Letter to Hermann Schluter, October 9, 1885

Author(s) Friedrich Engels
Written 9 October 1885


First published in: Marx and Engels, Works, First Russian Edition, Vol. XXVII, Moscow, 1935
Printed according to the original
Published in English for the first time in Marx-Engels Collected Works, Volume 47


ENGELS TO HERMANN SCHLÜTER

IN HOTTINGEN-ZURICH

London, 9 October 1885

Dear Mr Schlüter,

Yesterday I sent the introduction[1] to the Cologne Trial[2] to Ede in case he wished to print it beforehand in the Sozialdemokrat, in which case he would have to arrange matters with you.[3] Herewith now the list of contents to show you how it has been arranged; also printing errors in, and notes on, the Leipzig edition of 1875.[4] I have included only the London Central Authority's two Addresses of March and June[5] ; the Cologne Address of December 1850[6] offers nothing new in the way of theory, being a detailed account of the party's break-up which today would be of importance only in a circumstantial history of the movement of those days.

The thing has got badly behindhand — through no fault of my own. La bravoure, c'est dans le ventre,[7] as Marshal Davout once said to his host, Marx's father-in-law,[8] when the latter congratulated him on his appetite. L'esprit, c'est dans le ventre[9] is what I say, after discovering to what depths of stupidity and incapacity one can be reduced by catarrh of the stomach. To sweat away for five hours at one page and then furiously consign what one has written to the flames — WELL, it's all over now, not to return for a very long time, or so I hope.

Tomorrow I shall tackle the introduction to the Schlesische Milliarde.

As regards the June battle, however, there's nothing doing yet. I have become convinced that the things from the Neue Rheinische Zeitung can't be printed on their own without a real history of events. But this would call for specialised studies which can't be done until I have sorted out the piles of Marx's pamphlets, because only then shall I know what stuff I have yet to procure for the purpose. And only then could I embark on my studies. So for the time being this will have to be shelved.

With kindest regards,

Yours,

F. Engels

  1. ↑ F. Engels, 'On the History of the Communist League'.
  2. ↑ K. Marx, Revelations Concerning the Communist Trial in Cologne.
  3. ↑ See this volume, p. 329.
  4. ↑ Apart from the works mentioned in the text, Engels also included in the new edition of Marx's pamphlet Revelations Concerning the Communist Trial in Cologne a fourth appendix — 'The Communist Trial in Cologne' — to Marx's work Herr Vogt (see present edition, Vol. 17, pp. 305-11) and his afterword to the second German edition of the pamphlet (see present edition, Vol. 24, pp. 51-54).
  5. ↑ K. Marx and F. Engels, 'Address of the Central Authority to the League, March 1850'; 'Address of the Central Authority to the League, June 1850'.
  6. ↑ 'Proposal from the London District of the Communist League to the Central Authority in Cologne'.
  7. ↑ Bravery begins in the stomach.
  8. ↑ Ludwig von Westphalen
  9. ↑ Thinking begins in the stomach.