your old Joseph Roth
160. To Stefan Zweig
Hotel Schwanen
Rapperswil am Zürichsee
24 September 1932
Dear esteemed Stefan Zweig,
your kind letter of the 22nd arrived half an hour after I mailed my disgusting one to you. I am not protesting in an effort to move you! I am not complaining, believe me! I know I attract misfortune, I have gotten used to it, I don’t want you in your serenity to be affected by me. You obey other laws. You are—how many times do I have to tell you!—one of the blessed! Stay that way. Forget about me! It pains me that I once tried to attach myself to you. But I didn’t know you at that time. Believe me, won’t you! I gave you no cause to think I was playacting (not even unconsciously, not even 3 or 4 layers down).—All I know (as far as practical things go) is that I am supposed to read from my novel on the radio in Frankfurt. That’s all I know. I live by the practical measures undertaken by Landauer. I can’t live like that. I have no more strength. No strength! Possibly I am sinful, because I get through far more money than more deserving persons require. I comfort myself with the (base) thought that I have shorter to live than the deserving ones. I have no plan for the rest of my life. If the [. . .] Jewish scribblers trash me, then I have no money, Landauer has no money. I am 20,000 marks in hock to the publisher. The publisher has done a lot for me. He needs money. He doesn’t have any. Please understand that I can do nothing. I cannot live like this.
Maybe I am pampered. I can’t help that.—So far as I know, I’ll be here till 4 November. My postal address remains Englischer Hof, Frankfurt am Main. I cannot appear before you in my present condition. I’m like run butter, like ghee. At any rate I don’t want you to see me like this.—I’ll never forget you!
Cordially,
your old J.R.
161. To Blanche Gidon
Hotel Schwanen
Rapperswil am Zürichsee
25 September 1932
Dear esteemed Mrs. Gidon,
I have no “representatives” in Paris. The person who is responsible for foreign rights at Kiepenheuer is Dr. Landshoff. He is the only one who can sell translation rights to my book.1
I would be very happy if you were to translate me, and if Kiepenheuer and Plon were able to come to an agreement.
Very cordially, with many thanks and good wishes,
your old Joseph Roth
1. my book: of course and still refers to The Radetzky March.
162. To Friedrich Traugott Gubler
2 October [1932]
Dear friend,
it seems I have to write to you after all, afraid as I am that you haven’t heard from me. I feel like someone calling out into the desert, and no echo. I write and write, and I hear nothing from you.
I would like to see a statement again. I have no idea of where I stand with the paper with regard to lines and money.
I’m in urgent need of the latter. I don’t even know if I’m allowed to approach you with this silly nonsense. But I need about 100 marks a week—and I’m writing and writing, and I never see a penny. I’m in quite a good way, and not at all drunk.
Cordially
your Joseph Roth
Another article just mailed.
163. To Blanche Gidon
Hotel Englischer Hof
Frankfurt am Main
4 October 1932
Dear esteemed Madam,
thank you for all your trouble! If Plon has doubts—whether literary or financial—then he should forget the idea. I am by no means so consumed with ambition as to think my work must be translated. I have far too low an opinion of the public world, of literature, and publishers—in Germany and in France—for me to care about translation or “literary effect.” . . .
Thank you too very much for your efforts regarding Mrs. Manga Bell’s son (she says hello, and sends her best wishes). But 300 marks a month is out of the question for her. I’ve managed to find out since that the boy could get a place in the Lycée Janson for 120 a month. But there seems to be some doubt about their taking him. He doesn’t speak a word of French! On balance, though, it’s better that the son suffers, than the mother. Not merely because I’m involved with the mother; but because I think it’s a sin for mothers to lay down their lives for their sons. Mrs. M.B. gets (entre nous) nothing at all from her very rich husband. She has to earn everything herself. She is very poorly. She has, moreover, a lung infection. She has a daughter as well. How can she manage all that? The husband is a “sovereign” nobleman, and has the right, even by French law, not to pay alimony or child upkeep.
But don’t worry too much about all that! If Plon were to decide against the RM, then the only aspect of that I would find regrettable is that you wouldn’t be able to translate it! I have zero literary ambition in this plebeian literary cattle market of Paris (or Berlin).
My regards to your husband!
Ever your old
Joseph Roth
164. To Blanche Gidon
Hotel Englischer Hof
Frankfurt am Main
11 October 1932
Dear esteemed Madam,
thank you for your two kind letters. Where the Radetzky March is concerned, I’ve never doubted that publishers of all nationalities are businessmen. What annoys me is that they’re bad businessmen, and that, particularly in France, foreign books are badly paid for, badly translated, and badly sold. I care too much about words for me to be able to look on while my words are twisted and mutilated—merely because a publisher won’t give up the false vanity of continuing to bring out foreign books, nor admit that he doesn’t have deep enough pockets to do it with dignity. When I look at the revolting literary “scene”: that une heure avec,1 the quasi-Communist Nouvelle Revue Française,2 the stupid “conservative” periodicals in Paris, these snobberies and cliques, prepared to genuflect before each “novelty,” the incomprehensible Joyce,3 the latest postwar epsilon out of Germany, well: it makes me shudder! The book trade has become a matter of fashion—it wouldn’t surprise me in the least if Coty4 and Poiret5 were to be the next editors of the Nouvelles Littéraires. I won’t participate in that. I won’t join in the cult of Gide either. See: in Germany everyone is unliterary. I don’t get upset if they make idiots of themselves in literary matters. But I care too much about the grand traditions of France for me to be able to bear the way they now make une heure avec with driveling idiots from all over Europe—and on the basis of paid advertisements! I’m used to German barbarity. It’s my own. I live off it. But I can’t get used to French barbarities. It’s enough to make a boche out of me, even though, God knows, I have little aptitude for that.
Now, to Mrs. Manga Bell’s son:
Thank you so much for your trouble (and Mrs. Manga Bell sends her best). She would write to you herself, only she’s bedridden. She’s been ill since the beginning of autumn, she can’t take the adjustment. But she’ll write tomorrow!
It seems to me that Mrs. Tardieu would be very good for the little black boy. The expenses, if I’ve got this right, are 900 francs all told—150 marks a month, including laundry and sundries.
Well, I’d be in favor of the little fellow’s spending the 2 months before entering school in a French household.
But if he does have to go to the Lyceum, then the money question changes:
a. School fees—or is it free?
b. Transport?
So the boy would end up costing Mrs. Manga Bell ca. 1,200–1,500 francs per month.
(My arithmetic has always been poor, but isn’t that right?) And pocket money and clothes on top of that. So two months @ 1,500 francs comes to 3,000 francs = 500 marks. Then there is Mrs. Manga Bell’s second child, a daughter, in Hamburg. The children’s guardian (in financial matters as well) is an uncle of Mrs. Manga Bell’s in Hamburg. In my estimatio
n, we’d have to allow 10 days before she learns:
a. Whether the money is there
b. When!
Could Mrs. Tardieu wait that long?
To recapitulate: the children’s father is the Count of “Duallo and Bunanjo,” and stands under French protection.—He abandoned Mrs. Manga Bell, the mother of his children.—They were born in Paris, therefore have French nationality.—They won’t be able to stay in Germany for very long—on account of their race—and also on account of their future! (1) They are Negroes, and therefore dependent on France. (2) They are French Negroes, therefore they are French. (3) They have decent possibilities in France, because their father is a French “Negro chief.” They are respectively 12 and 11 years old: the boy 12, the girl 11. There is no suggestion of any childhood illnesses—unpredictable chance aside.
Dear Madam, please forgive the dryness of my tone here! It seems necessary to me, when dealing with practical matters. Incidentally—an instance of the strange hand of destiny in all this “practicality”: Mrs. Manga Bell’s daughter was born in the Levallois-Perret clinic.
I myself am very much concerned with the fate of the children. I love them as if they were my own.—I would adopt them, if that didn’t mean removing them from the protection of their much more powerful natural father.
And now: it’s a terrible thing to have you doing so much for me—and myself powerless to respond in kind. I can only thank you from the bottom of my heart,
Yours ever
Joseph Roth
1. une heure avec: an interview feature in the literary weekly Les Nouvelles Littéraires.
2. NRF: an imprint of Gallimard, founded by André Gide and Jean Schlumberger.
3. Joyce: James Joyce (1882–1941). As much as he disliked musty intellectualism, so JR also had it in for a sort of games-playing modern trickery.
4. Coty: François Coty, parfumier—and newspaper owner (Le Matin).
5. Poiret: François Poiret, a Parisian dressmaker and designer.
165. To Hans Natonek
Englischer Hof
Frankfurt am Main
14 October 1932
Dear Hans Natonek,1
your lovely review2 puts me to shame: firstly because I don’t entirely deserve it, and secondly because I was so slow in thanking you for your own book. Excuse my dilatoriness. Yours is a real friendship. It even overlooks flaws in my writing—even though it clearly has eyes with which to see them.
I will try to give you my sense of your book. First its shortcomings:
1. In the conception, already. You take up two intertwining themes, either one of which would have sufficed for a novel:
a. The children of a city3
b. The monster disfigured by hatred, and then cured.
This is a truly Shakespearean figure. Beside him, all the others would have had to look as small as they truly are. But if you wanted an antagonist, then you would have had to confront the hellish wickedness of Dovidal with the goodness of a saint. All the time I read your book, my fingers were itching to write in such an antagonist! Partly because of my personal feeling for the author, but more the latent charm of the material. Dovidal is bedeviled; Epp would therefore have to be blessed. (And Waisl is redundant. He needs his own story.) Remember, brevity is the soul of etc. You commit a very common German mistake that even great Germans have perpetrated—including, if you ask me, Goethe, in Faust—if it weren’t heretical to accuse such a one of failing. You packed in too much. Dovidal’s story on its own, told in detail, phase by phase, would have been enough. Do you see? Something very cold, in the way that my Job is something very warm. Forgive me for mentioning myself. The mother, the father, the sister, and Dovidal himself: complete story. Instead, you (vainly) tried to squeeze this prince of hell into something ordinary and human. You ended up underestimating your own character. You turned a metaphysical fable into a humdrum realist story.
2. You still make the huge mistake—have done since you’ve been writing books—of interpreting, of explaining, of being a know-it-all. You over-egg the pudding, you clue the reader in, you betray what is going on in your brain-cum-workshop. You offer commentaries not only where, for some external reason or other, you haven’t been able to show fully, but also where, probably without your knowing it, your construction has been brilliant. You know, I’m a clever dick as well. But I keep it under wraps. Only when you’ve won the Nobel Prize can you allow yourself to publish your work journals. You have fabulous scenes that speak for themselves. You present them with an extensive commentary. Your best scenes come ivied with commentary.—Your coarsest mistake: the final scene far too obvious. (Your fear, presumably, of lack of understanding on the reader’s part.)
3. The strong points of your novel are at the same time its flaws. Which proves to me that you’re a real writer. So I’m not just prejudiced in your favor—a relief to me. Dovidal is UNFORGETTABLE! Unforgettable the scene with the Rabitzwänden. Waisl’s first appearance. The mother. All of them unforgettable. Waisl’s marriage! Unforgettable!
4. The language is superb, but for some highly abstract remarks. A novel is not the place for abstractions. Leave that to Thomas Mann! If anything, your natural gift is too concrete at times.
And a few personal eizes:4
a. Read more of the greats and the immortals: Shakespeare, Balzac, Flaubert!
b. No Gide! No Proust! Nor anything of the sort!
c. The Bible. Homer.
d. Don’t distrust the “reader” too much!
e. Try to keep yourself clear of journalism at heart.
f. No interest in day-to-day politics. They distort. They distort the human.
g. You have sufficient means—thank God—that there’s really no need for you to write para-feuilletons! Fuck them. All they’re good for is a hat for the wife and a dress for the girlfriend.
Sorry, forgive the know-it-all tone, the superiority, and anything else that bothers you here. Listen, if you do listen, to the absolute honesty of my words.
Always cordially your old
Joseph Roth
1. Hans Natonek (1892 Prague–1963 Tucson), journalist and novelist.
2. your lovely review: of The Radetzky March.
3. Natonek’s Kinder einer Stadt, published in 1932.
4. eizes: (Yiddish) tips, advice.
166. To Friedrich Traugott Gubler
Sunday, 25 October [1932]
Dear friend,
I’m just over a bad shock. Mrs. M.B. was pretty seriously ill. I felt the chill breath of an operation. And worries, worries, and the need to suddenly honor a bond I’d given my parents-in-law. And a great swarm of little adversities, interrupting my work. Also my articles. And money—needing money! And a remittance from Kiepenheuer lost in the post, inquiries—and only then compensation. And the feeling of being pursued by demons. And doctors and pharmacists, and the smell of camphor again and again, and the bloody shimmer of the Red Cross, before me and behind me. Forgive my silence, all right, I’m going to get back to work tomorrow.
How is your daughter?
Cordially
your very old Joseph Roth
167. To Stefan Zweig
26 October 1932
Casa Bellaria
Ascona, Ticino
Dear esteemed friend,
read your book1 in two days of breathless excitement. My friendship for you can’t make me so blind—and if blind, then at least not so excited. I used to read like that when I was a boy, Karl May, Robinson Crusoe. There was material for a master, and you mastered the material. The way it tightens and tightens till the end—I got more and more breathless myself, I played along—that was how Schiller wrote history plays. My dear clever friend and Stefan Zweig. I am enraptured! You interpreter and poet! That’s really what you are.
Tel
l me where you are going.
At this stage, I know nothing, except that I’ll have to stay on here another 8–10 days, while Landauer sends money. Then, if sufficient, maybe Paris?
Always your loyal friend
Joseph Roth
1. your book: Marie Antoinette.
168. To Otto Forst-Battaglia
Caffè Centrale Ascona
as of: Englischer Hof
Frankfurt am Main
Ascona, 28 October 1932
Dear Doctor,1
thank you for your kindly letter. I am the son of an Austrian railway official (early retirement, died at home) and a Russian-Polish Jewess. I attended middle school (gymnasium) in Silesia, Galicia, and Vienna, and then studied German language and literature under Minor and Brecht (in Vienna). I volunteered for the front in 1916, and from 1917 to 1918 fought on the eastern front. I was made lieutenant and decorated with the Silver Cross, the Merit Cross, and the Karl Truppen Cross. My service was initially with the 21st Jaegers, then the 24th Land Reserve. The most powerful experience of my life was the war and the end of my fatherland, the only one I have ever had: the Dual Monarchy of Austria-Hungary.2 To this date I am a patriotic Austrian and love what is left of my homeland as a sort of relic.—I spent six months in a Russian prisoner of war camp, fled, and fought for two months in the Red Army, then two months flight and return home. In Vienna I began to write: first in the Arbeiterzeitung, then for the Neuer Tag (not to be confused with the Tag of today), then in the N. Wiener Journal; Flight Without End is largely autobiographical; thereafter I was a freelance reporter in Berlin, then roving reporter for the feuilleton section of the Frankfurter Zeitung [. . .] then for the Münchener Neueste Nachrichten. My first book appeared in 1923 or 1924. It was called Hotel Savoy. Since 1930, I’ve lived as a freelance author in Germany and abroad.
I want to thank you for your interest, and on this occasion for the warm notice you wrote about my novel Job.
Your humble servant
Joseph Roth- a Life in Letters Page 23