Letter to Friedrich Engels, October 19, 1867

Author(s) Karl Marx
Written 19 October 1867


First published abridged in Der Briefwechsel zwischen F. Engels und K. Marx, Bd. 3, Stuttgart, 1913 and in full in MEGA, Abt. III, Bd. 3, Berlin, 1930
Published in English in full for the first time in Marx-Engels Collected Works, Volume 42


MARX TO ENGELS[1]

IN MANCHESTER

London, 19 October 1867

DEAR FRED,

As regards Borkheim, I told him: what Engels wrote is final and is not subject to 'negotiation'. He (today he left for Bordeaux) let himself be ruled by me to the extent of paying out £40 to me and promising TO FIND THE REST by 10 November without further prevarication if you were unable, etc. But as a businessman and a Jew he had to make just one more attempt!

Incidentally, Borkheim has just had a hugely gratifying experi- ence. Schabelitz put an exceedingly bombastic notice of Bor- kheim's Perle"'[2] in the Buchhändlerbörsenblatt[3] in which Borkheim is featured as Peter the Hermit vis-à-vis Russia WELL! The Moscow Newspaper[4] has printed this (in translation) as a curiosity, and he thus had the pleasure of seeing himself and his name in print in Russian] He showed me a copy and interpreted it for me.

Lafargue was put to a deal of trouble translating Borkheim's French at least passably into French.[5] I had to give him some assistance, of course, especially for the quotations from Kant, Fichte and Hegel, which Borkheim probably did not quite understand even in German. But he has these gentlemen in his library.

I am glad the matter is thus SETTLED. In recent weeks I have found it perfectly impossible to write for more than maybe 2 hours. Apart from the incursions FROM WITHOUT, there are all the aggravations of home life, which I always find especially nerve- racking. I have been suffering from insomnia again and had the pleasure of seeing 2 small carbuncles blossom near the membrum. Fortunately, they have faded away. My sickness always originates in the mind. While on the subject of the membrum, may I commend the following lines to you for Moore from the French satirist of the 16th century, Mathurin Régnier. Well-read though I am in this field, I do not think that chaude pisse has ever been more poetically described:

Mon cas, qui se lève et se hausse, Bave d'une estrange façon; Belle, vous fournîtes la sausse, Lors que je fournis le poisson.

Las! si ce membre eut l'arrogance De fouiller trop les lieux sacrés, Qu'on lui pardonne son offence, Car il pleure assez ses péchés.[6]

And this by the same poet is not bad either:

Fluxion D'Amour

L'amour est une affection Qui, par les yeux, dans le cœur entre, Et, par la forme de fluxion, S'écoule par le bas du ventre.[7]

Finally:

Lizette tuée par Régnier

Lizette, à qui l'on faisait tort, Vint à Régnier tout éplorée, Je te pry: Donne-moi la mort, Que j'ai tant de fois désirée! Lui, ne la refusant en rien, Tire son... vous m'entendez bien; Et dedans le ventre la frappe. Elle, voulant finir ses jours, Lui dit: Mon cœur, pousse toujours, De crainte que je n'en réchappe. Régnier, las de la servir, Craignant une seconde plainte, Lui dit: Hastez-vous de mourir, Car mon poignard n'a plus de pointe.[8]

2 Freiligrath snippets enclosed.[9]

Enclosed 2 Courrier français and 1 Liberté. There is no need for you to send back these journals. But do keep them! I have not read the nonsense in the Courrier on the Art Militaire, but I did read Proudhon on the generatio aequivoca[10] . I suspect that l'un vaut l'autre[11] .

H. Meyer was here the day before yesterday en route for America. Perhaps he called on you, too.

Let me have your recipes[12] for the German newspapers. I will have them copied out and find the most suitable PLACEMENTS. They will even find double emploi[13] at least in part, as Meyer was also asking for something of the kind for over there and will put them to good use. As soon as this has been done in Germany—and that is the most important thing, for success here depends largely on what happens there—you must write a critique for The Fortnightly Review.[14] Beesly will get it in. This is a necessary prerequisite TO CATCH A PUBLISHER IN LONDON. The paper is secretly (so secretly that not a soul notices it) of Comteist persuasion, but wishes to provide an outlet for every point of view. If your critique arouses Mr Lewes' (the Goethe man, and unfortunately semi-Comteist, too) interest in the book (Lewes is secretly also CO-PROPRIETOR of the Review), it will be easy to find a publisher. And even without that, a publisher will in any case be easier to find then. The latest number contains a truly pitiful article by Thornton, in which he reproduces MALTHUSIANISM (in which the real MONGERS do not believe) in the most commonplace and trivial form.[15]

What our party lacks is money, as the enclosed letters from Eccarius and Becker once more painfully demonstrate.[16] But for this deficiency, we should always be, despite great and irreplace- able losses, today as in 1848, les plus forts[17] .

Regards to MRS Lizzy.[18]

Your

K. M.

  1. ↑ Part of this letter was published in English for the first time in The Letters of Karl Marx, selected and translated with explanatory notes and an introduction by Saul K. Padover, Prentice-Hall Inc., Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, 1979.
  2. ↑ S. Borkheim, Ma perle devant le congrès de Genève.
  3. ↑ Börsenblatt für den Deutschen Buchhandel, No. 230, 3 October 1867.
  4. ↑ MOCKOSCKIR eràoMocmu, No. 210, 28 September 1867.
  5. ↑ See this volume, pp. 435-36.
  6. ↑ My will, which riseth up in pride, Doth spout most curiously; The sauce, my love, thou didst provide, The fish it was from me. Ah, did that member overween To delve the sacred place? Pray pardon him his grievous sin, He weepeth his disgrace. M. Régnier, Stances.
  7. ↑ Love's Fluxion Our love is an affection That by our eyes attains the heart, Then takes the form of fluxion And issues through the nether part. M. Régnier, Epigrammes, X.
  8. ↑ Lizette slain by Régnier Lizette, beset by slander's breath, To Régnier came with tearful eyes: My friend, I pray thee, give me death, Therein my only yearning lies. He, ever eager to obey, Unsheaths his... what more need I say? And at her belly lunges low. She, hoping that he her would kill, Tells him, my heart it yearneth still, I fear I shall my fate forego, But Régnier, weary of his pledge, Fearing a second suppliant cry, Tells her, oh haste thee now and die, For this my sword has lost his edge. M. Régnier, Epigrammes, XV.
  9. ↑ The reference is probably to clippings from the Hermann which carried reports of the London committee for raising money for Freiligrath (see Note 422), in particular from the final address of the committee published in No. 459 of 19 October 1867. On this clipping which has been preserved among his papers Marx wrote a saying widespread in the Rhineland: 'If that's not champion drivel, I don't know what is.'
  10. ↑ spontaneous generation
  11. ↑ the one is as bad as the other. A reference to L. Nouguès, 'L'Art militaire et le progrès' (Le Courrier français, Nos. 123 and 125, 18 and 20 October 1867) and to P. J. Proudhon, 'Lettres inédites de P.-J. Proudhon sur les générations spontanées' (ibid., Nos. 121, 123 and 124, 16, 18 and 19 October 1867).
  12. ↑ reviews of the first volume of Capital (see this volume, p. 451)
  13. ↑ double utilisation
  14. ↑ Engels wrote the review of Volume One of Marx's Capital for The Fortnightly Review much later, in May and June 1868. As can be seen from their subsequent correspondence, Marx and Engels exchanged opinions several times on the content and form of the article. In spite of Professor Beesly's request, the review was rejected by the editorial board and has only been preserved in manuscript form (see present edition, Vol. 20).
  15. ↑ W. T. Thornton, 'Stray Chapters from a Forthcoming Work on Labour', The Fortnightly Review, Vol. II, No. 10, 1 October 1867.
  16. ↑ In his letter to Marx of 14 October 1867 Eccarius told him that he and his family were hard-up. For his active work for the International he had been black-listed by his employers and was out of work. For Becker's difficult financial circumstances see Note 506.
  17. ↑ the greatest force
  18. ↑ Lizzy Burns