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Special pages :
Letter to Bertalan Szemere, August 21, 1860
| Author(s) | Karl Marx |
|---|---|
| Written | 21 August 1860 |
Reproduced from the original
Published in English in Marx-Engels Collected Works, Volume 41
MARX TO BERTALAN SZEMERE
IN PARIS
London, 21 August 1860
My dear Sir,
I was most agreeably surprised on receiving the few lines you were so friendly to address to me.
My own silence is easily accounted for. For a long time after the arrival of your last letter, I was labouring under the most heavy and distressing liver-complaint, a complaint which almost disables you from writing. Later on, I was told by some acquaintance of mine, that you sojourned at London, so that I was not sure whether any letter addressed to Paris was likely to find you.
Great events, as you justly remark, have come to pass, but of all things the most dangerous that, in my opinion, could happen to Europe, would be a war between the legitimate counterrevolution, seated at Warsaw, and the illegitimate counterrevolution seated at the Tuileries. Still, we must take the situation as it is, and make the best of it. If Garibaldi, whose real intentions I have ascertained from private letters communicated to me, has momentaneously been forced to strike his own flag, I hope that in the coming spring the occasion will offer of separating once for all the cause of nationalities from the cause of French counterrevolution.
I have one thing to ask of you. Kossuth has in the latter times worked hard to reconquer his lost influence in the United States. I intend baffling his manoeuvres, and would therefore feel much obliged, if you would communicate to me, so soon as possible, and as circumstantially as possible, the late adventures of that mock-hero. He has been (or is) at Paris; what was he doing there? He has been at Turin; what was he about? Perhaps, you could also add some curiously grotesque details of his first appearance in Italy, during the war of 1859.[1]
With the events before us, it is of the highest importance, that on the one hand the good understanding between the German party of liberty and the Hungarians should be raised above every doubt—and I shall soon have the occasion of speaking (not by word of mouth, but by print[2]) to Germany on this point; that on
the other hand Kossuth, the would-be representative of the Hungarian Nation, should be disavowed on both sides.
Here at London I still live, and shall continue to live, in my old house, 9 Grafton Terrace, Maitland Park, Haverstock Hill. If you visit again London, I hope you will not again forget my address. Mrs Marx, moreover, was very disappointed in missing the occasion of making the personal acquaintance of a man whose great intellectual powers she has already become familiarised with by his writings.
Yours truly
A. Williams