Letter to Pasquale Martignetti, June 19, 1883

Author(s) Friedrich Engels
Written 19 June 1883


First published in La corrispondenza di Marx e Engels con italiani. 1848-1895, Milano, 1964
Printed according to the original
Translated from the Italian
Published in English for the first time in Marx-Engels Collected Works, Volume 47


ENGELS TO PASQUALE MARTIGNETTI

IN BENEVENTO

London, 19 June 1883

122 Regent's Park Road, N. W.

Dear Sir,

I was very pleased to receive your fine Italian translation of my Socialism: Utopian and Scientific.[1] I have been through it and I have suggested minor alterations in a number of places, although I am diffident and aware that my Italian is imperfect and that I am out of practice. I hope that despite this you can understand the translation (into Italian or French) of the additions to the first German edition which I have inserted at the corresponding points in your manuscript.

I am enclosing a copy of the recently published German edition, and a copy of the 2nd edition, which is going to press at the moment, will follow.[2] I am sorry that the translation could not have been made from the German text, since Italian is much better suited than French to the dialectical mode of presentation.

Thank you for your kind offer to send me several copies of the translation; six, or at most a dozen, will be enough.

Yours respectfully,

Fred. Engels

I am sending by the midday post a registered parcel containing

1) your manuscript, 2) the copy of the German edition.

  1. ↑ On 12 June 1883 Pasquale Martignetti wrote to tell Engels that he had read his work Socialism: Utopian and Scientific and intended to publicise it in Italy. With this in mind, Martignetti made an Italian translation from the French one by Paul Lafargue and sent it to Engels for the latter to look through. Apart from minor insertions, Engels made major additions to the text which had not featured in the French version.
  2. ↑ The reference is to Engels' Socialism: Utopian and Scientific (see present edition, Vol. 24) which in 1883 was published in three German editions running to a total of 10,000 copies. The work was composed of three revised chapters by Engels from his work Herr Eugen Dühring's Revolution in Science (Anti-Dühring) (see present edition, Vol. 25).