91 lines
3.8 KiB
Plaintext
91 lines
3.8 KiB
Plaintext
Title: On Vagrancy.
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Author: Isabell Eberhardt, 1877-1904.
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Date: unknown.
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Description: Isabell Eberhardt's father was an anarchist,
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and he brought her up as an anarchist. She
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lived the life of a drifter and vagabond and
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died before she was 30 of illness. She left
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behind some inspired writings.
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Keywords: vagrancy, vagrant, vagabond, Eberhardt
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Related Material: A slightly different version of this essay
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was published as "Pencilled Notes" in _The
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Oblivion Seekers, and other writings_
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translated by Paul Bowles. San Francisco:
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City Lights, 1975. ISBN 0-087286-082-5.
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On Vagrancy
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A subject to which few intellectuals ever give a thought
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is the right to be a vagrant, the freedom to wander. Yet
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vagrancy is deliverance, and life on the open road is the
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essence of freedom. To have the courage to smash the chains
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with which modern life has weighted us (under the pretext that
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it was offering us more liberty), then to take up the symbolic
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stick and bundle and get out!
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To the one who understands the value and the delectable
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flavor of solitary freedom (for no one is free who is not
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alone) leaving is the bravest and finest act of all.
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An egotistical happiness, possibly. But for him who
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relishes the flavor, happiness.
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To be alone, to be poor in needs, to be ignored, to be an
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outsider who is at home everywhere, and to walk, great and by
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oneself, toward the conquest of the world.
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The healthy wayfarer sitting beside the road scanning the
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horizon open before him, is he not the absolute master of the
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earth, the waters, and even the sky? What housedweller can
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vie with him in power and wealth? His estate has no limits,
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his empire no law. No work bends him toward the ground, for
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the bounty and beauty of the earth are already his.
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In our modern society the nomad is a pariah "of no fixed
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address." By adding these few words to the name of anyone
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whose appearance they consider irregular, those who make and
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enforce the laws can decide a man's fate.
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To have a home, a family, a property or a public
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function, to have a definite means of livelihood and to be a
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useful cog in the social machine, all these things seem
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necessary, even indispensable, to the vast majority of men,
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including intellectuals, and including even those who think of
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themselves as wholly liberated. And yet such things are only
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a different form of the slavery that comes of contact with
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others, especially regulated and continued contact.
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I have always listened with admiration, if not envy, to
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the declarations of citizens who tell how they have lived for
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twenty or thirty years in the same section of town, or even in
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the same house, and who have never been out of their native
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city.
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Not to feel the torturing need to know and see for
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oneself what is there, beyond the mysterious blue wall of the
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horizon, not to find the arrangements of life monotonous and
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depressing, to look at the white road leading off into the
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unknown distance without feeling the imperious necessity of
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giving in to it and following it obediently across mountains
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and valleys! The cowardly belief that a man must stay in one
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place is too reminiscent of the unquestioning resignation of
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animals, beasts of burden stupefied by servitude and yet
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always willing to accept the slipping on of the harness.
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There are limits to every domain, and laws to govern
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every organized power. But the vagrant owns the whole vast
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earth that ends only at the nonexistent horizon, and his
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empire is an intangible one, for his domination and enjoyment
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of it are things of the spirit.
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-Isabell Eberhardt, 1877-1904.
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