Quotes:Dramard, Louis

Zirkoff, Boris

Dramard, Louis: French Socialist and Theosophist, b. in Paris, Dec. 2, 1848; d. March 15, 1887, of an incurable disease which had undermined his health for over fifteen years. Greatly interested in natural sciences, he had intended to become a physician, but ill health prevented him. He then occupied himself with politics and sociology. During the Franco-German war, when still a student, he remained shut up in Paris where he did duty as a Mobile. After the war he made a journey to Switzerland and Belgium which he narrated himself in his Voyage aux pays des Proscrits. It is there that he identified himself with the cause of Socialism. Shortly afterwards, forced on account of his health to leave France, he first went to Italy and later settled in Algiers. Here he began to work for the amelioration of the conditions of both the French settlers and the Arab people, trying to bring harmony between them. The problem of inequality always occupied the first place in his mind. He planted militant socialism in Algiers by creating there the first “Cercle d’Études Sociales.” The group of men thus brought together by Dramard, who at the same time endeavoured to reorganize the Workmen’s Syndicates, became the nucleus of the Working Men’s Party of Algeria. He was nominated as delegate to the congress of the labour party at St. Etienne in 1882. For the better propagation of the ideas of peace in Algiers, he founded in 1879 the Voix du Pauvre, which brought him so many attacks and calumnies that he had to cease its publication. Unscrupulous adversaries, devoid of good faith, even went so far as to impeach his political honesty, although he had no great difficulty in exculpating himself. His arabophile ideas were the cause of further persecution, and at the advice of some of his friends he at length renounced militant politics and devoted himself henceforth to studies and writing. To this we owe his collaboration in the Revue Socialiste, founded and directed by his teacher and friend Benoit Malon. It is in this Journal (Jan. and Feb., 1885) that was re-published his remarkable study Transformisme et socialisme, which had originally appeared in Paris in 1881.

413 Towards the close of his life, he became identified with Theosophy and The Theosophical Society, becoming President of “L’Isis,” the French Branch of the Organization. The Theosophical philosophy brought a great calm to his restless mind; his vigorous hatred of all oppressors lost its bitterness and his sympathy for the oppressed gained in intensity. As has been the case with a great many other seekers, it is through the pages of Bulwer-Lytton’s Zanoni that Dramard first contacted the teachings of the Ancient Wisdom, which he preferred to call the “Esoteric Synthesis.” Dramard wrote several remarkable essays along Theosophical and Occult lines, among which mention should be made of the following “La Doctrine Ésotérique,” Revue socialiste, Aug. 15 and Sept. 15, 1885; “La Science Occulte,” Revue moderne, May 1 and 15, June 1, July 15 and 20, 1885; “La Synarchie,” Revue socialiste, Dec. 15, 1887. The first of these is a masterly presentation of the fundamental principles of the esoteric science by a man of great intellectual gifts and of dynamic sympathy for suffering mankind.

Ref.: Le Lotus, Paris, June and July, 1888; Lucifer, London, Vol. II, June, 1888; The Theosophist, Vol. IX, June, 1888.

Source: Boris de Zirkoff, «H. P. Blavatsky Collected Writings», vol. 9, pp. 412-413