Louise Michel

Louise Michel was born illegitimate in 1830 and became a schoolmistress in Paris. She was involved in radical activities during the twilight of France’s Second Empire, and during the Franco-Prussian War of 1870 and the siege of Paris. She was a leading member of the revolutionary groups controlling Montmarte. Michel emerged as one of the leaders of the insurrection during the Paris Commune of March-May 1871; and French anarchists saw her as martyr and saint – The Red Virgin. When the Versailles government crushed the Commune in May 1871, Michel was sentenced to exile in New Caledonia, until the general amnesty of 1880, when she returned to France and great popular acclaim and support from the working people of the country. Michel was arrested again during a demonstration in Paris in 1883 and sentenced to six years in prison. Pardoned after three years, she continued her speeches and writing, although she spent the greater part of her time from 1890 until her death in 1905 in England in self-imposed exile. It was during her prison term from 1883 to 1886 that she compiled her Memoires, now available in English. These memoirs offer readers a view of the non-Marxist left and give an in-depth look into the development of the revolutionary spirit. The early chapters treat her childhood, the development of her revolutionary feelings, and her training as a schoolteacher. The next section describes her activities as a schoolteacher in the Haute-Marne and Paris and therefore contains much of interest on education in 19th-century Europe. Her chapters on the siege of Paris, the Commune, and her first trial show those events from the point of view of a major participant. Of particular interest is a chapter on women’s rights, which Michel saw as part of the search for the rights of all people, male and female, and not as a separate struggle. The Red Virgin: Memoirs of Louise Michel will be useful to both scholars and students of 19th-century French history and women’s studies.

Memoirs Of Louise Michel

Red Virgin

En 1898, Louise Michel achève la rédaction de ses souvenirs sur la Commune : " Ecrire ce livre, annonce-t-elle au lecteur, c'est revivre les jours terribles où la liberté nous frôlant de son aile s'envola de l'abattoir ; c'est rouvrir la fosse sanglante où, sous le dôme tragique de l'incendie, s'endormit la Commune, belle pour ses noces avec la mort, les noces rouges du martyre. [...] Dans cette grandeur terrible, pour son courage à l'heure suprême lui seront pardonnés les scrupules, les hésitations de son honnêteté profonde. " Quelque vingt-cinq années après les événements, cette figure de la Commune de Paris n'a pas perdu sa fougue. Dans ce récit passionné, elle raconte, jour après jour, les épisodes de ce drame qui lui valurent d'être emprisonnée puis déportée pendant près de dix ans en Nouvelle-Calédonie. La richesse et la précision de ses informations font de ce texte un document exceptionnel sur la Commune et ses acteurs. De plus, ses qualités stylistiques et la force de son écriture élèvent ce témoignage émouvant au rang des grands classiques de notre littérature politique.

histoire et souvenirs

La Commune

Peter Kropotkin

Errico Malatesta

Abbie Hoffman

Félix Fénéon

Ann Hansen

Clément Duval

Louis Léveillé

Ravachol

Georges Étiévant

Auguste Vaillant

Émile Henry

Sante Caserio

Marius Jacob

Raymond Callemin

Enrique Flores Magón

Mollie Steimer

Louise Olivereau

Bo Brown

Kuwasi Balagoon

Bill Dunne

Nikos Maziotis

Pola Roupa

Rami Syrianos

Alfredo Cospito

Nicola Gai

Jeremy Hammond

Eric King

Anarchist Statements Before Judge and Jury

Defiance

Louise Michel was the incendiary French leader of the 1871 Paris Commune. An anarchist and irrepressible rebel, she spent much of her life in the run from police, in jail, or in danger of being locked away in mental asylums. Known as 'The Red Virgin', Louise was a central character in one of the greatest popular rebellions in history. Includes commentary by Emma Goldman, Bertolt Brecht, Sheila Rowbotham, Howard Zinn, Victor Hugo and Karl Marx.

Anachist and Revolutionary Feminist, Jailed and Exiled for Leading the 1871 Popular Uprising in Paris

O panfleto de Louise Michel, Tomada de Posse, publicado em 1890, é pela primeira vez publicado na íntegra e em sua originalidade no Brasil. Escrito no final de 1889, na encruzilhada da atividade propagandista da tribuna e da escrita autobiográfica e novelesca, este manifesto quer "esquentar" o público contra a República burguesa no grandioso centenário de 1789. Aqui uma Louise Michel viva, vibrante e potente surge, trazendo o relato dos dias, misturando-se aos acontecimentos atuais e aos mitos imemoriais da luta prometeica contra a Força. Seu discurso anarquista ressoa com um vigor cívico que não poderia ser mais atual.

Tomada de Posse

Mémoires de Louise Michel écrits par elle-même

Dans un furieux élan de générosité, Louise Michel a usé sa vie dans la fièvre révolutionnaire, sur les barricades du Paris de la Commune, dans ses combats pour les misérables, les "naturels" de Nouvelle-Calédonie, les femmes, les animaux torturés, toutes les victimes de la société ogresse. De sa voix prophétique, elle a jeté les lueurs, poétiques et artistiques, d'une aurore intensément rêvée. Présenté par Xavière Gauthier.

Louise Michel, 1830-1905

Cartas a Victor Hugo

In The Human Microbes, a man unjustly accused of a murder by an evil mastermind manages to escape the guillotine and embarks on a quest for revenge that will draw in its wake a cast of characters, including mad doctors, lost children, strange gypsies, Irish revolutionaries, Russian anarchists and Utopians. In 1883, the notorious anarchist Louise Michel (1830-1905) was sentenced to six years of solitary confinement; effectively deprived of communication, she had had no refuge but writing. It is during that time that she penned The Human Microbes (published in 1887), as a distraction from her awful circumstances. It was followed by a sequel, The New World, published in a truncated form in 1988, due to Michel being shot in the head that year. Both are modeled on the classic feuilleton serials of the 1840s and were intended to be part of a six-novel series, in which Mankind would build a new utopia on Earth before moving out into space.

The Human Microbes

Collection of Louise Michel's trial proceedings firsthand from various publications.

My Trials

In 1883, the notorious anarchist Louise Michel (1830-1905) was sentenced to six years of solitary confinement. Effectively deprived of communication, she had had no refuge but writing. It is during that time that she penned "The Human Microbes" and a sequel, "The New World." Both are modeled on the classic feuilleton serials of the 1840s and were intended to be part of a six-novel series, in which mankind would build a new utopia on Earth before moving out into space.

The New World

Memoires de Louise Michel

William Morris

Mikhail Aleksandrovich Bakunin

Alexander Berkman

Maurice Brinton

Voltairine de Cleyre

On 18 March 1871, the Parisian working class began a rebellion that shook the foundations of European society. Laborers seized direct control over their city, expelling their government and capitalist rulers. These revolutionary men and women declared Paris an independent municipality and commune where they would collectively manage their society through new institutions of their own creation, providing for their own welfare and defense. The Commune was annihilated 71 days later in one of the deadliest campaigns in French military history, La Semaine Sanglante, "The Bloody Week," during which over 30,000 men, women, and children were murdered for their revolutionary aspirations. Despite the brutality of its destruction, the Paris Commune uprising inspired revolutionaries the world over. In the near century-and-a-half that has passed since the Commune's destruction, anarchists and libertarian-socialists across the generations have looked to the 1871 Paris Commune, seeking to learn from its example--both its strengths and its limitations. The Commune: Paris, 1871, is a new collection of writings and critical reflections on the Paris Commune by classic anarchist and libertarian-socialist authors like Louise Michel, William Morris, Mikhail Bakunin, Peter Kropotkin, Voltairine de Cleyre, Alexander Berkman and Maurice Brinton.

Paris 1871

The Commune

Mis recuerdos de la comuna

Louise Michel

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