Zo d'Axa

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Zo d'Axa

Born Alphonse Gallaud de la Pérouse
28 May 1864
Paris, France
Died 30 August 1930
Marseille, France
Cause of death Suicide
Nationality French

Alphonse Gallaud de la Pérouse, (28 May 1864 – 30 August 1930) better known as Zo d'Axa, was an adventurer, anti-militarist, satirist, journalist, and founder of two of the most legendary French magazines, L'EnDehors and La Feuille. A descendant of the famous French navigator La Pérouse, he was one of the most prominent French anarchists at the turn of the 20th century.[1]

D'Axa was a cavalryman but deserted to Belgium and was exiled to Italy in 1889.[2] There he ran an ultra-Catholic newspaper and seduced the native womenfolk.[2] According to popular myth, d'Axa during his time in Italy was hesitating between becoming an anarchist or a religious missionary when he was accused (wrongfully, he contended) of insulting the Empress of Germany and made an anarchist by the subsequent legal proceedings against him.[3] He returned to France following the amnesty and engaged in libertarian movements. He founded the famous anarchist newspaper L'EnDehors in May 1891 in which numerous contributors such as Jean Grave, Louise Michel, Sébastien Faure, Octave Mirbeau, Tristan Bernard and Émile Verhaeren developed libertarian ideas. D'Axa and L'EnDehors rapidly became the target of the authorities after attacks by Ravachol and d'Axa was kept in jail in Mazas. After his release, he wrote numerous pamphlets and met Camille Pissaro and James Whistler in London. He was again arrested in Italy, and transferred at Sainte Pelagie (Paris) where he spent ten years before his release in 1894.[4]

An individualist and aesthete, d'Axa justified the use of violence as an anarchist, seeing propaganda of the deed as akin to works of art.[5] Anarchists, he wrote, "had no need to hope for distant better futures, they know a sure means of plucking the joy immediately: destroy passionately!"[6] D'Axa was a bohemian who "exulted in his outsider status".[5] "It is simple enough.", d'Axa proclaimed of his contemporaries, "If our extraordinary flights (nos fugues inattendues) throw people out a little, the reason is that we speak of everyday things as the primitive barbarian would, were he brought across them."[7] As an anarchist, he was an important interpreter of the philosophy of individualist anarchist Max Stirner,[8] defended Alfred Dreyfus and continued to write against prisons and penitentiaries. He visited Mexico, Canada and the United States where he met the widow of Gaetano Bresci (the murderer of the Italian king Umberto I), before returning to Marseille, France where he committed suicide on 30 August 1930.

[edit] Publications

  • From Mazas to Jerusalem (De Mazas à Jérusalem) (1895). Illustrations by Lucien Pissarro, Steinlen Félix Vallotton.
  • L'EnDehors (1891-1893)-(republished in 1922 and now as a web page.)
  • La Feuille (1897-1899)

[edit] References

  1. ^ S., R. (1900-08-19). "WHAT PARIS THINKS ABOUT; The Shah of Persia Contrasted with His Father. FRENCH ANARCHIST VIEWS Curiosity as to Policy of Italy's New King -- Ravages of Yellow Fever in French Senegal.". The New York Times. 
  2. ^ a b Bertaut, Jules (2007). Paris 1870-1935. Vincent Press. ISBN 1406743666. 
  3. ^ Everett, Marshall (2003). Complete Life of William Mckinley and Story of His Assassination. Kessinger Publishing. ISBN 0766132293. 
  4. ^ (1894) Appletons' annual cyclopaedia and register of important events.. New York: D. Appleton and company, 290. OCLC 6514833. 
  5. ^ a b Weisberg, Gabriel (2001). Montmartre and the Making of Mass Culture. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press. ISBN 0813530091. 
  6. ^ Sonn, Richard (1989). Anarchism and Cultural Politics in Fin-De-Siècle France. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. ISBN 0803241755. 
  7. ^ Grand, Sarah (2000). Sex, Social Purity, and Sarah Grand. New York: Routledge. ISBN 0415214114. 
  8. ^ Cohn, Jesse (2006). Anarchism and the Crisis of Representation. Selinsgrove Pa.: Susquehanna University Press. ISBN 1575911051. 

[edit] External links

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