MARX TO ENGELS” 

[London,] British Museum, 29 May 1863 

Dear FREDERICK, 

My long silence will ar once be explicable to you if you picture to 
yourself a badly swollen liver with a.z irs ‘appurtenances’. For apout 
12 weeks now I have been enduring more of this Nonsense than 
ever before. Nor can you have any conception of how it affects a 
person’s morale, namely the feeling of heaviness in the head and 
paralysis in the limbs. More specifically, one can’t bring oneself to 
do anything, not even, inter alia, to write letters. For the past two 
weeks the thing has again been endurable. This business has made 
writing of any kind so impossible that, despite various repeated 
attempts, I have not managed the stuff on Poland,” which I’m 
very glad of now, since it would have simply deprived me of the 
chance of going to Prussia without being of any immediate benefit. 

Meanwhile I wasn’t, of course, idle, though unable to work. 
What I did, on the one hand, was fill in the gaps in my knowledge 
(diplomatic, historical) of the Russian-Prussian-Polish affair *** and, 
on the other, read and make excerpts from all kinds of earlier 
literature relating to the part of the political economy I had 
elaborated.** This at the British Museum. Now that I am more or 
less able to work again, I shall cast the weight off my shoulders 
and make a fair copy of the political economy for the printers (and 
give it a final polish). If it were possible for me to retreat into 
isolation at the moment, the thing would progress very quickly. Ar 
att Events, I shall take it to Germany in person.’ 

4 See this volume, pp. 435-36. 

Little Jenny is not quite her proper self. She has had a nasty 
cough for the past fortnight. 

As to Izzy, he had—or so I’ve been told in confidence by 
Freiligrath (he showed me Izzy’s letter)—-asked F. to write a poem 
for him on the ‘new’ movement,” i.e. sing Izzy’s praises. 
However, he was mistaken in F. In his letter he says inter alia: 
‘Each day hundreds of newspapers carry my name to the furthest 
corners of Germany.’ ‘My proletarians! etc.’ Well, since F. won't 
sing his praises, he has found another poet. Herewith a sample: 

‘Thou German proletariat, come heed 

The clarion call, nor any longer stay! 

Here stands a man prepared to pave the way 
‘To thy prosperity. Be thine the deed! 

He hath no truck with lofty parliaments, 

Nor doth he flaunt his gift of eloquence, 
Speaks for us all with homely wit and colour, 
Man of the People, Ferdinand Lassalle! 

‘Tis not for others, not to fill their purse 

That you shall sweat and toil your lives away, 

While they wax sleek and richer every day 

And you more ragged as your lot grows worse. 
The fruits of labour shall be yours alone, 

*Tis you shall reap the harvest you have sown. 
So hearken all unto the man of valour, 

To the virile voice of Ferdinand Lassalle, 

Macie puer!* If that isn’t sauce for the gander! 
My warm regards to Lupus. Now don’t indulge in tit for tat but 
let me hear from you soon. 

Salut. 
Your 
K. M.