London, 19 April 1859 

Dear Lassalle, 

I sent no separate acknowledgment of the £14 10/- because the 
letter was registered. But I should have written earlier had I not 
been plagued by a damned ‘cousin from Holland’, who laid claim 
to my surplus working time in THE MOST CRUEL MANNER. 

HE 1s Now cone, and so I can breathe again. 

Friedlander has written to me.* The terms are not as favourable 
as those originally communicated to you, but are nonetheless 
‘RESPECTABLE. Once a few subsidiary points have been settled 
between us—which will, I think, be done in the course of this 
week—I shall write to him. 

Here in England the class struggle is progressing in a most 
gratifying way. Unfortunately there is no longer any Chartist 
paper in existence and hence I had to give up literary 
collaboration with that movement about two years ago. 

Now I come to Franz von Sickingen. D’abord, 1 must applaud 

a K. Marx, A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy. - » Asto - © Johann Carl 
Juta - 4 See this volume, p. 416. - © First 

both composition and action, and that’s more than one can say of 
any other modern German play. IN THE seconp instance, and aside 
from any reactions of a purely critical nature, the work excited me 
very much at the first reading and hence will induce this reaction 
to an even greater degree in more emotionally inclined readers. 
And that is another and very important aspect. 

Now for THE OTHER SIDE OF THE MEDAL: Firstly—and this is purely a 
question of form—since you have chosen to write in verse, you 
could have put a touch more artistry into the iambics. However, 
though your neglecting to do so might well shock a professional 
poet, 1 regard it by and large as a merit, our breed of poetical 
epigones having retained nothing but formal polish. Secondly, the 
implicit conflict is not just tragic; it is the tragic conflict upon 
which the revolutionary party of 1848-49 justly foundered. Hence 
making it the fulcrum of a modern tragedy can only meet with my 
wholehearted approval. But then, I ask myself, is the theme in 
question suitable for the portrayal of that conflict? Balthasar may 
indeed imagine that had Sickingen not pretended that his 
rebellion was a knightly feud, but had instead raised the standard 
of opposition to the emperor and open war against the princes, he 
would have won. But are we able to share that illusion? Sickingen 
(and with him Hutten, more or less) went under, not because of 
his cunning, but because, as a knight and as representative of a 
declining class, he rebelled against existing reality, or rather against 
the new form of existing reality. Strip Sickingen of the appurte- 
nances of the individual and his particular education, natural 
disposition, etc., and you have—Gotz von Berlichingen. In this 
latter, miserable fellow the tragic opposition between knights on 
the one hand and emperor and princes on the other is adequately 
personified and that is why Goethe rightly made him his hero.* In 
so far as Sickingen—and even Hutten up to a point, although in 
his case, as in that of all ideologists of a class, such assertions call 
for substantial modification—is fighting the princes (he turns 
against the emperor? only because the emperor of knights has 
become the emperor of princes), he is, in fact, nothing more than 
a Don Quixote, if with some historical justification. The fact that 
he begins his rebellion in the guise of a knightly feud merely 
means that he begins it in knightly fashion. Were he to begin it in 
any other way, he would have to appeal directly and at the very 
outset to the towns and the peasants, ie. the very classes whose 
development=the negation of knighthood. 

a J. W. Goethe, Gotz von Berlichingen. - > Charles V 

15* 

Unless, therefore, you wished to reduce the conflict to no more 
than what is portrayed in Gétz von Berlichingen—and such was 
not your plan—Sickingen and Hutten were bound to go under 
because they imagined themselves to be revolutionaries (which 
cannot be said of Gotz) and, just like the cultivated Polish 
aristocracy of 1830, turned themselves on the one hand into the 
organs of modern ideas while on the other actually representing a 
reactionary class interest.*°* The aristocratic representatives of 
revolution—behind whose catch-words of unity and liberty there 
still lingers the dream of the imperial past and of club-law—ought 
not in that case to monopolise the interest as you make them do; 
rather the representatives of the peasants (of these in particular) 
and of the revolutionary elements in the towns should provide an 
altogether significant and dynamic background. This would have 
enabled you to give expression in far greater measure precisely to 
the most modern ideas in their most unsophisticated form; 
whereas, in fact now, the dominant idea, apart from religious 
freedom, is civic unity. Then you would automatically have had to 
‘Shakespearise’ more, whereas your principal failing is, to my mind, 
‘Schillering’, i.e. using individuals as mere mouthpieces for the 
spirit of the times. Have not you yourself—like your Franz von 
Sickingen—succumbed, to some extent, to the diplomatic error of 
regarding the Lutheran-knightly opposition as superior to the 
plebeian-Miinzerian? 

Again, I miss what is characteristic in the characters. I except 
Charles V, Balthasar and Richard of Trier. And was there ever a 
time of more robust character traits than the 16th century? To 
my mind Hutten is, to far too great a degree, merely a represen- 
tative of ‘enthusiasm’, which is boring. Wasn’t he also witty, 
an infernal wit, and hence hasn’t he been done a _ grave 
injustice? 

The extent to which even your Sickingen—who, by the way, is 
portrayed much too abstractly—suffers as a result of a conflict 
that is quite independent of all his personal calculations is evident 
from the necessity he is in of urging friendship with the towns, 
etc., upon his knights and, on the other hand, from the 
satisfaction with which he himself imposes club-law upon those 
same towns. 

To come down to details, I would censure the sometimes 
excessive preoccupation of individuals with themselves—the result 
of your predilection for Schiller. E.g. on p. 121, when Hutten is 
telling Marie the history of his life, it would have been quite 
natural to make Marie say: 

‘The whole gamut of sensations’, 
etc., up to the words, 

‘And weighs more heavily on me than did the years’. 

The preceding verses, from “They say’ to ‘grown older’, might 
follow at this point, but the comment, “The virgin in a single night 
matures into a woman’ (although showing that the love Marie 
knows is more than a mere abstraction), is completely pointless; 
still less should Marie have begun by reflecting upon her own 
‘ageing’. After recounting all that she had said during the ‘one’ 
hour, she might have given general expression to her feelings in 
the phrase about her “ageing’. Again, what offends me in the lines 
that follow is: ‘I thought it was my right’ (i.e. happiness). Why give 
the lie to the ingenuous view of the world which Marie has 
hitherto professed to hold, by turning it into a doctrine of rights? 
Maybe some other time I shall give you my opinion in greater 
detail. 

I consider the scene between Sickingen and Charles V to be 
particularly felicitous, although the dialogue on both sides 
is rather too much in the nature of pleading; also the 
scenes in Trier. Hutten’s lines about the sword I thought very 
fine. 

Well, that’s enough for this time. 

You have made my wife into a special admirer of your play. 
Only Marie doesn’t satisfy her. 

Salut. 
Your 

K. M. 

Apropos. There are some bad misprints in Engels’ Po and Rhine. I 
append a list of them on the last page of this letter.’