Lettres à l'amant: Et autres textes sur la difficulté d'aimer, de faire l'amour, et d'être libre

by Emma Goldman, Léa Gauthier (translator)

"Jeudi dernier, c’est la journée la plus horrible de ma vie, le jour des plus grandes humiliations. J’ai vu que ce que tu appelles “amour” n’était qu’un caprice à satisfaire quel qu’en soit le prix. J’ai aussi vu qu’à moins de me soumettre à ce caprice je n’avais pas de place ni dans ta vie, ni dans ton humanité, ni dans ton estime. La question n’est pas de savoir si je t’aime assez pour supporter tes états d’âme ou si je le souhaite, je sais que je ne veux plus jamais subir ce que j’ai vécu jeudi dernier. Jamais."
De la passion d’Emma Goldman pour Ben Reitman, le "roi des hobos", à son combat pour l’émancipation, voici neuf textes, six lettres, et une difficulté : vivre ses idées.

161 pages, Kindle Edition

Published January 10, 2024

About the author

Emma Goldman was a feminist anarchist known for her political activism, writing and speeches. She played a pivotal role in the development of anarchist political philosophy in North America and Europe in the first half of the twentieth century.

Born in Kovno in the Russian Empire (present-day Kaunas, Lithuania), Goldman emigrated to the US in 1885 and lived in New York City, where she joined the burgeoning anarchist movement.Attracted to anarchism after the Haymarket affair, Goldman became a writer and a renowned lecturer on anarchist philosophy, women's rights, and social issues, attracting crowds of thousands.

She and anarchist writer Alexander Berkman, her lover and lifelong friend, planned to assassinate Henry Clay Frick as an act of propaganda of the deed. Although Frick survived the attempt on his life, Berkman was sentenced to twenty-two years in prison. Goldman was imprisoned several times in the years that followed, for "inciting to riot" and illegally distributing information about birth control. In 1906, Goldman founded the anarchist journal Mother Earth.

In 1917, Goldman and Berkman were sentenced to two years in jail for conspiring to "induce persons not to register" for the newly instated draft. After their release from prison, they were arrested—along with hundreds of others—and deported to Russia.

Initially supportive of that country's Bolshevik revolution, Goldman quickly voiced her opposition to the Soviet use of violence and the repression of independent voices. In 1923, she wrote a book about her experiences, My Disillusionment in Russia. While living in England, Canada, and France, she wrote an autobiography called Living My Life. After the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War, she traveled to Spain to support the anarchist revolution there. She died in Toronto on May 14, 1940, aged 70.

During her life, Goldman was lionized as a free-thinking "rebel woman" by admirers, and derided by critics as an advocate of politically motivated murder and violent revolution.Her writing and lectures spanned a wide variety of issues, including prisons, atheism, freedom of speech, militarism, capitalism, marriage, free love, and homosexuality. Although she distanced herself from first-wave feminism and its efforts toward women's suffrage, she developed new ways of incorporating gender politics into anarchism. After decades of obscurity, Goldman's iconic status was revived in the 1970s, when feminist and anarchist scholars rekindled popular interest in her life.

Reviews

[anne larouche · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5

Collection intéressante d'écrits d'Emma Goldman, anarchiste russe et américaine du début du 20e siècle. À coup sûr ce livre est pour moi une pièce pertinente dans ma compréhension de l'histoire des féminismes - comment Goldman parle de la condition des femmes, comment on voit, dans les lettres à son amant, son expérience personnelle. Si je n'y trouve pas nécessairement de prise sur laquelle rebondir à notre époque (quoique, bien des choses sont presque mot pour mot d'actualité, si l'on fait abstraction du style très caractéristique des années 1910-20 très influencé par la littérature de propagande), je crois bien que l'impression de contemporéanité du "situationship" de Goldman avec son amant, et son refus de vivre la relation selon ses termes, me restera longuement en tête.

[alayazombie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Y’a qque chose de terrifiant dans le fait de voir que des textes vieux d’un siècle pourraient à peu de choses près avoir été écrits aujourd’hui… c’est court, limpide, extrêmement lucide, chaleureusement anarchiste ✨

[Ambre ✩ · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ce recueil de lettres et de textes regroupe les idées anarchistes et féministes d'Emma Goldman sur la politique et la morale de son époque. Preuves de son avant-gardisme, ses textes appelant à l'affranchissement des rapports et à l'indépendance de l'amour sincère et de la famille voulue, restent incroyablement d'actualité.

[Miruna · Rating 5 out of 5]

You can see the tensions between ideology and human common sense here. Goldmann was both an idéologue and a reasonable person. Her commitment to libertarianism was her push to both love a man unconditionally and let go on him once she understood that libertarianism doesn't go hand in hand with lifelong monogamy (which she had all the reasons to be critical of, as she herself explained at length).

[fanny is probably reading · Rating 4 out of 5]

170 pages de boxe anarchiste, féministe, actuelles et nuancées 🥊

[Sasha Brost · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ensemble de textes.
Analyses toujours pertinentes un siècle plus tard (certaines un peu datées mais peu)

[Lena · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting to read from a feminist that lived around a century ago and had a very interesting view of the society that is still quite relevant today.