Letter to Wilhelm Alexander Freund, January 21, 1877

Author(s) Karl Marx
Written 21 January 1877


First published in Vorwärts, Nr. 275, Basel, 16. Juni 1931, Beilage
Printed according to the newspaper
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
Reproduced in Marx-Engels Collected Works, Volume 45


MARX TO WILHELM ALEXANDER FREUND

IN BRESLAU

London, 21 January 1877
41 Maitland Park Crescent, N. W.

Dear Friend Freund,[1]

My New Year's greetings to you and your dear wife are, unfortunately, belated owing to pressure of work and a sore throat which I caught during my last days in Karlsbad. My fate there was similar to that of Martin Luther's peasant who, given a leg up on one side of his horse, fell off on the other.[2]

My daughter[3] sends her best regards to your wife and yourself. She has, inter alia, been guilty of a translation, published by the local Shakespeare Society of which she is a member, of Professor Delius' 'Das epische Element in Shakespeare', a translation which has, however, earned her the highest praise from Mr Delius.[4] She has requested me to ask you for the name of the Swabian anti-Shakespeare professor and the title of his book about which you spoke to us in Karlsbad.[5] The matador of the Shakespeare Society here, Mr Furnivall, is determined not to forego enjoyment of that opus.

The 'Oriental Question' (which will end up with a revolution in Russia, whatever the outcome of the war against Turkey[6] ), and the mustering of the Social-Democratic legions at home[7] will perhaps have convinced the German cultural philistine that there are more important things in the world than Richard Wagner's music of the future.[8]

With kindest regards to you and your dear wife,

Your most sincere friend,

Karl Marx

Should you happen to see Dr Traube, would you be so good as to give him my kindest regards and remind him that he promised to send me the titles of his various publications. This would be of great importance to my friend Engels, who is engaged on a work on natural philosophy[9] and intends to give more weight to Traube's achievements than has hitherto been done.[10]

  1. ↑ A play on words by Marx: Freund= friend.
  2. ↑ In one of his toasts (Tischreden) Martin Luther likened the world to a drunken peasant unable to mount a horse (D. Martin Luthers Werke, kritische Gesamtausgabe, Tischreden, Weimar, 1912, Bd. I, S. 298).
  3. ↑ Eleanor Marx
  4. ↑ Nikolaus Delius' article 'Die epischen Elemente in Shakespeare's Dramen' appeared in 1877 in the Jahrbuch der Deutschen Shakespeare-Gesellschaft. Translated into English by Eleanor Marx, it was included in the transactions of the New Shakespeare Society.
  5. ↑ In his reply of 29 July 1877, Freund informed Marx of the book's title: G. Rümelin, Shakespearestudien, 2. Aufl., Stuttgart, 1874.
  6. ↑ Engels' forecast based on an in-depth analysis of European policy in the Levant proved correct. The Russo-Turkish war began on 24 April 1877 and ended in defeat for Turkey. On 3 March 1878, the preliminary San Stefano Treaty (see Note 430) was signed, which granted complete sovereignty to Serbia, Montenegro and Romania.
  7. ↑ Regular elections to the German Reichstag were held on 10 January 1877. About half a million votes were cast for the socialist candidates of whom 12 were actually elected (see also Note 248).
  8. ↑ 'The music of the future'—Richard Wagner's music, whose principles he expounded in his Zukunftmusik. Brief an einem französischen Freund (1861) addressed to Frederic Villot, keeper of the French museums, and in his book Das Kunstwerk der Zukunft.
  9. ↑ F. Engels, Dialectics of Nature.
  10. ↑ Marx is referring to M. Traube's principal achievement, the creation of 'artificial cells' (see Note 97).