
speare, but also beauty, fulfillment, and death, all flourishing in an atmosphere
uniting nature and culture. Erich Mühsam, Martin Buber (1878−1965), Else
Lasker Schüler, the painter Fidus, and many others gathered on Berlin’s periph-
ery to attend the community’s forest theater and public lectures on Tolstoy,
11 The scriptures of the medieval theologian and mystic Meister Eckhart, whom Landauer
had studied and translated into standard German for Mauthner, were a major source of
inspiration for these concepts. Landauer even adopted Eckhart’s transgressing temporal
categories-idea – “und darum bin ich Ursache meiner selbst nach meinem Wesen, das
ewig ist, und nach meinem Wesen, das zeitlich ist. Und darum bin ich geboren und kann
nach der Weise meiner Geburt, die ewig ist, niemals ersterben. Nach der Weise meiner
ewigen Geburt bin ich ewiglich gewesen und bin jetzt und soll ewiglich bleiben. Was ich
nach der Zeit bin, das soll sterben und soll zunichte werden, denn es ist des Tages; darum
muß es mit der Zeit verderben. In meiner Geburt wurden alle Dinge geboren, und ich war
Ursache meiner selbst und aller Dinge” (“I am the cause of myself as an eternal being. My
birth is eternal. I have always been eternal, I am eternal now, and I will remain eternal”) –
as the opening quotation for his essay Durch Absonderung zur Gemeinschaft (Through
Separation to Community). (Landauer 1900 [2010]: 94)
messianism, and the communards’ role as an impetus for social change.

(Fähnders 1987: 171−187; Bruns 1998) With its philosophy, the community un�-
doubtedly inspired Landauer’s monist stance.12 The Hart brothers postulated
that dichotomies such as man and nature, the material and immaterial world,
time and space, let alone word and thought were not actually separate but
whole. They made it the responsibility of the artist to lead a new creation, to
offer a new interpretation and to set new meaning. (Cepl-Kaufmann 2005) In
his leading essay for the community’s magazine, Landauer outlined his posi-
tion between anarchism and vanguardism as follows:
For those of us who see ourselves as part of the vanguard, the distance to
the rest of humankind has become enormous. […] One must understand
who really belongs to the vanguard. It is not a matter of knowledge or
ability, but of perspective and orientation. The social position of the mass
individual derives from a heritage that determines his being from the
outside as well as from within […]. Authority, custom, morality, time, and
class define his existence. Nowadays, however, there is a young genera-
tion that has become skeptical of tradition. We can categorize its mem-
bers if we want to: then we have socialists and anarchists, atheists and
gypsies, nihilists and romantics. […] I was among those who had gone to
the masses. Now I and my comrades have returned. […] We have come to
a realization that took pains to reach: we are too far ahead to be under-
stood. We have developed a sense of clarity that people in their everyday
confusion cannot grasp. Our souls cannot tolerate this confusion any lon-
ger. The conclusion is that we must cease descending to the masses. In-
stead, we must precede them. […] Away from the state, as far as we can
get! Away from goods and commerce! Away from the philistines! Let us –
us few who feel like heirs to the millennia, who feel simple and eternal,
who are Gods – form a small community in joy and activity.
landauer 1900 [2010]: 95−96
These basic findings on the vanguard transgressing temporal and spatial cate-
gories had been adopted from Mauthner, from the Neue Gemeinschaft, and
from Meister Eckhart, and were further developed in Landauer’s anarchist
theory.13
12 See also Fick 1993.

13 The spatial description “we are too far ahead” that Landauer made use of in his essay
brought him close to the imagery of the artistic avant-gardes with their focus on spaces
164 Kosuch
2 Concepts of Revolution, Concepts of Time
In his Theory of the Avant-Garde, Poggioli stated that “avant-garde communism

is the fruit of an eschatological state of mind, simultaneously messianic and
apocalyptic, a thing compatible, psychologically if not ideologically, with the
anarchist spirit”. (Poggioli 1962 [1968]: 100) Such an anarchist spirit would
nourish Landauer’s theoretical works on anarchist socialism and the revolu-
tion itself, which he authored after the turn of the century. The vanguard –
which he had once described enthusiastically as the driving engine holding
together the few advanced beings willing to form an exemplary community
with the objective of eventually initiating a broader movement – reappears in
these works as an element of the concept of ‘beginning’. In a sense, this concept
served as a counterargument to Marx’s idea of linear, staggered, and regulated
progress towards a non-hierarchical society. Landauer defined his ‘beginning’
as a concrete step that could be initiated anywhere and at any historical mo-
ment after pioneers started the enterprise, however capitalistic or authoritari-
an the existing society may be. He emphasized the spontaneous, anarchic
element of this empowerment in the hands of self-determined, decisive indi-
viduals. His particular understanding of revolution also mirrored his reading of
Bergson whom he highly appreciated and whose notions of élan vital, of intu-
ition, space and time were influential to his theories.14 In short, Landauer’s
concept of the vanguard shifted, moving from the context of art to a more
philosophical sphere. In the course of this transition, he redefined his central
idea: To ʻbeginʼ, in Landauer’s sense, became now a vital part of a theory ex-
plaining the basic principles of his anarchism and the coming revolution. Ap-
plying deductive reasoning, which he considered to be truly scientific because
of its intuitive character (Landauer 1907a [2010]: 112), Landauer attempted to
explain how the revolutionary process was a core element of his anarchism in
his essay Die Revolution (The Revolution), which he published in Martin Bu-
ber’s series Die Gesellschaft (The Society) in 1907. In the course of his text he
shed light on a rhythm underlying the historical process, and thereby placed
his idea of the anarchic ‘beginning’ in a larger framework.
World history, in Landauer’s understanding evolved along two alternating
basic principles he called ‘topia’, the stable status quo, and ‘utopia’ the unstable
promise of a better future for mankind that periodically challenges and chang-
es the ‘topia’. The utopia he conceived as “a combination of individual and
lying ahead or upwards, such as mountain tops or skyscrapers. (Van den Berg/Fähnders
2009: 4)
14 See also Dubbels 2011: 369−370.
eterogeneous manifestations of will that unite and organize in a moment of

h
crisis to form a passionate demand for a new social form: a topia without ills
and injustices”. (Landauer 1907a [2010]: 113) After a utopian period, a new ‘topia’
would develop aiming to preserve what once was claimed by the utopia. Yet by
the laws of nature, the newly established social stability was imperfect, as it fell
behind the demands of the original utopia. It is the chaotic, rebellious, border-
transcending, individualist period of transition between two ‘topias’ that, in
Landauer’s work, is characterized as revolution.
Extending this interpretation, in Landauer’s reasoning there is only one
revolution. It manifests at different times, but it is always present, even though
most of the time solely in the background as an emotional-memorial unit. This
concept of an ever-present yet hidden revolution mingles with a notion of
time focused on its flow and the mutual entanglement of effect and cause,
discarding the conventional timeline of past, present, and future:15
There is only way for us, there is only future. The past itself is future. It is
never finished, it always becomes. It changes and modifies as we move
ahead. I am not saying that it is merely the perceptions of our past that
are changing. This would be too simple. The past itself is changing – no
matter how paradoxical this might sound. There is no causal chain in
which a given cause triggers a given effect that then turns into another
given cause, etc. This is not how things work. The notion of causality as-
sumes a chain of given moments, all of which are fixed and stable, except
for the most recent one, which is active and causes another moment. But
this is not the case. The whole chain is always actively moving forward –
not just its last link. All so-called causes change with each new effect.
landauer 1907a [2010]: 121
While there is a past “alive in us” that “leaps towards the future in every mo-
ment” there is another past “passed down to us by our ancestors”, a “frozen
image” that only gets altered or redesigned during revolutions. (Landauer
1907a [2010]: 122) For Landauer, there is no such thing as temporal categories or
periods of history. Instead, he offers a system of relationships based on a more
or less intimate knowledge and insight into the history of strangers, neighbors,
and ourselves, tying history together. Christianity and the Middle Ages, in Lan-
dauer’s reading, are highlighted and idealized as eras of overwhelming unity, of
a spirit and culture in community that although dispersed, are still alive in the
15 On the roots of Landauer’s concept of time, see also Mauthner 1919 [21923]: 436−497.
166 Kosuch
hearts of his contemporaries, influencing them by their artistic imagery and

architecture:
The arts indicate for us whether a certain time marks a cultural peak.
During cultural blossoming, the arts are communal and not individual;
they are united around a center, but they are not isolated. During such
times, they represent the era and its people. During times of dissolution
and transition, however, they are products of single, lonely ingenious na-
tures; then they gravitate towards the future and a secret, non-existing
people. […] During the Christian era, sculpture and painting were insep-
arable from architecture […]; they represented society, a multiple peo-
ple’s common spirit. Then painting and sculpture became separated from
the buildings and turned into expressions of ingenious individuality. […]
Today, however, the visual arts have become separated from the lives of
individuals. Painting and sculpture only refer to themselves. Their prod-
ucts are like poems written to please the poet alone.
landauer 1907a [2010]: 131−132
In this once flourishing “ordered multiplicity” rather than as a “centralism and

state power”, (Landauer 1907a [2010]: 130), Landauer’s revolution and its van-
guard carriers found a role model in need of adaptation and renovation to fill
institutions anew with the spirit of commonality. Citing Godwin, Stirner, Ba-
kunin, and Tolstoy, and attempting to foster a sense of freedom and anarchy,
this is what Landauer called “our revolution”. (Landauer 1907a [2010]: 136, 160)
Like his idea of ʻvanguardʼ, Landauer’s notion of ʻbeginningʼ assigned to the
present a solely transitional character, marking a moment of utopia in the here
and now. It reminds one of Walter Benjamin’s Über den Begriff der Geschichte
(On the Concept of History, 1940) with its splinters of messianic moments
breaking up a linear timeline of progress, (Benjamin 1940 [2010]) a linearity that
was still assumed in Marx’ theory, which Landauer opposed with his theory of
the anarchist revolution. While the former was based on lines, the latter was
based on cycles. Landauer’s revolutionary ‘beginning’ originates in and recalls
the past, but at the same time symbolizes a moment of future in the present:
“Dieses so genannte Ziel ist ja in Wahrheit nichts, was sich vor uns in der Entfer-
nung befindet; es ist hinter uns her und treibt uns vorwärts, als Reiz und An
trieb.” (“Our goals must lie behind us and push us forward.”) (Landauer 1909
[2010]: 201) Hence the tied-to-the-present vanguard is part of a fervent call ‘to
begin’ that paradoxically spans two temporal directions at once, and at the
same moment relativizes their distinction. Because of this, it appears rather
ʻuntimelyʼ: “What an avant-garde that saw itself as a spearheading force in its
time could actually be gets lost in the flow of time. […] The relationship of
the avant-gardes with the past and future made them part and parcel of the
instable time-structure of modernity, in which all fixed relations are dis-
solved.” (Hüppauf 2000: 547, 553)16 In keeping with this, Landauer did not
preach a mere return; he broke up the timeline and included splinters of the
past in his blueprint for a new utopia, a vital trigger for his vision of a
community-to-come.
The path to achieve these goals is outlined in Volk und Land. Dreißig sozia
listische Thesen (People and Land. Thirty Socialist Propositions, 1907), which
preceded the creation of the Socialist League. This seminal manifesto called
upon the pioneers to start the envisioned revolution. It advocated a multifac-
eted anarcho-socialism that would not stop at securing essential human needs,
but strive to render “a cultured life” possible for everyone who performed “use-
ful work”. (Landauer 1907b [2010]: 109−110) Landauer declared that every hu-
man activity that supported life, including efforts dedicated to the creation of
beautiful products that imparted deep emotions, joy, and elevation to the peo-
ple were a part of such useful work. Artists, poets, and scientists, according to
him, belonged to a third category of work that does not serve life, but in Lan-
dauer’s view is life itself, but only if they take their basic inspiration directly
from life, from its beauty and its passions. Only in this manner is their work
meaningful, rather than being alienated from what Landauer labeled ‘the spir-
it’ which he believed had to return before a new culture-based community free
from capitalism, a stateless future could arise. Socialism, in this sense, meant
art, the art to create vitality. Sculptors, poets, and musicians were called upon
to initiate the reconquest of the soil and to form a society based on multifold
societies. (Landauer 1910 [2015]: 151, 157)
Against this backdrop, the Socialist League, created and guided by Landauer
in three leaflets that saw wide distribution, attempted to implement the art of
anarcho-socialist creation in his present reality. Hundreds gathered in the
newly founded associations of the League, discussing concrete steps towards
settlement, rural labor, and self-determined consumption. (Linse 1969b:
281−300; Lunn 1973: 190−200) Whatever his empathic call to begin might have
16 See also Marinetti’s Le Futurisme (Futurism, 1909): “Nous sommes sur le promontoire ex-
trême des siècles! … A quoi bon regarder derrière nous, du moment qu’il nous faut défon-
cer les vantaux mystérieux de l’impossible? Le Temps et l’Espace sont morts hier. Nous
vivons déjà dans l’absolu, puisque nous avons déjà créé l’éternelle vitesse omniprésente.”
(“We are on the extreme promontory of the centuries! What is the use of looking behind
at the moment when we must open the mysterious shutters of the impossible? Time and
Space died yesterday. We are already living in the absolute, since we have already created
eternal, omnipresent speed.”)
168 Kosuch
suggested, Landauer himself did not consider joining rural life. (Buber 1929,
vol. 1: 220) Instead, he crafted his appearance according to an eternal rebellious
ideal, keeping his opposition personal: (Hüppauf 2000: 568)17 “His wavy hair
falls onto his neck, his beard seemed Christ-like and his neck loop signalized a
bohemian character which he actually didn’t possess. […] In Berlin’s streets he
[…] stands out because of his beautiful ‘Ahasver’ look.” (Rosenzweig 1979: 266)
These observations point to a transition towards orientalist and messianic no-
tions, which informed Landauer’s vanguard concept of time in his theory of
anarchism no less than Berlin’s rebellious naturalist artists and politicians at
the turn of the century.
3 The ‘living Jew’, a Vanguard Pioneer?
With his specific notions of revolution and utopia, Landauer recalled time-
concepts as they exist in the Tanakh, even though he did not mention this in-
fluence explicitly. He likely adapted its contents through the writings of Martin
Buber, with whom he was friends and by whom, through the years, he was in-
formed about a spiritual Jewish rebirth. (Landauer 1916b [2012]) In the founda-
tional texts of Judaism, space and time are often entangled: what is far away in
terms of distance also lies in the past. The Hebrew, kedem, signifying the East,
the Orient, and anteriority, epitomizes these intertwined concepts: for the Isra-
elites, the East indicated a position in the front; the West was associated with
the back. Similarly, in the Hebrew language the past lies in front of a person,
while the future arises from behind as they move in time and space. (Wittler
2013: 430) When Landauer speaks of a past that is never bygone but always
changeable at each moment of time, of a status of spirit and community that
once existed and would be the trigger of the coming utopia and the revolution
traversing time and space, he adapted these principles.
17 Despite his ‘spirit of communality’-rhetoric, Landauer never conceptualized the League

as a mass-organization that would eliminate individuality in favor of a unifying group
consciousness. The Socialist League was instead a means to bring together people who
would work and live in a communal way united by a shared spirit. Landauer, however,
kept his autonomy as a rather isolated artist-prophet, guiding the others but not joining
them or getting beyond hierarchies. Here the equalizing and liberating anarchist credo
clashed with the demands of a modern and elitist avant-gardist intellectual following a
self-designed mission, a discrepancy that remained unresolved. For the complex distinc-
tion between an avant-gardist, political revolutionary attitude and a modernist stance,
see also Williams 1988.
However, this messianic concept does not express a longing for a lost para-
dise situated in the prehistoric past. Instead, it shows traces of the heterodox
modernity breaking up concrete temporal references. Restorative components
are vital for Landauer’s utopia, just as utopian moments are part of the ‘restor-
ative’ topia. Both unite in a social vision planted in the present moment. (Scho-
lem 1959 [71993]) They reflect the effect of Landauer’s cultural context, relying
on the modern notions of progress and fulfillment in the future − a progress
that, according to him, could be influenced by human determination and po-
litical action. His utopia differed from a simple nostalgia for a biblical promise
or a hope for a coming messiah, (Landauer 1912 [2012]; Löwy 1992, 2013) even
though in the anarchist principles of Landauer’s theory there is something
akin to the theoretical abandonment of the Jewish law in messianic times.
(Rahe 1988: 22) In fact, the concept of the vanguard within anarchism, which
informed Landauer’s notion of time and the revolution within, relates much
more to the fin de siècle environment than to religious concepts. (Kosuch 2018)
Still, Landauer referred to Judaism and Jewish history, and the “bewusste Jude”
(the “conscious Jew”) (Landauer 1913b [2012]: 364) in his writings took on the
characteristics that he had previously ascribed to the vanguard artist in his
anarchist theory.
Landauer’s reasoning on Judaism and the Jewish question followed a spe-
cific pattern. He focused on what he called “living Judaism”, which aligned with
his idea of a creative and quasi-artistic “living socialism”. (Landauer 1912 [2012]:
347) And just as the solitary vanguard artist felt the call to re-energize the la-
tent spirit of community within the context of anarcho-socialism, so too did
the ‘living Jew’ in exile draw strength from his isolation. Like the artist, he is
driven by a desire for unity and justice, which makes him, according to Lan-
dauer, a true socialist striving for a spiritual renovation of the innermost depths
of mankind’s soul. He believed that this ‘living Jew’, because of his uniqueness,
would be truly productive in working towards fulfillment. (Landauer 1912
[2012]: 349) The few existing ‘living Jews’ such as Martin Buber, in Landauer’s
reading, are united by a shared spiritual detachment from space and time.
Driven by a deep feeling of dissatisfaction, they work hard to find the language
that would kindle the masses and bring them together again. They could not
rest; they had to unleash their “lebensgefährliche Genialität” (“life-threatening
genius”) and spread their will and power. (Landauer 1913a [2012]: 360−361)
That being said, Landauer did not defend Zionist or specifically Jewish posi-
tions. His ‘living Jews’ were operating in the societies they lived in for the sake
of their communities, thus their ‘messianism’ was directed towards political
goals that would further the socialist beginning. Their profession and mission
were to better mankind; tradition, for Landauer, meant nothing other than
170 Kosuch
revolution. Once more he broke up the linear timeline when he defined “living
Jews” as complex and multifold beings, “alive [because] they have developed
and still are developing, grasping as one present, reality, past, and future and
taking themselves truly and completely on the journey to their promised land”.
(Landauer 1913b [2012]: 365, 368)
In a smooth transition, Landauer aligned his notion of the vanguard artist
and the ‘living Jew’. Both were agents of renewal and socialist beginnings, and
he placed them atop modernity.18 The key qualities he saw in them were cre-
ative power, the search for beauty, dynamic liveliness, awakening and revolu-
tion, and above all ability to act; while socialism was art, art, in Landauer’s
view, meant action. In this sense the artist and the Jew evolved as vanguard
pioneers: subversive, radical, and elitist, creative and unconventional, contra-
dictory and ambiguous. (Aschheim 2017: 253−254) This concept was itself a
new creation, and had little to do with traditional Judaism or its branches.
Nonetheless, Landauer quoted and utilized its basic texts and customs, its his-
tory and its particularities when designing his own persona and his theory of
anarchism and the vanguard within. (Aschheim 2017: 258) The Jew and the
artist are introduced as figures of protest and heralds of a new beginning that
challenged the notions, respectively, the status of art in a society, striving to
change it together with (bourgeois) life itself, through a revitalized act of time-
and space-less creation. With these qualities, Landauer’s vanguard characters,
of which he himself was the exemplary representative, belonged to an avant-
garde that mirrored the qualities and requirements of the artistic avant-gardes,
surpassing them in their political and social focus but falling behind in terms
of aesthetics, which was never a major concern for Landauer or his fellow in-
tellectual anarchists. In most cases, they continued to adhere to rather bour-
geois, idealistic measures of beauty, education through the arts, and the genius
as artistic pioneer.19
4 Conclusions
Though Landauer positioned his specific understanding of an anarchist begin-

ning beyond the temporal and spatial categories of his time, his concepts
and theories were strictly bound to the concrete historical context of the fin de
18 For further reading, see also Slezkine 2004.

19 For a distinction of the political and the artistic in European avant-garde movements, see
White 2012. See also Van den Berg 2005, who offers a detailed view of the proletarian an-
archists and their differences from intellectual anarchists such as Mühsam.
siècle German Empire and the German-Jewish balance between a seemingly

accomplished bourgeois acculturation and the ongoing anti-Semitic threat
within. (Kosuch 2015) In part due to this tension, which affected him person-
ally as a German Jew, he integrated the Jewish question into his anarchist oeu-
vre. The ‘living Jew’ he described therein was an exceptional character, just like
the true, self-consistent artist, a vanguard herald and pioneer who could heal
the frictions and inequalities of his time, which affected him as much as his
contemporaries.
The First World War marked a watershed moment in this specific period of
bustling modernity, dominant bourgeois culture, euphoric German patriotism,
and varying reactions to these complex circumstances, which would provide
the backdrop for Landauer’s reasoning. Towards the end of this period, Lan-
dauer and the vanguard anarchists around him tried in vain to implement
their beginning by means of revolution, which ultimately failed after a few
days of fragile existence. There were attempts to form an alliance with Russia,
but the Leninist, communist avant-garde with their cadres, their order, and
their professional revolutionaries differed too much from the anarchist van-
guard pioneers loosely gathered around Landauer’s personal charisma and
theory. (Kosuch 2014) Their political and intellectual vanguardism was slowly
spent, or took on new forms with Toller’s socio-critical expressionist writings
and Mühsam’s tentative convergence with the communists and departure
from his bohemian attitudes.
During the war and its hardships, Landauer, noticing the reduction of his
niche of existence and thought, was already searching for ways to find his revo-
lution elsewhere. Because of its ‘untimely’ character, and in accordance with
his own theory of ‘topia’ and utopia taking turns, he found traces of it in Shake-
speare’s and Goethe’s works, and even more in the French Revolution as he
began researching and writing about it. Yet this focus on literature was not a
sign of a closer alliance with the literary avant-gardes of his time. In Landauer’s
view, the place of vanguardism in German intellectual anarchism was not aes-
thetics but society and politics, no matter how much the role of the artist was
emphasized.20 Above all, Landauer’s ideas of a dissolving but constantly re-
newed structure of space and time, which he had derived mainly from Mauth-
ner’s Critique of Language, were also imprinted with a notion of revolutionary
vanguardism, along with his creative approach to the Jewish traditional canon.
The negation of time-concepts such as past, present, and future, and the
creative dynamic of ‘beginning’ that resulted from this fragmentation were key
20 See, e.g., Landauer 1916a [1997].

172 Kosuch
foundations for Landauer’s inventive anarchist originality, including the idea

of the vanguard artist and art’s overall role in revolution.
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Chapter 7
‘Theocratic Anarchism’? Walter Benjamin and

Gershom Scholem in Switzerland: Anarchism,
Messianism and the Avant-Garde
Gabriele Guerra
Abstract
In Walter Benjamin. The Story of a Friendship (1975) Gershom Scholem recalls how he
and Benjamin used to have intense discussions about politics and religion during and
after the First World War which both spent in Switzerland. During a 1919 night-walk
they talked about what they claimed to be ‘the most sensible response to politics’. Both
agreed that it could be traced back to a notion of ‘theocratic anarchism’ − undoubtedly
a highly ambiguous definition. The meaning of this paradoxical subsuming of anar-
chism, politics and theocracy doesn’t seem easy to grasp. Starting from the anecdote
above, this essay aims to shed light on a concept of Jewish politics grounded in an in-
tersection of anarchic will, religious longing, and an intellectual affinity connected to
the arts that builds upon German romantic ideas of politics and community. Yet, it
doesn’t refer to the original significance of these concepts. In fact, Benjamin’s and
Scholem’s life and work link, in a mutually beneficial way, many areas of culture, in
which the paradox seems the architrave of their thinking: they did not aim for an or-
ganic system of political and religious ideas, but rather for a reciprocal illumination of
both areas, balancing the external and internal contradictions. This essay will recon-
struct these religious and political notions of Benjamin and Scholem in the 1920s. It
was in these years that intellectual history, the history of religion, of political ideas, and
of the arts became intertwined, redefining a concept of Jewish politics located some-
where between anarchism, religion, and the arts. As such, it preceded Benjamin’s sys-
tematic theory of the avant-garde in which romanticism, messianism, and anarchism
are intermingled.
In Walter Benjamin. Die Geschichte einer Freundschaft (Walter Benjamin. The

Story of a Friendship, 1975) Gershom Scholem (1897−1982) recalls how he and
Walter Benjamin (1892−1940) used to have intense discussions about politics

178 Guerra
and religion during and after the First World War which both spent in Switzer-
land. The two German-Jewish philosophers came from a well-off Berlin bour-
geois social background and shared an interest in contemporary philosophy,
literature, politics and religion. With their decision to flee to Switzerland,
Sholem and Benjamin escaped military service. But, for some time, they re-
mained in their Swiss exile even after the war had ended. During a 1919 night-
walk they discussed what they claimed to be “die sinnvollste Antwort auf die
Politik” (“the most sensible response to politics”). Both agreed that it could be
traced back to a notion of “theokratischer Anarchismus” (“theocratic anar-
chism”) (Scholem 1975 [1981]: 84) − undoubtedly a highly ambiguous, perhaps
ironical phrase.
The meaning of this paradoxical merger of anarchism, politics and theoc-
racy doesn’t seem easy to grasp. This essay tries to take seriously what was
probably no more than a casual remark in the conversation of two friends
walking the Alpine paths of Switzerland while reflecting upon matters they
were both concerned with. Needless to mention that ‘theocratic anarchism’ in
the sense of Benjamin and Scholem was not just a simple composite from the
‘classical’ definition of ‘theocracy’ and ‘anarchism’. Rather, the basic assump-
tion of this essay is that the conjunction of both terms circumscribes and tries
to concretize a concept of contradictory and paradoxical politics built on a
critical and radical interpretation of anarchism and theocracy, including per-
ceptions of community and power, art and culture. The chapter suggests that
the idea of ‘theocratic anarchism’ needs to be understood in this radical sense,
and taken, most of all, as a basic criticism of the predominant political forms
of Benjamin’s and Scholem’s time. In this light, ‘theocratic anarchism’ is a
transversely readable diagram implementing a sort of romantic irony at the
expense of man’s political faith, yet, at the same time, perpetuating a
historical-political indication: ‘theocratic anarchism’ may be, according to the
young Benjamin and Scholem, ‘the most sensible response to politics’ but with
that reading the notion also proves to be located at an Archimedean point be-
tween radical power affirmation and its equally radical negation.
In the following, I will track the interpretive path offered by the concept of
‘theocratic anarchism’ – a shared figure of thought between the two friends
and a mirror of their reflections in that particular post-war period. At the same
time, I will trace its two main moments − those of theocracy and anarchism −
trapped in their historical-conceptual developments with respect to the his-
tory of Jewish intellectual identity from the late eighteenth to the early twenti-
eth centuries. In a third step, I will apply that notion to a specific understanding
of art – this time more explicitly within the matrix of Benjamin’s thought – in
which those philosophical-political themes recur in a different context, yet
‘Theocratic Anarchism’? Walter Benjamin and Gershom Scholem 179
with the same substantial meaning. In Benjamin’s works the avant-garde and
its artistic output adopt a new political and transcendental coloring. Benja-
min, in these realms, appears as a ‘mystical’ thinker, who is able to connect
politics, the philosophy of arts, and religion in a new anthropological model.
As such, it is part of the contemporary avant-garde theories.
1 A Jewish History of Theocracy
In a text written towards the end of the first century ce against the backdrop
of a Hellenistic cultural environment, the Jewish philosopher Josephus (c. 37–
100), who later adhered to the Roman world and even added to his name the
epithet Flavius in honor of the future emperor Vespasian, polemically ad-
dressed the Alexandrine rhetorician and grammarian Apion, author of a his-
tory of Egypt that put the Jews in a bad light. In his Contra Apionem (Against
Apion) Josephus offered a detailed and well-intentioned description of Jewish
customs and, at the same time, strove to parry contemporaneous negative ru-
mors circulating about the Jewish population. While reflecting upon the main
forms of government among men, Josephus stated:
There is endless variety in the details of the customs and laws in the
world at large. To give but a summary enumeration: some peoples have
entrusted supreme political power to monarchies, others to oligarchies,
yet others to the masses. Our lawgiver, however, was attracted by none of
these forms of polity, but gave to his constitution the form of what – if a
forced expression be permitted – may be termed a ‘theocracy’ [θεοκρατίαν],
placing all sovereignty and authority in the hands of God.
josephus c. 100 ce [1929]: 359
For Josephus, ‘theocracy’ involved a concept borrowed from the classical po-
litical vocabulary, as already becomes evident in his lexical choice, and in his
reference to other forms of government (aristocracy, democracy). Yet, it also
anticipated a controversial new figure directed against the Hellenistic political
thought of his time: a genuine Jewish politician, evidently destined to over-
come the Greek political system. In Josephus’ philosophical draft, God epito-
mizes the highest theological-political instance, to the point of being constitu-
ent and alone capable of bringing together ἀρχή and kράτος, beginning and
power, through his chosen people. However, his reading also implied a devalu-
ation of the world’s existing political, power-related and flawed institutions
while leaning towards a vision of the perfect divine union. Such a union, in
180 Guerra
Josephus’ view, would need no other mediation than that offered by God him-
self; theocracy, in his apologia, thus takes on the sense of an annulment of any
form of political intercession between world and God. At first, this model
seems an authoritarian one lacking any intervening or interfering instances; a
closer look, however, reveals a political concept inherent to Josephus’ term,
which is radically nomothetic, i.e. it refers to a political community without
any secular mediations. Precisely because of that it is based on equality. This
seeming paradox can be considered the origin of a genuine Jewish politics.
In the course of time and in other interpretations, though, the term ʻtheo
cracyʼ took on additional meanings. It evolved as a discursive pattern and influ-
enced the dialogue between Judaism and Christianity (typologically conceived
as a new contract with God). Over the centuries, it frequently became a medi-
um of self-reassurance and legitimacy in Jewish and non-Jewish contexts.1 On
further reflection the concept’s development throughout the history of Euro-
pean political thought reveals repeated attempts to retrace the political model
of ‘theocracy’ to its biblical predecessor of the respublica Hebraeorum – an
original and autonomous republican form of politics the Jews believed had
existed at the very outset of their community. (Richichi 2016)
The history of ‘theocracy’ – from the government of God to the republic of
the Jews – implies radical political consequences: only God is legitimated to
govern the secular community. Thus, in its duality, the term ‘theocracy’ offers
an alternative to the predominant governmental forms which are based on a
strategic alliance between religion and politics, as in the case of the European
Catholic or Protestant political communities. Theocracy in Josephus’ sense is a
sort of ‘meta-theocracy’ and denies any ‘real theocracy’ (that is, the rule of a
class of ministers in the name of a God over the people); ‘meta-theocracy’ rep-
resents a theology of a superior order, both spiritual and poetical together, that
is to say: mystic. The notion of a ‘superior theocracy’ seems to have been fur-
ther perpetuated by Dutch political legislators and philosophers of the six-
teenth century (applying the model of the respublica Hebraeorum),2 and it
continued to influence a small but assertive group of Jewish-German intelli-
gentsia between the two world wars. Benjamin and Scholem were not alone in
discussing this principle in 1919, but joined by other authors, of Jewish and
non-Jewish descent, such as Hugo Ball (1886−1927), Ernst Bloch (1885−1977),
Martin Buber (1878−1965), and Kurt Hiller (1885−1972). They seem to have felt
1 “Theokratische Diskurse jüdisch-christlicher Provenienz setzen häufig biblische Refigura-

tionen als Mittel zur Selbstvergewisserung und Legitimation ein.” (Tramedach/Pečar 2013: 9)
2 For example, Hugo Grotius or Petrus Cunaeus, author of De republica Hebraeorum (The
Hebrew Republic, 1617).
the allure of a world completely different from the highly criticized political
and social systems of their time and furthered a political-literary radicalism
that led them to revalue any form of acquired or established certainty on which
their contemporary political-cultural landscape was built. (Guerra 2006) Mar-
tin Buber, for example, became a supporter of a ‘divine’, i.e., religiously infused
concept of politics: in 1932, he published a study on biblical politics under the
title Königtum Gottes (The Kingship of God). In the preface to the first edition
he noted that the book intended to explore “the messianic faith of Israel”,
which consisted in “the being-oriented-toward the fulfilment of the relation
between God and world in a consummated kingly rule of God”. (Buber 1932
[1967]: 15) The preface to the third edition of 1956 specified this intention.
There, Buber launched the term ‘theopolitics’, defining it as “action of a public
nature from the point of view of the tendency toward the actualization of di-
vine rulership”. (Buber 1932 [1967]: 57) ‘Theopolitics’, for Buber, meant the mys-
tical moment in which the external and internal of the religious experience,
the ‘presence’ of the divine in the public sphere and the social body, coincide
(or tend to coincide) without residue.
However, the idea of theocracy was not confined to the history of German
Jews or, more generally, Jewish history in the early decades of the twentieth
century. As Benjamin scholars have repeatedly emphasized, it was Ernst Bloch
who, to quote Benjamin, “repudiated with utmost vehemence the political sig-
nificance of theocracy” and with that addressed a broader context transcend-
ing any merely Jewish setting. Following Benjamin, Bloch’s theocracy meant
“the cardinal merit of [his] Spirit of Utopia” (Geist der Utopie, 1923, a book that
Benjamin greatly admired in this period). (Benjamin 1921b [1986]: 312)3 Actu-
ally, however, in Bloch’s concept there is no real mention of the idea of theoc-
racy, although the topic of the political interrelation between immanence and
transcendence remains central in the philosopher’s notion of utopia. By con-
trast, it is very present in the writings of Hugo Ball. Like Benjamin, Scholem
and Bloch, Ball was exiled in Switzerland during the First World War,4 and also
remained there later on, to escape the economic crisis as well as the war in its
entirety which he regarded as a result of the Prussian imperialism he despised.
He sought new spaces for artistic creation with the invention of Dada and the
founding of Cabaret Voltaire in Zurich. Later, Ball articulated this creativity on
3 The German passage reads: “Die politische Bedeutung der Theokratie mit aller Intensität
geleugnet zu haben ist das größte Verdienst von Blochs ‘Geist der Utopie’.ˮ
4 On these Swiss years and on this constellation of authors see Rabinbach 1997: 59. There he
argues, perhaps too harshly, that “the tenor of these essays [Benjamin’s] might be described
as ‘anarchomessianic’, in sharp contrast to Bloch’s embryonic Marxism”. See also Kambas
2009: 67–87.
182 Guerra
a more personal level, with his reversion to Catholicism and his reading of the
Vitae Sanctorum (The Lifes of Saints, 1551–1560).5
In 1919, Ball published Zur Kritik der Deutschen Intelligenz (Critique of the
German Intelligentsia), later also studied by Benjamin. In this book he
argued:
A miracle would be the full incarnation of the Eternal in temporal form.

It never has been, and never will be. God and freedom are one. The king-
dom of God on earth is sacrilege. A visible church is sacrilege. An infalli-
ble Vicar of God is sacrilege. Theocracy, a power installed by God, the
sacrilege of all sacrileges.6
Ball was clearly criticizing worldly theocracy. In his writings, theocracy takes
on the features of the Lutheran, Bismarckian and Wilhelminian ‘Second Em-
pire’ and its unmistakable patronizing theological-political connotation link-
ing religious and worldy power to secure the status quo of oppression, war-
mongering and paternalism. In sharp contrast to this reign, he discussed a
theory of ʻtrue’ theocracy, a pure celestial construction with a political-utopian
outline. That is why, in his Critique of the German Intelligentsia, Ball empha-
sized an alternative, critical-of-authority historical-spiritual line from the
sixteenth-century Reformation theologian Thomas Müntzer (1489−1525) to the
Russian theorist of anarchism Mikhail Alexandrovich Bakunin (1814−1876).
According to Ball, this line grounded in a radical idea of freedom, self-
determination and community anticipating a new mankind. The tradition
those revolutionaries started was, however, suppressed and forced into oblivi-
on by the other, victorious ‘imperialist’ line from Luther to Bismarck which, as
Ball stated, dominated and continued to dominate German politics with the
help of its systemic and authoritarian political theology.
Yet, the cases of Müntzer and Bakunin connected to uprising and revolu-
tion, in Ball’s reasoning, both display the possibility of a different German con-
cept of politics: a radical integrative, unifying and therefore mystical one with-
in the theocratical spectrum. This branch of the genealogical line of theocracy
rests on a romantic legacy, intertwined with the formation of the avant-garde,
5 On the multifaceted life of Hugo Ball, founder of Dada and a mystical anarchist, see Stock
2012.
6 The German original reads: “Ein Wunder wäre die vollendete Inkarnation des Ewigen in
zeitlicher Gestalt. Sie war nie, und wird nie sein. Gott und die Freiheit sind eins. Reich Gottes
auf Erden ist Sakrileg. Sichtbare Kirche ist Sakrileg. Unfehlbarer Stellvertreter Gottes ein
Sakrileg. Theokratie, von Gott eingesetzte Gewalt, das Sakrileg aller Sakrilegien.ˮ (Ball 1919
[1980]: 240) [author’s translation]
as Hugo Ball’s life combining Dada, politics, and mysticism already suggests. In
fact, it is in the early eighteenth century that the idea of something like an
‘aesthetic-transcendental domain’ can be glimpsed beyond the actual political
quarrels, or, to quote Hölderlin’s words in Hyperion, a “sacred theocracy of the
Beautiful […]. The new union of spirits cannot live in the air, the sacred theoc-
racy of the Beautiful must dwell in a free state, and that state must have a place
on earth, and that place we will surely conquer”. (Hölderlin 1797 [1990]: 78)7
Following this idea, the romantic desire for an all-embracing community cre-
ates a drive towards an organized transcendence, an association free from any
restraints (a “free state”, in line with Hölderlin’s definition). The Beautiful as the
key political medium to perfect government and human society – a clearly ro-
mantic, but also avant-garde idea, a cornerstone of the envisioned new man-
kind and the herald of an aesthetic movement.
The model of the absolute power of God, as in Josephus’ writings, in the
more recent conceptual history of ‘theocratic anarchism’ thus merged with a
notion of the transcendent dominance of the Beautiful. Together with a new
desire for community and a radical critique of the present state, it leads to
Benjamin’s and Scholem’s ‘theocratic anarchism’: a figure of thought that turns
out to be, on closer reading, a multi-layered complex of ‘issues’, both in chrono-
logical and synthetic terms, combining elements of history, religious history,
and transcendental impulses connected to the immanent. Scholem’s anarchi-
cal position was furthered by this compound which also nourished his particu-
lar understanding of Zionism. After his relocation to Jerusalem (1923) this af-
filiation to the Zionist cause intensified due to the escalating conflicts with the
Arab population: its coloring became darker and more pessimistic. (Jacobson
2003: 68) Under these pressing circumstances the idea of ‘theocracy’ was fur-
ther transformed into a promise and infinite future political task not to be real-
ized amid the conflicts of the present, just as Scholem’s anarchism started to
shift and targeted an undefined moment in the future. It is no coincidence that
more or less in those same years, Benjamin drafted a fragmented essay the Ger-
man editors of his Gesammelte Schriften called Welt und Zeit (World and Time,
1920/21), taken from the title of the first section, that echoed Scholem’s ideas.
Benjamin headed the second paragraph “Catholicism – the process of the de-
velopment of anarchy” and dwells upon this vague future moment beyond
secular time just as Scholem did:
7 The German passage reads: “Der neue Geisterbund kann in der Luft nicht leben, die heilige
Theokratie des Schönen muß in einem Freistaat wohnen, und der will Platz auf Erden haben
und diesen Platz erobern wir gewiß.”
184 Guerra
The problem of Catholicism is that of the (false, secular) theocracy. The

guiding principle here is: authentic divine power can manifest itself oth-
er than destructively only in the world to come (the world of fulfilment).
But where divine power enters into the secular world, it breathes
destruction.
benjamin 1920/21 [1996]: 2268
Catholicism – according to Benjamin a “false, secular theocracy” – cannot de-

ploy “an authentic divine power other than destructively”: with this, he stressed
the intimate connection, on the one hand, of ‘false theocracy’ and divine pow-
er on earth; on the other hand, of what he claims to be a ‘real theocracy’ and
divine power of a messianic kind. Benjamin’s fragment introduces destruction
as the historically necessary constituent exposing a false axiom that binds di-
vine power to secular power: “Daher ist in dieser Welt nichts Stetiges und keine
Gestaltung auf sie (zu) gründen, geschweige denn Herrschaft als deren ober-
stes Prinzip.” (“That is why in this world nothing constant and no organization
can be based on divine power, let alone domination as its supreme Principle.”)
(Benjamin 1920/21 [1996]: 226) Just like Scholem, Benjamin categorically re-
fuses any concept of a theocracy to be immediately installed on earth. Later in
his fragment, he points out what kind of policy he considered a useful ap-
proach towards the “Erfüllung der ungesteigerten Menschhaftigkeit” (“fulfill-
ment of an unimproved humanity”):
We would be wrong to speak of a profane legislation decreed by religion,

as opposed to one required by it. The Mosaic laws, probably without ex-
ception, form no part of such legislation. And, they belong to the legisla-
tion governing the realm of the body in the broadest sense (presumably)
and occupy a very special place: they determine the location and method
of direct divine intervention. And just where this location has its frontier,
where it retreats, we find the zone of politics, of the profane, of a bodily
realm that is without law in a religious sense.
benjamin 1920/21 [1996]: 2269
8 The German original is: “Das Problem des Katholizismus ist das der (falschen, irdischen)
Theokratie. Der Grundsatz ist hier: echte göttliche Gewalt kann anders als zerstörend nur in
der kommenden Welt (der Erfülltheit) sich manifestieren. Wo dagegen göttliche Gewalt in
die irdische Welt eintritt, atmet sie Zerstörung.ˮ
9 The German passage reads: “Es darf nicht heißen: durch die Religion erlassne, sondern muß
heißen durch sie erforderte Gesetzgebung des Profanen. Die mosaischen Gesetze gehören
wahrscheinlich ausnahmslos nicht zu ihr. Sondern diese gehören der Gesetzgebung über das
Gebiet der Leiblichkeit im weitesten Sinne an (vermutlich) und haben eine ganz besondere
2 Towards an Anarchist Humanism
With Benjamin’s fragment we move on to a later stage in the history of the

theocratic model which, as we have seen so far, is more or less a typological
redefinition of the ‘ideal type’ of the constitutional pact between God and his
chosen people, completed by a modern intellectual fascination with the tran-
scendent. Theocracy, in the Benjaminian sense, claims absoluteness beyond
any political-worldly setting, a kind of absoluteness, the earthly reigns struggle
to accomplish in vain. Consequently, Benjamin’s theocratic model opens out
into an anarchic moment of negation of any political principle, given that –
paradoxically – it is precisely in the notion of the political beginning (of the
ἀρχή) that the negation of all political principles originates (the ἀν-ἀρχή). Ben-
jamin’s concept of the political expands upon this very paradox. It can be
defined, at least at this stage of his philosophical writing and in a strictly theo-
retical sense, as anarchist in tendency.
In fact, Benjamin’s fragment continues as follows: “Die Bedeutung der Anar-
chie für den profanen Bezirk ist aus dem geschichtsphilosophischen Ort der
Freiheit zu bestimmen. (Schwieriger Erweis: hier scheint die Grundfrage der
Zusammenhang von Leiblichkeit und Individualität).ˮ (“The meaning of anar-
chy for the realm of the profane must be defined from the locus of freedom in
the philosophy of history. [A difficult matter to prove: this is where we find the
basic question of the relation of individuality to the body].”) (Benjamin 1920/21
[1996]: 227) His rejection of the ‘political’, in its specific secular meaning, at this
point could not be more ontologically radical: Benjamin discards the basis of
politics including the worldly, institutionalized, ‘false’ theocracy of his time.
His understanding of politics, in fact, is primarily philosophical, since it is ar-
ticulated in abstract terms, denying the principles that constitute the world’s
political syntax. On these grounds, the meaning of anarchism Benjamin tries
to specify should not be simply equated with the libertarian doctrines of the
nineteenth and twentieth centuries. However, they had a strong influence on
the intellectual formation of the young Benjamin and also of Scholem: through
the writings of Gustav Landauer above all, but also of Bakunin and Kropotkin;
all the three of them were central to their thinking. Both admired those anar-
chists because their viewpoints and political visions evoked a concrete, sub-
stantial possibility of radical politics beyond philosophy.
Stellung; sie bestimmen Art und Zone unmittelbarer göttlicher Einwirkung. Und ganz unmit-
telbar da wo diese Zone sich ihre Grenze setzt, wo sie zurücktritt, grenzt das Gebiet der Poli-
tik, des Profanen, der im religiösen Sinne gesetzlosen Leiblichkeit an.ˮ
186 Guerra
That is why Benjamin dwells on the idea of a “fulfilment of an unimproved

humanity” as “my definition of politics”: because in this fulfillment, humanity
(but the original German is not only ‘humanity’, but Menschheit − a more
categorical re-definition, and at the same time, even more general, Menschhaft-
igkeit, Benjamin 1920/21 [1996]: 226) must refuse any rigidity in favor of its im-
provement which has its place in the narrow space between the worldly
religious order (that is to say a ‘false theocracy’), and the divine represented by
‘pure’ religion not affiliated with the secular powers (which obviously lies at
the core of ‘real theocracy’). Religion, therefore, in Benjamin’s writings appears
as a minimal but significant interpersonal shared space in which the individu-
al neither does belong to the profane nor is simply considered as a part of the
transcendent.
Facing Moses, Korah, son of Esau, agitated the people and led a revolt, as is
recounted in Numbers 16. Benjamin cites this episode in the last part of his Zur
Kritik der Gewalt (Critique of Violence, 1921) to underline the radically destruc-
tive character of the divine violence by means of what he calls “educative pow-
er”: “The educative power, which in its perfected form stands outside the law,
is one of its manifestations.” (Benjamin 1921a [1996]: 250) The divine power
inevitably must be educative and instructive because the relationship between
the two poles, between the divine and earthly power, isn’t evident and needs
clarification. Since we are all saints, Korah argues, implicitly referring to Exo-
dus 19,6,10 “Why should Moses ever become a solitary mediator with God?”
God’s response comes full-blown and forceful, and the earth opens, smashing
Korah and his rebellious company. Benjamin emphasizes that such punish-
ments are defined “by the expiating moment in them that strikes without
bloodshed, and, finally, by the absence of all lawmaking”. (Benjamin 1921a
[1996]: 250)11 The philosopher is very clear at this point: the punishment that
God hands out to Korah and his company is not only “without warning, with-
out threat, and does not stop short of annihilation”, but it is – precisely because
of its divine nature – sheer violence beyond all law-making. It is directed
10 The passage reads: “and you shall be to me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation”.
11 The full section is: “Die reine unmittelbare Gewalt aber, die der mythischen Gewalt Ein-
halt zu gebieten vermöchte, ist die göttliche. Ist die mythische Gewalt rechtsetzend, so
die göttliche rechtsvernichtend, setzt jene Grenzen, so vernichtet diese grenzenlos, ist die
mythische verschuldend und strafend zugleich, so die göttliche entstrafend, ist jene
drohend, so diese einfach schlagend, jene blutig, so diese auf unblutige Weise letal. Wie
das Recht sich selbst erhält, ist seine Gewalt, als mythische, Gewalt über das bloße Leben
um ihrer selbst willen, die göttliche reine dagegen Gewalt über alles Leben um des Leben-
digen willen (das beste wesentliche Leben ist hier Grund der Gewalt). Die erste fordert
Opfer, die zweite nimmt sie an.ˮ
t owards the radical transcending of the law, on a level of methodical absence

of every ἀρχή, of every principle of the political as a sphere of negotiation, dia-
logue and power struggle.
Those pages written by the young Benjamin suggest that his anarchism rests
upon biblical foundations, yet he radically rethinks them, both the very begin-
ning and the political principle in its historical course, just like classical ἀρχή:
This Benjaminian disposition
is anarchist because, by turning to God, Benjamin is turning to the root of

archism, the belief in an absolute truth, a manifestation of divine author-
ity that has come to take an earthly form as the state. For all of its sup-
posed secularism, even the modern state harkens back to religious prin-
ciples; God’s kinghood has transformed into modern secular nations but
the eschatological principles are the same. By turning God from being a
basis for mythic authority into a source of its undermining, Benjamin is
performing a spectacular act of sabotage against the core of archist prin-
ciples. He is removing the very center of that system, fighting the fire of
the hidden theology of contemporary notions of legal and political au-
thority with an answering theological fire of his own.
martel 2014: 5
The nature of Benjamin’s and Scholem’s model of ‘theocratic anarchism’ be-

comes apparent: they were striving to establish an intelligible and governable
world without rules, without ἀρχή, what to them meant – and this is actually
the same thing – to place this first and only principle in a superiorem non reco-
gnoscens power, God’s power. In both cases, they intended to deny the very
possibility of a secular power, in so far as it would be founded from the outset
by men.12
12 I took these reflections from Reiner Schürmann (1987). The influence of Martin Hei-
degger’s study on anarchic thinking is witnessed, for example, by Abensour 2013: 80–97.
Schürmann states: “By traditional structure of philosophy – or archic structure – we mean
a structure whose dominant feature is to submit the question of action to an arche in such
a way that the theories of action inevitably attempt to answer the question ‘What should
I do’? And the answer is always to be found with regard to that period’s ultimate knowl-
edge. Metaphysics would then mean the different attempts to determine an arche that
subordinates action. Or again, it would be the apparatus ʻwhere action requires a princi-
ple that words, things, and actions can be referred toʼ.” (Schürmann, 1987: 16) And Aben-
sour adds: “This principle is at once foundation, beginning and commandment.” (Aben-
sour 2013: 84)
188 Guerra
In these realms, anarchy could be understood as an extreme attempt to

think of the political – oscillating between theory and practice, thought and
action, subject and community – beyond this oscillation itself, therefore be-
yond its figuration, beyond its philosophical outlines. However, to grasp the
oscillation beyond the oscillation means thinking of politics beyond politics,
therefore: thinking of politics metapolitically. Anarchy as a ‘principle with-
out principle’ thus represents an incessant movement, a step towards the
absolute accomplishment of politics itself: in this sense it is metapolitical,
too. Following Benjamin’s reasoning, at the core of anarchy lies the will to
human fulfillment, which touches upon the realms of the historical, the po-
litical and the aesthetical. Its ultimate goal is happiness, a slogan Benjamin
introduced to refer to this longing for human fulfillment. In the final section
I will show that the very same principles of happiness and fulfillment cru-
cial for his political theory can also be traced in Benjamin’s concept of
avant-garde art as both, an infinite task and a promise lying ahead waiting
to be realized.
3 Linking Anarchy and the Avant-garde: A Conclusion
If anarchism in the reading of Benjamin embodies a spiritual disposition, a

will to happiness, then a further conceptual and philosophical twist towards
the mystic seems at hand, if we pursue the implications of the principles he
devised. Mysticism needs to be understood for our purposes not so much as a
generic religious notion meant to identify what cannot be uttered in the do-
main of the divine, but rather as a radical withdrawal from transcendental po-
sitions pointing to the absolute worldliness of the world. In other words, mysti-
cism, in Benjamin’s philosophy, is a concept of a world without God − including
the awareness of the limits of such a world. In these contexts, Benjamin’s mys-
ticism unveils the unresolved tension caused by the neglect of the divine re-
sulting in a dialectical gap within this world between reality and what it should
be. At this point and considering their shared goals, the anarchist turns into
the mystic and the mystic into the anarchist. What is more, both, anarchy and
mysticism are approaches to the principium individuationis impossible to
distinguish clearly. The Benjaminian concept of a will to happiness is imbued
with this notion of mystical anarchism − with mysticism as a metapolitical
attitude connected to the search for inner-worldly transcendence. This is the
theoretical constellation in which we need to move when we try to make
sense of an ‘ironic’ model like ‘theocratic anarchism’ – an immanent moving
rinciple, as we have seen so far – in a variety of domains: from politics to phi-

p
losophy, from criticism to literature, to aesthetics.
The thought pattern of ‘theocratic anarchism’ can be considered a vital
element in the reasoning of several philosophers in the decades around
1900, particularly Walter Benjamin and Gershom Scholem. Besides, it is a func-
tional part of a theoretical-aesthetic framework – especially in Benjamin’s
philosophy – which merges the topics of anarchism, art and theocracy, as I try
to demonstrate in these concluding pages. The modern idea of the artistic art-
work, which the avant-garde movements and their adherents advocated and
furthered in the early twentieth century, expands upon the impact of art on
society no less than on mankind. In that, it equals the radical political implica-
tions of anarchism and theocracy in the Benjaminian sense. What is suggested
here is that avant-gardist art in its striving to create a new world and a new man
should be anarchic – in its negation of any restrictive superior principle, politi-
cal power, predominant system or norm; and should be theocratic too – in its
constitutive reference to the transcendent.
The anarchic and mystical components of Benjamin’s thought are not sim-
ply linked to his concept of art and literature. Rather, they are intertwined with
the idea of the avant-garde (with which Benjamin dealt more systematically
later in his life) and share vital elements with it, such as violence, destruction,
the drive towards transcendence and the rejection of fixed principles. Of
course, the essential links of anarchism and avant-garde on the one hand, and
of destruction and avant-garde on the other, have already been comprehen-
sively highlighted by critics: in his seminal study on The Theory of the Avant-
Garde (1962 [1968]) Renato Poggioli stated, that “the only omnipresent or
recurring political ideology within the avant-garde is the least political or the
most antipolitical of all: libertarianism and anarchism”. (Poggioli 1962
[1968]: 97) Later, in another fundamental text, Theory of the Avant-Garde (1974
[1984]) by Peter Bürger, the importance of the destructive gesture – destructive
in its essence – in the avant-garde artistic notion of art, is emphasized: “The
meaning of the break in the history of art that the historical avant-garde move-
ments provoked does not consist in the destruction of art as an institution, but
in the destruction of the possibility of positing aesthetic norms as valid ones.”
(Bürger 1974 [1984]: 87) Art, at this stage, certainly has the task of reaching a
sort of “inner-worldly transcendence”. (Grimminger 2000: 425) And yet this
will to destruction common to all the avant-garde artistic tendencies between
the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries comprise both a radical re-
jection of the statute of art − in its philosophical content and its social
position − and an equally radical rethinking of the historically acquired nexus
190 Guerra
between the a uthor and his works, between life and art. In other words, the
overall ambition of avant-garde art was precisely to remove any classical path
from life to art, or vice versa.13
For these defining moments of the historical avant-garde, Benjamin’s work
was crucial. As we have seen, the radically negative gesture of ‘theocratic anar-
chism’ was echoed by an equally radically negative judgment about the art-
work. This is already anticipated in Benjamin’s essay Der Surrealismus (Surreal-
ism, 1929), his book Ursprung des deutschen Trauerspiels (The Origin of German
Tragic Drama, 1928), and his essay Das Kunstwerk im Zeitalter seiner technisch-
en Reproduzierbarkeit (The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduc-
tion, 1936). Benjamin’s thought was deeply linked to the German Youth Move-
ment with its appraisal of the philosophical concept of Youth by the poet
Stefan George and others, and the crucial role of poetry within it, e.g. the po-
ems of Hölderlin. Also, it builds upon Marxist and materialist as well as Jewish
and Zionist topics that infused the Youth Movement with literary criticism and
religious themes and subsequently inspired Benjamin’s work, too. Thus, it is
possible to trace a line of interpretation from the German Kultur of the early
twentieth century to Benjamin’s later writings. This particular concept of cul-
ture combined aestheticism – a decisive notion from the late eighteenth to the
early twentieth centuries – and the avant-garde intending to unite life and art.
If aestheticism, as Peter Bürger correctly stated, made “the distance from the
praxis of life the content of works”, the link to Benjamin’s critique of art as an
institution is established. To quote Bürger:
The praxis of life to which Aestheticism refers and which it negates is the
means-ends rationality of the bourgeois everyday. Now, it is not the aim
of the avant-gardistes to integrate art into this praxis. On the contrary,
they assent to the aestheticists’ rejection of the world and its means-ends
rationality. What distinguishes them from the latter is the attempt to or-
ganize a new life praxis from a basis in art. In this respect also, Aestheti-
cism turns out to have been the necessary precondition of the avant-
gardiste intent.
BÜRGER 1974 [1984]: 4914
13 It would be interesting, in this regard, to compare this trend with similar characteristic
tendencies in the contemporary debates on anarchism: see, e.g., Critchley 2012: 150: “What
is at stake is the affirmation of a life no longer exhausted by work, cowed by law and the
police. These are the core political elements of mystical anarchism.”
14 See also Mathy 1994: 79–88.
“New life praxis”, therefore, suggests we consider art in the sense of an in-
novative philosophy of life that, because its main interest centers on questions
of meaning, affects the concept of ‘life’ in its ontological, phenomenological,
political and/or symbolical dimensions. From this follows a mandatory call for
self-reflection that inevitably would initiate the radical reorganization of the
given world – an idea vital to Benjamin’s reasoning echoing, to some degree,
the critical and radical implications of ‘theocratic anarchism’ as he discussed it
with Scholem. In a paradoxical and antithetical way, this act of self-reflection
implies the negation of the very possibility of basing a philosophical system on
the idea of life. However, with regard to the historical dimension and starting
from the rejection of historicist positivism, this paradox converted into bio-
politics, and even into a racially grounded principium individuationis of the
‘perfect life’;15 a path, to some extent, from life as politics to biopolitics (and
finally to the National-Socialist thanatopolitics).
In this chapter, though, I have tried to establish some interpretive features
based on the ideas of ‘theocratic anarchism’ the young Benjamin and Scholem
had reasoned about. By means of their shared figure of thought and philoso-
phy it is feasible to picture the philosophical, political, and aesthetic act of a
rejection of the ordered world before such an act converts into biopolitics. This
repudiating act proves to be the critical condition to harmonize life and work,
life and art, in short, life and world. In the philosophy of the young Benjamin
and Scholem it occupies a significant place as it indicates the refusal of the
imperfect existing world – and heralds the potentiality of an alternative one.
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London: Heinemann.
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tung” in Chryssoula Kambas (ed.). Momentaufnahme der europäischen Intelligenz.
Moderne, Exil und Kulturtransfer in Walter Benjamins Werk. Hannover: Offizin:
67–87.
Lebovic, Nitzan. 2013. The Philosophy of Life and Death. Ludwig Klages and the Rise of a
Nazi Biopolitics. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Martel, James R. 2014. “Anarchist all the Way Down: Walter Benjamin’s Subversion of
Authority in Text, Thought and Action” in Parrhesia 21: 3–12.
Mathy, Dietrich. 1994. “Die Avantgarde als Gestalt der Moderne oder: Die andauernde
Wiederkehr des Neuen. Zur Korrespondenz und Grenzüberschreitung der Künste
zu Beginn des zwanzigsten Jahrhunderts” in Hans-Joachim Piechotta/Ralph-Rainer
Wuthenow/Sabine Rothemann (eds.). Die literarische Moderne in Europa, vol. 2: For-
mationen der literarischen Avantgarde. Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag: 79–88.
Rabinbach, Anson. 1997. In the Shadow of Catastrophe. German Intellectuals between
Apocalypse and Enlightenment. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Richichi, Iolanda A. 2016. La teocrazia: crisi e trasformazione di un modello politico

nell’Europa del xviii secolo. Florence: Firenze University Press.
Scholem, Gershom. 1975 (1981). Walter Benjamin. The Story of a Friendship [Walter Ben-
jamin. Die Geschichte einer Freundschaft]. Philadelphia: JPS.
Schürmann, Reiner. 1987. Heidegger on Being and Acting. From Principles to Anarchy.
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Part 3
Focal Points: Art and Education in Local and
Transnational Settings
∵
Chapter 8
Syndicalism and Art in France before 1914:

Propaganda and Prefiguration
Constance Bantman
Abstract
While the multifaceted interplay of anarchism with art, as well as the visual and liter-
ary culture of Belle Époque anarchism have been researched extensively, the relation-
ship between syndicalism and creative arts remains largely unexplored. This chapter
traces the mobilization of arts in the context of pre-1914 French syndicalism, as a pro-
pagandist device as well as a prefigurative practice. It argues that art remained integral
to the discourse and propaganda of the French syndicalists: access to art was also piv-
otal to the syndicalist vision and the educational project which lay at its core, as visible
in particular in the importance attached to education by French syndicalists, and the
place of arts within it. As in the anarchist period, these practices and concerns had
transnational ramifications, and a similar interest in art may be observed in other
countries. However, the relationship between art and syndicalism was both less symbi-
otic and more inclusive than in 1890s anarchism, in terms of ideals, propaganda and
militant personnel. This difference was important in distinguishing both movements
on a variety of levels: the lesser centrality of art to syndicalism partly accounted for its
perception as being institutional and narrowly ʻworkeristʼ. However, syndicalism de-
ployed a broader and less elitist cultural strategy to convey its political message and
strategies – thus acting out and shaping a different understanding of political and ar-
tistic vanguardism.
This chapter examines the mobilization of arts in the context of pre-1914

French syndicalism, as a propagandist device and a prefigurative practice.1
Syndicalism is understood here in a fairly restrictive and partisan manner, as
the revolutionary ideology and, to a lesser extent, praxis, partly derived from
anarchism, which became prevalent in the French national trade union
1 Institut d’Histoire Sociale – cgt, [n.d.] In accordance with Katherine Brion’s note that “dis-
cussions of ‘art’ in this period typically referred to literature and music as well as to painting”.
(Brion 2012: footnote 8)

198 Bantman
confederation, the cgt (Confédération générale du travail) and encapsulated

in its 1906 Amiens Charter: “La cgt groupe, en dehors de toute école politique,
tous les travailleurs conscients de la lutte à mener pour la disparition du sala-
riat et du patronat.” (“The cgt groups, outside any political school, all the
workers who are aware of the struggle to be led for the disappearance of wage
labor and employers.”)2 This strand of syndicalism espoused revolutionary
aims, to be achieved through direct action on the economic ground rather
than via political means. The doctrine of syndicalism, examined here in its
French context, was elaborated and disseminated transnationally before and
after the First World War, and France occupied an important place in these
processes. (Thorpe 2010) While the visual and literary culture of Belle Époque
anarchism and the diverse interplays of anarchism with art and artists have
been researched in considerable detail the relationship between syndicalism
and the creative arts remains less well known. This historiographic difference
reflects and leads to contrasting views of the movements. Thus, the pre-1914
French anarchist movement is commonly described as a complex counter-
cultural phenomenon, with strong philosophical and artistic underpinnings,
(Dardel 1987; Sonn 1989; Reynaud-Paligot 1993; Varias 1996; Roslak 2007; Leight-
en 2013) even as the conceptualization of cultural politics and the hierarchy
between art and politics varied significantly within the anarchist canon. (Weir
1997) In contrast, French syndicalism before 1914 has been labelled as narrowly
“ouvriériste” (“workerist”) (Jennings 1990: 2−3) and focused on ʻbread and
butterʼ issues. (Stearns 1971) Its utopian components and educational projects
have been highlighted, (Pelloutier 1902 [1921]) yet its artistic strategy and visual
identity have received far less attention than those of anarchism. The cultural
discourse and practices of syndicalism appear both more complex and more
fragmented than those of anarchism, which were central to the movement’s
identity and communication strategy. The way visual and literary contents
were mobilised to frame syndicalism and express the goals and ideals of the
movement was therefore significantly different from those of its anarchist
predecessors.
This contribution argues that visual and literary arts remained an integral
propagandist tool in the vision deployed by the French and international syn-
dicalists. They were used as a framing and prefigurative device as they had
been and continued to be in the anarchist movement; but with a significant
repositioning and rethinking of (counter-) cultural politics. This points to the
evolving interplay between artistic and political vanguards in the longue durée.
It is argued here that this association was redefined in this period, as part of a
2 Unless otherwise stated, all translations from French are the author’s own.
Syndicalism and Art in France before 1914 199
project focused on political vanguardism, where culture, education and aes-

thetics rather than arts in a narrower sense were at the heart of a movement
which foregrounded radical cultural politics, with a strong performative di-
mension. Visual and artistic representations in general reflected the identity of
the workers as artists perceived it, but also that of the movement which they
helped to build. Thus, much of the scholarly literature on visual culture in the
labor and social movements insists on the identity-shaping role of visual rep-
resentations: “On the one hand visual codes underline the connection between
activists and they express the attachment to a certain movement. On the other
hand, they make a movement and its adherents recognizable to outsiders.”
(Doerr/Teune 2013: 159)
Access to art was pivotal to the syndicalist vision and the educational project
at its core, as evidenced especially in the importance attached to education by
French syndicalists and the place of arts within it. As in the anarchist period,
these practices and concerns had transnational ramifications, and a similar in-
terest in art may be observed in other countries, with the express hope of build-
ing a cross-border movement. However, the relationship between the visual arts
and syndicalism was less symbiotic than in 1890s anarchism, in terms of ideals,
propaganda and militant personnel. This difference was important in distin-
guishing between both movements on a variety of levels. While syndicalism can
be defined as an avant-garde movement, this term took on a different meaning
from the wide-ranging cultural avant-garde of anarchism. A key reason for this
difference between both movements and their aesthetic strategy was the transi-
tion to a mass movement, which entailed a transformation of art social as well
as a different communication and propagandist strategy with the working class-
es, centering on militant education and access to knowledge. Thus, while the
scope of the present contribution makes it unsuitable as a significant addition
to the history of the relations between political and cultural radicalisms, a focus
on the syndicalist moment sheds light on the processes leading to the gradual
“divorce of the two avant-gardes”. (Poggioli 1962 [1968]: 12)
1 Avant-garde and Mass Politics: From Anarchism to Syndicalism
This section charts and seeks to explain the impact of the political transition
from anarchism to syndicalism, from political vanguardism to a revolutionary
movement aspiring to generate mass affiliation, and how this was reflected in
cultural politics. In their study on the use of cartoons by the American syndi-
calist movement, the Wobblies, Morrison and Isaac have identified three
parameters that gauge and explain artistic strategies within social movements.
200 Bantman
These can be usefully transposed to French syndicalism and they are examined
in this chapter. These parameters include the relationship between artists and
the syndicalist movement, the cultural strategy defined by syndicalists in offi-
cial documents and through praxis, and the material underpinnings of this
cultural strategy. (Morrison/Isaac 2012: 65−66)
The Belle Époque period which preceded the First World War was a golden
age for visual propaganda and satire, both politically and technologically.
French historian Bertrand Tillier has noted that the removal of Second Empire
censorship under the Third Republic after 1870 and the press liberalisation law
of 29 July 1881 led to an “outpouring” of attacks and caricature against politi-
cians, also making political cartoons a must-have feature for political papers of
all shades.3 These years also saw changes in France’s political and legal context,
from a highly repressive to a more integrative approach toward political sub-
version, although anarchism was subject to a different regime, especially with
the Lois scélérates (Villainous Laws) and stringent repression of the 1880−1890s.
Technological developments facilitated diffusion in a period of fast-evolving
printing techniques, making the reproduction of images easier. (Dixmier/
Dixmier 1974: 39) At the same time, the installation of the Third Republic and
implementation of free and compulsory education promoted social and politi-
cal awareness.
It is notoriously difficult to discriminate between anarchism and syndical-
ism and precisely define those movements which were characterized by both a
considerable ideological and personnel overlap as well as great internal ideo-
logical diversity in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Con-
versely, it is also erroneous to conceive of syndicalism exclusively in relation to
anarchism, since it was one of its strands, and a highly contested one that
waned over time. Various reformist socialist schools and parliamentary soci-
ties wielded considerable influence and contended with anarchist ideas with-
in the cgt. (Papayanis 1985) This chapter focuses – albeit not exclusively – on
the anarchist communist filiation and the first conceptualisation of syndical-
ism, which was heavily anarchist in origin. Different notions of syndicalism
and its aesthetics also existed; for instance, Georges Sorel’s (1847−1922) highly
influential ideas are only briefly discussed here. Nonetheless, the ideological
continuity with anarchism is manifest in the importance of key propagandist
themes, such as the primacy of direct action. Despite some changes in person-
nel between anarchism and syndicalism, and to some extent between the art-
ists involved, several individuals fostered continuity between the two move-
ments, in particular Émile Pouget (1860−1931), whose anarchist paper Le Père
3 Tillier 1996: paragraph 26; online exhibition 2015: “3ème République et caricature”.
peinard had been at the forefront of the promotion of avant-garde visual arts,
and who was the first general secretary of the syndicalist trade union federa-
tion, the cgt. Other prominent militants included Paul Delesalle (1870−1848)
and Fernand Pelloutier (1867−1901), the chief exponent of the Bourses du tra-
vail (Labor Exchanges). Many publications discussed here presented a mixture
of anarchist and syndicalist viewpoints, which was the case for some of Pell-
outier’s and Pouget’s writings, and the periodical L’Assiette au beurre. Much of
the artistic culture of syndicalism was also rooted in an anarchist legacy. The
ʻheroic periodʼ of anarchism in the 1890s saw important synergies between
painters, cartoonists, writers across a wide range of genres, and various strands
of the anarchist movement. Such links were essential in conveying the ideas of
anarchism and extending the movement transnationally. Visual allegories and
translated texts played key roles in the evolution of the movement’s shared
militant culture. In return, the individualist, rebellious and revolutionary mes-
sages of anarchism resonated with the way artists conceived of their creations
and their own marginal status in society, especially in relation to the art dis-
played and sold through academies and official circuits. (Roslak 2007) The “ab-
solute individualism” which represented an important facet of anarchism, and
underpinned even the communist variants of the ideology, (Poggioli 1962
[1968]: 78−102) was a powerful draw for some artists, while specific aspects of
anarchist theory resonated with individuals in different ways. (Weir 1997;
Leighten 2013: 7−8) These multifaceted connections were decisive in the for-
mation of influential artistic movements such as neo-impressionism and sym-
bolism, and in the emergence of prominent artists, whilst establishing anar-
chism as a long-lasting counter-cultural movement. There were also financial
and reputational assets for the anarchists, as seen in the financial support
made possible through the sale of works of art and the open defense of in-
dicted anarchists by famous writers, and in the public support given to anar-
chists by prominent literary figures. (Bantman 2017) Many of these publishing
partnerships and ideological affinities dissolved after the early 1890s, under the
impact of propaganda by the deed and the development of syndicalism, which
alienated many of those who had been briefly drawn to the movement’s trans-
gressive, elitist and individualistic aura. (Carassus 1966: 370−385) Terrorist at-
tacks and the ensuing repression tested the anarchist loyalties of these sym-
pathisers; many literary figures turned their backs on anarchism at that point,
while some visual artists continued to collaborate with the movement well
beyond 1896, and went on to become associated with syndicalism. Jules Grand-
jouan (1875−1968), Maximilien Luce (1858−1941), and Théophile Steinlen
(1859−1923) were among the few anarchist artists who espoused and promot-
ed syndicalism. Of all the neo-impressionists and post-impressionists once
202 Bantman
a ssociated with anarchism, only Luce contributed to publications associated

with syndicalism, such as Pouget’s La Sociale after 1895 and La Voix du peuple
(1900−1918). (Roslak 2007: 174)
This was an ideological, philosophical and aesthetic realignment. The histo-
rian Gaetano Manfredonia has offered a political interpretation of the dissolu-
tion of this web of connections, arguing that once anarchism returned to its
primary focus – the class struggle – it lost the interest of literary figures primar-
ily fascinated with its rebellious aura. (Manfredonia 1989: 159−160) This inter-
pretation goes some way towards explaining the problematic appeal of syndi-
calism for artists. Indeed, even in its anarchist communist variant (which is
arguably the one to which visual artists were most drawn in the 1890s), anar-
chism had a strong individualist ethos in its celebration of a philosophical,
political and aesthetic rebellion against bourgeois conventions. Concrete,
ʻbread and butterʼ political issues ranked second to such themes. Thierry Mari-
court has highlighted a similar process, or indeed misunderstanding for liber-
tarian writers, arguing that most of the writers associated with anarchism in
the 1880s and early 1890s had a very narrow knowledge of anarchism, without
any sociological basis, and tended to stay “cautiously away” from everyday mili-
tancy. For Maricourt, “their ‘anarchism’ was based on a misunderstanding and
overlooked economic, political and social issues, which would have to be
solved before a libertarian society could be established”. (Maricourt 1990: 85)
This understanding of and support for anarchism was intellectual, aesthetic,
and dedicated to a search for abstract beauty. In that sense, it was indeed based
on a political misunderstanding, which syndicalism clarified by focusing on
militancy, organisation, and labor issues. Roslak also underlines aesthetic fac-
tors, notably the very limited interest in manual labor as a pictorial motive for
visual artists, with the notable exception of Maximilien Luce; as a result, many
artists continued to be interested in anarchist themes, but were drawn to other
manifestations, as was the case with Henri Edmond Cross and Nietzscheism.
(Roslak 2007: 173−192)
The French syndicalist movement was revolutionary and continued to
stress individual emancipation, but its ethos was collective and institutional.
The legalization of trade unions after 1894 created the conditions for a mass
movement and provided a key incentive for a wing of the anarchist communist
movement, which made a case for entering trade unions and radicalising them
from within. This collective ethos informed syndicalist organization, as trade
unions (ʻle syndicatʼ) and labor exchanges (ʻles bourses du travailʼ) provided
the essential bonds and the focus for daily praxis. (Pouget 1910 [1997]) Such an
approach represented a clear departure from anarchism, which, almost by
definition, was more fluid in terms of organization, and relied on non-

institutional channels to organize and promote itself. The bases of anarchist
organization included, famously, the anarchist press, which was the key means
of communication and the organizational node for the movement, on a local,
national and transnational scale. (Maitron/Droguet 1973; Yeoman 2016) Artis-
tic content also played a key pedagogical role in framing anarchism by invent-
ing a transnational visual language of shared symbols that overcame language
barriers. It pithily conveyed both grievances and hopes to remedy them, as ex-
emplified by the rich iconography commemorating the Commune. (Bouchard
2013: paragraph 6) This change in organizational basis and institutional turn
also had consequences for artists drawn to anarchist ideas, given the integral
link between individualism and artistic avant-gardism which meant that “the
anarchist ideal is congenial to avant-garde psychology”; (Poggioli 1962 [1968]:
99) as pointed out by Donald D. Egbert in his study on the interplay between
artistic and political vanguards, “the anarchists, in their opposition to central-
ized governments and parties, allowed much more room for individualist ex-
pression”. (Egbert 1967: 355) This changed with the transition to syndicalism.
The collective and institutional shift induced by syndicalism meant that
some of the framing functions previously fulfilled by the press and artistic con-
tent were now assumed by organizational structures, and became discursive
rather than visual, with an unprecedented focus on organization as a means
and an end. This transition has been concisely summarized by Richard Sonn,
who underlined that syndicalism represented a formalisation and institution-
alization of anarchism: “[Anarchist culture] became institutionalized in the
anarchist press, in anarchist cabarets featuring anarchist singers, in libraries,
schools, and eventually in the unions and Bourses du travail where workers
sought work and found revolutionary propaganda.” (Sonn 1989: 2) Among con-
temporary activists and theorists, Fernand Pelloutier was the most eloquent
exponent of this organizational vision. The ʻBoursesʼ had many practical func-
tions, such as regulating the labor market and softening the harshness of eco-
nomic conditions, (Schöttler 1985: 119−125) but Pelloutier regarded them as
embodiments of the anarchist ideal of social organization, as well as the way to
achieve it. They met the ideal of labor self-management, through the four roles
which they assumed: the services of mutuality, teaching, propaganda and re-
sistance. They were revolutionary in their aims and helped prepare workers for
the general strike. Their flexible and decentralized structure made them a tan-
gible transposition of libertarian principles. Pelloutier was very explicit in stat-
ing the importance of the cgt’s dual institutional structure to enact and em-
body the organization’s revolutionary ideals:
204 Bantman
While it is true that the future will be ʻthe free association of producersʼ
planned by Bakunin, heralded by all the manifestations of this century,
proclaimed even by the most skilled champions of the current political
regime, it will be, no doubt, in these labor exchanges or in similar organ-
isms, open to everything that thinks and acts, that men will meet to seek
together the means to tame natural forces and let them serve human
well-being.
pelloutier 1902 [1921]: 264
The organization of the proletariat and the program they have given
themselves are the most surprising example of what the awareness of a
well-defined ideal can achieve, when coupled with a clear will. […] Such
are, not only in France but across the whole world, the workers’ organiza-
tion and their program.
Ouvrier des deux mondes 1898: 210−211
The decentralized labor organization of syndicalism created “a proletarian, an-

tistate, and federalist vision of emancipation and a new proletarian playful
solidarity and public space”. Within this “proletarian public sphere” with
“a strong aesthetic component”, (Tucker 2010: 127) the status of arts was rede-
fined. This was reflected in a repositioning and change of visual and literary
contents, since operating within an institutional mass movement required the
elaboration of new framing strategies: as Delporte has pointed out in reference
to the inter-war period (although the observation applies to the pre-war cgt),
“[militant] cartoons were above all the product of the trade union machinery,
expressing the complexity of their strategy and tactics”. (Delporte 1995: 97) In-
deed, institutionalization and the creation of a mass movement entailed some
restrictions on artistic content. Thus, Robert and Pigenet have argued that the
syndicalist paper La Voix du peuple, being a confederal organ, had to work for
different constituencies, so that manifestations of anarchism (including
through visual representations) could be frowned upon. This may have con-
tributed to the toning down of the polemic contents of artistic features, but
also to creating new shared visual and literary references. For those artists who
embraced syndicalism, the militant tactics specific to revolutionary syndical-
ism, such as direct action, the general strike, antimilitarism, and indeed mass
unionization, opened new possibilities and challenges for a visual discourse,
partly through the focus on masses which they introduced – although in sev-
eral cases the appearance of these visual themes did not occur before the early
twentieth century. (Dixmier/Dixmier 1974: 127) L’Assiette au beurre (1901−1912)
was exceptional in giving pride of place to artistic contents, based on the
remise that “it was very feasible to ally art with satire”. (Dixmier/Dixmier 1974:
p
ii) Printed entirely in color, L’Assiette au beurre featured over 100 contributions
from the main caricaturists of the period, such as Steinlen, Adolphe Willette,
Henri-Gabriel Ibels, Félix Vallotton, René Georges Hermann-Paul among oth-
ers, all of whom had previous anarchist connections. The paper’s political al-
legiances shifted throughout the period, and Grandjouan was the main illus-
trator who sought to specifically convey syndicalist theories. (Dixmier/Dixmier
1974: 58) The periodical also included representations of labor conflicts, the
struggle for the eight-hour working day, the general strike, and May Day cele-
brations. They were almost exclusively symbolical, detached from the realistic
depiction of everyday work life, providing “a perfect example of ideological
symbolism”. (Dixmier/Dixmier 1974: 130) Across the syndicalist press, continu-
ities with the modes of representation, allegory, symbolical drawing and satire
can be observed in the visual rhetoric previously deployed by anarchist artists.
There were recurring themes as well, with militant representations of op-
pressed working people and less of an emphasis on everyday working life in its
mundane aspects. According to Pigenet and Robert, the illustrations within
La Voix du peuple belonged to the double register of utopian realism and peda-
gogy; (Pigenet/Robert 2000: 9) this is aligned with the visual culture of the
French and international anarchist movement during the early 1890s and the
contemporary Wobblies’ cartoon propaganda. Similar themes, visual tropes
and literary topics also recurred, with an emphasis on representations of labor,
both negative and heroic, class antagonism, poverty and antimilitarism. In
terms of overall style, the quest for visual and ideological contrasts was a recur-
ring feature. (Bouchard 2013) Such stereotypical modes of representation of
workers were prevalent before the First World War, emphasizing proletarian
rather than working-class identity, the collective and class-based rather than
the individual, all of which may be seen as a visual counterpart to key syndical-
ist ideas: “Since they formed a class, all workers were identical. […] Austere
factories and their uniform chimneys, which stopped spouting their fumes
when unemployment threatened, were enough to conjure up the worker’s
daily universe.” (Delporte 1995: 99) Lumsden, in her study of the American
radical press, has stressed that this “dichotomized worldview […] is a tech-
nique for shaping social group identity by creating a common enemy”; (Lums-
den 2010: 228) it was indeed a characteristic feature of syndicalist art. The cir-
culation of a number of tropes, symbols, and papers, between movements and
countries, contributed to creating a shared visual language and collective
identity.
Overall, the visual discourse and imagination of syndicalism were more ru-
dimentary than those of anarchism. La Guerre sociale (1906−1916), one of the
206 Bantman
leading syndicalist papers, featured illustrations by Grandjouan and Aristide

Delannoy as well as songs by Gaston Couté. There were intermittent illustra-
tions in the leading syndicalist paper La Voix du peuple in 1901−1902, with an
emphasis on antimilitarism, which was a priority for the cgt. The eventual
inclusion of a greater number of representations derived primarily from com-
mercial considerations, as a way of attracting readers, came about as part of a
deliberate (and effective) strategy after May 1901, initiated to expand the audi-
ence by making the paper more readable. (Robert/Pigenet 2000) Le Mouve-
ment socialiste, which became more clearly syndicalist after 1904, did not con-
tain any illustrations but occasionally featured literary texts and literary
criticism. It was decidedly high-brow, including reviews of books on “Stendhal
et les femmes”, (Mouvement socialiste, June 1902: 1103) philosophy, and opera
reviews. (Mouvement socialiste, May 1902: 955−958) Its format was austere and
“far away from any avant-gardism”. (De Flers 1987: 51) However, after 1909,
a change in contents accompanied ideological repositioning, and the Mouve-
ment revamped itself as a Revue de critique littéraire, sociale et artistique, while
returning to France’s parliamentary socialist party, sfio. Similarly, the literary
element of syndicalism was far scantier than it had been in the context of an-
archism. Syndicalism had literary ramifications (discussed below in Section 2),
but not a prominent and fully-fleshed canon. In sociological terms, neither was
there an equivalent to the creative, political and financial symbiosis between
anarchists and symbolist writers which the previous decade had witnessed.
Nonetheless, it can be argued that French syndicalism had an unofficial liter-
ary manifesto, in the shape of Émile Pouget’s and Émile Pataud’s (1869−1935)
revolutionary utopia, Comment nous ferons la révolution (Syndicalism and the
Co-operative Commonwealth. How We Shall Bring About the Revolution,
1909), which also appeared in English translation (1913), with a foreword by
British syndicalist Tom Mann, a preface by Piotr Kropotkin, and illustrations
by Will Dyson. This text echoed some of the visual vanguard motifs sketched
above, through its emphasis on the masses, the revolutionary general strike,
and sabotage against the background of urban life and factories.
The relative discretion of the artistic and, more specifically, of the visual
culture of syndicalism has been interpreted as a sign of the movement’s nu-
merical and ideological weakness by some historians such as Robert and Pi-
genet, who pinpoint “the paucity of the system of self-representation for
unions on the eve of the war […] before 1914”. (Pigenet/Robert 2000: 28) None-
theless, the continuity between the syndicalist strategy of visual communi
cation and the anarchist period was sufficiently strong to constitute a visual
and artistic tradition of working-class representation. This tradition did not
undergo significant changes until the Popular Front, when the codes of visual
r epresentation of the working class were profoundly altered, now emphasizing

integration into the nation, a “dramatically new” take on the relationship
between workers and political authorities, and a backgrounding of the tradi-
tional visual tropes. (Delporte 1995: 106−108)
2 A Syndicalist Art Social?
Along with the relative lack of visual and artistic content in the printed syndi-
calist productions, the absence of an artistic doctrine matching the art social of
the anarchist period is also noteworthy. The founding doctrinal and program-
matic texts of syndicalism hardly discuss the role of the arts in relation to revo-
lutionary aims: the topic is absent from the 1906 Amiens Charter, the political
manifesto of the syndicalist cgt. The yearly national corporate congress of the
cgt and Bourses du travail also failed to include debates or motions on art – or
if they did, these were not documented.4 At the international level, the pro-
gram for the long-awaited (and eventually disastrous) 1913 London syndicalist
congress did not include a session on the arts or on the key area of education,
although ‘cultural’ topics such as language and religion were on the agenda.
(Thorpe 1981: 94−95) The omission is significant, since these programs claimed
to indicate “the types of issues which a variety of syndicalist organizations con-
sidered most pressing and most worthy of discussion at an international con-
gress”. (Thorpe 1981: 93) Instead, syndicalist congresses focused on practical
and organizational matters as well as militant strategy, providing convincing
evidence for the recurring claim that syndicalism was largely focused on mili-
tant matters. The main syndicalist periodicals also offered scant discussion of
the topics of ‘art’ and art social – terms for which a digital search provides hun-
dreds of entries in the contemporary anarchist periodical Les Temps nouveaux.
Within the French context, exposés of politicized aesthetic theories were ab-
sent from flagship syndicalist publications such as La Vie ouvrière and La
Guerre sociale; internationally, the long-running liaison organ Bulletin interna-
tional du mouvement syndicaliste focused almost exclusively on political and
strategic issues as well as labor news, and cultural matters were completely
overlooked.
There were, however, several unofficial aesthetic manifestoes where artistic
forms and their political roles were discussed in different guises and which do
provide some examples of the syndicalist conceptions of art and its role. Pell-
outier and Georges Sorel in particular played an important part in articulating
4 Congrès de la cgt/cgtu: <http://www.ihs.cgt.fr/spip.php?rubrique70>.

208 Bantman
a syndicalist cultural strategy which differed from that of anarchism. Thus,

Pelloutierʼs Histoire des bourses du travail (History of Labor Exchanges, 1902)
stated “quel rôle pourrait jouer un apprentissage intelligent et lʼinfluence
quʼexerce l’éducation artistique sur l’esprit d’indépendance” (“the role which
might be played by intelligent learning and the influence of artistic education
over the spirit of independence”). (Pelloutier 1902 [1921]: 65) He was one of the
rare publicists to devote regular column space to artistic matters. His review
L’Ouvrier des deux mondes featured a very highbrow art social section from
May 1898 onwards. He also described his ideal of a Musée du Travail (Museum
of Labor), which would showcase the fruits of labor, and highlight how crafts-
men were robbed of them. (L’Ouvrier des deux mondes 1898: 209−212) While
this showed a sustained emphasis on the leading role of art in the social revolu-
tion, it also illustrated Pelloutier’s increasingly comprehensive theory of the
links between art, culture and social change, in comparison to the narrower
conceptions set out in his 1896 lecture L’Art et la révolte. (Pelloutier 1897)
Georges Sorel’s ideas and theories reflect a different phase of the syndicalist
movement, despite his well-known affiliation with Pelloutier. (Antliff 2007)
However, his role in developing a “decidedly aestheticized concept of the revo-
lution” (Antliff 2007: 63) was pivotal to both syndicalism and, more specifically,
to the formulation of the movement’s aesthetic politics, which far exceeded
the reference to specific art forms and their political usage. His theory of the
relation between art and labor was characterized by utilitarianism and the re-
fusal to dissociate intellectual from manual labor, epitomised through such
statements as: “La forme la plus intéressante de l’art moderne est celle qui fait
complètement descendre la beauté dans l’utile. […] Ainsi lʼart me semble avoir,
en dernière analyse, pour mission dʼennoblir le travail manuel et dʼen faire
lʼégal du travail scientifique.” (“The most interesting form of modern art is that
which completely brings beauty down into usefulness. […] Thus, after careful
analysis, the mission of art seems to be to ennoble manual work, and put it on
a par with scientific work.”) (Sorel 1901: 270, 278) Sorel’s views on art were quite
different from the influential aesthetic doctrines of anarchism formulated by
Élisée Reclus, Camille Pissarro or Paul Signac, offering a far broader concep-
tion of aesthetic politics, especially because he
located art in workshops and connected it – like Proudhon or William

Morris earlier – with the moral satisfactions engendered by unalienated
labour. Stressing the importance of individuality and the essential role of
work in fulfilling it in workers, Sorel echoed his forerunners through the
synthesis between art and life which he advocated.
mcwilliam 2014: 1
His emphasis on the inherent dignity of labor and the rejection of art for
art’s sake provide an element of continuity with the previous period but he
rejected the subordination of art to ‘the cause’. These conceptions echoed Pel-
loutier’s emphasis on the interlocking of art and labor, the aesthetic and the
practical – with some distance from the anarchist art social, despite the lexical
continuities between both periods. Sorel’s aesthetic politics were part of a wid-
er mythical vision in which “the line between art and society was thin at best,
as social life was akin to theatre, and the proclamation of political positions
took on the appearance of the grand theatrical gesture”. (Tucker 2010: 122) This
vision was famously encapsulated in his conception of the general strike as a
myth, which stressed the aesthetic and performative dimensions of collective
mobilization, and blurred the boundaries between art and militancy.
3 A ʻlogocentricʼ Visual Culture?
Strategies of visual and discursive communication in placards are investigated

in this section. It is argued that the pedagogic and movement-building mission
statement of syndicalist posters was completed through substantial textual
contents alongside visual strategies, thereby articulating more complex mes-
sages, aligned with the cgt’s own mottos, within a predominantly “logocentric
culture”. (Doerr/Teune 2013: 158) This is convergent with other aspects of the
cultural politics of syndicalism, in particular the importance of pedagogical
songs within international syndicalist culture.5
As Delporte, among others, has stressed, “in a social environment where
people often had an imperfect command of words, a quick sketch was often a
substitute for the spoken or written word”. (Delporte 1995: 97) With its heavy
reliance on images as a propagandist and pedagogical tool, the visual tradition
to which French anarchism and syndicalism belongs confirms this observa-
tion. However, the strategies at play during the syndicalist period were in fact
more complex, and relied on the use of images within a text-based and coordi-
nated strategy, which reflects the primacy of education in the use of posters, as
well as their inclusion in wider campaigns. Thus, the selection of posters re-
printed in the anthology Affiches et luttes syndicales de la cgt (Poitou 1978)
points to the importance of textual content in providing a commentary on
5 Unfortunately, space and time constraints make it impossible to explore this aspect in the
present chapter. I am grateful to the anonymous peer reviewer who suggested this important
point.
210 Bantman
Illustration 8.1 Grandjouan, “Cheminots, syndiquez-vous” (“Railway workers, Unionizeˮ),

1910, <https://www.histoire-image.org/etudessyndicats-cheminots-greve-
1910?language=fr>.
illustrations. Some of the illustrations speak for themselves, such as Grandj-

ouan’s cover for the syndicalist George Yvetot’s 1911 brochure L’abc syndicaliste,
(Poitou 1978, no. 44) which is elaborate in its composition but contains mini-
mal text. However, many of the best known illustrated placards convey far
more elaborate ideas or indeed injunctions, and include more text. These tex-
tual elements range from a caption interpreting or amplifying visual contents,
to additional factual information, or indeed a truly complex exposition of
grievances denouncing large-scale injustice and calling for redress. This is il-
lustrated, for instance, by the Syndicat national des Chemins de fer’s poster
(Railway union’s poster, Illustration 8.1), (Poitou 1978, no. 49) which displays
the salaries earned by railway managers and owners (represented on the left as
top hat-wearing yellow balloons, a satirical riff on the theme of the greedy cap-
italist) and, on the right side, scores of workers employed for a pittance in
physically taxing jobs. No fewer than twenty salaries are displayed, compound-
ing the pithy message “Cheminots, syndiquez-vous” (“Railway workers, Union-
ize”, 1910; Illustration 8.1).
A similar layout and visual/textual strategy underpins another Grandjouan
1910 poster, Dans les chemins de fer (In the railways) – with the inclusion,
Illustration 8.2 Paul Poncet, Réduisons les heures de travail (For the reduction of working
hours), 1912, s.l.
owever, of a block of text in the bottom right corner reinforcing the claims
h
about unequal wages and summoning railway workers to a forthcoming meet-
ing at the Bourse du Travail.
One of the most iconic and complex posters of the period is the cgt’s
Réduisons les heures de travail (For the reduction of working hours, 1912;
Illustration 8.2) by Paul Poncet (1878–1962), a colored diptych contrasting the
impact of long working hours (on the left) and shorter ones (on the right), from
the perspective of wages, unemployment, health, moral well-being, alcohol-
ism, and overall welfare of the family. These differences are captured in two
different images: on the left, a sour-faced worker turning his back on his family
to enter a tippling house, against the grey background of the street; on the
right, a happy, smaller and more affluent family pictured in the warmth of their
home.
In terms of propaganda, both Grandjouan’s railway poster and Poncet’s dip-
tych were an important part of orchestrated campaigns and anchored in spe-
cific militant contexts. Grandjouan’s call for railway workers to unionize was
issued at a time of great difficulties in the industry, marked by declining wages
and living standards as well as sporadic industrial actions. A faction within the
union had resolved to press for a general strike, and Grandjouan’s poster played
212 Bantman
a prominent part in the public campaign to win over workers to this aim.
(Vincent/Natrritsens 2010: 8−9) Similarly, Poncet’s poster in favor of the reduc-
tion of the working week was part of a large-scale confederal campaign to
secure ‘la semaine anglaise’ (the English working week, that is to say 48 weekly
hours of work). Poncet’s poster had a 5.000 print run, alongside a 30.000-copy
pamphlet issued by the cgt. (Réduisons nos heures de travail, 1912)
In terms of the overall communicative approach, the subordination of these
posters to specific institutional targets and campaigns is a striking feature. This
strategy favored the inclusion of substantial textual elements and was geared
towards education, the visual components being primarily intended to provide
additional impact to a complex argument. It is also noteworthy that some of
the best-known and most impactful posters of the syndicalist era were exclu-
sively text-based – albeit often with a strong color statement characteristic of
such political flyers. Thus for instance with the 1905−1906 Affiche rouge (Red
Placard) issued by the International Antimilitarist Association (iaa, 1904),
calling for soldiers to aim at their leaders rather than shoot strikers, and to trig-
ger a strike and insurrection in the event of mobilization for war. After a first
trial in December 1905, during which 28 members of the antimilitarist iaa
were sentenced, the Association reprinted the same text on a different placard,
just a few weeks later. Threats were then made to publicize a third placard,
carrying 25.000 signatures. By then, the difficulties of prosecuting those in-
volved as well as the authorities’ desire to appease labor and socialist groups
resulted in charges being dropped and an amnesty being pronounced for those
engaged in antimilitarist propaganda. (Cordillot 2005) The 1908 Gouvernement
d’assassins (Government of assassins) placard released during the power strug-
gle between syndicalist leaders and the Minister of the Interior Georges Clem-
enceau provides another example. These examples testify to the key role of
placards in mobilizing support for the syndicalist and antimilitarist causes, but
with a greater emphasis on textual contents. Placards allowed more scope to
present information and level attacks, thus combining education with a strong
elocutory charge.
This text-rich visual strategy reflects the status of images as “argumentative
fragments”. (Delicath/DeLuca, cited in Doerr/Teune 2013: 161) It also reflects a
highly ambitious militant and educational project on the part of syndicalists,
as well as the different demographics of syndicalism as a social movement,
compared with anarchism. The more tenuous links of syndicalist organiza-
tions with avant-garde artists, and in particular Grandjouan, the redeployment
of visual contents as part of a strategy geared towards education and institu-
tional propaganda, led to questions to what extent syndicalism was still associ-
ated with cultural avant-gardes. In terms of reception, the subversive dimension
of this illustrative material was clearly perceived, resulting in prosecution for

Grandjouan in 1906−1907, for example. More significantly, however, focusing
exclusively on artistic contents detracts from the fact that syndicalism was in-
formed by a remarkably ambitious conception of art and culture, through its
educational program.
4 Education as a Framing Device: Revolution and Prefiguration in a

Mass Movement
The scope of the French syndicalist project was, if not unique, certainly re-
markable. It has been said regarding visual culture that “after the 1860s and
well into the 1920s, the cultures of sentiment and sensation continued to shape
the radical movements of the era, remaining primary modalities through
which alternate worlds and near futures were envisioned”. (Streeby 2013: 2)
However, while visual and artistic culture in general certainly played a role in
building solidarity and a collective sense of identity, and gathered support for
the unions on a general or punctual basis, it is not quite accurate to see visual
culture specifically as “primary modalities” for developing and promoting
identity within the movement, in the same way as visual arts and newspapers
had for the anarchist movement and other syndicalist movements, typically
for the American iww (Industrial Workers of the World, 1905). (Lumsden 2010;
Tucker 2010; Morrison/Isaac 2012) Within French syndicalism, the key cultural
site for these functions was education, conceived very ambitiously and articu-
lated in great detail in both discourse and practices. The interest in education
on the part of the libertarian movement can be traced back to its ideological
anchorage in Enlightenment ideals, such as “the Rousseauesque tradition that
encouraged the development of the child’s natural abilities” (Weir 1997: 132)
and the socially transformative impact of rational thought and education. In
other words, education rather than art was the central cultural project of syn-
dicalism; its role was integral to the dual focus of syndicalism itself, which
combined the struggle for improvement in the daily life of workers with revo-
lutionary propaganda. (Pouget 1997)
From the mid-1890s onwards, the strategic reorientation within the libertar-
ian movement emphasized education and long-term propaganda, reinforcing
the interest of militants for pedagogical themes. In France, the urgency of edu-
cating the working classes and fighting off obscurantism appeared with re-
newed intensity in the late nineteenth century as a result of the Dreyfus Affair,
bringing about a greater involvement of trade unionists and anarchists. Liber-
tarian pedagogies were also connected with antimilitarism, the fight against
214 Bantman
nationalism, the revalorization of manual work and intuition against narrowly

intellectual and theoretical pursuits, and the goal of achieving the complete
fulfillment of individuals in a libertarian perspective. The immediate context
was also important: educationalism, which spanned the anarchist and syndi-
calist movements in France and internationally, was perceived as a way out of
the deadlocks of anarchist-inspired terrorism.
Steps were taken to achieve these educational ideals across a wide variety of
settings, all geared towards similar ends:
the libraries with which the Bourses du Travail gradually endowed them-
selves, vocational classes, trade union press and above all the Musée So-
cial […]. The project formulated by Pelloutier, or art in its various compo-
nents, were as many ways for the workers to guarantee by themselves and
for themselves self-education, an independent education which ‘did not
corrupt the mind’, as the often-used phrase went.
hamelin 2011: 5
Syndicalist educational activism unfolded in three key locales: first, the print-
ed material discussed in the previous sections (both visual and textual), the
Bourses du travail and the Universités populaires (People’s Universities).
The Bourses were the most important sites for these educational endeavors.
David Rappe has stressed their dual function, providing a very wide range of
services such as placement and training offices, financial support for union-
ized workers, medical services, and also vocational training. Such education
fulfilled a double role: equipping workers with greater professional autonomy
so that they would be better prepared against employers when issues relating
to hiring, wages or dismissal arose. Secondly, education was also intended to
“foster a class conscience”. (Rappe 2011: paragraph 14) In other words, in the
comprehensive syndicalist educational and cultural project, no aspect of life
was left untouched to fulfil the general aim of promoting working-class au-
tonomy. As for cultural activities such as those pertaining to literature, visual
and performing arts, the Bourses played a part in working-class education
through lectures, socially-themed plays, artistic events and popular balls, usu-
ally connected with the intervention of a trade union. These initiatives covered
numerous topics, from antimilitarism to health and hygiene for the work-
ing classes, the emancipation of women and birth control. Such an empha-
sis on promoting working-class autonomy in every sphere made the Bourses
prefigurative of the postrevolutionary society, since their initiatives and ethos
“anticipate[d] or enact[ed] some feature of an ‘alternative world’ in the
present, as though it ha[d] already been achieved”, which is the essence of
refiguration according to Yates. (Yates 2015: 4) This emancipatory ideal per-

p
meated contemporary discourses on education, especially within the context
of the Bourses; nowhere did this find a clearer expression than in the writings
of Fernand Pelloutier, the earliest exponent of the libertarian interpretation of
the Bourses’ mission. Pelloutier categorized the work carried out in the Bours-
es in four classes, education being one of them: (Pelloutier 1902 [1921]: 17)
It was only when, having grown closer and federated, and being con-
cerned to see workers’ conditions worsen every day, trade unions came to
reflect on the economic problem that, first, workers gained some clarity
from social science and were fit to get interested in the volumes placed in
their hands, and secondly, cast their eyes on the world and discovered the
literary treasure that could soothe their sorrows, until it could actually
remedy such sorrows.
pelloutier 1902 [1921]: 179
This was illustrated by the Paris Bourse’s library, which included “works of
imagination” as well as a “technological section” (works on physics, engineer-
ing, chemistry, political economy, natural sciences). (Pelloutier 1902 [1921]:
180−181) Pelloutier expanded on similar themes in his periodical L’Ouvrier des
deux mondes, which extolled the power of education as a means of individual
and collective emancipation:
Isn’t this effort towards the light just wonderful? And, while it only prom-
ises emancipation for a remote date, does it not allow us to hope that we
may set foot on the Promised Land, does it not give us the consoling cer-
tainty that, the day the people will rise, they will have, along with iron
and fire, the weapon which is surer than any other: the moral strength
brought by cultivating intelligence?
L’Ouvrier des deux mondes 1898: 210
Pelloutier detailed an extremely wide corpus in terms of disciplinary scope,

which included drawing, mathematics and physics, technology, modern lan-
guages, linguistics, with an extensive literary pantheon – “nothing which
makes man complete is left out, nothing which composes intellectual and
moral life is omitted”. (Ouvrier des deux mondes 1898: 210)
This ambitious educational program was echoed in Émile Pouget and Émile
Pataud’s postrevolutionary utopia, Syndicalism and the Co-operative Common-
wealth, which contained an entire chapter on education, where the authors
highlighted the need, soon after the revolution, to “discuter des méthodes
216 Bantman
d’éducation et jeter les bases d’un enseignement rationnel, en concordance

avec la transformation sociale accomplie” (“lay the foundations of rational ed-
ucation, in accordance with the social transformation achieved in order to de-
liver a rational and integral education”). (Pouget/Pataud 1913: 225−226) The
emphasis was on manual and technical training as well as abolishing gender
differences in education; this suggests that emancipation would be realised
through work, education and autonomy, arts education being part of a much
broader project:
There was no need to fear that the level of art would be lowered as it be-
came universalized. Far from this, it would gain in extent and depth. Its
domain would be unlimited. It would enter into all production. It would
not restrict itself to painting large canvasses, to sculpturing marble, to
moulding bronze. There would be art in everything.
pouget/pataud 1913: 242
These projects placed syndicalism within a long and complex tradition attrib-
uting a key role to education in revolutionary utopias and transformative so-
cial undertakings. Through its sheer scale and comprehensive philosophy, con-
nection with labor, and central role as part of a twofold emancipatory project,
this educational plan also differed considerably from anarchism – even though
educationalism was a key trend within the movement at the time, as it was
indeed across labor and progressive movements in the aftermath of the Drey-
fus Affair. (Berger 2017: 395) Like visual propaganda in the previous period, but
in a more fleshed out and articulated manner, education was intended to de-
velop the workers’ self-consciousness; it had a pedagogical and a practical di-
mension, as well as a psychological mission (to “soothe their sorrows”). It was
integral to the syndicalists’ project of complete emancipation. This vision was
also consistent with a long French tradition of popular education, with its po-
litical and democratic implications. (Mercier 1986: 1)
The Universités populaires (People’s Universities), or ʻUPʼ, as they became
known, set up from 1899 onwards, were another key site for working-class edu-
cation. They were connected with other political movements, especially anar-
chism, thus testifying to a cross-political concern to educate the working class-
es; they were also undertaken internationally, and were popular among German
anarchists and London-based Italian groups, who organized an Università po-
polare. (Di Paola 2013: 99−101) Like the educational drive underpinning them,
the UP were cross-political organizations and attracted many libertarians;
their founder, George Deherme, had been an individualist anarchist in the
1880s. They shared in the Bourses’ philosophy of promoting working-class
a utonomy and emancipation through education and the fight against national-
ism. The initiative met with a favorable context, pervaded with scientism and,
despite the libertarians’ strong objection to state education, they also partook
in the republican belief in the wonders of education. The first Université popu-
laire, La Coopération des idées, opened in Paris, in 1899. (Lenoir 2014) These
institutions both promoted and embodied an ideal of cross-class collaboration,
of allowing workers to become emancipated through education – a set of aspi-
rations and initiatives which came at “a moment when there was, indeed, a
great appetite for knowledge in the popular classes and progressive intellectu-
als wished to associate with them”. (Lenoir 2014) UPs were regarded as “a work
of social education”, (Bulletin mensuel 1903: 2) with a comprehensive political
agenda which went far beyond the contents being taught. The program of eve-
ning lectures scheduled at the Université populaire of Le Mans in January 1903
provides an interesting overview of a wide-ranging agenda including special-
ized lectures on philosophy, the law, rhetoric and literature, history and geogra-
phy, science and medicine, and hygiene. Only one item was explicitly connect-
ed with labor issues – the final lecture on ‘Issues of labor legislation’, although
the first event, which was a series of discussions, dealt with “the main theories
regarding the distribution of wealth”. (Bulletin mensuel 1903: 4) Such a multidis-
ciplinary and ambitious program shows that, far from turning their backs on
culture for the working class, syndicalists embraced it and sought to develop it
in novel and inclusive ways. In terms of avant-garde politics, the UP can be
viewed in different, largely ambivalent, ways illustrating the contradictions im-
plied in a large-scale project of popular education. (Mercier 1986: 87−143) In-
deed, if considered within the integral and complex educational project inher-
ent to syndicalism, their transformative and prefigurative drive is apparent,
and points to a novel way of envisaging how the revolution may be achieved.
However, the fact that such libertarian-inspired initiatives coincided with a
large-scale Republican educational project points to a shared aspiration to in-
tegrate workers into the nation by giving them access to education and culture.
This may seem at odds with the emancipatory ideals of the syndicalists and the
centrality of education and autonomy as means of achieving them, evidencing
a tension between avant-garde revolutionary and integrative aims. The move-
ment declined after 1902. According to Mercier, the UP were torn between di-
verging interests, resulting in a pedagogical dilemma: how might workers who
only had minimal instructions be taught in a useful and interesting way? Was
there a risk of elitism within the UP? Should they remain politically neutral, or
actively promote the class struggle and working-class emancipation? Where
they stood on these questions determined how stakeholders saw the evolution
of these organizations. The initiative’s short-lived but genuine success testified
218 Bantman
to the importance of pedagogical concerns in the contemporary working-class

movement; its failure showed that the dilemmas relating to working-class inte-
gration were acute.
5 Conclusions
Morrison and Isaac have identified five reasons which explain why cartoons
were used to frame the American Wobbly movement. (Morrison/Isaac 2012:
62) If these criteria are used to summarize the arguments presented here re-
garding the French syndicalist movement, the continuity but also the narrower
remit of artistic contents within syndicalism are made apparent. Thus, em-
ploying as benchmarks the five roles listed by Morrison and Isaac in reference
to the Wobblies, we find that “add[ing] a pictorial dimension to the cultural
repertoire through which movements frame their message” was a restricted
dimension within French syndicalism, which was largely modulated on the vi-
sual culture of the earlier anarchist movement in this respect. Secondly,
“expand[ing] access to the potential consumption of the movement’s message”
was a more important dimension, as exemplified by La Voix du peuple, where
illustrations were included to attract new readers. Thirdly, both movements
shared the aim to “amplify the nature of injustice faced by the movement
showing, if in caricatured form, what oppression looks like”; this also explains
why symbolical representations were so prominent in syndicalism. Fourthly,
visual representations could “amplify the potential power of the movement by
drawing attention to agency”; in the case of syndicalism, these representations
staged new institutions and the workers peopling them, advertised militant
strategies and promote unionization. Lastly, Wobbly visual culture “br[ought]
humor to meaning-making in the struggle – cartoons may capture features of
characters and problems in exaggerated form driving home the point in enter-
taining yet forceful ways” – an aspect occasionally found in syndicalism, al-
though overall syndicalist papers were comparatively ʻasceticʼ in appearance.
(Pigenet/Robert 2000: 2)
Despite the multifaceted role of visual and literary contents within syndical-
ism, there is a sense that they were increasingly peripheral, in comparison to
the cultural effervescence of the previous anarchist period, as well as the in-
novative educational agenda at the heart of syndicalism. In part, this was be-
cause the strategies of visual and artistic communication of the anarchist pe-
riod had been absorbed and indeed made more complex by syndicalists: art
remained essential to movement building and activism, in terms of identity
definition and strategic dissemination. Such uses, as well as the imagery it
obilized, despite some adaptations, placed syndicalism firmly within a tradi-

m
tion of working-class and labor (self-) representation. While it would be erro-
neous to speak of a complete ‘divorce’ between political and artistic radicalism
in pre-1914 French syndicalism, it is clear that the aesthetic and cultural strat-
egy of syndicalism was part of a project of political vanguardism in which art
occupied a secondary role. However, focusing on this narrower understanding
of arts tends to obscure the innovation of syndicalism, which consisted in de-
veloping a comprehensive educational project to promote workers’ autonomy,
with a view to building class awareness and preparing society for the revolu-
tion. In doing so, those who reflected and worked towards this emancipatory
project transferred and expanded the framing role previously fulfilled by arts
within anarchism. This was a radical and avant-garde project of cultural de-
mocratization, paving the way for social emancipation.
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Chapter 9
Anarchism, Geography and Painting: Élisée Reclus

and Social Art
Federico Ferretti
Abstract
This chapter investigates the relationship between the anarchist geographer Élisée Re-
clus and the numerous artists he was acquainted with during his career as a scientist
and a militant. It contributes to recent international research on the interplay of art
and anarchism through the prism of Reclus and his scholarly and activist networks.
Based on the exploration of primary sources such as correspondence and original texts
by Reclus and his collaborators, my main argument is that Reclus’s engagement with
visual arts (especially drawing and painting) allows us to understand some fundamen-
tal points of his geography and his anarchism.
Reclus’s idea of beauty was inseparably linked to his idea of justice. Therefore, he
argued that the social scientist, the activist and the artist had the task of building a
better world, socially and aesthetically. For that reason, Reclus cooperated with artists
representing different visual tendencies because he considered social content para-
mount in the assessment of art; though engaging directly with visual languages for
both geographical publishing and political propaganda. Reclus and the anarchist geog-
raphers were strongly committed to the visual arts of their day. Within a wide network
of intellectuals, activists and painters they proved to be at once influential and influ-
enced. This essay suggests that several aspects of the artistic avant-garde of the first
half of the twentieth century, such as the social role of art, the questioning of the aura
and the dichotomy between the ‘creative genius’ and art’s recipients were anticipated
by early anarchist geographers.
During his career, the anarchist geographer Élisée Reclus (1830−1905) engaged
directly or indirectly with visual arts in at least three ways.1 First, he collabo-
rated with several artists to build the iconographic apparatus of his works, yet
he did not simply appoint draughtsmen for doing the maps and figures
accompanying his books. Rather, he conceptualized these images together
with them, as shown by the correspondence he exchanged with the publisher
1 Part of the materials used for this chapter were discussed in French, in: Ferretti 2014b.

224 Ferretti
Pierre-Jules Hetzel. (Ferretti 2012b) Among others, this work involved Charles
Perron (1837−1909) and André Słomczynski (1844−1910), respectively cartogra-
pher and draughtsman for the Nouvelle Géographie universelle (New Universal
Geography, 1876−1894), and Léon Benett (1839−1916), famous for illustrating
the Jules Verne’s novels. (Benet et al. 2011) Benett made the illustrated tables in
two of the most famous of Reclus’s works, Histoire d’une montagne (The His-
tory of a Mountain, 1880) and the second edition of Histoire d’un ruisseau
(History of a Brook, 1881). František Kupka (1871−1957), one of the ‘fathers’ of
abstraction, completed the full illustration of Reclus’s last work, L’Homme et la
terre (The Earth and its Inhabitants, six volumes, 1905−1908). Second, Reclus
was directly acquainted with painters sharing his political views and his schol-
arly and activist networks, such as Gustave Courbet (1819−1877), and Auguste
Baud-Bovy (1848−1899), a Geneva painter close to the circles of international-
ists and political exiles in Switzerland of which Reclus was also a prominent
member. Third, Reclus’s works influenced several impressionist, neo-impres-
sionist and avant-garde painters who took inspiration from both his geography
and his anarchism, such as Camille Pissarro (1830−1903), Paul Signac
(1863−1935), and Maximilien Luce (1858−1941).
Reclus experimented with different visual styles as he was concerned with
the social content of art and its utility rather than with the language of aesthet-
ics. Nevertheless, he actively participated in the development of the visual and
graphic aspects of his books, contributing to what French historians consider a
social turn ‘fine arts’ underwent in the last decades of the nineteenth century,
when many artists supported social movements. (Prochasson 2006) Reclus’s
ideas matched the principles of ‘social art’ and anticipated some features of
what was then called ‘avant-garde’. Definitions such as ʻavant-gardeʼ and
ʻmodernismʼ need to be contextualized and understood as “historical concepts”.
(Poggioli 1962 [1968]: 3) Authors such as Poggioli extended the avant-garde as a
“sense of exception, novelty and surprise” to the mid-nineteenth century, and
even supposed an “avant-garde character of naturalism”. (Poggioli 1962 [1968]:
8, 11) Others, such as Peter Bürger and Jochen Schulte-Sasse, argued for “the
historical uniqueness of the avant-garde of the 1920s”. (Schulte-Sasse 1984: x)
These critics disagreed with Poggoli’s views somehow equating modernism
and avant-garde, and underscoring the idea that “the social role of the modern-
ist and the avant-garde artists are radically different”. (Schulte-Sasse 1984: xv)
According to Schulte-Sasse, these definitions differed because, while mod-
ernism mainly “calls attention on its own material”, the specificity of avant-
garde is that it “attacks the institution of art”. (Schulte-Sasse 1984: xxxv, xxxvi)
It deals directly with social realities and, in Bürger’s reading, spread conscious-
ness of the “artistic means” by “shocking the recipient”. (Bürger 1974 [1984]: 18)
Anarchism, Geography and Painting 225
Drawing critically upon Walter Benjamin’s notion of ‘the loss of aura’, Bürger
considered the European artistic avant-garde of the twentieth century as a
generation of artists who challenged the (bourgeois) idea of ‘art for art’s sake’
and attacked “not a style but art as an institution that is un-associated with the
life praxis of men”. (Bürger 1974 [1984]: 49) Given these premises, it would be
clearly anachronistic to define Reclus’s artistic networks as ‘avant-garde’. Yet,
following Bürger and Schulte-Sasse, it is apparent that Reclus’s ideas antici-
pated some of the characteristics these authors attributed to the avant-garde,
such as the link between art and radical political commitment, the question-
ing of the ‘bourgeois’ principle where the “individual is considered the creator
of the work of art” and in general the aim “to eliminate the antithesis between
producer and recipient”. (Bürger 1974 [1984]: 52, 53) These considerations sug-
gest that the anarchist networks I address offered a basis for further artistic
elaborations.
This chapter also adds to international scholarship by rediscovering the his-
torical and conceptual links between anarchism and geography and showing
that both embody ways of thinking about spaces and terrestrial materialities
with a view to transforming society. (Pelletier 2013; Springer 2016) More specifi-
cally, the figure of Élisée Reclus has been the object of new studies analyzing
his scholarly, activist, social and family networks as fundamental parts of his
work. (Brun 2014; Ferretti 2014a) A key member of Reclus’s network was an-
other famous ‘anarchist geographer’, Piotr Alexeyevich Kropotkin (1842–1921),
who shared many of Reclus’s geographical and activist endeavors. Against this
backdrop, I will examine Reclus’s networks to assess the participation of other
artists and the significance of visual art for their viability. My main argument is
that early anarchist geographers were fully committed to including the visual
arts in their strategy of public communication and their construction of spa-
tial knowledge. Initially, this was intended to foster popular education and sci-
entific dissemination; later, visual styles such as neo-impressionism became
conceptually inseparable from the idea of social emancipation through space,
though Reclus and Kropotkin always declared that they were more interested
in the social content of the visual arts than in their formal languages. However,
especially in Reclus’s case, the great originality of early anarchist geographers
lies in the fact that they thought of the world as a true work of art to be embel-
lished by social scientists and activists. They believed that aesthetic better-
ment would lead to social revolution.
In the first part of this chapter, I address the origins of this discourse,
inspired by French anarchist Pierre-Joseph Proudhon (1809–1865) who consid-
ered visual arts as a powerful vehicle of political propaganda. His vision influ-
enced Reclus, especially during his exile in Switzerland (1872−1889). Reclus’s
226 Ferretti
Swiss networks comprised militant artists such as Perron and Słomczynski

who collaborated on the iconographic and cartographic apparatus of his Nou-
velle Géographie universelle, and Baud-Bovy who played a role in inserting Rec-
lus into local activists’ circles. All these authors were acquainted with Courbet
who was an exile of the 1871 Paris Commune, like Reclus, and an important
interpreter of the concept of social art at that time. In the second part, I exam-
ine Reclus’s theory of the world as work of art. On the one hand, his approach
focused on the naturalistic field trip (i.e., the direct experience of the world) as
the most important pedagogic experience. On the other, it inspired the mate-
rial construction of geographical objects, such as globes and bas-reliefs that
provided alternative representations to the prevalent flat maps. In the third
part, I trace the sociability networks linking the anarchist movement, e specially
through Reclus’s and Kropotkin’s close collaborator, Jean Grave (1854−1939), to
the movement of French neo-impressionist painters, drawing upon recent lit-
erature and primary sources, among them Reclus’s correspondence and Grave’s
archives surviving at the ifhs (Institut Français d’Histoire Sociale). (Roslak
2007; Ferretti-Bocquillon 2010; Leighten 2013)2
1 Proudhon, Courbet, and Reclus: Art for Everybody
With his pamphlet, Du principe de l’art et de sa destination sociale (On the

Principle of Art and its Social Purpose, 1865), Proudhon became one of the
protagonists debating ‘art and the people’ in the nineteenth century. The con-
troversy had been launched by several French socialists and by famous writers
such as Victor Hugo. In the 1860s, Proudhon intervened in the ongoing polem-
ics by defending the realistic paintings of Courbet, who had proposed a public
“discourse on the democratic art”. (Schlesser 2005: 1) This discourse contained
an embedded rebuttal of metaphysics and religious art. (Prochasson 2006) In
contrast, Courbet’s artistic productions, such as Un enterrement à Ornans
(A Funeral At Ornans, 1850), targeted people’s emancipation. According to
Thomas Schlesser, Courbet “first attributed to his art a philosophical function
(‘reason’s emancipation’) allowing it to exert an influence on society and politics
to promote individual liberation and then collective emancipation through de-
mocracy”. (Schlesser 2005: 3) Thus, substituting religious and m ystical i llusions
with social realities was a central task for an artist who considered himself as
2 All quotations from sources in French have been translated by the author, with the exception
of those from L’Art et le peuple, which partially rely on the translation appeared in Reclus
1927. For some idiomatic or especially significant expressions, the original French has been
given additionally to the English translation.
“coming from the people and talking directly to the people: it was no longer
time to paint the rich, the future was for social art”. (Schlesser 2005: 6) The
result was a subversion of the social hierarchies reproduced in traditional
paintings: instead of kings, priests, warriors and various ‘heroes’, proletarians
became the leading characters of art.
Already in 1854, Courbet lauded Proudhon, calling him “the philosopher
who has my same ideas”. (Courbet 1996: 122) He expressed the wish to portray
him, which he put into practice later on. (Bowness 1978) A source of inspiration
for the federalist ideas of future anarchists such as Reclus, (Ferretti/Castleton
2016) Proudhon considered art as political and debated the role aesthetics
should play in the process of social emancipation. Its changing values were
expressed in different schools of painting identified by Proudhon as a classical
school, politically conservative and represented by Jean-Auguste-Dominique
Ingres, a romantic school, associated with liberal bourgeoisie and represented
by Eugène Delacroix, and a realistic school, politically the most radical, repre-
sented by Courbet. Proudhon had been scandalized by a decision of the Sec-
ond Empire administration which accepted Ingres as a member of the French
Senate. “[E]ncore une fois, le gouvernement préfère-t-il, en fait d’art, la décré-
pitude à la jeunesse, les antiquailles aux inventions nouvelles. L’art est-il un
élément de civilisation ou de décadence?” (“Once again, our government pre-
fers decrepitude to youth, old junk to new inventions in matters of art. Is art an
element of progress or of decadence?”) (Proudhon 1865 [1875]: 8) The French
philosopher concluded that there was no politically neutral art: “Toute créa-
tion de l’art, comme de l’industrie ou de la politique, a nécessairement une
destination; elle est faite pour un but.” (“Every creation of art, as well as of poli-
tics or industry, does have necessarily a destination: it is done for some aim.”)
(Proudhon 1865 [1875]: 369) He saw only two alternatives for art: either being a
vehicle for social emancipation through realism and educational value to per-
form “le perfectionnement physique, intellectual et moral de l’humanité” (“the
moral, physical and intellectual betterment of humankind”), or being ‘art for
art’s sake’, devoid of a positive social mission, performing only “une [mission
sociale] parfaitement irrationnelle, chimérique et immorale” (“a highly irratio-
nal, chimeric and immoral [social mission]”). (Proudhon 1865 [1875]: 370)
It is in this historical, cultural and political context that we should view the
relations Reclus established with artists, especially painters and draughtsmen.
Courbet and Reclus were both associated with the 1871 Paris Commune, albeit
playing different roles, as the anarchist geographer was imprisoned by the peo-
ple of Versailles after the first clashes, while Courbet became a central figure in
the Commune council, being also accused as one of the persons responsible
for the destruction of the Vendôme column in May 1871. (Descaves 1922) Both
went into exile in French Switzerland, where Courbet died in 1877 and Reclus
228 Ferretti
remained until his return to France in 1889. They also lived for a few months in
the same village, La-Tour-de-Peilz, where Courbet resided permanently and
Reclus stayed from July 1874 to the spring of 1875. (Brun 2015) It is certain that
they were acquainted and moved in the same circle of friends but they never
cooperated directly for a number of reasons. First, Reclus arrived in the canton
of Vaud only in 1874, when the physical and mental health of Courbet was
already compromised by alcoholism leading to his death three years later. Sec-
ond, their styles of life were too different: Reclus was the personified stereo-
type of the great worker with ascetic habits, while Courbet was exactly the
opposite, cultivating excesses in matters of food, alcohol, tobacco, and n ightlife.
According to Gary Dunbar, who referred to the rigid education Reclus received
as the son of a Calvinist minister in Southwestern France, “Reclus’s puritanical
habits provoked admiration and a little amusement among his friends. Cour-
bet said that Reclus lived on lentils and water and warned against accepting
invitations to dine with him”. (Dunbar 1978: 78) Courbet also launched sarcas-
tic jokes about Reclus, telling his friends that “il travaille comme une couseuse”
(“he works like a seamstress”). (Descaves 1922: 236) With such gags Courbet
eventually expressed some male chauvinism, a position characteristic also for
Proudhon, but strongly disapproved by Reclus, an enthusiastic supporter of
early feminists’ claims. (Ferretti 2016a) Courbet’s behavior caused additional
embarrassment among the militants of the Fédération Jurassienne (Jura Fed-
eration, 1871–1880), the first anarchist organization in history which brought
together Reclus and Kropotkin. (Nettlau 1928 [1930]) James Guillaume, Rec-
lus’s and Kropotkin’s friend and collaborator described the impression Cour-
bet made on him during an otherwise sober anarchist dinner in Vevey as
follows:
After the political meeting, there was a dinner party with speeches, music
and socialist songs. Courbet, who lived in Vevey since 1872, joined us;
I had never met him before, and I looked with some curiosity at this gen-
tle giant who sat down, with two or three friends he brought with him, at
a table which was soon charged with wine bottles. With his rude peas-
ant’s voice, he sang for us all the evening, without any need to encourage
him, some rustic and monotonous melodies from the Franche-Comté,
which at the end ‘sucked’ us, as was said by another Communard who did
not like him.
guillaume 1909: 2953
3 The French original reads: “qui, à la longue, finirent par nous ‘raser’, comme disait un autre
communard qui ne l’aimait pas.ˮ
Thus, Courbet and Reclus moved in the same circles of French exiles associ-
ated with the libertarian ‘minority’ of the Commune, constantly under the
eyes of the French police. A close collaborator of both Reclus and Courbet was
the Polish painter André Słomczynski, also called Slom, likewise exiled from
the Commune. He lived in Courbet’s house and worked as a draughtsman for
Reclus’s Nouvelle Géographie universelle, producing a number of the engrav-
ings. (Reclus 1927; Lindsay 1973: 308) According to Descaves’s recollections,
Slom was “un bien aimable garçon…, condamné à mort” (“a lovely boy […]
condemned to a death sentence”) for his actions during the Commune. (Des-
caves 1922: 207) However, after the 1879 and 1880 amnesties, all the surviving
Communards were allowed to return to France.
In Switzerland, Reclus was also acquainted with local painters such as Au-
guste Baud-Bovy, a protagonist of the radical community of Genevan artists
and craftsmen, “who, in 1849, bought the Gruyères Castle [in the Freiburg can-
ton] starting to spend their summers there […] to restore these very ruined
buildings. […] Courbet also frequented Gruyères from 1855 onwards”.
(Vuilleumier 1996: 13) The generation of Auguste Baud-Bovy turned this “pha-
lanstère genevois” (“Genevan phalanstère”) into a clearly socialistic venue, a
place of welcome for foreign artists and political refugees. (Anker 1991: 22)
Baud-Bovy was close to the First International activists in Geneva, and after
1871 was considered as “the devoted protector of all the Commune refugees”.
(Anker 1991: 22) He supported French exiles, including Courbet and Reclus, but
also activists such as Benoît Malon (1841−1893) and his partner André Léo,
pseudonym of Léodile Béra-Champseix (1824−1900), novelist and early femi-
nist, and a life-long friend of Reclus. (Vuilleumier 1996)
In Geneva, Baud-Bovy involved Reclus in the ‘popular lectures’ taking place
there from 1875 on. Progressive intellectuals were appointed to foster workers’
education through evening lectures. (Heimberg 1996: 544) The correspon-
dence between Reclus and Baud-Bovy on arts and scholarship reveals the im-
portance both ascribed to education. It also highlights the role of daily and
practical solidarity for their forming networks. For instance, Baud-Bovy was
among the first to help Reclus, who worked in an isolated village in the Swiss
canton of Ticino from 1872 to 1874, to consult the books he needed for his Nou-
velle Géographie universelle. For this purpose, the painter cooperated with the
Geneva Geographical Society on behalf of the French geographer, as a letter of
Reclus suggests:
Lady André Léo was so kind to write you about my issue, so I am encour-
aged to write directly. Books arrive to me with some difficulties, and I of-
ten have to send requests to libraries. Yet, I could not find anybody for
230 Ferretti
sending me Le Globe, the geographical journal of Geneva. […] If possible,

could you forward my subscription directly to the secretary of the Geneva
Geographical Society?4
The importance of popular education in the interplay of scholarly and political

activities is revealed by a letter in which Reclus accepted Baud-Bovy’s invita-
tion to participate in the popular lectures: “Though very busy, I would not dare
to refuse your proposal. The idea of lecturing for workers is very seductive to
me, and I would be very happy to contribute this way to our cause.”5 Twenty
years later, Reclus’s correspondence with Auguste’s son, Daniel Baud-Bovy,
novelist and art critic, substantiated his further engagement towards perform-
ing aesthetic experiences for pedagogical aims. In his letters to Reclus, the
younger Baud-Bovy lamented the death of Barthélemy Menn (1815−1893), art-
ist and a sort of spiritual guru for the Genevan cenacle Les Humanistes (The
Humanists), whose members targeted “a transformation of the basic principles
of education through painting”. (Anker 1991: 68) According to Baud-Bovy,
Menn’s loss had rendered impossible the creation of the self-managed school
of arts they wanted to open in Geneva.6
In the milieu of Geneva internationalists Reclus met one of his most impor-
tant collaborators, Charles Perron, a craftsman and enamel painter, who
worked as cartographer for the Nouvelle Géographie universelle during the fol-
lowing twenty years. At that time, geographical publications were becoming
increasingly enriched by iconographic systems of maps, diagrams, engravings
and photos. (Mendibil 2000) Hence, from 1895 on, Perron would be one of the
artists creating the three-dimensional geographical objects for Reclus’s project
of the Great Globe, (Ferretti 2014c) as I discuss in the next section. During his
exile in Switzerland, Reclus was preoccupied with the choice of engravings to
illustrate his Histoire d’un ruisseau and Histoire d’une montagne. As his corre-
spondence with the Paris publisher Pierre-Jules Hetzel suggests, the geogra-
pher was initially unhappy with the work of Léon Benett, the draughtsman of
Jules Verne, to whom Hetzel had entrusted the illustrations. In his letters to
both the editor and the artist, Reclus insisted that an image, to have pedagogi-
cal value, should be realistic and ‘true to nature’. This confirmed Reclus’s eager-
ness to seek the best visual language for his ideas. (Ferretti 2012b)
4 Geneva, Bibliothèque de Genève, Département des Manuscrits, Archives Baud-Bovy, Ms. 237,
Reclus to Baud-Bovy, November 30, 1872.
5 Ibid., Reclus to Baud-Bovy, November 19, 1874.
6 Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Département des Manuscrits Occidentaux, Nou-
velles Acquisitions Françaises (hereafter bnf-naf), 22914, Baud-Bovy to Reclus, N
ovember 19,
1894.
Illustration 9.1 “L’Homme est la nature prenant conscience d’elle-même” (“Nature

Self-Consciousness”) in Reclus 1905 s.l.: 1.
In the 1870s and 1880s, Reclus and his collaborators shared a rather realistic-
descriptive idea of art serving education. As I explain below, this was no longer
the case with the neo-impressionists and with pioneers of abstraction like
Kupka. To him Reclus entrusted the illustration of his last work, L’Homme et la
terre (1905−1908). Kupka designed a graphic apparatus which Marie-Pierre Salé
considered to be “intimately linked to [Reclus’s] text” and the result of a “pas-
sionate collaboration” between the two men. (Salé 2002: 105) Yet, Kupka had
little time to work directly with Reclus, and most of his output appeared after
Reclus’s death and was edited by Élisée’s nephew Paul Reclus. Only on 4 June
1905, that is one month before the geographer’s death, did Kupka send to Rec-
lus the first two images he had drawn for him. They were the famous cover
image with a man looking down to earth from space, and of the likewise famous
frame containing the aphorism “Man is Nature becoming Self-Conscious”.
(Illustration 9.1)7 Reclus seemed an important source of inspiration for Kup-
ka’s work as revealed by the letters the painter sent to Jean Grave after Reclus’s
death: Kupka promised benefit drawings for the anarchist press, “to respect-
fully honor the memory of Élisée Reclus who would be delighted to know that
I am working with you”.8 Kupka also discussed a new colored version of the
cover image for the Spanish edition of L’Homme et la terre with the Spanish
7 Ibid., Kupka to Reclus, June 4, 1905.

8 Pierrefitte-sur-Seine, Institut Français d’Histoire Sociale, Fonds Jean Grave, 14 AS 184a (here-
after ifhs), Kupka to Grave, December 1905.
232 Ferretti
anarchist and educator Francisco Ferrer y Guardia. He had proposed the image
of “an intellectual and a proletarian supporting each other”,9 but apparently it
was never completed.
It is possible to conclude this section with a reference to Hem Day (pseud-
onym of Marcel Dieu, 1902−1969), a Belgian anarchist intellectual and admirer
of Reclus. Day stressed Reclus’s care for every aspect of his books, including the
material ones studied today under the notion of ‘materialist hermeneutics’.
(Mayhew 2007) According to Day, the anarchist geographer, “rêvait comme les
Florentins de la belle époque de tailler lui-même les caractères qui servent à
l’impression de son livre” (“like the Florentines of the Renaissance, dreamed to
cut himself the typographic characters serving to print his book”). (Day 1956:
27)
2 Globes, Fieldwork and ‘Naturphilosophie’: The World as an Artwork
The aphorism on nature’s self-consciousness recalls a central point of Reclus’s

thinking: his life-long reference to the German concept of ‘Naturphilosophie’
he had espoused in his youth while studying authors such as Friedrich Schelling
and Lorenz Oken. (Reclus 1911: 17; Ferretti/Malburet/Pelletier 2011) ‘Naturphil-
osophie’ considered ‘humankind’ and ‘nature’ as consubstantial entities not
divided into separate spheres such as nature and culture, the natural and the
artificial, or history and environment. Consequently, Reclus argued that the
world should be the true work of art. Unlike his North American fellow geogra-
pher George Perkins-Marsh, he referred to the idea of nature not as an ideal-
ized ‘wilderness’ dissociated from human agency. Rather, Reclus proposed
the cooperation of both human and non-human agencies to embellish the
planet – to transform society according to libertarian and egalitarian princi-
ples. (Ferretti 2014b) The geographer dealt with these topics in a pamphlet en-
titled L’Art et le peuple (Art and the People, 1904):
At the closing of the Salon, one of my friends, an amateur connoisseur of

beautiful things, came to me quite desolate. He had been ill and had tak-
en a journey away from Paris. Now he returned too late for the Exhibition
and so he lamented not having been able to see these multitudes of mar-
bles and paintings which special reviews kept him conversant with. The
dear comrade may reassure himself. A walk upon forest-paths, on fallen
9 Amsterdam, International Institute of Social History, Spain, Various Manuscripts Collection,

Folder 7, Kupka, Ferrer to Kupka, July 5, 1909.
leaves, or one moment of repose upon the brink of a pure fountain […]
will console him for having missed his visit to the habitual museum
where there is shut up every year temporarily that what is called the fine
arts.
reclus 1904 [2012]: 14010
This did not mean that Reclus despised the ‘fine arts’. On the contrary, he de-
clared to admire them, but at the same time he raised the problem of their so-
cial utility:
There also do I see the artist prestidigitators who manipulate and mix
colors with an incomparable dexterity, who blend in a thousand ways
lights and shadows in a hash which is entirely unexpected and who suc-
ceed in making a stunning light spring up from the darkest depths. All
this seems to be very fine, or rather surprising, and I applaud the virtuosi
of the pencil in all sincerity. Nevertheless, I am not at all satisfied. Is it this
indeed which is true art? […] Can all these paintings, sculptures, en-
graved or embroidered objects make me forget the sordid misery outside
and the presence of the armed policeman who stands near the door […]?
No, all this multi-colored art that accumulates its incongruous products
in rooms lent by the State can only be a false and lying art, for it is not the
work of a free people.
reclus 1904 [2012]: 14111
Free art, in contrast, could help to “embellish the planet”, relying on architec-
ture and regional planning: “Ah, if the painters and sculptors were free, there
would be no need for them to shut themselves up in Salons. They would have
but to reconstruct our cities, first demolishing these ignoble cubes of stone
where human beings are piled up.” (Reclus 1904 [2012]: 141−142) Reclus’s idea of
beauty was strictly linked to his idea of justice, which contradicts judgments
considering ‘political anarchism’ and ‘cultural anarchism’ as rather separate
spheres. (Weir 1997)
Matching Kropotkin’s views, Reclus found historical examples of collective
experience referring to the joint endeavors of town building in ancient Greece
and the Middle Ages:
10 The French original reads “sa visite au palais coutumier où, tous les ans, sont enfermés
temporairement ce que l’on appelle les ‘beaux-arts’ˮ.
11 The French original is: “ne peut être qu’un art faux, mensonger, car il n’est pas l’œuvre d’un
peuple libreˮ.
234 Ferretti
This way, one saw the raising of Greek cities and medieval naves: entire
populations, animated by the same spirit, pushed by the same desire, col-
laborated to the common good which should be at the same time the
collective glory and the private pleasure of each citizen. […] Every mem-
ber of the commune found in the building the part where his ideal of
beauty had taken a material form.
reclus 1904 [2012]: 143
Considering misery as a key problem for art, Reclus also attached great value to
material questions. “Comment un peuple deviendrait-il artiste quand les souf-
frances de la faim et de la maladie forcée l’enlaidissent?” (“How can a people
become artists when the sufferings of hunger and unnatural illness render it
ugly?”) Quoting Ruskin and his idea of public betterment through art, he al-
ways came back to his own principles of social and engaged art. “‘Art is life’, said
Jean Baffier, the workingman sculptor who has put so much passion and joy in
chiselling out of the marble the noble and pure figure of his mother, the peas-
ant woman and those of the valiant workers, prudent gardeners.” (Reclus 1904
[2012]: 145)
In line with ‘Naturphilosophie’, Reclus embedded the intended ‘embellish-
ment’ of cities in a wider framework uniting town and countryside. (Ferretti
2012a) “It is not only the restoration and embellishment of our cities that we
expect from the man who becomes artist. Because he will be free, we also
count upon him to renew the beauty of the fields, in adapting all his works to
their proper milieu in nature.” (Reclus 1904 [2012]: 146) To illustrate the envi-
sioned harmony between a building and its site he again referred to a historical
example: “A Greek temple continued, developed and made flourish the shapes
of the rock on which it was built. It was its integral part, but giving it a more
elevated sense.” (Reclus 1904 [2012]: 147) However, building speculation did not
belong to Reclus’s vision of embellishment grounded in ‘Naturphilosophie’:
One has a feeling of real disgust when insolent architects, paid by ob-
scene innkeepers, build enormous caravanserais, erect rectangular
blocks, on which are hewed out a thousand squares of symmetrical win-
dows, and which bristle with a hundred smoking chimneys. All this in the
face of superb summits of granite, fields of immaculate snow, rivers of
blue ice meandering in the valleys of the mountain.
reclus 1904 [2012]: 14712
12 The French original reads: “Le tout en face de pics superbes de granit, des champs de
neige immaculés, des fleuves de glace bleue serpentant dans les vallées de la montagne.ˮ
In conclusion, Reclus merged art, geography and activism: “The earth is in-
finitely beautiful, but for us to associate ourselves to its beauty, to glorify it by a
respectful art, there is no other means but that of becoming free, of instituting
the decisive revolution against money and of ennobling the class-struggle by
abolishing the classes themselves.” (Reclus 1904 [2012]: 147−148) He believed
that ugliness, symbolized by polluting factories or military settlements, would
increase if the harmony between humankind and nature was sacrificed for
profit by the State. In his early paper Du sentiment de la nature dans les sociétés
modernes (The Feeling of Nature in Modern Societies, 1866) Reclus thus con-
trasted the beauty of landscapes with the ugliness of their commodification:
Speculation usurps all the charming places, dividing them in rectangular

parcels, closing them with uniform walls and then constructing hundreds
or thousands of pretentious cottages […]. On the sea shores, the most
picturesque cliffs, the most beautiful beaches are often grabbed by egoist
landlords or by speculators who appreciate nature’s beauty in the same
way a banker estimates a gold bar.
reclus 1866: 377
The main reason for this was “the fact that everything can become private
property”, (Reclus 1866: 377), an assumption implying that, for Reclus, art
seemed incompatible with the existing state and capitalism. In L’Homme et la
terre, Reclus again took up the concept of art in a chapter dedicated to anar-
chist education. He followed the works of Swiss pedagogue Heinrich Pestalozzi
with their direct approach to the world:
The part of education that should result in great aesthetic transforma-

tions is even more delicate than the scientific one, because its elabora-
tion is entirely personal and very nuanced. The feeling of beauty precedes
the notion of classification and order: art comes before science. The child
is enchanted by handling a luminous object, with vivid colors and silvery
sounds; he enjoys delightfully the music of sounds and nuances, and only
later he tries to understand the reason of this rattle.
reclus 1908: 479−480
Reclus did not place art in the realm of the ‘irrational’ or ‘non-scientific’. To
him, the more the artist was free and creative, the more his work served social
causes. “The one who pretends to be an artist by the servile imitation of mas-
ters […] will only become a lamentable copyist, a generator of decadence and
death. According to Ruskin, the first rule of art is to be sincere, spontaneous
236 Ferretti
and personal.” (Reclus 1908: 480) It is worth noting that Reclus’ conviction did
not refer to a Rousseau-like naturalism praising the ‘state of nature’ over civili-
zation. He was enthusiastic not only about ‘nature’ but also about science and
technology which he was convinced would improve, not destroy, the environ-
ment. Throughout his career, he sought a synthesis of ‘nature’ and ‘culture’ an-
ticipating today’s approaches applied by ‘hybrid’ and ‘more-than-human’ geog-
raphies. (Ferretti 2017)
Matching Proudhon’s anticlericalism, Reclus blamed Christian traditions in
art for their ideological role and their censure of the human body:
The material tyranny of masters and castes is not the only one which
hinders art’s development: the heavy oppression of an unintelligent pub-
lic opinion does the same. […] Until recent times, the so-called ‘conve-
nient’ arts and literature were forced to ignore completely sexual life. Be-
yond the purely spiritual love, it seemed that the human being was
completely bodiless: a flame, a light, an elf. In that, the modern epoch,
submitted to this shameful condemnation of flesh pronounced by Chris-
tianity, is still inferior to the noble Hellas, which respected and divinized
the human forms.
reclus 1908: 48413
Yet, even though he was an early propagandist of naturism and nudity, Reclus
still criticized the artistic nudes created in the ateliers as something morbid.
“This appreciation of living bodies should be done in complete freedom and in
open air […] not in ateliers where people accustomed to a conventional pose
sell themselves for a tariff at each session.” (Reclus 1908: 485) In addition, fash-
ion and glamour were depreciated as a form of commodification of art. “Fash-
ion still rules, like Lord Capital and the surviving State do. We should not ex-
pect that fashion abdicates spontaneously a new regime of art and reasonability
arises, as it represents the interests of numerous suppliers and infinite per-
sonal passions.” (Reclus 1908: 485) Reclus did not stop at theory: He committed
himself to the iconographic apparatuses of his books, and later started to pro-
mote the construction of three dimensional geographical objects such as
globes and reliefs. Their aesthetic and visual aspects had to be consistent with
their scientific task to correct what Reclus defined as ‘the lies of flat maps’. Re-
cent scholarship has shown that the anarchist geographers pioneered later
13 The French original reads: “À cet égard, la société moderne, toujours soumise à cette hon-
te, à cette malédiction de la chair qu’avait prononcée le christianisme, est encore singu-
lièrement inférieure à la noble Hellade, qui respectait et divinisait les formes humaines.ˮ
c ritiques of maps as ideological items informed by Euro-centric views serving

states. Reclus and his colleagues were among the first to propose their replace-
ment by three-dimensional devices especially conceived for educational aims.
(Ferretti 2014c) Following Reclus, flat maps are “d’autant plus fausses … elles ne
peuvent que tromper le lecteur sur les dimensions relatives des régions différ-
entes [tandis que] sur la rondeur d’un globe artificiel aucune méprise n’est pos-
sible au sujet de la superficie relative des diverses individualités terrestres”
(“false as […] they mislead the reader on the relative dimensions of different
regions. [On the contrary], due to the roundness of an artificial globe no mis-
understanding is possible concerning the relative surface of terrestrial charac-
teristics”). (Reclus 1895: 3−4) This view led to Reclus’s proposal of a Great Globe
at the scale of 1/100.000, resulting in a monumental object of 127.5 meters of
diameter to be presented at the 1900 Paris World Fair. Several studies already
exist on this project, (Dunbar 1974; Alavoine-Muller 2003; Jankovic 2011; Ferretti
2014c) and here I would only stress a few points fundamental to understanding
the relation between art and anarchist geographies. First, the Great Globe con-
tinued a tradition of globes, georamas and landscape gardens combining both
geography and visual arts throughout the nineteenth century. (Besse 2003)
Second, Reclus envisaged appointing a number of neo-impressionists (akin to
his approach, as I explain in the next section) such as Signac, Henri-Edmond
Cross (1856−1910), or Théo van Rysselberghe (1862−1926) to paint the decora-
tions for the globe’s huge surface. (Roslak 2007: 109) Third, the great symbolic
power of that object was an attempt to minimize as much as possible the di-
chotomy between the world and its representations and to make the world a
work of art. In the end, the Great Globe was not completed because it was
considered too pedagogical and not ‘spectacular’ enough to be worth funding.
(Alavoine-Muller 2003; Besse 2003) Nevertheless, Reclus continued to support
the construction of smaller globes and reliefs, endorsing Charles Perron’s Relief
of Switzerland (1900) initially conceived as a part of the Great Globe. (Ferretti
2014c) Reclus also worked with Belgian map maker Émile Patesson on a Globu-
lar Atlas consisting of so-called ‘spherical maps’ – painted sheets of aluminum
reproducing in scale the terrestrial curvature related to the represented area.
A very telling anecdote is the public presentation of an object that Reclus gave
to the Royal Geographical Society in London, defining it as “a work of art, or of
high-level artisanship” and concluding that: “I speak here not as a geographer,
but as an artist.” (Reclus et al. 1903: 298) In the same year, the Geographical
Institute founded by Reclus at the Université nouvelle de Bruxelles was re-
quested by Francisco Ferrer14 to provide this kind of object for the Barcelona
14 bnf-naf, 22914, Ferrer y Guardia to Reclus, June 1, 1903.

238 Ferretti
Modern School, the most famous of the anarchist schools at that time. (Ferretti
2016b)
The anarchist geographers did not conceive of artists as ‘organic intellectu-
als’ as the twentieth century Soviet realists did. Criticizing the separation of
manual and intellectual work (Kropotkin 1898 [1910]) and matching some
‘avant-garde’ arguments explained above, early anarchist geographers ques-
tioned the division between the professional artist and the public, arguing that
everyone should be an artist for the sake of society. In such a way, Reclus indi-
rectly joined the debate promoted by Jean Grave on the idea of social art as
opposed to ‘art for art’s sake’ in 1895. Lucien Pissarro (1863−1944) intervened to
dispute this distinction, because
all real artistic production is social, independently by the author’s will,

because who produced it shares his emotions with his counterparts. It
seems that you [Grave] are establishing hierarchies between works,
based on their direct utility for propaganda. I don’t think it is true. A work
conceived only for pure beauty might do more for human intellectuality
than many others pretending to teach something, because this artwork
will enlarge the aesthetic conceptions of other individuals.
pissarro 1895: 1
For Lucien Pissarro, art should help to form a new society. To this end and as a
condition for art to be close to ‘true life’ the freedom of the artist had to be se-
cured, a similar position to that of Reclus. He was eager to support advanced
visual experiments but above all took into account their social contents. In
contrast, Bernard Lazare (1865−1903), the anarchist writer engaged against
anti-Semitism in the Dreyfus Affair and Reclus’s friend and collaborator in
Brussels, defended the idea of social art in an 1896 paper published in the jour-
nal L’Art social; yet, he refused to identify it with the ‘old’ naturalism and
descriptive realism. (Lazare 1906)
3 Anarchist Geographies and Neo-impressionism
Recently, historians of art have called attention to the close ties established
between neo-impressionism, the avant-gardes and anarchism in France.
Among others, Robyn Roslak, Patricia Leighten and Marina Ferretti-Bocquillon
noted how anarchist geographers such as Reclus and Kropotkin influenced a
number of artists on grounds of both their geography and their anarchism. To
give a prominent example, Paul Signac, whose adherence to anarchism was

public and explicit, declared that he was influenced by Reclus and Kropotkin
on both political and cultural sides. (Roslak 2006: 860) Furthermore, according
to Roslak, anarchism and neo-impressionism shared discursive devices and
metaphors inspired by chemistry and natural sciences then considered instru-
ments for social progress as well as for geography. (Ferretti 2017)
Chemical language and metaphors appeared regularly in the political

commentaries of Grave and Kropotkin most often in their description of
human societies […] as the basis for constructing a social order whose
diverse parts were perfectly harmonized correlates with the neo-
impressionists’ faith in science as the basis for constructing aesthetic
harmony, the latter of which, according to Seurat, was the essence of art.
roslak 2007: 4−5
The example of molecular reactions and recombinations was often evoked to

argue that the elements forming a society (i.e., the individuals) could reach a
state of harmony with the help of ‘formulae’. The neo-impressionist techniques
for separation of colors and brush strokes were also comparable to this social
process: the artist utilizes color ‘molecules’ to establish harmony in a painting
similar to the activist and social scientist who seeks to create harmony in soci-
ety starting from the autonomy of individuals. (Roslak 1991) This harmony took
the form of a synthesis, a chemical term very common in debates of anarchist
organization. (Malatesta 2014)
Geographers and painters also touched upon ideas of landscape. According
to Roslak, “Reclus’ geography was more than an effort to understand the earth’s
surface objectively as a disengaged, scientific eye might see. He also under-
stood it subjectively and imaginatively as landscape”. (Roslak 2007: 101) Many
painters, especially Luce, Signac and Charles Angrand, showed a keen interest
in Reclus’s and Kropotkin’s studies on the problematics of industrial cities, pic-
turing scenes from proletarian neighborhoods. (Roslak 2007: 126−132) Yet, an-
archist significance was not given to urban landscapes alone. Painters such as
Cross and Signac located their sense of harmony in Mediterranean scenery.
(Roslak 2007: 146−154) They harked back to a classical anarchist interpretation
that centered upon pre-Christian Mediterranean civilizations, especially that
of the ancient Greeks, as ideal social types characterized by free speech and a
deep interest in philosophy that seemed closer to secularization than more
recent societies. Perpetuating this interpretation Reclus even launched a met-
aphor defining the Mediterranean tangles of islands and peninsulas as
240 Ferretti
“the cerebral circuits where human thinking was elaborated”. (Reclus 1876: 47)
With this he contributed to what French scholarship called “the geographic
invention of the Mediterranean”. (Deprest 2002)
Art historians such as Marina Ferretti-Bocquillon stressed the direct engage-
ment of Signac and Luce in the anarchist movement and traced their discus-
sions about the best ways to portray workers’ and popular life. To them, both
symbolized proletarian action against capitalist society, as in the case of Sig-
nac’s painting Le Démolisseur (The Demolisher, 1899). (Ferretti-Bocquillon
2010: 20−21) Yet, the intersection of artistic social networks with the anarchist-
intellectuals, ensured a more or less intense contact of geographers and artists.
The international meeting place was the Université nouvelle de Brussels, Rec-
lus’s headquarters from 1894 to 1905. There, the poet Émile Verhaeren and the
painter Van Rysselberghe, friends of Reclus, acted as local contacts for Luce
who was working in Belgium at the time. (Ferretti-Bocquillon 2010: 21) The case
of Camille Platteel (1854–1943) exemplifies the international circulation of ac-
tivists, artists and scholars. Formerly a teacher in a secondary school in Brussels
and a close friend of Van Rysselberghe, this unconventional woman tran-
scribed the only surviving notes on the courses Reclus gave at the Université
nouvelle.15 She was the lover of Félix Fénéon, an important figure who fur-
thered the cooperation between anarchists and neo-impressionists. In Paris,
both moved in the same circles and Platteel attended “all the avant-garde man-
ifestations, where she knew everybody and everything”. (Halperin 1991: 362)
The main exponent of the Paris anarchist strand was Jean Grave, editor-in-
chief of the journal Le Révolté, founded in Switzerland in 1879, and later pub-
lished in Paris as La Révolte (1887−1894), and finally as Les Temps nouveaux
(1895−1914). In what follows, I apply a relational approach to the Temps nou-
veaux circuits. Because only a few documentary sources have survived regard-
ing whether Reclus had direct contact with the neo-impressionists, I use
Grave’s correspondence as a source to account for their apparent interactions.
While it is widely acknowledged that Grave was the major French exponent of
Reclus’s and Kropotkin’s political thought and something like their ‘represen-
tative’ in Paris, the letters of the authors quoted below contain several
comments on Reclus and Kropotkin, and messages from an artist to Grave on
behalf of Reclus and vice versa. These sources show how artists played impor-
tant roles in several projects furthered by Reclus and Grave such as the
15 Bruxelles, Université Libre de Bruxelles, Archives de l’Université nouvelle, I Z 456, Cours

de M. Élisée Reclus, Géographie comparée dans le temps et dans l’espace. Notes prises par
Mlle Camille Platteel, professeur de géographie aux cours d’éducation B de la Ville de
Bruxelles.
anti-colonialist book, Patriotisme et colonisation (Patriotism and Colonization,

1903).
In his autobiographical recollections, Grave documented the support a sig-
nificant group of painters gave to the journal. They collected money, but also
illustrated militant publications, especially covers for books and propaganda
brochures. “We could count on the good will of some whose reputation was
not in doubt: Steinlen, Willette, Roubille, Iribe, Grandjouan, Luce, Signac, Agar,
Couturier, Angrand, Delaw, Delannoy, Van Dongen, Lebasque, Jossot, Kupka.”
(Grave 2009: 409) In the 1890s, there was a financial crisis when Reclus, after
finishing the Nouvelle Géographie universelle, found that he could no longer
provide the generous economic contributions for Grave’s publications. (Fer-
retti 2014a) But help came from Pissarro, who “twice paid our debts with the
printer, giving [a] thousand francs at each time”. (Grave 2009: 517) The Temps
nouveaux was also supported by raffles for which the avant-garde artists of-
fered their works gratis to be sold in support of the journal. Again, Grave men-
tioned a list of famous names:
For 25 pennies, it was possible to win paintings by Angrand, Agar, Bon-

nard […], Cross, Mme Couturier, Van Dongen, Delannoy, d’Espagnat,
Grandjouan, Hermann-Paul, F. Jourdain, Lebasque, Lefèvre, Manzana,
Paviot, Pissarro father, L. Pissarro, Luce, Petitjean, Roubille, Van Ryssel-
berghe, Raieter, Steinlen, Valloton and Willette. To only mention the most
known.
grave 2009: 520
But this collaboration was not limited to financial matters. The unpublished
correspondence of Grave, preserved at the Paris Institut français d’histoire so-
ciale (partially reproduced in: Herbert and Herbert 1960), indicates that artists
participated in the choice of images, themes and editorial strategies, and, like
Signac, who corresponded with Grave over a period of thirty years, actively
discussed anarchist topics. Signac provided Grave with constant feedback on
the main debates, and praised his propaganda publications for their “langage
politique net et précis et définitif […] pas des phrases: des idées, des faits”
(“clear and precise political language […] not phrases, but ideas and facts”).16
Like Signac, Luce often debated activist matters, and his letters also suggest the
painters’ participation in the international anarchist networks. At the begin-
ning of the 1890s, Luce asked Grave for a presentation letter for one of his
friends who planned to visit London and was trying to get in touch with
16 ifhs, Signac to Grave, November 18, 1899.

242 Ferretti
Kropotkin.17 Luce also seems to have coordinated the contributions of a num-

ber of different painters for Grave’s publications, as a letter dating back to 1900
reveals in which he mentioned the respective situations and commitments of
Angrand, Cross and Signac.18 Charles Angrand also performed similar tasks,
writing to Grave that he would “try to include as many friends as possible in our
project”.19
The artists made efforts to match Grave’s needs exactly and constantly asked
him for guidance and inspiration to improve their work. Luce wrote “please
inspire me, give me an indication”,20 while others, such as Van Rysselberghe,
frankly addressed the difficulty of “expressing abstract ideas with an image”.21
These painters also added to the political deliberations of the time about com-
munication strategies for Le Temps nouveaux. It was again Van Rysselberghe
who advised Grave not to request decorations and caricatures for the weekly
journal because he was convinced that “l’aspect d’un journal gagnerait à être
seulement typographique. Je n’ai jamais trouvé que les vignettes, quoique réus-
sies fussent-elles, ajoutassent le moindre intérêt à aucun journal. [De même]
un titre orné me semble si inutile” (“the aspect of a journal should be only ty-
pographic: I have never thought that vignettes, albeit excellent, added any in-
terest to a journal. [Besides], a decorated title seems to me so useless”).22 Jean
Baffier, mentioned by Reclus in his pamphlet on art, debated with Grave the
issue of nature and its representations.23 Moreover, artists such as Théophile
Alexandre Steinlen (1859−1923) expressed their preferences concerning graph-
ic solutions for popular propaganda. He argued that “we should do a drawing
and not a rebus, something which is too often forgotten in journalism”.24
Cross, the creator of one of the most impressive anti-colonialist drawings
for a collective book edited by Grave and prefaced by Reclus in 1903, Patrio-
tisme et colonisation (Illustration 9.2), discussed this work with Grave, asking
him to confirm the latest version and apologizing in case it would not fit Grave’s
needs: “[J]’ai constaté en le faisant que je manquais d’entrainement dans ce
genre.” (“Doing this, I realized that I lack training in this genre.”)25 Indeed, edi-
torial engravings presented a challenging genre for some of these painters
17 Ibid., Luce to Grave, December 1890.

18 Ibid., Luce to Grave, 1900 [n.d.].
19 Ibid., Angrand to Grave, [n.d.], f. 48.
20 Ibid., Luce to Grave, Spring 1905.
21 Ibid., Van Rysselberghe to Grave, July 6, 1998.
22 Ibid., Van Rysselberghe to Grave, March 30, 1905.
23 Ibid., Baffier to Grave, December 25, 1895: February 17, 1897.
24 Ibid., Steinlen to Grave, July 4, 1912.
25 Ibid., Cross to Grave, [n.d.], f. 132.
Illustration 9.2 Henri-Edmond Delacroix’s (ʻCross’sʼ) drawing for Patriotisme et colonisa-

tion (Patriotism and Colonization). (Grave 1903: n.p.)
a ccustomed to work with different techniques, with the exception of Leb-

asque, Steinlen and Hermann-Paul who specialized in illustration. Unable to
deal with all his requests by himself, Signac often recommended other artists
to Grave.26 Camille Pissarro was always willing to discuss the editorial business
involving publishers such as Hachette, Stock or Gallimard with Grave. Pissarro
asked his son Lucien to contribute illustrations to Grave’s novel Les Aventures
de Nono (The Adventures of Nono, 1901), which included a tribute to Reclus
portrayed as the savant Botanicus and requested copies of the autobiography
of Kropotkin (both published by Stock).27 Steinlen likewise provided a cover
image for one of the numerous editorial versions of Reclus’s L’Évolution, la
révolution et l’idéal anarchique (Evolution and Revolution, and the Anarchist
Ideal, 1898).28 Later, Lebasque, Hermann-Paul, Jourdan and Luce correspond-
ed with Paul Delesalle, the other editor of Les Temps nouveaux and friend to
Grave, Reclus and Kropotkin, on similar editorial projects.29
26 Ibid., Signac to Grave, [n.d.], f. 1321, 1322.

27 Ibid., Pissarro to Grave, September 15, 1900; August 27, 1902.
28 Ibid., Steinlen to Grave, 10 June [n.d. - f. 1341].
29 Ibid., Dossier 14 AS 53ter, various artists to Delesalle.
244 Ferretti
Camille Pissarro’s published correspondence with his son Lucien substanti-

ates his acquaintance with Reclus and Van Rysselberghe. In July 1894, the three
men traveled in the Flanders for some days. (Pissarro 1988: 469) According to
Joël Cornuault, this travel illustrates the common involvement of painting and
geography with fieldwork techniques. (Cornuault 1999) One of Reclus’s sons-
in-law, William Barbotin, was a painter, albeit stylistically more traditional
than the neo-impressionists and avant-garde artists. However, he did contrib-
ute to the illustrations of his father-in-law’s works and militated in favor of the
anarchist movement. (Jung 2013) He donated engravings of famous anarchists
such as Bakunin, Proudhon, Cafiero, and of course Reclus for Grave’s tombola.
(Grave 2009: 529) Enclosed with his letters to Grave, Barbotin often sent Rec-
lus’s notes he had entrusted to him for Les Temps nouveaux.30
As Patricia Leighten has noted, another topic connecting avant-garde artists
and anarchists was anti-colonialism, which was well-illustrated in a series of
satirical drawings published by journals such as L’Assiette au beurre. (Leighten
2013) Yet, more research is needed concerning the commitment of the artists
mentioned above, namely Luce, Lebasque, Cross, Willaume, Jourdan, Agar, An-
grand, Couturier, and Roubille on Patriotisme et colonisation. (Grave 1903) This
book, considered the first political expression of French left-wing anti-
colonialism, (Liauzu 2012) is vital to understanding the impact of anarchist ge-
ographers on anti-colonial thinking. It includes a preface by Élisée Reclus and
reproduces several chapters of the ethnographic works of his brother Élie Rec-
lus (1827−1904). Élie was an anthropologist and one of the early critics of the
genocide of native peoples whose adaptation to their environment he studied
with empathy and without the pretentions of white European superiority. (Fer-
retti 2014a) Merging anti-militarist, anti-clerical and anti-colonialist topics
with an original geographical imagination, these avant-garde artists designed a
separate album to accompany Patriotisme et colonisation. It can be considered
one of the great accomplishments of the dedicated anarchist geographers to
take anti-colonialism from the field of scholarship to the field of activism and
public communication by means of a popular edition and engaging art.
4 Conclusions
Reclus and the anarchist geographers were committed to the visual arts of
their day, and among the wide network of intellectuals, activists and painters
they proved to be at once influential and influenced. Several aspects of the
artistic avant-garde of the first half of the twentieth century, such as the social
30 Ibid., Barbotin to Grave, [n.d.], f. 658.

role of art, the questioning of the aura and the dichotomy between the ‘cre-
ative genius’ and art’s recipients were anticipated by early anarchist geogra-
phers. It is likely that some of Reclus’s and Kropotkin’s ideas inspired later
avant-garde artists, mediated by figures like Kupka and the neo-impressionists
with their influence on the succeeding art movements. (Leighten 2013) Activ-
ists such as Reclus cooperated with painters representing the most ‘advanced’
tendencies of that time, but they never abandoned the more ‘classic’ idea of
social art expressed by Proudhon and Courbet. Working directly on the iconog-
raphy of his mammoth works Reclus appropriated their social and pedagogical
effectiveness without preferring one visual language over another. His original-
ity was grounded in the application of art to the principles of ‘Naturphiloso-
phie’ reinterpreted in his social geography: the truest work of art is the world,
and the artist working with rough materials is like the social reformer eager to
embellish (i.e., better) society. Reclus’s and Perron’s endeavors to build globes
and reliefs can also be read as an attempt to minimize the dichotomy between
‘nature’ and ‘culture’, between the actual world and its representations.
This chapter has highlighted the importance of studying social networks to
access the works of early anarchist geographers and to understand their con-
texts. (Ferretti 2014a) It also confirms the importance of both manual work and
intellectual work in anarchist thinking. In his works, Reclus intermingled geog-
raphy, art and anarchism and questioned the exclusivity of the artistic task. By
maintaining that everyone could be an artist of social reform, the gap between
actor and spectator as well as the division of work and social hierarchy was
bridged.
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Chapter 10
Teaching Revolution through Art? Anarchism, the

Avant-garde and Education Critically Revisited
Piotr Laskowski
Abstract
An examination of anarchist educational initiatives may provide a fresh look into an-
archism’s intense and, at the same time, problematic relation to the avant-gardes. This
chapter analyzes key concepts of a libertarian education – harmony, creation and
social milieu – to confront them with anarchist political militancy on the one hand
and the avant-gardes on the other. One of the central questions of the anarchist and
avant-garde movements, namely how to integrate education and art into the life prax-
is, may be answered by either the attempt to liberate the creative potential of manual
and physical labor, or the revolutionary negation mediated – in the case of the avant-
gardes – via an artistic gesture. Although the majority of anarchist activists rejected
the idea of a “revolution carried out by artists and steered by novelists and poets”
(Proudhon), some libertarian educators considered art as the sphere of unconstrained
creation. Their position towards art was influenced by their differing opinions regard-
ing the purposes of education which was supposed either to liberate the child’s indi-
vidual will, or to provide a universal, shareable cognition of the world.
Amongst all the libertarian schools, the Ferrer Center in New York was exceptional
insofar as it brought together ‘rebels and artists’ who managed to create a place that
became both a unique anarchist educational enterprise and a seminal avant-garde mi-
lieu. The examination of journals published at the school (The Modern School, Looking
Forward, The Stelton Appendix) will further the understanding of the specific relation
between an avant-garde, libertarian education and anarchist militancy, as well as to
trace the evolution of this outstanding vanguard milieu.
“Anarchism, with its spirit of daring and inquiry, its criticism of old standards
and values, and its emphasis on individual freedom, innovation, and experi-
ment, has always held a special attraction for artists and writers.” (Avrich 1994:
146) Indeed, anarchist and avant-garde movements are similar in regard to
their quest for ‘novelty’, which is to be understood as a total redefinition or, in

Teaching Revolution through Art? 251
fact, the abolition of State-organized society and art as an institution.1 But this
correspondence can be misleading, for both the avant-garde movement and
anarchism are multidimensional phenomena that comprise many, often con-
tradictory, tendencies and currents. Thus, any attempt at a simple comparison
of these movements instead of a comprehensive review is likely to be biased
and certain to privilege some aspects or perspectives.
Jochen Schulte-Sasse in his foreword to Peter Bürger’s seminal Theory of the
Avant-Garde distinguished two modes of understanding the avant-garde: one
centers upon the “opposition between solidification and dissolution, represen-
tation and life”, the other “proceeds from the historical observation that […]
official, ideological discourses tend to destroy and expropriate individual ‘lan-
guages’ in the interest of domination”. (Schulte-Sasse in Bürger 1974 [1984]: xvi)
The former interpretation seems to echo Renato Poggioli who pointed to ex-
perimental creation as a driving force of the avant-garde, a way to overcome
the state of alienation. (Poggioli 1962 [1968]: 102–129) However, Poggioli under-
lined that the avant-garde cult of novelty, as he saw it, was “an exquisitely ro-
mantic phenomenon even before it became typically avant-garde”. (Poggioli
1962 [1968]: 50) Peter Bürger, representing the latter mode of thinking, posited
that the avant-garde, contrary to romanticism or aestheticism, intended not so
much to produce new forms of artistic expression than to abolish the institu-
tionalized autonomy of art by integrating it into the praxis of life. (Bürger 1974
[1984]: 49, 54) These two perspectives may illuminate our understanding of
anarchism and its attitude towards the avant-garde. Anarchism certainly fa-
vored the particular over the general, and the fluid and dynamic over the rigid
and ossified. It shared the romantic belief in spontaneous creation as opposed
to the alienating institutionalized order; yet, the relationship between anar-
chism and modern art turned out to be convoluted. Although a number of
modern artists were indeed attracted to anarchism, their ‘bohemian anar-
chism’ often met with disinterest, if not distrust on the part of anarchist activ-
ists. This is because anarchists rarely embraced the idea of the autonomy of
art. They did support the avant-gardist postulate of integrating art with labor,
with the praxis of life, but they did not believe this could be achieved by artis-
tic means. In fact, they doubted that art as such was revolutionary, not only in
its ability to bring about social change, but also as it could, by itself, reintegrate
with life. Anarchists claimed, on the contrary, that primacy should be given to
the social revolution as a necessary precondition of a new conceptualization
of art. However, not all anarchists adhered to revolutionary militancy; many
1 On the avant-garde and the concept of the ‘new’, see Bürger 1974 [1984]: 59–63.
252 Laskowski
of them considered autonomous creation as both conceivable and truly sub-

versive. Although this affirmation of autonomy and creation may seem close to
the ideal of modern aestheticism, it must be stressed that for the anarchists of
that time it was not so much a matter of artistic production but of the emanci-
pation of collective manual and physical labor.
In this essay, I will examine a specific form of anarchists’ activity: their edu-
cational enterprises. Notably, anarchists turned to education when revolution-
ary attempts failed: Paul Robin (1837–1912) founded Cempuis after the Paris
Commune had been defeated; disenchanted by the propaganda of the deed,
Sébastien Faure (1858–1942) organized La Ruche (The Beehive). In fact, the an-
archist vision of an educational community implied a refusal of fierce mili-
tancy. This in turn meant that the relation between libertarian instructors and
political or social radicals could become very tense. Therefore, one would sus-
pect that of all the anarchists the libertarian educators should be the most
sympathetic towards (avant-garde) art, assuming that education and art could
appear as alternative means of revolutionary activity, beyond the political
insurgency.
To actualize the liberating potential of education, it was necessary to abol-
ish its institutionalized form and reintegrate it into the dynamic flow of life.
This could be achieved either by releasing individual creativity or by associat-
ing education with the life praxis of men. Libertarian educators had to decide
whether to reinforce a child’s unconstrained self-expression or to provide an
adequate, unbiased cognition of the world which would allow informed fash-
ioning of a free social milieu. These two purposes were not necessarily mutu-
ally exclusive, but the educational practices – as we will see – usually favored
one at the expense of the other. With regard to education, the alternative goals
of autonomous creation or integration into the praxis of life seem to corre-
spond to the key problem in defining the difference between aestheticism and
the avant-garde. Unlike the case of a ‘work of art’ bound to an ‘institution of
art’, the anarchists believed that a school conceived as a free educational com-
munity could exist as an immediate social milieu, its autonomy differing from
the autonomy of art, so fiercely denounced by the avant-gardes.
The aim of this essay is to illustrate the intersections and divergences
between avant-garde ideas and anarchists’ heterogeneous educational prop
ositions. It is composed of five parts. First, I will outline the basic ideas of
anarchist pedagogy to confront them with avant-garde concepts of artistic
production. In the following, I will present some reservations to the

emancipating potential of education and art as voiced by advocates of politi-
cal militancy. I aim to show how they influenced Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy’s
(1828–1910) school in Yasnaya Polyana which may be considered the earliest
anarchist educational enterprise. In the third part, I will focus on the alienat-
ing dimension of education as perceived by anarchists and define two currents
of anarchism – the individualist and the collectivist – with respect to the strat-
egies they developed to overcome the alienation, and trace the correspon-
dence between those strategies and the avant-gardes. The fourth part is dedi-
cated to those anarchist educational enterprises which were distrustful of
artistic creation and favored manual labor and scientific cognition. The final
part deals with the Ferrer Center in New York and Stelton, a unique example of
an anarchist school and at the same time an avant-garde artistic milieu.
1 Anarchism, the Avant-garde and Education
There is little doubt that anarchists considered themselves a political ‘avant-

garde’ – trailblazers for a new society. Anarchism, Emma Goldman (1869–1940)
posited, “urges man to think, to investigate, to analyze every proposition”.
(Goldman 1910 [1969]: 50) At the beginning of the twentieth century, this per-
ceived relation between revolutionary ‘novelty’ and critical investigation drew
many anarchists, including Goldman, to education. As much as schools could
be exploited as instruments of oppression, they could also become a medium
for social change. Hence, Francisco Ferrer y Guardia (1859–1909), an iconic fig-
ure of libertarian pedagogy, chose the name ‘Escuela Moderna’ (Modern
School) picked up also by his American followers. Its ‘modernity’ grounded in
a reliance on science (as opposed to social and economic dogmas), a critique
of hierarchy and discipline, but above all a future-oriented perspective of uni-
versal liberation: “We are futurists in education.” (Wolff 1913b: 20) In 1940, the
Modern School in Stelton published an anthology with a number of recollec-
tions by its teachers and pupils. Henry T. Schnittkind, the school’s principal for
a short time in 1915, (Avrich 1994: 248–249) summarized thus: “This school can,
and should, become a testing laboratory for a new world.” (Schnittkind 1940:
16) And James Dick, an organizer of Modern Schools in England who later su-
pervised the boarding house at Stelton (1917−1924), concluded: “We may as-
sume that we have contributed something toward shaping a better social order
and to the culture of the future.” (Dick 1940: 32)
To become the vanguard of a future society, the school had to take seriously
the anarchist observation that a child, as Goldman argued, “has no traditions
to overcome. […] The child is to the teacher what clay is to the sculptor. Wheth-
er the world will receive a work of art or a wretched imitation depends to a
large extent on the creative power of the teacher”. (Goldman 1910 [1969]: 148)
Was this parallel between education and art only a figure of speech? Since the
254 Laskowski
time of romanticism, the child has been considered the true artist whose
innocence and sensibility were destroyed in the process of education. (Plotz
2001) That is why Charles Baudelaire defined artistic genius as a “childhood
recovered at will”. (Baudelaire 1863 [21995]: 8) However, Goldman’s ‘artistic’
metaphor seems a little disturbing since she accentuated the ‘creative power of
the teacher’ rather than that of the child. Francisco Ferrer, on the contrary, ar-
gued that “education is not worthy of the name unless […] it leaves to the child
the direction of its powers and is content to support them in their manifesta-
tions”. (Ferrer 1912 [1913]: 69) Obviously, anarchist educators agreed that school
should be liberating but differed concerning the role of the teacher as either an
active champion or passive assistant to the child’s blossoming. In any case the
child was everything but ‘clay’ in the teacher’s hands. The Encyclopédie anar-
chiste, for instance, emphasized that education should enable children to ac-
complish what they would consider the best for themselves to become free
and self-reliant individuals, (Delaunay 1934: 634–635) while Sébastien Faure,
founder of La Ruche, declared:
La Ruche is a school of the future, organized for the child, so that the child
would cease to be a thing, property of a religion or state, and would be-
long to themselves, and find at school bread, knowledge, and tenderness –
which are the needs of their body, brain, and heart.
faure 1914 [1992]: 1242
Interestingly, Man Ray (1890–1976), an artist involved in the activities of the

New York Modern School, asserted in a similar tone that the artist’s work should
not be “put to the service” of the church or the state but had “to be measured by
the vitality, the invention, and the definiteness and conviction of p
urpose with-
in his own medium”. (cited in Antliff 2001: 89) Ray’s postulated autonomy of the
artist’s work was further problematized by the avant-gardes who followed
Baudelaire’s claim that the artist should cease to be an artist and become “a
man of the world”. (Baudelaire 1863 [21995]: 6) This vision of intertwining life
with art may seem very close to the ideas expressed in the first issue of The
Modern School journal by Konrad Bercovici (1882–1961), a Romanian-born writ-
er and anarchist, father of one of the first pupils of the New York Modern
School. Bercovici compared children at school to enslaved workers:
And we who dream of the time when to work will be joy – is it not well
that we should commence by having a school to which the children may
2 Unless otherwise indicated translations are those of the author.

go with eager steps and dancing eyes, and therein find their joy? Perhaps
this will give the first impetus to the wheel of the Revolution – our Revo-
lution? […] Raised in Liberty they will not live as slaves.
bercovici 1912: 3
Bercovici’s vision of everyday toil turning into the joyful art of creation was
common among anarchists. Both avant-garde art and anarchist education
struggled to merge life and artistic creation; yet, they differed because the rela-
tion between artist and medium couldn’t be simply equated with the relation
between teacher and pupil. While anarchist educators wanted to elevate labor,
perceived as alienating and destructive, into a form of art, the avant-gardes
strove to abolish the very institution of art. For anarchists, all individuals
should become artists to re-appropriate their own labor; for the avant-gardes,
the status of the ‘work of art’ needed to be negated so that every object, finally,
could turn into a work of art. Ironically, to merge art with life, the avant-gardes
depended on an artistic gesture (e.g., Duchamp’s signature that negates itself
only to re-affirm itself) and therefore were in need of an artist. Anarchist edu-
cators, in contrast, believed in the proliferation of creative forces that could be
saved from being captured by the institution or apparatus of art, which they
would rather neglect than negate. The tension between immediacy of creativ-
ity favored by anarchists and the avant-garde concept of art as negation of art
(which required artistic mediation) may explain at least some of the mutual
misunderstandings.
2 Distrust of Education
A belief in the revolutionary potential of education (and in particular of art)

was not at all implicit in anarchist thinking. Some anarchists, particularly mili-
tants from subaltern classes, regarded art and education as a monopoly of the
bourgeoisie that would strengthen its domination: “Quiconque signe un livre
ou un article de journal, ne peut être anarchiste.” (“Whoever signs a book or a
journal article cannot be an anarchist.”) (cited in Malato 1894: 261) It was only
after the revolution that education and art would be truly appropriated by
the oppressed. These concerns were voiced already by Mikhail Alexandrovich
Bakunin (1814–1876). In a series of four articles, known under the common
title L’Instruction intégrale (Integral Education) published in the Geneva-
based journal L’Égalité in the summer of 1869, Bakunin denounced schools as
the most important instruments of social selection and inequality. He out-
lined a project of ‘integral education’ dwelling on the Proudhonian idea of
256 Laskowski
c ombining intellectual, manual, and physical activity, but at the same time

ridiculed self-professed instructors of the people and dismissed the idea that
this type of education could be organized in the existing society as an avant-
garde of the world to come. On the contrary, the people could and should first
emancipate themselves in order to reinvent and reorganize their own educa-
tion. (Bakunin 1869 [1992]: 124–125)
For Bakunin, school always mirrored society, its values and benchmarks.
And since revolution meant a radical rupture with the past, there was nothing
in the pre-revolutionary world that could inform rebellious ‘indignation and
will’. In that sense, all culture is reactionary. In the 1840s, Bakunin was attracted
to Hegelian dialectics which shaped his idea of revolution as negation. Con-
trary to the avant-garde, however, he did not believe in artistic mediation. In
the existing society, the very possibility of engaging in artistic creation or even
simple access to works of art, according to Bakunin, was a privilege rather than
a means for universal liberation. His rejection of ‘great works of art’ and his
distrust of ‘modern’ art corresponded with Russian nihilism as portrayed by
Ivan Turgenev. (Turgenev 1862 [1895]: 91)
As we will see, anarchist schools usually preferred science to art – not be-
cause of a fascination with technique that some currents of the avant-garde
professed, but because they regarded science as a universal, commonly share-
able form of cognition. However, Bakunin himself denounced every form of
intellectual activity as an instrument of selection and self-identification of the
ruling elite. (Bakunin 1869 [1992]: 112) This radical stance met with the first
educational enterprise that can be labeled as anarchist: the school at Yasnaya
Polyana founded by Lev Tolstoy. In 1862, he began publishing a journal of the
same name, where he commented on his pedagogical experiences. In the arti-
cle Воспитание и образование (Education and Culture, 1862), he clarified the
difference between education and culture that “lies only in the compulsion,
which education deems itself in the right to exert. Education is culture under
restraint. Culture is free”. (Tolstoy 1862 [1967]: 110)
Tolstoy did not dismiss the idea of imparting knowledge but denounced at-
tempts of using it as a Promethean tool for a specific amelioration. In fact, he
declared education to be often violent and destructive since teachers usually
overlooked the value of what they annihilated: the world experienced and per-
ceived by the child, particularly “the child from the people” prevented from
“breathing with full lungs” by education. (Tolstoy 1862 [1967]: 344) His distrust
of high culture reached its peak in one of his most famous texts: Кому у кого
учиться писать, крестьянским ребятам у нас, или нам у крестьянских
ребят? (Are the Peasant Children to Learn to Write from Us? Or Are We to
Learn from the Peasant Children?, 1862) Tolstoy starts with an account of the
short story he wanted his pupils to write. Since they were reluctant, he drafted
the first page himself to encourage them. In comparison with what they would
go on to produce, his own page appeared to him “so false, so artificial, and writ-
ten in such a bad language”. He concludes: “It is impossible and absurd to teach
and educate a child […]. The moment I gave him full liberty and stopped teach-
ing him, he wrote a poetical production, the like of which cannot be found in
Russian literature.” (Tolstoy 1862 [1967]: 193, 222–223) A romantic-conservative
tone is easy to spot here. The ideal of harmony achievable through immediate
contact with nature is contrasted, very much in Rousseau’s style, with the
(urban) civilization and its artistic achievements. Many anarchist schools
would share Tolstoy’s belief in the beneficial influence of nature, of manual
labor in the artisan workshop or physical labor in the fields. They did not ac-
cede to eulogies of industrial dynamics, typical for some avant-garde currents,
and their position may, at first, seem close to the fascination other avant-garde
artists had for the so-called ‘primitive’ cultures. However, whereas the avant-
garde seems to have aestheticized ‘primitive’ objects or motifs, and appropri-
ated them through artistic mediation, Tolstoy appreciated the creativity that
stemmed from a child’s immediate experience of life.
But is this ideal of harmony really conservative? It is not so much a myth of
the past as it is a recognition of autonomous collective forms of living. Where-
as ‘primitivism’ simply negates modernity by an artistic gesture, Tolstoy hoped
to preserve and strengthen those forces – subordinated or latent, but neverthe-
less existing – which resist the alienating powers of modern institutions.
Instead of Bakunin’s revolutionary negation, he chose to protect the social cre-
ativity of the underprivileged from the destructive impact of education which
appeared to him abstract, estranged, and mortifying.
3 Alienation, Individual Will, and Experience of the World
Probably the first theorist to articulate anarchist ideas on education was

Charles Fourier (1772–1837). To consider Fourier an anarchist may seem doubt-
ful, but there are good reasons to claim his views were “essentially anarchistic”.
(Mason 1928: 228–262) In “Fourier’s anarchism”, Nicolas Riasanovsky observed,
“in contrast to Bakunin, the positive element prevailed over the negative, cre-
ation over destruction”. (Riasanovsky 1969: 207) As early as 1820, Fourier com-
mented on what he called ‘civilized’ education:
I do not know what the aims of civilized education are […] but to judge
by its outcome, the first and the most general result among civilized
258 Laskowski
c hildren is that they only use their freedom to commit damage of every
sort, […] to the point where, if a group of children were left in full liberty
without fear of punishment, they would end up giving themselves into
the relaxation of Nero and set fire to the city.
fourier 1852: 302
The ‘Neronian’ passion3 of destruction, following Fourier, is a corollary of bour-

geois culture, and, above all, an outcome of the anti-social bourgeois system of
education. (Fourier 1852: 306) He also drew the parallel between education
and legislation, between a child in school and the people in the state: “l’une
forme l’enfant à détruire les produits de l’industrie, l’autre forme le peuple à
détruire l’ordre social.” (“One forms the child so that they destroy the products
of industry, the other forms the people so that they destroy the social order.”)
(Fourier 1852: 302) This observation is of particular importance: school, ac-
cording to Fourier, alienates children to such an extent that they can only use
their freedom to destroy. Thus, negation, also the avant-garde passion of aboli-
tion, appears to be a form of resentment, a product of bourgeois alienation.
According to Fourier, the destructive power of civilized education is ex-
plained by the fact that it tames, not develops nature. (Fourier 1852: 303) Thus,
he advocated ‘harmony’, and explained the differences between ‘harmonious’
and ‘civilized’ education in three points. Firstly, harmony, in contrast to civili-
zation, puts practice before theory. Secondly, harmony seeks inducement only
in regard to the child’s passions or appetite, whereas civilization is based on
duty, constraint, and need. Finally, harmony consists of infinite inspirations
motivated exclusively by pleasure, whereas civilization subjects the child to a
limited number of compulsory functions defined by the course of studies and
needs of labor. (Fourier 1852: 297–298, 187–188) Fourier identified the key prob-
lem both anarchist pedagogy and avant-garde art had to tackle and overcome:
the alienation, the inaccessibility of experience. Thus, he outlined the anar-
chist way of schooling as a harmonious enterprise of liberated creative pas-
sions. The immediacy of ‘harmony’, both in Fourier and Tolstoy, is opposed to
alienation and the mediating character of negation.
Even Hegel, for whom negation was an indispensable element of the dialec-
tical process of overcoming alienation, recognized the importance of immedi-
ate experience. (Hegel 1807 [1977]: 19–20) He described two ways to liberate
oneself from ready-made, abstract forms of thinking: either “the direct driving-
forth of what is within” an individual, or recurrence to “the concrete variety of
3 Obviously, the references to Nero, here and below, are not historically accurate. Rather, Fou-
rier makes use of the cultural image of Nero.
existence”. (Hegel 1807 [1977]: 19) These two ways or strategies – one oriented
towards self-expression, the other pointing to dynamic cognition of the world –
may be associated with the two currents of anarchism: the individualist and
collectivist respectively. In the following, those currents will be briefly exam-
ined to see how each of these strategies conditioned anarchists’ visions of edu-
cation and their concept of art.
Anarcho-individualists referred to the Young Hegelian philosopher Max
Stirner (1806–1856) as their founding father. The key reference point in their
thinking was the opposition of the individual will to the various sorts of fixed,
abstract concepts and ideas. Many avant-garde artists inclined to anarchism
sympathized with the individualist current. (Antliff 2001: 75–77) Stirner him-
self, in a minor article Kunst und Religion (Art and Religion), published in 1842
in Marx’s Rheinische Zeitung, denounced art for setting ideals over and against
man. (Stirner 1842a) Two months earlier, in the same journal, he had put for-
ward his critique of the educational system. Having stated that “the school
question is a life question”, he differentiated between two types of education:
‘humanist’ (based on the reading of ‘the old classics’, and thus necessarily ex-
clusive) and ‘realist’. (Stirner 1842b) The latter endeavored to bring “the mate-
rial of life into the school”, and to “eliminate the priesthood of the scholars”, so
that “the sovereign-authority lost its nimbus”. And although Stirner admitted
that the ‘realists’ with their concept of education, due to its relation to practi-
cal life, “may glory in their advantage that they do not simply educate scholars,
but rational and useful citizens”, he also observed that the way they conceived
‘usefulness’ is inaccurate for it can only produce “idea-less and fettered ‘practi-
cal men’”. What was needed, Stirner argued, was “no ‘Concordat between
school and life’, but rather school is to be life and there, as outside of it, the
self-revelation of the individual is to be the task”. (Stirner 1842b) He accentu-
ated the importance of negation of knowledge for the liberation of the will. His
most influential book, Der Einzige und sein Eigentum (The Ego and Its Own,
1844) opens and closes with the same declaration: “I have founded my cause on
nothing.” Here we reach the mystery of the individual will – it is founded on
nothing and can only exist as mediated by negation.4
Thus, it is not surprising that for fin de siècle artists the idea of art that ‘is to
be life’, i.e. an expression of will, meant above all a negation of ‘bourgeois Phi-
listinism’ which combined ‘realist’ practicality with ‘humanist’ sanctification
4 Thus Poggioli, who seems to equate modernism and the avant-garde, was right to speak of
“a culture of negation”. (Poggioli 1962 [1968]: 107) However, as observed by Schulte-Sasse, mod-
ernist negation aiming at liberating individual artistic creation was something very different
from avant-garde negation of the art institution. (Schulte-Sasse in Bürger 1974 [1984]: xv)
260 Laskowski
(and therefore alienation) of cultural heritage. However, this anti-‘Philistine’

resentment turned out to be easily absorbed by Fascism (as exemplified by
Julius Evola’s concept of the ‘aristocracy of the soul’) which indeed attracted
some artsy rebels. Jean Grave (1854–1939), a pivotal figure of the anarchist
movement at the time, editor of one of the most influential anarchist papers,
Le Temps nouveaux, observed:
Many artists and writers who condemn ‘Philistines’, ‘bourgeois’, and the
reign of money, at the same time hold on to the idea of domination, for in
fact they have equal contempt for ‘vile multitude’, which should, accord-
ing to them, toil and sweat for the interest of ‘the salt of the earth’ which
they claim to be.
grave 1897: 83–845
With Grave, we turn to the collectivist current of anarchism which focused on

what Hegel described as the ‘concrete variety of existence’. Its forerunner,
Stirner’s contemporary, Pierre-Joseph Proudhon (1809–1865), denounced bo-
hemian radicalism fifty years before Grave: “Oh, then you will know what revo-
lution is when it is […] carried out by artists and steered by novelists and poets!
Once upon a time Nero was an artist […]. Which is what made him Nero!”
(Proudhon 1848 [2011]: 313) Proudhonian anarchism attracted a very specific
type of artist. At first glance, it might correspond with the avant-garde as de-
fined by Bürger. However, Proudhon had no interest in dialectical negation,
and he believed in art as a means of cognition that would overcome alienation
and re-appropriate the experience of the world. This explains the special rela-
tion between Proudhon and Gustave Courbet (1819–1877), which is worth a
brief investigation as Proudhon’s views on education parallel his ideas on art.
Courbet honored Proudhon by portraying him; Proudhon paid homage to
Courbet in his posthumously published book Du principe de l’art et de sa desti-
nation sociale (On the Principle of Art and its Social Purpose, 1865). Proudhon
rejected idealism as it “ne repose que sur les chimères de votre imagination,
sur […] les ébullitions impuissantes de votre cœur” (“is based only on the illu-
sions of your imagination, on […] the impotent boiling of your heart”), and
instead advocated
5 The French passage reads: “Les idées de domination se font également jour chez beaucoup
d’artistes, de littérateurs qui clament contre ‘le philistine’, contre ‘le bourgeois’, contre le
règne de l’argent, mais ont au fond un égal dédain ‘de la vile multitude’ dont la raison d’être
selon eux, serait de peintre et suer pour ‘le sel de la terre’ qu’ils ont la prétention d’être.”
depicting men in the sincerity of their nature and their habits, in their
labor, in their accomplishment of public and domestic roles, […] not for
the simple pleasure of mockery but as an aim of general education […]:
this seems […] a true starting point of modern art.
proudhon 1865: 200, 203
This distrust of idealism also influenced the Proudhonian vision of education.

As early as 1843, in De la création de l’ordre dans l’humanité (The Creation of
Order in Humanity), Proudhon outlined the concept of education which he at
that time called apprenticeship encompassing every aspect of human life and
production: “Le droit de l’apprenti est de tout connaître, de tout voir, de tout
essayer.” (“The right of an apprentice is to be acquainted with everything, to see
everything, to try everything.”) (Proudhon 1873: 344) Such an education would
produce an adequate image of the society and become “le sceau de l’égalité”
(a “seal of equality”). As such it would “donnera à la société sa forme définitive
et fermera la série des révolutions” (“give the society its definite form and finish
the series of revolutions”). (Proudhon 1843 [1873]: 347) This idea of revolution-
izing the cognitive experience obviously differs very much from Bakunin’s
revolutionary negation.6
Yet, Bakunin was also a collectivist: despite his notion of revolutionary
negation that moved him in proximity to Stirner rather than to Proudhon, he
vehemently rejected the concept of “free will”. (Bakunin 1869 [1992]: 122) What
he called for was recognition of the multiple dynamic forces constituting the
very essence of life. Therefore, he accepted (as a project for the future, post-
revolutionary society) the Proudhonian vision of education combining intel-
lectual and manual training. (Bakunin 1869 [1992]: 120)
4 Anarchist Schooling Enterprises
Among anarchist schooling enterprises, four – apart from Yasnaya Polyana –

gained peculiar prominence and fame: the orphanage in Cempuis (1880–1894),
founded by Paul Robin; La Ruche (1904–1917), organized by Sébastien Faure;
Escuela Moderna in Barcelona (1901–1909), created by Francisco Ferrer; and
the Ferrer Center in New York which opened in 1911, and moved to Stelton in
1915.
6 See e.g. the entry on ‘Education’ in the Encyclopédie anarchiste: “Education is useful at all
times and in all places; the Revolution is only an ephemeral crisis which enables us to break
down the obstacles that could have been removed by other means.” (Delaunay 1934: 634)
262 Laskowski
What all those schools had in common was a critical appraisal of the system
of education. As Ferrer put it: “‘Education’ means in practice domination or
domestication. [The children] must learn to obey, to believe, and to think ac-
cording to the prevailing social dogmas.” (Ferrer 1913: 67–68) To him, the school
system became a powerful instrument of selection, exclusion, and reproduc-
tion of social inequality. (Ferrer 1913: 47) He considered it insufficient to simply
make “the children of the rich mingle with the children of the poor”, as in state
schools which, due to this practice, would only perpetuate the class division.
(Ferrer 1913: 48) However, whereas Bakunin claimed that this situation could
be altered solely if society as a whole would undergo radical changes, Ferrer
believed in ‘modern pedagogy’ as an “effort towards the realization of a new
and more just form of society”. (Ferrer 1913: 48)
Emma Goldman remembered that the first of anarchist schooling enterpris-
es, Paul Robin’s Cempuis, took its pupils “from the street, the hovels, the or-
phanages and foundling asylums, from all those grey and hideous places where
a benevolent society hides its victims”. (Goldman 1910 [1969]: 149–150) This
might bring to mind the bohemian fascination with the lowest strata of soci-
ety: prostitutes, thieves, ever-rebellious ‘rabble’ appreciated by some anarchists
as a dynamic and chaotic force of social life that resisted every kind of organi-
zation. According to Goldman, however, Robin, with his enterprise, wanted to
contradict the idea of heredity and prevent further criminalization of the out-
casts. Rather, he wished to school them in freedom, love and closeness to na-
ture to bring up self-reliant individuals. (Goldman 1910 [1969]: 149–150) After
Cempuis had been closed down by the French government, Octave Mirbeau,
one of the most famous writers sympathetic to the anarchist cause, and strong-
ly appealing to the literary avant-garde as well, published in the widely-read
paper Le Journal an eulogy of the school entitled Cartouche et Loyola (Car-
touche and Loyola, 1894):
The most difficult thing is to induce in what we are doing […] the love
which is also of intellectual character. Then there will be no more inferi-
ority of crafts, even the humblest, and a locksmith who works with
his metal with love, and consequently with artistic attitude, will be equal
to the admired sculptor who creates a beautiful statue or the writer
who produces a beautiful book. That is what Mr. Robin taught his chil-
dren. And it is not imprudent to hope that this admirable system will re-
sult in a renewal of social conditions as a whole. To elevate the worker to
the role of a conscious creator, to enrich his life with essentially artistic
research – what can be more beautiful?
mirbeau 1894: 1
Robin, inspired by the Proudhonian concept of ‘integral education’, tried to

fulfill an old anarchist dream: that every kind of labor should become art. But
this attitude, albeit inspiring, might, and often did imply, some neglect of artis-
tic expression as such, as if artistic mediation could only perpetuate the state
of alienation. This, in turn, could result in the kind of ‘realist’ education criti-
cized by Stirner. Anarchist educators such as Robin, Ferrer, and Faure were not
particularly fond of art, nor were they concerned about teaching literature or
humanities. When it came to the intellectual content of education, they were
inclined to choose scientific objectivity over any form of individual artistic cre-
ation. For them, science had all the advantages the arts lacked: it referred di-
rectly to material reality; it could be opposed to any form of religious or social
prejudice (which humanities too often strengthened); it provided the positive,
objective foundation that was desperately needed to dispel the danger of re-
sentment on the one hand, and the teacher’s personal authority and influence
on the other. To quote Ferrer: “Truth is universal, and we owe it to everybody.”
(Ferrer 1913: 19) It should be noted though, that some anarchist pedagogues
were less eager to accept scientific universalism. In his article on Education in
the Encyclopédie anarchiste, Eugène Delaunay (1816–1872), having declared his
admiration for Sébastien Faure’s La Ruche, criticized his vision of science, and
pointed to the fact that sciences differ in their level of development and do not
offer any harmonious, coherent, and definite explanation of the world. (Delau-
nay 1934: 639) But that was something Ferrer and Faure were ready to admit.
They considered science as a research process rather than a set of ready-made
formulae. Thus, they incessantly repeated that anarchist education should be
based on individual observation of facts, on experiment, immediate contact
with and use of the material reality. (Faure 1992: 45) Eventually, Faure would
argue that the only thing a school should teach is to learn how to learn. (Faure
1992: 41)
There were, however, notable exceptions – some anarchists highlighted the
value of art and literature and argued it should not be restricted to the
privileged few. In 1897, Jean Degalvès and Émile Janvion called for an equal
development of “toutes les facultés du corps, du cœur et de l’intelligence” (“all
the faculties of body, heart, and intelligence”) but contrary to Robin who fo-
cused on body and heart, they stressed that school should above all make the
‘déshérités’ (disinherited) feel “l’âpre regret des paradis intellectuels entrevus”
(a “bitter regret of the intellectual paradises they have seen”), so that they
could stand up to conquer them. (Degalvès/Janvion 1897: 210) Yet, the attempt
to put this ideal into practice failed miserably. In 1897, Degalvès and Janvion
founded the Ligue d’enseignement libertaire (League of libertarian education)
and collected money that, in 1898, enabled them to organize a holiday school
264 Laskowski
for 19 children (Émile Zola and Mirbeau were among the donors). However,
one day Degalvès lost his temper and slapped one of the children. Jean Grave
summed up in Les Temps nouveaux that it was a result of the inexperience of
the founders that their high hopes failed. (Grave 1898: 2)
Anarchist educators agreed on the need for protecting the child’s freedom
and autonomy. At first glance, acknowledging the pre-eminence of the child’s
spontaneous activity corresponded with the intuitions of the whole move-
ment of child-centered pedagogy that flourished at the beginning of the twen-
tieth century. Ellen Key, one of the founders of this current of pedagogy, in an
article suggestively entitled Soul Murder in the Schools (which was included in
her seminal book Barnets århundrade [The Century of the Child, 1900]) ob-
served: “Our age cries for personality; but it will ask in vain, until we let our
children live and learn as personalities, until we allow them to have their own
will.” (Key 1900 [1909]: 232) Anarchists were acquainted with Key’s book (The
Modern School informed in its first issue about the lecture on Ellen Key held in
the Ferrer Center in March 1912),7 but they diverged from her pedagogical vi-
sion. Faure distinguished two model types of school – a repressive one and an
‘optimistic’ one that would leave every single child alone to liberate their ‘natu-
ral’ instincts – only to reject both of them. (Faure 1992: 88) He repeats inces-
santly that individuals are only worth as much as the milieu that forms them.
(Faure 1992: 107, 128) Thus, the central idea of anarchist education was a school
conceived as an autonomous milieu, a social entity. In line with this Faure de-
clared that La Ruche was not a school insofar as its aim was not restricted to
teaching. (Faure 1992: 130) And also Ferrer defined the main objective of the
school to be “the formation of an entirely fraternal body of men and women,
without distinction of sex or class”. (Ferrer 1913: 21)
The idea of school as an autonomous community might imply that it should
be separated from the existing society and its destructive influence. Indeed, La
Ruche was to a large extent isolated; it was a farm, partly self-subsistent, for
Faure believed that “if the child is subjected to contradictory influences, its
development suffers in consequence”. (Goldman 1910 [1969]: 151) This isolation
gave anarchist enterprises a somehow elitist dimension. But the anarchist af-
firmation of minoritarian activity did not have much in common with the
avant-garde’s “reduction of the link between art and society to a purely nega-
tive function”. (Poggioli 1962 [1968]: 118) Delaunay, who presented favorable
albeit not uncritical accounts of La Ruche in the Encyclopédie anarchiste,
hoped the school would become more related to a particular social milieu
7 The Modern School 1 (February 1912): 14.

o utside, and went on to say: “It is not – at least as regards children – about
adapting them to that milieu, but about making them capable of adapting to
its possible transformations and also capable of cooperation in the social
transformation.” Delaunay argued that one should not believe, as Faure did, in
an absolute influence of the school milieu, the existing society not being an
enemy of the individual, but “le moule dans lequel se forgent et se trempent les
individualités” (“a mold in which individualities are forged and immersed”).
Therefore, the anarchist school would have a double aim – to prepare children
to live a sound social life in the world as it is, but also to enable them to criti-
cally inspect society so as to change it someday. (Delaunay 1934: 639)
Francisco Ferrer, whose Escuela Moderna was immersed in the life of the
city of Barcelona, acknowledged the need to “instruct the rising generation in
the causes which have brought about and maintain the lack of social equilib-
rium”. (Ferrer 1913: 47) He denounced those reformers of the school system
who “care little about the social significance of education”. (Ferrer 1913: 64) But
Ferrer, sentenced to death and executed after having been falsely accused of
launching a revolt, firmly rejected the idea of a school that would raise rebels:
I venture to say quite plainly: the oppressed and the exploited have a
right to rebel, because they have to reclaim their rights until they enjoy
their full share in the common patrimony. The Modern School, however,
has to deal with children, whom it prepares by instruction for the state of
manhood, and it must not anticipate […] the adhesions and rebellions,
which may be fitting sentiments in the adult.
ferrer 1913: 45
This rejection of political militancy, of Bakunin’s revolutionary negation, is the

most striking feature of anarchist educational ‘harmonies’. In this regard they
definitely diverged from avant-garde nihilistic and agonistic attitudes. (Poggio-
li 1962 [1968]: 60–77) But it was political, not artistic radicalism that libertarian
educational harmonies were compelled to counter. In the case of Stelton this
was precisely the controversy that tore the school apart.
5 The Ferrer Center
In 1911, the Ferrer Center opened in New York, cofounded by prominent anar-
chists such as Emma Goldman, Alexander Berkman, and Leonard D. Abbott.
Apart from day school for children it organized evening classes for adults, as well
266 Laskowski
as lectures, discussions, and exhibitions. It also attracted many avant-garde

artists: the “combination of revolutionary politics and revolutionary art was
nowhere more evident than at the Ferrer Center”. (Avrich 2006: 147) In a pro-
grammatic article on Art and Social Life, Hippolyte Havel, a friend of Emma
Goldman and close associate of the school, wrote in 1925:
Important changes in the life of a people find their most decisive expres-
sion in contemporary art. The work of the artist […] mirrors the reflex of
the various struggles, hopes, and aspirations of our social life. The cre-
ative artist has the deepest appreciation of the tendencies of his time. He
is therefore the fittest exponent of new ideals, the coming reconstruc-
tion; indeed, he is the prophet of the future social order.
havel 1925: 24–25
The text appeared in the journal Open Vistas, a work of art in itself. Edited by
Havel and Joseph Ishill (who taught printing in the Modern School), (Avrich
2006: 253–259) the journal was a tribute to William Morris. Beautifully de-
signed, it envisaged its educational ideal by publishing, in the first issue, the
text A School of the Renaissance by Élisée Reclus. Reclus’ account of the early
fifteenth century school of Vittorino Rambaldoni presented a joyful vision: “In
the vast house ornamented with trees and flowers, the children come from all
over the country, belong to all social classes, […]; they dance, spring, sing, […]
and amuse themselves when they recite from Virgil, write Latin, improvise
discourses.” (Reclus 1925: 5) It is most meaningful that the Modern School
chose – in the spirit of the Arts and Crafts Movement, which was also dear to
Kropotkin – to go back to the pre-Raphaelite Renaissance with its “humanist
faith in the possession of the world”. (Negri 2007: 112–113) It seemed a world
that did not know separation, alienation, or negation.
The Modern School in New York became an educational enterprise that was
closely involved with artistic activities. The evening art classes in the Ferrer
Center were held by Robert Henri, (Antliff 2001: 11–38) with Man Ray and Adolf
Wolff among those who attended. (Naumann/Avrich 1985) Wolff published an
account of the Modern School’s ‘maiden art exhibit’ which opened in Decem-
ber 1912 presenting the works of its ‘adult pupils’:
These efforts at self-expression through the medium of color and line

were the work of young men and women who take advantage of the op-
portunity the Modern School affords them to use their eyes and their
hands in accordance with the dictates of their own minds and hearts;
they work under the guidance and inspiration of Robert Henri and
George Bellows, the sum total of whose teaching amounts to the com-
mand, ‘Be thyself’.
wolff 1913c: 10–11
The idea of expressing the individual self permeated both artistic and educa-
tional experiments of the Ferrer Center: “The only thing truly our own, the only
thing that is sacred private property, is our individuality.” (Wolff 1913c: 12) One
can easily detect a Stirnerian tone here. The school was supposed to inspire
free acts of creation and it refused to burden children with any rules or expec-
tations, for in the avant-garde spirit, art was not conceived as a dead ideal but
as “the embryo or the foetus curled up in the womb, unformed but in process
of formation”. (Wolff 1913c: 11) Artistic expression was considered a means of
liberation, the very essence of education. William Thurston Brown, who be-
came a headteacher of the Modern School, observed in 1913: “Education is ex-
pression, and expression is necessary to happiness. Expression is art, and nei-
ther can exist except on the basis of educational value.” (Brown 1913: 3)
Happiness through artistic expression seemed to Brown the only way to resist
the suffering of toil. The aim of schooling was to educate happy creators, for he
believed happiness to be the power that made it possible for the people to de-
termine the conditions of their labor: “Only so can work become art on a uni-
versal scale.” (Brown 1913: 3)
However, for Brown art was not only a matter of expression, but also, or even
firstly, a matter of knowledge. He opposed the enforcement of manual labor
characteristic of Proudhon’s ‘integral education’ not so much with a Stirnerian
apology of free expression as with the intellectual content of education. (Yet
Stirner himself repudiated realists’ ‘unfriendly’ attitude towards philosophy.)
During his time as principal, Brown turned the curriculum of the school to-
wards academics. (Porter Miller 1940: 27; Avrich 2006: 299) The ‘academic’ con-
tent of education became the central issue Modern Schools strove to address.
It arose from the need to overcome a distrust of intellectualism deeply rooted
in anarchist thinking, and typical for both ‘integral education’, and Stirner’s vi-
sion focused on spontaneous creation. Voltairine de Cleyre, a pivotal figure of
the anarchist movement in America, criticized Modern Schools for their
“strong desire to accomplish something with no definite idea of what it is nor
how to do it”. (Avrich 2006: 97)
Leonard D. Abbott, co-founder of the Ferrer Center, pointed out, in a way
reminiscent of Bakunin, the difficulties in answering de Cleyre’s critique: “To
destroy the false ideals of capitalistic education it is necessary to have a new
268 Laskowski
ideal. A new ideal necessitates new subject matter […]. Do we possess this new
subject matter? Have we this new ideal?” (Abbott 1912: 7) Despite the Ferrer
Center’s artistic leaning, Will Durant (1885–1981), who in 1912−1913 served as
principal of New York Modern School was everything but the partisan of un-
bounded free expression. He agreed on an educational model free from con-
straints, yet like Brown he believed that children should be attracted to ‘aca-
demic’ knowledge. For Durant, cultural heritage was a matter of existential
need, a treasure everyone should be able to access. In the preface to the second
(1933) edition of his bestselling The Story of Philosophy, Durant defined “the
function of the professional teacher” as a mediator between the people and
specialists, someone who acts “in order to break down the barriers between
knowledge and need” to prevent knowledge from being restricted exclusively
to its ‘priests’. (Durant 1926 [1933]: viii) Notably, in those early days Durant’s
attitude complemented rather than countered artistic visions of liberation.
Adolf Wolff published a poem inspired by one of Durant’s lectures, On a talk on
Spinoza:
Durant spoke of Spinoza yesterday

And I sat list’ning, feeling, meditating.
And now and ever afterwards will feel
And live and think more deeply than before,
For having heard Durant speak of Spinoza.
wolff 1913a: 8
Wolff, who also authored poems on Shelley, Whitman, and William Morris
(“dreamer of golden dreams […], Columbus of Arcadian Continents”), is prob-
ably the best example of the spirit that dominated the school at that time. He
combined freedom of creation with admiration of the great artists of the past
and political involvement. (Wolff 1913a: 7)
In 1915, the Modern School was separated from the Ferrer Center and moved
to Stelton. Principal William Thurston Brown (1915–1919) continued Durant’s
direction. But in 1920 a great change took place with Elizabeth and Alexis
Ferm – Aunty and Uncle Ferm – as new teachers in charge of the school who
both preferred manual training over academic education. (Avrich 2006: 299)
That contrasted with Stelton’s predominant spirit – libertarian, albeit nour-
ished by the high value its mainly Jewish members attached to education.
(Avrich 2006: 228) Thus, it is not surprising that dissatisfaction grew. Eventu-
ally, in 1925, the Ferms resigned. Their departure, however, did not put an end
to the crisis. Many parents who had opposed the school’s direction were not
defending the liberating power of art and literature but seemed rather
c oncerned about their children’s future career. In 1927, The Stelton Appendix
published a bitter article entitled Our school, and why children leave it. The
anonymous author outlined the history of the conflict and did not conceal his
or her disenchantment: “My suggestion Comrades is that if you find your ideal
too difficult to follow […], close the school once for all, not close it thru the
slow process of drawing out child by child.”8
6 Conclusions
Anarchist educational enterprises seem not to have valued the avant-gardes.

Despite some correspondence, their encounter was either superficial or ac
cidental. Anarchist schools followed Proudhon’s vision of integral education:
they focused on manual labor in search of an immediate experience of the
‘concrete variety of existence’, and distrusted art, including avant-garde art, as
inevitably a form of mediation.9 The key reason for the mutual misunder
standing concerns the ways to overcome alienation and to re-appropriate the
experience of life. Avant-garde (as defined by Bürger) emphasized the moment
of negation, whereas libertarian education was immersed in Spinozian-
Bergsonian materialism, focused on the proliferation of creative forces and the
unmediated experience of material reality.
If we were to accept the wider definition of avant-garde suggested by Pog-
gioli, we would have to observe that anarchist educators denounced individual
will and self-expression, so dear to aestheticism, as ‘Neronian’ passions stem-
ming from negation. Instead, libertarian instructors privileged the idea of the
educational milieu and strove to actualize the ideal of harmony, which had no
appeal for avant-garde artists. (Paul Signac seems to have been a notable ex-
ception, but his profound understanding of the anarchist ideal was uncom-
mon for the avant-garde.10) The New York Ferrer Center is of particular interest
8 The Stelton Appendix, 14 May 1927. The publication is preserved in Rutgers University Li-
braries, Special Collections and University Archives, Modern School Collection box 5,
folder 14 (henceforth quoted as msc). I am most indebted to Andrzej Grzybowski for his
invaluable assistance with archive research in New Brunswick.
9 The avant-gardes, despite their ambitions, never managed to overcome artistic media-
tion, and eventually were institutionalized as art. (Bürger 1974 [1984]: 58) This was prob-
ably inevitable since the avant-garde negation was only a moment in the dialectical
process.
10 In this context, his 1894 painting Au temps d’harmonie: l’âge d’or n’est pas dans le passé, il
est dans l’avenir (In the Time of Harmony. The Golden Age is not in the Past, it is in the
Future), originally titled ‘In the Time of Anarchy’, is worth noting. Signac contributed to
270 Laskowski
in this context. Art was regarded there as a form of free expression, a synonym
for creativity and rebellion, and notably also as a subject for teaching. Charac-
teristically, Durant and Brown did not differentiate between ‘modern’ and
‘classical’ art. Both perceived art as a whole, as eternal manifestation of free-
dom. Thus, they did not criticize the very institution of art, which the avant-
gardes found necessary to destroy. They saw, however, the need to ‘democra-
tize’ art and reintegrate it with artisanal production in a way similar to the Arts
and Crafts Movement. After separating from the Ferrer Center, the Ferms opt-
ed for a child-centered approach and focused on children’s spontaneous
activity.
In the 1930s, the Great Depression and the rise of Fascism and Stalinism
made it necessary to decide whether Stelton’s teachers could continue to work
within an atmosphere of autonomous ‘harmony’, or whether they should turn
to bringing up future activists and militants. This controversy caused a lot of
damage to the school’s welfare. (Dick 1940: 32) The Ferms returned to Stelton
in 1933. In 1937, in Looking Forward, a magazine published by the Stelton Anar-
chist Youth, a two-part article Modern Education & the Stelton School appeared
that challenged their pedagogical approach. The anonymous author criticized
the school for having become “stultified into a static, non-growing institution”11
paralyzed by the “policy of fear, fear of misdirecting the child”.12 The proposed
solution was to “never lose sight of our long range objective of social revolu-
tion. In that lies the creation of the true Libertarian school.”13 This meant going
back to Bakunin. In the existing society ‘harmony’ could not persist. Children
were in fact affected by movies, the radio, as well as “bigoted, reactionary influ-
ences in the community”.14 These influences had to be negated. But even if the
avant-gardes stressed the moment of negation, Stelton youth did not search for
radical art but chose radical politics. In the second part of the article the au-
thor argued that the school “above all must imbue the maturing pupil with a
keen and true social outlook, so that he will not fear to participate in the strug-
gle for social progress”.15 Unfortunately, the author went on, “the Stelton School
lacks social militancy”.16
Les Temps nouveaux, edited by Jean Grave, who – as we have seen – did not hesitate to
express his distrust of an ‘arty anarchism’.
11 Looking Forward 1.3 (November 1937): 6; all the issues of this unofficial paper are pre-
served in msc, box 5, folder 9.
12 Looking Forward 1.4 (December 1937): 6.
13 Ibid.: 1.3 (November 1937): 7.
14 Ibid.: 7.
15 Ibid.: 1.4 (December 1937): 5.
16 Ibid.: 5−6.
Alexis Ferm responded to the article in the following issue of Looking For-
ward. He fiercely defended his vision of a school focused on the child’s “self-
initiated activity”. Turning away from Will Durant he stated that the “child
learns from experience, not explanation”: “Induced activity alone in all school
work may make good Fascists or Communists but not free men.”17 Ferm would
come back to this thought many times.18 The weakness of his argument was
that, despite Faure’s reservations, he passionately defended the model of the
‘optimistic school’, based on the child’s individual will. As we have seen, the
concept of individual will implied the moment of negation, which Ferm was
unable to recognize. Since he neglected the social dimension of milieu, which
Faure stressed in a most perspicacious way, he could not defend his vision
against revolutionary negation. Therefore, he did not convince his opponents
who responded to his argument: “If you believe that the educator must not
influence the child, must not indoctrinate him, why have educators at all? Why
have schools?”19
In the gloomy days of triumphant Fascism there was no place for harmony
based on an immediate experience of material reality. Torn between Ferm’s
reductive individualistic voluntarism and radical politics, the anarchist idea of
libertarian education was suffering defeat. The bitter cry of Stelton’s Anarchist
Youth “Why have schools?” was a sign of desperation, very different from the
optimistic, provocative, joyful prophecies of disappearance of the school in a
world of harmony that were proclaimed in Stelton in much happier times.20
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Index
Abbott, Leonard D. 265, 267 art social (social art) 199, 207–209, 224–227,
Action d’art 37–41, 47–48n, 51–66 238, 245
Adam, Paul 14, 18–21 Aura 201–202, 223–225, 245
Aesthetics Autonomy
Aesthetic individualism 30, 131, 134–139, individual 130, 131, 168n, 216–217, 239,
150 252, 257, 264, 270
Aestheticism 37, 60–62, 110, 190, 251–252, of art 25, 77, 110, 119, 129, 251–252, 254
269 political 20, 129, 134, 157n
and anarchism 4–5, 21, 72, 157, 170–171, worker’s 214, 217, 219
189, 199–200, 224, 227
and politicization 13, 21, 24n, 60n, 72, 88, Baader, Johannes 119
95, 101–122, 137 Baju, Anatole 6, 17–18n, 131, 139–142, 150
and the avant-garde 107, 118 Bakunin, Mikhail Alexandrovich 5, 8, 14, 21,
Anarchism 28, 56, 99, 103, 105–109, 121, 138, 148, 166,
Anarchist communism 28, 71, 94 182, 185, 204, 244, 255–257, 261–262,
Anarchist ideology 25, 37, 64, 70, 134, 137 265, 267, 270
Anarchist individualism (see also Ball, Hugo 99–122, 127, 181–183
Individualism) 38, 40n, 60, 62–65, Baud-Bovy, Auguste 224, 226, 229–230
71–72, 82, 259 Baudelaire, Charles 14, 17, 132–135, 143–144,
Anarcho-collectivism 6, 131, 139, 150, 253, 254
259–261 Bavarian Council Republic 122, 153–154n
Anarcho-socialism (see also Beauty 7, 23, 26, 33, 63, 65, 134, 141, 162, 167,
Socialism) 56, 106, 153–155, 164, 167, 169 170, 183, 202, 208, 223, 233–235, 238
Anarcho-syndicalism (see also Beginning (philosophy of) 153, 155, 164,
Syndicalism) 28, 79, 83 166–171
and chaos 131, 165, 262 Belle Époque 197–200, 232
and destruction 5, 7, 22, 64, 99, 101, 109, Benjamin, Walter 7, 110, 166, 177–191, 225
111, 113, 138, 144, 184, 189 Bergson, Henri 5, 37, 40, 60–65, 72, 164, 269
theocratic 7, 177–191 Berlin
Angrand, Charles 239, 241–244 cultural scene 6, 161–162, 168
Anti-art 5, 100–103, 108, 112, 117–119, 138, 255 Dada 102, 111, 117–119, 121–122
Anti-authoritarianism 3, 7, 80, 150 Friedrichshagener Dichterkreis (Poet’s
Anti-colonialism 94, 244 Circle of Berlin-Friedrichshagen) 153,
Antimilitarism 5, 70–87, 94, 204–206, 155–158
212–214 Bismarck, Otto von 160, 182
Anti-politics 3, 103, 189 Bloch, Ernst 117, 180–181
Antiquity Bourget, Paul 17, 134–137
Ancient Greece 44, 62, 179, 233–234, 239 Bourses du travail (Labor Exchanges)
Ancient Rome 62, 132, 139, 143, 179 201–203, 207–208, 214–216
Architecture 154, 166, 233–234 Brecht, Bertolt 110n, 118–119
Aristocracy 6, 129–139, 147–161, 179, 260 Brown, William Thurston 267–268, 270
Art for art’s sake 14, 32, 138, 209, 225–227, Brupbacher, Fritz 5, 103, 105–106, 122
238 Buber, Martin 162, 168–169, 180–181
Artificiality 133–134 Bürger, Peter 3, 15, 110, 119, 159, 189–190,
Arts and Crafts Movement 266, 270 224–225, 251, 260, 269
276 Index
Cabaret Voltaire 99, 101, 108, 112, 115n–119, 181 Education 2, 4, 7–8, 18, 106n, 118, 154–155,
Caricature 82, 91, 158, 200, 218, 242 157, 170, 197–200, 207–209, 212–219, 225,
Cartoons 83–84, 87, 92, 94, 199–200, 204, 218 227–231, 235, 250–271
Catholicism 44, 78, 106, 118, 180–184 Egoism (concept of) 5, 37, 40, 61–65, 72, 74,
Cempuis 252, 261–262 130, 150
Christianity 44, 57, 62, 64, 91, 118, 156, Eight-hour working day 205
165–166, 180, 236, 239 élan vital (vital impetus) 164
Colomer, André 38–41, 51, 60–65 Elitism 6, 130, 140, 150, 159, 168, 170, 197, 201,
Colonialism 5, 89, 91, 145 217, 256, 264
Comité d’esthétique (Aesthetic Emancipation
Committee) 47–52, 59 individual 157, 202
Confédération générale du travail (cgt, political 117
General Confederation of Labor) 198, social 7, 219, 225–227
200–204, 206–207, 209, 211–212 worker’s 160, 204, 214–217, 252
Courbet, Gustave 138, 224, 226–229, 245, 260 Encyclopédie anarchiste 138, 254, 261n,
Creativity 2–3, 5, 7, 61–63, 103, 109, 112–113, 263–264
117, 138, 158, 169–171, 181, 206, 223, 235, Enlightenment 2, 213
245, 250, 252–255, 257–258, 266, Ephraim, Jan 115n
269–270 Epstein, Jacob 5, 37–66
Crisis Escuela Moderna (Modern School) 8, 238,
economic 181, 241 253–254, 261, 265–269
of modernity 100–102, 108–109, 113 Evenepoel, Henri 86–87
poetical 27, 109, 161 Expressionism 73n, 100, 103, 112, 171
political 78, 108–109, 165, 261
Critique of language 102, 115–117, 121, 153, Faure, Sébastien 74, 138–139, 142, 252, 254,
161–162, 171 261, 263–265, 271
Cross, Henri-Edmond 75n–76, 94, 202, 237, Fauvism 1, 5, 70–95
239, 241–244 Fédération jurassienne (Jura
Czolgosz, Leon 55, 59 Federation) 228
Fénéon, Félix 2, 14, 21, 31, 89–90, 92, 240
Dadaism 1, 5–6, 39, 99–122, 138, 181–183 Ferm, Alexis and Elizabeth 268, 270–271
Dandy 134 Ferrer Center (New York) 8, 250, 253, 261,
Dave, Victor 55–56 264–270
Decadence 1, 6, 17–18, 23, 129–150 Ferrer i Guàrdia, Francesc (Francisco Ferrer y
Degalvès, Jean 263–264 Guardia) 8, 232, 237, 253–254, 261–265
Delesalle, Paul 201, 243 fin de siècle 5–6, 13, 16–17, 57, 71, 100, 110, 153,
Democratization 7, 219, 270 156, 169–170, 259
Derain, André 5, 70–72, 74, 82–84, 86–89, First World War 5, 39, 79–80, 95, 99–100,
92, 94 106, 108, 113, 117, 122, 153, 171, 177–178, 181,
Der Revoluzzer 99, 101, 104–105 198, 200, 205
Deutsche Misere 105 Flavius Josephus 179–180, 183
Dionysian 57, 99, 108 Fourier, Charles 257–258
Dongen, Kees van 5, 70–73, 79, Fourierism 15–16, 33
87–95, 241 Free verse 30, 32
Dreyfus Freie Volksbühne (People’s
Affair 5, 70–72, 78, 80, 86, 145–146, 213, Theater) 159–160
216, 238 Friedrichshagener Dichterkreis (Poet’s Circle
Dreyfusards 74, 78, 80, 86–87, 145 of Berlin-Friedrichshagen) see Berlin
Durant, Will 268, 270–271 Futurism 6, 39, 60, 70, 100, 103, 167n, 253
Index 277
Garden City Movement 153, 155, 157 142, 148, 150, 165, 201–203, 216, 253, 259,
Gardens 75–77, 237 271
General Strike (see also Strike) 79, Intuition 37, 61–65, 164, 214
203–211
Genius 159, 169–170, 223, 245, 254 Janco, Marcel 100–101, 108, 111
Geography 1, 7, 217, 223–245 Janvion, Émile 263
German Youth Movement 190 Jews (see also Judaism) 6, 7, 42,
God (Jewish/Christian) 62, 65, 156, 179–188 53–55, 78, 153–155, 168–171, 177–181, 190,
Godwin, William 131, 166 268
Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von 156, joie de vivre 5, 37, 63–65
162, 171 Judaism (see also Jews) 168–170, 180
Gogh, Vincent van 74, 76
Goldman, Emma 5, 37, 53–59, 130, 149, Kahnweiler, Daniel-Henry 79–80
253–254, 262, 264–266 Kampffmeyer, Bernhard 157, 160
Gourmont, Rémy de 5, 14, 22–23 Kandinsky, Wassily 100n, 113n
Grandjouan, Jules 83–84, 201, 205–206, Key, Ellen 264
210–213, 241 Korah 186
Grave, Jean 14, 17, 21, 28, 139, 143–144, Kropotkin, Piotr Alexeyevich 5, 14, 28, 53,
150, 226, 231, 238–244, 260, 264, 72–74, 92, 103–106, 136–139, 142, 160, 185,
270n 206, 225, 228, 238–240, 242–243, 266
Great Globe 230, 237 Kupka, František 78–79, 89, 224, 231–232,
241, 245
Happiness 188, 267
Harmony 19, 61, 63–64, 71–72, 77, 107, 141, Landauer, Gustav 2, 6, 53n, 105–107, 115, 122,
191, 234–235, 239, 250, 257–258, 263, 130, 149, 153–172, 185
265, 269–271 La Révolte 17, 21, 24, 28–29, 32, 240
Hart, Heinrich and Julius 155, 162–163 La Ruche (The Beehive) 252, 254, 261,
Hausmann, Raoul 118–119 263–264
Heartfield, John 119–120 L’Assiette au beurre 79, 83, 89–90, 201,
Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich 113, 256, 204–205, 244
258–260 Laverdant, Gabriel-Désiré 15–16, 22
Hellenism 179 La Voix du peuple 83, 202, 204–206, 218
Herzfelde, Wieland 119–120 L’Endehors 21, 28–31
Hölderlin, Friedrich 183, 190 Lépine, Louis 47
Homosexuality 5, 37–66, 147 Le Révolté 17, 40, 137, 240
Huelsenbeck, Richard 100–103, 105, Les Entretiens politiques et littéraires 20, 29,
111, 119 33
Humanity Les Temps nouveaux 17, 24, 28, 32, 79, 89, 91,
fulfillment of 162, 169, 181, 184, 186, 188, 207, 240, 243–244, 264, 270n
214 Liberalism 2, 129–130, 156, 227
idea of 62, 100–101 Libertarianism 2–3, 99, 121, 153–155, 185, 189,
liberation of 108, 116, 121 202–203, 213–217, 229, 232, 250,
Huysmans, Joris-Karl 129, 132–133, 135, 252–253, 263, 265, 268–271
143–144 Lois scélérates (villainous laws) 31, 200
London
Impressionism see Neo-impressionism anarchist networks 37, 40, 56, 160, 207,
Individualism (see also Anarchist 241
individualism) 23–25, 28, 30, 33, 37, artistic circles 37, 39–43, 46, 53, 60
39–40, 60–65, 70–73, 81, 94, 130–140, education and science 216, 237
278 Index
Luce, Maximilien 92n, 201–202, 224, Neo-impressionism 1, 5, 70, 201, 225,

239–244 238–239
Lumpenproletariat 91, 133n Neo-romanticism (see also
Luther, Martin 106, 182 Romanticism) 6, 144, 157
Neue Gemeinschaft (New Community) 153,
Mallarmé, Stéphane 2, 5, 14, 18, 22–23, 25, 155, 162–163
27–31, 129, 135, 138 New York (see also Ferrer Center,
Marinetti, Filippo Tommaso 100, 114–115, Escuela Moderna/Modern School)
167n anarchist networks 37, 39, 53, 55–56
Marxism 3, 16n, 95, 102, 110, 118, 121–122, 181n, artistic circles 44, 56, 122
190 Nietzsche, Friedrich 6, 72, 100, 107, 109, 112,
Marx, Karl 74, 106, 133, 160, 166 115, 117, 153, 155–157, 202
Matisse, Henri 70, 72, 74–75n, 94 Nonsense (poetry) 99, 113, 117
Mauclair, Camille 14, 22, 26 Nostalgia 6, 153, 155, 169
Mauthner, Friedrich (Fritz) 6, 102, 116–117, Novelty 4, 64, 224, 250–251, 253
121–122, 153, 160–163, 171
May Day 141n, 205 Oberdada see Johannes Baader
Mediterranean 239–240 Orientalism 37, 168
Meister Eckhart 162n–163
Mercié, Antonin 48–49 Paradox 7, 30, 119, 144, 148, 153, 155, 165–166,
Messianism 4–7, 164, 166–169, 177, 181, 184 177–178, 180, 185, 191
Metapolitics 188 Paris
Michel, Louise 18, 26, 139–142, 150 anarchist circles 17–18, 22, 37–43, 53, 56,
Middle Ages 165, 233 59, 240–241
Mirbeau, Octave 6, 21, 24, 129, 131, 139, avant-garde 17–18, 20, 37–43,
142–147, 150, 262, 264 46–49, 51, 71, 75, 89, 92n–93, 122, 139,
Modernism 4–5, 70–72, 77–79, 83, 86–87, 92, 240–241
94–95, 111, 168n, 224, 259 Commune 140, 203, 226–227, 229, 252
Modernity 2–4, 32, 100, 102, 111–113, 129–130, cultural scene 29, 46–49, 215, 217, 230,
133n, 167, 169–171, 208, 236n, 253, 257 232, 237
Moses 184, 186 socialist politics 79
Mühsam, Erich 105, 153–154, 162, 170n–171 Pataud, Émile 206, 215–216
Müntzer, Thomas 106, 182 Pelloutier, Fernand 201, 203–204, 207–209,
Muralists 39 214–215
Mutual aid 64, 71 Père Lachaise 5, 37–38, 41, 47, 49, 59, 66
Mysticism 161–162, 179, 181–183, 188–190n, Perron, Charles 224, 226, 230, 237, 245
226 Picasso, Pablo 77, 79, 92, 99n
Pissarro, Camille 2, 71–73n, 76, 208, 224, 241,
Naturalism 73, 82, 137, 140, 157, 224, 236, 238 243–244
Nature (concept of) 8, 77, 81, 133–134, 144, Pissarro, Lucien 238, 241
161–163, 230–236, 242, 245, 257–258, 262 Placards 209–210, 212
Naturphilosophie (Philosophy of Poetry 13–14, 17, 30, 32–33, 53n, 57, 102, 109n,
Nature) 232, 234, 245 110–113n, 115–119, 132, 161, 190
Naudin, Bernard 84, 89 Poggioli, Renato 3, 15, 155, 158n–159, 164, 189,
Negation 199, 201, 203, 224, 251, 259n, 264–265,
anarchic 171, 185, 189, 191, 259, 260, 269 269
avant-garde 111, 158, 189, 255, 258–259n, Political exile 7, 20–21, 29, 40, 53, 169, 178,
269n–270 181, 224–227, 229–230
revolutionary 178, 250, 256–258, 261, Poncet, Paul 211–212
265–266, 271 Posters 93n, 209–212
Index 279
Pouget, Émile 28, 90, 140, 142n, 200–202, Saint Simon, Claude-Henri de Rouvroy
206, 215–216 15–16, 22, 32–33
Primitivism 6, 81–82, 88–89, 91–92, 94, Salon d’automne (Autumn Salon) 72–73n,
99–100, 107, 111–112, 257 92
Propaganda by the deed 14, 22, 24–25, 201 Salon des indépendants (Salon of the
Proudhon, Pierre-Joseph 14, 71n, 105–106, Independents) 73n–74, 92
131, 133n, 138, 157, 160, 208, 225–228, 236, Scholem, Gershom 21, 177–191
244–245, 250, 255, 260–261, 263, 267, Sculpture 5, 42n, 44–52, 59, 72, 100, 154, 166,
269 216, 233
Prussia 160n, 181 Secularity 62, 180–187, 239
Puech, Denys 48–49 Self-determination 157n, 164, 167, 182
Sexual liberationism 5, 37, 41, 52, 66, 70, 89,
Quillard, Pierre 14, 22, 33 92
Signac, Paul 71–76, 89, 94, 208, 224, 237,
Ray, Man 254, 266 239–243
Realism 110n, 137, 205, 227, 238 Social democracy 3, 105, 156, 160
Reclus, Élisée 2, 7–8, 14, 21, 142, 208, Socialism (see also Anarcho-
223–245, 266 socialism) 2–3, 17–20, 27, 44, 53–54,
Religion (see Catholicism, Christianity, 79–80, 95, 105–106, 118, 141–143, 148,
Judaism, Messianism, Spirituality) 153–160, 163, 167–170, 200, 206, 212,
respublica Hebraeorum 180 226–229
Retté, Adolphe 14, 19, 22–23, 32n Sorel, Georges 200, 207–209
Revolution Sozialistischer Bund (Socialist League) 153,
aesthetic 101, 115, 137, 140 155, 167–168n
anarchist 6, 13, 27, 29, 31, 66, 102, 137–138, Spartakusbund (Spartacus League) 118, 122
153–155, 159, 164–172, 206, 208, 243, 250, Spirit (concept of the) 61–62, 100, 109,
255–256, 260–261n 164–169
French Revolution 171 Spiritual art 112, 119
October Revolution 101 Spirituality 6, 99, 112, 115, 118
Revolutions of 1848 130 Steinlen, Théophile 55, 89, 201, 205, 241–243
social 111, 131, 136–137, 182, 208, 213, 215, Stelton 250, 253, 260–265, 268–271
217, 219, 225, 235, 251, 270 Stirner, Max 5, 14, 28, 37, 40, 60–65, 72, 74,
Rimbaud, Arthur 112–113 105, 157, 160, 166, 259–267
Robin, Paul 252, 261–263 Strike (see also General Strike) 26,
Romanticism (see also Neo- 79n–83, 212
romanticism) 2, 7, 99, 103, 105–106, Słomczynski, André 224, 226, 229
133, 140, 144, 157, 177–178, 182–183, 227, Symbolism 1, 4, 13–33, 39, 70, 138–142,
251, 254, 257 201–205
Ross, Robert 37–38n, 41–45, 52–53, 66 Syndicalism 2, 7, 197–219
Rousseau, Jean-Jacques 107, 213, 236, 257
Russia Terrorism 2, 24–25, 201, 214
anarchists (see also Bakunin, Kropotkin, Theater 39, 154, 159–162
Tolstoy) 106, 121 Theocracy (see also Anarchism
avant-garde 70 [theocratic]) 7, 177–189
culture and literature 109–110n, 121, 148, Third Republic (France) 19–20, 30–33, 72,
257 78, 89, 132, 200
philosophy 106, 109, 256 Time (concept of) 4–6, 153–155, 161–171, 183
politics 154n, 171 Tolstoy, Lev Nikolayevich 160, 162, 166, 252,
Russians in exile 55, 105–106 256–258
Rysselberghe, Théo van 237, 240–244 Tomb of Oscar Wilde 5, 37–66
280 Index
Topia 164–165, 169, 171 divine 186, 189

Transcendence 5, 14, 25, 62, 112, physical 24, 59
179–189 political 4, 59
Tzara, Tristan 100, 111 Visual culture 12, 199, 205–206, 209, 213, 218
Vlaminck, Maurice de 5, 70–95
Université nouvelle de Bruxelles
237, 240 Weimar Republic 106, 118–122
Universités populaires (People’s Weisses Schwänli (Little White Swan) 103,
Universities) 214–217 105n
Utopia 2–6, 103, 111, 117, 121–122, 133, 149, Whitman, Walt 43–44, 55–57, 268
164–171, 181–182, 198, 205–206, 215–216 Wilde, Oscar 2, 11–13, 37–66, 129–150
Wilheminian Era (see also
Vanguardism 4, 6–8, 73, 153–155, 160–171, Prussia) 100, 106, 161, 182
197–199, 203, 206, 219, 250, 253 Wille, Bruno 157, 160
Verein unabhängiger Sozialisten (Association Wolff, Adolf 253, 266–268
of Independent Socialists) 160
Verlaine, Paul 14, 24, 132, 139 Yasnaya Polyana 252, 256, 261
Vielé-Griffin, Francis 14, 20, 32
Violence Zionism 169, 183, 190
anarchist 24, 32, 55, 88, 144 Zola, Émile 74, 80, 264
and arts 28 Zurich 99–113, 117–122, 160, 181

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Anarchism and the Avant-Garde

Avant-Garde Critical Studies

Hubert van den Berg

International Advisory Board

The titles published in this series are listed at brill.com/agcs

Copyright 2020 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands.

This book is printed on acid-free paper and produced in a sustainable manner.

1 The Symbolist Movement: Anarchism and the Avant-Garde in Fin de

2 Egoism, Homosexuality, and Joie de vivre: Jacob Epstein’s Tomb of Oscar

3 A Politics of Technique: Fauvism and Anarchist Individualism 70

4 Anti-Art? Dada and Anarchy 99

5 Decadent Anarchism, Anarchistic Decadence: Contradictory Cultures,

6 ‘We Are Too Far Ahead to be Understood’: Vanguard Creation in Fin de

7 ‘Theocratic Anarchism’? Walter Benjamin and Gershom Scholem in

8 Syndicalism and Art in France before 1914: Propaganda and

9 Anarchism, Geography and Painting: Élisée Reclus and Social

10 Teaching Revolution through Arts? Anarchism, the Avant-garde and

3.3 Maurice de Vlaminck, Paysage d’automne (Autumn Landscape), c. 1905. Oil on

9.1 “L’Homme est la nature prenant conscience d’elle-même” (“Nature Self-­

of Empire, and having gained teaching experience in Verona, in Geneva, and in

humanist lyceum in Warsaw where he worked as director (2006–2010) and still

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ��20 | doi:10.1163/9789004410428_002

avant-gardists converged around a revolutionary moment, shared a desire to

d­ escriptor by researchers, and as a positive self-description by adherents. Its

a heterodox and diffuse assemblage of ideas, theories and modes of prac-

literary-artistic movement of the avant-garde(s) augmented terminologically

propagate a new spirituality based on ‘primitivism’ and anarchism. Citing

A Jewish perspective in the anarchist – avant-gardist interplay is also ad-

The Symbolist Movement: Anarchism and the

The relationship of the French symbolist movement in literature to anarchism has

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ��20 | doi:10.1163/9789004410428_003

1 Theories of the Avant-garde

The notion of the avant-garde as it applies to late nineteenth-century French

The Fourierist Gabriel-Désiré Laverdant expanded upon the Saint-Simonian

taking a leading role in the direction of society.4 As Hadjinicolaou indicates,

4 A number of scholars have detailed the development of the term ‘avant-garde’ in

2 Two Movements Developing at the Same Time

Although the intellectual foundation of anarchism goes back much further,

between ‘decadent’ and ‘symbolist’. Symbolist literature also appeared in 1886

7 Le Scapin (begun in December 1885) also published a few symbolists.

3 Symbolists and the Political Field

9 One convenient overview of Boulangism can be found in Garrigues 1992.

4 The Symbolists Embrace Anarchism

In the Boulangist platform, therefore, nothing reactionary, nothing but

for example, previously enlightened by the articles of La Révolte, were,

The spread of anarchism to even a relatively small number of writers could

Thus, consciously or not – what difference does it make? – whoever com-

Gourmont’s Le Symbolisme (Symbolism, 1892) established a fundamental

For many critics, such as Richard Sonn, this is merely an aestheticization of

12 “Opinions Diverses” in Le Journal (10 December 1893): n.p.

in the fragile recognition the symbolists were seeking to build in order to be

5 Framing the Symbolists’ Interest in Anarchism

Their ‘anarchism’ was based on a misunderstanding and thumbed its

describes it as: “rencontre de surface; écart en profondeur” (“surface encoun-

6 Another View of Symbolism’s Connection to Anarchism

The accusations leveled against the symbolists both by their contemporaries

[the socialist movement] should be examined as a space of polemical

19 Pseudonym of Charles Victor Albert Fernand Daudet (1869–1957).

21 L’Eclair 1893. Press clipping found in APP B/a 78 1893.

@narlivres. “C” <http://anarlivres.free.fr/pages/biblio/biblioC.html>.

Frigerio, Vittorrio. 2014. La Littérature de l’anarchisme. Anarchistes de lettres et lettrés

Egoism, Homosexuality, and Joie de vivre:

In the spring of 1913, an amazing instance of international solidarity occurred

9.1 “L’Homme est la nature prenant conscience d’elle-même” (“Nature Self-

d escriptor by researchers, and as a positive self-description by adherents. Its

Illustration 2.8 Antonin Mercié, Monument funéraire de Paul Baudry

Illustration 2.10 “Monument du poète Oscar Wilde” in Supplément à l’action d’art

“à froisser les susceptibilités de certain familles” (“to offend the sensibilities of

r ationalism, scientific discourse and what he called ‘fixed ideas’ as pernicious

Illustration 3.1 Maurice de Vlaminck, Maisons à Chatou (Houses at Chatou), 1905–1906.

Illustration 3.2 Camille Pissarro, La Cueillette des pommes à Éragny-sur-Epte (Apple

Illustration 3.3 Maurice de Vlaminck, Paysage d’automne (Autumn Landscape), c. 1905.

Illustration 3.11 Kees van Dongen, “Le Péril Blanc” (The

opular Romanian transvestite singer who performed in Paris and Rotterdam

which artistic daring was seen to parallel propaganda; he inhabited a milieu in

several other German artists turned to Russian tradition and philosophy.

e lements evoking ecstasy and rapture by mingling a political gesture with a