Letter to Jenny Marx, December 22, 1859

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Letter to Jenny Marx in London

December 22, 1859

Dear Mrs Marx,

I take the liberty today of sending you a dozen bottles of wine for the festive season in the hope that they will be to your liking and contribute to the FAMILY’S cheer.

The champagne and Bordeaux (Château d’Arcins) can be drunk at once, while the port wine should be allowed to rest a little and won’t be in proper condition until about New Year.

I am downright annoyed by this whole Freiligrath business. It is always the same old story with this belletrist rabble: they for ever want to be lauded to the skies by the newspapers and have their names in the public eye. The most wretched verse they turn out is more important to them than the greatest event in history. As this cannot be brought about without a coterie organisation, it is natural that this becomes the principal requirement and, unfortunately, we unlucky Communists are quite unsuited to this. Even worse, we know this whole fraud, scorn this organisation du succès and have an almost criminal aversion to becoming popular figures. If such a poet for this reason feels uneasy in such a party, it is indeed a sign of extreme narrow-mindedness, for he has absolutely none of the competition which he is sure to meet everywhere else; and he shows even greater narrowmindedness, if he throws himself into the arms of a group where, right from the beginning, he has to face the competition of Kinkel. Mais que voulez-vous? [but what can you do?] For his very existence the poet needs incense, a great deal of incense, and Mrs Poet consumes even more. Competition or no competition, Mrs Poet will always be in raptures for the side which daily parades before the public her noble genius of a Ferdinand, herself, her interesting offspring, her cats, dogs, rabbits, canaries and other vermin, and indeed, showers them with Bengal lights, sentimentality and romantic lies. And what Mrs Poet wants, Mr Poet must needs want also, and this all the more in that madame gives expression to his own innermost thoughts. Das Volk, INDEED! The Gartenlaube is a very different kind of paper, and unctuous Bettziech a very different kind of man from the communists. After all in the Gartenlaube they still treat us as a poet’s family and accord us a weekly mention, nor does crooked Bettziech ever let slip an opportunity to pay us a little compliment or give us a puff. — True, Kinkel is praised far more highly for his poetry, which is greatly inferior to ours, and they publish many more anecdotes about him, but the man is Bettziech’s patron after all, and everything will come right in the end. And then, take the Schiller festival! These communists despise and deride Schiller, so how could one run a Schiller festival with them? But the Schiller festival is more important than all the rest of history put together and, after all, why was Schiller born a 100 years ago if not for us to write a cantata about him today?

And then there is the further consideration that the noble Ferdinand’s poetry pretty well dried up years ago and the little he still manages to extract from his noddle is appallingly bad. This necessitates thinking up DODGES such as collected editions, etc., and that’s something that can’t be done every day. So, in order that one should not be forgotten, a puff becomes daily more of a necessity. Who, IN FACT, ever talked about Freiligrath between 1849 and 1858? Nobody. It was Bettziech who first rediscovered this classic writer, who had been so lost from mind that he was used only as Christmas and birthday presents and no longer figured in literature but in the history of literature. And, of course, nobody was to blame for all this save Karl Marx, with his ‘inspiration’. But once F. Freiligrath has been thoroughly warmed up by the incense of the Gartenlaube, then you’ll see what poetry will come bubbling out of him!

How petty, shabby and paltry are the doings of these poets!

Give me Siebel any day; he may be a rotten poet, but he does at least know that he is a thorough humbug and all he asks is to be allowed to advertise himself—nowadays a necessary procédé without which he would be a complete nonentity.

But you really mustn’t take all this bickering too much to heart. As a ‘personage’ Freiligrath is bound sooner or later to betray weaknesses such as will put him into our hands when the time is ripe. Meanwhile, no breach if it can be avoided.

I am very sorry that I shan’t be able to come up on Friday, but there are such a lot of changes going on here that yesterday, for instance, I had to slave away till 9.45 at night, and there can be no question of getting away.

My warmest regards to Moor and the YOUNG LADIES’

Your

F. Engels