[Bremen, November 13-20, 1839]

Nov. 13, 1839. Dearest Guilielme, why don’t you write? You all
belong to the category of idlers and loungers. But I am a different
fellow! Not only do I write to you more than you deserve, not only
am I acquiring an exceptional acquaintance with all literatures of
the world, I am also quietly making for myself in short stories and
poems a memorial of glory which, unless the censor’s breath turns
the bright gleam of steel to ugly rust, will shine in brilliant,
youthful radiance through all German lands, Austria excepted. In
my breast it ferments and boils, in my sometimes drunken head it
glows quite exceptionally; I long to find a great thought which will
clear the ferment and blow the glow into a bright flame. A
splendid subject, compared with which all my previous ones are
mere childishness, is working upwards in my mind. What I want
to do is to reveal in a “fairy story” or something like that those
foreshadowings of the modern world that showed themselves in
the Middle Ages; I want to uncover those spirits who knocked
under the hard crust of the earth for release, buried beneath
the foundations of churches and dungeons. I want to try and resolve at least part of Gutzkow’s task: the true second part of
Faust— Faust no longer an egoist but sacrificing himself for

a The end of the letter is missing.— Ed.

mankind—has yet to be written. There is Faust, there is the
Wandering Jew, there is the Wild Huntsman, three types of the
anticipated spiritual freedom which can easily be placed in
connection and relation with Jan Huss. What a poetic background
is given to me there, against which these three demons work their
will! The idea of the Wild Huntsman, formerly begun in metre, has
merged into it-~These three types (why don’t you write, you
fellows? Nov. 14) I shall treat in a most original manner; I
promise myself a particular effect from the interpretation of
Ahasuerus and the Wild Huntsman. To make the subject more
poetic and the details more significant I can easily weave in other
things from German tradition—but there is time for that yet.
While the short story I am working on at present is more of a
mere study in style and character portraying, this is to be the
real thing on which I found my hopes for my name.

Nov. 15. No letter today either? What shall I do? What shall I
think of you? I can’t understand you. Nov. 20. And if you don’t
write today I shall geld you in thoughts and make you wait as long
as you do me. An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, a letter for a
letter. But you hypocrites say: Not an eye for an eye, not a tooth
for a tooth, not a letter for a letter, and fob me off with your
damned Christian sophistry. No, better a good pagan than a bad
Christian.

Poets of world-weariness

A young Jew has arisen, Theodor Creizenach, who writes most
excellent poems and even better verses. He has written a comedy*
in which W. Menzel and company are ridiculed in the most
priceless fashion. Everybody is now flocking to the modern school

* Th. Creizenach, Der schwibische Apoll.— Ed.

To Wilhelm Graeber, November 13-20, 1839 483

and building houses, palaces or little huts on the foundation of
the great ideas of the time. Everything else is going to the dogs,
sentimental little songs die away unheard, and the ringing horn
waits for a huntsman to sound it for the hunting of tyrants; and
God’s storm rustles in the tree-tops and the youth of Germany
stand in the grove, clashing their swords and raising high their
brimming cups; from the mountain-tops the burning castles blaze,
thrones shake, altars tremble, and if the Lord calls in storm and
thunder: Forward, forward! who will resist us?#

wer Friedrid Cnoels
oberster Poet im Bremer R ‘aths keller ee previlegute,

LECHE
Thun Fund und 3s wiffen ER entn, Gegenwart gen

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bu Lyne
Da Ohhh! ae te SE) Es
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In Berlin lives a young poet, Karl Grün, of whom I have these
days read a Buch der Wanderungen which is very good. But he is
said to be twenty-seven already, and at that age he should be able
to write better. Now and again he has very striking thoughts, but
often dreadful Hegelian phrases. What does this mean, for

* Further comes the following joking text: “We, Friedrich Engels, supreme poet
in the Bremen town-hall cellar and privileged boozer, announce and make known
to all and sundry, past, present, absent and future, that you are all asses, lazy
creatures, who are wasting away from disgust with your own existence, scoundrels
who don’t write to me, and so on, and so on. Written on our office stool at a time
when we had no hangover. Friedrich Engels.” — Ed.

instance: “Sophocles is the highly moral Greece which lets its
titanic outbursts break against the wall of absolute necessity. In
Shakespeare the concept of absolute character made its appearance.” *

The night before last I had a great booze-up in the wine cellar
on two bottles of beer and two and a half bottles of 1794 Rudesheimer. My prospective publisher and diverse philistines were
with me. Specimen of an argument with one of these philistines
on the Bremen constitution: I: In Bremen the opposition to the
government is not of the right kind since it consists of the money
aristocracy, the aldermen who oppose the aristocracy of rank, the
Senate. He: You cannot really maintain that, can you? I: Why not?
He: Prove your assertion.— That sort of thing passes for argument here! Oh, you philistines, go and learn Greek, and come
again. Anyone that knows Greek also knows how to argue rite. I
can argue six such fellows to death at once, even if I am
half-seas over and they are sober. These people cannot follow a
thought through to its necessary conclusions for three seconds, but
everything goes in spasms; you only need let them speak for half
an hour, throw in a few seemingly innocent questions, and they
contradict themselves splendidamente. They are dreadfully stolid
people, these philistines; I began to sing, but they resolved
unanimously against me that they would eat first, and then sing.
They stuffed themselves with oysters, while I went on angrily
smoking, drinking and shouting without taking any notice of
them, until I fell into a blissful slumber. I am now a large-scale
importer of banned books into Prussia; Bérne’s Franzosenfresser in
four copies, the Briefe aus Paris by the same, six volumes,
Venedey’s Preussen und Preussenthum, most strictly prohibited, in
five copies, are lying ready for dispatch to Barmen. The last two
volumes of the Briefe aus Paris I had not yet read; they are
magnificent. King Otto of Greece is given a terrible going-over;
thus he says on one occasion:

“If 1 were God I would have great fun: I would let all the great Greeks rise
again one night.” >

Then comes a very fine description of how these Hellenes
walk about in Athens, Pericles, Aristotle and others. Then it
is announced: King Otto has come. Everybody gets up, Dio-

* Buch der Wanderungen. Ostsee und Rhein, Cassel und Leipzig, 1839, S. XXV.
(Grün’s book was published under the pseudonym of Ernst von der Haide.) — Ed.

> L. Bérne, Briefe aus Paris, Brief 89.— Ed.

To Wilhelm Graeber, November 13-20, 1839 485

genes trims his lamp, and all hurry to Piraeus. King Otto has
landed and is making the following speech:

“Hellenes, look up. The sky has taken on the Bavarian national colour.” (This
speech is really too good, I must copy it out in full.) “For in the most ancient
times Greece belonged to Bavaria. The Pelasgians lived in the Odenwald, and
Inachus was born in Landshut. I have come to make you happy. Your demagogues, seditionists and journalists have brought your beautiful land to ruin.
The fatal freedom of the press has thrown everything into confusion. Just see what
the olive-trees look like. I would have come to you long ago, but I could not do so,
for I have not yet been long in this world. Now you are a member of the Deutsche
Bund; my ministers will inform you of the latest decisions of the Bund. I shall know
how to safeguard the rights of my crown and by and by make you happy. For my
civil list” (salary of the king in a constitutional state) “you shall annually give
me 6 million piastres, and I allow you to pay my debts.” *

The Greeks become confused, Diogenes shines his lamp in the
king’s face, and Hippocrates has ordered six cartloads of hellebore
to be fetched, etc., etc. This whole ironical poem is a masterpiece
of biting satire and written in a style that is divine. The reason
why you like Borne less is because you are reading one of his
weakest and earliest works, the Schilderungen aus Paris. The Dramaturgische Blatter, the criticisms, the aphorisms, but above all the
Briefe aus Paris and the marvellous Franzosenfresser stand infinitely
higher. The description of the collection of paintings is very boring, there you are right. But the grace, the Herculean strength,
the depth of feeling, the devastating wit of the Franzosenfresser
are unsurpassable. I hope we shall meet at Easter or else in the
autumn in Barmen, and then you shall get a better idea of
this Bérne.— What you write about Torstrick’s duel is indeed
different from his own version, but in any case he is the one
who had the most unpleasantness from it. He is a good fellow, but he lives in extremes, now drunk, then a little pedantic.

Continuation. If you are of the opinion that German literature
has gradually fallen asleep, you are greatly mistaken. Don’t think
that because you hide your head from it like an ostrich and don’t
see it, it has ceased to exist. Au contraire, it is developing quite
appreciably, as would be clear to you if you paid more attention to
it and didn’t live in Prussia, where the works of Gutzkow, etc.,
first require a special and rarely granted permission.— You are
equally mistaken in thinking I should return to Christianity. Pro
primo, it is ridiculous to me that I no longer count with you as a
Christian, and pro secundo, that you think anyone who for the sake
of the Idea has stripped off what is fantastical in orthodoxy could

* Ibid. — Fa.

submit to that strait jacket again. A true rationalist can perhaps do
so by acknowledging that his natural explanation of miracles and
his shallow moralising are insufficient; but mythicism and speculation cannot again descend from their dawn-reddened snow-capped
peaks into the misty valleys of orthodoxy.— For I am on the point
of becoming a Hegelian. Whether I shall become one I don’t, of
course, know yet, but Strauss has lit up lights on Hegel for me
which make the thing quite plausible to me. His (Hegel’s)
philosophy of history is anyway written as from my own heart. Do
see that you get hold of Strauss’ Charakteristiken und Kritiken, the
essay on Schleiermacher and Daub is wonderful.?!* Nobody else
writes so penetratingly, clearly and interestingly as Strauss. By the
way, he is not at all infallible; even if his entire Leben Jesu should
be discovered to be a collection of sheer sophistries, still the first
thing that makes this work so important is its basic idea of the
mythical in Christianity; and the discovery would not damage this
idea, for it can always be applied anew to biblical history. And that
he has not only conceived the idea but also carried it out with such
undeniable excellence raises Strauss’ merit still higher. A good
exegetist may be able to convict him here and there of a mistake
or of falling into extremes, just as Luther was in detail open to
criticism; but that, of course, does not matter. If Tholuck has ever
said anything good about Strauss? that is either a sheer accident or
an apt reminiscence; Tholuck’s scholarliness is too diffuse and
with that he is merely receptive, not even critical, much less
productive. The good ideas Tholuck has had can easily be
counted, and he himself destroyed any belief in the scientific
character of his polemics as far back as ten years ago by his
controversy with Wegscheider and Gesenius. Tholuck’s scientific
effect has in no way been lasting, and his time is long past.
Hengstenberg did at least once have an original, even if absurd
thought: that of the prophetic perspective.— It is incomprehensible to me that you care for nothing that goes beyond Hengstenberg and Neander. With all due respect for Neander, he is not
scientific. Instead of setting intellect and reason solidly to work in
his writings, even if at some point he should come into Opposition to
the Bible, whenever he fears that might happen he lets science take
care of itself and comes out with empiricism or pious sentiment.
He is much too pious and amiable to be able to oppose Strauss. Precisely by these pious outbursts in which his Leben Jesu abounds
he blunts the point even of his genuinely scientific arguments.

* A. Tholuck, Die Glaubwürdigkeit der evangelischen Geschichte— Ed.

To Friedrich Graeber, December 9, 1839-February 5, 1840 487

A propos—a few days ago I read in the paper that Hegelian
philosophy has been banned in Prussia, that a famous Hegelian
lecturer in Halle has been induced by a ministerial rescript to
suspend his lectures and that it has been intimated to several
junior Halle lecturers of the same colour (presumably Ruge, etc.)
that they cannot expect appointments. It is said that by this same
rescript the definitive ban on the Berlin Jahrbiicher ftir wissenschaftliche Kritik has been decided. I have not yet heard
anything further. I cannot believe even the Prussian Government
capable of such an unheard-of act of violence, although Borne
prophesied it as long as five years ago, and Hengstenberg, an
intimate friend of the Crown Prince,’ as well as Neander, is said to
be a declared enemy of the Hegelian school. If you hear anything
of the business, write to me about it. Now I'll study Hegel over a
glass of punch. Adios. Expecting a letter from you soon,

Friedrich Engels

Berlin, 1920 ane