Marx closes his youthful period with a letter written to his father from Berlin on November 10, 1837. In this valuable document, written at the age of 22, he justifies his lyrical vocation to his father as a necessary but outdated stage of life and casts a retrospective look at his literary output. He makes a highly self-critical assessment, especially of his poetry, which he considers excessively romantic and intellectualist. In the most heartbreaking part, he accuses himself of writing disordered and haphazardly constructed sentiments, of making "rhetorical reflections instead of poetic thoughts," and of falling into an idealistic romanticism. He tells us that he had already attempted to remedy this by introducing satire and humor into some poems, and through the writing of the experimental novel. Scorpio and Felix and the drama Oulanem.

In 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.