London, 26 November 1885 

Dear Mrs Kautsky, 

(You will, I hope, permit me to use this simple form of address, for 
why should two people like ourselves continue to stand on ceremo- 
ny?) First of all, very many thanks for your kind references to my- 
self. #8° I was very sorry not to have been able to spend more time 
with you while you were here; it gave me infinite pleasure, I do assure 
you, to meet for once a German authoress who had also remained 
a simple woman — in this respect it has been my misfortune to meet 
only affected, ‘eddicated’* Berlin ladies of the kind one would not 
urge to take up the kitchen spoon again, if only because they would 
eventually wreak more havoc with it than with the pen. So I hope 
that it won’t be too long before you cross the Narrow Seas again, 
when you and [ shall be able to ramble gently round London and its 
purlieus, exchanging light-hearted banter lest our conversation 
should become altogether too serious. 

That London didn’t please you, I can readily believe. Some years 
ago I used to feel much the same. It is difficult to accustom oneself to 
the gloomy atmosphere and, for the most part, gloomy people, to the 
reserve, the class distinctions in social life, to living shut up indoors as 
the climate demands. One has to temper somewhat the animal spirits 
imported from the Continent and let the barometer of joze de vivre fall 
from, say, 760 to 750 millimetres, until one finally becomes acclima- 
tised. Then one gradually reconciles oneself to the whole thing, dis- 
covering that the place has its good points, that people are on the whole 
more straightforward and reliable than elsewhere, that no city is bet- 
ter suited to the writing of learned works than London, and that the 
absence of harassment by the police makes up for a great deal. I know 
and love Paris but, given the choice, I would rather settle perma- 
nently in London than there. Paris can only be enjoyed properly if 
you become a Parisian yourself, with all the prejudices of a Parisian, if 

* In the original ‘jebildete’ (Berlin dialect). 

you confine your interests primarily to things Parisian and accustom 
yourself to believing that Paris is the centre of the world, the be-all 
and end-all. London is uglier yet more grandiose than Paris, and is 
the true centre of world trade; it also offers a far greater variety. But 
London also permits one to maintain a completely neutral attitude 
towards one’s surroundings as a whole, as is essential to scientific and, 
indeed, artistic impartiality. One adores Paris and Vienna, detests 
Berlin, but towards London one’s feelings are those of neutral indif- 
ference and objectivity. And that also counts for something. 

Apropos Berlin. I am glad to hear that that wretched place is at 
last succeeding in becoming a metropolis. But as Rahel Varnhagen 
said as much as 70 years ago: In Berlin everything becomes shabby, so 
that Berlin would seem to be trying to show the rest of the world just 
how shabby a metropolis can be. Only poison all eddicated Berliners, 
conjure up at least tolerable surroundings there, and rebuild the 
whole place from the foundations up, and something decent might be 
made of it. But not, I think, so long as that dialect continues to. be 
spoken there. 

I have now also read Die Alten und die Neuen,* for which many 
thanks. The descriptions of the life of the salt miners are as masterly 
as were those of the peasants in Stefan.” Again, your descriptions of 
life in Viennese society are also very good on the whole. Vienna is, 
after all, the only German city that has a society, whereas Berlin has 
only ‘certain circles’ and even more uncertain ones, which is why it is 
productive only of novels about literati, civil servants and actors. 
Whether the action in this part of your book does not move rather too 
rapidly in places you are better able to judge than I; much that ap- 
pears to do so to the likes of us, may seem perfectly natural to you in 
Vienna because of that city’s peculiarly international character with 
its admixture of southern and east European elements. In both 
spheres, too, I find your customary clear-cut individualisation; each 
character is a type but at the same time a definite individual, a “This 
One’ as old Hegel puts it, and that is how it ought to be. But now, if 
only for the sake of impartiality, I really must find something to criti- 
cise, and this brings me to Arnold. The latter is indeed altogether too 
well-behaved and, when he is finally killed in a landslide, one can 
only reconcile it with poetic justice by telling oneself, for instance, 
that he was too good for this world. It is always a bad thing, however, 

2 a novel by Minna Kautsky-* M. Kautsky, Stefan vom Grillenhof. 

for an author to dote on his own hero, and you would seem to me to 
have erred somewhat in this direction. With Elsa, individualisation is 
still in evidence, if not altogether devoid of idealisation, but with 
Arnold the man tends rather to be absorbed into the principle. 

The source of this failing, however, may be discovered in the novel 
itself. In this book you obviously felt impelled to take sides openly, to 
testify to your convictions before the whole world. Now that you have 
done so, it is something you can put behind you and have no need to 
repeat again in the same form. I am not at all opposed to tendentious 
poetry as such. The father of tragedy, Aeschylus, and the father of 
comedy, Aristophanes, were both strongly tendentious poets, as were 
Dante and Cervantes, and the best thing about Schiller’s Kabale und 
Liebe is that it was the first politically tendentious drama in Germany. 
The Russians and Norwegians of today, who are producing first-rate 
novels, are all tendentious writers. But I believe that the tendency 
should spring from the situation and action as such, without its being 
expressly alluded to, nor is there any need for the writer to present the 
reader with the future historical solution to the social conflicts he de- 
scribes. Furthermore, in present circumstances, the novel is mainly 
directed at readers in bourgeois—i.e. not our own immediate — 
circles and, such being the case, it is my belief that the novel of social- 
ist tendency wholly fulfils its mission if, by providing a faithful ac- 
count of actual conditions, it destroys the prevailing conventional il- 
lusions on the subject, shakes the optimism of the bourgeois world 
and inexorably calls in question the permanent validity of things as 
they are, even though it may not proffer a solution or, indeed, in cer- 
tain circumstances, appear to take sides. Your detailed iowicdee 
and your wonderfully true-to-life descriptions, both of the Austrian 
peasantry and of Viennese ‘society’, provide ample material for this, 
and you have already shown in Stefan that you are also capable of 
handling your protagonists with a nice irony which testifies to the 
command an author has over his creatures. 

But now I must desist, otherwise you'll think me altogether too pro- 
lix. Over here everything goes on much as usual; Karl and his wife * are 
learning physiology at Aveling’s evening classes and are also busily 
engaged in other respects; I, too, am up to my eyes in work; Lenchen, 
Pumps and her husband are going to the theatre tonight to see 
a melodrama and meanwhile old Europe is beginning to bestir herself 

* Karl and Louise Kautsky - ° Percy White Rosher 

again, and high time too. I only hope I shall have time to complete 
the third volume of Capital and then the fun can begin. 

Assuring you of my cordial feelings and sincere regard, I remain, 
Madam, 

Yours, 
F. Engels