I have nothing terrestrial left to accomplish on this earth, except to complain.
You all drop me, you are so worldly, and so canny, and I am guilty of so much “foolishness.” I have helped so many people, I am left so alone. I was so nice to people, they are so mean. I am so much your friend, in spite of all, I remain
Your Joseph Roth
303. To Stefan Zweig
[Nice] 11 September 1934
Dear friend,
even though you forbade its use, I had to telegraph Huebsch today. I must beg your pardon too for bothering you again with my wretched affairs, and to ask you to write to Huebsch to ask him to do what he said he would do. Kesten is leaving Nice on the 15th and I will have to move next door, and pay at least 2 weeks in advance. I was expecting another 400 dollars from Huebsch (de Lange agreed to Huebsch’s conditions), but I hear nothing from him. My address, for the time being, will be 121 Promenade des Anglais, Nice, Jos. Roth.
Please write to me, and write to Huebsch as well. Begging your pardon once more, your old
Joseph Roth
304. To Stefan Zweig
New address:
121 Promenade des Anglais
Nice
18 September 1934
Dear friend,
I wouldn’t have written to you so soon, but am compelled to, by a letter from de Lange, which I am faithfully passing on to you. Well, the situation is that de Lange is prepared, and with pleasure—so he says—to offer you an EXCEPTIONALLY large sum for ONE book. Between the lines I can discern that de Lange might agree to get rid of disagreeable authors whom he might be harboring for your sake. Yes, they would try hard to publish you as something outside, so to speak, the normal run of things. Between the lines I can further discern the familiar expansive gesture that, if they’d had an author like You, then I might have found myself, so to speak, underwritten for the whole of next year. No point in telling you that I am reporting these things to you, purely and simply so as to be able to report with clear conscience that I have discharged my duty properly. I don’t want to have to lie, so I say everything. (For no other reason.) Nor may I allow myself a lie. For on 1 October my advance stops, but my novel1 is not yet concluded. I have no hope, but may not pretend to be indifferent to the interests of de Lange. I am incapable of addressing you “officially,” so I have to degrade you to my accomplice. Forgive me, you who have already forgiven me so much. I don’t have a “personal” opinion—in this case—except in the event that you should happen to need said exceptionally large sum. In that case, I would urge you to take the money, the only reality that allows us to survive. That’s all that matters.
With me, terrible things are happening on top of terrible things. My parents-in-law are emigrating to Palestine. It was for the sake of those old people that I undertook so much for my wife, now the mother is leaving her daughter, and I alone will be the mother. But the Steinhof2 is paid only till the end of October. It’s about 150 schillings a month, which I don’t have. What shall I do? Does Mrs. Zweig know anyone at the Steinhof? I hardly dare burden her with that. At least I would like to know that I won’t have to bother myself with the Steinhof for half a year. What shall I do? Time is ticking, I can’t do anything, I work, I work 10–12 hours a day, very well, VERY well. With all my worries. It’s like suicide. I think it’s more respectable to drown in the sea of work than in the actual sea, and I have hit upon a method to cheat my faith, which forbids suicide. So I will die with my pen in my hand. Soon, soon, I won’t see you again, my dear friend. Have you received my Antichrist yet? I don’t know if my novel will be completed, or when or where or why! I have nothing, nothing at all. I can calculate nothing. I know nothing. I find myself far, far outside the realm of calculation.
Write to me soon, you’re leaving me so soon.
Sincerely, your old
J.R.
1. my novel: The Hundred Days.
2. the Steinhof: sanatorium, into which Friederike Roth was admitted through the agency of the writer Franz Theodor Csokor; it is also where the farsighted Count Chojnicki winds up—see The Radetzky March, pp. 356 ff.
305. To Carl Seelig
Nice
Till October: 121 Promenade des Anglais
20 September 1934
Dear Carl Seelig,
I would be very grateful to you if you could put in a good word for my friend Dr. Ludwig Marcuse with the Zurich Stadtbibliothek.—I think you won’t mind either if I encourage him to apply to you directly.
Have you gotten my Antichrist yet?
Max Picard won’t write to me any more. I am very sad.
Best wishes,
from your old Joseph Roth
306. To Stefan Zweig
Nice, 23 September 1934
121 Promenade des Anglais
Dear friend,
I’m missing a reply to my last letters. Not from impatience, no, but because the post is functioning so badly. I’ve had one or two unfortunate experiences in these last weeks.
I’ve persuaded Marcuse to come here. He will write another article for the Tagebuch about your Erasmus.
I think it’s in your interest. I sometimes get the impression that you underestimate the effect of criticism, and of the so-called émigré press. It’s avidly read by French, English, and American journalists, and then not quoted, but used, which is better.
If you happen to see Huebsch again, tell him not to forget me. In two weeks, I will be left destitute. I can’t write so quickly. I’ll be finished with my novel1 in December, not before. I am very pleased with it. But I’m too old now to be able to write with just two weeks’ security.
(I’ve been boring you with this for a year now, my dear friend.)
Tell me precisely when you’re leaving Europe.2 I can already feel you’ve detached yourself from it. I hope not from me. Have you gotten the Antichrist yet? Ever since Hitler, the Austrian newspapers treat me as if I didn’t exist. I have no friends left in the editors’ offices either. Do you know anyone who would give a mention to my Antichrist?3 Not on my account, you know, but on de Lange’s. For his naïveté it’s important that his books don’t sink without trace.
The world has seemed very dark to me ever since Germany went off on its own. People are assuming that Hitler will stay, and they want a war—in the world outside now, as in Germany previously. He has no option either. What will Austria do, and I, her poor lieutenant?4
1. my novel: The Hundred Days.
2. when you’re leaving Europe: Stefan Zweig went to the United States on a short lecture tour (with Arturo Toscanini and Schalom Asch, the renowned Yiddish novelist); he didn’t go to South America until August/September 1936.
3. Antichríst: The Antichrist was published on 9 September 1934 by Allert de Lange.
4. her poor lieutenant: words from a song.
307. To Stefan Zweig
28 September 1934
Nice, 121 Promenade des Anglais
Dear friend,
one of your letters must have gotten lost. I got the cheerful postcard. I am not straightaway discouraged, I am not overly vain, but you must see that it takes colossal courage to write a novel when you have precisely 3 weeks to live. “Just concentrate on it, everything else will take care of itself”—but even to concentrate like that and write is beyond me. You know that I am incapable of giving in anything unfinished, it’s physically impossible for me to hand in half a book, I mean, I can’t hack off one arm, and mail that either! I am a very honest man, I have never once cheated a publisher, at the most I have handed in manuscripts a month or two in arrears—how do I come to have a reputation for being unreliable?—I can’t possibly give in half a novel—and anyway what is that: half a novel? It doesn’t exist! Those are dreadful offers from pathetic writers: “I can show you the first 3 chapters” and so forth. What does th
at mean: 3 chapters? a half?—No, please, tell me, not that. You know it as well as I do. Your great and kind friendship forever leads you to deal with me pedagogically. Why when it’s between us? You know how awful my life is? How much courage I have?—Ach, let’s not talk about it.
After this novel, I will need to have at least 4 months of absolute peace. I repeat what I have written since Hitler’s accession, 8 hours a day on average, day after day: a novel (botched, but still a finished book); 3 novellas, highly successful,1 the Antichrist; ½ a novel (new); 34 articles. Interspersed with sickness, poverty, betrayal. What do you expect from me, my dear friend? Am I a god?—The betrayals of friends, being conned, looking after 6 others—what more should I do?—court cases, lawyers, letters, negotiations, and writing, writing, writing.—Of course you can tell me everything. But explain it to yourself, not me. I’m not an author, I’m a fakir! Won’t you at least see that?—I’m dying. You’ll be sorry. Why force me to so much self-praise and vanity?
Thank you for the translator! Important! Yesterday in Le Temps a big review, the translation wretchedly reviewed—and where they’re attacking my book, I see the fault of the translator. Even the malicious Thérive can see my quality shine through the translation.
Who knows whether it’s just one letter of yours that’s been lost. That’s why I’m sending this registered. I’m sorry.
When is the new date for the Erasmus?2 I need to know.
Hugs, sincerely, your old friend
1. Three novellas: The Coral Seller (The Leviathan), The Bust of the Emperor, The Triumph of Beauty.
2. the new date for the Erasmus: Stefan Zweig’s Triumph und Tragik des Erasmus von Rotterdam originally appeared in August 1934. The first printing had to be pulped by Zweig’s new publisher, Herbert Reichner of Vienna, because it had so many misprints.
308. To Annette Kolb
[postmarked: Nice, 30 September 1934]
Saturday
Truly loved Annette Kolb,
here is confirmation of your great talent, and my great devotion to you as well. If I could ever have thought your charm led me to rate your work higher than my cruel authorial conscience permits: well now, thanks to your divine Schaukel,1 I can turn to myself in triumph, and say: you know, you were right about her all along. She is beguiling IN EVERY WAY! Annette, I want to say—no Kolb—but don’t worry, I’m only intrusive like this in my initial rapture! I have just finished reading your Swing, interrupting work on my own book, thinking I can read ten pages—and now you’ve cost me a day and a half of work. Blissful vacation! How rotten I feel, confronting my own book again! You write like a bird, and I like an elephant. You are the only woman who has God’s leave to exercise this masculine calling. Every sentence is a pearl, every scene a life, every thought a truth, every observation a gem of wisdom. Charming priestess, darling of the small old gods, and the great Lord God—and of connoisseurs, of connoisseurs! You can do everything: rush to maturity, dance with wisdom, overcome gravity, you wonderful acrobat! And Germany is no longer there to hear you, and I am no longer able to hail you even in the Frankfurter Zeitung! Worse times are coming, now that I have read your book. I would like to give you now beautiful flowers from the gardener’s old garden. I am just checking, to make sure I am not exaggerating—I detest untruth, and fear I may have fallen into it—but no, no. By God, I’m right.—Come soon, before I’m all done in.
I kiss your hand, authoress, woman,
your old Joseph Roth
1. Schaukel: Die Schaukel, novel (The Swing).
309. To Klaus Mann
Nice, 6 October 1934
Dear Mr. Klaus Mann,
thank you for your letter and for what you say about the Antichrist. You’re probably right: it’s not religion that lives in Austria, but the negative effects of wars. You may have heard that I have broken off all ties to the Heimwehr, following the killings of the workers in February. I wasn’t the only one of the “Conservatives” to have done so.
I have just read your article on Moscow, and felt an itch to write a reply. In your notes, more of your ambivalence comes out than you’ll admit, and probably more than you’re even aware of. One day—when I have the time—I’d like to write a piece on Potemkin and the West. I will demonstrate that a western European, going east of Warsaw for the first time, becomes an utter child. It happened to the most brilliant European, Napoleon, and also to Balzac. Other examples abound. But first I’d like to draw your attention to that fact, not the shriveled arena1 that’s all we’re still allowed to address in our language.
I think of you as a scrupulous person: so you would have to admit that you don’t know a syllable of Russian. You’ve seen how men and women go to the congress in “work clothes” and heard them speak there with surprising freedom. What you don’t know is what platitudes, really offensive platitudes, these good people mouthed. It would have been better for them to stick to their normal tasks, and not to venture into the literary arena. (Cobblers and engineers get no eizes2 from me either.)—But it’s worse than that. As I know Russia, they will have been disguised Jews, and not workers at all, not representatives of the people, but semi-intellectuals, ambitious inadequates.
Second, you should understand that for the average Russian, a subway and a book and a phonograph are all equally great miracles. Earlier, it was the sight of a governor, a general, a tsar. It’s nothing to do with Communism. Only a naïve and genuinely rustic people like the Russians is capable of such enthusiasm. The precursors of the subway and the book, just as public, were the parade and the procession.—For western European eyes (Catherine the Great was a German) the Russians don’t paint their villages any more, they build them. That’s why they remain Potemkin villages.—The notion of all these things turns the heads of the West. In the consciousness of the Westerner, who hasn’t clapped eyes on Russia before, the astonishment at Russia merges with that at Bolshevism. What so impresses you isn’t BOLSHEVISM, IT’S RUSSIA.
Third, you don’t seem to understand that thanks to Bolshevism Russia isn’t on the way to becoming some new West, but that Bolshevism is merely the route by which our repulsive Western civilization is leaking into Russia. No new world is being readied, but our repulsive old one is moving eastward. (The League of Nations marked the beginning.) In 1927 I wrote an article for the Frankfurter Zeitung, called “Russia Goes to America.” That’s it, that’s what’s happening. You are young enough, you’ll live to see it.
Fourth, you mentioned tradition. What you don’t know is that the editions of Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky are “purged.” You don’t know Asia.
Fifth, you make comparisons with Germany. Don’t make comparisons with Germany. Only hell is comparable. Everything, everything evil in the world, becomes noble by comparison with Germany. Germany is accursed, you have to learn to get out of the habit of comparing anything at all to this German shit.3
Sincerely,
your Joseph Roth
1. the shriveled arena: wonderful and terrible phrase for the German readership of these writers in exile—on average, 5 percent of their previous editions.
2. eizes: (Yiddish) advice.
3. German shit: worth noting that this was written well before the establishment of the concentration camps.
310. Stefan Zweig to Joseph Roth
11 Portland Place
London W 1
9 October 1934
Dear friend,
I’m sorry to hear about your sciatica. I had a bout of it myself just a year ago, but then did the needful immediately, namely diathermia, which almost always helps, and I also went to Baden near Zurich, which I can recommend, a small, quiet, inexpensive place with the best baths, and from where, if you have to, you can be in Zurich in twenty minutes. What you mustn’t do is let it establish itself, because then it’ll eat its way into your bones, and you’ll have the unflattering sense of being
an old Jew.
I haven’t seen the Vienna papers for weeks, and so I don’t know if they carried anything on the Antichrist or not. If they didn’t, I’m sure it wasn’t malice but another equally noble quality, which is to say cowardice. The so-called Christian course is steered by the Jews there with almost religious devotion. It’s been a long time since I published anything at all in that country.
Erasmus comes out ca. 20 October, and is encountering the usual difficulties in Germany. The official policy is much stricter now, since someone from Eher1 has taken over the booksellers. It’s very clear that the publishers are to be slowly choked off on the Russian model, and the Eher-Verlag will be made the state publisher. That will give them control of the few Aryan German authors who have hitherto been independent. It’s the same method everywhere.
You should fight to get your health back, first and foremost. The body has more importance than we are usually willing to allow, and if there’s something wrong there, the brain will sense it. You need to concentrate hard for your novel, it’s all-important.
The Antichrist translation is coming along well, so I hear, and I can imagine the book will be a success here as well, although the English have a tendency to shy away from anything too impassioned or vehement. Then again, they do have a feeling for biblical and prophetic writing, so let’s hope for the best, and anyway I promise to do what I can for the book myself. Don’t worry about the other things, and continue to rely on
Your St. Z.
1. Eher: Franz Eher, Hitler’s publisher, the press czar of the Third Reich, and publisher of the Völkischer Beobachter, the official newspaper of the Nazi party.
311. To Carl Seelig
Nice
c/o Kesten
121 Promenade des Anglais
21 October 1934
Dear esteemed Mr. Seelig,
it’s three weeks since I sent you a signed copy of my Antichrist. I should like to know if it’s gotten to you safely. Lots of things are getting lost in the present climate. I have the feeling the secret police have their men in all the sorting offices.—The Antichrist is a great success, with 5,000 sold in 4 weeks—how I wish I hadn’t taken an advance, then I might stand to get some money now—but what else could I have done then? I never hear anything from Max Picard. Do you?
Joseph Roth- a Life in Letters Page 39