Unimaginable water, my little boat,
And curtains lowered, let's speak.
— Paul Eluard 1895-1952, "The River"
Daily Bleed web page, http://recollectionbooks.com/
NOVEMBER 25
BA JIN
Leading Chinese novelist of 20th-century independence, lifelong
revolutionist, anarchist.
Purged during the Cultural Revolution.
Nominated for the 1975 & 2001 Nobel Prize in Literature.
The 2001 nomination letter notes,
"Ba Jin has made great efforts in fighting for man's freedom,
democracy, man's psychic liberation; his in-depth exploration
about human nature & man's esteem has been recorded in the
history of Chinese culture."
http://dwardmac.pitzer.edu/
____________________________
BUY NOTHING DAY.
England: CATHERNING DAY: traditionally, young women make merry today.
FESTIVAL OF SHADOW ECONOMIES.
____________________________
1871 -- Japanese socialist, writer & historian Toshihiko Sakai lives (d.1933). Best
known for his translation work with Shūsui Kōtoku, with whom he co-founded Heimin
Shimbun (Common Peoples' Newspaper). They were the first to translate The
Communist Manifesto into Japanese before Kōtoku became an anarchist.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
1904 -- Ba Jin (aka Pa Chin [pseud. of Li Feigan]) lives (1904-2005).
Chinese novelist, discovered anarchism with the reading of Peter Kropotkin
& Emma Goldman & created his pseudonym Ba (from Bakunin ) & Jin (from
Kropotkin). Cruelly persecuted, but finally, in the decade of Deng Xiao-ping's
reforms, he was elected honorary chairman of Chinese Writers' Association.
Elected a contender for the 2001 Nobel Prize.
Ba Jin was constantly harassed by the Communists, & in 1949, was forced
to rewrite his stories, removing or replacing all anarchist references with
Communist ones.
& in 1966 he was again in disgrace, branded
"A great poisonous weed"
& his writings condemned as seditious.
http://recollectionbooks.com/
1921 -- Novelist & radical Nathanael West flunks out of Tufts, where
he got in by falsifying his high school transcripts. Befriended many
struggling writers & artists as a hotel clerk. Wrote Day of the Locust,Miss Lonelyhearts, A Cool Million.
http://www.literarytraveler.
1947 -- US: The Hollywood Ten is blacklisted.
1957 -- Radical Mexican muralist Diego Rivera dies, México City, Mexico.
http://www.DiegoRivera.com/
1968 -- US: American socialist, novelist, politician, Upton Sinclair dies.
1974 -- England: Nick Drake is no longer a stranger among us, dies
after eating his corn flakes, a possible suicide.
“Fame is but a fruit tree —
So very unsound.
It can never flourish
Till its stalk is in the ground.
So men of fame
Can never find a way
Till time has flown
Far from their dying day.”
2001 -- US: No anarchy club in Kanawha County Schools! Katie Sierra,
a 15-year-old tenth grader at Sissonville High School in Charleston, West
Virginia is suspended for anti-war sentiments & her desire to start a
student anarchist club.
http://www.zpub.com/notes/
2005 -- France: Colloque d'Histoire, « la Charte d’Amiens a 100 ans » lieu
de naissance de Victor Griffuelhes, secrétaire général de la CGT en 1906
et rédacteur de la Charte avec Émile Pouget. (November 25-26).
_______________________
“We can comprehend this world only by contesting it as a whole ...
The root of the prevailing lack of imagination cannot be grasped unless
one is able to imagine what is lacking, that is, what is missing, hidden,
forbidden, & yet possible, in modern life.”
---auntie copyright 1997-2014
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