Joseph Roth- a Life in Letters

by Michael Hofmann

  your old Joseph Roth

  1. my mattress grave: the allusion is to Heinrich Heine.

  393. To Stefan Zweig

  Eden Hotel

  Amsterdam

  29 May 1936

  My dear friend,

  I’ve read your book1 in the past three nights. I don’t think I am deceived by personal feeling for you, or first impressions. I really believe you have said lasting and valid things about the present condition of mankind, and the latent good and evil in it. I believe you have found the decisive expression for the kindly, sincere skepticism that was always present in you, and that you persisted in stifling within yourself. For all your understanding of the world there was a tendency for illusion in your books, for vague hope rather, a certain moral ballast. You’ve jettisoned that now, and as a result you’ve climbed higher. It’s exactly what I like: clear, clean, pellucid writing, both in thought and form. No ponderous metaphors. Your style is more sinewy and “Latin.” You will guess how happy that makes me, with my almost Calvinist fanaticism for pure language.—As I write this, I’m continually testing myself to see if my friend’s and my literary conscience allow me to tell you this. I don’t think I can reproach myself with anything. I remember your Erasmus. Compared to this book, it’s like an idyll to a tragedy. Perhaps more than all your other qualities, what pleases me in this book is the emergence of your basically religious nature. The way you say: humanity, and conscience is with a different, a more sonorous undertone than before—humanity and conscience are almost grace. Yes, that’s what especially delights me, the way I can hear the words at either end of your book: God help us, amen! An amen intones on every page. In that sense, and stylistically, it’s surely the most mature and modest of your books. An old and good mirror that reflects the present day extraordinarily sadly and gruesomely. I think you’ve attained a sort of objectivity with this book. Yesterday afternoon I read some passages of it to a Dutch Catholic friend of mine, including the execution that C. avoids. So that you see the extent to which this stubborn fanaticism is still with us: my friend has employed a Calvinist butler, these past ten years. Ten days ago, he built a small pool in his garden so that his children could splash about in it. After the very first time, the butler gave notice, because he couldn’t stand to see naked children in the garden. Before he left, my friend asked him to fetch the bicycle he had left at the station. The butler looked at the ticket, and gave it back and said, no he couldn’t, because it was insured. It was wrong to intervene in God’s councils and insure anything. (You should get your book sent to the local Catholic Illustrated magazine, Mr. W. van de Randen, Admiral de Ruyterweg 362 bis.) I’m trying to get attention for it, it’s the right place. If possible, might I get another two paperbound copies.—I am so pleased for you, my dear friend. To me it’s as if you’d found your way home, and I flatter myself you’re a little closer to me. (Don’t think I’m out to convert you—how easy it is for such a suspicion to take root.) I’m so glad you don’t make the least concession, not stylistically, not intellectually. Quite apart from the fact that there’s no one writing in German who is capable of combining clarity and truth, the way you do. (Usually the clear ones are shallow, and the deep ones skewed.) There is a fine quiet sheen over the book, in spite of its cruelties. (I have one single, minor complaint to make: you use “always” and “never” too frequently and emphatically.) What is the “legend”?2 What is it about? (Freud?)

  * * *

  As far as I’m concerned: Landauer will send you the first—wretched—galleys of my book.3 Read them with one eye shut. It’s nothing close to final. I don’t think you can get anywhere with your Hollywood man on my behalf. Even if you were successful, I’m tied up for another 3 months—if not more.

  I can’t get anything from Huebsch directly. De Lange won’t make the Anglo-American rights available. I see no hope there.

  I am very feeble, and barely able to walk. There’s no particular illness. Every day brings with it different symptoms. If I don’t vomit spleen and blood, then my eyes are inflamed, or my feet are swollen. Palpitations, heart pain, shocking migraines, teeth falling out. It sometimes seems to me that nature is kindly after all, because it makes life so rotten that you positively long for death. I still have a feeling for life, though, I want to write my “Strawberries,” I don’t want to die in wretchedness. I would so like to be able to stop and draw breath for 6 months. I can’t, I just can’t. I’ve been telling you this for a year. You have boundless optimism where I’m concerned, but you’re mistaken, you see it yourself. You didn’t believe me. I understand the laws that govern my life.

  Now, what shall I do now? Do I go to the Salvation Army; to a monastery? I have only your support. And you’re just a human being, overburdened yourself. You will leave sometime, you will forget the wretch. You’ve helped me, and I still have 20 gulden of yours, but I owe 8 of them already. I managed to get the price for the room down to 1 gulden today, but there’s nothing more I can do. I have to drink wine now, no more schnapps for weeks now.—My room looks like a coffin; but a bottle of wine costs 2 gulden. I own 2 suits and 6 shirts. I wash my own handkerchiefs. I’ve never learned to iron shirts. I look completely dreadful. Another 4 weeks and I’ll be perfectly dead, but I need to remain alive for the next 4 months.

  Brussels is cheaper, if they give me a visa here, I’d like to stay there for 2 months once the proofs are corrected. I have to give a lecture here still, there are lots of people here who read me and admire me, but I can’t go telling them how I feel.—I don’t know how much of the money from your Dutch publisher you’re holding back for me, but please, send it to me next week, I hope it’ll keep me for 3 weeks—4 lives and a little breathing space.

  Please, won’t you come here, if only just for one day!

  Will I not see you again before you go?4 I have no one, no one but you. I’ve wasted everything on others. Mrs. Manga Bell thinks only of her children, those children on whom, according to Landauer’s calculations I spent 42,000 francs, and who call me boche. I’ve lent I think 8 writers sums up to 800–1,000 francs, none of them comes forward, and one has even savaged me in the press. The only one who is kind to me is Landauer. He looks after me like a brother. But he has a girlfriend, who unfortunately is addicted to morphine—and he has to give her almost all he earns.

  How am I going to live? Tell me this, if you will: can I count on you, even after you’re gone.

  All I want is to take a deep, deep breath, and sleep for a week. Can you, will you help me?

  I implore you, answer me right away, clearly, tell me clearly what I can expect and what not. I don’t believe in my rescue by the film industry. Those things are always touch and go. There’s no point, they’re chimerical hopes. Maybe—maybe not.

  Must I beg your pardon for writing you this? Who else do I say it to, if not you? Who else have I got? Even if I didn’t love you, would I have to write you this just to survive?—I’m at the end of my rope.—Landauer tells me my situation is hopeless.

  Will you write back? Will you not get all impatient, and in spite of your feeling for me, leave me hanging on, think it over, and finally say to yourself: Oh, he’ll find something!—He won’t!—What is there? I beg you, I beg you, please stifle your optimism in my regard. Now come, come, I’m going to be here for another two weeks, longer if you come. Answer me, please, right away. I’m half demented. Sincerely your

  Joseph Roth

  1. your book: Castellio against Calvin.

  2. the legend: The Buried Candelabrum.

  3. my book: Confession of a Murderer.

  4. before you go: from August to October of 1936, Zweig was on his second tour of South America.

  394. Stefan Zweig to Joseph Roth

  49 Hallam Street

  London W 1

  2 June 1936

  Dear friend,

  don’t be cross if I don’t write y
ou a full letter. I’m tired, I have to go soon, I have a lot to do, so just a sort of shorthand report.

  Your novel1 is excellent, and precisely because it’s not overstretched. The mistake of the last few years was simply that for purely practical reasons you stretched out your material to more than its natural length (Tarabas, Antichrist). This time the fit is perfect, and the Russian element is not only in the characters, but also in the rhythm of the prose. Warm congratulations—and more anon.

  I’ve asked Landauer to pay you the 200 gulden due on signature, and I hope that gives you a little breathing space.

  I’m seeing Huebsch later today, and will take him the novel.

  Castellio is making me quite ill. At a perfectly unimportant place (the story of Bernardo Ochino) I’ve fallen prey to a wrong and romantic source. It doesn’t matter a great deal, but imagine the delight of the Calvinists to be able to denounce the whole book as a fable and window dressing, I can’t go to Geneva except to the pastor of Calvin’s church, who loves Castellio. But that too will be overlooked, once we’ve gotten over sundry other difficulties.

  In haste, your Stefan Z.

  1. your novel: Confession of a Murderer (Amsterdam: Allert de Lange, 1936).

  395. Stefan Zweig to Joseph Roth

  49 Hallam Street

  London W 1

  10 June 1936

  Dear friend,

  I just want to let you know that on the morning of the 15th I’m going to Austria, and will stay for about a fortnight. My address during this time will be c/o Herbert Reichner Verlag, Aegidienstrasse 6, Vienna vi, then I want to go somewhere quiet to work, and after that I’ll probably go to South America. I’m looking forward to putting all sorts of things behind me, and to being away from Europe for a while.

  Huebsch, who’s attending a publishing convention here, will read your novel in the next few days. The film person hasn’t arrived yet, but is expected daily.

  Then this. I’ve spoken about your books to the owner of the Skoglund Verlag in Stockholm, and recommended them strongly. Perhaps, to remind him, you could ask your publisher to offer him Job and The Radetzky March. I’m pretty sure he’ll do them, and that you’ll have a lasting connection.

  Perhaps you could drop me a line on a postcard to let me know where you’ll be in July, maybe I can work it into my schedule, and Belgium might not be the worst, somewhere by the sea.

  Sincerely, your rushed, tired, and somewhat exasperated

  St. Z.

  396. To Stefan Zweig

  Eden Hotel

  Amsterdam

  15 June 1936

  Dear, dear friend,

  forgive me for leaving you without word for so long. I was working very hard on a talk which I gave here on Thursday. It was a moral triumph, and even brought in a little money (50 gulden). Thank you very much for making your royalty over to me.—On Sunday or Monday I’m going to Brussels. Where shall I send you my Brussels address? I quoted quite a bit from your book in my talk—I know it doesn’t amount to a hill of beans, but at least it won’t have done you any harm.—In Brussels I’ll probably be even lonelier than here, but I’ll get by better and for longer.—Don’t be too irked by the misprint in your book! The way the world is nowadays, hardly anyone will notice it. And the few who do will be large-hearted or other writers, who’ll know just how such things come about. Please try not to worry about it.

  I’ve heard nothing from Huebsch. Maybe he dislikes my novel.

  I don’t want to talk to you about my family life, it would probably spoil your mood. Dear friend, why is it that the most banal things in this short life obscure the serious ones, and create differences between friends?

  Dear friend, will I see you before your big trip? Perhaps in Brussels? Remember, one can never know which time will be the last. And letters are no substitute for the moment of seeing one another, exchanging greetings, and then that other moment, of taking leave.

  Will you reply here?

  I am your old friend

  Joseph Roth

  397. Stefan Zweig to Joseph Roth

  Hotel Regina

  Vienna

  [End of June? 1936]

  My dear fellow,

  I hope this letter gets to you in time. Either way, I’ll be in Ostend for a month from 2 July to work, my friend Fuchs,1 who helps me with the editing, will be there, and my secretary2 is coming, I HAVE to have 110 typed pages ready by 1 August! Because that’s when I’m going.

  It would be wonderful to have you there as a sort of literary conscience for my legend. We could test one another in the evenings, and lecture each other, as in the good old days. You don’t have to swim, I won’t be swimming either—Ostend isn’t a spa, but a CITY, prettier, and with more cafés than Brussels.

  My address is Ostend poste restante Cursal. I hope to get a room on Monday night in the Hotel SIRU. They gave me my new passport3 here, without any fuss,

  warmly, Z.

  1. Fuchs: Martin Fuchs.

  2. my secretary: Lotte Altmann, later Zweig’s second wife, dying with him in their suicide pact in Petropolis, Brazil, on 23 February 1942.

  3. my new passport: Austrian, still. Zweig took British nationality later, in 1939.

  398. To Blanche Gidon

  Eden Hotel

  Amsterdam

  16 June 1936

  Dear kind friend,

  you must never reproach yourself for writing candidly to me. Of course I would do absolutely anything at all—if there was anything sensible I could do. But it’s confusing cause and effect if you think my situation is the result of alcoholism. I haven’t drunk any schnapps for 3 or 4 weeks now. (My situation hasn’t improved thereby. My health not much either.) In the instant of standing over the abyss such considerations have little meaning. I’m drinking only wine, and still my feet are swollen, my heart is heavy as a stone, and in front of me is, quite literally, a black void. It’s a terrible feeling not to know what you’re going to live off in another week. Sixteen years ago I could bear it. Not any more.

  I didn’t write, because I had a talk to prepare here. It was a success, I made 150 gulden with it. With that—because it’s cheaper there—I want to go to Brussels. Please write to me here first. I don’t yet have an address in Brussels.

  The galleys1 you were sent aren’t anything near final. I’m still making changes up to my departure.

  Plon would be nice. But I don’t know how Mr. Marcel feels about me at the moment. I have no very strong sense of the novel. Grasset or Michel or Plon: all that matters is that the publisher here sees some money come in. Maybe I can get another 6-month contract in September.

  Thank you very much, to you and Mr. Gidon.

  Please don’t be cross about my writing in German.

  I am so terribly tired.

  In warm friendship

  your Joseph Roth

  1. galleys: of Confession of a Murderer.

  399. To Blanche Gidon

  Eden Hotel

  Amsterdam

  24 June 1936

  Dear kind Madam and friend,

  in case I do go to Belgium—I’m waiting for the visa to come—I want to say that this address is fine. My mail will be forwarded.—I’m working on some new thing1 now. Please write to me, and forgive me for being so curt.

  I’ll write to you at greater length in a fortnight.—I’m very concentrated on my work.

  Best wishes to Mr. Gidon.

  I kiss your hand.

  Please write me a few words, it’s important to me, in this situation, which I can’t describe to you just now,

  your old and trusty Joseph Roth

  1. some new thing: Weights and Measures (Amsterdam: Querido, 1937).

  400. To Stefan Zweig

  Eden Hotel

  Amsterdam />
  Wednesday, 24 June 1936

  Dear friend,

  I’ve spent the past 6 days waiting for a Belgian visa, which for Austrian subjects has to be sent to their main domicile. I’ve been waiting for eight days. (I should have had to go to Paris to get it right away.)

  (Will you give the accompanying note to your wife, please.)