Manuscript Letter of Louise Michel to Ernest Vaughan, 1883/84
Maison Centrale de Clermont (Oise) Name: L. Michel No. 1327 / Atelier: Cell 16
Dear friends,
Here is what I am doing definitively so that it can pass without contestation.
I am taking from the notebooks of my entire life everything that has absolutely no relation to anything but the physical world—Nature without us.
Here is the idea for the collection; there will be, without dates, old and new verses.
No human breath is on the pages, only that of the elements. The cyclone howling on the beaches, the legends of the Oceans, the green firs under the snows twisting their branch-arms like harps in the winds.
Under the corals or under the sands, nature sometimes rising. In its formidable torments, a collection, city or continent, and the oak leaf having in its mouth a fallen leaf from the storm…
Top Section: Titles
“Here are some titles:
- Legends of the Ocean
- The Cyclones
- Atlantis
- The Coral Flower
- Under the Niaoulis”
Middle Section: Personal Reflection
I am going to try to know immediately, keeping the notebook, because to write things that will be known when my mother is no longer here, I would not do it.
I do not want to appear in this book, not being able to be in the newspapers; it is Nature that breathes there and gives us the idea.
Bottom Section (with red ink):
Perhaps I would have done better to let you choose yourself everything in my collections that has no connection to my family, to me, or to any question that occupies us. But since I have started the choice myself, let’s leave it and if a publisher wants this collection, you have the idea—I embrace you all from the bottom of my heart.
Red Ink Note: (Cela vaudrait bien mieux) — “That would be much better.”
Link to original digitised document at Geneva Graduate Institute