Marx, a literary vocation (I)

PalmIn this article, he recovers a forgotten and largely unknown Marx. This is a young Marx, a university student, more lyrical and enamored, idealistic and romantic, who does not fit well with the Marx universally known for promoting the overcoming of capitalism through communist revolution.

The approach to the early Marxist writings is of documentary interest; it allows us to accurately reconstruct an early intellectual period centered on idealistic romanticism, which emphasizes individual freedom and the power of ideas to transform reality; it provides information on the cultural, literary, and philosophical background from which the young Marx articulated his initial thought; and, furthermore, it allows us to recover a little-studied Marxist perspective due to the dubious literary quality of the writings, their incompleteness, and their lack of political significance.

Professional Choice

At seventeen, Marx was already considering what his future profession would be. We know this from reading the essay Reflections of a young man when choosing a profession (1835), which he wrote as part of his final high school exams. In this work, Marx establishes that the first duty of young people is to choose a profession and not to be randomly chosen. According to the Rhenish philosopher, a professional choice must meet two conditions: it must be vocational and contribute to personal fulfillment, and at the same time it must be at the service of society and the progress and well-being of humanity as a whole. Marx considers it essential to listen to the voice of God, even if "it speaks in a low voice," to meditate calmly, and to avoid being carried away by a false enthusiasm that stems from ambition and fantasy. Marx imposes on himself the task of choosing a worthy profession, linked to individual and social improvement. To practice a profession worthily, one must be talented and heed the sound advice of one's father and mother. Marx believes that a person who wants to be perfect cannot be driven by selfish interests; he must not be concerned with himself, but with others and the common good. If he succeeds, he will live forever.

In accordance with this work, I will argue that the young Marx had literary aspirations and longed to be a great writer. Therefore, during this student stage he wrote poems, while experimenting with other genres, such as the humorous novel and drama, and dared to translate the classics Ovid and Tacitus. These literary experiments of his youth are philosophically marked by the adoption of Hegelian dialectics, the influence of the aesthetic conceptions of Schelling, Lessing and Winckelmann, and the romantic and satirical tone.

Between 1836 and 1840, Marx wrote love poems dedicated to his beloved Jenny von Westphalen, coinciding with his student stage at the University of Berlin and with the aim of rationalizing the feeling of love, under the formal and thematic influence of romanticism and the Heine ideal. The collection of poems also includes verses dedicated to his father, intended to justify a literary dedication that distances him from his studies of law and philosophy.

Most of the poems are lyrical and lack a defined narrative thread, except for Lucinda, in which he tells the tragic story of two lovers. There are some poems that stand out for their originality, such as the one in which Marx converses with a lyre or the one in which he compares man to a drum. Others, however, those dedicated to medical students, stand out for their ironic and humorous tone.

In his poems, he uses some literary topics: the distance from his beloved as a painful obstacle, the changing moods of the lover, the exaltation and idealization of his beloved, sexual desire, eternal love, and the tragic side of love that adepts her.

The collection of poems includes philosophical references to Kant, Fichte, Schiller, Schelling, Hegel, and Maimonides, most of which are included in epigrams. It also makes literary references to the Muses, Homer, Goethe, and Bettina Brentano; fictional characters such as Faust; and mythological heroes, such as Icarus, Oedipus, and Achilles.

In the poems, he addresses the pain caused by separation from his beloved, family obstacles, and also distance as a more circumstantial impediment. Other prominent themes are poetry, inspiration, and creative difficulties. For Marx, poetry is songs joined to the lyre that are born from inspiration and feelings of love, in which the beloved object is inseparable from the verse, because, as Marx writes, in the centuries to come the amorous saying will be remembered: "Love is Jenny. Jenny is the name of love."

The Marxist expression of love is nonconformist, since it needs to be complemented by knowledge, deep thoughts, and the flow of words. He is concerned with humankind's place on earth and in the universe, and the problem of existence and becoming that directs us from nothing to everything, that is, from the cradle to the coffin. He is enthusiastic about life and all that is created. In fact, he wants to take advantage of it and maximize the hours to advance toward freedom and perfection. In short, in his verses he creates an idealization of passions that he accompanies with reflections and introspection.

In his poems he makes continuous religious references to the Christian God, the Virgin Mary, Christ, the archangel Gabriel, which alternates with other references to Jupiter or Zeus and Apollo, and to mythological gods in general. He is a believer and devotee, and admits to praying and composing hymns to honor God. He feels fear and anguish of the final judgment, of the destiny that will determine whether the soul rises to heaven or falls to hell, although he trusts in the greatness, piety and goodness of God.

For Marx, loving union is magical, so are claws, hearts, gifts and blessings, spaces and whirlpools, images, powers and words, fantasy, existence and poetic writing itself. The positive poetic images of joy, delight, and happiness contrast with others fraught with hidden dangers beneath the wild waves, thunder and storms, cloudy valleys and nights, the darkness of abysses and cliffs, and demonic souls. Ultimately, he perceives that love is also a poison that stabs and kills.

Emotions and feelings

For Marx, there is no love without pain, no light without darkness, no day without night, no heaven without hell. Emotions and feelings follow one another without interruption; joy and desire are interrupted by fear, misery, and forgetfulness. But Marx defies danger with his song and, above all, faces reality with dreams. Dreams are important because they are illusions and unfulfilled goals that can become reality. Here, hope and dissatisfaction come into play and invite action.

In some poems dedicated to his father, Marx develops a very characteristic ironic and satirical humor that he uses to criticize the fashion for rhetorical romanticism; as well as the mathematical measurement of the world; philistine medical students and their psychology, metaphysics, anthropology, and ethics; the nonexistence of the soul; the materialist vision of man; the medicalization of life; and the instrumentalization of nature for medical purposes.

In the poem titled 'The Pale Virgin', he records his aspiration to occupy a place of honor in literature and achieve literary success, but the cruel reality is that it remained a dream, since he was not even able to enjoy the satisfaction of seeing his poems published.