Sincerely, ever
Your Joseph Roth
312. To Ernst Krenek
temporarily in Nice
121 Promenade des Anglais
c/o Kesten
24 October 1934
Dear esteemed Mr. Krenek,
I only saw your review in the Wiener Zeitung rather late, hence my thanks to you are also rather late. In the meantime, I hope you may have received a copy of my Antichrist.
It was very noble of you to write about me as you did. Yes, the kingdom of the fathers, I fear for it again, a different fear now, will it be realized? Drop me a comforting line, if you have a moment. I fear for the following reasons: (a) it was destroyed by that repulsive National Socialism = Nazism, whose fathers were Social Democrats, whose grandfathers were Liberal Jews. (b) These latter two are both still alive, they have outlived their sons—the shard outlives the pot, as the Eastern Jews like to say. (c) Socialism was only destroyed by force of arms—therefore it still exists! (d) The new governors have too much “soil” about them for my liking, too much Alpenland, not the breadth therefore but the narrowness of the physiognomy of our forebears’ kingdom. Is it possible that a geographically diminished Austria can give rise to our geographically boundless one (as an idea?). I sometimes hear that the chancellor1 admires a well-known poet2 as “Austrian”—when we all know that if the world was as it ought to be, he would just about have been famous for the length and breadth of Brünn. Is that true? And does the chancellor believe that that’s the way to create a balance between the Alpine narrows and the “breadth of the horizon”? Between Andreas Hofer and Moritz Benedikt3—Catholic now? Is that timely? What do you think about it?
Sincerely,
your old and grateful Joseph Roth
1. chancellor: Kurt von Schuschnigg (1897–1977), leader of the Christian Socialist Party, and successor as chancellor to Dollfuss, whom the Nazis had murdered in July 1934. In 1938 he yielded before the march of Hitler’s armies. Interned in a concentration camp until 1945, then went to the United States.
2. a well-known poet: the Jewish (but in JR’s view unimpressive) Franz Werfel.
3. Moritz Benedikt: then editor of the Viennese paper the Neue Freie Presse.
313. To Félix Bertaux (written in French)
121 Promenade des Anglais
Nice
25 October 1934
My dear friend,
I’ll be here another 4–5 weeks, to finish my novel. Almost all of literature is here, the good and the bad, even the wicked. I am staying in the same house as Heinrich Mann and Hermann Kesten. I see a lot of Schickele, and the Jewish author Schalom Asch . . . They are all doing much better than I am. They have much more money, and much less sense. The only one I really admire is Heinrich Mann, and I’m not quite happy about that. Just now he’s in Prague. He’s gotten very old and seedy. A proper Professor Unrat1 with his amour, a very blond and very deceitful woman, a tart to be frank, who is costing this great writer even more in terms of worries and run-ins with the police. He’s quite fallen from grace. I don’t quite understand it.
I am waiting for a few hundred francs from my editor to help me finish the book.2 I left Marseille, because it was too expensive. When the book’s finished, I’ll go back there and try to find Mr. Lasne.
It’s strange! Only you—and besides you a couple of Jesuits—recognized me in my Antichrist. One wrote: “Excellent, excellent! I can smell heresy here!” But the others! The people on the left think I’m a “reactionary.” Those on the right think I’m with the others. Apart from that, it’s a great “success.” They’re declaiming it from lecterns in Amsterdam. It’s selling well. That’s why I hope to get a few more francs to help me finish this book. What a world! What a world! The most rational people have been driven mad! And Félix Bertaux—in the company of Jesuits!
Greetings to Mrs. Bertaux, and to Pierre.
And, as ever, for you too, from your faithful friend Joseph Roth
1. Professor Unrat: title character in the early novel by Heinrich Mann. It’s true that the novelist, with his goatee and his ungovernable blond wife, Nelly Kröger, came to resemble more and more the familiar hero of the film version of the book, The Blue Angel (1930), played with unforgettable pathos by the great Emil Jannings.
2. book: The Hundred Days.
314. To Blanche Gidon (written in French)
1 November
121 Promenade des Anglais
Nice
Dear Madam and friend,
once again, forgive me for the brevity of my letters. Right now I need to know when the Antichrist is due to come out in France.
My English publisher needs to know. The English translation is ready to come out. Did you have any more doubts, or questions? Don’t be afraid of interrupting me, please.
I will write you a longer letter once I’ve finished the novel. For today, all friendly greetings from your old and (still) unhappy
Joseph Roth
315. To Carl Seelig
Nice
121 Promenade des Anglais
11 November 1934
Dear Mr. Carl Seelig,
I make haste to reply to you, even though I have no time, and my reply must needs be very short—or at least not sufficiently detailed. But I don’t want you to remain uncertain a moment longer than necessary, as to how I took your letter. How little we know of one another, even when we are close! It’s touching to imagine that I wouldn’t care to hear a negative response from my friends. Where else other than in candor is the decent relationship of one person to another to be found?—Of course I know that you are unfair to me, like various other friends of mine—and I can’t change your mind, I can only hope that you will later change it by yourself. I made a silly mistake by padding the book1 with journalistic work. It should have been half the length. But I wanted to be unambiguous. The cause I was fighting for seems to me to permit an address to the psyche of the common man. But how to persuade him? Purposeful simplicity, of the sort you’ll find in many religious works, is a means to an end, and it was only the end I had in mind. But that’s by the by!—More important to me than being in the right is that none of those who are dear to me should think me vain. Vain I am not, I swear. Vanity is the attribute of the common and the dilettante. It’s regrettable but true that vulgarity and dilettantism today are included in the makeup of the true master; hence your misunderstanding, as I sought to account for it to myself.
Until I’ve finished the novel,2 I will be in a bad way, spiritually and materially. It’s far worse than it was a year ago. I don’t know what to do—for all my self-imposed limits. It’s my first attempt at a historical novel—certainly not because I want a “success”—do I still need to say that? But because I’ve found in the material a way of expressing myself directly. And I’m in the worst pickle: I despise the low modes of the historical novelist, and become lyrical, in the way of the novelist. It’s difficult, but it tempts me, perhaps in the same way it seemed tempting once to write a Salammbô. Only “balladesque” rather than “Homeric.” Please excuse these hasty obliquities.
Sincerely,
your old Joseph Roth
And give my best regards to Mr. Polgar.
1. the book: The Antichrist.
2. the novel: The Hundred Days.
316. To Blanche Gidon (written in French)
[postmarked: Nice,
17 November 1934]
Dear Madam and friend,
the mountain still looms as tall as ever, thank you. The novel: it’s sad, I don’t want to give it away, but I’ll let you into the secret: the hundred days. He interests me, your poor Napoleon—I want to transform him: he’s a god who went back to being a man—the only time in his life when he was a “man” and unhappy. The only time in history that you see an “unbeliever” visibly SHRINK. That’s what d
raws me to him. I wanted to make a “humble” man out of a “great” one. It’s all too clearly DIVINE PUNISHMENT, for the first time in modern history. Napoleon humbled: a thoroughly terrestrial soul lowering and raising itself at the same time. That’s what you can tell Gabriel Marcel, if you like.
Don’t apologize, my dear! And don’t always say you want nothing for yourself. That I know. But I am loyal, an old soldier who firmly believes that loyalty is the greatest human virtue.
Greetings to Mr. Gidon, and LOYAL regards to you, from your old
Joseph Roth
317. To René Schickele
[Nice] 17 November 1934
Dear Mr. René Schickele,
thank you very much for the Lawrence.1 The subject is foreign to me, but you are dear. Yes, I don’t think any subject has ever been further from me, and the sender so near. I am delighted you have the same views on Lenin’s mausoleum and Marx’s opium as I do. The chapter on the revolution is superb. I am utterly remote from Lawrence, so I can’t understand why he has to be the peg for you to hang all those things that do concern me so much. Never mind! I am struck by the book, and in what you say I see a clear reinforcement of the position I try to take up.
Kiss your wife’s hand for me
Sincerely,
your old Joseph Roth
The part about the Jews is outstanding as well. Even though I don’t think you have any Jewish friends who are so typical. You must have intuited it from the falsified conversations of your Jewish friends.
Lovely style! Wonderful style: my deepest artistic pleasure.
1. the Lawrence: Schickele’s essay on Lawrence, Liebe und Ärgernis des D. H. Lawrence (Love and Irritation in D. H. Lawrence), Amsterdam, 1934.
318. To Carl Seelig
Nice
121 Promenade des Anglais
19 November 1934
Dear Mr. Carl Seelig,
excuse this letter (and please confirm its receipt). It’s about something important, namely a human being. The German writer David Luschnat,1 no Communist, not even a Jew, a perfectly harmless fellow with strange original ideas, is being extradited from Switzerland.
He has no “name,” no money, he can’t even pay his way to the border. In this labyrinthine world, there is no way of helping him and his ilk. So we have to help in the individual case, wherever we can. And here I appeal to you. You are a Swiss citizen, and a journalist, perhaps you can assist Mr. Luschnat in some way. He lives in Ronco, with Signora de Marcos. I don’t know what he can have done in his eccentricity that would attract the ire of the Swiss authorities. He is a good person, a frail person too, he has strange ideas, not a Communist, not a Jew, his name David probably drew suspicion to him. It’s too bad that things happen in that way. If you can’t help him officially, perhaps you’ll know someone who will at least shell out a few francs to get him to the border. There is no time to waste in his case. I blush at the thought of my own helplessness, and also that the world is so wicked, so unfathomably mean. David Luschnat has done nothing more than Thomas Mann: both have left Germany. Both are writers. It’s not for the police to judge their respective literary merits. I know you, dear Mr. Seelig, hence my appeal to you. Please, surely it must be possible to take on such a case. Tomorrow, because your name is Seelig, you will be extradited from Austria. What a world! What a country, where such things are possible! Mr. Luschnat hasn’t won the Nobel Prize. That’s why he is being extradited! At the latest on 4 December, he must have left. And he and his wife were starving long before Hitler came to power. I know him from Paris. (He is a straightforward man, mediocre, and slightly comical.) He has appealed for leave to stay, but he won’t be given that, because Mr. Luschnat doesn’t have a “name.” I am furious, I should like to throw bombs. Please forgive me this letter. Don’t leave yourself in peace, we all have to do what we can, privately, we can’t do it publicly any more, we missed our chance.
Sincerely,
your old Joseph Roth
1. David Luschnat (1895–1984) was a German writer who went into exile in 1933.
319. To Blanche Gidon (written in French)
27 December 1934
Dear Madam and friend,
thank you so much for your letter. I still need another two or three weeks to finish my book.1 After that, I shall go to Amsterdam, but probably not to stay, just to get my contract extended till early March at least. Mrs. Manga Bell sends you her best. Her brother has sent his children to her. She is very happy. But me, I don’t know how to send them back again. It’ll have to happen, anyway. There are miracles in my life, poor little miracles, but miracles just the same—only fair for a poor little believer like myself.
My book seems atrocious to me. It can’t be helped! I have no time. My literary conscience is my worst enemy.
There are many things I should like to tell you—but not before the book is finished. And then over a small cognac at your house.
Please give my warmest best wishes to Mr. Gidon. I wish you both a very good new year.
Your faithful old
Joseph Roth
Nice,
121 Promenade des Anglais
1. my book: The Hundred Days.
320. To René Schickele
[no date]
Dear esteemed Mr. René Schickele,
since yesterday I’ve been staying at the Hotel Imperator, Boulevard Gambetta, as befits a café habitué, next to the France.1
Please come by, I am relieved to hear you are better.
Kiss Mrs. Schickele’s hand. Sincerely
your old Joseph Roth
1. the France: i.e., the Café de France, in Nice.
321. To Stefan Zweig
Café de France
Nice
4 January 1934 [1935]
Friday
Dear friend,
I think I must tell you quickly, because otherwise you will do something precipitate. I don’t like the little man1 at all—what I will say now is based on pure instinct, consciously without other basis, spoken to you, purely the way my nose speaks to me. He is the type of Jew who has a subscription to Karl Kraus2 lectures and the Weltbühne. (“Weltbühne readers forgather in the Café Augarten.”) You can have no idea what you confer upon a little twerp when you suddenly make him your publisher. Your publisher! Think it through, purely on a financial level. And even if he was a good, devout, little Jew! But this! He is a cheeky Lefty, who CAN’T possibly relate to your work! He’s a pocket-sized Tucholsky, a mini Marcuse—it’s wrong, it’s unseemly. You can’t have a gnat like Tucholsky for your publisher. It’s unworthy. Even a murderous goy would be an improvement.
It almost shocks me when I see something more clearly than you do, because we both know you’re so much cleverer than I am. I do crazy things, but I’m at least sighted. You (with “blind” holy credulity) surround yourself with lots of little people—you know, it’s possible to sin through too much holiness. Please, dear, dearest friend, stop scattering your credit all over the place. A little analphabetical cacker, a Weltbühne yid, can’t be your literary representative! How incomparably bigger is the Hungarian jester Brug!—Please give up your divine indifference! You’re laying claim to a sort of British fair play, and you’re only human. There is a point at which forgiveness becomes a sin.
A so-called Austrian publisher! If you have to have an Austrian, then a good Catholic, not, not, not please a Weltbühne yid. Please be careful! Don’t put yourself in the hands of someone who THROUGH YOU can suddenly acquire prosperity and influence, and who at the same time will go on shamelessly badmouthing you in his shitty intimate circle of “Jewish-aware” and “Progressive” illiterates. (That’s what I feel.)
Please understand, I’m talking freely, as though to myself, I lay no claims to objectivity or fairness. It’s my instinct that’s writing to you. I
hate sawn-off Jews with that sort of haircut. It’s a Weltbühne readership haircut. It’s absolutely not the place for you.
Forgive all this, and don’t suppose I’m drunk. (If anything, alcohol makes me even more clear-sighted than I have the misfortune of being when sober.) I’ve drunk one beer while writing this. And I say again: I know I am being “unfair.” I don’t like the fellow with his woollen—don’t laugh: it’s a sign!—mittens. I don’t like it. It doesn’t go with you.—Now, tear this up please. I’m going to leave it with the hotel porter tonight.
1. the little man: Zweig’s new publisher, the Viennese Herbert Reichner.
2. Karl Kraus (1874–1936), Viennese satirist, polemicist, and playwright, author of The Last Days of Mankind. His emphasis on purity and correctnesss of language should have made him more attractive to JR than it did.
322. To Blanche Gidon (written in French)
[Nice] 9 January 1935
Madam and dear friend,
I allow myself to send you 1,500 francs, of which I ask you to keep 900 initially for yourself, and the other 600 for me. Unless I instruct you otherwise by the 15th, would you be so kind as to then pay the 600 to the little Manga Bell girl’s school, Lycée Victor Duray, Boulevard des Invalides?—Dear, dear friend, I’m so sorry to put you to trouble like this. But to explain these proceedings psychologically: I have received by chance 1,500 francs from England. I had cause to fear my own weakness and poverty, so I decided to send you the money. I am asking a lot, even from a friend as good as you. But—if not you—who else? Whom to trust?
I am unhappy with my work. I will have finished by the end of January. At that time I’ll be coming through Paris, on my way to Amsterdam.
Work is difficult. There are many things I could say.
I kiss your hand, and send sincere greetings to Mr. Gidon,
your old Joseph Roth
323. To Stefan Zweig
Joseph Roth- a Life in Letters Page 40