MARX TO WILHELM ALEXANDER FREUND ”° 

London, 21 January 1877 
41 Maitland Park Crescent, N. W. 

Dear Friend Freund,” 

My New Year’s greetings to you and your dear wife are, 
unfortunately, belated owing to pressure of work and a sore throat 
which I caught during my last days in Karlsbad. My fate there was 
similar to that of Martin Luther’s peasant who, given a leg up on 
one side of his horse, fell off on the other.**° 

My daughter“ sends her best regards to your wife and yourself. 
She has, inter alia, been guilty of a translation, published by the 
local Shakespeare Society of which she is a member, of Professor 
Delius’ ‘Das epische Element in Shakespeare’, a translation which has, 
however, earned her the highest praise from Mr Delius.”*’ She has 
requested me to ask you for the name of the Swabian anti- 

a Alexander II - > A play on words by Marx: ‘Freund’=friend. - © Eleanor Marx 

Shakespeare professor and the title of his book about which you 
spoke to us in Karlsbad.” The matador of the Shakespeare 
Society here, Mr Furnivall, is determined not to forego enjoyment 
of that opus. 

The ‘Oriental Question’ (which will end up with a revolution in 
Russia, whatever the outcome of the war against Turkey ”’’), and 
the mustering of the Social-Democratic legions at home”’” will 
perhaps have convinced the German cultural philistine that there 
are more important things in the world than Richard Wagner’s 
music of the future. 

With kindest regards to you and your dear wife, 

Your most sincere friend, 
Karl Marx 

Should you happen to see Dr Traube, would you be so good as 
to give him my kindest regards and remind him that he promised 
to send me the titles of his various publications. This would be of 
great importance to my friend Engels, who is engaged on a work 
on natural philosophy* and intends to give more weight to 
Traube’s achievements than has hitherto been done.?*