| Author(s) | Paul Lafargue |
|---|---|
| Written | 14 December 1889 |
PAUL LAFARGUE TO NIKOLAION (DANIELSON)
IN ST. PETERSBURG
Le Perreux, 14 December 1889
Dear Sir,
Thank you for your letter and for the news it contains about my articles: I have still not received anything from the directress of the Review.[1]
Engels' eyes are still ailing: however I think that, thanks to the precautions he is taking, they are better rather than worse. Engels does not like to talk about himself; it is only from third parties that I learn about his state of health which, fortunately, is satisfactory.
He is working at the moment on the 3rd volume of Capital; Kautsky is helping him.[2] You are familiar with Williams'[3] cramped handwriting; on the manuscripts it is even worse; since they contain abbreviations which have to be guessed at, crossings-out and innumerable corrections which have to be deciphered; it is as difficult to read as a Greek palimpsest with ligatures. Kautsky reads the manuscript through and makes a copy which Engels then verifies with the other manuscripts. In one of his recent letters, Engels wrote that he was satisfied with this way of working, and that Kautsky was very good at making out Williams' writing.
Engels has just passed his sixty-ninth birthday and, as he wrote to me, even if one turns the figures upside down, they still read 69; I replied that he had only to wait until he was 99 to become 66 by inversion. It is extraordinary that he is able to work on the publication of Williams' works, and keep up his vast correspondence with almost all the countries of Europe and America. I do not know if he writes to you in Russian, which he reads fluently, but he insists on corresponding in the language of the person he is writing to. He is a veritable polyglot and knows not only literary languages, but even dialects such as Icelandic, and ancient languages such as Provençal and Catalan. His knowledge of these languages is not superficial; in Spain and Portugal I read letters to friends there who found that they were written in perfect Spanish and Portuguese, and I know that he writes in Italian. There is nothing more difficult than to write in these three sister-languages full of similarities, and not become confused. Engels, however, is a marvellous man, I have never come across such a mind, so young and alert and an erudition so encyclopedic. When one thinks that for more than 20 years he worked as a legal consultant with a Manchester trading establishment, one wonders when he found the time to amass all the knowledge contained inside a head which, be it said, is not very large, in spite of the fact that he is very tall.
I shall pass on to Kautsky what you say about him, and he will be happy, as I am, to learn that his work is appreciated in Russia as it is in Germany and France.
My articles will contain tables to illustrate, it is impossible to engage in comparative and philosophical statistics without illustration. I am sending you one of the tables. If the Review so wishes, I can send the cliches for the tables; but I would prefer it if they had them remade, since I shall extend my research up to 1888, and not 1886. I shall have the engravings made, it will not be very expensive; because they will be reproduced using the photo-engraving method, as was the one which I am sending you.
My best regards
P. Farguale[4]