Joseph Roth- a Life in Letters

by Michael Hofmann

  Warmly, your Stefan Zweig

  382. To Stefan Zweig

  Amsterdam

  Eden Hotel

  2 April 1936

  Dear friend,

  if you hadn’t said in your last letter that I was “subconsciously (what’s that supposed to mean, “subconscious”? It’s pure Antichrist!) angry” with you, I wouldn’t have written back to you at all.

  It’s only devils not human beings that are “subconsciously angry.” That’s a type of religious perspective; people are not, ever “subconscious,” save in the sexual domain, and crime, and dream. And even that is a sin, or at least suspect. I’m not angry with you, I’m your friend! Why “angry”?

  You know you’ve no need to tell me of all people what it is to be a poor little Jew. I’ve been that since 1894, and with pride. A believing Eastern Jew from Radziwillow. I would drop it if I were you. I’ve been small and poor for 30 years. Heck, I am poor.

  But nowhere is it written that a poor Jew may not try to earn a living. That’s the only advice I turned to you for. If you don’t know, then say so. I thought you might be able to put me onto some film people, or something.

  If it wasn’t that I was convinced brotherly feeling dictated your letter, I would tell you I was “consciously” angry.

  I’m not, as you know, because I’m always conscious.

  I send you my warmest regards, your old friend

  Joseph Roth

  Please reply.

  383. To Blanche Gidon

  Amsterdam

  Eden Hotel

  4 April 1936

  Dear, dear friend,

  the only reason I haven’t written you is because it’s so cold and dark. De Lange’s successor won’t give me any money. I’m at the end of my rope, I can’t think of anything at all. But don’t think that I don’t think of you with great gratitude and constant affection.—Maybe things will lift. If they do I’ll write you a detailed letter, straightaway. I’ve been pursued by calamity for 2 years now. It surrounds me like a fortress. Forgive my German. I can’t easily translate in this state.

  I kiss your hand warmly and gratefully.

  Your old

  Joseph Roth

  Mr. van de Meer seems to have lost a lot of money in one of the banks here. He hasn’t written back to me either.

  384. Stefan Zweig to Joseph Roth

  49 Hallam Street

  London W 1

  6 April 1936

  Dear friend,

  you can write me as angry letters as you like, I won’t be angry with you. Do you really think that if I had even the ghost of an idea, I would keep quiet about it, or not bring it up? Perhaps, though, you could work out a plan yourself, and lay it before us, how you could be helped in the straitened circumstances dictated by these times. Make it easier for us by coming up with some proposal. And you could also scribble out some film themes on a piece of paper, regardless of style and art, so we could have a basis for possible future negotiations. Berthold Viertel1 has been struggling for the past two years for your Radetzky March, and still hopes to get it taken on somewhere, sooner or later.

  Sincerely your S.

  1. Berthold Viertel (1885–1953), poet, novelist, playwright, essayist, and director; lived in Vienna, Prague, Berlin, Hollywood, and Zurich.

  385. Stefan Zweig to Joseph Roth

  [undated]

  Dear friend,

  Huebsch sent me the letter for you under the same cover on purpose so that I should read it—he’s really trying for you, and doesn’t have any exploitative intentions. Please trust him.

  I feel rather written out. I corrected the proofs, the book will be out soon.1 The print run will be small, because it’s a book for a male readership, and all the dictatorships of course are closed off (Italy, etc., Germany happened long ago) but I felt the need to speak my mind unambiguously. Now I’m working on a Jewish legend, I think it’ll be good.2

  I wrote to Landauer yesterday, concerning you. I would have come over in person, but the only planes are German, and frankly I’d sooner drown. But we must see one another soon. Please don’t forget: draw up a plan for the next two months, so that we can help you together and have the certainty that it is helping you.

  I am very down. My instinct for political calamity pains me like an inflamed nerve. I fear for Austria, and the loss of Austria would be the end of us, spiritually,

  your St. Z.

  1. out soon: Castellio gegen Calvin.

  2. I think it’ll be good: Der begrabene Leuchter (The Buried Candelabrum), 1937.

  386. To Stefan Zweig

  Eden Hotel

  Amsterdam

  30 April 1936

  Dear friend,

  my silence isn’t truculence, but despair. Landauer’s gone away. I’m all alone. You won’t come either. It’s not true that only German planes fly here. Only the 6 o’clock flight is Lufthansa. At 7:00, 11:00, 12:15, 2:10, and 7:45, there are Dutch ones. But you don’t want to, and it would be better if you said so. But I can empathize with you, I can sense that you have no desire to see a man in utter distress. It’s not pleasant, it’s even harmful to see friends in a condition resembling mine. Do you remember, in your hotel room, when I was sitting on the prosecution suitcase,1 that I told you I wouldn’t be offered a contract, and that the next stop was either the Seine or the Salvation Army. That’s where I’m at now. Your best and maybe your only friend is in the greatest physical and spiritual danger, and you don’t come. I love you too much to be angry. You just make me bitter. I’m to pull myself together, you say, what with, by what means? Can’t you see what a “pulling together” it already is if a 42-year-old man, having written 20 books by the sweat of his brow, and having experienced no end of suffering in his life, still continues to work. I write every day, simply so as to lose myself in fictional destinies. Don’t you see, fellow human, friend, brother—brother, you called me once—that I am shortly to die. Please give the accompanying letter to your wife.—In old fervor,

  Your Joseph Roth

  Forgive me my bitterness, I would tone it down if I could.

  I hear that Bruno Frank has good connections to the film business, I’ll write to him, my novel is filmable.

  1. the prosecution suitcase: a puzzling turn of phrase, but it sounds as though SZ (and maybe JR) had found a way of gaming through JR’s predicament, involving one taking the best case, the other the worst, or one the prosecution, the other the defense, the respective points of view marked by something easily found in those days—a suitcase.

  387. To Stefan Zweig

  Eden Hotel

  Amsterdam

  4 May 1936

  Dear friend,

  thank you from the bottom of my heart for your friendly act. Unfortunately, Landauer’s not back yet, and he may be some time still. The people don’t pay up, even though they have the bearing of solid businesspeople. That terrible marriage of respectable and rapscallion. I’ve seen it now with my statement. At last I start doing my sums, and it turns out they’ve been cheating me the way a maître d’ in a 5-star hotel cheats a drunk. I can hardly believe your publisher will want to pay. I had to fight for two weeks to get a statement out of de Lange. Then they told me it wasn’t a final statement. Unfortunately Landauer isn’t around. I’ll be glad if I can save my hide till the autumn. Everyone else has relatives, a mother, a brother, a cousin, but I come from far away, I don’t even remember the names of my relations in the East. Plus, if they’re still alive, they’re bound to be in dire straits. What shall I do? I have to view you as a brother, I beg you, please permit me to, I’m talking to you as to a brother. Mme Manga Bell is with her girlfriend in Jona near Rapperswil, but she can’t stay there for longer than 4 weeks. What shall I do with her? She’s probably madly in love with me. What shall I do about myself? However cheap this
hotel is, as I have nothing, it’s dear for me. What shall I do with myself question mark period?

  It’s too bad I hear only now that Bruno Frank has behaved disgracefully toward you. Dr. Landshoff from Querido has written to him on my account, and out of politeness I’m going to have to write to him myself. So I too have thrown myself at an unworthy person. Should I rescind my plea?

  I am waiting with brotherly anticipation for your book,1 and hope with all my heart that your novella2 is successful, even though it keeps you from coming to see me. When are we to meet, anyway, and where? Everything seems tangled and hopeless to me. It’s as hard to see a friend nowadays as it once was to defeat an enemy.

  I am in despair anyway—not just for personal reasons, though that’s reason enough. It’s the confusion of the world! It looks as though Austria may be lost. Then the two Dutch publishers have decided to abandon their German lists. They say it quite openly now.—I congratulate you on your banning in Germany. What the hell are you and Hofmannsthal and Freud doing in Germany anyway?

  I think my novel is very poor, I wrote it too quickly. Landauer didn’t mention it at all to me. And even if it turned out to be good, what use would that be to me? The novel has to come out next month, and my name is finished. Through overproduction. What can I do?

  I am physically sick as well. Every evening I run a temperature. The climate in Amsterdam is horrible. I hope I’m not seriously ill, but I’m working very hard, and that’s the cause. I’m editing my first novel, and writing my second.3 I’m chucking all the material into it that I wanted to save for my great book “Strawberries.” It’s a shame, but what else can I do? I’m living off the last of the money that Querido paid me for the stories: 5 weeks ago, 200 gulden, for all rights, it’s extortionate. But what could I do? When Landauer’s girlfriend turned up, he couldn’t spare any more money for me.—I am so wretched, if I see you again, I’ll frighten you. I’m sure of that, but I’m so utterly wretched. I want to know that there is someone in the little circle whom I can look down on.

  Your Joseph Roth

  I’ve just been forwarded an invitation for Freud’s festschrift. I’m sending it on express. What else do I do with it? Copy it out again? What for?

  1. your book: Castellio gegen Calvin.

  2. your novella: Angst (Fear) was filmed in Paris in 1936.

  3. and writing my second: probably Confession of a Murderer and Weights and Measures, respectively.

  388. To Stefan Zweig

  Eden Hotel

  Amsterdam

  7 May 1936

  Dear friend,

  thank you very much for your kind letter. It’s a good thing that your wife has left. I don’t think I’m being indiscreet if I say it’s what I told her to do. I would have said it openly in front of you both. But you should never forget, my dear friend, that she is an extraordinarily loyal person, and deserves consideration, and that she’s at an age when all women are afraid of being abandoned. It’s the age of panic. Her sufferings over the last few years won’t have been less than yours and mine. We too live in a state of continual panic. God knows who has the rights of it. She did write to me, never inflammatory letters, always perplexed and sad. Dear friend, it’s important to love and love, these days. (We are all so tangled up.) Good luck with your story. I hope it comes out beautifully. God will assist.

  I am in a dire situation. Landauer is ill, and is lying in the Hotel Siru in Brussels. Mr. Kroonenburg, the editorial manager of de Lange, told me today that your publisher won’t have any money for another 6 months. On top of my hacking cough, I’ve had swollen legs and feet these last 3 days. I can hardly pull my shoes on, and at night I lie with my legs raised, which means I don’t sleep. I’m afraid my heart will pack up.

  But I go on working, and will soon be finished with my new novel. I can’t go on. I really can’t. Landauer and the publisher want to bring this new book out next. I think they have their reasons. It’s all one to me, everything is busted, my head is only half working. I have dropsical feet. I couldn’t send you my novel, because I had to deliver the only handwritten copy of the book to the publisher. It’s being set on 1 June.

  Listen, my friend, I’m in the depths of distress, listen to me, I’m dying, believe me, I’m dying. I have no idea what or where or how. I don’t believe in the film. Even if, it’ll be too late.—Please reply to me,

  your old Joseph Roth

  389. To Blanche Gidon

  Eden Hotel

  Amsterdam

  8 May 1936

  Dear friend,

  don’t be angry with me. I’m sick, and no one will give me an advance. You’ll get my novel1 when it’s set. My feet are swollen to the knee, and I can’t walk. Mrs. M.B. is very poorly, wretched, no money, staying with a Swiss girlfriend, but not able to stay there much longer. I am at my wits’ end, and don’t know what the rest of my life is for. Don’t be angry with me, be kind. My heart is as empty as a desert and as black as an abyss. I am humiliating myself horribly, don’t tell anyone, the help committee is paying this wretched red-light hotel for me, but the people here are kind to me. Sincerely, your grateful old

  Joseph Roth

  1. my novel: Confession of a Murderer

  390. To Stefan Zweig

  Eden Hotel

  Amsterdam

  11 May 1936

  Dear friend,

  what you write really doesn’t make sense. How could I find you ungrateful, and what words are these: grateful, ungrateful, in this unfathomably bottomless thing called friendship. It seems to me you can’t have had a friend before in your life. You were only ever a friend to others. Is there gratitude or ingratitude between brothers? How much less then between friends! If I can give my life for a friend a thousand times sooner than for a woman, will you then say I’m grateful or ungrateful? I would let myself be cut into tiny pieces for you, literally; within such a serious and tragic relationship as friendship, there is only the UNCONDITIONAL. THE UNCONDITIONAL. There are no criteria. Why do you tell me you give money to so many causes? I know you do. What concern is it of mine. You don’t know—otherwise you wouldn’t do it—how much you hurt me when you write: “Don’t mistrust me!” There is no situation in which I would “mistrust” a friend. How is such a thing possible? There are moments sometimes when a friend may be mistaken, and then I will tell him. If I were to distrust you for a second, I wouldn’t be your friend any more. But within this relationship called friendship, I am grateful for every kind word and action. If you save me from my doom—but I fear you may be overestimating your powers there, and my powerlessness—you will keep your friend for longer, and I will keep you longer. But how do you think it can go on? I can’t live entirely off you, who are so overrun by needy people. One day your conscience won’t be able to stand it any longer, and you will try and flee your own powerlessness, and rightly so. And then what will become of me? How many people do you have writing to tell you that you are their one source of support? I am ashamed, thinking about it, to say the same thing. But it’s true. If there’s nothing doing with the cinema, then I’ve gone under.

  Landauer wants to publish the new novel in summer, he claims it’s a good time, and then I could hope to get another contract in the autumn. There are supposed to be German Jews abroad then, buying books they won’t find at home.1 Perhaps he’s right. In a fortnight you’ll have galleys. It seems it is suitable for filming.—In response to your telling me the 3,000 francs were on their way, I went ahead and borrowed 50 gulden here in the hotel. That makes things a little easier for me.—What’s terrible is my physical condition, the coughing and the swollen extremities. I’m going to see a doctor today. I’m drinking milk, to try and get the poison out of my system.

  If you’re finished in 14 days—perhaps you could come here? With your manuscript. Should I expect you?

  The subject matter for my novel2 isn’t contemp
orary. But I have so many projects and themes. All it takes is for someone to tell me what they’re looking for, and I’ll supply something “appropriate.”

  Please, my dear friend, write back. I’m very ill, and I need kind words, and quickly.

  Where is your wife, in Salzburg or Vienna?

  WHAT IS YOUR STORY ABOUT?

  Sincerely,

  your old Joseph Roth

  1. buying books they won’t find at home: I don’t know what’s more striking here—to be so reduced, or still to be calculating.

  2. my novel: Weights and Measures.

  391. Stefan Zweig to Joseph Roth

  49 Hallam Street

  London W 1

  20 May 1936

  Dear friend,

  Mr. Stols in Maastricht has suddenly bestirred himself, and ignoring my instructions, sent money directly to me, namely 24 pounds, 9 and a penny, without telling me how much that would be in Dutch, or how many copies it represents. Since I’ve just sent you other money, I’ll save this for you for later. Please tell Landauer of this astonishing turnup.

  My Castellio book is happily out. I hope it will go to you directly, not via Paris. On page 47 in the paragraph after the xxx in the first line, the word “before” has annoyingly been left out. Please write it into your copy.

  I am working solidly. No news from Huebsch.

  Sincerely, your Stefan Zweig

  392. To Blanche Gidon

  Eden Hotel

  Amsterdam

  26 May 1936

  My dear friend,

  please forgive me my silence. I’m ashamed when I think of your great kindness and noble friendship. I’m too ashamed even to thank you. The way I’m living here is humiliating. A committee had to lend me money, and then Stefan Zweig sent me funds that were owing to him from a Dutch publisher. When I’m a little better, I can perhaps give a lecture, for which I’ll get 50–60 gulden. In the meantime, I’m working so as to desensitize myself. But I’m still not able to pay this hotel, which has only taken me on account of my name. If I hand in part of my new novel, I may be able to get 800 gulden. But I’m still exhausted from the last. I’ve finished correcting the manuscript amid indescribable agonies. It was the novel The Regular. Now it’s to be called Confession of a Murderer. It’s coming out in August, and you’ll get the galleys in 10 days. I spent three days in bed, literally with my feet up. I drank a pint of milk a day to detoxify my system. The swelling has gone down. Today I am able to walk and sit down, without my legs swelling up again. I can’t keep food down, it goes straight up again, I try to eat rice pudding. I drink red wine instead of schnapps. I’m afraid my mattress grave1 will be in Holland. I had to send something to Mrs. Manga Bell. I don’t know what’s to become of her. She’ll be pleased maybe if you write to her, so let me give you the address: Canton St., Gallen, Jona bei Rapperswil, Switzerland, Villa Grünfels. The schools haven’t been paid. I don’t know what will become of the children. That woman whose weakness is responsible for 50% of my grief is a poor soul herself, and I can’t think of her without feeling very downcast.—I am unable to make plans—the best case, but really the very best, is that I have the wherewithal to live for another 3 months—but I have no strength with which to begin another book. Even a letter is a colossal effort. Don’t be cross if I don’t write. Frankly, even a stamp is a significant item for me. Give my warm regards please to Dr. Gidon. Forgive me for writing to you in German. I kiss your kind and friendly hand,