Marx-Engels Correspondence 1872
Source: MECW Volume 44, p. 385;
First published: in Russian, in Minuvshiye gody, St Petersburg, 1908.
My dear Sir,
My reply to you has been so delayed because I had kept on hoping that I would be able to send you, simultaneously with the letter, the first instalments of the 2nd German edition of ‘Capital’ as well as the French translation (Paris). But the German and French booksellers have dragged the business out for so long that I cannot postpone it any longer.
First of all, my best thanks for the beautifully bound copy. The translation is masterly. I would be grateful if you could let me have a second, unbound, copy — for the British Museum.
I regret that absolute [lack of time] (in the most strictest sense of the word) prevented me from making a start on the revision for the second edition before the end of December 1871. It would have been of great benefit for the Russian edition.
Although the French edition — (the translation is by Mr Roy, the translator of Feuerbach) — has been prepared by a great expert in both languages, he has often translated too literally. I have therefore found myself compelled to re-write whole passages in French, to make them palatable to the French public. It will be all the easier later on to translate the book from French into English and the Romance languages.
I am so *overworked, and in fact so much interfered with in my theoretical studies, that, after September, I shall withdraw from the commercial concern, which, at this moment, weighs principally upon my own shoulders, and which, as you know, has its ramifications all over the world.* Mais, est modus in rebus *and I can no longer afford — for some time at least — to combine two sorts of business of so very different a character.
The news you have communicated to me on our mutual friend has delighted both myself and my family. There are few people in the world of whom I am so fond and whom I esteem so much. *
You will much oblige me by delivering the enclosed letter to Dr W. Baranoff at this address: ‘Frau Baggohufudt-Gross, Theater Platz, Haus Baron Küster’.
In the hope of hearing from you soon.
Yours very sincerely,
A. W.
One of the barkers at present living in Switzerland — Mr Bakounine — is playing such strange tricks that I would be very grateful for any precise piece of information about the man — 1) as to the extent of his influence in Russia, 2) about his role in the trial of such notorious memory.