Emma Goldman Returns to America by Paul & Karen Avrich

Much as Goldman enjoyed living in St. Tropez, she yearned to return to the United States, the country in which she had first become an anarchist. The months she spent in Canada, so close to her former home, only sharpened her longing. She often expressed this desire to her comrades, and viewed the United States as the ripest earth in which to plant her anarchist ideas. “Oh, Sasha dearest, if only I could be in America now,” she wrote Alexander Berkman in 1932. “For another five years intense activity I would gladly give the balance of years still left to me.”

To Emma, America was “the land of the Walt Whitmans, the Lloyd Garrisons, the Thoreaus, the Wendell Phillips, the country of Young Americans of life and thought, or of art and letters; the America of the new generation knocking at the door, of men and women of ideals, with aspirations for a better day; the America of social rebellion and spiritual promise, of the glorious “undesireables” against whom all the exile, expropriation and deportation laws were aimed. It was to THAT America,” she declared passionately, “that I am proud to belong.”

Over an extended period she pursued her quest to return, seeking the help of powerful friends, including American Civil Liberties Union founder Roger Baldwin.

The authority to grant permission for an anarchist deportee to reenter the country rested with the secretary of labor, Francis Perkins, and on December 27, 1933, Baldwin informed Emma that he had opened channels with Colonel Daniel W. MacCormack, the commissioner general of the Immigration and Naturalization Service. “One will do whatever he directs, because he is really speaking for Miss Perkins and the President. As a matter of fact,” Baldwin added, “I happen to know that Mrs. Roosevelt read your book [Living My Life] with great interest. She spoke highly of it to a friend of mine.”

Emma wanted Sasha to apply for a visa and come with her, but he would have none of it.  He did not share her confidence that America now would be more open to her ideas.  Berkman never felt the pure, sentimental tug of a homeland or missed his adopted nation – he cared about his anarchist creed, not any one country. His experience in Russia and his passport problems in Europe had only made him more hostile to government bureaucracy.  Moreover, a significant portion of his years in America had been spent suffering in prison, the resulting trauma a lifelong burden whereas Emma, despite dealing with persecution and frustrating obstacles, had enjoyed decades of lectures and laurels, travels and revelry, comforts and kindnesses.

Roger Baldwin was aided in his efforts on Goldman’s behalf by a “committee,” said Emma proudly, “consisting of the best known people in art, letters and the liberal movement,” including Sherwood Anderson, John Dewey, Sinclair Lewis, Margaret Sanger, and John Hayes Holmes. It was organized by activist Mabel Carver Crouch.

The group directed a flurry of letters to Secretary Perkins pleading for Emma’s homecoming. “I am very sure, Miss Perkins,” said Sherwood Anderson, “we both look upon her as a great old warrior and I hope there will be some way – without too much noise – of letting her come back into America. Educational reformer Dorothy Canfield Fisher noted that Goldman wanted to return “for the purpose of giving some public lectures.  The cause of freedom of speech could not be, I feel, better served than by allowing this serious woman to address American audiences,” she said.  Eugene O’Neil assured Perkins that “Miss Goldman has the admiration and respect of many of the leading citizens in this country, and thousands would welcome her re-entry to this country.”

Along with this glittering deluge of entreaties, Baldwin negotiated the delicate details of the agreement. The government issued a rigid requirement that Goldman offer no lecture or remarks of a political nature though the parameters of this directive were hazy.  In fact, Emma had always been one if not the  most exciting and accomplished public speakers of her age. Her standard repertoire included speeches on drama, the arts, and her autobiography; also anarchism, Communism, and lately, conditions in Germany, the rise of Nazism, the threat of Adolf Hitler, and fascism in Europe.  Even her tamest topics could veer into the controversial, and whether Living My Life should be characterized as literature or politics was a matter of some debate.

Baldwin advised Emma to engage A.L. Ross to argue on her behalf and Ross went to Washington D.C., to handle the legal aspects while Baldwin dealt directly with the administration.  Shortly thereafter, Ross cabled Goldman with the good news. Her application had been approved; she would be allowed to remain in the country for ninety days, beginning February 1, 1934.

Emma’s return was met with curiosity but little outcry; President Roosevelt’s America was a rather different place from the country from which Emma was deported in 1919.  Lecture agencies immediately offered to represent her, and a number of groups signed up to hear her speak.  Many in the public now regarded her as a bold woman with a complicated past, rather than a chilling specter of chaos. Even so, nor everyone was pleased with “Red Emma’s” reappearance.  Editorials objecting to the visit ran in newspapers around the country, and some irate citizens took pains to make their sentiments known.

“I believe her to be a grave menace to this country,” wrote Murray Miller to Eleanor Roosevelt. “The assassin of President McKinley said it was her influence which induced him to commit that atrocious crime. I am afraid that she may have designs upon the life of our beloved President Roosevelt. He is accomplishing so much wonderful work that anarchists do not want this country to regain its former prosperity. It would be her first thought, I suggest, to remove him, or have it done.”

“Thank you very much for your solicitude and interest in the President,” replied Mrs. Roosevelt. “He is very carefully protected and, in any case, Emma Goldman is now a very old woman. I really think that this country can stand the shock of her presence for ninety days. I appreciate your writing, however, and hope you have not been unduly alarmed.”

When the day came, Emma took the train from Toronto to Niagara Falls and continued on to Rochester where she was reunited with her extended family of siblings and their children, and greeted by crowds of friends, admirers, reporters and photographers.  Whereas once” ‘Red Emma’ was a name to frighten little children,” said one reporter, now she looked “like a motherly housewife or perhaps the president of the library committee of the local women’s club.”

Her modest appearance aside, Goldman was blunt as ever. “My views have not changed,” she announced in Rochester. “I am still an anarchist. I am the same. The world has changed – that’s why I haven’t had to.  Everyone is an anarchist who loves liberty and hates oppression.  But not everyone wants it for the other fellow. That is my task; I want to extend it to the other fellow.” Emma flatly denied that while on tour she would avoid topics of politics or the economy – “I promised nothing” – and pronounced herself free of resentment for all that had befallen her.  “I believe in the principle of letting people think for themselves,” she explained, “so why should I be bitter?” “ The fires have cooled somewhat in the years, wrote one reporter, “but they still burn.”

Goldman’s first major public appearance was on February 11 in Manhattan, hosted by pastor John Haynes Holmes. According to the New York Times, “2000 persons stormed the Community Church services in the Town Hall in the hope of hearing her old fiery oratory.  They heard instead a calmly delivered eulogy of the Russian anarchist Peter Kropotkin .  .  . Only once, when she denounced Hitler, did her voice ring with the indignation that formerly provoked her sympathizers and opponents to stormy demonstrations.” Except for this outburst, Goldman came across as a “mild gray-haired woman” in a black dress and red and gold shawl.

As far as Arthur Ross was concerned, however, Emma had pushed the boundaries of her visa agreement. “I personally vouched that Emma would make no political speeches and then the first thing she did was make a political speech! It was about Kropotkin and it was quite an occasion .  .  . Town Hall was packed., and people were hanging from the chandeliers. I thought the upper gallery would collapse, it was so heavy with people.”

Emma spent a good deal of time in Chicago where she found time for romance when she met Frank Heiner, a sociologist at the University of Chicago.  Heiner was in his mid-thirties, and had been blind since the age of three months. He was a knowledgeable anarchist scholar, as well as a skilled writer and speaker. He also had a wife and two children but for Emma this was not a deterrent.

“Heiner is the greatest event in the last seventeen years,” she confided to Sasha, “He combines all that I had longed for and dreamed about all my life and never achieved.” Her bliss, however, was bittersweet. “Here, I had longed for so many years for fulfillment of love with someone who would share my ideas and ideals, blend harmoniously with my tastes and desire,” she said six months after meeting him. “And now at sixty-five when all this riches is laid at my feet, it is only for a fleeting moment.”

After the pair consummated their relationship, they exchanged heated love letters. “Oh, my Frank, if only I could make you understand how completely you have fulfilled me,” Emma wrote. “No, not only physically, but intellectually, and spiritually as well. Frank, my Frank I long for you with every fiber of my being.”  Emma, in turn, was Heiner’s “Goddess.” “I could not love you more. You are my true love, my own supreme, complete love, the love of my life.” He told her.

Emma was thrilled to be back on American soil, delighted to reconnect with her old friends and revisit her favorite haunts. Although she took issue with the president’s policies – neither she nor Sasha had any faith in the New Deal – the nation’s energy excited her. “True, America remains naïve, childish in many respects in comparison to the sophistication of Europe,” she said to Sasha. “But I prefer its naivety, there is youth in it, there is still the spirit of adventure, there is something refreshing and stimulating in the air.”

From a financial standpoint, Emma’s lecture tour was a failure. Some segments of the circuit were inefficiently managed, and while anarchist followers showed up with enthusiasm, many of her speeches drew small crowds and she had difficulty filling halls. However, Goldman was routinely observed by the authorities. One comrade who attended a speech near the end of her tour recalled that “reporters and detectives sat in the front row, writing down everything she said.” At times Emma was uncharacteristically circumspect with her words; during an April event in New York, she would allow that Roosevelt “has a very pleasant voice on the radio. Beyond that, I really wouldn’t want to say anything.” Hitler and Mussolini, meanwhile, were dismissed jointly as a “nuisance.”

But Bureau of Investigation Director J. Edgar Hoover considered the tone of her lectures grounds to prohibit future visits, and prospects for another returned seemed dim. A gloomy Berkman wrote to Pauline Turkel, “Emma’s tour was a disappointment in various ways, I believe, also financially.” To Pierre Ramus, he noted that she “even had to borrow money for her return ticket.”  Emma herself described the tour to W. S. Van Valkenburgh as “a complete flop.” Never-the-less, Goldman was gratified by the respectful reception she had received. Her life was deemed “amazing” by a host of journalists and elites, and she was recognized by some as a true admirer of the United States after years of being branded as a traitor.

At the end of April 1934, Goldman’s three months in America came to a close, and she departed with great reluctance. “The trip to the United States has revived my spirit more than my fifteen years in exile,” she wrote to Joseph Ishill before she left. “If ever I had any doubts about my having roots in America my short visit has dispelled them completely .  .  .I don’t know what it is in America, but I felt years younger and full of vigor and enthusiasm .  .  . I felt a changed woman from the moment I arrived in New York. And my departure will be more painful than it was when Sasha and I were deported.”

But the experience was well worth the heartache, and Emma was optimistic about the country’s future. “This is the age of youth. Youth now has the controls. Let’s see what youth can do. The old ones made a  mess of things.”

Rumi Translated by Coleman Barks

Story Water

A story is like water

that you heat for your bath.

It takes messages between the fire

and your skin. It lets them meet,

and it cleans you!

Very few can sit down

in the middle of the fire itself

like a salamander or Abraham.

We need intermediaries.

A feeling of fullness comes,

but it usually takes some bread

to bring it.

Beauty surrounds us,

but usually we need to be walking

in a garden to know it.

The body itself is a screen

to shield and partially reveal

the light that’s blazing

inside your presence.

Water, stories, the body,

all the things we do, are mediums

that hide and show what’s hidden.

Study them,

and enjoy being washed

with a secret we sometimes know,

and then not.

 Breadmaking

There was a feast. The King

was heartily in his cups.

He saw a learned scholar walking by.

“Bring him in and give him

Some of this fine wine.”

Servants rushed out and brought the man

to the king’s table, but he was not

receptive. “I had rather drink poison!

I never tasted wine and never will!

take it away from me!”

He kept on with these loud refusals,

disturbing the atmosphere of the feast.

This is how it sometimes is

at God’s table.

Someone who has heard about ecstatic love,

but never tasted it, disrupts the banquet.

If there were a secret passage

from his ear to his throat, everything

in him would change. Initiation would occur.

As it is, he’s all fire and no light,

all husk and no kernel.

The king gave orders. “Cupbearer,

do what you must!”

This is how your invisible guide acts,

the chess champion across from you

that always wins.  He cuffed

the scholar’s head and said,

                                                      “Taste!”

And, “Again”

                        The cup was drained

and the intellectual started singing

and telling ridiculous jokes.

He joined the garden, snapping his fingers

and swaying. Soon, of course,

he had to pee.

He went out, and there, near the latrine,

was a beautiful woman, one of the king’s harem.

His mouth hung open. He wanted her!

right then, he wanted her!

and she was not unwilling.

They fell to, on the ground.

you’ve seen a baker rolling dough.

he kneads it gently at first,

then more roughly.

He pounds it on the board.

it softly groans under his palms.

Now he spreads it out

and rolls it flat.

Then he bunches it,

and rolls it all the way out again,

thin. Now he adds water,

and mixes it well.

Now salt,

and a little more salt.

Now he shapes it delicately

to its final shape

and slides it into the oven,

which is already hot.

You remember breadmaking!

this is how your desire

tangles with a desired one.

And it’s not just a metaphor

for a man and woman making love.

Warriors in battle do this too.

a great mutual embrace is always happening

between the eternal and what dies,

between essence and accident.

The sport has different rules

in every case, but it’s basically

the same, and remember:

the way you make love is the way

God will be with you.

So these two were lost in their sexual trance.

They did not  care anymore about feasting

or wine.  Their eyes were closed like

perfectly matching calligraphy lines.

The king went looking for the scholar,

and when he saw them there coupled, commented

“Well, as it I said, ‘A good king

must serve his subjects from his own table!’”

There is joy, a winelike freedom

that dissolves the mind and restores

the spirit, and there is manly fortitude

like the king’s, a reasonableness

that accepts the bewildered lostness.

But meditate now on steadfastness

and clarity, and let those be the wings

that lift and soar through the celestial spheres.

Ayaz and the Thirty Courtiers

The courtiers are jealous of Ayaz.

they tease the king, Why should he get

thirty times what each of us gets?

The king does not answer, but soon they go out

into the desert mountains on a hunting expedition.

The king sees a caravan in the distance.

find out where they are from.

One of the courtiers goes. From Rayy.

where is it going? Her doesn’t know.

The king asks another

to ride and inquire. He does. To Yemen.

What are they carrying? He doesn’t know.

go ask, the king directs another.

They have many different kinds of merchandise.

mostly they’re carrying silver cups made in Rayy.

How long have they been traveling? No response.

it goes on like this until thirty courtiers

have been dispatched.

                                           Then  the king tells a story.

one day I sent Ayaz to ask about a caravan.

he came back with the answers to these questions.

He did not have to be lead by me, point by point.

he is strong and lively enough in his curiosity

to follow the natural line.

But this is not by choice, say the courtiers.

it is his God-given personality.

No, says the king.  There is a range of human choosing.

this falls within that.  There is destiny

but don’t deny your individual freedom.

Shall I go to the market in Mosul

or to Babylon to study magic?

When a person commits murder,

retaliation swings back on him.

When on person drinks wine,

does someone else get the headache?

Take responsibility for your laziness.

that weak-mindedness was your doing.

Harvest it, trace it back

to seed inside yourself.

Action born of your particular being

clings to your legs like your own scared child.

it knows who it belongs to.

Nasuh

Some time ago there was a man named Nasuh.

he made his living shampooing women in a bathhouse.

he had a face like a woman, but he was not effeminate,

though he disguised his virility, so a to keep his job.

He loved touching the women as he washed their hair.

He stayed sexually alert, at full strength

all the time, massaging the beautiful women,

especially the Princess and her ladies-in-waiting.

Sometimes he thought of changing jobs,

of doing something

where he wouldn’t be so constantly lustful,

but he couldn’t quit.

He went to a mystic saint and said,

“Please remember me in a prayer.”

The holy man was spiritually free,

and totally open to God. He knew Nasuh’s secret,

but with God’s gentleness he didn’t speak it.

A gnostic says little, but inside he is full of mysteries,

and crowded with voices.  Whosoever is served

that cup keeps quiet.

The holy man laughed softly and prayed aloud,

“May God cause you to change your life

in a way you know you should.”

The prayer of such a sheikh is different

from other prayers. He has so completely dissolved

his ego, nothinged himself, that what he says

is like God talking to God. How could

such a prayer not be granted?

The means were found to change Nasuh.

while he was pouring water into a basin

for a naked woman, she felt and discovered

that a pearl was missing from her earring.

Quickly, they locked the doors.

they searched the cushions, the towels, the rugs,

and the discarded clothes.  Nothing.

                                                                  Now they search

ears and mouths and every cleft and orifice.

Everyone is made to strip

and the queen’s lady chamberlain

probes one by one

the naked women.

                                  Nasuh, meanwhile,

has gone to his private closet, trembling.

“I didn’t steal the pearl,

but if they undress and search me,

they’ll see how excited I get

with these nude ladies.

                                           God, please

Help me!

                  I have been cold and lecherous

but cover my sin this time, PLEASE!

Let me not be exposed for how I’ve been.

“I’ll repent!”

                       He weeps and moans and weeps,

for the moment is upon him.

                                                       “Nasuh!

We have searched everyone but you. Come out!”

At that moment his spirit grows wings, and lifts.

His ego falls like a battered wall.

He unites with God, alive,

but emptied of

Nasuh.

His ship sinks and in its place move the ocean waves.

His body’s disgrace, like a falcon’s loosened binding,

slips from the falcon’s foot.

His stones drink water.

His field shines like satin with gold threads in it.

Someone dead a hundred years steps out well

and strong and handsome.

                                                       A broken stick

breaks into bud.

This all happens inside Nasuh,

after the call gave him so much fear.

A long pause,

a long, waiting silence.

Then a shout from one of the women, “Here it is!”

The bathhouse fills with clapping.

Nasuh sees his new life sparkling out before him.

The women come to apologize, “We’re so sorry

we didn’t trust you. We just knew

that you’d taken that pearl.”

They kept talking about how they’d suspected him,

and begging his forgiveness.

Finally he replies,

                                “I am much more guilty

than anyone has thought or said. I am the worse person

in the world.  What you have said is only a hundredth

of what I’ve actually done. Don’t ask my pardon!

You don’t know me. No one knows me.

God has hidden my sneakiness. Satan taught me tricks,

but after a time, those became easy, and I taught Satan

some new variations.  God saw what I did, but chose

not to publically reveal my sin.

And now, I am sewn back into wholeness!

Whatever I’ve done,

                                     Now was not done.

Whatever obedience I didn’t do,

                                                             Now I did!

Pure, noble, free, like a cypress,

                                                          like a lily,

is how I suddenly am. I said,

                                                      Oh no!

Help me!

              And that Oh no! became a rope

let down in my well.  I’ve climbed out to stand here

in the sun.  One moment I was at the bottom

of a dank, fearful narrowness, and the next,

I am not contained by this universe.

If every tip of every hair on me could speak,

I still couldn’t say my gratitude.

In the middle of these streets and gardens, I stand and say

and say again, and it’s all I say,

I wish everyone

could know what I know. 

               

A Just Finishing Candle

A candle is made to become entirely flame.

in that annihilating moment

it has no shadow.

It is nothing but a tongue of light

describing a refuge.

Look at this

just-finishing candle stub

as someone who is finally safe

from virtue and vice,

The pride and the shame

we claim from those.

Through The Low Gate

Moses put a low gate in the Jerusalem wall,

so that even unconsciously

everyone would have to put down his pack

and lower his head, bowing at least that much,

as though to say,

I pray that I can put down what I carry.

The function given to kings and all authorities

is so that people who won’t bow down

and surrender to the presence

will have one place where they are humble.

The gate was called  Babi-Saghir,

the little door.

Consider the world-power you acknowledge

as a small gate you must go through

to pay homage to a dunghill,

and instead of doing that, recognize the holy ones,

who are sweet as sugarcane.

Don’t grovel in front of political leaders

not your highness, say your lowness

to those empty weed-stems.  Honor the sun we see by.

Don’t play a cat-and-mouse game.

join the lion and swift deer in their hunt for soul.

Let pot-lickers follow the big basin-licker.

I could continue and make some rulers and administrators

very angry. They know who I’m talking about.

What Jesus Runs Away From

The son of Mary, Jesus, hurries up a slope

   as though a wild animal were chasing him.

someone following him asks, “Where are you going?

   No one is after you.”  Jesus keeps on,

saying nothing, across two more fields. “Are you

   the one who says words over a dead person,

so that he wakes up?” I am. “Did you not make

   the clay birds fly?” Yes. “Who then

could possibly cause you to run like his?”

   Jesus slows his pace.

I say the Great Name over the deaf and the blind,

   they are healed.  Over a stony mountainside,

and it tears its mantle down to the navel.

   over non-existence, it comes into existence.

but when I speak lovingly for hours, for days

   with those who take human warmth

and mock it, when I say the Name to them, nothing

   happens.  They remain rock, or turn to sand,

where no plants can grow.  Other diseases are ways

   for mercy to enter, but this non-responding

breeds violence and coldness toward God.

   I am fleeing from that.

As little by little air steals water, so praise

   dries up and evaporates with foolish people

who refuse to change.  Like cold stone you sit on

     a cynic steals body heat.  He doesn’t feel

the sun.  Jesus wasn’t running from actual people.

   He was teaching a new way.

The Guest House

This being human is a guest house.

every morning a new arrival.

A joy, a depression, a meanness,

some momentary awareness comes

as an unexpected visitor.

Welcome and entertain them all!

even if they are a crowd of sorrows,

who violently sweep your house

empty of its furniture,

still, treat each guest honorably.

He may be clearing you out

for some new delight.

The dark thought, the shame, the malice,

meet them a the door laughing,

and invite them in.

Be grateful for whoever comes,

because each has been sent

as a guide from beyond.

              The Tent

Outside, the freezing desert night.

This other night inside grows warm, kindling.

Let the landscape be covered with a thorny crust.

We have a soft garden here.

The continents blasted,

cities and towns, everything

becomes a scorched, blackened ball.

The news we hear is full of grief for that future,

but the real news inside here

is there’s no news at all.

*   *   *

Which is worth more, a crowd of thousands,

or your own genuine solitude?

freedom, or power over an entire nation?

A little while alone in your room

will prove more valuable than anything else

that could ever be given you.

The Witness, The Darling

Muhammad could mediate

for every kind of disgrace,

because he looked so unswervingly

at God. His eye medicine came

from his ever-expanding into God.

Any orphan daubed with that salve

will get better.  He could see all

the attainments of those on the way.

Hence God called him “the witness.”

The tools of the witness are truthfulness

and keen seeing and the night vigil.

This is the witness a judge listens

most carefully to. A false witness

has some self-interest that makes

his testimony specious.

He can’t see the whole.  That’s why God

wants you to deny your desires, so

You will learn to give up self-interest.

It’s the love of the manifest world

that makes you an unreliable witness,.

There is another way of seeing,

that sees through your love of this place,

through the exciting drunkenness to the headache.

the witness can cure that hurting.

God is a just judge,

who calls the true witness,

the eye of pure love,

the darling,

                       the dalliance,

the reason inside the playfulness

that created phenomena.

The Dream That Must Be Interpreted

This place is a dream.

Only a sleeper considers it real.

Then death comes like dawn,

and you wake up laughing

at what you thought was your grief.

But there’s a difference with this dream.

Everything cruel and unconscious

done in the illusion of the present world,

all that does not fade away at the death-waking.

It stays,

and it must be interpreted.

All the mean laughing,

all the quick, sexual wanting,

those torn coats of Joseph,

they change into powerful wolves

that you must face.

The retaliation that sometimes comes now,

the swift, payback hit,

it’s just a boy’s game

to what the other will be.

You know about circumcision here.

it’s full castration there!

And this groggy time we live,

this is what it’s like:

                                    A man goes to sleep in the town

where he has always lived, and he dreams he’s living

in another town.

                               In the dream, he doesn’t remember

the town he’s sleeping in his bed in. He believes

the reality of the dream town.

The world is that kind of sleep.

The dust of many crumbled cities

settles over us like a forgetful doze,

but we are older than those cities.

                                                               We began

as a mineral. We emerged into plant life

and into the animal state, and then into being human,

and always we have forgotten our former states,

except in early spring when we slightly recall

being green again.

                                   That’s how a young person turns

towards a teacher. That’s how a baby leans

towards the breast, without knowing the secret

of its desire, yet turning instinctively.

Humankind is being led along an evolving course,

through this migration of intelligences,

and though we seem to be sleeping,

there is an inner wakefulness

that directs the dream,

and that will eventually startle us back

to the truth of who we are.

      *   *   *

In a boat down a fast-running creek,

It feels like trees on the bank

Are rushing by. What seems

To be changing around us

Is rather the speed of our craft

Leaving this world.

       *   *   *

Birdsong brings relief

to my longing.

I am just as ecstatic as they are,

but with nothing to say!

Please, universal soul, practice

some song, or something, through me!

*  *  *

Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing,

There is a field. I’ll meet you there.

When the soul lies down in that grass

the world is too full to talk about.

Ideas, language, even the phrase each other

doesn’t make any sense.