Letter to Karl Marx, November 29, 1873

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To Marx in Harrogate

London, November 29, 1873

Dear Moor,

Lopatin left for Paris again yesterday evening. He intends to come here in a month or two, at which time Lavrov too will move in with his printing shop, unless he changes his mind on account of the expense, a matter to which I particularly drew Lopatin’s attention.

It is unlikely that Lopatin and Outine will ever be very firm friends, their temperaments are not really compatible and the shadow of their first cool encounter in Geneva still weighs down on them. Moreover, Lopatin remains a great Russian patriot and still treats the Russian cause as something special, having nothing to do with the West, and is hardly grateful to Outine for having initiated us into its mysteries. In addition, Lopatin has just passed through Lavrov’s hands and coming fresh, as he does, from the solitude of Siberia, may well be fair game for the latter’s befuddled dreams of reconciliation.

On the other hand, he is fed up to the back teeth with the whole Russian emigration nonsense and wants to have nothing further to do with it whereas Outine, despite and because of his hostility to the gang, is still up to his ears in all their gossip and thinks every last fart a matter of importance. He is absolutely furious because Lopatin wants to have Chernyshevsky’s manuscript that you know about printed not by Trusov but by Lavrov, parce que cela leur donne du prestige !

So in my view it is of no great significance whether Lopatin takes Elpidin, for example, not for a sophisticated rogue, but for a simple ass. Even though it was precisely the indiscreet remarks of this same Elpidin to a certain Fedetzki or Feletzki, and the latter’s inability to hold his tongue, that put the Russian government wise to Lopatin’s presence in Irkutsk and so brought about his arrest.

When Lopatin arrived at Irkutsk, Chernyshevsky was ‘quite close by’, i.e. 700-800 English miles further on near Nerchinsk, but was straightaway removed to Srednevilyuisk, to the north of Yakutsk, 65° latitude, where, apart from the indigenous Tungus, the only company he has are the non-commissioned officer and the 2 soldiers who guard him.

Having escaped in July, Lopatin remained in hiding in Irkutsk for a month, ending up in the house of the very man who had been ordered to discover his hiding place. He then travelled on his own telega to Tomsk, disguised as a peasant and doing the driving himself; from there he went by steamer, from Tobolsk by post-horse and finally by train to St Petersburg, still dressed as a peasant. There he stayed in hiding for another month, after which he quietly crossed the frontier by train.

In the translation of Capital Chapters 2-5 (including machinery and large-scale industry) are by him, i.e. quite a decent chunk. He is now translating from the English for Polyakov.

Yesterday I read the chapter on factory legislation in the French translation of [Capital]. With all due respect for the skill with which it has been translated into elegant French, I am sorry for that beautiful chapter. All its power and life’s blood have been sent to the devil. The mediocre writer castrates the language in order to express himself with a certain degree of elegance. It is becoming increasingly difficult to think in this modern constrained French. Already the sentence inversions, necessitated almost everywhere by pedantic formal logic, deprive the presentation of all its force and liveliness. I think it would be a grave mistake to use the French version as a basis for an English translation. The strength of expression in the original need not be diminished in English; whatever is inevitably lost from the truly dialectical passages will be balanced by the greater power and tenseness of the English language in many other passages.

Herr Kokosky, by the way, excuses his miserable translation by declaring that I write in the — very difficult “Liebknechtian-Marxian style.” What a compliment!

Tussy’s letter arrived yesterday evening. Shall answer it tomorrow, so that you don’t receive everything on one day. What does Gumpert have to say?

Best regards to Tussy.

Your

F. E.