Joseph Roth- a Life in Letters

by Michael Hofmann

  I was sick for a long time. Even so I managed to finish a book, a new one. It’s called The Antichrist. It’s not a novel, but a sort of “wanted” poster of the Antichrist.

  I’ll send you a typescript in a week. Please, if you will, be very discreet, and tell me what you think of it.

  I wish I didn’t have to turn to you. I know you’re a mensch. But I don’t know if our relationship is ready for something like this. I don’t know anything any more. I can no longer look after myself. Don’t be angry with me, please!

  Sincerely, your

  Joseph Roth

  I need the loan of Picard’s book,1 just for a fortnight. Can you help me?

  1. Probably Das Menschengesicht (The Human Face), 1930.

  255. To Carl Seelig

  Paris 6e

  33 rue de Tournon

  Hotel Foyot

  24 April 1934

  Dear Mr. Carl Seelig,

  awful things have kept me from writing to you straightaway. Thank you so much for all your kindness and affection. I will write you in more detail by hand soon. Please be patient with me. Things are very bad.

  I send you my sincere gratitude.

  I am very unhappy. I will write soon.

  Yours, Joseph Roth

  256. Stefan Zweig to Joseph Roth

  [April or May 1934]

  Courage, dear friend. I must have your novel SOON. Huebsch will be here at the beginning of June, and the film person, I will HAVE to have it then. Get on to Landauer!

  Your Hollywood-style Job is said to be, well, exquisite. They’ve turned Mendel Singer into a Tyrolean peasant. Menuchim yodels. I simply have to see it. I will roll in the aisles on your behalf.

  You must work. I am working too, on that novella, which is more of a Jewish legend,1 built up by me from a very slender foundation. I think it will turn out well, though I’m not given to optimistic prognoses. I’m not yet convinced of the style. For that I need your once-over. But all in all, it’s looking good. I can write only things that are in some relation to the time, and that have something comforting about them, in spite of their tragic philosophy. Before long, you’ll have my Castellio to read.

  I’m glad the money has got to you. Please don’t send or give any of it away. Pay your hotel bill for three weeks in advance, so you can work undisturbed. You must have some tranquillity.

  My wife is in Salzburg. Since she’s gone I’m quiet and clear in my head, and working smoothly and peacefully. Really all we need is peace and quiet, and a little solitude. In a fortnight at the latest, I’ll have the legend finished. Then I’ll take a deep breath, and write another couple of decisive moments (for my Collected Novellas, a selection from thirty years, old and new, which Reichner will be bringing out in two volumes in the fall). Then South America for a couple of months.

  Warmly,

  your Stefan Z.

  1. more of a Jewish legend: this sounds like Zweig’s novella The Buried Candelabrum (1936).

  257. To Carl Seelig

  Paris, 6 May 1934

  Dear Mr. Carl Seelig,

  you really do have superhuman patience where I am concerned. Thank you so much. Now, if you will just wait a little, I will write in more detail, and in the way I wish I could write to you today. I’m getting Tarabas sent to you today. Unfortunately, I have no copies here, and everything has to go via Amsterdam.

  There are many reasons for my unhappiness. Please be patient a little longer.

  With sincere gratitude,

  your Joseph Roth

  258. To Blanche Gidon

  Hotel Foyot

  Paris

  9 May 1934

  Dear Madam,

  what I have to say to you I am unable to say in French. Please therefore allow me to write in German.

  I was quite shaken when I left your house last night. Shaken by the proofs of your kindness and humanity toward me. I didn’t deserve them. I didn’t deserve them.

  It’s something I’m cursed with, that I sometimes hurt people who are dear to me. I know I have hurt you. I beg you please to forgive me.

  I am shaken too by Mr. Gidon’s goodness. It’s quite extraordinary that an important man should undertake something so difficult for my sake. I will never forget that. Please give him my warmest regards.

  I used to think I was smart, and had graduated from the school of life.

  In the last few weeks, I have learned that I am stupid, a fool, and an idiot.

  I have learned it with you too.

  Please forgive me all the ill I have done to you.

  Your faithful

  Joseph Roth

  259. To Hermann Hesse

  Paris 6e

  Hotel Foyot

  33 rue de Tournon

  18 May 1934

  Most esteemed Mr. Hermann Hesse,1

  I happened to read in the 6 May edition of the Basler National Zeitung the flattering lines you wrote on my book. Allow me, the younger man, who when still a boy worshipped your books, to thank you profoundly, and to tell you what an honor it is to be praised by your pen.

  I beg you to excuse me that I don’t have a copy to hand, to send you with an inscription. There are irksome customs barriers between Amsterdam and Paris, that won’t permit me to send for personal copies from Holland without high penalties.

  In long-standing veneration, I remain your humble Joseph Roth

  1. Hermann Hesse (1877–1962), Swiss author of Steppenwolf and many other books. Won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1946.

  260. To René Schickele

  Saturday [1934]

  Dear Mr. René Schickele,

  since you will best know where a letter will find Annette Kolb at this moment, I ask you kindly to forward the enclosed to her. Her book is MAGNIFICENT,1 and I want her to know it right away.

  And one other favor, if you will: I want to exploit your “unpatriotic mastery of foreign tongues.” I would like to send my Antichrist to Thérive and Praz,2 with inscriptions that will indicate that I am aware of what their good opinion might mean. “Hommages” is too general. What can I say that would be short, pithy, and not too groveling in French?

  Please don’t mind that I’m availing myself of your helpfulness! Thank you!

  Yours sincerely

  Joseph Roth

  And please, if you will, just a word back to tell me the letter to Annette is safely on its way.

  1. her book: Die Schaukel (The Swing).

  2. Praz: Mario Praz (1896–1982), the noted critic and writer on the Romantics (The Romantic Agony, 1930).

  261. To Blanche Gidon (written in French)

  Hotel Foyot

  Paris

  [postmarked: 20 May 1934]

  Thank you, dear Madam Gidon!

  Please, I beg you, don’t believe all the “scuttlebutt” people tell you—as Miss Kolb was wont to say to me.

  I hope to see you again one day.

  My obeisances to Mr. Gidon.

  Yours devotedly,

  Joseph Roth

  262. To Fritz Helmut Landshoff

  Hotel Foyot

  Paris, 26 May 1934

  Dear Mr. Landshoff,

  thank you for your thoroughness. Let’s stick to the numbered headings, it’ll be easier to follow.

  1. The Englishman1 will send the contract for me to Mrs. Vallentin today or tomorrow. Probably he will have agreed to my demands. (But I don’t know that he will.) The novellas2 are included in the contract, also my two following books.

  2. If I agree to give you the novellas before the novel is ready for de Lange, then I run two risks: (a) I may risk Walter3 far too early; it would have the same effect as concluding an “entire” deal with Querido right away. (b) I risk losing the Englishman; in whic
h case Querido, as the only contractual partner, would give me less than he does at present.

  From which follows (a) that it seems impossible to me to have the novellas announced or published before I deliver the novel to L.4 (b) that I get from you the absolute certainty—even if the English interest disappears—of getting everything he offers me; otherwise I would be missing out on a good opportunity.

  3. It seems to me I will have to leave L. The only impediment is Walter. But then I don’t have as much time as he does. My only choice is between you and the English. And I have to make up my mind before I leave.

  4. You probably see Walter all the time. He must know whether he can still work with L., or not. If he still doesn’t know, and doesn’t tell me either way today or tomorrow, then I will have to decide before I leave here—whether it’s you or the Englishman. I can’t sell my fate to a madman. If I decide in favor of Querido, then it would be better if you tried—with Walter’s support—to buy back my next book from L. It’s a surefire success, on account of its theme.

  I have no time. I am provided for for the next 4 weeks. After that I will be in Marseille, starving. I don’t have time to wait for the whims of a lunatic.

  Please write me straightaway whether Querido is ready to match the English conditions. Or better still, wire! (I might be leaving as early as Monday.)

  In general, the English will be giving me about the same as L. (This is the basis) 80% foreign rights, 40% set off against advance, 40% payable immediately to me, 850 marks per month.

  If L. really hasn’t spoken to Walter yet, then I won’t believe in L’s interest in German literature any more.

  5. The personal dedications have gone out.

  6. Rischon le Zion is the destination, Palestine will do. (Erna Steiner.)

  7. So far as the Sammlung is concerned, I enclose this letter to Dr. Wasserbäck, the secretary at the embassy. Would you please send it, along with your own, registered, to the addressee, at the Austrian embassy, Paris. I’ll give you a rough draft—only rough, mind. KM can refine it. Esteemed Dr. Wasserbäck, we turn to you at the suggestion of Joseph Roth, the Austrian writer. Mr. Roth, who, as you know, is a patriotic Austrian, is working with us on our magazine. His collaboration, if nothing else, would tend to rule out a radical left-wing orientation for our magazine, which is in any case an unpartisan literary journal. The unhappy article about Austria came to be in our magazine through a mistake on the part of a Dutch editor (or publisher), whose German was not good enough. The editors of the Sammlung5 are prepared at any time to publish an official rebuttal from an official Austrian source. Many conservative Austrian authors write for us. They surely deserve to be read in Austria. The character of our Sammlung is purely literary. A single error surely cannot lead to the banning of the journal. We beseech you to mediate . . . etc.

  8. At the same time, you can write a little more freely—because he’s a Jew—to Dr. Martin Fuchs, also at the Austrian embassy, Paris. You might suggest to him that he compose an official reply.

  9. In general: don’t bother appealing to rigid official-line people. I could have written you a fairer and less damaging article about Austria than that.

  10. I’m meeting your wife tomorrow. My personal and family life is ghastly.

  Sincerely,

  your old Joseph Roth

  Herewith the letter to Wasserbäck (Dr. Erwin): put it in a separate sealed envelope.

  1. the Englishman: Roth was in negotiations with a Mr. Reece at the Albatross Press (sic!), an English reprint publisher, about the financing of some of his books.

  2. the novellas: probably The Coral Seller, first printed in Das neue Tagebuch, in Paris, in December 1934. It appeared in book form as The Leviathan with Querido, Amsterdam, in 1940.

  3. Walter: Walter Landauer.

  4. L.: de Lange.

  5. the Sammlung: Klaus Mann’s magazine Die Sammlung had been banned in Austria because it had carried an anti-Austrian article—a heavy blow for the exile magazine. Much of what follows here is the attempt to restore its credit.

  263. To Erwin Wasserbäck

  Hotel Foyot

  33 rue de Tournon

  Paris 6e

  26 May 1934

  Dear and highly esteemed friend,

  I approach you with a heartfelt request: the Sammlung, a purely literary and if anything rather conservative periodical, for which I personally write, has fallen victim to a stupid article by our stupid old compatriot Stefan Grossmann1 about Austria, and has therefore been banned in that country.

  As I say, I’m a contributor. There are other conservative Austrian writers whose work this periodical helps to disseminate.

  It’s perverse that, for instance, the Communist, Moscow-bankrolled Neue Deutsche Blätter, published in Prague, and where Mr. Ehrenburg2 unleashes savage screeds against Austria, is not banned at home.

  What can be done? The Sammlung would be happy to redress the balance by publishing an “official” article on Austria.

  It’s unjust to ban it, and to permit the Muscovite Neue Deutsche Blätter to continue to appear.

  Can you help?

  The Sammlung has quite rightly asked me to represent them. I do so with the clear conscience of one who—as you know—is a passionate Austrian.

  I send you salutations in old dear friendship,

  your old Joseph Roth

  1. Grossmann: Stefan Grossman (1875–1935), an Austrian journalist, co-founder of the weekly Das Tagebuch with Leopold Schwarzschild, which the latter went on to edit alone.

  2. Ehrenburg: Ilya Ehrenburg (1891–1967), novelist, essayist, a ubiquitous figure in those days, working now for the Bolshevik regime, and now as an exile against it.

  264. Stefan Zweig to Joseph Roth

  [May 1934?]

  [. . .]

  representations, and reverted to my erstwhile student nature. I have begun to learn again, like a high school kid. I am once again uncertain, and full of curiosity. Now, at age fifty-three, I am enjoying the love of a young woman!1 A book like yours is perhaps a lesson to me not to forget the bitterness of this world. My political pessimism is boundless. I believe in the coming war, the way others believe in God. But merely because I believe in it, I am living more intensely now. I hang on to the last shred of freedom we still enjoy. Every morning I thank the Lord that I am free, and in England. Picture my happiness, in such a lunatic age, I feel strong enough to lend moral support to others. That’s why I am so sorry that you are not here with me, who knows how long my strength may endure, strength that comes, I repeat, not from ignorance, but from a lucid sense of the brittleness of our existence. “In spite of” and “for all that” need to become our watch words in life: “to understand people and still to love them,” as Rolland unforgettably said.

  I embrace you, dear friend. I suffer from the fact that you’re so far away. The last time, in the teeth of my difficulties—I didn’t tell you: they had searched our house in Salzburg two days before, and looked through my sock drawers for weapons of the Schutzbund,2 and I had the strength to keep quiet about this flagrant show of disrespect from a city where I have been living for 15 years, and thank God it didn’t get into the papers, they persecute me with reports from spies as if I was a criminal—all that was weighing me down, when I spoke with you in Paris I was quite beside myself with my own silence and shame (or rather, the shame of those others). But how I should like to see you now, when I am myself again, and almost cheerful.

  You should have my Erasmus3 in a fortnight. I think it’s a decent book (written for the small readership of those who understand halftones.)

  Once again, then: love and gratitude.

  I’ll probably be in Austria in August, straightening out one or two things. But Salzburg is over for me, in the fall I’m going to lecture in North or South America. I have an appetite for d
istant places again, and the desire to see this world in the round once more, before it burns.

  1. the love of a young woman: Zweig had started an affair with his secretary, Lotte Altmann, later to be his second wife. Roth, one feels, disapproved (personal happiness would not have struck him as possible or even permissible at such a juncture), and was in any case bound also by his affectionate relationship with Friderike Zweig.

  2. Schutzbund: (literally, protective union), an organization founded by members of the SPÖ.

  3. my Erasmus: Triumph und Tragik des Erasmus von Rotterdam.

  265. To Blanche Gidon (written in French)

  [no date]

  Dear friend,

  this is a lady1 I recommend to you; she could work for you or your friends. She is Polish, persecuted by Hitler, and very unhappy. She will tell you about it, if you care to listen to her. Could you help her make 200 francs a month, for her poor children (two of them, about 5 years old)?

  Thank you very much, my friend.

  Entirely yours

  Joseph Roth

  She needs addresses. She is very hardworking.

  I’ve known her for a long time.

  1. lady: a Mrs. Kokotek, conveyor of this card to Blanche Gidon. JR’s generosity and willingness to help strangers and unfortunates—while often in desperate straits himself—is wonderful and extraordinary.

  266. To Blanche Gidon (written in French)

  Marseille

  4 rue Beauvau

  1 June 1934

  Dear Madam and friend (if I may presume to address you like this!).

  I’m pretty well set up here. This afternoon, I’m going to start working.

  I’ll write to you again in a week, and maybe I’ll even be able to send you the story for the NL (20 pages?).1

  Entirely yours (and Mr. Gidon’s)

  Your old Joseph Roth

  1. The story for the Nouvelles Littéraires was Triomphe de la Beauté (The Triumph of Beauty), first published in 1934, in Blanche Gidon’s translation.

  267. To Blanche Gidon (written in French)

  Grand Café Glacier

  La Canebière

  Marseille

  4 June 1934