Letter to Eduard Bernstein, February 5, 1884

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February 5, 1884

Dear Bernstein,

One thing you can be sure of: I wish for no better translator than you. In the first folio, in endeavouring to reproduce the sense correctly and accurately, you somewhat neglected the syntax — voilà tout. In addition, I wanted to render Marx’s peculiar style, to which you are unaccustomed; hence the numerous alterations.

If, having once conveyed the sense in German, you read through the manuscript once more with a view to simplifying the syntax, and at the same time remember to avoid wherever possible clumsy, schoolmasterish syntax, which continually places the verb right at the end of the subordinate clause (and which we have all had crammed into. us), then you will encounter little difficulty and will yourself put everything in order.

You would do best to send me the ms. by sections, each of them ± a whole, 1, 1/2 or 2 printed sheets at a time. In which case I shall also supply the notes for it straight away. I should also like to see the proofs; many things look quite different in print.

Please send me the article on Proudhon in the old Social-Demokrat. I had overlooked it; the whole thing might have to go into the preface. You will get it back, of course.

As regards von der Mark and the Volkszeitung, I am entirely of your opinion. When Marx died, Schewitsch falsified my telegram to Sorge and printed it as though it had been sent to the Volkszeitung. I protested. He glossed over the falsification with the lie that the first word had been illegible — though he copied it correctly! while the other he had ‘considered necessary in the interests of the paper’! Moreover he thought it ‘petty’ of me to have drawn his attention to it. Petty it certainly was not, magnanimous rather, considering the way those gentlemen took advantage of Marx’s death to draw attention to themselves and proclaim their semi-alliance with Most. However, Schewitsch is the last Russian socialist aristocrat; such men must always ‘go further than anyone else’ and are accustomed to use the world at large as a means to serve their own ends. The article on tolerance was downright silly. Russians have set about one another con amore, as have the Irish.

I don’t know whether you get the Travailleur, etc.; I receive a few copies from time to time and shall send them to you. Also two Sozialdemokrats with scorings by Marx which might interest you.

I shall keep Schorlemmer’s pound here then; will you debit me with this, in return credit Schorlemmer with his annual subscription, and pay the balance (inserting an announcement to this effect in the Sozialdemokrat) into the election fund. Similarly, will you debit me with Tussy’s and my subscriptions, supposing that she doesn’t decide to send you To-Day in exchange. Finally, will you alter Tussy’s address and send items to

Miss Marx,

32 Great Coram St., London, W. C.

As to what is to be done with the money for Marx’s memorial, I have absolutely no idea. How much is there altogether? If you wish, I shall write an article for your issue of 14 March. Let me know roughly what it should be about so that it fits into your scheme. Meissner, then, will doubtless still have copies of the 18th Brumaire; his failure to push it is doubtless attributable to timidity. Marx sold him the entire edition, so there is nothing we can do.

Tussy has taken the best of the dictionaries — French and Italian — but there are still plenty left and I have made certain that you get one particularly nice item — the editorial copy of the Neue Rheinische Zeitung. The parcel will go off in the course of this month.

I don’t know of any poems — König Dampf, perhaps, from my Condition of the Working-Class? A search is being made here for the English original, but it seems to have fallen into oblivion, like the Serbian of Goethe’s lament of Hassan Aga’s noble wife, only still more so, since the latter does after all still exist in black and white. What wouldn’t Bismarck give to have the ‘Viennese in Berlin’, namely the anarchists! A perfect caricature of the Russians — though obviously bred by the police!

Yours,

F.E.