Letter to Laura Lafargue, January 8, 1890

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To Laura Lafargue at Le Perreux

January 8, 1890

My dear Laura,

Prosit Neujahr avant tout! Et puis après, as I cannot bear the idea you should translate Walther von der Vogelweide from a modernisation, I send you a copy of the original. You are quite right, the metre and rhyme of the original ought to be preserved in every translation of poetry, or else go the whole hog like the French and turn it at once into prose.

Hope you got over your influenza by this. We have it here too and pretty thick, although of our nearer circle none has as yet been caught. Percy is better, but Pumps is laid up with bronchitis and congested lungs, will however be up soon. Charley R. is the only one I know who can boast of having the influenza.

Old Harney is laid up at Enfield with chronic bronchitis; I shall have to go some day this week and see him. Poor fellow, but he feels happy in one thing: being out of America! It is most amusing to see how America makes all Englishmen patriotic, even Edward was not without a touch. And all on account of a quarrel about ‘manners’ and ‘breeding’! The Yankees, too, have a rather provoking way of asking you how you like the country, what you think of it, and expect of course an outburst of admiration. And so poor old Harney has got so disgusted with the ‘Land of the free’ that his only wish is to be well back to the ‘effete monarchy’ and never to return to Yankeeland. I am afraid he will have his wish; bodily he is aging very much, no wonder after the eight years’ torture with rheumatic gout he has had. But in spirit he is the old inveterate punster and full of humour.

I was glad, on receiving Paul’s letter about the new paper, that I had written to Bonnier my opinion that they ought formally to engage you on the rédaction for the German part. So he will see that I had no idea of the situation and at the same time considered it as self-understood that everybody got paid. He has not written again to me but to Tussy, saying the paper will come out 11th January, and wanting them to write and to get Burns, etc. to do the same.

I really think you are about the only person who can keep his or her head above water and clear in Paris; that place seems to make people cracked. Here is Bonnier who was sensible enough as long as he was here and now all at once he is as mad as Guesde can be over this impossible paper. A daily paper with unpaid rédaction, unpaid correspondents, unpaid everything—why it is ruination to begin with, and being kicked out of the paper you have made as soon as you demand the payment due for your work! He might well write to me que la partie internationale doit être écrasante—when the partie parisienne is as good as non-existent from the beginning! And to expect people here to write à jour fixe regular letters, so that the fact may be announced la veille! for that he actually expected all of us, Burns and God knows whom besides, to do here, and all for the honour of having the honour of being allowed to speak to the inhabitants de la ville lumière qui se fichent pas mal de nous tous!

It strikes me this affair will end in all sorts of muddles, if not in quarrels amongst our own people at the moment when everything seemed to promise well.

Anyhow I shall feel obliged and it will be useful to all of us if you or Paul will keep us well posted up with regard to this matter; for we shall surely be bombarded with all sorts of demands when once the paper is out, and experience shows that ‘in the interest of the cause’ one half of the facts are kept from us. Of course we shall be very shy in engaging ourselves, but at the same time it will be better if we have not in every case first to inquire from you how the matter really stands.

I don’t understand how Guesde can act in that way upon his own hook and let his meridional imagination run away without the consent of Paul, Deville and others. Bonnier’s letters sound as if these people thought the whole world was idle, had more time on their hands than they knew to employ, and was anxiously waiting for the chance of a French paper coming out to which they might contribute gratis! Such things would not be suffered in the German or any other party—that one man engages the responsibility of all without a special mandate; that he acts upon delusions, as to the chances of his getting foreign contributors, which you and Paul would have at once destroyed, or if you had a chance of refuting them, acts in spite of your better experience. Really if our friends will be guided by their delusion and fancies alone, nobody can prevent them from coming to grief.

I am called away suddenly and must conclude.

Ever yours

F. Engels

Richtig wäre:

Under der linden an der heiden dâ unser zweier bette was, dâ mugent ir vinden schöne beide gebrochen bluomen unde gras vor dem walde in einem tal                 tandaradei schöne sanc diu nahtegal. Ich kam gegangen zuo der ouve: dô was nun friedel komen ê dô wart ich empfangen here frouwe, daz ich bin saelic iemer mê. kuster mich? wol tûsentstunt:                 tandaradei seht wie rôt ist mir der munt. Dô het er gemachet also rîche von bluomen eine bettestat: des wirt noch gelachet innecliche, kumt iemen an daz selbe pfat. bî den rosen er wol mac                 tandaradei merken wâ mirz houbet lac. Da zer bî mir gelaege, wessez iemen (nu enwelle* got!) so schämt ich mich, was er mit mir pflaege, niemer nîemen bevinde daz, wan er unt ich, unt ein kleinez vogellon -                 tandaradei daz mac wol getriuwe sîn *enwelle = wolle nicht.

muget vriedel emphangen vrouwe kuste er Mir ist hete phat laege schämte phlaege

Pronunciation:

ie, iu, uo, the accent on first vowel: fe, hi, uo.

ei = ei in Portuguese, Italian, Danish, Russian etc. e+i, not a+i as in Neuhochdeutsch

sch = s+ch same as in Dutch & Greek.

H at end of syllable or before consonant = Swiss ch, nahtegal, sehr, nachtegal, lacht.

Z = ts, zz = ss.

Vowels with circumflex long, all others short: tal, not tâl, schämt, not schämt.

Dipthongs of course long.