Cartoonists that Never Were: Friedrich Engels
by Jeet Heer
Tuesday, February 15, 2011
A cartoon of Frederick William IV and the Prussian bourgeoisie drawn by F. Engels, 1849.
In recent years, there has been a surge of critical interest in the fact that many major writers were also, on the side at least, doodlers and drawers. Off the top of my head, such writers include Thackeray, Kipling, Flannery O’Connor, Evelyn Waugh, John Updike and Guy Davenport. There are many critical insights to be gained by thinking of these writers as “cartoonist manqués” (to borrow a phrase from Updike). Thanks to Kent Worcester we can add another notable name to the list: Friedrich Engels, the co-creator of historical materialism. For those not familiar with him, Engels was to Karl Marx what Gerhard has been to Dave Sim. Engels was also a lifelong doodler and sketcher. Many of his letters are filled with drawings. He had an excellent sense of draughtsmanship. I would love to see someone familiar to Engels life and thought do an analysis of his drawings. The website www.marxists.org has a vast collection of Engels’ letters, sometimes including the drawings that accompanied them For a sample, page, see here. I’ve posted a few of Engels’ drawings below.
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Engels drawing
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Engels drawing.
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Engels drawing.
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Labels: Friedrich Engels, Guy Davenport, John Updike
Maybe it’s more understandable because of the nature of the film medium, but there are quite a few great film directors who probably would have been great cartoonists (Welles, Kurosawa), or at least interesting ones (Scorsese, Burton).
Thanks for posting this, Jeet. As far as major-writers-who-also-drew-pictures are concerned, you can add H.G. Wells to the list. See http://www.amazon.com/Picshuas-H-G-Wells-Burlesque/dp/0252030451 for more info.
Someone gave me this: http://www.bookforum.com/inprint/014_04/1426 as a present a few years ago, which had me thinking on similar lines. That book is just a look at the artistic talent of writers, I agree that it would be amazing to look at how the two aspects of their work overlapped and influenced each other. Please let us know if you find anything like that!
Thank you, Jeet. I think Bruno Schulz, too, fits into the category of incredible authors who are also (really great)artists/draftsmen.
[…] Friedrich Engels: secret cartoonist. […]
Tolkien comes to mind of course.
Mervyn Peake is also an interesting example. Better known (I think?) as an illustrator in his time, but now remembered as much, if not more, for the Gormenghast books, the writing of which, even without the accompanying illustrations (by Peake) seems very much informed by a visual sensibility.