Page 207 - DPOL201_WESTERN_POLITICAL_THOUGHT_ENGLISH

Unit 11: Karl Marx: His Life and Works, Materialism and Dialectical Materialism

11.2 Marx as a Poet Notes

The poetic phase of Marx was short-lived. In his later life he did not show much interest in his
own poems, though his interests in poetry in general continued. Marx was well-versed with the
works of contemporary German poets and those of Shakespeare. This interest was further reinforced
by his father Heinrich Marx and his mentor Baron von Westphalen. During his student years in
Bonn University, Marx belonged to the poet’s club. Even after he moved to Berlin, his interest in
poetry continued. During this time he attempted to write fiction and a tragedy. Unfortunately, the
poems written in the autumn of 1836 were lost. The ones that survived, written sometime in the
early part of 1837, were also those that were dedicated to Jenny.
Marx’s poems were not amongst his well-known works. His overall lack of interest in his poems
was because everything seemed vague and diffused. In 1929, about 60 of his poems were discovered
and published. However, this did not arouse much interest among Marxist scholars, as Marx had
disowned their significance and importance from the point of view of revolutionary activity.
These poems, as his early biographer Franz Mehring (1846-1919) admitted, “breathe(d) a spirit of
trivial romanticism, and very seldom does any true note ring through”.
A dissection of Marx’s poems revealed his resolve for purposeful activity, signalling the beginning
of Marx the revolutionary. This was evident from the following poem.
Never can I calmly realise,
What steadfastly grips my soul;
Never can I rest in comfort,
Storms forever through me roll.
Continuing with his revolt against abstract thought and his repudiation of German idealism, Marx
wrote:
Kant and Fichte like to whirl in the ether,
Searching for a distant land;
While I only seek to understand completely,
What I found in this street.
Some of his epigrams revealed his dissatisfaction with the unrealism of Hegelian idealism, for it
ignored realities and depicted the non-existent.
Pardon us creatures of epigram,
If we sing disagreeable tunes;
We have schooled ourselves in Hegel,
And from his aesthetics we have not yet been purged.
Because I have discovered the highest.
And found the depths by pondering;
I am roughen like a god, I hide in darkness, like him,
Long I searched and floated over the rocking sea of thoughts,
And when I found the word, I clung fast to what I had found.
Words I teach in a demonically confused to-do.
At least he will never more be restricted by limiting fetters,
For as out of a roaring flood pouring from a projecting rock;
The poet invents the words and thoughts of his beloved.
And perceives what he thinks and thinks what he feels;
Everyone can sip the refreshing nectar of wisdom,
After all, I am telling you everything because I have told you nothing.

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