Et Tu, Brute? Friderice Graeber, hoc est res quam nunquam de te 
crediderim! Tu jocas ad cartas? passionaliter? O Tempores o moria! Res 
dignissima memoria! Unde est tua gloria?* Where is your honour and 
your Christianity? Est itum ad Diabolum! Quis est, qui te seduxit? 
Nonne verbum meum fruxit (has borne fruit)? O fili mi, verte,> 
otherwise I'll beat you with rod and switch, cartas abandona, fac 
multa bona, et vitam agas integram, partem recuperabis optimam! Vides 
amorem meum, ut spiritum faulenzendeum egi ad linguam latinam et dic 
obstupatus: quinam fecit Angelum ita tollum, nonsensitatis vollum, 
plenum et, plus ancora much: hoc fecit’ excessive card-playing. 
Recollect yourself, you evil-doer, think what is the purpose of your 
existence! Robber, think of how you are sinning against everything 
sacred and profane! Cards! They are cut from the skin of the 
devil. O you terrible people. I think of you only with tears or 
gnashing of teeth. Ha, I am filled with inspiration. On the 
nineteenth day of the second month of 1839, on the day when 
midday is at twelve o’clock, a storm seized me and carried me afar 
and there I saw them playing cards, and then it was time to eat. 
To be continued. 

And behold, there arose from the Orient a dreadful thunder- 
storm, so that the windows rattled and the hailstones came beating 
down, but still they went on playing. Thereat a quarrel arose and 
the King of the Orient marched into battle against the Prince of 
the Occident and midnight echoed with the cries of the combat- 
ants. And the Prince of the Sea rose up against the lands in the 
Orient and a battle took place in front of his town, the like of 
which was never before seen by men. But they went on playing. 
And seven spirits came down from heaven. The first wore a long 
coat and his beard came down to his chest. He was called Faust. 
And the second spirit had a venerable fringe of grey hair round 
his bald head and he called out “Woe, woe, woe!” He was called 

To Friedrich Graeber, February 19, 1839 415 

Lear. And the third spirit was of great stature and enormous to 
behold and his name was Wallenstein. And the fourth spirit was 
like the children of Anak* and he carried a cudgel like to the 
cedars of Lebanon. He was called Hercules. And the fifth was 
made of iron through and through and his name was written on his 
brow — Siegfried — and by his side strode a mighty warrior whose 
sword gleamed like lightning. He was the sixth and his name was 
Roland. And the seventh spirit carried a turban on the point of his 
sword and swung a banner over his head on which was written — 
Mio Cid. And the seven spirits knocked on the door of the players, 
but they paid no heed. And behold, there arose from midnight a 
great brightness which spread over the whole earth like an eagle, 
and when it was gone I saw the players no more. But written in 
black letters on the door was 19731> And I was struck dumb. 

If my letter to Wilhelm’ was not sufficient proof of my 
madness, I hope that it will not occur to any of you now to doubt 
it. If this is not the case, I am willing to give you even more 
convincing proof. 

Future of the five card-players 

I have just seen in the Telegraph a review of the poems of 
Winkler, the Barmen. missionary.’ They are trounced terribly 
and a mass of extracts are given which have a distinct missionary 
flavour. If the paper comes to Barmen, that will be the end of 
Gutzkow’s reputation there, which is already low. These extracts 
are really infinitely revolting— Pol is an angel by comparison. 
Lord Jesus, heal the issue of blood of my sins (an allusion to the 

well-known story in the Gospel*) and a lot more like this. I am 
despairing more and more about Barmen. It is finished as far as 
literary matters are concerned. What is printed there is, at best, 
piffle, with the exception of the sermons. Religious things are 
usually nonsense. Truly, it is not without justification that Barmen 
and Elberfeld are cried down as obscurantist and mystic. Bremen 
has the same reputation and resembles them in many ways. 
Philistinism linked with religious zealotry, with, moreover, in 
Bremen’s case, a vile constitution, hinders any uplifting of the 
spirit, and one of the most outstanding hindrances is F. W. 
Krummacher.— Blank is complaining so terribly about the Elber- 
feld preachers, especially Koh] and Hermann, that I should like to 
know whether he is right. He attacks them for their dryness 
more than anything else, with the sole exception of Krum- 
macher.— What the missionary writes about love is extremely 
comical. Look, I shall give you something like it. 

The Pietist Declares His Love 

Respected maiden, after struggling hard and long 
Against all worldly joys, because their lure was strong, 

I come to Thee to ask if Thou wouldst not wish me 

In honour bound Thy lawful wedded Spouse to be. 
Although I love Thee not—that were too much to ask— 
I love in Thee the Lord, who— 

No— it won’t do. You can’t go making satires on things like this 
without dragging in the most sacred things behind which these 
people hide themselves. I should like to see a marriage in which 
the man does not love his wife but Christ in his wife; and is it not 
an obvious question there whether he also sleeps with Christ in his 
wife? Where can you find nonsense like this in the Bible? In the 
Song of Songs it says— “How fair and how pleasant art thou, O 
love, for delights!”’ But, to be sure, any defence whatever of 
sensuousness is attacked nowadays in spite of David, Solomon and 
God knows whom. I can get terribly annoyed over this kind of 
thing. In addition, these fellows pride themselves on having the 
true teaching and they damn anybody who does not so much 
doubt what is in the Bible, as interpret it in a different way from 
them. It is a pretty business. If anyone should dare to say that this 
or that verse is an interpolation, then they'll soon go for you. 
Gustav Schwab is the finest chap in the world, and even orthodox, 

but the mystics do not think anything of him because he is not 
always playing them religious songs in the style of: You say lama 
Christian, and in one of his poems hints at a possible understand- 
ing between rationalists and mystics.* As far as religious poetry is 
concerned, it is at an end for the time being until someone comes 
along who can give it a new impetus. With both Catholics and 
Protestants everything goes on in the same old humdrum way. 
The Catholics compose hymns about the Virgin Mary, the Protes- 
tants sing the old songs with the most prosaic words in the world. 
These horrible abstractions — sanctification, conversion, justifica- 
tion and lord knows what loci communes? and hackneyed flour- 
ishes. Out of anger at present-day religious poetry, out of very 
piety, that is, one might well go over to the devil. Is our time 
so shabby that it is impossible for anyone to set religious poetry on 
to new paths? Incidentally, I think that the most contemporary 
kind is that which I have used in my Sturm and Florida,‘ con- 
cerning which I ask you for the most detailed review on pain 
of not-receiving-any-more-poems. It is inexcusable of Wurm to 
hold on to the letters. 

Yours, 
Friedrich Engels