Joseph Roth- a Life in Letters
Page 14
4. The position concerning my documents is tangled and difficult. You remember how I changed from being a Russian to an Austrian—well, now I have to prove that I was always an Austrian. The unorthodox means by which I furnished myself with names, dates, schools, and army career are to be tested to their destruction—and I’ve spent the past fortnight trying to establish my literary and journalistic existence to authorities who don’t know anything about me. The earth would betray me, so I’m forced to use Olympus. Arguing that papers are quite rightly bound to have disappeared—hence the absence of conventional documentation. I’m living and improvising twenty novels. It’s so exhausting, I haven’t a hope of getting on with the one I’m trying to write. I’ve called a halt. My nationality is connected—via the question of passport—both to the question of household and to the questions of travel. Without a passport, I’m toast. This month, August, I shall have to find my way to a document that accords with my present identity. For the past 25 years I’ve been living as a sort of fantastic figment.
You can imagine how I feel. Every day I go to some office or other. Fight against the recalcitrance of the lower officials and the cunning of their superiors. Trying to make play with my “social position” and call in aid the patronage of personal acquaintances. Another two weeks of this, and I’ll be done in.
My liver is playing up again.
Cordially
your old Joseph Roth
Address: c/o Tal, Vienna VII, Lindengasse 4.
No hotel, because it’s very expensive, and I moved out, am only hanging on here to suggest a fixed address to officialdom for a few days.
70. To Benno Reifenberg
9 August 1928
Dear Mr. Reifenberg,
even though I wrote you two letters yesterday, one after the other—which I hope you received, they weren’t registered—I’m writing you again today. Because, given my intense mistrust toward the world, FZ included, the sudden announcement of my visit to Italy1 makes me suspicious. (1) How is it that you don’t try and see me in Frankfurt, following the end of a tour? (2) Why does the board agree to a proposal of yours so quickly? I, or if you like, my suspicion, can think of the following reasons: (1) You, dear Mr. Reifenberg, have some reason not to see me right now. You’re planning something, or have just done something that you assume I wouldn’t approve. (2) The board thinks Roth shouldn’t be running around drawing money, unless he’s been given something to do. (3) The board is able to sell copies in Italy again, and thinks Roth is sometimes tame enough for Bäderblatt articles, and maybe we could use him to try and sell space and subscriptions in Italy. You see what sort of things are apt to fly into my mind when someone does me a good turn. What pains me the most is of course (1) that you might have some personal grounds, and that makes me ask openly and suspiciously: if you go on vacation, who is filling in for you? Whose job is it to unpick the little bit that has been achieved? Please tell dear Kracauer that I don’t trust him, ever since the books pages under his command have been opened to the tone and the feeling of Fred Hildebrandt.2 If Kracauer carries on like that, out of laziness or apathy or whatever, then I promise I will wreck his literary career for him. Please give him my regards, I remain personally very fond of him! Dr. Morgenstern seems to be personally offended with me, I haven’t seen him for a long time. And now you pack me off to Italy. Faced with so much kindness, timeo danaos, I start to scent mischief.
You’re none too well, I know. You run around with a heavy heart, and need to groan: Oh Lord! at least twice a day—and that takes some doing. And it’s not the case that you can shake off that sort of thing easily. Cycling doesn’t always help. You’re stuck on a horrid treadmill, and you won’t mind my giving you the truth. I make no demands of you, as you know, only that you don’t go to the trouble of being diplomatic with me, because I won’t even believe the unvarnished truth.
Warmest regards to all at home, and no one in the office.
Your old
Joseph Roth
1. Italy: JR visited Italy for the paper in 1928, and wrote a series of articles called “The Fourth Italy.”
2. Fred Hildebrandt, the feuilleton editor of the Berliner Tageblatt.
71. To Benno Reifenberg
telegram from Vienna, 22 August 1928
reifenberg grueneburgweg 95 frankfurtmain
wire deputy prior departure what I should write if not italy stop paris hotel foyot stop propose resigning because simon hindrance to my participation on paper till tomorrow Vienna stop in event of future difficulties am prepared to write publicly against paper have received request cordially
roth
72. To Benno Reifenberg
[1928?]
Dear Mr. Reifenberg,
I wrote you at home a week ago.
I would like, not a reply, please don’t go to any trouble, but just a confirmation. Since the 2nd I’ve wanted to go to Essen by way of Cologne. But I am incapable of traveling, of writing, am completely crushed, fighting an illness I won’t allow to break out, days in bed, curing myself with raw onions, and tired, terribly tired.
A little patience still, please. I’m writing two more letters.
Cordially,
your old Joseph Roth
Big successes. Offer from S. Fischer.1
1. This seems doubtful, or at least overstated. The closest Roth got to being published by Fischer was when a chapter from his unfinished novel The Silent Prophet was printed in Fischer’s “house” magazine, Die Neue Rundschau, in 1929.
73. To Stefan Zweig
Hotel Englischer Hof
Frankfurt am Main
26 November 1928
Dear esteemed Mr. Zweig,
after a long stay in Italy and France, I happened to pick up a newspaper, where you mention me in connection with another book. After a long time, it’s the first positive sign from you, and I hasten to thank you for it. I have the faint hope that fate might favor our meeting, if I tell you a little more.—Tomorrow I am going for 2 days to Vienna, where my address remains c/o E. P. Tal Verlag, Lindengasse 4, VII. Thence to Berlin to deliver my new novel1 to S. Fischer, I finished a week ago, after 8 months of work. I heard once indirectly, that you expressed the wish to see a manuscript of mine.2 It is yours whenever you want, I’ll be in Berlin ca. 1–2 December. Then a day in Frankfurt Englischer Hof, then 1–2 weeks Paris 6e, Hotel Foyot, rue de Tournon.
After that I don’t know. I can’t work so much for the newspaper any more. I have major projects in mind, and nothing to keep me fed, if I don’t write articles.
How have your recent books fared? Are you satisfied?
A line from you to one of my addresses would make me happy, a meeting with you would be the fulfillment of a long and deeply held desire.
As ever your
Joseph Roth
1. new novel: either (probably) The Silent Prophet or Right and Left. When Fischer declined, Roth took himself off to Gustav Kiepenheuer Verlag, Berlin.
2. a manuscript of mine: Zweig was one of the leading autograph collectors of the day.
74. To Félix Bertaux
Hotel Imperial, Vienna
29 December 1928
Dear esteemed Mr. Bertaux,
I want to wish you and your wife a Happy New Year! Tomorrow I’m setting off for Zurich, and from there to Marseille. Maybe I’ll be in Paris in the course of January. Then I will have the great pleasure of seeing you. If not, I’ll send you 3 or 4 of my articles on the Saarland from Marseille. Some were unavailable from the FZ—the issues sold out—and I’ve had them copied, though I don’t know if a manuscript is any use to you.
Fischer didn’t like my novel. I won’t therefore get it published—because I don’t want the publisher to bring out a book of mine without conviction. Perhaps Fischer, who even as I speak is thrilling to Gerhart Ha
uptmann’s new novel Wanda, is getting on a bit. The people around him are marionettes!
Your son Pierre will have written to you about me. His development is really exceptional, he is becoming terribly clear and wise and warmhearted: a young Mensch in the old, almost lapsed sense of the word. We became very close, and I will be delighted if he can accompany me to Russia in the spring.
Goodbye, dear Mr. Bertaux, and please give Mrs. Bertaux my regards,
Ever your grateful
Joseph Roth
75. To Benno Reifenberg
6 January 1929
Dear Mr. Reifenberg,
I got your kind letter today—thank you. I know how hard it is for you to send me money, but still I have no option but to take it. I am simply too wretched. Thank you for the improvisation too. It’s in your best vein. What else can I write you? Yes! I would like to have written an introduction to my Panopticum,1 making the entire book over to you. But in the meantime, misfortune struck, and I had to content myself with a hasty dedication, for which I ask your pardon.
Best regards to you and yours, especially Babuscha.2 I am still a wreck, a long way from being whole. Who knows if I ever will be again.
Ever your old
Joseph Roth
1. A collection of Roth’s feuilletons that appeared under the title Panoptikum: Gestalten und Kulissen (Munich, 1930), all part of a deal with the Münchener Neueste Nachrichten. See no. 84.
2. Babuscha: Maryla’s (Polish) mother, of whom JR remained very fond.
76. To Stefan Zweig
Hotel Beauvau, Marseille
15 January 1929
Dear esteemed Mr. Zweig,
as Ernst Tal was away for the Christmas holidays, I didn’t get your wife’s1 kind note in Vienna, but forwarded to me here. Please kiss her hand, and thank her for the answer to my first telegram, and beg her forgiveness for the second.
I had so looked forward to meeting you at last. All these wretched obstacles that make us slip past one another.
I heard you were going to Russia again.2 I am to visit Siberia in early April. Will you let me know when you set off? I’m sure I’m going to be here for the next 10 days. I must finish my Jewish book—a revised version is to appear with Kiepenheuer, including a new section, called: The Jews and Their Anti-Semites.3 I am also finishing a new Zeitroman that’s been on the go for a long time.4
I’m delighted to hear of your success with the Volpone adaptation.
Let me say again how much I long to see you in the flesh. I have a sense of your humanity, even though—as you will know only too well, all the literary dogs are yapping. Just because would be too easy. No. There is something else in you, a humane heart surely, and a fine humanistic contempt. Happy New Year to you,
Cordially your
Joseph Roth
1. wife: Friderike Maria von Winternitz-Zweig.
2. Zweig had been to Moscow in 1928 for the Tolstoy centenary celebrations, where he had met Maxim Gorki.
3. The Jews and Their Anti-Semites: long mooted by JR, but it was never written.
4. This sounds like Perlefter: Story of a Bourgeois, which remained unfinished, unpublished in Roth’s lifetime, and untranslated.
77. To Félix Bertaux
Hotel Beauvau, Marseille
18 January 1929
Dear esteemed Mr. Bertaux,
I enclose a couple of my old articles—copies, because as you will see from the FZ’s letter to me, the numbers in which they appeared sold out. Is it too late?
Forgive me for keeping you waiting so long. I have a lot to do just now, working on 2 books at once, which must be finished before I leave for Siberia.
I got a charming, clever, and very intimate letter from your son Pierre. He is some fellow, as they say in Germany.
Always your grateful
Joseph Roth
P.S. I can’t find Reifenberg’s letter just at the moment. I’ll send it later.
78. To Pierre Bertaux
Hotel Beauvau, Marseille
26 January 1929
Dear friend,
your letter came, like a good friend, like a personal envoy of yours. Thank you! As you say, I’m sitting in the southern part of Europe, feel happy and at home, and not the least bit romantic. You came up with an excellent definition of modern man, showing the true measure of difference between the past and future type. Incidentally, the one who’s never surprised by anything is a type that has existed before. It’s not my sense that Alexander the Great felt romantic emotions—which after all began with Napoleon—when he was in Egypt. Nor did Caesar. In the Middle Ages, people shuttled between Padua and Krakow. And we’ll be going to Moscow in just the same fashion. What’s insufferable about Germany isn’t the technology so much as the romantic cult of the technology. The German is always a small-town person, so he always finds something to gawk at. Really, the Tartarins1 belong in Germany far more than they do in your land. See how every German is equipped with all kinds of gadgets and portable knickknacks, forever on the hunt, the police are kitted out à la Tartarin. The most important difference between the American and the German is that the former uses the technology as naturally as a baby drinks milk, while the latter is incapable of making a phone call without lyrical commentaries on what a great thing the telephone is. That’s what preserves Germany from ultimate Americanization. We’re half ashamed of still being Europeans, and are not capable of becoming Americans. (That’s part of the German misfortune.)
It’s a wide field.
Outside it’s bright and clear, a mistral blowing, typical Marseille weather. I’m writing this in a café, excuse the scruffiness of my writing, and this letter. I’m hard at work, writing two books simultaneously (my novel and the “Jews and Their Anti-Semites”), and articles 4 times a month. My wife isn’t quite well, is in bed, sends her regards. I’ve become very moody, toying with my novel, assaying various willfulnesses, all to loosen my stiffness. Like a form of gymnastics.
I hope your work is going well. I hope to be here 2 more weeks. Please write, and don’t mind my irregular replies.
In old cordiality ever your
Joseph Roth
1. the Tartarins: see Roth’s piece on Alphonse Daudet’s delightful book in What I Saw.
79. To Stefan Zweig
Hotel Foyot, Paris
27 February 1929
Esteemed Mr. Zweig,
your kind letter has been in my correspondence file for a month now. I was delighted by it. It’s a kindly proof of the humanity I sensed in you, and a generous present to a near-stranger who is unable to reply in kind. I had other reasons, admittedly, that kept me from writing to you: a protracted illness of my wife’s (who is still not completely well), a flu that laid me out, and the aggravation of a chronic stomach ailment, and on top of everything else 10 hours a day working on my book, of which 30 pages remain to be written, and which I hope to finish by the end of March. Even if there hadn’t been all those distractions, I would have sat over my piece of paper just as perplexed as I’m sitting over it now. I don’t know what entitles me to your great trust, and to what extent I may reveal my (unexpected) self-confidence without making myself ridiculous to you, by answering a personal letter of yours as though I’d all along been entitled to receive such letters. By making me a present you embarrass me.
The book I’m working on now isn’t the one I told you about then. I traveled to Marseille for material for the book that is to come after this one. What I am working on now is the story of a German bourgeois up to 1928.1 As you see, I work hard. I have the feeling it takes a great deal of talk to get one out of the stage of being utterly misunderstood into merely partial misunderstanding. The only reason I work though is material. I must succeed in producing the minimum from my existence, without regularly writing articles that unde
rmine my health. So that my life isn’t too grotesquely abbreviated, I should like to find myself a free man in a year’s time. And for that to happen, I have to write every day. But that’s a change. It’s impossible to fix myself. I have no such thing as a stable literary “character.” I am not stable in other respects either. I haven’t lived in a house since my eighteenth year, aside from the odd week staying with friends. Everything I own fits into three suitcases. It doesn’t strike me as at all odd, either. What is odd, though, to me, and even romantic, is a house, with pictures on the walls, and so on and so forth. In a fit of mindlessness, I took on the responsibility for a young woman. I need to keep her somewhere, she is frail, and physically not up to a life at my side.
You write true things about Marseille. I want to write a (commissioned) article on the city for the Wiener Neue Presse,2 and then you will see how much our views coincide. Marseille has another side: the terrestrial one. The city is even more colored by Provence than it is by the sea. I spent months living and working among peasants. The city quite lost its maritime aspect and acquired a wholly continental character. (Please excuse my skewed handwriting.)
1. Hermann Kesten thinks Right and Left, but this is more likely Perlefter: Geschichte eines Bürgers, a satirical novel that Roth began and abandoned. The manuscript surfaced only recently; there is no English translation.
2. Presse: JR means the Neue Freie Presse, for which Zweig made his literary debut, and remained a regular contributor.
80. To Félix Bertaux
Hotel Foyot
Paris
27 February 1929
Dear, dear Mr. Bertaux,
I begin this letter with a burdened conscience. I didn’t answer your kind letter, but put it off, day after day. My wife has been in bed for weeks, I was unable to leave the room in Marseille, and have become ill myself. I have been working on my novel 12 hours a day. Finally, I came back here, because I didn’t want to see a doctor in Marseille, and my wife’s state was getting worse all the time. She has a swollen cheek (this is to do with her general frailty) and will perhaps have to undergo a minor sinus operation. The doctor who will come this afternoon will make the decision.