ENGELS TO MARX”?! 

[Manchester, 23 September 1852] 

Dear Marx, 

The day before yesterday I sent you the translation and a Posr 
Orrice order for a pound. A few more pounds will follow at the 
beginning of October—i.e. in 9-10 days. I should like to send you 
more at a time because, then even though the total amount is the 
same in the end, it has the advantage of enabling you to plan your 
expenditure more methodically, but my own pecuniary cir- 
cumstances are in such a muddle just now that I never know 
exactly how much I shall need for the month, and hence pounds 
only become available singly, so it seems best to send them to you 
straight away. Next month I shall put things on a business-like 
footing, after which I shall soon be able to make some rough 
estimates. 

From the enclosed memorandum you will see that Pieper has 
made a number of fairly bad howlers—I haven't, of course, 
enumerated his transgressions against grammar and Donatus,” cela 
naurait jamais fini. You may give it to him if you think it would 
do any good; otherwise, if it might lead him to abandon the 
translation, you had better keep it. Should he grumble over this or 
that correction, you can always use it as an opportunity to point 
out his imperfections. 

Individual bits are, by the way, almost untranslatable. 

2 into English of the first chapter of K. Marx’s work The Eighteenth Brumaire of 
Louis Bonaparte - b Fourth-century Roman grammarian. - © there’d have been no 
end to it 

Incidentally, it might also be advisable for the bookseller to see 
the last chapter in particular; he would then be vastly more 
impressed; I suggest that Pieper might translate it and you send it 
straight on to me; having already looked at it with this in mind, I 
am not wholly unprepared and progress would therefore be rapid. 
Even if it can’t be published now, the translation must be 
completed; the chap* will soon become Emperor,” and that 
would provide another splendid opportunity for adding a 
postscript. 

I am going straight home to finish the article for the Tribune” so 
that it catches the 2nd post and you can send it off by tomorrow’s 
STEAMER. What prospect is there of a new English article for Dana? 

I trust the brandy has set your wife on her feet again—warm 
regards to her and your children, also Dronke and Lupus. 

Your 
F. E. 

Massol’s letter with the article for Dana by the 2nd post—I 
haven't got it here. 

Did you see the statistics from Horner, the factory inspector, on 
the growth of the cotton industry in yesterday’s Times and 
day-before-yesterday’s Daily News?° 

Oct. 1850-Oct. 1851— 

2,300 horsepower in newly built factories 

1,400 horsepower in extensions to existing factories 
3,700 horsepower increase in the Manchester district 

and the cotton industry alone.” The following particulars reveal 
that during that period there were factories still under construc- 
tion which would require some 4,000 horsepower and which will 
now have been completed. Since that time, work has undoubtedly 
begun on factories of 3,000-4,000 horsepower, more than half of 
which might be completed by the end of the year; if we assume 
that the increase between Jan. 1848 and Oct. 1850, ie. 2/4 years, 
is no more than 4,000 horsepower, the steam-power of the 
Lancashire cotton industry will have risen between 1848 and the 
end of 1852 by 3,700+4,000+1,500+4,000=13,200 horsepower. 

@ Louis Bonaparte - > F. Engels, Revolution and Counter-Revolution in Germany, 
XIX. - © ‘Cotton Manufactures’, The Times, No. 21227, 22 September 1852; 
‘Progress of Cotton Manufactures’, The Daily News, No. 1975, 20 September 1852. 

In 1842 the total steam-power of the cotton industry in 
Lancashire amounted to 30,000 and in 1845 (end) to 40,000 
horsepower; in 1846/47 there was little installed, hence almost 
55,000 horsepower, nearly twice that of 1842, will now be in use. 

On top of that there is hydraulic power—about 10,000 
horsepower (1842) which has barely increased, hydraulic energy 
having been fairly well exploited for some time past. From this it 
may be seen where prosperity’s additional capital has gone. For 
that matter the crisis cannot be very far off, although here excess 
over-speculation is almost entirely confined to omnibuses. 

Memorandum on the Translation of the Ist Chapter 

Ad generalia’: 

1. Pieper is evidently more used to writing English spontaneous- 
ly than to translating. Hence, if he wants for a word, he should 
guard all the more against having recourse to that worst of all 
known aids, the dictionary, which, in 99 cases out of 100, will 
regularly provide him with the most inappropriate word and 
invariably gives rise to a disastrous jumbling of synonyms, 
examples of which follow. 

2. Pieper should study elementary English grammar, in which 
he makes a number of mistakes—especially as regards the use of 
the article. There are also spelling mistakes. 

3. Above all Pieper must guard against falling into the 
Cockney’s petty-bourgeois floridity of style, of which there are 
some irritating examples. 

4. Pieper uses too many words of French derivation, which are, 
it is true, sometimes convenient because their vaguer, more 
abstract meaning is often of help in a quandary. But this 
emasculates the choicest turns of speech and often renders them 
completely incomprehensible to an Englishman. In almost every 
case, where vivid, sensuous images occur in the original, there is a 
no less sensuous, vivid expression of Saxon derivation, which at 
once makes the thing plain to an Englishman. 

5. Where there are difficult bits, it would be better to leave 
blanks to be filled in, rather than—on the plea of literal 
translation— put in things which Pieper himself knows full well to 
be sheer nonsense. 

6. The main criticism of the translation, and which sums up 1-5, 
is gross carelessness. There are passages enough to prove that, if 

* In general 

he really tries, Pieper is reasonably capable, but such superficiality, 
in the first place, makes more work for himself and secondly twice 
as much for me. Some passages are quite admirable, or could be 
so, had he tried a little harder. 

Ad specialia*: 

schuldenbeladene Lieutnants?: here the word lieutenant can only 
mean ‘representative’. In English and French a lieutenant is not, as 
in German, primarily a figure of fun; 

unmittelbar gegebne, vorhandene und überlieferte Umstande‘: cir. 
CUMSTANCES IMMEDIATELY GIVEN AND DELIVERED. Pieper himself was very well 
aware that this translation made nonsense. ‘petiveren’ can here only 
mean ‘delivered of a child’; 

sich und die Dinge umzuwalzen: THE REVOLUTION OF THEIR OWN PERSONS, 
This revolution can be nothing other than a somersault; 

A NEW LANGUAGE (eine. neue Sprache) means a newly invented 
language. At most, A LANGUAGE NEW TO THEM, 

Minpie Crass Society for bitirgerliche Gesellschaft is not strictly 
grammatical or logically correct; it is as if one were to translate 
feudale Gesellschaft as Nosnity soctery. An educated Englishman 
would not say this. One would have to say sovurczors society or, 
depending on circumstances, COMMERCIAL AND INDUSTRIAL SOCIETY, to 
which one might append the following note: *By Bourgeois 
Society, we understand that phase of social development in which 
the Bourgeoisie, the Middle Class, the class of industrial and 
commercial Capitalists, is, socially and politically, the ruling class; 
which is now the case more or less in all the civilized countries of 
Europe and America. By the expressions: Bourgeois society, and: 
industrial and commercial society, we therefore propose to 
designate the same stage of social development; the first expres- 
sion referring, however, more to the fact of the middle class being 
the ruling class, in opposition either to the class whose rule it 
superseded (the feudal nobility), or to those classes which it 
succeeds in keeping under its social and political dominion (the 
proletariat or industrial working class, the rural population, etc., 
etc.)—-while the designation of commercial and industrial society 
more particularly bears upon the mode of production and 
distribution characteristic of this phase of social history.* 

To arrive AT ITS OWN contents (bei ihrem eignen Inhalt anzukommen) 
can only mean: to arrive AT THE CONTENTS OF ITS OWN STOMACH. 

@ In particular - > debt-ridden lieutenants (this expression was omitted in the 1869 
second German edition of The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte) - 
© circumstances immediately given, existing and handed down 

g* 

Otp society (alte Gesellschaft) won’t do in English and at most 
means feudal rather than bourgeois society. Owen’s writings have 
been forgotten; and whenever he mentions op society, it is always 
accompanied by a plan and elevation (if possible in colour) of the 
NEW SOCIETY, SO THAT THERE CAN BE NO MISTAKE; WHICH IS NOT TO BE EXPECTED 
NOW-A-DAYS., 

SET IN FIERY DIAMONDS (in Feuerbrillanten gefasst*) is nonsensical in 
English, since in English usage it 1s diamonds themselves that are 
set, and FIERY DIAMONDS is in any case something of a hyperbole. 

STORM AND PRESSURE PERIOD does not translate Sturm- und Drang- 
periode’*** but Sturm- und Driickperiode. 

A FUTURE THAT was To come (die Zukunft, die ihnen bevorsteht‘’) is 
nonsense, as Pieper himself knows (EVERY FUTURE BEING TO COME), and 
. altogether in the style of Moses & Son,’ as in an earlier bit where 
‘die Geister der Vergangenheit’* is rendered as THE SPIRITS OF THOSE THAT 
HAVE BEEN. 

‘THE CIRCLE SHOULD BE INCREASED (erweitert werden’ p. 4, bottom). Un 
cercle est élargi, il n'est pas acranot.” 

‘THE GENERAL INDEX (der allgemeine Inhalt der modernen Revolution’) 
means the general list of contents of modern revolution! Le citoyen 
Pieper le savait, du reste, aussi bien que moi! 

AS IT COULD BUT BE, wie es nicht anders sein konnte—lapsus pennae; 
should read ‘as rr could NOT BUT BE’; Otherwise it would mean: wie es 
kaum sem konnte. 

Unwieldiness (p. 5, top in the orig.) is Unbehilflichkeit in the 
passive sense, ‘inertia’ in physics but, applied to persons, can only 
mean that they cannot move for fat. Unbeholfenheit, used of 
persons, in the active sense, means ciumsiness. This mistake was 
suggested to Pieper by his dictionary. 

Constitutional Stanparp (die Nationalversammlung sollte die Resul- 
tate der Revolution auf den bürgerlichen Maßstab reduzieren*). C'est 
un peu fort' that, in order to evade the difficulty of translating 
‘bürgerlich, Citoyen Pieper should everywhere render it as ‘constrtu- 
tional’ because ‘konstitutionelle Republik’ and ‘bürgerliche Republik’ 
are used synonymously. Je demande un peu,” what does constitution. 

@ set in sparkling brilliants - © Storm and Stress period - © the future that is in 
store for it- 4 A hint at Moses Hess. - © the spirits of the past - be widened - 
8 Here and below Engels refers to the first edition of Marx’s Eighteenth Brumaire of 
Louis Bonaparte, published in New York in 1852.-» A circle is widened, it is not 
increased. -' the general content of modern revolution - i For that matter Citizen 
Pieper knew it as well as I do. -* the National Assembly was to reduce the 
results of the revolution to the bourgeois scale -! That’s too bad - ™ I ask you 

AL mean in this context? It becomes even more delectable later on, 
when _ bürgerliche Gesellschaft figures sans fagon* as constitutional 
society. C'est assommant.” 

For EVER AND THE DURATION (fir die ganze Dauer des Zyklus‘). Why not 
rather FOR EVER AND A Day, as the saying goes? 

Uropian juccies (utopische Flausen). Juccirs means legerdemain, 
not flights of fancy. 

‘TRANSPORTED WITHOUT JUDGMENT means déporté contre le sens commun, 
transported in defiance of common sense and should read without 
TRIAL. 

To pass AS A REAL EVENT doesn’t mean ‘um tiberhaupt als ein Ereignis 
passieren zu können’,’ but to pass for something that has really 
happened. 

fondé doesn’t mean fondu* but fondé. It has nothing to do with 
the illogical but accepted term conrounnen for confondu. 

All these are things which Pieper, if only he paid a little 
attention, would know as well as I do but, as already mentioned, it 
is easier to translate difficult things oneself than to correct a 
translation that is carelessly thrown together and dodges the 
difficulties. If he tried a little harder, he could translate quite well.