| Author(s) | Karl Marx |
|---|---|
| Written | 13 June 1854 |
MARX TO ENGELS
IN MANCHESTER
London, 13 June 1854 28 Dean Street, Soho Dear Frederic,
Enclosed letters from Cluss which you needn't return since they have already been made known to the competent people and have been answered.
The article on Silistria[1] is splendid. The request made through Austria to Russia[2] that she promise to evacuate the Danubian principalities (the intention being to conclude an armistice and convene a congress in Vienna on the strength of that promise) was of purely Russian inspiration. At the same time it was assumed that Silistria would quickly fall into Russian hands. The English public had been prepared for this event by the entire ministerial press. HENCE Paskievich's haste. The resistance of the Turks at Silistria upset these calculations—just as happened to a similar plan that had matured the previous autumn.
COLONEL Grach is an acquaintance of mine from Trier; not one of your Prussian instructors, but a talented ADVENTURER who went to Turkey as much as 19 or so years ago to seek his fortune.[3] A crapaud[4] in the know tells me that Boichot, who was caught in Paris, had in fact been sent to France as a political emissary by Pyat's clique and not, as Pyat declares in execrable English in the Advertiser, to pay a visit to his old mother, whom he hadn't seen for 5 years. It's really repulsive the way the crapauds continually act out of character and remain addicted to these 'melodramatic' lies calculated to appeal to the hearts of the petty bourgeois. C'est dégoûtante[5]
You will shortly have another consignment of Pioniers. Heinzen, of course, is ranting and roaring dreadfully about the defunct Reform, and has actually managed to trot out a quotation from Catullus, no doubt picked up from a school-book complete with crib. Also contains comical diatribes against Dulon. The great Ruge writes to them both, friend 'Dulon' and friend 'Heinzen'. He informs the latter of his grand design for the foundation of a free university in Cincinnati where Ruge intends to drone away agreeably the remainder of his days as rector magnificus in partibus.[6]
He can hardly wait to become a professor at last, something which, for all his servility, he was unable to 'wrest' from the Saxon Minister Lindenau or, before that, from the Prussian Minister Altenstein. 'Doctorates' will also be awarded in this glorified contrefaçon[7] of a German university. All that is needed is dollars to the tune of 1,000,000 and 6 citizens of Cincinnati to administer the finances. In addition, a prospectus covering all disciplines. A wild omnium gatherum, mixtum compositum[8] of headings from Hegel's Encyclopädie and the table of contents from Ersch and Gruber.[9] E.g. General Linguistics. (Cf. Ersch and Gruber, Pott's article on the distribution of languages.) The following are to be excluded from professorial chairs: 1. Strauss and Bruno Bauer; 2. the 'Sophists' who make stuff and nonsense of philosophy; 3. not the doctrine of communism, but the 'vile personages who have betrayed the Republic and Liberty'.[10]
In one of his rotten letters Ruge extols 2 anonymous pamphlets on Palmerston—never, of course, suspecting that one of them originated with me.[11]
My wife is now confined to bed. Yesterday I at last managed to persuade her to call Dr Freund. As soon as she is at all fit to do so, he wants her to take a trip to Germany, which accords with the wishes of my mother-in-law[12] and has been impossible hitherto only on financial grounds, but will have to be engineered somehow. The children are back at school today.
Dronke's bad luck is tragi-comical. The fellows seem to be playing havoc in Bradford.
Your
K. M.