Letters from Prison

EMMA GOLDMAN

Queen’s County Jail, Long Island City, New York. April, 1916.

What am I doing? I am watching human misery. There is no misery so appalling as imprisoned misery. It is so helpless, so humiliated.

Yes, I think the prisoners do love me, at least those who have been thrown in with me. It is so easy to get their love. The least bit of kindness moves them—they are so appreciative. But what can one do for them?

Do you remember that passage from Galsworthy’s Justice in which some one says to Falder: “No one wishes you harm”? Therein lies the pathos. No one wishes these social victims harm. The Warden and Matron here are exceptionally kind. And yet the harm, the irreparable harm, is done by the very fact that human beings are locked up, robbed of their identity, their self-respect, their self-hood.

Oh, I am not sorry I was sentenced. In fact I am glad. I needed to get to these pariahs who are the butt of all the horrors. It would be well if every rebel were sent to prison for a time; it would fan his smouldering flame of hate of the things that make prisons possible. I am really glad.

... We are awakened at six and unlocked at seven in the morning. Then comes breakfast, of which I have so far eaten only oatmeal with what pretends to be milk. The coffee or tea I have not managed to get down. At seven-thirty we are taken out into the yard. I walk up and down like one possessed, to get the exercise. At eight-thirty we are back, and the women keep themselves busy scribbling; but my girls will not let me do that; I must talk to them. (The Warden, by the way, is reading my Anarchism, and the Matron my Social Significance of the Modern Drama). In fact, I seem to have more devotion here than on the outside. At eleven we have dinner, and at four in the afternoon supper—which I will describe to you when I come out. Then we are locked up until seven A. M.—fifteen hours, the hardest of all to bear. Do you remember the line in The Ballad of Reading Gaol: “Each day a year whose days grow old”? To me it is “each night a year whose nights grow long”. I have always loved the night, but jailed nights are ghastly things.

The lights are on until nine P. M., and we can read and write all day—which is a god-send. Also this prison is one of the cleanest in the country.

... What on earth have I done that people should go into such ecstasies? No one raves because you breathe; why rave if you take a determined stand when that means the very breath of life to you? Really I feel embarrassed with all the love and devotion and adulation for so little a thing, so infinitesimal compared with the truly heroic deeds of the great souls. My only consolation is that the fight is not at an end and that I may yet be called upon to do something really great. But for the present it is hardly worth the fuss.

Today is Sunday and we were taken out to the yard for a walk. It was a glorious day, marred only by the monotony of the stripes and the spiritless slouching figures. Yet the sky excluded no one; its glorious blue spread over them all, as if there were no sorrows in all the world and man was never cruel to his kind.

The days pass quickly between the study of my fellow prisoners, my letters, and other writing. The evenings are taken up with reading. But jailed nights are so oppressive. They lie like stone upon your heart. The thoughts, the sobs, the moans that emerge like pale shadows from every human soul. It is stifling. Yet people talk of hell. There is no more threatening thing in all the world than the hell of jailed nights.

Good morning. Another crazing night has gone....