Letter to Minna Kautsky, November 26, 1885

Add a subpage to this text

Read the help page for usage.

 

To Minna Kautsky in Vienna

London, November 26, 1885

Dear Mrs Kautsky,

(You will, I hope, permit me to use this simple form of address, for why should two people like ourselves continue to stand on ceremony?) First of all, very many thanks for your kind references to myself. I was very sorry not to have been able to spend more time with you while you were here; it gave me infinite pleasure, I do assure you, to meet for once a German authoress who had also remained a simple woman — in this respect it has been my misfortune to meet only affected, ‘eddicated’ Berlin ladies of the kind one would not urge to take up the kitchen spoon again, if only because they would eventually wreak more havoc with it than with the pen. So I hope that it won’t be too long before you cross the Narrow Seas again, when you and I shall be able to ramble gently round London and its purlieus, exchanging light-hearted banter lest our conversation should become altogether too serious.

That London didn’t please you, I can readily believe. Some years ago I used to feel much the same. It is difficult to accustom oneself to the gloomy atmosphere and, for the most part, gloomy people, to the reserve, the class distinctions in social life, to living shut up indoors as the climate demands. One has to temper somewhat the animal spirits imported from the Continent and let the barometer of joie de vivre fall from, say, 760 to 750 millimetres, until one finally becomes acclimatised. Then one gradually reconciles oneself to the whole thing, discovering that the place has its good points, that people are on the whole more straightforward and reliable than elsewhere, that no city is better suited to the writing of learned works than London, and that the absence of harassment by the police makes up for a great deal. I know and love Paris but, given the choice, I would rather settle permanently in London than there. Paris can only be enjoyed properly if you become a Parisian yourself, with all the prejudices of a Parisian, if you confine your interests primarily to things Parisian and accustom yourself to believing that Paris is the centre of the world, the be-all and end-all. London is uglier yet more grandiose than Paris, and is the true centre of world trade; it also offers a far greater variety. But London also permits one to maintain a completely neutral attitude towards one’s surroundings as a whole, as is essential to scientific and, indeed, artistic impartiality. One adores Paris and Vienna, detests Berlin, but towards London one’s feelings are those of neutral indifference and objectivity. And that also counts for something.

Apropos Berlin. I am glad to hear that that wretched place is at last succeeding in becoming a metropolis. But as Rahel Varnhagen said as much as 70 years ago: In Berlin everything becomes shabby, so that Berlin would seem to be trying to show the rest of the world just how shabby a metropolis can be. Only poison all eddicated Berliners, conjure up at least tolerable surroundings there, and rebuild the whole place from the foundations up, and something decent might be made of it. But not, I think, so long as that dialect continues to be spoken there.

I have now also read Die Alten und die Neuen, for which I sincerely thank you. The life of the salt-mine workers is described with as masterly a pen as were the portraits of the peasants in Stefan. The descriptions of the life of Vienna society are for the most part likewise very fine. Vienna is indeed the only German city which has a society; Berlin possesses merely “certain circles,” and still more uncertain ones, that is why its soil produces only novels about men of letters, officials or actors. You are in a better position to judge whether the plot in this part of your work develops sometimes too rapidly. Many things that may give us this impression, perhaps look quite natural in Vienna considering the city’s peculiar international character and its intermixture with Southern and East-European elements. In both spheres the characters exhibit the sharp individualisation so customary in your work. Each of them is a type but at the same time also a definite individual, a “Dieser,” as old Hegel would say, and that is how it should be. And now, to be impartial, I have to find fault with something, which brings me to Arnold. He is really much too worthy a man and when he is finally killed in a landslide one can reconcile this with poetic justice only by assuming that he was too good for this world. But it is always bad if an author adores his own hero and this is the error which to some extent you seem to me to have fallen into here. In Elsa there is still a certain individualisation, though she is also idealised, but in Arnold the personality merges still more in the principle.

The novel itself reveals the origins of this shortcoming. You obviously felt a desire to take a public stand in your book, to testify to your convictions before the entire world. This has now been done; it is a stage you have passed through and need not repeat in this form. I am by no means opposed to partisan poetry as such. Both Aeschylus, the father of tragedy, and Aristophanes, the father of comedy, were highly partisan poets, Dante and Cervantes were so no less, and the best thing that can be said about Schiller’s Kabale und Liebe is that it represents the first German political problem drama. The modern Russians and Norwegians, who produce excellent novels, all write with a purpose. I think however that the purpose must become manifest from the situation and the action themselves without being expressly pointed out and that the author does not have to serve the reader on a platter — the future historical resolution of the social conflicts which he describes. To this must be added that under, our conditions novels are mostly addressed to readers from bourgeois circles, i.e., circles which are not directly ours. Thus the socialist problem novel in my opinion fully carries out its mission if by a faithful portrayal of the real conditions it dispels the dominant conventional illusions concerning them, shakes the optimism of the bourgeois world, and inevitably instils doubt as to the eternal validity of that which exists, without itself offering a direct solution of the problem involved, even without at times ostensibly taking sides. Here your exact knowledge and admirably fresh and lifelike presentation of both the Austrian peasants and Vienna “society” find ample material, and in Stefan you have demonstrated that you are capable of treating your characters with the fine irony which attests to the author’s dominion over the beings he has created.

But now I must finish, or I shall bore you to tears. Everything here is as before. Karl and his wife are studying physiology in Aveling’s evening classes, and are also working diligently; I am likewise engrossed in work; Lenchen, Pumps and her husband are going to the theatre this evening to see a sensational play, and meanwhile old Europe is preparing to set itself in motion again — and not before time, perhaps. I simply hope that it gives me time to finish the third volume of Capital, then it can begin!

In cordial friendship and with sincere respect I am Yours,

F. Engels