Réttur - 01.01.1984, Blaðsíða 43

seems, from the energies and aspirations of a
poor people in a barren northern island in the
twelfth century. There can be few more striking
examples in history of the revolutionary power
of culture than this renewal of courage and of
faith in humanity, which was blown from Ice-
land to William Morris, across the waters of the
North Sea and eight hundred years of time.“
7 Til er ágæt ævisaga Toms Mann: „Tom Mann
and his Times“, rituð af framúrskarandi sagn-
fræðingi og rithöfundi Donu Torr, sem því mið-
ur lést alltof ung, en lætur eftir sig hrífandi rit-
gerðir ekki síst hvað snilli hugmynda snertir.
Ævisaga Tom Mann er gefin út 1956 af Lawr-
ence and Wishart í London.
8 G.D.H. Cole gaf út úrvalsrit Morris (671 síða)
í fyrsta sinn á aldarafmæli hans 1934, en hér er
stuðst við útgáfuna 1946.
9 Hér er stuðst við frásögnina á bls. 105-6 í
ágætri bók R. Page Arnot: „William Morris,
the man and the myth“, útgefin 1964 hjá Lawr-
ence and Wishart í London. — Læt ég enska
textann á setningunum fylgja hér, því þýðing
þeirra mætti vissulega vera betri en hjá mér:
„For I do declare that any other state of soc-
iety but communism is grievous and disgraceful
to all belonging to it.“
„Communism is in fact the completion of
Socialism: when that ceases to be militant and
becomes trimuphant, it will be communism.
The communist asserts in the first place that the
resources of nature, mainly the land and those
other things which can only be used for the
reproduction of wealth and which are the effect
of social work, should not be owned in severalty,
but by the whole.“
„Intelligence enough to conceive, courage
enough to will, power enough to compel. If our
ideas of a new Society are anything more than
a dream, these three qualities must animate the
due effective majority of the working-people;
and then, I say, the thing will be done.“
10 Hjá Thompson hljóðar þetta svo: „The power
is the power of the organized working class.
The intelligence is their revolutionary theory,
Marxism. The courage — that is a moral qua-
lity. And it is here, above all, that we need
William Morris to-day.“
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