Anarchism and Other Essays | Page 4

vanity and jealousy, obstruct his way and fill his
heart with sadness. It requires an inflexible will and tremendous
enthusiasm not to lose, under such conditions, all faith in the Cause.
The representative of a revolutionizing idea stands between two fires:
on the one hand, the persecution of the existing powers which hold him
responsible for all acts resulting from social conditions; and, on the
other, the lack of understanding on the part of his own followers who
often judge all his activity from a narrow standpoint. Thus it happens
that the agitator stands quite alone in the midst of the multitude
surrounding him. Even his most intimate friends rarely understand how
solitary and deserted he feels. That is the tragedy of the person
prominent in the public eye.
The mist in which the name of Emma Goldman has so long been
enveloped is gradually beginning to dissipate. Her energy in the
furtherance of such an unpopular idea as Anarchism, her deep
earnestness, her courage and abilities, find growing understanding and
admiration.
The debt American intellectual growth owes to the revolutionary exiles

has never been fully appreciated. The seed disseminated by them,
though so little understood at the time, has brought a rich harvest. They
have at all times held aloft the banner of liberty, thus impregnating the
social vitality of the Nation. But very few have succeeding in
preserving their European education and culture while at the same time
assimilating themselves with American life. It is difficult for the
average man to form an adequate conception what strength, energy, and
perseverance are necessary to absorb the unfamiliar language, habits,
and customs of a new country, without the loss of one's own
personality.
Emma Goldman is one of the few who, while thoroughly preserving
their individuality, have become an important factor in the social and
intellectual atmosphere of America. The life she leads is rich in color,
full of change and variety. She has risen to the topmost heights, and she
has also tasted the bitter dregs of life.
Emma Goldman was born of Jewish parentage on the 27th day of June,
1869, in the Russian province of Kovno. Surely these parents never
dreamed what unique position their child would some day occupy. Like
all conservative parents they, too, were quite convinced that their
daughter would marry a respectable citizen, bear him children, and
round out her allotted years surrounded by a flock of grandchildren, a
good, religious woman. As most parents, they had no inkling what a
strange, impassioned spirit would take hold of the soul of their child,
and carry it to the heights which separate generations in eternal struggle.
They lived in a land and at a time when antagonism between parent and
offspring was fated to find its most acute expression, irreconcilable
hostility. In this tremendous struggle between fathers and sons--and
especially between parents and daughters--there was no compromise,
no weak yielding, no truce. The spirit of liberty, of progress--an
idealism which knew no considerations and recognized no
obstacles--drove the young generation out of the parental house and
away from the hearth of the home. Just as this same spirit once drove
out the revolutionary breeder of discontent, Jesus, and alienated him
from his native traditions.

What role the Jewish race--notwithstanding all anti-semitic calumnies
the race of transcendental idealism--played in the struggle of the Old
and the New will probably never be appreciated with complete
impartiality and clarity. Only now are we beginning to perceive the
tremendous debt we owe to Jewish idealists in the realm of science, art,
and literature. But very little is still known of the important part the
sons and daughters of Israel have played in the revolutionary
movement and, especially, in that of modern times.
The first years of her childhood Emma Goldman passed in a small,
idyllic place in the German-Russian province of Kurland, where her
father had charge of the government stage. At the time Kurland was
thoroughly German; even the Russian bureaucracy of that Baltic
province was recruited mostly from German JUNKERS. German fairy
tales and stories, rich in the miraculous deeds of the heroic knights of
Kurland, wove their spell over the youthful mind. But the beautiful idyl
was of short duration. Soon the soul of the growing child was overcast
by the dark shadows of life. Already in her tenderest youth the seeds of
rebellion and unrelenting hatred of oppression were to be planted in the
heart of Emma Goldman. Early she learned to know the beauty of the
State: she saw her father harassed by the Christian CHINOVNIKS and
doubly persecuted as petty official and hated Jew. The brutality of
forced conscription ever stood before her eyes: she beheld the young
men, often the sole supporter of a large family, brutally dragged to the
barracks to lead