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At the dances I was
one of the most untiring and gayest. One evening a cousin of
Sasha [Alexander Berkman], a young boy, took me aside. With a
grave face, as if he were about to announce the death of a dear
comrade, he whispered to me that it did not behoove an agitator
to dance. Certainly not with such reckless abandon, anyway. It
was undignified for one who was on the way to become a force
in the anarchist movement. My frivolity would only hurt the Cause.
I grew furious at the impudent interference of the boy. I told him to
mind his own business, I was tired of having the Cause constantly thrown
into my face. I did not believe that a Cause which stood for a beautiful
ideal, for anarchism, for release and freedom from conventions and prejudice,
should demand the denial of life and joy. I insisted that our Cause
could not expect me to become a nun and that the movement should not
be turned into a cloister. If it meant that, I did not want it. "I
want freedom, the right to self-expression, everybody's right to beautiful,
radiant things." Anarchism meant that to me, and I would live it
in spite of the whole world--prisons, persecution, everything. Yes,
even in spite of the condemnation of my own comrades I would live my
beautiful ideal.
-- Living My Life
(New York: Knopf, 1934), p. 56
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