Write back soon, even if it’s just a line or two. My wife is doing badly. Credit to the girl, even so, that I’m not as burdened by it as usual. I may be a sonofabitch, but defloration in a literary setting, that’s worth something to me.
In old and late friendship
Your JR
1. regimental doctor: Max Demant, the Jewish doctor in The Radetzky March.
123. To Stefan Zweig
Hotel du Cap d’Antibes
Antibes
4 April [1931]
Dear esteemed Stefan Zweig,
just a few words. I’ll write in greater detail once I’ve finished the 4th chapter. Everyone is thinking of you, and sends you their best. A horribly swaggering Remarque is here with hangers-on, Adolf Loos1 very poor and embarrassing, with miserable wife in tow. I wish you happy Easter, good luck with your work, and I look forward to hearing from you, whether my letters are shorter or longer.
The enclosed is for your wife.
In continuing cordiality
your JR
1. Loos: the Viennese architect (1870–1933), known for his buildings in Vienna and the Czech Republic.
124. To Stefan Zweig
Hotel du Cap d’Antibes
Antibes
Saturday [11 April 1931]
Dear Stefan Zweig,
I’m going into Antibes, and think I’ll stay there all day. I’m sorry I’m so unbearable, I can feel you holding it against me. But part of it—you give me the right to be frank with you—is the result of the tension between the three of us, your good wife, and you, and me. It always hurt me, as a friend, once I’d given myself permission to feel it at all. You seem to want to stifle my frankness—and for me that’s what friendship consists of. I feel you holding many things against me that you are unable or unwilling to say. I am too straightforward for that, you are more complex and mature, and I can’t bear it. I hope our friendship—it is in danger—won’t break, either over a wife or over less. To me friendship is as high an ideal as freedom, and I want to keep them both.
I feel a little feverish, and I beg your pardon for possible bad behavior. My writing is brittle and harsh, I’m sure I could find better expressions.
I would have left long ago, if a poor person weren’t keeping me here. You know it well, and you know too that I cannot leave, of my own.
I’ll write from Antibes.
I embrace you in love and friendship
your JR
125. To Stefan Zweig
Hotel Foyot, Paris
22 April 1931
Dear esteemed Stefan Zweig,
I am still on my 4th chapter, and have been here since the day before yesterday. Your good letter followed me here. The auction of Flaubert’s estate in Antibes didn’t contain anything remarkable. But the Maupassant manuscript the dealer in Nice wrote you about seemed, in spite of its high price, very interesting.—My life currently has more tensions and complications than I am able to set down. I may tell you about them, in some confidential hour. Will we have one again, ever? I have to go to Poland in the next few weeks. My dear old friend is iller than usual.1 My wife is still silent, and the letters of my in-laws, which continue to speak of cure and a resumption of marriage, hurt me; just like their reports of my wife’s apparent happiness when they mention me in front of her. Miss Prensky,2 in Flanders for 3 weeks, was at least able to relax her. I am grateful to her. I will go and visit her. Even there there are complications I can’t write to you about. The novel remains my chief concern. Being or staying in the mood for it: the tensions help and simultaneously hinder. I feel something important coming, and at some deep level of myself am calm, though agitated on the surface. I am sending your Cure through the Spirit to my Polish friend. She is very eager to see it. Here, another good friend of mine read it in 2 days, with great enjoyment. I am to tell you!
Write in full consciousness of your mastery! Your novel! It’s to be your masterpiece.3 Please don’t tell anyone I’m here. I want 10 days of quiet. Give my fond regards to your wife.
I am your old friend
Joseph Roth
1. JR is referring here to Mme Szajnocha.
2. Prensky: Eva Prensky, translator and literary agent in Paris. In 1941 she was picked up in Nice and put into a concentration camp by the Gestapo.
3. masterpiece: the posthumously published and never properly completed Post Office Girl.
126. To Stefan Zweig
Hotel Foyot, Paris
5 May 1931
Dear esteemed Stefan Zweig,
terrible, in the most literal sense indescribable things are happening in my life. Since my last letter I’ve been bedridden. I’m completely shattered. I am incapable of writing. For the first time in my life, I feel that even a letter requires some form of crystallinity. The confessional beckons. Even in Notre Dame confessional chairs are set up before Christmas and Easter with the simple legend: German, English, French, etc. I am writing in a tearing rush, with fever, with sick, inflamed eyes, and I beg pardon for the rapidity, and ask that you be assured of my sincere friendship.
Ever your old
Joseph Roth
127. To Friedrich Traugott Gubler
Hotel Foyot, Paris
6 May 1931
Dear friend, heartiest thanks,
I am in a terrible situation, experiencing terrible things, not since my wife fell ill have I gone through such a terrible time as now. I am waiting for decisions to be taken, and then I’ll come to Frankfurt. Please don’t mention anything to anyone in Berlin. I shall tell you what it is impossible to write. Life has become awful for me, a simple torment. My script is so skewed, and my style so abrupt, because I have pain in one eye, which has been inflamed for days.
My regards to your wife. Hugs!
Your old
Joseph Roth
128. To Stefan Zweig
13 May 1931
Dear esteemed Stefan Zweig,
in addition to all the other things you don’t know about, I have an eye inflammation that stops me from writing. Thank you so much for your letter! I feel bad in every respect. Please say so to Mr. Latzko,1 whose book and letter I received. I will ask Gubler at the FZ to let me review his novel. Please excuse the handwriting. I am writing with half-open eyes. I look like a bloodhound. Flanders has taken a wholly unexpected turn. The little girl has blabbed, and been put in a nunnery where she will probably die. I’ve had a letter from a monk. Life is so much finer than literature! I feel sorry for literature! It is a SWINDLE!
In old cordiality
Your J.R.
1. Latzko: Andreas Latzko (1876–1943), novelist and pacifist.
129. To Stefan Zweig
Hotel Foyot, Paris
Whitmonday [24 May 1931]
Dear, esteemed Stefan Zweig
I am writing to you in a pair of dark glasses, prescribed by the doctor, very unpleasant, cornea apparently damaged. (Excuse any abruptness!) My heart is not at all full of Flanders. Though must have contributed to physical malady. I couldn’t stand to have yet another woman suffer on my account. (She would be the fourth.) The second psychotic, this one channeled into Catholicism. Eye is just expression of spiritual depression. Other things, not to be written down. Quarrel with Kiepenheuer, who wants to have my wife put up somewhere more cheaply, sends me no money (but I have some from the FZ), has fucked up French edition of Job, just because Valois, a publisher of the very last rank, offered 100 francs more. Translation putrid. Living with the sense of always working in vain. Many reasons not to get away. Can’t go on a train with my eye this way. Even so, must meet Landauer next week in Frankfurt.
Very cordially,
your old Joseph Roth
Please don’t forget:
Otto Zarek’s1 address.
Than
k you!
1. Otto Zarek (1898–1958), novelist, biographer, journalist. A friend of Zweig’s, he emigrated to London.
130. To Stefan Zweig
Hotel Foyot, Paris
3 June 1931
Dear esteemed Stefan Zweig,
I’d rather not dictate, I can’t find anyone to take it anyway. Spending half the day in hospital. Sometimes they rip out my eyelashes, at others they inject me, and rub me, and hold my eyelids open till I can’t think any more. In this sort of condition, pity for publishers is about the furthest thing from me. As a sick man, after 10 books1 and over 4,000 articles, I think I have a right to a suit, a pair of shoes, food, hospital fees. Publishers shouldn’t publish crap, and they shouldn’t make dilettantes famous. I need to go for treatment every day for at least another 12 days. I know I’m thinking like a sociopath, but unfortunately it doesn’t help much. If there were some lousy idea that would help me make money, do you think I’d hesitate. I have to be healthy and free and able to work. I can’t stand this imprisonment. I’ve gotten so indifferent to everything.
Cordially
your old Joseph Roth
1. No exaggeration. Hotel Savoy (1924), Rebellion (1924), April (1925), The Blind Mirror (1925), The Wandering Jews (1927), Flight Without End (1927), Zipper and His Father (1928), Right and Left (1930), Job (1930), Panopticum (1930). A few of these, admittedly, are “only” novellas, but even then Roth doesn’t list either his first book, or the nixed “White Cities,” or the abandoned Perlefter and Silent Prophet. To get to 4,000 articles, he would have to have written nigh on one a day—not impossible, for him, then.
131. To Stefan Zweig
Hotel Foyot, Paris
27 June 1931
Very dear, very esteemed Stefan Zweig,
I have one good and one bad conscience simultaneously, because I avoided writing to you while my eye wretchedness was so bad that I could have done nothing but wail to you. For two days now, no dark glasses, on the other hand, a pair of normal ones that are here to stay, a symptom of aging I can’t do anything about. My left eye still very weakened by the inflammation. I myself still very confused, an illness I couldn’t suppress is a shaming defeat for me.
Day after tomorrow I go to Frankfurt, after that Berlin.
Unable to work on the novel.
Where are you now?
I lost Otto Zarek’s address again. Do you have it?
In old cordiality
your old Joseph Roth
132. To Jenny Reichler
Hotel Foyot, Paris 6e
29 June [1931?]
Dear Mother,
please write me the name of Father’s illness.
I have money for Friedl till August.
Sorry to write such a scrappy note.
Kiss Father for me.
When I come, I’ll wire ahead.
Most cordially
your son
133. To Jenny Reichler
Hotel Foyot, Paris 6e
Thursday [1931]
Dear Mother,
it takes longer than last time to shake off my jaundice. I am so feeble, please forgive these short and illegible notes.
Please, go on writing to me at this address.
By the 15th I shall have to be writing again. I hope I’m restored by then.
If Friedl were to get better at last, then I would get better too. It’s brutal, I can’t stand it.
Hugs to you both
your son
134. To Benno Reifenberg
Hotel Englischer Hof
Frankfurt am Main
Thursday [1931?]
Dear Benno Reifenberg,
I feel Germany right off the bat, and all of it at once. Every street corner expresses the awfulness of the whole country. It has the ugliest prostitutes, the girls indistinguishable from the women who swab the floors of the FZ at night, in fact I think they’re the same. The men are all scoutmasters on display. You see more blondes in summer than in winter. All tanned and deeply unhealthy looking. An awful lot of bodies, precious few faces. Sports shirts, no skirts. Yesterday, my first day back, was ghastly. Immediate plummet of spirits, the way mercury can fall to zero. The feeling as though your genitals were gone, nothing left! Skirts, where there are skirts, all buttoned up, crooked gait of the men, as though they were originally designed as quadrupeds. Refreshing humanity among the little people, far more kindness than in France. All the little employees at the FZ, very, very human. Silent suffering, you get a sense of what these people have to live through. Somewhat perversely: a touch of patriotic feeling. Envy of France. Arch-envy, like arch-enemy. The former more appropriate than the latter. Saw Peters.1 Equanimity and nobility at the same time. Like a pair of scales that always hold exactly identical weights, but sometimes I think: perhaps the pans are empty? The needle hardly moves. (Not like mine.) Complete absence of crests and troughs. Eat with him on Friday. Englischer Hof completely empty. Great rejoicing at my presence, tipper, unrest-creator, asker-after-more. Page boys get errands. Arrived like a prince in Sleeping Beauty’s castle. No sleeping beauty, though, bought a street girl from the Alkazar perfumery. Wouldn’t stop kissing me. Felt as though I’d been blessed by the Holy Fathers or something. Convey my regards to all at home.
Your old
Joseph Roth
1. Peters: Hans Otto Peters (1893–1943), a landscape painter.
135. To Stefan Zweig
Hotel Englischer Hof
Frankfurt am Main
4 July 1931
To Mr. Stefan Zweig, Salzburg/Austria, Kapuzinerberg
Dear and esteemed Mr. Zweig,
may I trouble you to forward the enclosed letter to Otto Zarek, whose address I’ve lost again.
My eyes are much better. Unfortunately, I wear glasses now. It will take another 3–4 weeks before they’re completely healed. Apparently I have an astigmatism.
I’m going to Berlin now. The only hope for Kiepenheuer and me is the American edition of Job.1 Perhaps you’ll run into Mr. Huebsch. Give him my best regards; I’m going to miss him in Berlin.
Have to stay here though to settle the question of what to do with the advances I’ve had from the Frankfurter Zeitung. Ghastly business.
Because of my eyes, I won’t be able to get going on the novel for another 2–3 weeks. I’m staying in Berlin for about 3 weeks.
Very cordially your old
[Joseph Roth]
1. American edition of Job: it was published in 1931 in the translation of Dorothy Thompson, by the Viking Press (director, Ben Huebsch). The Thompson translation is still in print.
136. To Benno Reifenberg
Hotel Englischer Hof
Frankfurt am Main
6 July 1931
To Mr. Benno Reifenberg, Paris 5, Place du Panthéon
Dear Benno Reifenberg,
I went to the Städel.1 It was the last day of the exhibition, Peters made me go. Formed a dismal impression of contemporary painting, without exception. Even in the case of Beckmann, there seemed to me to be a vast gulf between him and the ancients, a kind of porosity. I think painting, even more than literature, has become impossible. Of course the gulf between Beckmann and the rest is almost as great as the one between the classical painters and Beckmann. Even so, it remains perplexing to me how I, not understanding anything about painting, will find myself physically affected by an old painting, while it takes effort of brain and imagination on my part to be moved by a good new one. Old paintings look at me, they come to me to take my hand and squeeze my heart. For a moment it crossed my mind that B. is overestimated. But probably all this is very amateurish.
Went back with Peters. Saw many fine watercolors, and felt a great deal of space in them. I had the feeling that in this inadequate period, a delicate pai
nter like Peters is more expressive than someone more vigorous. Saw two good paintings of his that he wants to show you, shattering pictures, but as delicate as watercolors.
Will you please mail the enclosed letter to Mrs. Vallentin.2 Don’t forget.
Regards to all at home. I won’t write to you from Berlin again.
Your old
Joseph Roth
Will you send my Job to Heilbronn?!
Yes?!
1. Städel: the museum in Frankfurt.
2. Mrs. Vallentin: Antonina Vallentin (1893 Lvov–1957 Paris), wife of the politician Jules Luchaire, she kept a high-powered literary salon in Paris, and worked as an agent on JR’s behalf.
137. To Stefan Zweig
Hotel am Zoo, Berlin
8 July 1931
To Mr. Stefan Zweig, Salzburg/Austria, Kapuzinerberg
Dear esteemed Stefan Zweig,
I think I may soon go somewhere where the air is clean to work on my novel. It has to be finished by the end of September, because after long negotiations I managed to get my advance from the Frankfurter Zeitung commuted to royalties for the serialization.1 Which means that I will receive immediate payment for articles—if I should manage to write any; but the novel still needs to be finished before October. There was no better solution possible, in view of the short time, and the limited resources of the book publishers.
That’s a terrible thing that happened to you. Of course you won’t learn from it, and that’s quite right. You won’t change any more than those people who exploit you will change. That’s all as it should be.
Perhaps we can meet over the summer, but I won’t know for another 2 weeks or so. Things need to be straightened out here first.
Joseph Roth- a Life in Letters Page 20