Letter to Friedrich Engels, January 20, 1864

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To Engels in Manchester

Zalt-Bommel, 20 January 1864

Dear Frederick,

As you see, I am still here and ‘let me tell you something else, Sir’, I am in fact once more unable TO MOVE ABOUT This is a disease of truly Christian perfidiousness. When I got your letter, I was congratulating myself on the way the old wounds had healed, but that self-same evening a large furuncle erupted just below my neck on the left-hand side of my chest and, antipodally to it, one on my back. Although irksome, it did not, at least, prevent me from walking and, in fact, I accompanied my uncle and cousin on a stroll across the Rhine (Waal). But a few days later, yet another carbuncle appeared on my right leg, close beneath the spot of which Goethe says: ‘And if the noble fellow has no bum, on what does he propose to sit?’ Now this is the most painful and embarrassing boil I have had so far, and I trust will be the last of a long series. In the meantime, I can neither walk, stand, nor sit, and find even lying down damned difficult. So you see, mon cher, how nature in her wisdom is persecuting me. Would she not bebetter advised to inflict these trials of patience upon a good

Christian — someone of the same stamp as Silvio Pellico? Besides the carbuncle beneath my buttock, I should inform you that another furuncle has erupted on my back, while the one on my chest has only just begun to heal so that, like a veritable Lazarus (alias Lassalle), I am assailed on all sides at once.

Apropos of Lazarus I am reminded of Renan’s The Life of Jesus. In many regards this is a mere novel, full of pantheistic-mystical phantasies. However, the book is in some ways superior to its German predecessors, and since it isn’t very long, you must read it. Naturally it is based on the German studies. Quite remarkable. Here in Holland, the German critical theological school is so much a l'ordre du jour that clerics openly proclaim their allegiance to it from the pulpit.

As regards the Schleswig-Holstein affair, I hope that it will lead to clashes in Germany itself. How well Russia knows her Pappenheimers, both Austrian and Prussian, is evident from the COOL IMPUDENCE with which she is, at this juncture, allowing the Petersburg Journal to print the Warsaw Protocol.

The German petty princes are taking the fiction of the Schleswig-Holstein movement very seriously. They genuinely believe that Germania cannot have enough of them and is therefore intent on enthroning a 35th.

I am writing you no more than a short letter, and that only with great effort, since it’s agony for me to sit. But I shall expect an early reply from you; it CHEERS ME UP to see your handwriting. Don’t forget to enclose your photograph. I have promised my cousin as much, and how is she to believe in our Orestes-Pylades relationship, if I can’t even commovere you to send a photograph? Address as before CARE OF Mr L. Philips.

Salut to yourself and Lupus.

Your

K. M.