Letter to Pasquale Martignetti, January 10, 1888

Author(s) Friedrich Engels
Written 10 January 1888


First published, in the language of the original (German), in La corrispondenza di Marx e Engels con italiani. 1848-1895, Milano, 1964
Published in English for the first time in Marx-Engels Collected Works, Volume 48


ENGELS TO PASQUALE MARTIGNETTI

IN BENEVENTO

London, 10 January 1888

Dear Friend,

I would have written to you long ago, but could only suppose that you were no longer in Benevento, for one of the periodicals you very kindly sent me bore a different address with a domicile I didn't know. So I have been awaiting further word from you.

The ludicrous charge brought against you in connection with the embezzlement of LI5,000 is best refuted by the fact that you have been given employment by the government prefect himself. I trust that the whole intrigue will fizzle out before things get to the stage of public proceedings.

I don't know how the Hamburg business passed off; I have heard no further news on the subject from Wedde.[1] But it is just as well that nothing has come of it. The Prussian government has at last managed to bring the government of the Hamburg 'republic' to heel. Our newspa- per there[2] has been banned; Wedde, the editor, though a citizen of Hamburg, has been banished from his native city, and some twenty socialists have been sentenced in Altona (the neighbouring Prussian town) and will, on release, be expelled from Hamburg. Under the circumstances you too would have been expelled from there and, as a foreigner, from the German Empire as a whole; and the cost of the double removal complete with family would have been ruinous.

I am grateful for the trouble you are taking over my biography and shall be happy to go over your translation.[3] But I doubt whether it would be worth your while getting it published as a pamphlet. After all, I'm as good as unknown in Italy and among those who do happen to know me there are many anarchists, by whom I am hated rather than loved. But I leave this to you.

I shall also be able to attend to your manuscript within the next few weeks, after which it will go off to you at once.[4] Unfortunately I still have to spare my eyes.

With sincere regards,

Yours ever,

F. Engels

Mefistofele I will be posted this evening.

  1. ↑ Early in 1887 Pasquale Martignetti, an Italian socialist, approached Engels with the request to help him find work outside Italy as he was being persecuted for his views (see note 8). Engels, through the mediation of Johannes Wedde, editor of the Hamburg-based Social Democratic newspaper Biirger-Zeitung, tried to find a job for Martignetti, but failed in his attempt.
  2. ↑ Bürgerzeitung
  3. ↑ Martignetti's letter to Engels (dated 3 January 1888) was accompanied by the issue of the journal Mefistofele, carrying the first instalment of the Italian translation of Engels' biography written by Karl Kautsky. Martignetti intended to continue the publication in this journal of excerpts from Kautsky's work and then have it published in full as a separate pamphlet. For this reason he asked Engels to look through the translations in the Mefistofele and send him comments on the translation. The Engels biography was published in the journal between 1 January and 30 November 1888.
  4. ↑ In February 1886 P. Martignetti sent his Italian translation of Marx's Wage Labour and Capital for Engels to peruse. However, because of his work on the English edition of Volume I of Capital, and his eye disease, Engels was unable to read the Italian translation immediately. It was published in Milan only in 1893.