Scorpion and Felix
| Author | Karl Marx |
|---|---|
| Original title | Skorpion und Felix, Humoristischer Roman |
| Language | German |
| Genre | Comedic novel |
| Publisher | not published |
| Publication place | Germany |
| Media type | unfinished manuscript |
Scorpion and Felix, A Humoristic Novel (German: Skorpion und Felix, Humoristischer Roman) is the only comedic fictional story to have been written by Karl Marx, the founder of Marxism. Written in 1837 when he was 19 years old, it has remained unpublished.[1][2] It was likely written under the influence of The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman by Laurence Sterne.[1]
The novel is told by a first-person narrator in the present tense. The plot revolves around three main characters, Felix, Scorpion, and Merten, and their quest to uncover their origins. The novel seems to take an ironic polemic with philosophy.[3] It has also been described as satirical.[4]
The book did not garner many positive reviews. Francis Wheen in his biography of Marx sums it up as a "a nonsensical torrent of whimsy and persiflage", "dashed off in a fit of intoxicated whimsy", although he notes that a paragraph from that novel appears, in a slightly changed form, as a "famous opening paragraph" in the The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte.[1] Siegbert Salomon Prawer noted that the book is notable for being Marx's first attempt to discuss politics, and that it begins his polemic with Hegel.[5] Anna Kornbluh, however, argued that the piece is a polemic with Locke, Fichte, and Kant, but not Hegel.[3] She also commented more positively on the novel, concluding that is shows how even a young Marx "pursued logico-formal connections behind the veil of the visible, how thoroughly he tracked different forms of appearance of the real within ontologically positive reality".[3]
The novel was never finished.[6] Only some chapters of the novel survive to the modern day.[7] Parts of the novel could have been burned by Marx himself, along with some other early works of his.[2] The parts that survive are those fragments that Marx included as a supplement when he published his Book of Verse (1837).[8]
References
- Footnotes
- ^ a b c Wheen 1999. pp. 25–6.
- ^ a b Stanley Edgar Hyman (March 1974). The tangled bank: Darwin, Marx, Frazer and Freud as imaginative writers. Atheneum. p. 86. Retrieved 6 March 2011.
- ^ a b c Anna Kornbluh. On Marx’s Victorian Novel. Mediations. Journal of the Marxist Literary Group. Mediations: Journal of the Marxist Literary GroupVolume 25, No. 1. Fall 2010
- ^ Blandine Kriegel (16 October 1995). The state and the rule of law. Princeton University Press. pp. 136–. ISBN 9780691032917. Retrieved 6 March 2011.
- ^ Siegbert Salomon Prawer (1978). Karl Marx and world literature. Oxford University Press. p. 16. ISBN 9780192812483. Retrieved 6 March 2011.
- ^ John Bowker; John Westerdale Bowker (1993). The meanings of death. Cambridge University Press. pp. 10–. ISBN 9780521447737. Retrieved 6 March 2011.
- ^ Boris Nicolaievsky (15 March 2007). Karl Marx - Man and Fighter. READ BOOKS. pp. 27–. ISBN 9781406727036. Retrieved 6 March 2011.
- ^ Debaprasad Bandyopadhyay. Comparative Philology and a Novel by Karl Marx . Carnagor. Vol. I. (pp. 54-68). Dhaka, Kolkata, London, New York.
- Bibliography
- Wheen, Francis (1999). Karl Marx. London: Fourth Estate. ISBN 9781857026375.
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