Emma on Love and Stuff
My marriage posting yesterday kinda freaked me out and sent me back to "the most dangerous woman in the world" -- Emma Goldman -- brilliant writer, activist, feminist, and anarchist. Some of my friends out there in cyberspace might also like to know that she was Lithiuanian. Here are a few excerpts from Marriage and Love.
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?
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Love needs no protection; it is its own protection. So long as love begets life no child is deserted, or hungry, or famished for the want of affection. I know this to be true. I know women who became mothers in freedom by the men they loved. Few children in wedlock enjoy the care, the protection, the devotion free motherhood is capable of bestowing.
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Some day, some day men and women will rise, they will reach the mountain peak, they will meet big and strong and free, ready to receive, to partake, and to bask in the golden rays of love. What fancy, what imagination, what poetic genius can foresee even approximately the potentialities of such a force in the life of men and women. If the world is ever to give birth to true companionship and oneness, not marriage, but love will be the parent.
May your love be bigger than any institution, and remember what Mae West said,
Marriage is a fine institution, but I'm not ready for an institution.
5 comments:
Didn't Presidnet McKinley get assassinated in Leon Czolgosz's desire to impress Emma Goldman? Love is a many splendid thing...
You and your sibling need to cleanse your minds and try and spend a weekend curled up with a good monosyllabic book. Let your hair down, enjoy it, don't critique it. Every book does not have to have the meaning of life or a cure for what ails society. You will not get fined for laughing and enjoying yourself.
Yes I do know that I left myself wide open for your sharp wit. And before you jump on it, and try to humor yourself at my expense. I have read the classics and many other books without pictures and large print.
Yes...but Emma was more like Jody Foster to Czolgosz's John Hinkley, Jr. The Man tried to pin it on her, since she was a feminist and an anarchist --- but she was found not guilty.
This would be a case of psychotic obsession -- and although that may seem like SOME people's version of love...it is neither a many splendored thing, nor -- actually -- love.
"I don't want to be part of your revolution if I can't dance."
--Emma Goldman
Indeed... That quote and Zapata's (Better to die on your feet than live on your knees) are mottos worth having.
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