I’ve posted a revised translation of Joseph Déjacque’s essay, “Authority—Dictatorship,” also known by the title “Down with the Bosses!” My original working translation was not the most elegant of attempts, and it’s nice to have a substantially improved version available to readers. Slight revisions of “The Universal Circulus” and “The Theory of Infinitesimal Humanities” are on their way as well, as I start to work seriously on an anthology of Déjacque’s work.
I’ve combed through library catalogs and the pages Le Libertaire for important and representative material, and it looks like these texts are key:
- Down with the Bosses!
- The Revolutionary Question
- The Human Being, Male and Female
- Beranger at the Pillory
- The Humanisphere
- The Universal Circulus
- Direct and Universal Legislation
- The Organization of Labor
- The Decadent Civilizées (one-act drama)
- Letter to Pierre Vésinier
- various essays from Le Libertaire, including the material on chattel slavery in the United States
That amounts to slightly over 250 pages worth of material, and leaves the long book of poetry, Les Lazaréennes, to be dealt with, but the serial nature of that publication means that there will be at least a bit of work to do just to assemble the various sections. I’ll try to include a few of the shorter poems, which do not lose too much in translation, in the anthology. Some of Déjacque’s poetry was really lovely.
It’s always hard to judge how long translation projects will take, but my hope is to have this one together early in 2013.
