[Lendon,] 11 April 1877 

Dear Bracke, 

Your title’s a good one, except that, instead of ‘text’ you should 
put ‘original text’ or else just ‘original’, whichever you please.” 

I am returning the first proof-sheet with this note; it will do, 
because the little madam,* despite her evident annoyance with 
myself, has stuck pretty accurately to my corrections. But every 
now and again she makes mistakes which are a bit too much of a 
good thing. On p. 14 we read: ‘As luck would have it, a vague 

4 Isolde Kurz 

piece of news burst open the doors.’ How can a ‘piece of news’, 
and a ‘vague’ one at that, burst open doors? In French it’s ‘une 
vague nouvelle’, which should read: ‘a fresh wave’ (of people) that 
is! 

Moreover, the translation has gone damned slowly up till now. 

Could you send me an approximate list of works which have 
appeared in Germany during recent years on the commercial and 
industrial crisis there ’’*? 

What your complaint chiefly calls for is a ‘good’ doctor. But 
whatever you do, don’t treat the thing too lightly. Easy to cure in 
the early stages, the illness will become malignant if not dealt with 
in good time. 

Engels is very dissatisfied with the way in which the Vorwarts is 
printing his anti-Dühring piece. First they forced him into doing 
it, and now they pay not the slightest heed to the terms of the 
contract. At election time,’ when no one did any reading, his 
articles were simply used to fill up space; next, they print short, 
disjointed fragments, one fragment one week, another a fortnight 
or three weeks later, which means that readers (working men in 
particular) lose the thread. Engels wrote, admonishing Lieb- 
knecht.* He believes that this way of going about things is 
deliberate, that there’s been intimidation by Mr Dühring’s handful 
of supporters. It would be quite natural if the same blockheads 
who originally made such a song and dance about the ‘deathly 
silencing of the hollow fool’ should now wish to silence his critics. It’s 
all very well for Mr Most to talk about the undue length of the 
articles. His apology for Dühring,'” luckily for him never published, 
was very long indeed, and if Mr Most has failed to note that there’s 
much to be learnt from Engels’ positive exposés, not only by 
ordinary workers and even ex-workers like himself, who suppose 
themselves capable of getting to know everything and pronounce 
on everything within the shortest possible time, but even by 
scientifically educated people, then I can only pity him for his lack 
of judgment. 

With kind regards, 

Yours, 
K. M. 

PS. Mile Kurz translates ‘l’expropriation de toutes les denrées de 
premiére nécessité’,” which means expropriation by the government, 

4 See next letter. - > expropriation of all the prime necessities 

or public appropriation, as ‘public alienation’, which gives 
completely the wrong sense (p. 16). 

Rationnement = being placed on short rations (as in a besieged 
fortress or on board a vessel when supplies are running out), as 
‘maintenance of all citizens’ (p. 16). She sets down the first word 
that comes into her head, whether it makes sense or not. 

Ditto, p. 16, she translates ‘pour faire lever les provinces’, as ‘to 
levy the province’; should read ‘to cause the provinces’ (not 
“‘province’) ‘to rise’.