From far away Africa, there speaks again the note of soul rebellion in
the exquisite "Dreams" of Olive Schreiner, wherethrough "_The Hunter
walks alone_." Grant Allen, too, in numerous works, especially "The
Woman Who Did," voices the demand for self-hood. Morris gives us his
idyllic "News from Nowhere." Zola, the fertile creator of dungheaps
crowned with lilies, whose pages reek with the stench of bodies,
laboring, debauching, rotting, until the words of Christ cry loud in the
ears of him who would put the vision away, "Whited sepulchres, full of
dead men's bones and all uncleanliness"--Zola was more than an
unconscious Anarchist, he is a conscious one, did so proclaim himself.
And close beside him, Maxim Gorki, Spokesman of the Tramp, Visionary of
the Despised, who whatever his personal political views may be, and
notwithstanding the condemnations he has visited upon the Anarchist, is
still an Anarchistic voice in literature. And over against these,
austere, simple, but oh! so loving, the critic who shows the world its
faults but does not condemn, the man who first took the way of
renunciation and then _preached_ it, the Christian whom the Church casts
out, the Anarchist whom the worst government in the world dares not
slay, the author of "Resurrection" and "The Slavery of Our Times."
They come together, from the side of passionate hate and limitless
love--the volcano and the sea--they come together in one demand, freedom
from this wicked and debasing tyranny called Government, which makes
indescribable brutes of all who feel its touch, but worse still of all
who touch it.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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