On the occasion of this recovery, the Madrid publisher Stirner has published the book "Written in Red" with the foreword of Emma Goldman. It is a collection of writings extracted from the work Selected Works, published in 1914, which was a great orator and writer, and an orderly poet, but did not leave any longer work, probably due to his early death due to his fragile health. This book covers a multitude of topics that went through the anarchist life to draw the feminine and revolutionary poet. The anarchy itself, the Russian literature, the Mexican revolution, the Paris Commune or the melodies sung by black prisoners, among others, while performing captive work. “(…) And the imposing face he grabbed at the gun observed with icy laughter: ‘While they sing they work,’ he said flat, ironic smiles.” In addition, Goldman’s preamble contains an exhaustive biography of Cleyre, combining the intimate with the public. “Voltairine is spiritually reanimated – to put it mildly – as a rebel poet, a freedom loving artist and the most important anarchist in America.”

Librepentine movement

The American libertarian movement dates back to the 1940s, country II. When he entered the World War. Later, in the late 1960s and early 1970s, it boomed. However, there was another anarchist current, Benjamin R. Developed around the twelfth Liberty, founded by Tucker in New York. Released from 1881 until 1908, Voltairine de Cleyre is one of the great protagonists of this time, born in Leslie (Michigan) in 1866. His father was a French immigrant, Hector de Claire, who named him in honor of the writer Voltaire. I had a little sister, Adelaide. Mom, Harriet, lived in the shadow of her father.

She soon found that her eldest daughter was very smart and talented, and at the age of 13 she introduced her into a Port Huron convent in order to account for her “restless” character. Cleyre tried to escape from there, but eventually graduated at the age of 17. This religious institution became a prison, a burden that reduced its freedom. “It was like a valley in the shadow of death and there are still white scars in my soul. There, ignorance and superstitious burned me, through the fire of his hell, in those suffocating days.” As a result, when he left the monastery, he began a passionate struggle against religion, immersed in the absolute atheism.

So he went back to downtown Michigan. He began writing at the Librepentine weekly The Progressive Age, and gradually began lecturing, and at the age of 19-20 he dedicated his lectures to Thomas Paine, a precursor of atheism and anarchism, in the western part of the state. By the age of 21, he became the star of the Librepentine movement. In this movement different perspectives converged and its members addressed issues such as sexuality, women's rights, birth control, racial relations, labor relations and the individual's relationship with the State.

Haymarket case

The librepentines maintained a long and close relationship with anarchism, as they remained against authority. So many who later became anarchists came to the libertarian movement through this current, like Cleyre himself. His anarchist leap is due to the Haymarket case: Chicago police shot protesters at the McCormick crop factory. One person was killed and other injuries. The next day, the anarchists gathered near Haymarket Square to protest. The police appear and a bomb suddenly explodes. Police started firing, seven officers and four workers died. After the event, eight anarchists were tried. Cley read the newspaper's corrals and said: “They should hang out.”

He regretted having said those words forever. The defendants had nothing to do with the attack, but they were sentenced to five death sentences and the others to long prison terms. The executions scared and troubled Cleyre, who joined anarchism. “I will never forgive myself that ignorant, shameful and thirsty phrase of blood. (...) Although I know the dead would forgive me, I know the lovers forgive me. But my voice, as I heard that night, will resonate in my ears until my death: rejection and bitter shame.” He tried to release the prisoners and at the end of his life he moved to Chicago, where he died and buried along with the martyrs of Haymarket.

Before, he spent his life extending anarchist doctrine to become a charismatic voice in favor of a society without a state. Cleyre was not an outstanding theorist, but he had an enormous capacity to reflect, synthesize and communicate all the knowledge acquired from his readings. Their conferences were great and as prestigious as they visited England, Scotland and Norway. Thousands of people gathered to listen.

At the beginning of his libertarian career he was linked to the individualistic anarchism of American tradition. In his work In Defense of Emma Goldman and the Right of Expropriation (in favor of Emma Goldman and the right to expropriation), written in 1894, clearly opted for this individualistic trend: “Miss Goldman is a communist, I am an individualist. He wants to destroy property rights, I want to use it. I wage a war against privilege and authority and, therefore, the property right, the real right of the person, is annulled.”

Later on, he opted for anarchism without adjectives, as his discourse focused on personal and other freedom, perhaps because of the closure that happened in the convent of young people. In short, neither individualistic anarchy nor communist anarchy would have kept the freedom: “I am an anarchist, simply, without adding economic label.”

In the last years of his life, in 1910, he moved to Chicago to practice as a young man, as a teacher of young immigrants. He also continued to write, among other things, from the French who was translating a biography of Louise Michel. But he was very sick, for an attack in 1902: an old student shot him accusing him of anti-Semite. In Goldman’s words, “he dedicated much of his life to educating the Jews!” Cleyre forgave the aggressor and asked him to be taken to a center for healing. In its 1912 months 2,000 people gathered: “My prize is to live with the young; I still think with my colleagues: I will die with the boots and my face turning east, east, light.”