Emma Goldman

Date

1869–1940

Description

City of birth: Kovno
Country of birth: Russia
Field of activity: Politics — activism, feminism

More detail coming ...

Quotes

‘Goldman, [Ms Gornick says,] "was not a thinker, she was an incarnation", a "depth of spirit". Hers was the sensibility not of the intellectual but of the artist; and she performed like an artist, dramatizing for others what they could hardly articulate for themselves. Her anarchist outlook insistently located the source of individual suffering in the transgressions of society. She dramatized society's malign machinations through her own suffering — as a daughter, as a wife during a marriage to an impotent man and as a sweatshop worker. Demeaning labor, she said, alienated the Übermenschen (superior people such as herself) from their deepest feelings and the earthly paradise of erotic love.’

Author

Vivian Gornick

Title of the publication

‘Lyrical Leftist, Dogged Idealist; Demeaning Labor has an Alienating Effect on Erotic Love? Bet the Occupy Wall Street Crowd hasn't Thought of that One.’

Other contributors

Fred Siegel, reviewer

Publisher (or journal name with vol. and number)

Wall Street Journal

City of publication

New York

Country of publication (modern nation-state equivalent)

United States of America

Publication date

24 October 2011

Location [pp. or web]

https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424053111904060604576573200507131230

Other location

https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424053111904060604576573200507131230

Original language

English

Genre

Review

Context

Vivian Gornick (b. 1935) is an American critic, journalist, essayist, and memoirist. In 2011 her book, Emma Goldman: Revolution as a Way of Life was published by Yale University Press as part of the Jewish Lives series.

‘Love, the strongest and deepest element in all life, the harbinger of hope, of joy, of ecstasy; love, the defier of all laws, of all conventions; love, the freest, the most powerful moulder of human destiny; how can such an all-compelling force be synonymous with that poor little State and Church-begotten weed, marriage? Free love? As if love is anything but free! Man has bought brains, but all the millions in the world have failed to buy love. Man has subdued bodies, but all the power on earth has been unable to subdue love. Man has conquered whole nations, but all his armies could not conquer love. Man has chained and fettered the spirit, but he has been utterly helpless before love. High on a throne, with all the splendor and pomp his gold can command, man is yet poor and desolate, if love passes him by. And if it stays, the poorest hovel is radiant with warmth, with life and color. Thus love has the magic power to make of a beggar a king. Yes, love is free; it can dwell in no other atmosphere.’

Author

Emma Goldman

Title of the publication

Anarchism and Other Essays

Other contributors

n/a

Publisher (or journal name with vol. and number)

Mother Earth Publishing

City of publication

New York

Country of publication (modern nation-state equivalent)

United States of America

Publication date

1910

Location [pp. or web]

Chapter 11: Marriage and Love

Other location

https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/goldman/works/1914/marriage-love.htm

Original language

English

Genre

Book

Context

Emma Goldman founded Mother Earth in 1906, a magazine devoted to social science and literature. Mother Earth published articles by contemporary activists and writers in Europe and America and enjoyed monthly circulation until August 2017.