Karl Marx

Date

1818–1883

Description

City of birth: Trier
Country of birth (modern equivalence): Germany
Field of activity: Politics — social theory

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Quotes

‘If at the end of a year spent here I now cast a glance back at its conditions and so, my good father, answer your dear, dear letter from Ems, allow me to review my circumstances just as I observe life itself, as the expression of a spiritual activity, which develops on all sides, in science, art, and private affairs. As I left you a new world was born for me, a world of love, and, indeed, in the beginning a love intoxicated with longing and empty of hope. The trip to Berlin, which otherwise would delight me in the highest degree, would excite in me the appreciation of nature, would fire up a love of life, left me cold. Indeed it put me in a noticeably bad humor, for the rocks which I saw were neither steeper nor more intimidating than the feelings of my soul, the wide cities were not more lively than my own blood, the tavern tables no more filled or indigestible than the packets of fantasy I carried with me, and finally, the art not so beautiful as Jenny. Having arrived in Berlin, I broke off all previous relationships, made only few visits and those without joy, and sought to lose myself in science and art. According to the spiritual situation at that time, the first subject, or at least the most pleasant and simplest to pick up was necessarily lyrical poetry. But my situation and development up to that point made this purely idealistic. My heaven, my art, became a remote beyond, just like my love. Everything real faded, and all faded things lose their boundaries. Ali of the poems of the first three volumes that Jenny received from me are characterized by attacks on the present times, by broad and formless feelings thrown together, where nothing is natural, everything constructed from out of the moon, the complete opposition of what is and what should be, rhetorical reflections rather than poetical thoughts, but perhaps also by a certain warmth of feeling and wrestling for vitality. The whole extent of a longing that sees no limit finds expression in many forms and makes “poetic composition’ into mere “diffusion.” ’

Author

Karl Marx

Speaker

Karl Marx

Title of the publication

The First writings of Karl Marx

Other contributors

Saul K. Padover, editor; Paul M. Schafer, translator

Publisher (or journal name with vol. and number)

Prentice Hall

City of publication

Upper Saddle River

Country of publication (modern nation-state equivalent)

United States of America

Publication date

1979

Location [pp. or web]

p. 71

Other location

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1837-pre/letters/letter-to-father.pdf

Original language

German

Genre

Correspondence

Context

The quote is from a letter dated 10 November 1837 from Karl Marx to his Father, Heinrich, and was written at the end of Marx’s first year at the University of Berlin. Karl Marx married Jenny von Westphalen in 1843 and remained so until her death in 1881, they had seven children. The letter was originally published in Die Neue Zeit, no. 1, 1897 (The New Era No. 1, 1897) by Verlag C.H. Beck.

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