Anarchism

For a brief period that reached its greatest intensity around the years 1890-94, anarchism was not merely a political movement specific to working class politics and revolution, but a cultural phenomenon that played a major role in the art and literature of the fin de siècle in France. From Mallarmé's declaration that the "true bomb is the book," pronounced in the midst of the wave of anarchist bombs exploding around Paris and terrifying the bourgeoisie, to Georges Darien's formulation of an "anarchist novel," anarchism provided the writers of the Symbolist and Decadent movements a framework in which to think the role and function of literature in a world where our nascent modernity had not yet taken its definitive form given to it by the World Wars and the twentieth century and whose horizons were still open with endless possibilities. A history of this period reminds us not only of lost opportunities but the chances for a rebirth in our own time.