1933–1939
After Hitler: Work, Despair, Diminishing Circles, Work, and Death
JOSEPH ROTH IN THE COMPANY OF DUTCH WRITERS
IN A CAFÉ IN AMSTERDAM IN 1937
On the morning of 30 January 1933, the day Hitler was appointed chancellor, Joseph Roth boarded the Berlin–Paris train, and never set foot in Germany again. The hair-fine precision of the timing might have been an accident; the rigor with which Roth drew his consequences assuredly wasn’t. His immediate attention—in the letters, at least—was needed for matters closer to home: what was to become of Andrea Manga Bell’s son, and worries about the quality of Blanche Gidon’s French translation of The Radetzky March. By mid-February, though, events in Germany had fully claimed their place, which they were to keep for the remaining years of Roth’s life: “It will have become clear to you now that we are heading for a great catastrophe,” he wrote to Stefan Zweig, to whom this may have been far from clear, and who—like many of the most “assimilated” Jews—continued to believe in the intactness, and quite possibly the immunity of his personal arrangements. Roth had no such illusions, and went on, “Quite apart from our personal situations—our literary and material existence has been wrecked—we are headed for a new war. I wouldn’t give a heller for our prospects. The barbarians have taken over. Do not deceive yourself. Hell reigns.”
The intensely dramatic, complicated correspondence between the two unequal friends takes up most of the latter part of this book. Roth begins writing to Zweig in no. 49; starting at no. 216, some of Zweig’s letters are also included. You could say that Zweig picks up where this or that publisher of Roth, or the Frankfurter Zeitung, leaves off; he is, so to speak, the one in the blue corner; he is not really an adversary, but—like the publishers, like the FZ—he comes to be seen in the role of an adversary. Roth simply carries on as before. His own letters are always uphill. He is always the underdog, always indomitable, always David to the other’s Goliath. By the same token, he is always the better writer, and he is always in the right. The other is the one with money, power, authority, patronage, prestige. Roth has nothing, is nothing, all he can do is make a noise, and issue threats. He can withdraw his labor, or he can tell the other—tell Zweig—how badly he is doing, how desperate he is for money, medicine, tranquillity, affection, understanding. In the early letters, up until, say, 1928—up until the catastrophe with Friedl—Roth was always reserved, dignified, keeping things back until there was a chance to say them, face to face, in a meeting; keeping them out of letters, where he felt they didn’t belong. This gradually is turned on its head. First, they come with apologies (“I come to you with a revolting request”), and by the end, they come anyway. Eventually there is nothing that Roth will not write; a letter, in his hands, is an instrument of necessary terror. The extremity of his situation justifies it. Anything less is the waste of a stamp.
When the calamitous events of 1933 happened, no one was perhaps better prepared for them than Roth. He had been building up his Feindbild of Germany and the Germans—of Prussia and the boches—for the best part of fifteen years. He knew from repeated bitter experience that life was a catastrophic sequence of losses, betrayals, and disappointments. His birthplace had been ceded to Poland, his country—the supranational Dual Monarchy comprising seventeen nationalities—was a figment of history, and he lived off his wits, out of a couple of suitcases. He expected nothing else. He may have thought he had little left to lose (he was wrong). And conversely, perhaps no one was worse prepared for them—or had more to lose, was more invested in the fiction of a heile Welt where not only was there no 1933, there was no sure sign that 1914 had happened—than Stefan Zweig, whose “world of yesterday” had not fallen about his ears, not any part of it: who was born on the Ringstrasse in Vienna, and was free to go back there whenever he liked; who grew up in the bosom of a wealthy and sympathetic Jewish manufacturing family; studied in Berlin; had traveled around the world; was a pacifist and an internationalist during the war; lived, when he cared to, in a fourteenth-century bishop’s palace above Salzburg that his lovely and capable wife had found for him; was on close personal terms with a who’s who of European intellectuals; and was the mainstay and virtual editor-at-large of a German belletristic publishing firm with extraordinary production values called Die Insel (the Island—sic), where for the best part of thirty years he had been a best-selling author of error-free books snapped up by an especially devoted and largely female readership. Roth, one might say, was all instinct (albeit the instincts were not always correct); Zweig had none, and duly experienced—at the proper time, so to speak—all those losses and disappointments that Roth had suffered proleptically.
To Roth it will have looked as though Zweig’s advantages were such that he would never stop defending them, whatever the moral cost; Zweig will have thought that Roth, shifting and transient, with no real sacrifice to make, had no proper understanding of the painfully slow accrual of property or reputation. The exchange goes through all sorts of phases: sometimes it is a dialogue of the deaf, sometimes we have two competing prophets (or egocentrics); then Roth blusters and wails, Zweig pleads, reasons, extenuates. Zweig evokes his freedom and his good intentions as an individual; Roth assures him that anyone continuing to have dealings with the enemy had no further claim on his friendship. The very quick and fiery and aggressive Roth and the obtuse, decent-minded, and squirming Zweig are a fascinating—and distressing—study in contrary temperaments. Their relationship was further complicated by the fact that Roth was monetarily—one could almost say physically—dependent on Zweig, and handled his dependency predictably badly, with histrionic begging, intermittent gratitude, and shorter and shorter intervals. When Paula Grübel offered to buy her cousin a new set of teeth, Roth straightaway refused: “If she pays for my teeth, she will own a bit of me,” he is said to have reasoned. He took Zweig’s money, but refused to be bought. On the one hand, his need for more was basically unappeasable; on the other, he maintained his natural dominance in the relationship, in spite of all Zweig’s advantages.
Hermann Kesten tells a superb story of the time1 they were all together in Ostend in 1936, how they would work during the days, and in the evening Zweig would take Roth out to expensive restaurants and bars, Roth in his only pair of, fraying, trousers. One day Zweig took Roth to a tailor, and had him fitted for a new pair of trousers. They turned out to be terribly expensive, because the tailor needed to be bribed to make the trousers the way Roth wanted them, in the style of Austrian cavalry trousers, very narrow below the knee. To Zweig’s satisfaction, Roth turned out that evening in his new trousers. The next day, Kesten relates, he came upon Roth sitting with Irmgard Keun at a bar in the market. The waiter brought out three glasses of brightly colored liqueurs. Roth took his, and slowly and deliberately, and to applause from Keun, emptied it over his jacket. Kesten asks Roth, “What are you doing?” “Punishing Stefan Zweig,” replies Roth, emptying the next lurid glass over the jacket. Roth explained to Kesten that that evening he would shame Zweig with his stained jacket. “Millionaires are like that! They take us to the tailor, and buy us a new pair of pants, but they forget to buy us a jacket to go with them.”
There is a photograph of the time, taken on a café terrace in Ostend: a Great Dane with a terrier. Zweig, big, sleek, friendly, glossy, leans in toward his friend affectionately and indulgently; he looks animated, enthused, warm; he is about to say something kind and perhaps ever so slightly witty. Roth looks like an old boxer or wrestler, a square head on thick shoulders, slumped, pouchy, impervious, a lumpy jack-o-lantern face under a few damp squiggles of hair squeezed out of an icing bag, the eyes between blinking and glowering. No one looking at the picture would guess that Roth is the younger by some thirteen years. Nor could anyone be oblivious to the fact that he is the dominant personality. Soma Morgenstern describes his friend in these terms:
As he took a sip of cognac to recover from his coughing laugh, I studied him closely. The changes to face and form staggered me. He was not quite forty-three years old, and—my heart won’t forgive me for saying so: he looked like a sixty-year-old alcoholic. His face, once so animated and alert, with its prominent cheekbones, and short jutting chin, was now puffy and slack, the nose purple, the corners of his blue eyes rheumy and bloody, his head looking as if someone had started plucking it and given up part way, the mouth completely covered by heavy, dark red, Slovak-style drooping mustaches. But when summoned to the telephone, he slowly hobbled away with the aid of a stick, his thin legs in narrow old-fashioned pants, his sagging little paunch at odds with his birdlike bones, the east Galician Jew made the impression of a distinguished, if somewhat decayed, Austrian aristocrat—in other words, exactly the impression he had striven all his life to give, with every fiber of his body and soul, by means both legitimate and illegitimate.2
This understands—as it is important to understand—the balance between tragedy and dignity in Roth, sadness and success.
177. To Félix Bertuax
1 February 1933
Hotel Jacob
44 rue Jacob
Bien cher ami,
I’m here at last, and would love to see you—this week still, if you can manage it.
I need to talk to you about my little pickaninny.
Looking forward to seeing you.
My best regards and those of Mrs. Manga Bell to Mrs. Bertaux.
Your old true
Joseph Roth
178. To Félix Bertaux
9 February 1933
My dear friend,
I must burden you with the horrible business of the translation.1 Here enclosed is Mr. Marcel’s letter—a copy—the original is back with Mrs. Gidon—from which it appears that Mrs. Gidon has delivered an excellent translation.—I don’t know what to do now. Either Mr. Marcel doesn’t know German or French—or else he’s lying. I’m tired of all these things, because of the goings-on in Germany I’m incapable of settling the least personal matter, and I feel completely downtrodden. What sort of moral responses are open to me anyway, if the publisher insists on his legal right to proceed with the translation?
Cordial wishes to Mrs. Bertaux and yourself, your desolate old
Joseph Roth
Please don’t call, but give me a written rendezvous.
I am never at home, just wander around randomly, I can’t stand to be in a room.2
1. translation: of The Radetzky March.
2. in a room: this note (typically) has interposed another drama, and another crisis, but this remark surely wants to be taken in relation to events in Germany. Even so, however, we have a description from Gustav Kiepenheuer of seeing JR once—unusually—in an apartment in Berlin, ten years previously, “pacing up and down the vast, gloomy drawing room, his hands in his coat-pockets, as though in a station waiting room, waiting for his train to be made ready.” He could never stand to be “in a room.”
179. Gabriel Marcel to Blanche Gidon (written in French)
8 February 1933
Dear Madam,
I have just read the first two chapters of your translation. It seems to me that the only criticisms one might make are trivial, that overall this is an excellent translation and I won’t even contemplate the idea of giving the rest of the book to anyone else. By all means show this letter to Mr. Roth.
Yours sincerely,
G. Marcel1
Director of the Feux Croisés
1. Gabriel Marcel (1889–1973), philosopher, dramatist, critic. Winner of the 1964 Peace Prize of the German Book Trade. At the time an editor at Plon. The Feux Croisés was an imprint at Plon. It is very difficult at this distance in time and language to get a sense of the rights and wrongs of Blanche Gidon’s translation of The Radetzky March, which came out in 1934. (The fact that it is still in print in France today speaks in its favor.) Roth in any case brought a characteristic energy, confusion, and offense to the matter, which, somewhat surprisingly, his personal and professional relationship with Mrs. Gidon managed to survive.
180. To Félix Bertaux
11 February 1933
Dear friend,
I have just written to Gabriel Marcel that I find the translation utterly unusable, and that I consider it my duty to appear before the French public in an adequate translation.
At the same time I replied to Mrs. Gidon’s letter, which you saw yesterday, as follows:
“The only person, my oldest friend in France, on whom I can depend, is Mr. Bertaux, as you know. He is very stringent and harsh (even with me), and he is familiar with my style. Without a second’s hesitation, I would give my public approval to any translation he deemed good.”
I hope you’re not annoyed with me for thus enlisting you, unasked.
The whole business is deeply unpleasant!
1. Gidon is a friend of Reifenberg’s;
2. Reifenberg is my friend;
3. it is deeply embarrassing to encounter a piece of sharp practice in France that I would never have thought possible.
4. I am completely wiped out
a. without a penny, since, between ourselves, Landauer is giving up the publisher.
b. With debts of 18,000 marks in Germany.
c. With prospects of having to sleep under the Seine bridges within 4 weeks. (figure of speech?)1
Forgive me this trespass into personal affairs. Perhaps—let’s hope—it’s only a bad dream.
I hope to be more cheerful on Monday.
Please kiss Mrs. Bertaux’s hand for me—in Austrian. (Do read Hofmannsthal’s posthumous Andreas!)
Your old and desolate
Joseph Roth
1. See The Legend of the Holy Drinker, Roth’s last completed work of fiction.
181. To Félix Bertaux
11 February 1933
My dear friend,
I come to you with a revolting request: I have been sent a banker’s draft from Kiepenheuer: 550 marks, roughly 3,300 francs.
I have no bank account here (none at all).
Is it possible for you to cash the check for me, so that, through your bank—assuming you have the appropriate facilities—I might get the money as early as Wednesday?
I’m meeting Pierre on Monday.
I would give him the check if such a transaction is indeed possible. If not, then please don’t trouble yourself! I’ll try something else.
My antagonism with Sieburg makes it impossible for me to use the offices of the Frankfurter Zeitung.
Very cordial wishes to Mrs. Bertaux and yourself, ever your old
Somewhat mad and desolate
J.R.
182. To Stefan Zweig
47 rue Jacob
Hotel Jacob, Paris 6e
[mid-February 1933]
Dear esteemed friend,
I’ve been here for a fortnight trying to find accommodation for a young French pickaninny. It will have become clear to you now that we are heading for a great catastrophe. Quite apart from our personal situations—our literary and material existence has been wrecked—we are headed for a new war. I wouldn’t give a heller for our prospects. The barbarians have taken over. Do not deceive yourself. Hell reigns.1
Warmly your old
Joseph Roth
1. Hell reigns: aptly, the obtuse and temporizing Zweig is the recipient of JR’s first explicitly monitory reaction to the Nazi takeover.
183. To Félix Bertaux
14 February 1933
My dear friend,
Mrs. Manga Bell is just back from seeing Mr. Diagne. As I guessed—going by my experience of minorities—Jews and Negroes—Mr. Diagne didn’t “daign” to meet Mrs. Manga Bell in person, had her received by a trainee, and merely for the purpose of sending her away again. He was unable apparently to do or promise anything. Meanwhile, a brother-in-law of Mrs. Manga Bell’s (her husband’s brother) is in Paris, is a member of the “etudiants evangeliques,” has a 12,000-franc scholarship, thanks to Mr. Diagne, and Mr. Diagne seems not even to want to lift a finger for any member of the Manga Bell family. At the most, Mr. Diagne’s trainee—a loathsome white bigot—would agree to confirm that Mr. Diagne knew Mrs. Manga Bell. The only way will be through the Ministry. The little fellow is French by birth. In my opinion, it doesn’t matter if he’s a black or white Frenchman. In political terms, black is even slightly preferable. If it can be done, a direct petition from Mrs. M.B. to M. de Monzie1 resolved favorably by Mr. V.,2 that—from all I know and sense about Negroes—is probably the only way forward. I tell you this, my friend, with the heavy conscience of a friend abusing friendship—but also with the clear conscience of someone who is responsible for the fate of a completely helpless child. It’s a given that a black French boy can’t stay in Germany. It’s almost equally given that France doesn’t need to support etudiants evangeliques who also happen to be black. By the way, Mrs. Manga Bell’s brother-in-law is no Frenchman by birth. What I’m demanding is an injustice in the name of justice. It’s enough that someone be black. He doesn’t need to have a set of black feelings.—My dear friend, I wouldn’t be so insistent, if Hitler hadn’t got in, and robbed me of my livelihood. I’m, as you know, stuffed. Otherwise I could have got together the 150 marks a month for the boy.
Would you speak to Mr. Viénot? If he helps, I’ll be very grateful to him—naturally enough. Unfortunately, we don’t have much time—I can only keep the boy fed for another 6 weeks. Lousy, isn’t it.
Please forgive me, and tell me—tell me honestly—if it’s not too much of a burden for you.
Your old
J.R.
1. de Monzie: Anatole de Monzie, author.
2. V.: Jean Viénot, senior civil sevant, subsequently Socialist minister.
184. To Bela Horovitz
18 February 1933
Paris
Dear, esteemed Dr. Horovitz,
thank you for your kind letter. What a question: how am I! Seeing as I can’t get the money I need from Kiepenheuer, and the Jews are ducking behind Hitler’s back, and I can’t go back to pre-election Germany—merely because it makes my heart bleed to see German fraternal quarrels—I’m feeling great. You might think about making discreet preparations to welcome new German authors. The Jewish publishers in Germany are shutting up shop.
I’m staying here for another 2–3 weeks. I’m between hotels. If you have something to send me, send it for now to Joseph Roth, c/o Mr. Isaac Grünberg,1 Bon Hotel, rue Vaneau 42, Paris.
I have a lot of zores and two small favors to you. Can you settle the Roth account (enclosed), and send 15 schillings to Mrs. Jenny Reichler, Am Tabor 15? It’s a mizwe.2 (If you can’t, I won’t be angry.)
As far as Rebellion goes—it’s a stroke of luck for me that you have the book—but what about the fee? I’m waiting for it—how can I not: we’ve both been waiting 3,000 years to be given a role to play in German literature.
And on top of that, it’s taken me a further 12 years to acquire a nice conservative reputation.
Since you must have paid at least 1,000 marks for Rebellion, I’ll ask only another 100 schillings for Savoy. Between you and me: Rebellion is still in print. For falling for it, another 20 schillings. Are you now going to spoil the success of all my reactionary works to follow?
What about Hotel Savoy?
To live is to outlive.
I mean the Third Reich.
So, no hurry, please. Otherwise I’ll have to say Rebellion is by my twin brother of the same name.
Nothing against God and Christians, if you please.3
Your old
Joseph Roth
1. Isaac Grünberg, writer and friend of Joseph Roth’s. He translated Céline’s Voyage au bout de la nuit into German in 1933.
2. mizwe: (Yiddish) kindness, solace.
3. If you please: a wonderful breezy irony—hopelessness in its early stages—pervades this letter.
185. To Félix Bertaux
Café des 2 Magots, [Paris]
24 February 1933
My dear friend,
I am now staying at: Le bon Hotel, rue Vaneau 42. I have had some more ill luck in the last few days. The boy was returned to me with high fever and a serious flu. He’s in the hotel with me now. Apparently, I can’t cure myself of these misfortunes. Quite apart from the fact that with all these terrible and unplanned expenses, I won’t have anything left to live on. I am completely crushed.
Still no word from Mr. Gabriel Marcel. Because of the little pickaninny, I couldn’t even think about all that. I’ll write to Marcel today. In the meantime—before I fire the Big Bertaux—I’m asking you whether you can find out from Stock1 whether Mrs. Gidon was the original [sacked] translator of Kästner.2 (Fabian.) André Thérive3 is said to have attacked the translation so violently in Le Temps that the publisher was forced to withdraw it. If that was Mrs. Gidon, then I really need no further argument, and I don’t need to send you off to the front, when I’d rather keep you behind the lines as my general. Could you find that out? Will you? It has to be soon.
Could you also pass my new address to your son Pierre? It’s very important to me that I find some accommodation for my little pickaninny. How much is the Lycée Janson per month? More than 400 francs? And boarding? I may have to go back to Germany, if the thing with the publisher doesn’t work out. I have to anchor my existence for at least six months.
Please write back. And let’s meet.
Sincerely, your old
Joseph Roth
1. Stock: Librairie Stock, a French publishing house.
2. Kästner: Erich Kästner (1899–1974), novelist, poet, essayist.
3. André Thérive (1891–1967), critic and writer.
186. To Félix Bertaux
1 March 1933
My dear friend,
I’m seeing Marcel on Saturday morning. He wrote back yesterday, at long last. I’m going to appeal to you. If you can manage, can we meet tomorrow (Thursday) afternoon? I’m free then.
Sincere best wishes to you and Mrs. Bertaux, your humble
Joseph Roth
187. To Félix Bertaux
4 March 1933
My dear friend,
I’m just back from seeing Mr. M.1 He is very keen to have my book on his list. He is one of too many figures in the book business with strong aesthetic convictions, and a quick and instinctive grasp of things, but who remain fundamentally unreliable. He completely understood my position. He even said I was right. He is a nimble translator, and is quick to find the right form of words. He wants to send me someone who, he thinks, will match my intentions. He would rework the translation completely. I am to give this gentleman a sample. I can then present that to you for approval. Then we’ll see. It appears that Mr. Marcel has several reasons for not offending Mrs. Gidon. I said more than once that I relied entirely on you. He spoke very warmly of you. Almost dismissively of Werfel.2 All in all, I formed the impression that he doesn’t want to lose me, but that he’s a little hemmed in by Mrs. Gidon. If I get a good translation from someone else, then I don’t really care what happens between Mr. M. and Mrs. G.
I’ll phone you on Monday evening. Grim news from Berlin.3 I’m exhausted. I can’t even go on working on the novella. I really am exhausted.
Best wishes to Mrs. Bertaux,
Ever your old
Joseph Roth
1. Mr. M.: Gabriel Marcel.
2. Werfel: Franz Werfel (1890 Prague–1945 Beverly Hills), writer, poet, essayist, one of the most successful and bankable names among German writers between the wars. His best-known novel is The Song of Bernadette, completed in the United States in 1942, after he and his wife, Alma Mahler, made a dramatic escape through occupied France. It was also made into an Oscar-winning film during World War II.
3. Grim news from Berlin: a reference to the burning of the Reichstag on 27 February 1933, and the promulgating the next day of an emergency decree that suspended civil liberties and permitted the central government to take over authority in the individual states. This “temporary” decree was never rescinded.
188. To Félix Bertaux (written in French)
Tuesday 1:30 [no date]
My dear friend,
I’ve been making myself try and telephone you for the past hour. It seems the telephone has other ideas.
I hope you’re not angry with me. I would like to see you at the end of this week or early next. (Give me a written time and place.) I will come, or be there already.
Mrs. M.B. is doing better, at any rate—thanks be to God—she won’t need an operation.
As for me, I’m doing very badly. I can’t write any more. I am too weak to endure the crowd of misfortunes that are too small to give one any satisfaction, even the satisfaction of being “unfortunate.”
Will I see you soon?
I crave the reassurance of your presence.
Forgive this indiscreet confession from your (old) friend
Joseph Roth
Best wishes to Mrs. Bertaux, and to Pierre. Will I not see him in the time he’s “in purdah”?
189. To Blanche Gidon
16 March 1933
Dear esteemed kind Madam,
thank you for your dear letter. My publisher was here, and kept me from answering you at once. I never accused you of ill will. I have always been grateful to you for going to so much trouble over my book. I never doubted that you took on the translation for no selfish motive. However, I cannot avoid saying to you that your translation is a bad translation, and—in spite of my debt to you for going to so much trouble over the book, and in spite of the friendship I feel for you—it remains a bad translation. I fail to understand how a perfectly objective criticism should strike you in light of a personal grievance. Anyone is free to tell me that such and such a book of mine is no good. I would never draw personal conclusions from it. You are free to rework the translation with the help of the party Marcel will suggest, or by yourself, or with whomever else you like. I need to look to my own survival. I cannot—even if my French were up to it—busy myself with the translation. I have to go to Switzerland now for a week. Please believe me, at least, that I continue to believe in the unselfishness of your motives. But that has nothing to do with my conviction that your translation—in the form in which it is in front of me—is not good. Do you want me to tell you it is good, against my own convictions, when I am convinced of the opposite?—Maybe I am a boche. But, be it out of politeness or friendship or anything else, you can’t expect me to say something that doesn’t accord with my convictions. Is that why you’re angry with me?
Sincerely your
Joseph Roth
Hotel Foyot, 33 rue de Tournon, Paris 6e.
After 4 p.m. you will always find me in the Foyot. I am writing a novella,1 six hours a day, every day, for Ullstein. 6 more days. Every day, after 4 p.m.
1. novella: “Stationmaster Fallmerayer.”
190. To Stefan Zweig
Hotel Foyot
Paris
17 March 1933
Dear esteemed friend,
I know you understand why I haven’t written to you for so long, and I know you can’t hold it against me. Nor do I have any idea what to say or write now. It’s no longer the case—as it was still a year ago—of the sensible person being driven mad by the world, it’s the world that has gone mad, and there’s no point in common sense any more.
To stick to practical matters:
My publisher1 is being wound up (this between you and me). He is trying to sell me on. I don’t know to whom. I have no idea what I am going to live on. I really don’t want to be an émigré.
What will you do?
There is no question of being published in Germany any more. Now do you understand why I always was, and am, presciently sad?
Yours sincerely, your old
Joseph Roth
1. my publisher: Gustav Kiepenheuer, Berlin.
191. To Stefan Zweig
Paris, Hotel Foyot
33 rue de Tournon
19 March 1933
Dear friend,
I’ve waited till now to answer your kind letter, because I’d hoped not to have to need your practical generosity. However, even the tiny sum I’ve been expecting from Poland has failed to come in these 3 weeks. I can’t even say any more how much or how little I need to get a little breathing space. If you’re kind enough to transfer whatever money you have disposable by Wednesday or Thursday—because that’s a critical date for me—then you will have gained me a deal of breathing space, certainly enough to finish my book. It’ll be finished in 6 days.
Please can you help me. It’s a dreadful thing for me, to “disgust you”1 like this.
Ideally, Grasset,2 who knows my name, wouldn’t get to hear about it. Is it really no trouble for you to wire me the money by Wednesday?
I do feel some compunction, I will admit, because I know how the French think. I know what Directeur Brun3 thinks.
Forgive me for saying this to you.
Write soon, and tell me why you are quite so het up.
Your old
Joseph Roth
1. “disgust you”: JR, presumably, never got wind of it, but Zweig privately referred to (and thought of?) his friend’s financial affairs as “Augean.”
2. Grasset: the publishing house of Bernard Grasset, in Paris.
3. Brun: director of Grasset.
192. To Stefan Zweig
Hotel Foyot
Paris
22 March 1933
Dear esteemed friend,
thank you for your kind letter. The day I next clap eyes on you will be a red-letter day. I think of you to myself as “The Wise Man of the Kapuzinerberg.” In such times, I have to talk to you, not just correspond. Never mind that I have to contradict you in many things. Discussions with a wise man are never without contradiction. You speak for and from yourself: fate has given you sorrow, happiness, fame, success, and 50 years, a happy youth in peacetime, and a vigorous maturity.1 Forgive a friend for pointing out that that’s not the universal lot. You know my lot pretty well, but I’m not talking about myself. I’m speaking, rather, for a world, a good world, a tried and tested world. Of late, it’s not the majority of writers who have fared well, but rather a minority—and that, only in relative terms. In a time that had no Woolworth magazines, Lessing and Wieland fared much better on small incomes than—well, let’s say Arnold Zweig in the time of Tietz.2 You have in mind a couple of youngish authors, without worries, without grave private fate before them, living on relatively high royalties quite frivolously, though (even they are) not entirely without worries. And, as far as the Jews are concerned, firstly they are facing their dissolution (thanks to Russia), and will no longer exist in 50 years’ time. Secondly, today’s Jews, not having lived in their spiritual home for 200 years, are no longer capable, physiologically speaking, of enduring the torments of their ancestors. Did you learn the Talmud? Do you pray every day to Jehovah? Do you lay tefillin? No, it’s over, and you and I are Germans in the midst of Germans, with a strange inheritance that other peoples in the civilized world react to, if not with joy, then at least without a rubber truncheon. And for your information, however sensible it is of you not to be going out giving lectures at this moment in time: you will understand that there is a conflict between your legitimate expectations as a European, which you have always voiced as an important and gifted German author against bestiality, and the spontaneous recognition of your duty to suffer and be silent, which your forebears will certainly have felt, though not yourself, not freely anyway. One can’t repudiate a 6,000-year-old Jewish inheritance; but it’s almost as hard to repudiate a 2,000-year-old non-Jewish inheritance. We come from “emancipation,” from humanity, from the humane tout court, rather more than we come out of Egypt. Our forefathers are Goethe Lessing Herder as much as they are Abraham Isaac and Jacob. And anyway, we are not being beaten, as our ancestors were, by devout Christians, but rather by godless heathens. The Jews are not the only ones they are out to get. Even though they—as ever—are the ones that raise the most piteous lament. The onslaught this time is against European civilization, against humanity, whose proud champion you are. (And against God.)
And the practicalities:
1. The time has come (entre nous)—the Jews Landshoff and Landauer are unable to keep the publisher K.3 afloat any longer.
2. Landauer is in Vienna, and has spoken to Zsolnay, who doesn’t have any money to buy me with.
3. I’ve cut my advance from 35,000 to 10,000 marks; not all that much really for an author as successful as me. But there are no takers.
4. Aside from 4,000 marks and what I owe you, all my debts have been paid.
5. If Fischer doesn’t take me now, I’ll be left hanging. And now, for you.
It’s not right that you want to stay even if things get dangerous. “It is written,” that the man who willingly courts danger is committing a sin. Life is a gift from God. One may risk danger only for the sake of God. Nor may one seek to know in advance where or how danger may choose to strike. One has to flee a burning house, and if a tree should fall on top of you, then that is God’s will.
I know you understand what I mean, and how concerned I am for your welfare, physical and other.
My best wishes to your wife.
Your old friend
Joseph Roth
1. See Zweig’s autobiography, The World of Yesterday (1942).
2. Tietz: Oskar Tietz (1858–1923), founder of the first German supermarket chain.
3. K.: Kiepenheuer.
193. To Stefan Zweig
Paris
33 rue de Tourmon
Hotel Foyot
26 March 1933
Dear esteemed friend,
I’m of the view that one should stay in constant contact in these times. Hence the prompt reply.
You should make sure your letters to me go via Switzerland; some go via Germany.
I completely agree with you: we have to wait. For now. Only I’m not quite sure how long for.
The world is stupider now than it was in 1914. The human no longer bestirs himself when humanity is hurt and killed. In 1914, all parties tried to come up with human reasons and pretexts to explain the bestiality.
Whereas today people just offer bestial justification for bestiality that are even more foul than the bestialities themselves.
And nothing stirs in the whole world. I mean, in the world of writing people, aside from the eccentric Gide, who, recently converted to Communism,1 has held a meeting for snobs and international Communists, without the least success; aside from the Jews of England and America, but they are just disturbed by anti-Semitism, which is a little spoke in the great wheel of bestiality.
You understand, the difference between 1933 and 1914 is roughly that between a sick animal like Goering, and Wilhelm II, who at least kept vestiges of humanity.
Obviously, fools perpetrate folly, and beasts commit bestiality, and madmen commit mad acts: all of them suicidal.
But it is not at all obvious that our equally sick and confused surroundings discern stupidity, bestiality, and madness.
That’s the difference. And I ask myself whether the time hasn’t come where it is our duty to quarantine the world around us, so that it doesn’t get infected.
My fear is that it is too late.
I’m afraid I’ll be forced into the position of wishing for war as soon as possible.
I won’t be going to Vienna, for lots of reasons. The past 10 years I’ve lived 6–8 months a year in France. Why not now? And in particular, why not when those people who hate me will always say I fled anyway. (And why not, when it is plain to see that one really is fleeing.)
In Vienna word would get around even quicker that I’ve left Germany. There especially, because I’d be returning to a place I once lived.
In a French gutter magazine, your name is listed among those who have fled to Switzerland, while I appear as Ernst Roth—no doubt, because they left Toller off their list.
I can’t take the initiative with Zsolnay myself, because Landauer is my friend, and I want him to take what advantage of the situation he can—by selling me. He’s not in an easy position either.
But I’ll go to Salzburg to see you, even if it’s just for a couple of days, as soon as I have a new contract and a little money and security.
As far as the Jewishness in us is concerned, I agree that one mustn’t give the impression one is concerned for the Jews, and no one else.
But we must remember that being a Jew absolves no man from the duty to go to the front line, along with any conscientious non-Jew.
There is a certain point where noblesse is disobliging, and doesn’t help anyone. Because for the beasts over there, a filthy yid is what one remains.
You opposed the war as a Jew, and I fought in it as a Jew. We each have many comrades. We didn’t hang around behind the lines.
On the battlefield of humanity, you could say, there are such people as behind-the-lines Jews.2
We mustn’t be like that.
I have never overestimated the tragic destiny of Jews, least of all now, when it is a tragedy to be a decent human being.
It’s the nastiness of the others to see only Jews. It’s not fitting that we, by hanging back, should reinforce the argumentation of those foolish animals.
As a soldier and an officer I wasn’t a Jew. As a German author I’m not a Jew either. (Not in the way we’re talking about.)
I’m afraid there will be a moment when Jewish reserve will be nothing more than a reaction of the discreet Jew against the chutzpah of the indiscreet Jews.
The one is as damaging and foolish as the other.
As I said already we owe a duty as much to Voltaire, Herder, Goethe, and Nietzsche, as to Moses and his Jewish fathers.
From there may be derived the duty:
To save one’s life and one’s writing, if they are threatened by the animals.
No premature surrender to what we are pleased to call fate.
And to “take a hand,” to fight when the moment has come. The question is whether it might not be sooner rather than later.
As ever, sincerely yours
Joseph Roth
1. Communism: on his return from Russia in 1931, Gide remarked that Russia was the land where the future was being born, only to repudiate his belief in Communism five years later.
2. behind-the-lines Jews: this will have nettled (and is clearly meant to nettle) SZ, who tried to keep his pacifism and humanism together.
194. To Stefan Zweig
Hotel Foyot
Paris
6 April 1933
Dear esteemed friend,
I hope you’ve recovered your calm somewhat. What happened to you is of course bitter. But you must get a grip, and understand that you are atoning for the sins of all Jews, and not just those of your namesakes. Do you think Mr. Goebbels cares if he’s got you confused with someone else? As far as he’s concerned, you’re no better and no different than those he currently has it in for. What I wrote to you before is true: our books are impossible for the Third Reich. They won’t even advertise us. Not even in the Börsenblatt.1 The booksellers will turn us away. The SA storm troopers will smash the display windows. The racial theorist Günther will use your photograph for his typical Semite. There is no compromising with these people. Watch yourself! I’m telling you! You won’t be safe in Salzburg (remember the story of the Rotters2 in Liechtenstein) if you chance your arm. See no one. Get used to the fact that the 40 million who listen to Goebbels are remote from making any distinctions between you and Thomas Mann and Arnold Zweig, Tucholsky, and me. Our life’s work—in the terrestrial sense—has been for nothing. They confuse you, not because your name is Zweig, but because you’re a Jew, a cultural Bolshevist, a pacifist, a cosmopolite, a liberal. It is pointless to hope. This “national renewal” will go to the extremes of madness. It takes exactly the same form as what the psychiatrists term manic depression. That’s this people. All one can do is wait. Don’t for God’s sake imagine you can address these people in any form. You can do it later. There are no manners when dealing with these apes. Don’t issue any pieces of paper! Don’t protest! Shut up—or fight: whichever you think is advisable.
Sincerely,
your old Joseph Roth
1. Börsenblatt: the magazine of the German book trade.
2. Alfred and Fritz Rotter, from 1914 to 1932 theatrical impresarios in Berlin, till their theater business failed.
195. To Stefan Zweig
Paris
28 April 1933
Dear esteemed friend,
You probably won’t get this letter till your return.
I have your happy postcard.
I hope you get home feeling calmer and stronger.
I can’t get away.
I need a new publisher and promise of new earnings.
Things are grim—both in the world at large, and for us as individuals.
We all overestimated the world: even me, an absolute pessimist.
The world is very, very stupid, and bestial. There are more brains in a cowshed.
Everything: humanity, civilization, Europe, even Catholicism: the cowshed is cleverer.
I have been asked whether you’d care to offer a “Balzac” to a new publisher in Zurich, where I too am to appear (with one book).
Not a lefty outfit. Nothing oppositional. Lots of solid untouchable things. I vouch for it.
Please reply ASAP. One of these days it may turn out to be very important for you. We can’t drown out the madness in Germany. Your books were burned in Breslau. You probably read about the demonstration of German students.
It will be good for you to publish something somewhere else—and in a house that doesn’t stink of opposition.
So far as I’m concerned:
I see myself compelled to follow my instincts and conviction, and become an absolute monarchist.
In 6 or 8 weeks, I will publish a short book about the Habsburgs.1
I am an old Austrian officer. I love Austria. I view it as cowardice not to use this moment to say the Habsburgs must return.
I want the monarchy back, and I will say so.
Several thinking persons are of the same view.
I hope I succeed.
I don’t dare ask whether you are of the party.
I assume, though, that you will take me for a “romantic.”
If, counter to expectation, you are able to join me, then you will know already how happy that will make me.
Sincerely
your old Joseph Roth
1. short book about the Habsburgs: not known—as the time frame perhaps suggests.
196. To Stefan Zweig
9 May 1933
Hotel Foyot
33 rue de Tournon
Paris 6e
Dear highly esteemed friend,
thank you for your letter. I love your idea of a joint manifesto, in exactly the way you describe. It’s the only thing one could with dignity bequeath to posterity. I am not quite clear yet whether only Jewish authors should sign, or their origin should be pointed out. If I understand it in its whole solemnity, it is intended to be our monument. And for all my skepticism vis-à-vis posterity I know that a hundred years from now people won’t understand the word “Jew” in the sense it has today. That’s why I think we would do well to recruit the best of the other victims. And quickly too. The acute interest in our singularity will wane very quickly. In two or three months we’ll just be a few obscure individuals. In ten years the generation that knew us will be over. A monument will only stand if carried into the future by the passion and commitment of the generation in which it was built. I can think of no one better than you to collect and distribute this manifesto. You have friends all over God’s earth, cleverness, calm, and acuity. Do it now. Choose the names you want yourself.
As far as your work is concerned, it’s my feeling that quite soon—and who knows for how long, if Hitlerism persists—the Insel Verlag will renounce it. You must not think in any part of you that you are still viable in Germany as the author whose reputation even your enemies were unable to deny. It’s my sense that you exaggerate the moral qualities of the Insel Verlag. Have you still not heard enough stories about his treachery? Still not? If you were physically within reach, the son-in-law of Insel would hand you over to the SA. I urge you: quit Insel. A few of your books will be republished in other houses, and contribute to your wealth and fame.
(Did you get a letter from Amsterdam [from Praag]1 as well?—There is some thought here as well, of Grasset’s bringing out a new list.)
Remember that you will need money; and that you will be called on to help other deserving parties with the luster of your name, who need a publisher if they are to live.
I don’t think you should write the article about children now. The people it would appeal to don’t need you. The rest won’t understand it. The charges you lay against the Hitler beasts are mistaken too: they’re not pursuing the Jews because they’ve done something wrong, but because they’re Jews. In that respect, the “children” are every bit as “guilty” as the fathers.
It occurred to me too that one might write the Habsburg pamphlet anonymously. Against that there is the desire of my political friends. They are convinced the statement of a “leftist” author—you know how little I was ever that—would have some propaganda value. Plus: this is a time when the Jews are needed. In all discretion, the Christian Socialists (the Vaugoin2 group) are with us right now. Starhemberg3 very strongly, Dollfuss4 and Winkler5 are wavering. But in the army and the civil service, anything is possible. I need Prince Polignac6 Do you know him? Are you able to get me an introduction to him?
It’s good for us now to have the Jews on board. Even if the Nazis yell. We have enough anti-Semites and Catholics.
So far as I’m concerned, I stood in the field for nine months for the Habsburgs. No swastika merchant can claim that. I have a right to my fatherland.
Please write soon.
I can only come and see you when I am in possession of a new contract. Maybe 6–8 weeks.
Sincerely,
your old and loyal Joseph Roth
1. Praag: Siegfried Emanuel van Praag (1899–2002), profilic Dutch writer and essayist. He sought to woo exiled German writers to the Dutch publisher Allert de Lange.
2. Vaugoin: Karl Vaugoin (1873–1949), Austrian politician.
3. Starhemberg: Ernst von Starhemberg (1899–1956), leader of the Fascist home guard, from 1934 to 1936, Austrian deputy chancellor.
4. Dollfuss: Engelbert Dollfuss (1892–1934), from 1932 to 1934 Christian Socialist Austrian chancellor, establishing a “Christian state” (aka a Catholic dictatorship) in 1934. Shot by the Nazis.
5. Winkler: Franz Winkler, Austrian politician, deputy chancellor in Dollfuss’s cabinet from 1932 to 1933.
6. Prince Polignac: the nephew of Prince Edmond de Polignac and his wife, Winaretta, née Singer.
197. To Klaus Mann
19 May 1933
Hotel Foyot
Paris 6e
Dear Mr. Klaus Mann,1
of course I should like to get the money2 as quickly as possible. The sooner the better. First serial rights are 600 francs. Emigré prices. Second serial 300.
If I’m still in Paris, I should like to see you both3 again—For now, all the best!
Sincerely
Joseph Roth
1. Klaus Mann (1906 Munich–1949 Cannes), journalist, writer, essayist. Edited the exile magazine Die Sammlung from 1933 to 1935.
2. money: for a contribution to Die Sammlung.
3. Presumably Klaus and his sister Erika Mann, sometimes known as “the terrible twins.”
198. To Stefan Zweig
[Paris] 22 May 1933
Hotel Foyot
Dear esteemed friend,
in three or four days Dr. Landshoff will be with you.
He will bring with him, as others have already, a new publishing project.
Of all that I have heard so far, it’s the only proper and trustworthy one.1
If it comes about—and one should be a little careful, because Dr. L. went to Berlin yesterday for a couple of days—then I’ll write my next novel2 in 3 months, for the first time in my life. Wonderful material, remote from Germany, though with obvious application to it. Plays in the eastern borderlands. Par discretion:
St. Julian the Hospitaller, modern version, instead of animals, Jews, and at the end the removal. Very Catholic.
I stumbled upon it in a Ukrainian newspaper. Fully formed.
You don’t write me. Mrs. Van Praag conveyed me your best wishes, nothing more.
I am afraid, I fear for your immortal soul. You don’t mind if I’m open with you?—I am afraid you don’t quite see events straight. You’re pondering your alternatives. You’re making up your mind.
Here’s my view:
a. It’ll last for 4 years;
b. Hitler will end in disaster, or in monarchy,
c. We will have nothing whatever to do with the 3rd Reich;
d. Within 5 months, there will be no publisher, no bookseller, no author of our kind;
e. We must give up all hope, irrevocably, and be as strong and braced as we have to be. There is war between him and us. Any thought for the enemy is punishable by death. All authors of repute who stay will suffer their own literary death.
f. As long as we are banished, no common cause with the “Left”: Feuchtwanger, A. Zweig, the Weltbühne. They are partly to blame for our plight. They are the party of the fools with chutzpah.
Please come and be on my side. Ditch the Insel Verlag. For the last 4 years his behavior toward you has been scandalous. His recently published denial on the subject of your German was, frankly, disgusting.
These are not temperamental reactions on my part. I go to meet these people with a riding crop. You in your high-mindedness don’t grasp the instincts of the janitor. You don’t know the Prussians, the way I do. I know them from the field. It’s true, everything they say about atrocities in Belgium. All true! The Prussians are representatives of the chemical inferno, of the industrialized inferno, in the world. I hope lightning strikes them. I know they will be destroyed far sooner than people think.
You won’t take anything I say amiss, will you?
Sincere and loyal regards
your Joseph Roth
1. Publishing project: the Querido Verlag, a principal publisher of exiled German writers, with Fritz Landshoff’s participation, in Amsterdam.
2. novel: Tarabas, published by Querido in 1934.
199. To Stefan Zweig
Hotel Foyot
Paris 6e
Saturday [24 June 1933]
Dear esteemed friend,
in haste:
Your telegram yesterday. My letter was pretty important. Its loss indicates that Nazi cells have been at work.
Whether I make it to Zurich or not depends on many factors, of which more later.
I don’t know of a single one here that’s important.
Expecting your letter with impatience.
Please confirm safe arrival of this one.
Sincerely
Joseph Roth
200. To Stefan Zweig
[Paris] 26 June [1933]
Dear esteemed friend,
please consider my material situation, as much as my yearning for you. I can’t go to Basel. Come here! No one will know. I have to see you! For me a great deal depends on it. I cannot leave. But you can come here. Please show yourself to be the way I know you are. Come, even for 2 hours.
Sincerely
J.R.
And wire, please, on Monday!
201. To Hermann Kesten1
Hotel Foyot
Paris 6e
29 June 1933
Dear friend,
I am awaiting the check with impatience.2 I suggest you send it express. Landshoff is coming tonight.
There is no gossip. We’re looking—according to Mehring3—for a cheap room for Hugenberg.4
I am writing, very badly, very unhappily, no money.
Jakob Hegner,5 whose letter I will forward to you, is starting a publishing company in Zurich.
I’ll give Tuke your instructions. Mrs. Manga Bell asks to be remembered to you both. We’re positively longing for you.
God help us. Dr. Bermann was here. Wants to copublish Landshoff’s authors in the 3rd Reich in the Fischer Verlag. As a proud Austrian, I declined to be a yid.
Write soon, Hermann!
Best wishes J.R.
1. Hermann Kesten (1900–1996), author and editor (for Kiepenheuer); JR’s friend from 1927 to his death, he probably did more for the retrieval of his reputation following World War II than any other individual. Brought out a three-volume edition of JR’s fiction, and assembled and edited the 1970 selection of his letters on which the present book is based.
2. For “Stationmaster Fallmerayer,” which appeared in an anthology of exiled German writers brought out by Kesten.
3. Mehring: Walter Mehring (1896–1981), poet, essayist. Went into exile in Paris in 1933.
4. Hugenberg: Alfred Hugenberg (1865–1951), media proprietor and film entrepreneur, in 1928 leader of the German Nationalist People’s Party. In 1933, after strongly supporting Hitler, became a minister in his cabinet. In June of that year, he abruptly resigned and withdrew from politics, realizing that he had no control of the direction of the party.
5. Jakob Hegner (1865–1962), printer, publisher, and translator.
202. To Stefan Zweig
Hotel Foyot
Paris 6e
13 July 1933
Dear esteemed friend,
forgive me, since I left you, I’ve thanked you neither for the day you sacrificed to me, nor for the letters you’ve written since. These days have brought one misfortune after another. My father-in-law underwent an operation, the operation failed, and he is blind. God, I have nothing! I can’t go on. Eight people are depending on me. No one helps me. I am already in the circle (perhaps I’m feeling it too quickly) of the scroungers. Huebsch’s behavior is inexplicable! I’ve just written him a very forthright letter. If he’s angry with me, I can’t help it. I work 10 hours a day, have another 7,000 francs (700 gulden) coming to me from Landshoff, and am 3,000 in debt. Dear friend, Mr. Alexander1 doesn’t write back to me; perhaps not to you either. My last happy day was my day with you. Black clouds have closed in.
I want to know that you got this letter. Please, send a card to confirm arrival.
How can I live, even if I get the strength to finish the novel in 8 days? Can you invoice Mr. Alexander?
Sincerely,
your old Joseph Roth
I was just given the news—I’m writing in a café—that a telegram from Mr. Alexander has come for me, but it’s in English and the porter can’t translate it. I’ll send it along ASAP. If it’s positive, then disregard these lamentations.
1. Kurt Alexander, a literary agent in London. Roth will have been trying to get money owing to him out of America, either for Job or for The Radetzky March, only to be foiled by the Nazi laws, and a plethora of middlemen.
203. To Stefan Zweig
Hotel Foyot
Paris 6e
33 rue de Tournon
14 July 1933
My dear friend,
here is the telegram, my reply, and Mr. Alexander’s reply to me.—I refuse to believe it. I refuse to believe there’s a chance that I’ll survive all this.
Please confirm receipt of both letters.
Yours sincerely, your old
Joseph Roth
204. To Klaus Mann
Hotel Foyot
Paris 6e
33 rue de Tournon
18 July 1933
Dear Klaus Mann,
the novella isn’t finished after all. I’ll give it to you next week, here. That seems better to me. Don’t panic!
Sincerely,
your old Joseph Roth
205. To Stefan Zweig
Hotel Foyot
Paris 6e
19 July 1933
Dear esteemed friend,
here is Mr. Alexander’s latest telegram. I don’t understand your last kind letter at all. Even if you believed I could be so thoughtless on my own account, do you think me capable of exposing or embarrassing you, discrediting you in some way, I don’t know?—I asked for the money all at once, because the pound is falling. I’ve been stung before. Mr. Alexander first wires his authors, and only then, armed with their replies, does he approach their publishers. It’s not at all—as you seem to think—that Mr. Alexander makes an offer to an author, having first discussed it with a publisher.—But, irrespective of that: do you take me for a fool?—The only thing that will help me in my position is if I get the sum of 80,000 francs at one fell swoop—and since you said so yourself, I can tell you that if I ever believed I might have good fortune on such a scale, my first action would have been to send you half of it, and ask you, you in person, to keep it safe for me. But this is all hypothetical! People don’t come to me offering miracles.—And our friend Huebsch—such a friend!—stood me up, treated me positively sadistically. I would tell you what he did, only physical disgust prevents me.
My dear friend, I have often been foolish in the course of my life. I still am. But don’t think I don’t see the vileness perpetrated by others. You, however, don’t see it. You would go rigid with pain and dread if I told you how I lived, and how Huebsch and others have let me down. I refuse to do it in writing. Please drop me a line to let me know you’ve got this, and I don’t have to wire.
Sincerely and faithfully,
your old Joseph Roth
206. To Stefan Zweig
Hotel Foyot
Paris 6e
20 July 1933
Dear esteemed friend,
would you happen to have a copy of my novel Zipper and His Father? Or can you manage to get hold of one? If so, then please send it to A. Corticelli, Viale Abruzzi 19, Milano.
He wants to publish it, and will pay me for it. It’s shocking, I have no copies of any of my books.
Sincerely,
your old Joseph Roth
207. To Stefan Zweig
Hotel Foyot
Paris 6e
33 rue de Tournon
24 July 1933
Dear friend,
misunderstandings should be cleared up as soon as they occur. So I’m writing you back straightaway.
1. You write and say they’ve agreed to pay 800 pounds. But it wasn’t my idea to ask for 1,000. It was Mr. Alexander who offered me that, in his first telegram. Should I have written back to say, no no, too much?
2. Maybe Pinker1 is behind Alexander. But what I don’t understand is that carry-on of making an offer, and only when the author has replied, start to negotiate a deal. I’ve heard from three separate publishers that Mr. Alexander isn’t among the ones who are taken seriously.
3. I hope to see Mr. Huebsch here tomorrow. I’ll write to you. For now, here’s this: (a) Huebsch sends 1,000 dollars to Kiepenheuer after Hitler’s arrival, and only 100 to me, even though I’ve wired him that Kiepenheuer is broke and he should just hang on to all moneys for the time being; (b) Mr. Huebsch sells film rights to Job: a 3,000-dollar advance is paid to the publisher by the film company: 2,000 are still outstanding: Huebsch writes that they’ll be paid as soon as Kiepenheuer confirms that he is giving up my film and foreign rights: I get Mr. Landshoff to put up the 5,000 marks the Kiepenheuer Verlag, or its liquidators, want for the surrender of my foreign rights; Landshoff pays the money: whereupon Huebsch writes that the film company is unsure what to do: I owe Landshoff 5,000 marks; furthermore, Huebsch should have paid another 500 dollars for the Radetzky March in April: they haven’t reached me yet. Meanwhile, the dollar falls.
All this to Huebsch.—I don’t think he’s a bad man. He’s just a so-called businessman. He’s even a decent man—except where dollars are at stake. I have no comprehension for that kind of thing. I know only comradeliness, including in business.
4. More important: the fact that you say advances are a consequence of the inflation. Maybe so. But the world has changed. Taking myself for an example, without an advance I couldn’t have written Job or the Radetzky March. Between the old writers and me there is the war. If Austria-Hungary had survived, then I’d be a major in Witkovitz, and could write without an advance. And irrespective of that: why seek to abolish advances, if the inflation that gave rise to them remains a factor? Why do you suggest that the weakest people, authors, return to solid bourgeois conditions, while all around the colossuses are crumbling? Where’s the logic in that, my dear fellow! In Kipling’s time, capitalists were still decent people. The world was in order. But in today’s world, you want us to be the solid and respectable ones?—It’s not possible for us to live and work without an advance, any more than it is possible for capitalists to get by without bank credits and state subventions. Do you think Roosevelt isn’t a swindler? The dollar inflation no wheeze? And you want me to live like Kipling? Without advances?
I’m not just being polemical here for the hell of it, but because you seem to me to have “romantic” opinions on several matters. You’re so much wiser than I am, you know life and people better than I do. The way you behave in the world is infinitely wiser than me. But strangely you’re less realistic than I am. And even though I’m younger and more foolish than you, I come to bring you enlightenment. I am your friend, and that’s my right.
(Excuse these stains!)
5. You say, may God free me from money. Not so, dear friend! May God give me money, a shed load of money! Because in today’s world money is no curse any more, and poverty no blessing. To put it bluntly, that’s “romantic.” (Quite apart from the fact that I’m not poor, but something that’s grim and in-between.) I need money! I write with money, I help six or seven people to get by with my money, which isn’t “gold” any more, and so isn’t a curse! It’s a figment! What’s real is my work, and the lives of those dear to me. I’ve never earned as much as a Wassermann,2 but I’ve never lived like him either. And the people who live at my side—apart from my poor wife—they’re already living like “proles.” And I can’t even afford to keep them like that. I can’t eat decently. Show me the prole who lives as badly as I do!—And above all, where did you see a prole doing such important work as we do?—Even our nearest and dearest, our friends, our families: haven’t they got the right to live better than donkeys? Who works in the night for the light of the world? Doesn’t my work entitle me to look after a few people whom I love, as much as it entitles me to drink schnapps? Looking after people is a legitimate spur, every bit as much as alcohol.
6. As far as the “chance” circumstance that we’re the victims now, that has nothing at all to do with what has gone before. It’s a misfortune, a calamity. But firstly: I’m convinced we’ll get through it; and second, while the world hasn’t forgotten me, am I to tighten my belt till Hitler tightens it for me!?—You live and write like a romantic. That would be OK if the president of the United States was a straight-up guy. But he’s a cheat. A big cheat, like Krueger!3 Bigger! Worse.—If a gangster’s in charge of America, you can’t be Kipling!
I had to tell you that. Please reply right away. I’m hoping I can be with you in 3–4 weeks.
Your very old and faithful
Joseph Roth
1. Pinker: J. Ralph Pinker, son of a literary agent, and himself a noted literary agent in London.
2. Wassermann: Jakob Wassermann (1873–1934), highly successful German novelist and essayist who lived on a lavish scale. Author of Caspar Hauser and many other titles.
3. Kreuger: Ivar Kreuger (1880–1932) owned a match factory in Sweden. When it suddenly went broke, he committed suicide in Paris.
208. To Stefan Zweig
Hotel Foyot
Paris
2 August 1933
My very dear friend,
I’m dripping with heat and work, burdened, strained, oppressed, but I’m working. I think I can be with you in about 3 weeks.
You should speak on 2 September, which is Sedan Day, and also my birthday, nebbish.
Your old and faithful
J.R.
209. To Max von Hohenlohe-Langenburg1
Hotel Stein
Salzburg
24 August 1933
Dear friend,
thanks for your sad letter. You tell me nothing new. You’re right about almost all the general things. But everything personal is completely wrong. Neither Landauer, nor me, nor Ludwig Bauer2 have the feeling that we’re “Jews,” in the sense in which the Nazis are “Aryans.” To a Catholic like myself, my Jewishness is more or less what it would be to a Hasidic wonder-rabbi: a metaphysical affair, high above everything to do with “Jews” on this earth. It certainly has nothing to do with the fact that I can’t, for example, send you money. The true reason for that is this: I’m a beggar. I don’t have money for the next fortnight, nothing for me, and nothing for the 8 people whom I support, who are dependent on me. Of course, like you, I know that Jews are detested everywhere. That’s the way God wants it to be, and so it can’t be any other way. It won’t be the Jews who will overcome Hitler, it will be God. Our individual fates have nothing to do with that.—Incidentally, I never spoke badly of you to Mrs. Kiepenheuer,3 definitely not.—Nor should you get general and individual things mixed up. Don’t seek general reasons for the private behavior of your friends. That way madness lies. It seems to me you think about Jews more than I do. I simply cannot give you any money. I live off alms. I have to write articles to live. I feed off my name, which I gained in the course of writing 14 books. I am not familiar with any Jewish support group. And the Jews that are, get given 5 francs a day. I understand and feel sorry for your plight. You don’t need to explain it to me. Bear it, believe in God, be devout, as I try to be. If you are a “worldly” type, you can hardly complain if we are ground up between Bolshevism and National Socialism.
Landauer will write to you.
Sincerely your old
Joseph Roth
1. Max von Hohenlohe-Langenburg: Prince Max Karl Joseph Maria zu Hohenlohe-Langenburg (1901–1943 in concentration camp, in Stuttgart), went into exile in 1933. Wrote articles against the Nazi regime. Had already offered his memoirs to Kiepenheuer before 1933.
2. Ludwig Bauer: a Viennese journalist.
3. Mrs. Kiepenheuer: Noa Kiepenheuer, wife of the publisher Gustav Kiepenheuer, and a regular visitor to Paris.
210. To Stefan Zweig
Hotel Schwanen
Rapperswil am Zürichsee
31 August 1933
My dear friend,
thank you so much for the days you gave me.
I sometimes worry if my attitude doesn’t alienate you from me.
I also have a distinct feeling that you’re not seeing straight, where our respective political views are concerned; and our reaction to one another.
There is something else too: I can’t quite grasp that you are not content to be an Austrian pure and simple.
Yours is a conservative and respectful character. All you have in terms of literary and human qualities is old Austria.
Impossible to imagine you as the son of a Prussian Jew.
It is imperative that you must love Austria, it will love you back. It is not the same as Prussia.
I came to know the Austrians and Prussians in the war, when I was seconded to a Prussian division. My active Austrian patriotism dates from that moment.
I do not expect you to become an outspoken monarchist; that would be too much.
But you grasp it as well as I do: that’s the only possible salvation for Austria.
Each one of us is tethered to his past. But you can help us with your precious gifts.
I was sorry you didn’t want to meet Mr. W.1 I know you avoided sitting at the same table as him. From ethical wisdom, so to speak. But it would certainly have gladdened your heart to see how esteemed you were in that quarter. And when you saw me off, you stood so to speak between Mr. Fuchs,2 the not actual but symbolic representative of the “Left,” and me, the actual representative of the “Right.”
Or perhaps I’m mistaken. Tell me if I am.
And what you said about Thomas Mann.3 It can’t be right. We are human. I have never cared for Thomas Mann’s way of walking on water. He isn’t Goethe. He isn’t entitled to such pronouncements. And only the words of one who is entitled can be right.
Thomas Mann has somehow usurped “objectivity.” Between you and me, he is perfectly capable of coming to an accommodation with Hitler. Only for the time being, it’s been made impossible for him. He is one of those persons who will countenance everything, under the pretext of understanding everything.
As far as I am concerned, I can’t be objective any more. A man like Mr. Rieger4 is worth a million Thomas Manns. Merely by being, Rieger achieves more than Mann with all his writings. And his Nobel Prize too. I’ve always jibbed at the name “Mann.” I always thought he was more of an “it” myself. Whereas someone like Mr. Rieger is a man. And that’s more than an “author.”
Please, write to confirm arrival.
Something went missing from a registered letter to me in Salzburg. It can only have been a postal official. I’m complaining to the authorities concerned.
Sincerely,
your old J.R.
1. Mr. W.: Von Wiesner, ministerial councillor, leader of the Austrian legitimists, and a friend of JR’s.
2. Fuchs: Martin Fuchs (1903–1969), press attaché to the Austrian embassy in Paris, and a friend of JR’s. Following the Anschluss in 1938, he edited a Habsburg journal in Paris, to which Roth contributed. In his last years, he was Austrian ambassador in Paris.
3. Thomas Mann (1875–1955), German novelist and essayist. Went into exile in Switzerland in 1933, then the USA. For a variety of reasons—class, politics, nationality, self-complacency?—Roth never liked him.
4. Rieger: Erwin Rieger (born 1889; died 1940 in Tunis), essayist and writer, friend of Stefan Zweig’s.
211. To Stefan Zweig
Hotel Schwanen
Rapperswil am Zürichsee
5 September 1933
Dear esteemed friend,
in haste, thank you for your kind letter.
So Mrs. Thompson1 is going to try and meet you. I’m seeing her tomorrow in Zurich. I would ask you to make her welcome. There are many things she can do in America.
I’m never sorry to get any of your letters. I just can’t reply to everything you say. I dread any chance of a misunderstanding.
Please write and let me know where you’re going. My regards to your dear wife.
Sincerely
your Joseph Roth
1. Mrs. Thompson: Dorothy Thompson (1906–1961), political journalist. Evicted from Germany on Hitler’s orders. Married to the writer Sinclair Lewis from 1928 to 1942. She translated JR’s novel Job. President of the New York PEN Club for a time. See no. 457.
212. To Carl Seelig
Hotel Schwanen
Rapperswil am Zürichsee
5 September 1933
Esteemed Mr. Seelig,1
thank you so much for your kind letter of the 30th last, and for asking me to read in Zurich. Unfortunately I suffer from so-called psychological barriers, I am unable to read aloud in front of an audience, and have thus lost many opportunities of earning money over many years.
It was very kind of you, however, to make me such an offer, and I would be glad of the chance to thank you personally, if you cared to write me when I could meet you.
Yours humbly and thankfully
Joseph Roth
1. Carl Seelig (1894–1962), Swiss critic, and editor of the works of his friend Robert Walser.
213. To Blanche Gidon
Rapperswil am Zürichsee
20 September 1933
Hotel Schwanen
Dear esteemed Madam,
please excuse the dictation. I am hard at work, and I find it difficult to write detailed letters by hand.
Thank you for your friendly postcard. I am very sorry we didn’t meet. I hope you and Mr. Gidon recuperated very well in the holidays. Are you and your colleague making good headway with the translation of my novel? I am very disturbed that the book is not yet ready to appear. Please send me news here, and also how your dear husband is faring.
I was very glad to meet Mr. Poupet in Austria. I hope he likes my poor fatherland.
In loyal and sincere devotion, and with best regards to your husband
Your Joseph Roth
214. To Stefan Zweig
Rapperswil am Zürichsee
20 September 1933
Hotel Schwanen
Esteemed and dear friend,
please excuse the dictation.—I have a great favor to ask of you. A good friend of mine over many years, a wonderful human being and a doctor, Dr. Walter Neubauer, has been forced to leave his hometown of Hamburg and his family very suddenly, and is going—which I find quite admirable—to Shanghai. I doubt if I could find anyone else who had connections there, with the sole exception of you. I imagine you know people there, Chinese professors or people in public life there, that sort of thing. Do you in fact know such people, and please will you not take it amiss if I ask you to furnish Dr. Neubauer with two or three introductions? I am very serious. He is an utterly reliable and wonderful person. Compelled to leave Hamburg by the idiotic Aryan laws, even though he is a Christian son of Christian parents.
Everything else I will write by hand, as soon as I’ve got a bit further with my misbegotten book.
In loyal friendship your old
[Joseph Roth]
215. To Blanche Gidon
Rapperswil am Zürichsee,
27 September 1933
Hotel Schwanen
Dear esteemed Madam,
thank you for your kind letter of the 23rd. I am delighted you liked Austria so much. Please give my regards to Mr. Poupet. And, inasmuch as it’s in your power, try and do something for the country to rescue it from Nazi barbarism.
Dear Madam, I beg you once more, please see to it that my book appears quite soon and in a decent form. I am faring very badly—in financial terms too—and I am utterly reliant on a success in France.
I am sorry the Reifenberg family are doing badly. On the other hand, it is impossible for me to have any sort of fellow feeling with my friend Reifenberg. Persons who neglect their honor cannot remain my friends. Whoever enters into a relation with the Third Reich, and a public one at that, like my poor friend Reifenberg,1 is struck out of the book of my friends.—Please give my best regards to Professor Gidon.
I am your humble
Joseph Roth
1. my poor friend Reifenberg: JR, as will have been seen, was often impatient with his gentle, sanguine editor, who said of him in turn that “he did not care to understand when it was possible to judge.” Reifenberg, a half-Jew married to a Polish wife, politically left of center, and personally devoted to JR and his memory, was no one’s idea of a Nazi. He attempted, though, with others, to keep the FZ going through the Nazi period as a liberal paper, steering his habitually gentle course, and hoping for change from within, until the FZ was finally shut down in August 1943. Some years after the war, Reifenberg thought to put out a collection of articles from the Nazi period, only to come to the dispiriting conclusion that the opposition supposedly encoded in them was so faint and obscure as not to exist in any real sense.
216. Stefan Zweig to Joseph Roth1
[postmarked: London,
30 September 1933]
Dear friend,
we feel extraordinarily well here, I have rented a nice apartment, work all morning until 3 o’clock in the library, and then at home; the people are pleasant and considerate, the climate positively helpful to one’s work, I am sure you would feel much better here than in Paris, or in your solitude. I haven’t smoked now for four weeks, it helps me no end, and what makes me breathe even more easily is that I hear no news of home.2
Sincerely your
Stefan Z.
11, Portland Place
1. At this point in the collection, some of Stefan Zweig’s letters to Joseph Roth are also included.
2. Really a bizarrely, almost provocatively insouciant note to go from someone in Zweig’s position to someone in Roth’s.
217. To Stefan Zweig
Rapperswil
2 October 1933
Hotel Schwanen
Dear, esteemed friend,
congratulations on your cure. I well know how hard it is for you, and I know too that part of you is thinking not just of you, but also of me. I am not so strong as you. I don’t write. I can’t write. I am indifferent. All my friends in the business have dropped me.
Excuse the harshness and brevity. I’m sad that you didn’t go to Paris. You could have done a lot for Austria. But perhaps you could still do that in Paris, behind the scenes. A few days ago, I met Mr. von Wiesner. He came directly from the emperor.1 The empress is in Italy. Foolishly, she is trying to prevent a marriage with an Italian princess, which the Italians are apparently trying to bring about. I tried to prove the foolishness of her endeavors. But in Austria, the situation is that Mr. Dollfuss is tacitly ready to acknowledge the monarchy. As soon as the fait accompli has been created, he will agree to it. Our plan is to convey the dead emperor2 from Lequeto to Austria, and with him the live emperor. We need 30,000 schillings, which for the time being we don’t have. Austria is in the bag. There is no cause to worry about National Socialism there.
My dear friend, you must commit the entire weight of your public person to Austria. Believe me, I know, I can feel that it is of great importance for you to appear as an Austrian. At a stroke you will set aside everything you have suffered and continue to suffer in Germany. We need a Romain Rolland3 for Austria. You know I’ve never been one for glib phrases. And you know I don’t need to reach for them when talking to you. On the contrary. My friendship for you is such that I would rather say disagreeable things to you, than agreeable things.
Yours sincerely
your Joseph Roth
1. emperor: the pretendant Otto von Habsburg.
2. dead emperor: Karl I (1887–1922), emperor from 1916 to 1918, when he was forced to abdicate.
3. Romain Rolland (1866–1944), writer and essayist, pacifist, later Communist. Was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1915, which he made over to the Red Cross. A close friend of Stefan Zweig’s, who very much admired him. By a species of triangulation Roth is trying to recruit Zweig for the monarchist cause.
218. To Stefan Zweig
[Rapperswill]
9 October 1933
Dear esteemed friend,
in haste, and in an effort to calm you down: how can you overestimate the importance of that printed bullshit! In this world it’s a matter of absolute indifference—unfortunately—what is written about us or by us. There’s a handful who know, and they know everything. All the others are blind or deaf. Haven’t you got that yet? The word has died, men bark like dogs. The word has no importance any more, none in the current state of things. I had an interview in the Mois1 where they said I was an anti-Semite. Do you suppose I cared? In the space of three days, even a true word is dissipated. And a lie is even quicker. There is no “public arena” any more. Everything is shit.
More soon!
Your old Joseph Roth
1. the Mois: Le Mois, a monthly magazine for French publishers and booksellers.
219. To Carl Seelig
Rapperswil
16 October 1933
Hotel Schwanen
Dear Mr. Seelig,
thank you for your kind letter, and your Basel address. I am insufficiently musical to offer a one hundred percent guarantee. But I like what I heard of the work. I’m a layman, but I trust that my ear won’t be absolutely wrong about something.
Just come along on any day you fancy, even if I’m working you won’t bother me. At the most, good company like yours will spur me on,
Sincerely
Your J.R.
220. To Félix Bertaux
Hotel Schwanen
Rapperswil am Zürichsee
22 October 1933
Dear, esteemed friend,
I haven’t heard from you in weeks, and had no reply from you to my letter from Salzburg to Lescun. I expect you’ll be back in Paris by now. Perhaps you’ll be kind enough to drop me a line here—I’m always eager to hear news of you and your wife and Pierre.
I am working hard on my novel, which I should have delivered long ago, but can’t seem to finish.
Please give my regards to Mrs. Bertaux, say hello to Pierre, and be assured of my long friendship.
Your loyal and grateful
Joseph Roth
221. Stefan Zweig to Joseph Roth
[postmarked: London,
3 November 1933]
Dear friend,
after some wonderful days, some very painful ones. Just imagine: from some attacks on me in Vienna and elsewhere, three weeks after the event, I learn that Insel took the letter I had written at their request to spare them unpleasantness in the matter of Klaus Mann’s magazine, and published it, without asking me, without telling me at any stage, so that to this day I haven’t had sight of it, in the Börsenblatt1 (apparently—I don’t know—without even saying it was written to them). Now the decision I was agonizing over for so long has been made for me. I sent a correction to the AZ2 which has to appear tomorrow, and I would ask you to inform anyone you happen to see, and also to send me any attacks on me, so that I can energetically and promptly put them right. And I was working so well when it happened! Another week now, and maybe see you in December.
Your St. Z.
1. Börsenblatt: The Buchhändler Börsenblatt, magazine of the German book trade. What happened was that Zweig had written at Insel’s request (rather as previously Thomas Mann, Döblin, and Schickele had at Bermann Fischer’s) a letter distancing himself from Klaus Mann’s—politically inflected—magazine of German exile writing, Die Sammlung, thereby rather leaving Klaus Mann high and dry. He, it has to be said, had proceeded to use their names either without having asked at all or having offered only a misleading prospectus for the magazine. Basically, the middle-of-the-road-to-right-wing exiles were embarrassed to appear under leftist colors, or in some cases (Thomas Mann, Döblin under special circumstances) to be outed as exiles at all.
2. AZ: Arbeiter Zeitung, an (in)appropriately left-wing newspaper in Vienna to launch such a correction.
222. To Stefan Zweig
Hotel Schwanen
Rapperswil am Zürichsee
5 November 1933
Dear, esteemed friend,
let me congratulate you, me, and all your friends, on your decision! Robert Neumann1 passed through here yesterday, and talked about you. I am very glad—you should be too. You have remained Stefan Zweig, and I have remained your friend, without any reservations. Please don’t think this is “youthfulness” speaking from me, or that it’s youth that made me suspicious of Thomas Mann. Suspicion accompanied me when I was younger—suspicion of the young. Simply because most of them were and are not real writers. They are not real people either. The absolutely comme il faut Professor Thomas Mann is simply naïve. He has the gift of writing better than he can think.2 Intellectually, he is not on the level of his own talent. With Schickele you get spasms of cowardice, with Döblin the occasionally irritating infantilism that shapes two-thirds of his literary production, and three-thirds of his personal life.
Shit on the Neue Deutsche Blätter.3 It’s a bought-and-paid-for Soviet affair. Werfel, Döblin, and I, were all attacked in the same number. It’s the Communist pendant to the Gartenlaube. Boring. Jakob Wassermann, whom I saw as a German patriot not long ago in Zurich, has just published parts of his very boring novel there.
If you have ex-friends who are now out to hurt you, then you should be pleased. You always had too many friends for my liking. The worst of it was they came from all over the spectrum. I never cared for that. If you shed a few friends, that can only do you good.
I don’t know any lawyer for you. It seems better to me that you take someone in England, not a Swiss or a Dutchman.
Stay strong, calm, and happy.
Thank your dear wife for the greeting on the envelope, and kiss her hand for me.
Greet Schalom Asch for me, the Homeric Jew. I think of him often, for no reason I can think of. He could have taken part in the Trojan Wars.
Your old
Joseph Roth
1. Robert Neumann (1897–1975), novelist, satirist, and parodist. Went into exile in London in 1934.
2. Mann, Döblin, Schickele—see my note on no. 221.
3. Neue Deutsche Blätter, a monthly magazine for German life and letters, produced in Prague between 1933 and 1935.
223. To Stefan Zweig
Rapperswil
Tuesday, 7 November 1933
Dear, esteemed friend,
I was happy to get your postcard. I’ll be honest with you, and say I wouldn’t have known what to say. I saw the Börsenblatt and the Arbeiter Zeitung; or rather, I was shown them with a great display of mockery. Of course I made the pathetic attempt to deny everything. You can imagine with what feelings. You don’t know that I was about to lay into Thomas Mann, Döblin, and Schickele for their similar statements. When I heard about you, I felt I’d been slapped. At least with those three you could argue that they were too dependent on [. . .] Bermann Fischer. You are not dependent on Insel. At the time you wrote your letter, I’m thinking you must have known the resounding comment which the ministry slapped on the loyalty declaration of the three valiant little tailors: that they still didn’t approve of the intellectual position of the loyal writers.
Well, I’m glad of what separates you from that trio: they write to their publisher, knowing it will be published—they even wired him. Whereas your letter to Insel was private. What I’m not glad of is the fact that you saw fit to write at all. Sure, many things separate me from Feuchtwanger. But only things that divide human beings. But what divides me from everyone, without a single exception, who is today active in Germany, with Germany, for Germany, is precisely what divides a human from an animal. Compared to stinking hyenas, compared to the spawn of hell, even my old foe Tucholsky is a comrade in arms. And even if the Sammlung were wrong a thousand times over: they would be right about Goebbels, about the violators of Germany and the German language, about those stinking Luther farts. I think Klaus Mann, with whom, God knows I don’t have much in common, still gave the most dignified reply to your letters to German publishers: the appeal of Romain Rolland in the latest issue of the Sammlung.
Rolland is right. An upright man should have no cause to fear “politics.” We have outstanding examples in literature. It is hubris to want to be more Olympian than Hugo and Zola. But I admit it’s a question of temperament, whether one seeks to intervene or not. However, to swear fealty to that band of killers and cackers, of liars and morons, of madmen and illiterates and rapists and robbers and mountebanks: that I don’t understand. Drop your misguided respect for “power,” for numbers, for 60 millions,1 leave it to the stupid Hendersons2 and Macdonalds,3 the Socialists, the politicians of bankruptcy. If we don’t see the truth, and quake at those jumped-up farts: who’s going to see the truth?
Ah, I can hear you say, but we’re Jews. Well, even though my head is too precious for me to waste it by running against a brick wall, I don’t see why my blood should absolve me from fighting in the front line, and condemn me to clerkdom. Only beasts like those yonder mention my blood to me. I’m staying in my trench. I daren’t ask what others think of me. I am human, and I’m fighting for man, and against animals. Numbskulls can say what they like. The just cause is stronger than the appeal to my Judaism.
Then comes your second objection: I’m underestimating the enemy. Oh dear, I’m afraid you’re overestimating him. However stupid the world is: in the long run they won’t fall in with the shower that’s running Germany just now. There is a fight to the death between European civilization and Prussia. Or hadn’t you noticed?
All right, avoid joining sides publicly. Maintain that—to me, incredible—respect for everything you term the “elemental-national” or whatever you want to call it. But I tell you, stop trying to build bridges to Germany. Stuff the Insel. Anyone who has a public function in Germany today, no matter who he is or what he once did, is a BEAST.
It used to be that you were happy to deny that you were Arnold Zweig. What you’re doing today, with the least association with Germany, is denying that you’re Stefan Zweig. (A reader of yours came up with that.)
You have so much to lose: not just your personal dignity, but your literary—and world-renowned—bearing. To thousands who think of Germany the way I do, not you, you were a prop, a pillar of faith. In the war you stood at the side of Romain Rolland. And now, now that things are at a worse pass than they ever were then, you’re writing anxious little letters to the Insel. It’s as if, during the war, you’d written letters to a captain in headquarters—merely because his reputation might have suffered on account of his old friendship with you: to say that you weren’t opposed to the war at all, “not really.”
Everything is the fault of your shilly-shallying. All the badness. All the ambiguity. All the stupid newspaper comments on you. You are in danger of losing your moral credit vis-à-vis the world, and not winning anything in the Third Reich either. Put practically. And in moral terms: you’re repudiating your personal principles of 30 years. And why? For whom? For a business partner. A decent, narrow-minded person, that’s about the most that could be said about him, who’s made a fortune from publishing you. Whose son-in-law is [. . .]. Who, merely by remaining in Germany himself, has undone all the good he may have done to you and others. (Though that too was business.)
Dear friend, you know I belong more to those who want to be fair than the implacable ones. I am revolted by narrow-mindedness and sectarianism. But now the hour of decision is at hand. More than in the war. Now, confronted by this hellish hour in which a beast gets itself crowned and anointed, not even a Goethe would have remained quiet. (At least he wouldn’t have denied involvement with the enemies of the Third Reich.) This is no longer the time to speak of Jews and non-Jews either. Why didn’t you think of it then, when you were in Switzerland, in the war, that you mustn’t do anything to strengthen the disgraceful calumny that Jews were sabotaging the fatherland? You were a Jew then, as much as now.
I can’t approve of your position. I’m a better friend to you than the Insel. If only for my sake you should never have written that letter. Not without asking me. Even if you didn’t know it, you will still have sensed that I would not have approved of such a letter.
It’s the hour of decision, not just in the sense that it’s time to take the side of mankind against Germany, but also in that it’s time to tell every friend the truth. So I say to you—and believe me, haste forces me to a ceremonial tone that is rather embarrassing to me—there will be an abyss between the two of us, unless and until you have finally and innerly broken with Germany. I would prefer it if you were fighting against it with all the power of your name. If you are unable to do that, then at least keep quiet. Don’t go writing letters to Insel, or to some other Tom, Dick, and Harries. To spare the addressee from any “unpleasantnesses.” You’ll only incur worse ones yourself. You’re smart enough to realize that in Germany nowadays the proprietor of the Insel is just as much a state-appointed functionary as a minister of state. You should have known all by yourself that your letter would never remain private. Any ordinary German citizen is an ass-kissing employee of the state; never mind the publishers of Insel, or Fischer. (They should all be packed off to a concentration camp.)
(Please send the Tagebuch4 a copy of your reply to the Arbeiter Zeitung. Mr. Schwarzschild mentioned your letter to Insel to me as well. I think it’s important that he knows where you stand.)
One more time: you will have to finish with the Third Reich, or with me. You cannot simultaneously have relationships with representatives of the Third Reich—which includes every single publisher—and with me. I won’t stand for it. I can’t justify it, not to you, not to myself.
Reply, please, as soon as possible. Kiss Mrs. Zweig’s hand for me.
Your old friend
Joseph Roth
Wednesday [8 November 1933]
Dear friend,
I’ve just read over the letter I wrote you yesterday. Lest you be in any doubt: I did not write it while intoxicated. I drink almost nothing but white wine these days. I am stone sober. Please be in no doubt about that.
And be in no doubt either that I am your friend. Even if you don’t answer my plea, and don’t end your commerce with Germany, I remain your friend, and will defend you wherever possible.
I am, further, quite clear about the fact that it constitutes an act of crass presumption to approach you with rules for conduct. I apologize. I have probably made a mess of my own life. But I still think I can see the life of one dear to me perfectly. I think I am right where you are concerned.
Stay true to the picture I have of you. I have painted you as you are.
You yourself will know that best (and your wife knows it too).
If it’s even necessary to say this, and even though it sounds offensive: I can see straight through your worldly wisdom, and into your poetic heart.
Don’t repudiate it! Remain true to it. It’s worth it.
Don’t betray the “emigration” any more! Leave that to the bastards and the idiots.
I appeal to you once more: keep your DIGNITY!
Your old
Joseph Roth
1. 60 millions: the number of Germans at the time, and hence the number of Stefan Zweig’s potential readership.
2. Henderson: Arthur Henderson (1863–1935), leader of the British Labour Party. Foreign secretary from 1929 to 1931, Nobel Peace Prize in 1934.
3. Macdonald: James Ramsay Macdonald (1866–1937), co-founder of the Labour Party in 1900, prime minister in 1924 and again from 1929 to 1935.
4. Tagebuch: Das neue Tagebuch, weekly magazine in German, edited by Leopold Schwarzschild. It existed from July 1933 to May 1940, and was based in Paris and Amsterdam. Roth wrote many magnificent and wrenching pieces for it.
224. Stefan Zweig to Joseph Roth
[November 1933]
Dear friend,
forgive me for giving such a rushed reply to a letter whose human content I sense so profoundly. But I am exhausted, this affair has put me into a quite unparalleled situation—all brought about by the remissness of friends, the complete silence on the part of my publishers, by my own change of address (which probably no one will believe). I have communicated the enclosed explanation to the world press via the Jewish Telegrafic Agency (you can show it to anyone not yet familiar with it), and set other necessary steps in train. I have still no idea of the legal position, even a year ago my work was a vast object of speculation for the Insel, its standing today is impossible for me to ascertain, I must consult an expert (Swiss or Dutch) as to how to conduct the affair, in the event that—and this is why I exercised self-restraint—it is not amicably resolved. You, you young people, who have been involved with the German publishing scene for no more than 3–5 years, and are able to move with your houses, you can have no idea of the fact that Thomas Mann and I are involved in ties that cannot be undone overnight (for instance, Fischer demands 200,000 marks for the release of Wassermann’s rights), this just so that you get some idea of how things look after thirty years of ties to the damned material world. Not that I am out for money, I shit on it, but I must clarify the situation (do you happen to know, by the way, some expert from whom I could get advice, and who might ultimately represent me, not a Jew, nor a German?); I don’t think it will prove necessary, because things are moving my way through the planned Zwangsschriftstellergesetz,1 and then I would have the advantage that I wouldn’t have to negotiate my freedom, but would be offered it on a plate. Please don’t think I’m such a fool or weakling as to seek to be “tolerated” in Germany, or be boycotted silently instead of openly: what I am concerned about is getting control of my own work again and not (my nerves wouldn’t be up to it) having to go to court over it. But it couldn’t be done violently, the way you imagine it. Why won’t you give someone you’ve known for many years a few weeks’ grace, and not shout “Treason!” right away where you don’t understand something (as with Thomas Mann too, a highly principled man, who as an Aryan has no need to share the fate of Jews). You can’t rub out the seventy million Germans with your outcry, and I’m afraid the Jews abroad are in for more disappointment, it’s quite possible that a pact may be concluded over their heads, diplomacy is capable of any sort of dastardliness, and politics of the wildest leaps, we will have to bear a lot of disappointment in the time to come: how crazy to rage against each other now! If only the meeting I suggested had come about, then our joint position would have had enormous strength, whereas today, to the glee of the Nazis, we are tearing strips off one another.
More soon
your St. Z.
1. Zwangsschriftstellergesetz: a recent law required all writers and journalists to become members of one of several chambers (for literature, press, theater, etc.). Eligibility for membership was controlled by Goebbels’s Reich Chamber of Culture (established in September 1933).
225. Stefan Zweig to Joseph Roth
[postmarked: London,
13 November 1933]
Dear friend,
I have finally heard from Professor Kippenberg.1 He was undergoing a cure all this time, everything transpired in his absence. Now, that won’t do for me as an explanation, I have already written to say that following this abuse I have (regretfully) decided to leave the Insel, my life is there, but honor is more important. I don’t know where I’m going to take my new book, but I don’t care either. At any rate, I am now in a state of inner freedom. And if my books disappear for a few years, that doesn’t matter, I don’t care for them that much. What I am shaken by, though, is what is done to me on both sides by friends, in the next issue of the Neue Deutsche Blätter, you will find an incendiary article about me, again by a friend. Well, one will have to learn to live in solitude and in hatred, I’m not about to hate back. I’m looking forward to your book.
Sincerely St. Z.
1. Kippenberg: Professor Anton Kippenberg, director of the Insel Verlag, with whom Zweig had published since 1905.
226. To Carl Seelig
Rapperswil
23 November 1933
Dear Mr. Seelig,
I would very much like to see you, and if it’s all one to you, then Saturday rather than Sunday, because there’s a chance that another visitor might come, and we wouldn’t be alone. I would like to be able to talk to you undisturbed.
I would be particularly grateful if you were able to bring along a couple of Balzac novels, either very cheap paper editions, or for me to return, in German or French. If it’s not too much trouble!
Sincerely
Your Joseph Roth
227. To Stefan Zweig
Hotel Schwanen
Rapperswil am Zürichsee
24 November 1933
Dear esteemed friend,
please don’t forget to give me your address when you leave London. I don’t yet know myself when I’m leaving here, but will certainly write and tell you first. I’m working very hard, feeling ill and staring into a grim and empty space.
I expect you saw, in yesterday’s Temps that a law has been passed in the Third Reich invalidating contracts between Jewish authors
and Aryan publishers. So they’ve beaten you to it. I’d be surprised if the Insel expected you to remain. You will be spared no disappointment. The Insel will be happy if you go. Today you are a burden on it. Jews nowadays are something to be ashamed of. The fatter the Jew, the greater the “shame” for those madmen.
I am no agitator. But if you have something on your conscience, write it down. It will do you good. Your friends will be pleased. And no doubt you will write it very cleverly and place it effectively.
Sincere friendly greetings from your
Joseph Roth
228. To Franz Schoenberner
28 November 1933
Rapperswil am Zürichsee
Hotel zum Schwanen
Dear esteemed Mr. Schoenberner,1
your kind letter finds me here, where I’ve been living these past three months. I am unable therefore to tell you anything about what Mrs. Luchaire2 has achieved. I fear: nothing.
I am here working on my novel. Ten pages are still to be written. Then I will have to go to Paris and Amsterdam. I may be able to get hold of some money for the next couple of months. My advance is spent. It’s a wretched life.
I’ll have them send you my novel from Amsterdam. Thank you kindly. You are very dear.
I’ve heard nothing from my friend Kesten for months now. Do you see him?
Sincerely your
Joseph Roth
1. Schoenberner: Franz Schoenberner (1892–1970), journalist, essayist, editor. Exiled to France in 1933, and then New York in 1941.
2. Mrs. Luchaire: Antonina Vallentin.
229. To Stefan Zweig
Hotel Schwanen
Rapperswil am Zürichsee
29 November 1933
Very dear and esteemed friend,
thank you so much for yours of the 27th. I think I can promise you that I’ll be in Paris on 10 December, admittedly only for two days; I have to go to Amsterdam to see my new publisher and assure myself of the immediate future. I think we have the same journey. Perhaps we could meet somewhere. Yes, let’s meet. (Please, drop me a line to confirm arrival.)
I fear you are overestimating the whole literary kerfuffle about the Insel once again. To begin with, it is a matter of complete indifference to the Third Reich whether you write that you want nothing more to do with Germany, or with Germany today. You must understand that Germany today is just as indistinguishable from the Third Reich as, say, you are, in Goering’s eyes, from Feuchtwanger and Arnold Zweig.
Further, I don’t believe there are any legal obstacles, even though I have no way of assessing the whole business legally and financially. If you haven’t heard back from Insel yet, then there are other reasons for that: perhaps Mr. K’s1 conscience is paining him, belatedly. Your separation from Insel will go very smoothly, much more smoothly and easily than you believe today.
Of the three possibilities of expressing your views, the public exchange with Romain Rolland seems the most effective to me. The prominence of your names is a guarantee of effectiveness. Furthermore, the reproaches that have been hurled at you will be defused by the authority of Rolland. If it’s in your hands, I would choose that form.
Don’t get so worked up about those left-wing shits! It’s too late to tell you that that little Fischer2 (I ordered a couple of articles of his in the AZ specially) is a narrow-minded bourgeois numbskull, a dilettante. [. . .] Let him print what he likes. (I think his sponsor is Davidl Bach.) You are on a different level, and the judgment of people who matter to you has nothing to do with the writers and readers of the AZ or the Neue Deutsche Blätter. Forget about those people already!
“Germany” isn’t about to do Mr. Fischer’s bidding. Somehow, you still fail to see it: for Germany, you (or me), and Arnold Zweig, Fischer, the AZ in Vienna, Feuchtwanger, Thomas, Heinrich, and Klaus Mann are all absolutely the identical same Jewish shit. That’s the way of it.
Bonsels3 was here. He asked me via intermediaries if I was angry with him. I told him by the same method he can take a flying ——
Germany is dead. For us it’s dead. It’s not possible to take account of it any more. Neither its unscrupulousness, nor its magnanimity. It was a dream. Please see that, won’t you!
Your old
Joseph Roth
1. Mr. K.: Anton Kippenberg.
2. Fischer: Ernst Fischer (1899–1972), Communist journalist in Vienna.
3. Bonsels: Waldemar Bonsels (1880–1952), author of a celebrated German children’s book; in 1933 he was a Nazi.
230. To Stefan Zweig
Rapperswil
30 November 1933
Hotel zum Schwanen
Dear esteemed friend,
about two hours ago, I finished my novel. Its final title is: Tarabas, a Guest on This Earth. When you see the book, you’ll understand why. I have no idea yet how it’s turned out.
Yesterday I ordered a copy of the Neue Deutsche Blätter. Even though I don’t care for your ex-friend Fischer, I have to say that he didn’t publish your private letter out of low-mindedness, but from the feeling of having to “absolve” you. Further, it was an editorial note that specified that it was Hitler-Germany and not “Germany” that you were finished with. But as I wrote you yesterday, the Third Reich couldn’t give a shit whether you say Germany or Hitler-Germany, the editorial note made it clear that you meant Hitler’s Germany. You needn’t worry any more about that.
I dislike your friend Fischer, because for me he reeks of socialism. About three years ago, I was startled to note that little [. . .] Ebermayer1 was your friend. Well, frankly, he could never have been mine. No more than the Marxist Fischer. Just by the by. I just mean to say that the scurrilousness of printing a private letter wasn’t in any way scurrilous where Mr. Fischer was concerned, quite the opposite: he wanted to “see you in the clear.” He’s a plebeian (just like his wife, whom I met once. She looks huge, but only sitting down. A stumpy-legged plebeian.)
(You know my intentions with all this stuff are not personal.)
I read further, in my Neue Deutsche Blätter, that you are supposed to have told Mr. Fischer that it hardly matters whether a Stefan Zweig writes any more or not, when one considers that the Communists are transforming an entire continent.
Well, for myself, I’d rather that you and I wrote, than that Russia be changed or “improved.” If you really imagine “Communism” is any better than “National Socialism” then your letter to Insel is perfectly all right. If you told Fischer the Soviets have right on their side, then you will have to say the Nazis have right on their side as well.
Modest as I am, a single invention from the likes of us is worth more than all the proletariat garbage that you get over the airwaves. Wherever they oppress us, in Russia, Italy, Germany, is a TOILET. It stinks there. It’s not true to say that Communism has “transformed an entire continent.” Like fuck it has. It spawned Fascism and Nazism and hatred for intellectual freedom. Whoever endorses Russia has eo ipso endorsed the Third Reich.
All of which is to say: if you decide to raise your pen against Hitler’s Germany, then you must not repeat or repeat approximately the sentence you are supposed to have said to Fischer, or to Gerhart Hauptmann.
It is more important that a Stefan Zweig writes, than that a hundred thousand plebeians learn to read and write, as now supposedly in Russia.
As soon as my book is typed up, in another 2–3 days, I’m going to Amsterdam.
Sincerely,
your old Joseph Roth
1. Ebermayer: Erich Ebermayer (1900–1970), lawyer, novelist, playwright, scenarist.
231. To Félix Bertaux
Rapperswil
1 December 1933
My dear good friend,
I’ve made you wait a long time for a reply, but this time too I regret to have to say, there were many reasons which will make you take a lenient view of my silence. I had to finish my novel at a great rate, after urgent warnings and even threats from the publishers, Querido of Amsterdam. So I worked like a madman, whole nights through sometimes with temperature of 99 degrees. I finally finished it last night. I hope the book will be able to come out before Christmas, because the first part was typeset even before I’d written the middle. I’m afraid it will be my last book. I used up the whole of the advance. I have just enough money to see me through to 15 December. I need to go to Amsterdam, and try to find a rich man who will help me out for a couple of months. If I don’t, my end is certain. Please, dear friend, forgive me these explanations. You understand that I am in desperation and thinking of nothing else than keeping alive, day and night. It’s absurd to be in this situation, at the end of 14 books, 3,500 newspaper articles, having made a name for myself, and lived through so much personal unhappiness! It’s not even tragic any more! In almost every country I have publishers, readers, buyers. No one knows I’m dying, at the end of twelve years that were stuffed with paper, paper, paper!
Do you know if my Radetzky March is on sale in Paris yet? I don’t hear a squeak from Plon. I expect the translation is god-awful. But what does it matter to me, in my position?
Please give Mrs. Bertaux and Pierre my warm regards.
Maybe we’ll see each other in Paris.
Sincerely,
your old Joseph Roth
232. To Stefan Zweig
Hotel Foyot
Paris
22 December 1933
Dear friend,
thank you for your letter. I congratulate you on the Erasmus.1
I have asked for new and proper proofs in Amsterdam. They’re due at the very beginning of January. I’ll send them to you.
I have the keen sense that my book is bad. But my indifference towards “literary” questions has become such that my shame at showing you the book has become rather slight.
I wasn’t able to see the publisher Querido.2 He had the flu. Instead, I saw the publisher de Lange.
I told him that I am unable to let him have the book: “Jews and Anti-Semites” by 31 January. You remember: we spoke about it in Zurich, about the extensive changes I would make, changes from the ground up. Now I must have it ready by 31 March instead. Mr. de Lange said promptly then he would pay me another 3 installments. That means 3 x 750 marks, at the moment (and at other moments) a great deal of money for me. Even more, seeing as I quite literally have nothing at all right now. I got to Amsterdam by borrowing 100 francs. I sat in the American Hotel for 3 days, without eating anything. Mr. Querido was, for the first time in his life, confined to bed.—Little tricks of the devil, things I’m pretty much used to by now. In the end I was able to secure 1,000 francs from Mr. Landshoff. Then I began to drink. I had a supper invitation from Mr. de Lange, for which I turned up completely drunk. Now, Mr. de Lange is a mighty drinker, and he wasn’t sober either. But something happened that I thought would never happen to me. For the first time in my life I experienced a complete blackout. My recollection of the evening is absolutely nonexistent. It’s possible I’ve wrecked my chances with de Lange. You know, he’s a sort of Junker type really. He knows from somewhere that writers drink, but in his imagination or experience it doesn’t stretch to their actually being drunk. He can only have had a very approximate sense of me. I was a “literary name” to him, little more. He was very nice, but I’m afraid I’ve messed up my chances. For the first time I felt a real sense of weakness. My dear friend, it’s possible that my “self-destructive instinct” put in a major appearance; even though, in physiological terms it’s easy enough to explain how a man can get very drunk if he hasn’t had anything to eat. I’m still rather shocked at myself. For the first time. In the field and after, I sometimes had an awful lot to drink, as you know. But I never had the feeling afterwards that I had been completely awol. Maybe it’s a sign to me to stop. But believe me: however much I believe that my muse is the muse of desperation, I know perfectly clearly that she is driving me to suicide. I can’t live any more with five francs in my pocket. I can’t imagine that I’ll get through this time. Bear in mind that I’ve spent 20 years of my life starving, was in the war for four more, and was “desperately up against it” for another six. It’s only in the past three years that I can be said to have lived at all. And now these global events. And before that the business with my wife. I know that all this is part of me, that it’s what I consist of. But with all that, I remain a private individual, who eats, sleeps, fucks, and so forth. I can’t historicize myself. But nor can I continue to convert this intrusion of private grief into my “true,” unliterary life into literature. It’s killing me. And believe me, never did an alcoholic “enjoy” his alcohol less than I did. Does an epileptic enjoy his fits? Does a madman enjoy his episodes?
But to turn to the intended topic: Mr. de Lange sends you his best regards. He has infinite respect for you. He sees me principally as your friend. And I have the wretched feeling that it is your friend upon whom I have brought discredit, through my lack of moderation. Please forgive me!
If you felt able to write him a kind word about me under some business pretext, then I wish you would. (He intimated that he was involved in some sort of business correspondence with you.)
Indeed—and now I’m not writing, as I’m sure you will suppose, for myself—I’m ashamed to say so, even though the next 6 months or even a whole year could be assured by you: if you were to give just some trifle to de Lange, he would, as they say, kiss your feet. You can write your own terms. All foreign rights free. Any sum—I know it doesn’t matter to you. You can hardly imagine the degree to which this basically unintellectual man is devoted to you.
Well, it won’t matter much—to you. For me, a book of yours with de Lange3 means staying alive another year. Not that I’m trying to tell you to underwrite my life for a year. I’m afraid I’ll live another year anyway (as a beggar, a down-and-out). But I certainly wouldn’t be writing you all this if I didn’t seriously think that you would have all possible freedom here, with him. De Lange would agree to any conditions of yours. And now: you surely won’t believe I’m writing this on my own behalf. You can’t think that, my dear friend! All I’ve said to you is that I depend on you—perhaps I’ve even exaggerated a little—because, to you, I want to say everything. I don’t want you ever to get a letter from me in which I keep silent about something, or in which I hide or keep back anything from you.
I am very, very unhappy. Please reply, right away.
All the best! Kiss Mrs. Zweig’s hand for me.
Your old J.R.
*-----
* I wanted to put: alias Beierle. But I’m not so strong. And I’m not so forlorn either—I think, at the last moment.
1. Erasmus: Zweig’s book Triumph and Tragedy of Erasmus of Rotterdam, English edition with Cassell in 1934, German edition from Reichner in Vienna in 1935.
2. publisher Querido: Emanuel Querido, owner of the Querido Verlag in Amsterdam. He was deported and gassed by the Germans.
3. a book of yours with de Lange: no book of Zweig’s appeared with de Lange until long after Gerard de Lange’s death in 1935. (His novel Ungeduld des Herzens/Beware of Pity did in 1939—too late to do JR any good.)
233. To Stefan Zweig
[Paris] 27 December 1933
Dear, esteemed friend,
I’m just reading the beginning of your fine Erasmus in the Freie Presse.1 I want to alert you to a few irritating trifles right at the beginning: the most indisputable fame; the form shaded by others’ profiles; to procure one’s own biography; “just like us”: unnecessary and weakening; “the contrary spirit of common sense”; the unilaterally beating whip; war the most violent form . . . is pleonastic; “truly in no country” is dubious; to refer to Latin as “artificial Esperanto” is probably more than dubious.—Such little things—perhaps they wouldn’t bother anyone else—and more like them. There is a pleasing momentum to the whole, and a few deft phrases. Its bearing on the present time is distinct and abundant.
All for now, and for today.
Happy New Year
Sincerely your
Joseph Roth
1. JR means the Neue Freie Presse, a Vienna paper.
234. To Klaus Mann
Paris 6e
33 rue de Tournon
28 December 1933
Dear Klaus Mann,
I hear to my consternation from Mr. Landshoff that you and other acquaintances of mine are of the opinion that people have been collecting money for me in Switzerland. Unfortunately, this is not the case. I want you to know that this is not the case. Not because I would be ashamed; but because it would be harmful in the event of there one day actually being a collection. People would say, “oh, they’re always collecting for him.” I would be very grateful to you, therefore, if you could inform all persons within earshot, and write to Miss Schwarzenbach1 and Mr. Schickele, that it is not true. Will you do so? Whether you do or not, I look to you, please, to reply.
Furthermore, I am sending you a novella by Isaac Grünberg, whom you know from the Deux Magots. I am surprised myself: it’s a good novella. And the man’s name is Isaac. In the emigration that seems even more appropriate. Even in the Second Reich, we should all have been called Isaac.
Furthermore: Prince Hohenlohe (to balance out the Isaacs) would like to know when his contribution is to appear. He is very poorly.
If you should have happened to let fall something in front of Erika Mann2 and your parents about any “collection for me,” then kindly let them too know that that was a misunderstanding.
To you and all others a good New Year! It just occurs to me that it was three years ago today that I had the pleasure of meeting you for the very first time. It was in the Hotel Foyot. There was a lady present too, with a dog.
Yours sincerely
Joseph Roth
1. Miss Schwarzenbach: Annemarie Schwarzenbach (1908–1942), writer, journalist, socialite, and friend of Erika Mann’s. Coming from a Swiss industrialist family, she supported Die Sammlung financially.
2. Erika Mann (1905–1969), eldest child of Thomas Mann, actor, writer, reporter. Was briefly married to the Nazi actor Gustav Gründgens, and later, in a(nother) marriage of convenience, to W. H. Auden. Ran the famous anti-Fascist Peppermill cabaret in Zurich from 1933 to 1936; was later an English war correspondent, and edited the letters of her father, and the works of her brother Klaus.
235. To René Schickele
Monday [end of 1933 or early 1934]
Dear esteemed Mr. René Schickele,
how can you think I might be angry with you? What a peculiar notion. If every debate would lead to such serious consequences, where would that get us? Once everything has been said, my heart harbors nothing, therefore I tend always to say everything. I hold nothing back. If I’d been angry with you, then I would have said, I’m angry with you. Therefore, I have nothing to say on your sticking up for Reifenberg that I would not have said to you previously. Otherwise I wouldn’t have said anything. I’m not stupid enough just to be “angry” with someone.
“Mess spirit” I took to be the splendid training of young officers (at least in Austria) to respond to an insult with an insult back, and to prefer death to disgrace. That is a clear human quality. Only God or his holy saints are allowed to suffer an insult without immediately punishing it, God because He is exalted, and the saint because his life is worth nothing in his eyes anyway. And I am not a saint.
Nor am I a judge. But where would it get us, if we drew different, sensitive, wavering lines between good and bad, depending on the state of our sympathies for the parties?1 If, 30 years ago, someone who claimed to be a man of honor had said that he would allow himself in this instance to be spat at, because he and his family had to live, well, he would have been despised for it. Since when is it the case that a writer can say: I must lie, so that my wife can continue to live and wear hats? And since when is it the custom to approve of that? Since when is honor cheapened beyond life, and the lie a ready means to save life? Above all, let us avoid making appeals to Christianity here, at an instant when to do so makes one an associate of the Antichrist. I am a feeble man, but the one thing that God has given me to help me comport myself in His image is the ability to identify evil. After I have identified evil, which is to say Germany, I have no choice but to hate His editorialists, the editorialists of the Antichrist—and, if possible, to try and root them out. Yes, in that respect, and in all humility, I am a gladius dei. I say so without conceit. A proper Christian, a true Christian, a dime-a-dozen Christian has the duty to fight with pitch and sulfur against hell and its minions. Grace is with God alone. I am too humble to grant forgiveness to the Antichrist and his minions, who have become his minions to save their skins. It’s not for you, my dear René Schickele, to say: good deeds last forever. No man is lost before the moment of his death. To do so is to arrogate to yourself the role of God. You speak in the manner of Christ, when all you are is a mortal writer of books. Your job is to distinguish good from evil, following earthly measures. You may forgive and you may love. You are even instructed to do so. But you may not move the absolute line between good and evil because it suits you. A vile act is a vile act—there’s no more to be said about it. To lie in order to keep your family safe is a vile act. If you take the fact that you are no “judge” to its logical conclusion, you would have to say: hm, I don’t actually know what’s vile and what isn’t. And you do know—how can you deny it? You don’t commit any such acts yourself? Or at least not consciously?
In fact what you say resembles the heathenism to which you are opposed. Be careful not to support barbarian heathenism with your Christian indulgence. Leave the Church’s errors out of it. It’s not for us to criticize the Church. Least of all when we know the Vatican less well than Reifenberg, whom you allow to get away with almost as much as you accuse the Church of. You cannot in one breath pardon an editorialist or editor of the Antichrist—only God may do that—and attack the politics of the Church, which is certainly less familiar to you than those of the FZ. That way lies Protestantism. Perhaps you are—a Protestant. I don’t know your declared religion. You’ve always struck me as “Catholic” in the old sense of “inclusive.” As you know. So why do you fight it?
Anyway, there is no “anger” between you and me. I have the habit of speaking my mind. Embarrassing, I know. But I will speak it only in front of people I like and am fond of, as I like and am fond of you and your wife. Otherwise I keep silent.
Yours sincerely
Joseph Roth
1. sympathies for the parties: JR’s tremendous tirade against all ethical relativism. It reminds me a little in its rigor of the Polish poet Zbigniew Herbert’s poem “A Knocker” with its “yes—yes / no—no.”
236. To Klaus Mann
Hotel Foyot, Paris 6e
33 rue de Tournon
12 January 1934
Dear Mr. Klaus Mann,
I have a bone to pick with you—several, in fact—and I want to do it right away.
In the latest issue of Die Sammlung, you print a rather long (and rather clever) essay by Golo Mann1 on Ernst Jünger.2 I find that extremely tactless. There is, so to speak, a politics of the literary emigration. Let’s not even get into the question of the importance or otherwise of Jünger. Even given that he has some—though in my view, he’s a fool, and a barbarian, and a muddlehead—one would either have to ignore him altogether, or have done with him in a couple of dismissive sentences. A magazine—in these times—isn’t there to serve the book business. You showed that you understood that in your clever book review. Have we left Germany just to alert the world beyond to “interesting” new literary products of the barbarian heathens? Is that what we’re for? And another thing: your magazine addresses itself to emigrants, to writers, to tastemakers for a wider public, to people who are absolutely opposed to Jünger and everything he stands for. You don’t just alienate such people—you offend them. Because each one of them has his own conceit, and he will ask himself: hm, why not six pages on me?—(I need hardly tell you that I am not among these people.) So you make yourself enemies, quite needlessly.
Another thing: you take George3 for a great poet. I take him for a great con artist. It’s not the time—whatever one thinks of George—to show respect to a guy, a great guy if you like, who has landed us in some of this shit we’re in, some of the loftier or deeper parts of it. Factually, too, it is not true to say that George wanted to die far away from Germany. He was very keen on life, and very keen on death, period. Not far from the “hurly-burly”—which I can understand. But in the hurly-burly of clouds, because he preferred clouds to people. Goebbels and Sieburg are among his disciples. Your disciples say something about the kind of person you are.
It’s a good thing that Die Sammlung isn’t too “long-term” in its orientation. But if you continue to edit it outside with that “objectivity” that you did for us inside Germany, then you will soon find yourself hated.
I wanted to warn you of that danger.
Yours sincerely
Joseph Roth
1. Golo Mann (1909–1994), second son of Thomas Mann, historian and biographer.
2. Ernst Jünger (1895–1998), essayist, militarist, diarist. Fought in World War I, 1919–1923 in the Reichswehr, from 1941 to 1944 and his dismissal in the German occupying army in Paris.
3. George: Stefan George (1868–1933), cultish poet and translator. He resisted Goebbels’s overtures to him in 1933, and died—this is at issue here between KM and JR—on Swiss soil.
237. To Stefan Zweig
Hotel Foyot, Paris 6e
33 rue de Tournon
14 January 1934
Dear friend,
this is my belated answer to yours of the 27th last. I beg your pardon.
I cannot reply to you, not to what you wrote me.
I no longer understand what happened. Don’t you understand what I tell you in the simplest terms?
You have gone to the trouble to write to me by hand. At one and the same time, you simplify and complicate the things I tell you.
The simplest things—I should like to say—but I’m afraid I can’t.
There’s no question of “drinking out of despair” or “Russification.” I would be stupid to be doing that. Please understand, I don’t lose my clarity for a moment.
No, I don’t want to go on either. Forgive me. I can’t. Writing only makes it worse.
I am perfectly sober.
I embrace you
your J.R.
238. To Klaus Mann
Hotel Foyot
Paris, 16 January 1934
To the editorial board of the Sammlung,
Querido Verlag,
Amsterdam, Keizersgracht 33
Dear Mr. Klaus Mann,
thank you for yours of the 14th. When you refer to the Communists— “radical émigrés,” as you are pleased to call them—who tell you it’s your duty to portray the most interesting minds on the other side, that (at least to me) constitutes no defense. For me the Communist minds among the Germans—the Germans, NB—are just like the National Socialists. Apart from that, I think you’re making a mistake when you suppose Jünger has any influence in Germany. With all that one might say about him from my point of view, he remains sufficiently decent as a human being for the people in Germany to be profoundly suspicious of him. So he’s not at all as “interesting” in current political terms as the Communists suppose. In every other respect, be it as an author, or “thinker” or anything else you want to call him, he’s a bonehead. All right, perhaps there is a difference within the Third Reich between his personal decency and the absolute indecency (personal as well) of the Third Reich: but for me and many others, standing outside, there is a straightforward equation between Jünger and Goebbels. If out of woolly-mindedness or boneheadedness or stupidity he has supported or prepared the ground for the bestial ideology of National Socialism—and apart from that remained a decent human being—it’s completely ridiculous, in an émigré journal, a journal of his direct or indirect victims, to give him six pages of space, even if it finally comes down against him.
This isn’t the time or place for a proper discussion of the case of Stefan George. Perhaps we’ll talk about it together sometime.
I understand of course how you “intended” it to come across.
Overall, if advice from me is acceptable and useful to you: your personal “literariness” (George is just one example) may turn out to be utterly detrimental to the magazine you are bringing out. To attempt to put it at its briefest: you will not manage to be fair to all of those for whom the magazine is intended.
As far as my own contribution is concerned, I won’t have it ready for another 3–4 weeks. There are a couple of chapters in my new book that would be suitable for separate publication. What do you offer in the way of royalties, and how much could I expect for 5 or 6 pages?
Yours sincerely
Joseph Roth
239. To Stefan Zweig
Paris, 20 January 1934
To Dr. Stefan Zweig, Salzburg, Kapuzinerberg 5
Dear esteemed friend,
forgive the typed letter, and dictation. I just wanted to thank you quickly for your kind letter. I hear terrible news from Austria. In spite of that, I continue to believe in its independence. I’ll write you in a week. Mr. de Lange is due here, and I’m impatient to see him—you’ll understand. Give my best regards to Mrs. Zweig. I can’t force myself to make the corrections. Querido has sold the serial rights to my book1 to an émigré newspaper for a tiny sum of money, which has only increased my reluctance to going through the book and making changes. Please write.
Yours sincerely
Joseph Roth
1. my book: Tarabas.
240. To Stefan Zweig
Joseph Roth
Hotel Foyot, Paris 6e
33 rue de Tournon
28 January 1934
My dear friend,
It’s sweet of you to send me Mondadori’s1 letter. I do beg you to forgive me for continuing to bother you, on top of everything else. I sent the letter on to Querido right away. You see, my dear friend, I’m not always the one to blame for the frittering away of my strength and books. (Don’t sigh with relief just yet.) I have some pretty bad news here.
Sincerely,
your old [Joseph Roth]
1. Mondadori: Alberto Mondadori, celebrated publisher in Milan.
241. René Schickele to Joseph Roth
Sanary-sur-Mer (Var)
“Le Chêne”
28 January 1934
Dear Joseph Roth,
it seems to me you could hardly have paid my book1 a greater compliment than allowing it to eclipse your long and great rage. In a bid to retain your renewed friendship, for such time as the delights of Widow Bosca may have lost some of their freshness, I would like to seize this opportunity to make my position clear, and it is certainly no accident that you are the designated recipient of my clarification.
I don’t like to think back to the telegram. Particularly with reference to Klaus Mann, who was left exposed by it. I was working at the time, and in the all-consuming, volcanic manner of my working, I am at times not fully aware of what I am doing (which isn’t intended as an excuse, but may partly explain my folly in disregarding Annette Kolb’s and Meier-Graefe’s warnings concerning the Sammlung). For, while Klaus Mann may not have behaved absolutely correctly when, without asking me, he put my name on a list of contributors to a magazine that was not in line with my own views, even so I should not have snubbed him. The fact that it was a snub only dawned on me later, just like the other matter, that the “use” the Fischer Verlag reserved the right to make of the telegram “in an extreme emergency” might have as a consequence its publication. I’m sure I will have an early opportunity to make it up to Kl.M., and I will certainly take it. I say that in the knowledge that you don’t especially like Kl.M. I, for my part, do. I have a strong liking for him.
Now the telegram.
In my form of words, I went further than Thomas Mann (which I would ask you to note!), who merely stated a fact, namely that when he had given his consent, he had had a different notion of the character of the Sammlung. The telegram was not addressed to any “Ministry” but to the S. Fischer Verlag, to which, surely rightly, I felt obligated in many ways. (Here the prehistory. After a protracted exchange of letters, Professor Saenger2 came to see us, and told us in some considerable detail about the state of the Fischer family, and of the publishing firm. Among many other things, not all of them strictly necessary, he told me that Fischer was physically threatened. He said old Sami,3 to whom I am utterly devoted, would rather be clubbed to death than leave Germany. He spoke for many hours over the course of two full days. He himself made such a pitiable impression that his appearance was more eloquent than all his words. Whether I did right or not, I gave the statement. I felt obliged to give it, and in exactly the form in which the publisher wanted it given. Other factors were involved, too. (1) we were of the view4 that whoever among us could still appear in Germany should do so, as long as it was done decently, every non-approved, non-gleichgeschaltet word mattered more than all the bluster that no one in Germany would ever get to hear anyway. (2) I was resolved not to go political, because I know that the politically engaged émigré is forced onto one or other extreme of the debate, and winds up either with the CP or else with the (French) Nationalists. (3) If Fischer had dropped me, I would have found myself penniless. This last point is important enough on its own, because I have no aptitude for financial rescue plans where my own person is involved. I suppose I could have gone to Meier-Graefe, who is a close personal friend, and who has some savings, and he wouldn’t have turned me down. I mention this, so that point (3) doesn’t get more weight than it should have.)
What I regretted soon after sending the telegram (and regret to this day) is the form of words, in which I followed too closely the wishes of the publishers and that (this is not insignificant here) was criticized mildly but distinctly by Thomas Mann. Whereas Heinrich Mann, long before I had decided to send the telegram, said to me, and these are his very words: “Deny it in the crudest possible terms.” It was clear to me that his vehemence was out of friendship for me, because he thought it was principally his own essay that had caused the ruckus.
Dear Roth, in your letter you talk about comradeship—but how does the friend differ from the enemy, if he condemns his comrade without even giving him a hearing? Neither Annette Kolb nor anyone else led me to suppose you were baying with the wolves against me, which, quite apart from our friendship, is not your style at all. Your letter hit me unprepared. It is a painful experience, the most painful of all of those I have undergone in this matter. If you, Joseph Roth, committed a murder, and the whole world arose against you, then I would be blindly on your side and seek illumination from you, and not join a band of pathetic but for all that no less malign dervishes.
On 28 August 1932 we were all sitting together on our terrace in Badenweiler . . . You remember the occasion, don’t you? We were very harmonious. At a time when the leaders of today’s emigration were successively hailing Brüning,5 Papen,6 and Schleicher7 as “the lesser of two evils,” and were ready to take all sorts of kicking, so long as the government left them the possibility of receiving them at home . . . I, though not personally affected, was physically ill at the sight of this charade, but at no time did it cross my mind to break with old friends over this . . . I rebuked them when they were with me, and able to defend themselves, and basically my pity only heightened my fellow feeling for them. How could I ever have guessed you in the chorus of those who would defame a man who voluntarily, facing no threat, left Germany together with them, who resigned from the Academy8 (and not, like the others, whose names feature in all the émigré publications, not over the matter of the declaration of loyalty), and condemned him, of whom even his enemies said, they “would never have expected it of him,” without even taking the trouble to inquire how this uncharacteristic and unexpected action had come about?
The first to approach me over the telegram was someone who had come to me during the war when I was in Berlin editing the Weisse Blätter and brought me a “heroic” war novella asking me to publish it. I returned it to him, and talked to him long and patiently, and since he was a Jew, told him about the role of Judaism in the world that did not consist of putting on the beard of Father Jahn9 when the hour seemed to call for it. Unfortunately, I was unable to convince him. When the war was over, and pacifism was the “order of the day” the man rewrote his novella in the new spirit, and dedicated it to me. It’s in one of his books, dedication and all. So this man was the first who approached me in Sanary. And in what manner? Bursting with malignity, like a whore catching a previously respectable woman in flagrante. I swear, his voice cracked with malice! At home I had the manuscript of his latest book, with a foreword where he explained how certain regards compelled him to publish anonymously. (In the meantime, the need for these regards has fallen away, and his book will shortly come out, with his own name bravely on the spine.) This was the emigrant who, powerless in the face of real violence and oppression, plays his one sorry trump against a “comrade”—a goy who “won’t live in Germany, but doesn’t want to lose out on the German market”! (What a foolish reproach, by the way! As if the deepest desire of all emigrants throughout history were not precisely to be heard in the land from which they had been expelled: from Marx and Heine and Victor Hugo to Lenin and Trotsky.) I say “goy,” because it struck me that in the course of what I suppose I may call his tirade, that he only ever spoke of Thomas Mann and me, and never of Döblin . . .
I always had the deepest suspicion of émigrés—for their noted sentimentality (it was Victor Hugo’s friends who accused him of continuing to see France the way he saw it in 1851, the year he left), and this wave of emigration in particular, whose leading members I know all too well. With few exceptions, they have all swallowed shit, until the Nazis put an end to it, and they had to leave. If Hitler hadn’t been such a rabid anti-Semite, they would be hailing him today as the “lesser evil” and reserving their fire for Bolshevism and the Nuremberger Streicher.10 And now they feel like big heroes, which is always how the people behind the lines felt. Which of them seriously thinks about the poor devils standing in the front line of indignity and abuse, unable to flee, and having to gulp down their own shit every day? I would excuse all those in Germany who betray themselves with each action decreed by those in power, and who with each new day sink further into self-contempt. Those are the ones whom God will forgive first, their sufferings are possibly even greater than those others, gifted with physical courage, who are simply beaten to death or strangled.
Curious how readily the victims take on the habits of the jailers! Whoever takes revenge is not just evil, but also stupid. If the victims don’t yet rule the world, it can only be because of that. Cometh the hour, cometh the hour of vengeance, and the intellectual victim happily turns hangman. There is no end to cycles of grief and revenge. The empire of Christ has barely even begun. No sooner was he dead than a general took over the enterprise. His name was Paul. He was a stupid and ambitious fellow, another general who dabbled in politics.
The true horseman of the Apocalypse is Stupidity, the others just trot along after.
You speak of the Antichrist, dear Joseph Roth. But you’re underestimating him if you think he wears just the one uniform. He is in every camp. And that’s what makes him so powerful. He forces his enemies into a fighting style that turns them inevitably into his creatures. To go back to my starting point: something of that is what I wanted to show in my Widow Bosca—she forces her daughter to kill her lover, she even forces her husband to strangle her. Burguburu11 doesn’t want revenge—which is why I allow the mechanical clock of the seasons to play a soft little “Gerettet”12 at the end. It’s just a windup clock. But I hope it sounds pure. I don’t have the strength for amplification. But how I’d love to stun and change the whole world with that same tune!
Excuse the long letter. And now: not another word! I don’t demand an answer, and I don’t need one. Whatever you might say by way of reply, I couldn’t say anything back to you that I haven’t said here. Even more than your judgment, I want your friendship, even if you won’t agree with me over this matter here, ephemeral though I think you will agree it is,
Yours sincerely
René Schickele
1. my book: the novel Die Witwe Bosca.
2. Professor Saenger: Samuel Saenger (1864–1944), editor of the S. Fischer house magazine, Die Neue Rundschau. Went into exile in France in 1939, to the USA in 1941.
3. Sami: as S. Fischer was known to intimates and unqualified persons alike.
4. we were of the view: the counterargument to Roth’s intransigence and inflexibility-leading-sooner-or-later-to-war—the importance of going on talking, going on trading, going on dealing with an opponent.
5. Brüning: Heinrich Brüning (1885–1970), chancellor between 1930 and 1932. From 1934 to 1951 in exile in the United States.
6. Papen: Franz von Papen (1879–1969), 1932 chancellor, 1933 deputy chancellor under Hitler, then personal envoy and ambassador in Vienna and Ankara till 1945.
7. Schleicher: Kurt von Schleicher (1882–1934), chancellor from December 1932 through January 1933. Murdered by the SS in June 1934 during the Night of the Long Knives, on direct orders of Hitler.
8. the Academy: recte, the Preussische Akademie der Künste: Sektion für Dichtkunst, founded in 1926, and taken over in 1933 by the Nazis. (The poet Gottfried Benn, for a brief, unhappy, and regrettable period, allowed himself to be used as their cat’s-paw.) Schickele is pleading for more sympathy for the likes of himself, Heinrich (who was elected its new chairman in 1931) and Thomas Mann, Ricarda Huch, Käthe Kollwitz, and others, who lost prestige and living, and in some cases went into exile, though (!) not themselves Jews.
9. Friedrich Ludwig Jahn (1778–1852), who gave German nationalism a gymnastic and Prussian inflection.
10. Streicher: executed for war crimes in 1946, Julius Streicher (born 1885) was a racial theorist and founder and editor of Der Stürmer.
11. Burguburu: a character in Schickele’s Die Witwe Bosca.
12. “Gerettet”: “rescued” or “saved.” Cf. the quartet in Beethoven’s Fidelio, act 2.
242. To René Schickele
Hotel Foyot, Paris 6e
33 rue de Tournon
31 January 1934
Dear esteemed René Schickele,
your desire for no reply won’t prevent me from telling you two things. Firstly, my thanks and a friendly greeting to you.
Secondly, the book I am working on now is called The Antichrist.1 It will contain all his manifestations. Precisely that is my subject: the Antichrist as enemy and friend. By the end, a fragment of him will be in me.
You could say we are the last Christians. That’s the result of these times: it’s not Christ we see and recognize—he’s too distant—but his enemy.
Regards to your dear wife!
Good luck to your Bosca! I remain enraptured.
Your old
Joseph Roth
I reread these lines and see that they do not say how very fond of you I am. Let me tell you so, then, expressis verbis: I am very fond of you.
And forgive me: one other thing I am unable to bite back:
When I ran into Döblin, I told him I would not sit down with him unless and until he had explained the telegram: well, at that time his two eldest sons were in Germany. Saenger talked about concentration camp. That’s fairly easily understood. Even I understand it. Forgive me my strictness! It’s the old tribe of Jehovah, from which I am descended.
Forgive me!
1. The Antichrist: Der Antichrist. A polemic, published by Allert de Lange, Amsterdam,1934. It was translated into English in 2010, and published by Peter Owen.
243. To Stefan Zweig
Hotel Foyot, Paris 6e
33 rue de Tournon
9 February 1934
Dear friend,
on 4 February I wrote to you at the Hotel Louvois, because I’d heard you were in Paris to give a lecture on Austrian literature at the Sorbonne. I didn’t understand why you didn’t meet me, or alternatively, didn’t tell me why you wouldn’t meet me. Well, were you here or not? Today I got a card dated 7th inst. about the novella.1 But I don’t have the novellas yet. Did you send them registered mail? Then they’ll be sure to come a day late.
I’ve spent the last 6 days in bed with flu. But I will read the novella right away, and tell you what I think about it.
Most sincerely your
Joseph Roth
1. the novella: (Zweig’s) Angst (Fear), 1925.
244. To Blanche Gidon (written in French)
Hotel Foyot
Paris 6e
16 February 1934
Dear Madam Gidon,
here are some facts:
Born on 2 September 1894
in Szvaby,1 a German settlement
close to the Austrian frontier,
to a Russian Jewish mother
and an Austrian father (state employee, painter, alcoholic, went mad shortly before my birth)2
school: lycée (humanist gymnasium)
very poor, gave lessons to very rich people
university: Vienna, “German language and literature”
1916 war
volunteered
eastern front
1917 promoted to second lieutenant, 2 months in Russian detention
1918 revolution
1919 journalist in Vienna
1920 journalist in Berlin
many foreign trips (Russia. Africa, Albania, Balkans)
1922 France – la lumière, la liberté PERSONELLE
(not a figure of speech!)
Cordially, all yours
Joseph Roth
1. Szvaby: actually one of the villages outlying Brody, Roth’s actual birthplace, and hence part of his systematic mystification regarding his birth. Swaby (to German ears evoking “Schwaben,” Swabia, from where German emigrants settled parts of southeastern Europe, in some cases many hundreds of years ago) has the effect of making Roth appear thoroughly and ancestrally German. Brody, a known center for Jews since the eighteenth century, if not a particularly miserable center for particularly miserable Jews (as witness the saying “verfallen wie in Brody,” desperate or wretched as in Brody), has and had a very different resonance, which Roth for much of his life sought to avoid.
2. His father (Nahum) was the most mythologized person in Roth’s life, possibly including himself. Roth’s biographer David Bronsen reckoned up seventeen versions of his identity. The “painter” and “alcoholic” here suggests an identification with the character of Moser in The Radetzky March.
245. To Stefan Zweig
Paris, 18 February 1934
Dear friend,
I am pleased to have your letter. I was getting a little nervous.
The causes and consequences of the catastrophe in Austria1 don’t seem quite so plain to me. Both sides, all three sides, if you like, seem to have made one mistake after another. A good party line is hard to evolve at a time when the party has no power. A child could have worked out that the Social Democrats were doomed. They could not look to their enemies for fear or respect. A year ago they might still have won. This time, whether provoked or not, it was a glorious suicide. I don’t myself believe in the wholesale switch of Socialist workers to the Nazis. If it can even be expressed in figures at all, then I see about one-third Nazis, mainly those Socialists who were closer to Communists. For all the tragedy and catastrophe, I don’t yet see the Anschluss or the end of Austria. Hitler’s situation was never so bad as now. The foreign powers are watching him like a hawk, and he’s almost lost his only friend, which was Italy. If Dollfuss cuts a sorry figure in the world, then Hitler cuts a worse one, because he’s frightening into the bargain. Besides, you know how quickly the world forgets and forgives violence. Objectively it’s not right to speak of a war debt. Certainly, the elemental moment was important here. But I am cast down, and at my wits’ end. It’s made me even sicker than I was before. I’m still spending half my days in bed, unable to write a line. Please forgive me for dictating now. In particular, forgive me for dictating what I have to say on the novella.2 I’m returning it by the same post.
Of course you know that your novella is another masterpiece. Whoever manages such clever construction, and heightens the tension almost to the very last line, knows a thing or two about literary artistry. I have nothing to teach you about craft, my own artisanal soul delights in those tiny solder seams invisible to the layman, those tiny, concealed, and silent hinges and joints, and those lights, each one brighter than the one before, or rather all continuing to cast their light however far one goes. It’s like a walk along a beautiful, gently climbing path where you have the feeling right from the start that you’re going uphill, and that affords a score of surprises at every bend. Then, when you reach the end, you have the unaccountable feeling that the path has been perfectly straight. I have to ask myself whether I’ve been had. I don’t think so. I’m certain my craft conscience wouldn’t allow itself to be bribed.
Keeping pace with this mastery of craft is your psychology, and what I would term the ethical component of your writing. It’s splendid how the narrator’s psychology identifies ever more strongly with the psychology of the subject, and how therefore simultaneously, even those who disapprove of the subject have their ethics refined. The most original way of defending a murderer is when the being with the most developed conscience, namely the writer, identifies with the criminal. You get a poet pleading. And a clever poet like you deploys his nobility so deftly, not only knowing his own psychology and that of the criminal, but also that of the ordinary reader. How easily someone else might have become irritating, in the name of conventional morality!
Now I have a bone to pick with you. The last page and a half or two pages, it seems to me, should be either shortened or lengthened. I might be tempted to leave out the conclusion. There is no need to indemnify the criminal for his fear. Here a personal—and hence, in a literary sense, implausible nobility—mingles with the previous, legitimate, plausible form. Right at the end, something personal is shared with us. It becomes a confession, which diminishes the necessary distance between your persona and the reader. Moreover, it’s inconceivable that the man out there is still afraid. He must have that much human understanding, and indeed he does, as you’ve told us yourself. I don’t know how to improve it. But I think the ending has to change. I have complaints about the beginning as well. I see no justified connections between the special character of that day, and the subsequent events. I would make cuts. And also shorten the address to Paris. It’s all too “somptueux” for me. Both the introduction, and that address. Style and use of metaphor are a little careless. I would cite the word “capricious” for April showers, I don’t like the notion of a spring that leaves a calling card, because that’s more than an urbane spring, that’s a positively genteel one; you wreck the planned irruption of the elemental into the urbane by stressing the capricious qualities of the elemental. Nor do I want to associate the damp and streaming season with the crisp dry edge of the visiting card. Nor yet the regiments of water, when to keep faith with a military metaphor, they should be projectiles, which indeed you go on to say in the same sentence, and thereby confuse your metaphors. The capitulating locomotive I find a little precious. Then how do you come to associate sunbeams with tridents? I wouldn’t use the word “biped.” It’s a little facile. Day of curiosity seems like a private usage. Other pages too have some slapdash expressions, too many to list. You will see them yourself. There are some rather worn adjectives.3
Thank you so much, my friend, for the novella. Please write and let me know when you’re coming. I hope to be able to start work tomorrow or the day after. I have many private woes in addition to my illness, but I am reluctant to dictate them to you.
Sincerely, your old
Joseph Roth
1. the catastrophe in Austria: 12 February saw the beginning of an uprising by the Social Democrats in Austria in Linz. A countrywide general strike followed. Fighting in Vienna and Graz led to the dissolution of the SPÖ (Socialist Party of Austria) and to the Dollfuss dictatorship on 1 May.
2. novella: Angst (Fear).
3. some rather worn adjectives: Zweig and Roth were both (rightly) of the view that Zweig was not a tenth the writer that Roth was. Zweig—to do him credit—was quite open about it, and would say as much to anyone who cared to hear. In JR it takes the rather tortuous form of combining (as here) excessive praise of the whole with copious criticism of details to appease his—unappeasable—literary conscience. Or he could be (alas!) straightforwardly duplicitous, talking behind Zweig’s back. Roth would explain to friends that he was a friend of Zweig’s, and they would therefore have to forgive him for having to read his books; Zweig’s Beware of Pity was as little a great novel as its author a great writer. And so on, and so on. It seems to me that Roth—always needy, always manipulative—plays Zweig like a big fish he’s not quite sure he wants. Several decades later, strange to say, there is a creeping inability to distinguish between Zweig and Roth, which is basically illiterate and unpardonable.
246. To Stefan Zweig
Paris 6e
33 rue de Tournon
Hotel Foyot
6 March 1934
Dear esteemed friend,
I think you’re being a little unfair on Matveev.1 Remember, he’s forty, and a painter, and he won’t straightaway understand some of the technical points. Also, I think—it happens to me sometimes—that one is slow to find something tragic because it’s too personally upsetting. Then, when you take a second look, you come to see that the upsetting doesn’t preclude the tragic. I am saying, I suppose, that we always react personally and humanly, in spite of our line of work. At any rate, I’ve gotten to know Matveev, and have spoken to him. It seems to me he’s invented more things than he’s actually experienced, which of course speaks for him, in literary terms. Don’t you think Huebsch could be interested?
Write me something of what’s happening to you personally. I’m appending a few handwritten lines. Also, albeit a little reluctantly, the final galleys of Tarabas, and what appears to me a rather nasty review from London.
Tell me if I’m mistaken.
Sincerely
Your Joseph Roth
8 March. Dear friend, my life is still more complicated than you think, even though you seem to have a lot of understanding for me. I think it’s my foe, the Antichrist, hatching little plots to cripple me. And I can, following your advice, retire all I like, he keeps running the doors down. Let me be a little less cryptic. I have an old friend, one Konstantin Leites,2 a 56-year-old Russian, an important person (he was a financial counselor under the tsar). Some 8 months ago, his wife lost her mind. Of late, she was doing better. I advised him against taking her out of the asylum. The doctor was in favor. He followed the doctor and his own sentiment. He rented an apartment for her, and spent many hours there with her. Well now, a couple of days ago she threw herself out of the window. Terrible hours with my friend. A terrible funeral. I spent two whole days in bed, unable to do a stroke.
But lest this tragedy lack also the most banal awfulness: my friend many times offered to lend me money—I always refused. The tragedy happened on the day that for the first time, I had to accept. I called him to that end—and caught the tragedy instead.
I am completely done in. I have to live somewhere, eat something. I owe you, my dear friend, the following sum—but I could be wrong about that:
2,000 marks
4,000 francs.
Would you be able to lend me more? Do you have it handy? Things with de Lange are serious. I have to deliver on the 30th.3
This is, putting it crudely, so crude that I remind myself of Beierle, but what am I to do? Lack of funds makes one crude. And no amount of stylistic finesse can prettify that ugly reality. Promise me you’ll tear up this letter. Don’t hold it against me. (Even the most decent of men can make mistakes.) Write back.
Your old
J.R.
1. Matveev: Michel Matveev, painter and Yiddish writer, a friend of Roth’s then living in Paris.
2. Leites: Konstantin Leites, a Russian financier and publisher of Russian writing. Went to Paris in 1933.
3. deliver on the 30th: i.e., The Antichrist.
247. To Félix Bertaux (written in French)
Hotel Foyot
Paris 6e
33 rue de Tournon
8 March 1934
My very dear friend,
I just read in 19341 the preface you wrote for the excerpt from my novel. I thank you from the bottom of my heart. You know—and this isn’t a figure of speech—you demonstrate more than an “understanding” of me—it’s already more like a divination. Friendship has taught you much about me. And it’s friendship too that is the basis of my deep gratitude.
I am sad not to have heard from you for many months. I was sick then, and I’m sick now. I can’t make myself understood on the telephone. And, as before, I am very unhappy, and very impoverished. I can’t describe it to you.
What about you, though? And Mme Bertaux? And Pierre?
I am writing The Antichrist. And having to write 10 pages a day, so as to be finished on the 25th. Feverish and impoverished.
I remain
your old and sad Joseph Roth
1. 1934: a weekly publication, in Paris.
248. To Blanche Gidon (written in French)
Hotel Foyot
Paris 6e
33 rue de Tournon
8 March 1934
Dear Madam Gidon,
I have just read the preface.1 I want to thank you with all my heart for the deep understanding you have of my work, and of my still poorer life. I found the quotations particularly well chosen. I want to say: how did you know?
And how is Mr. Gidon? How is he doing? Do you want to see me? I am writing The Antichrist, and must be finished by the 25th. Would it be possible to meet sometime after that?
Your ever grateful
Joseph Roth
1. The foreword (by Mrs. Gidon, and using the materials in no. 244, ones assumes) to the French edition of The Radetzky March.
249. To Carl Seelig
Joseph Roth
Paris 6e
33 rue de Tournon
Hotel Foyot
12 March 1934
Dear Mr. Seelig,
thank you for thinking of me. I go to the cinema so infrequently that I am afraid I could embarrass myself with the accompanying statement.
I am very poorly. I’ve been sick for a couple of weeks. I have no money at all, and “spiritually” I am no better off. I heard from Polgar1 via the Austrian embassy. I haven’t heard from Max Picard for a long time now. My book, which I finished in Rapperswil,2 I no longer have any feeling for. I am writing a new one. It is called The Antichrist. Nevertheless, I will send you Tarabas as soon as it comes out. I am afraid to look at the proofs, which is delaying publication. Mrs. Manga Bell is at present not in Paris. She thinks of you sincerely. And that I do, you won’t need me to tell you.
Very sincerely,
your humble Joseph Roth
Please excuse the pencil. I am in bed, very ill, with a bad throat.
1. Polgar: Alfred Polgar (1875–1955), Austrian novelist, translator, reviewer, and, above all, author of feuilletons, where he was probably the most admired in the business. Roth liked to call himself a pupil of Polgar, who, in fact, published some of his early pieces in Vienna. Fled to the United States in 1941.
2. in Rapperswil: The Radetzky March?
250. To Stefan Zweig
Hotel Foyot
Paris 6e
26 March 1934
Dear friend,
Thank you so much. Mr. Alzir Hella1 brought me the money, I gave him a receipt for it.
a. I finished The Antichrist an hour ago. At last, for the first time in my life, I’m satisfied with a book.
You too, I’m sure, will be satisfied with it. It’s a thousand times better than Tarabas. I spent 10–12 hours on it every day, 8 on the writing, 2–4 preparing it.
I’m at the end of my tether, but very happy.
b. Forgive me for talking about myself first.
The embassy isn’t claiming that you publicly spoke out against Austria.
But a few weeks ago—or it could have been longer—you may have said something negative about the current state of Austria to a French journalist.
It’s nothing to worry about, in any way.
Nothing happens here concerning you, without my being consulted.
I think that what you say about your criticisms being broadcast through all the embassies is an exaggeration.
c. More important, to me much more important, is that there is a rumor going the rounds that you are reluctant to sign a new publishing contract, because you are still counting on Insel and on Germany.
Please write and tell me that isn’t so.
d. Just as important to me is our relationship. Or to put it another way: my fear that you may view me in a different way because I owe you money.
I know money can have that effect: it corrodes the noblest of relationships.
But I can’t help it. I’m living in abject poverty. (Some of it through my fault, if you like.)
You haven’t written to me about it—thus far—even though you must sense how awful it feels to me that you haven’t mentioned it to me. If it doesn’t suit you, though, to mention it, then please don’t.
I’ll send you the manuscript of The Antichrist, if you like.
Sincerely,
your old friend Joseph Roth
1. Mr. Alzir Hella, the French translator of Remarque’s novel All Quiet on the Western Front.
251. To Blanche Gidon (written in French)
Hotel Foyot
Paris 6e
Monday
[postmarked:
26 March 1934]
Dear Madam Gidon,
thank you for your kind letter. Rest assured, there is not a single cloud in our sky. I’m not sure if I’ll be able to see you before you leave. I am in the Deux Magots almost every day, and write there at night.
(There we are, I’ve just been summoned to the telephone)
So it seems we’ll meet tonight!
All yours!
Greetings to Mr. Gidon.
Your Joseph Roth
252. Stefan Zweig to Joseph Roth
[London] 27 March 1934
Dear friend,
thank you for your letter. You can imagine how furious I was when it was bandied about that I had made some political utterances in Paris that were directed against Austria—I gave an interview in Paris-Soir or in L’Intransigeant,1 I don’t remember, it was three months ago with the stipulation: not one word of politics, and I wanted to see it before it appeared, and it duly came out without a single word of politics. Every other account is a barefaced lie. You know yourself I was only there for a very short time, and that was taken up by publishing business (and one day, if you remember, at Fontainebleau for work).
As for the lecture, I had promised Radio Paris a talk when I was in Salzburg, and wrote it, and had it translated into French at my own expense (I still have it)—proof of my best intentions. Then it turned out that some two years ago I had promised some learned society a talk on a different subject, and I didn’t want to deliver two lectures in Paris at the same time, because—as you know—I like to guard my anonymity when I’m there, and don’t want to be drawn into the social whirl. I asked the government councillor Hofman-Montanus whether someone else couldn’t be found to speak on my behalf, and was all set to give him the lecture—my intentions were the best, and of course I was giving my services for nothing, not even expenses.
The lecture that I canceled—to be honest, because of Germany—was a year ago in Strasbourg, shortly after Hitler’s coming to power. I would have made myself liable to attack if I, a German author, had spoken in French in Strasbourg of all places, where everyone understands German; Strasbourg friends of mine had told me under the then prevailing tensions it would cause embarrassment. I understood, as any sensible person would have understood it in my place.
This is all perfectly straightforward. But on the basis of it, and reports from Paris that were circulated against me in Vienna, I was made subject to a sort of inquiry, the newspapers were banned from publishing anything of mine, and there was tittle-tattle, as though I had been abroad, giving talks against Austria, about the latest developments. You will hardly believe that people can proceed in such fashion against someone who, as you know, both at home and abroad, has always been the most reticent of men, and discreet to the point of hysteria: but that is indeed the case, and it’s no fabrication of mine and no exaggeration. Surely to God, they must understand in official places in Paris, where they know about the spread of my books, and my position there, the lengths I’ve gone to avoid every public utterance since the political poisoning of the world, and what feats I perform to prevent a single word of mine coming to light that was capable of being politically exploited. Here in London, the papers leave me alone, but you know yourself how I have to hide myself in Paris.
Sincere regards from
Stefan Zweig
Please for God’s sake tell no one about this matter, otherwise it’s certain to end up in the French and émigré newspapers.
If you were to go to the embassy in person, and offer a vigorous explanation, you would be doing me a service, because the situation is serious.
1. Paris-Soir or L’Intransigeant: both popular Parisian newspapers.
253. Friderike and Stefan Zweig to Joseph Roth
[London]
28 March 1934
Dear Joseph Roth,
Stefan says you’ve finished your book, and are pleased with it. I am very glad to hear it. Now you must reward yourself, and look to your health. If you are satisfied with your work you no longer have any excuse not to.
I send you my fond regards and all good wishes. There is so much we might talk about: I think you would understand how I view the situation, but there is too much of it, so I just send you my warmest good wishes
Yours, Friderike Z.
Dear friend, I didn’t reply to your question yesterday. I never think of money matters when I think of you1—that’s a complex of yours that you must shrug off. I am happy that you are for once satisfied with a piece of work, how good it must be for you, your own archenemy, to be proud of it!
You’re not seeing my situation in the correct light. It is very serious. I am the subject of an investigation in Vienna, none of my friends will tell me what’s going on, and the only cause is an accusation from Paris official channels concerning alleged talks, or public utterances given by me. Luckily I can prove that I haven’t given any lectures, and only one interview, with no political content, three months ago, I haven’t spoken to journalists, otherwise they would have fabricated an interview out of it, but how do you defend yourself against something when you don’t even know what it is, or whom it’s coming from. You’ll remember that I told you, one of my closest friends (you remember, I said: because you’re a drinker) that there are certain things of a personal or political nature that I just don’t want to talk about, and you laughed—but that shows you how circumspect I, by nature so open and candid, have become. The denunciation that forms the basis of the Vienna investigation (of course my absence from Austria is accounted “suspicious” too, though it’s to do with Mary Stuart2 and America), has come from Paris, that’s all I was able to find out about it; here too I have an official questionnaire to deal with, but evidently, because they know how I live and the manner of work that I do, they don’t think it’s worth accusing me in such a way. Oh, I’m so fed up with these torments, they always disturb my work, which is the only thing that matters to me.
1. when I think of you: not quite, and hard to see how he couldn’t. For instance, when the writer Joseph Breitbach told SZ in 1935 that he was lending money to JR, Zweig warned him that it would cost him his friendship with Roth.
2. Mary Stuart: Maria Stuart, published in 1935; Zweig researched it in the British Museum in London.
254. To Carl Seelig
Paris 6e
33 rue de Tournon
Hotel Foyot
28 March 1934
Dear Mr. Seelig,
things are so bad, I have decided to ask you for help.
Perhaps you could advance me some or all of the fee the newspaper is to pay me for my answers to the questionnaire?
I don’t want to go into particulars. Awful things have happened. I am running around like a trapped mouse, there are no chinks between the bars, no way out.
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 which 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 distant 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
Dear Madam and Friend,
thank you for the article! I’ve corrected a few words in it. The sentence on the Austrian officer, etc.1 made me laugh. It seems to me the aristocratic genius of the French language is opposed to personal professions of faith—just as the genius of German seems to call for them. In French it comes across as “too personal.” Ah, how I wish I could write in French! Now, at almost forty, I’m at last beginning to understand that writing in just one language is like having only one arm. Having two fatherlands, I ought to be able to master two mother tongues. But I am old! And the language of a country is still more difficult to know than its inhabitants! This is all too difficult for me to say—I am shaping the expressions in German in my mind.
Once again: thank you for your goodness to little Manga!2
You are good, good, good. I will always be put to shame.
Your old Joseph Roth
1. In the series une heure avec, the journalist Frederic Lefèvre had conducted an interview with JR, to which he had given somewhat fantastical replies. See no. 244.
2. Manga: Manga Bell’s son went by that name.
268. To Blanche Gidon (written in French)
Hotel Beauvau
Marseille, 7 June 1934
Madam and dear friend,
thank you for your letter and please excuse the typed reply. I spend all day writing, and am simply too tired to take pen in hand.
Yesterday I finished my story for the Nouvelles Littéraires. Tomorrow I’m getting it typed, and you’ll have it the day after. I hope it’ll be of interest to your readers. Myself, I think it’s good enough to go in my next collection of novellas that is now under discussion.
It will contain three novellas, and I make so bold as to ask you, madam, to translate two of them; half of the third was translated some time ago by an old friend of mine, Madam Vallentin. I will also ask you to show the letter here enclosed to Monsieur Lefèvre. I hadn’t read the interview with him. Thank you for having sent it.
It seems to me he took me for a Trebitsch-Lincoln type,1 rather than a Joseph Roth. As far as the public is concerned, he’s probably right. (All this between us, please.)
Madam and dear friend, you are very dear to me, but I won’t be able to write to you again for a fortnight, not before I’ve finished my three novellas, the first of which you’ll have in your hands tomorrow or the day after. But please write to me yourself, in the meantime, if you’re not angry with me.
If the novella seems too long, please tell me right away. I have the feeling it’s all right as it is.
My sincere and heartfelt greetings to Mr. Gidon.
Your already aged friend and more
Joseph Roth
1. a Trebitsch-Lincoln type: Ignaz Tebitsch-Lincoln (1879–1943), a rather adventurous journalist, Buddhist monk, and political agent. If Lefèvre came to such a conclusion, it will no doubt have been with the encouragement if not the connivance of JR.
269. To Blanche Gidon (written in French)
Hotel Beauvau
Marseille
14 June 1934
Madam and friend,
thank you with all my heart for your letter. If women were to think my novella1 is directed against them, I would be sorry. It’s not informed by misogyny—it’s simply my conviction that a woman finding a man incapable of loving her as she would like to be loved will one day become a plaything of the devil’s. That would be a possible title for my poor little tale: “The Devil in Miss Gwendoline.” Of course, not a serious possibility. I hope it’s not too long to be published.
I will write to you once I’ve finished my third story, and am in possession of a contract. Forgive me for not writing you a longer letter today—and forgive me too for turning to you for practical advice.
I would like to enroll Mrs. Manga Bell’s son in a military academy. Since he was born in Paris—and hence France—the son of a French protégé from Cameroon, it ought to be easy. I don’t have any more money to keep him, nor does Mrs. Manga Bell. I don’t have the feeling he’s any more [sic] gifted than I am, and I made it to officer.
It’s all rather urgent. The little fellow has finished the year at school, and I can’t pay his fees any more. He must be in the military academy 4 weeks from now, or 8 at the outside.
I know I’m allowed to abuse your kindness, madam. But if I am presuming too much, perhaps Mr. Poupet could assist?
As for Mr. Breitbach,2 he has, as we say, made his bed and must lie in it. It’s a typical literary feud. Mr. Breitbach discussed his article with Mr. Kesten. Mr. Kesten discussed it with the (Communist) Mr. Weiskopf in Prague. And so it comes about that the Communist—they are in a hurry, because the World Revolution keeps not happening—has dashed off an article in response to an article that has yet to appear.
I am sad about this. I wanted to write a reply myself—and can’t because that would be making common cause with the Communistic Weiskopf. (I haven’t read his article.) At any rate, I would have written a different sort of reply, and I would first have shown it to Mr. Breitbach.
If you see him, tell him this. Apart from that, it wasn’t exactly noble of him to write an article like his at precisely this moment. Certainly, I am more “reactionary” than Mr. Breitbach. But anyway, it’s in poor taste to go singing German songs now. I have never associated with left-wing Jews like Mr. Breitbach. And now he denounces them to the French public for being “not German”! It’s so childish. And not at all noble. [. . .] And then if someone like Breitbach claims to know “real Germans” [. . .] and begins in the manner of his literary heroes, by loving his dim “blond Gretchens”—well, between ourselves . . .
Excuse me, dear friend, for talking to you thus frankly.
Greet Mr. Gidon for me.
I remain your loyal and appreciative friend
Joseph Roth
Mrs. Manga Bell sends you her very sincere regards.
1. my novella: The Triumph of Beauty, whose leading female character, Gwendoline, is a relentless flirt.
2. Mr. Breitbach: Joseph Breitbach (1903–1980), playwright, novelist, journalist.
270. To Stefan Zweig
Hotel Beauvau
Marseille
14 June 1934
Dear friend,
your letter made me as happy as it is possible for me to be in the circumstances in which I have now been living for many months. I believe my Antichrist is an honest outcry, not a book, I know how bitter my life is becoming for universal reasons—and unfortunately also for personal reasons—but it’s basically all one; I wrote my Antichrist out of private need. Very private.
Film is not just a contemporary phenomenon. It may make people happy, but the devil sometimes does that. I am unalterably persuaded that the devil shows himself, so to speak, in living shadow play. The shadow that speaks and acts is what Satan is. The cinema marks the beginning of the twentieth century. It ushers in the end of the world. Please don’t underestimate that. Telephone, radio, aeroplane, are nothing in comparison to it: the separation of the shadow from the man. It’s a turning point in human history, more significant than the Russian Revolution with its so-called liberation of the “proletariat.” (If only it had freed people instead! But of course it couldn’t do that.)
You’re right: I didn’t plan the Antichrist, but simply wrote it out, and for the first time in my life, I felt detached from this world. I got a sense of what a saint might feel, if such a one ever sat down to write. I was simultaneously furious and ecstatic. I’m sure a few trivial and irrelevant things will have made it into the book. But I still have the feeling that it’s not a book of mine, rather as though someone had dictated it to me. I don’t have the right to do more than correct the misprints.
I read what you told me about Salzburg1 with astonishment and indignation. If it hadn’t been you telling me these things, I wouldn’t have believed them. If we pooled our imaginations, we still couldn’t come up with such vileness. What was it? The revenge of jealous people? There was certainly no simple-minded credulity involved. It was malice, insane malice.
I understand why you can never go back to Salzburg.
For purely selfish reasons I am very unhappy that you are going so far away. Of course I am pleased for you as well, but let me tell you straight: here you are my most influential friend and—even if that’s not what I like you for—I do find your power pleasant and soothing. You don’t know, you have no idea how I live. Your great and shining cleverness doesn’t recognize me, can’t see me, even though I’m one of your most honest friends. Between us too the Antichrist has cast his shadow.
I beseech you now—and don’t make me mention it again—it costs you so little to get me an advance from an English publisher. They will listen to you. I beg you, I implore you to take this trouble upon yourself! Take the rope off my neck that’s on the point of choking me! Please, please understand. I’m going down, I’m already wallowing in filth. All sorts of ugly private painful humiliating things on top of that. I cannot WRITE to you about them. In spite of that, I’ve completed 2 novellas, each of 40 pages. I’m working like a pack-ass. I have worries, such worries, and I’m so UNHAPPY. Please, please secure a little freedom for me. I can’t live like this any more, it’s killing me. Absolutely. Is that what you want? Do you think I’m blackmailing you? I’m writing to you in desperate need. Please will you talk to the publishers.
Please. And let’s meet BEFORE you go. Definitely.
I embrace you,
your old J.R.
1. about Salzburg: i.e., the searching of SZ’s house for weapons. Soon after, Zweig moved to London.
271. To Stefan Zweig
Marseille
Hotel Beauvau
22 June 1934
Dear true friend,
I know I ask too much of you. I am writing to you again today, even though I wrote to you only yesterday. I want to thank you first for your letter about Gollancz.1 I have no agent, Landauer and de Lange didn’t try to sell the Antichrist in England. It might not be easy for you—or pleasant—to hear all the acts of folly I perpetrated since you left Paris—all under the pressure of repulsive experiences. I know how difficult it is even for a great understanding to cope with a small derangement. But I still beg you to continue to think of me as a sensible person subject to occasional fits of madness but broadly in control, and as a conscientious friend who only writes like this in hours of clarity. I have debased and humiliated myself. I have borrowed money from the most impossible places, despising and cursing myself as I did so. And it was all because never in my life have I had anything like a secure financial base, never a bank account or savings. Nothing, nothing, just advances—expenditure, expenditure, advances, and until the Third Reich, I had publishers. (And I’ve paid all my debts in Germany.) When you were in Paris, I only had 2,000 francs of debts. Since then it’s risen to 11,000 urgent, pressing, terrible debts. I feel obliged to come before you quite naked, my dear friend. Whatever you do, you cannot judge me more harshly than I do myself. I abuse you too, with the desperate selfishness of someone putting the life of his friend in danger by clinging to him like a drowning man clinging to his rescuer. I can think of no other image! If anything is able to exculpate me in your eyes and in my own—which are probably more indulgent—then it will be this: that I am working every day, that here in Marseille I’ve written 3 half-decent novellas, each of 35–40 pages. At the beginning of October I need to hand in my novel, which is just one-third written. I can’t go out any more. I’ve felt the rope around my neck for months now—and if I haven’t been throttled, it’s purely because every now and then some good-natured individual comes along and allows me to push a finger in between my neck and the rope. And straight after, the rope draws tight again. With the rope around my neck like that, I work for 6–8 hours a day. If you knew what commitments I’d incurred, you would laugh. But my dear friend, I must be free, just once, the relaxing of the noose isn’t enough, it has to be taken off. Oh, please, I need 12,000 francs by the end of August. Maybe an English publisher will provide them. Maybe, maybe! I am working, it’s all I can do, I can’t do more! Please, please don’t forsake me! Don’t take anything here amiss! Picture me lying flat out on my deathbed. Forgive me. I have drunk nothing while writing this to you. I am stone-cold sober.
I embrace you fervently,
your J.R.
1. Victor Gollancz (1893–1967) was a British publisher, who gave his name to his imprint.
272. To Blanche Gidon (written in French)
Hotel Beauvau
30 June 1934
Marseille
Madam and dear friend,
forgive me for interrupting your painstaking labor, but it’s to do with the article about Breitbach. Hermann Hesse is Swiss, and I would certainly not have written that he has become Swiss. He wrote to me very kindly about my book, and I would risk losing a friend who is very proud of his nationality just as, in fact, Switzerland is very proud of him. I risk losing other Swiss friends. Mr. Breitbach can hardly say he is “of Swabian extraction.” All German Swiss are of Swabian extraction. Just as all the Swiss from the canton of Geneva are of French extraction. The Swiss from the Ticino are of Italian extraction. We, the Austrians, are of Bavarian extraction. No, it’s impossible to claim that Hesse has become Swiss. One might as well say that Mr. Gidon was of “Norman” or Germanic extraction. Or that Rilke “was Czech” and “had become Austrian.” [. . .] It’s the desire to conquer the whole world on account of its Germanic roots, as far as the Italians of Milano, who are of “Vandal extraction.” No, Hesse is Swiss, just as Rilke, Kafka, and I are Austrians—for the whole world, except [. . .] and Breitbach.
I’m sorry. But if he gets threatening letters I have to say he himself writes letters to all and sundry, foolish, imprudent letters. [. . .] I know that at bottom he’s a good boy. [. . .] He’s one of those people who will always have “contacts” and “acquaintances,” but never any friends [. . .]
Enough. It’s not worth the trouble. Forgive me, my dear friend. Each time I write to you, I congratulate myself on having found you. And as I have already once had the unhappy experience of showing you my fatal propensity for shamelessness, believe me equally when I say how fond I am of you and of Mr. Gidon.
Your loyal friend, Joseph Roth
273. To Carl Seelig
Marseille
Hotel Beauvau
7 July 1934
(good as an address, even though I’m leaving)
My dear, dear Mr. Seelig,
one day, in case we should ever meet again, I may be able to say to you how wretched I am. No—I’m still no better.
Thank you very much for your good opinion of my Tarabas. It’s a bad book.
The Antichrist—which I think is good—is going out to you in uncorrected galleys. (Lacking the quotations from Picard’s book, which need to be added.)
I am very fond of you, the longer since I last saw you, the fonder I become.
Write soon!
Your Joseph Roth
274. Stefan Zweig to Joseph Roth
11 Portland Place
London, 10 July [1934]
Dear friend,
now the whole thing is fucked again, and it’s not my fault. I asked you expressly whether you had the rights to your book, and it turns out that you’re contracted to Heinemann1 for the next two. I now need to conciliate, so that Viking doesn’t take your doings amiss, and I will talk to Ginzburg,2 who is here at the moment, tomorrow, I hope. It’s such a pity, my dear fellow! If only you’d informed me correctly! I did my best for you, and was quite close to gaining my objective!
Your Stefan Zweig
1. Heinemann: William Heinemann Ltd., a London publishing house.
2. Ginzburg: Harold Ginzburg, co-owner and (with Ben Huebsch) director of Viking Press, the New York publisher.
275. To Stefan Zweig
Dégustation Cintra
Marseille
11 July 1934
My dear friend,
thank you for your telegram and letter. Of course I wrote to Gollancz straightaway. It’s a great coup, only unfortunately my foolish publishers—how often you wisely warned me against my friends L. and L.!1—force me to pay 60% to de Lange. Of the 2,000 dollars that Huebsch was paid—for film rights to Job—Landshoff gets 1,600 gulden, and I barely 3,500 francs. You have no idea how furious I am with myself; much less how the others, taking advantage of my craziness and helplessness, are furious with me. It’s the story of Aladdin and the 40 thieves, only with a bad ending.
I’m leaving in two hours. My chum Hermann Kesten has invited me, because he’s seen how wretchedly off I am. His address will be the one, until further notice: 119, Promenade des Anglais (for J.R.). I won’t be able to stick it with him for long. He has his wife and mother with him. After two days I’ll have to move into a hotel. I can’t share a toilet with acquaintances, and be seen in pajamas2 and see others so dressed. Grisly! Sooner be completely destitute, as once before. No other possibility. I’m too sick.
Please give Mr. Gollancz my address sometime. At the time I wrote to him, I wasn’t sure when I was leaving.
Should I thank you? In what form? It would be so much easier for me to think up an entire novel, than a warm and yet dignified way of expressing my gratitude to you. When did I ever have a friend like you? As good? As noble? As natural? Since the time I got your first letter to me—here in Marseille—five or 6 years ago, I’ve had a sense of being happier (the feeling of a barge at sea, when it encounters a steamer, I imagine, naumorphically) and unfortunately also the feeling that I’m bringing you bad luck. And believe me, this friendship is very difficult to bear.
And I still have something more to beg of you, harder than everything I’ve sought from you so far: will you give me 10 lines or so from your latest book, Erasmus—unpublished, to set at the head of it, or to conclude the book with—that might fit (or fit by association) with my Antichrist. I am asking for quotations from friends, to proof it—call it superstitious of me—against hell.
Yes, you strike me as very cheerful, and it makes me glad. Your words are full of cheer.
If only you knew how I felt! How ringed with darkness! For days at a time, I fear for my reason, and presentiments come back that I haven’t had since boyhood: that I will go mad at the same age as my father. My dear friend, my sufferings are appalling! Work is flight, for me. I have written 3 novellas and 6 articles, and many private jottings for myself. I am horribly beset with mortal and immortal darknesses. Write to me right away, at Kesten’s address. As soon as I’ve found a cheap hotel, I’ll give you that address.—I wish I could throw my arms around you. The business with Gollancz made good sense, I am so, so fond of you. Rescue me please, believe in me, believe in my reason not least!
Your old J.R.
1. L. and L.: Landauer and Landshoff.
2. pajamas: A slightly frivolous-sounding but inalienable principle of the self-styled “hotel-patriot” Joseph Roth.
276. To Blanche Gidon (written in French)
Grand Café Glacier
Marseille
11 July 1934
Madam, dear friend,
you can’t have known how much I would panic on learning that you lent me 500 francs in 1934. How will I ever get out of my debts! At least write and tell me how much the Weekly Review is paying you! This is awful! Write to me—quickly! Urgent!
The address of Mr. Moreaux is Vauxvain [?], Oise, près Gisors, Eure, 75 km from Paris.
But he’s already written, Mrs. Manga Bell will write to you. I am leaving, to stay with my friend Hermann Kesten, 199 Promenade des Anglais, Nice.
Here, I’ve completed 3 novellas and 6 articles, I must write another 6 articles and a novella before I can get on to my novel. Write to me! And remember to look up my friend Fuchs at the Austrian embassy, well in advance of your departure for Austria. If practical, take Mr. Poupet with you. He is a good friend, a good politician, a good sort—but he won’t write to me. You always have to go and see him and speak to him. He is “concrete” like a good many of my compatriots: they’re not good at physical distance.
[Joseph Roth]
277. To Walter Landauer
Hotel Nordzee, Zandvoort
[Nice, no date]
Wire right away what to do stop Zweig is writing Gollancz heard from Heinemann that contract exists between Heinemann and Huebsch for Antichrist as Huebsch has rights to next two books stop wire Zweig 11 Portland Place London my innocence stop check contracts send Zweig and me copies address Kesten Nice
Roth
278. To Stefan Zweig
11 Portland Place, London
[Nice, no date]
Inform Gollancz immediately that according to information from Kiepenheuer and Landshoff Antichrist rights free stop wire him also stop preserve my honesty at all costs stop Huebsch subcontract with Heinemann only applies to novels am in despair wire me address Kesten 119 promenade des anglais Nice
Roth
279. To Victor Gollancz
London (written in English)
[Nice, no date]
Assure by my honor that conforming to informations of my German publisher Antichrist free and agreement Viking and Heinemann does not apply Antichrist stop near explanations follow
Joseph Roth
280. To Stefan Zweig
Nice
13 July 1934
Dear friend,
I am writing to you in high excitement, half an hour after wiring you and Gollancz.
I enclose a letter from my publisher Landauer—proof that I couldn’t have known of the agreement between Huebsch and Heinemann about Antichrist.
I implore you, please explain this to Messrs. Gollancz and Huebsch and Ginzburg. I am an innocent victim—I’m terrified that I’ll be seen as a swindler.
I am writing to you in high excitement, I am washed up. 40% of 100 pounds does not represent salvation.
I am finished.
I’ve telegraphed away the last of my money, including to Gollancz, in wretched English. Please, I care desperately about preserving my honor. Help me! It’s all I can do to keep stammering those words.
Please believe me. You know me. Landshoff and Landauer told me Tarabas was the last book that I had under contract to Viking.
[. . .]
I am beside myself, at the end of my tether, finished, I am feeling close to suicide, for the first time in my life.
I beg you, my dear friend, your
J.R.
1. Orcovente1
You remember this exotically named company set up by my friends: Landauer, Landshoff, and Schottländer (garment dealer in Berlin) after Hitler’s accession, and on my behalf, as Landauer told me at the time.
Apparently, this company shelled out 6,000 Swiss francs to Kiepenheuer Verlag, to free up my foreign rights.
So all the moneys for my foreign rights were paid in to “Orcovente.”
In the meantime, Viking had sent 2,000 dollars to Kiepenheuer [. . .]
In the meantime, as you will recall, little Rosner2 became a fixture in my house, and—voluntarily, as I believed at the time—my secretary.
He had also become—by my agency—because I took him to be poor and honest—Landauer’s secretary.
He lied to me, he couldn’t even type—and Mrs. Manga Bell did all his typing for him.
One day Kesten became aware of some inconsistencies,3 and threw him out.
(I paid half his tab at the Hotel Foyot—750 francs.)
[. . .]
Kindly note, from the top part of my letter, which I have drawn up with all my available papers, to the best of my ability, and with the assistance of the very conscientious Mr. Kesten, that I am not so stupid as I might sometimes appear.
2. Kindly note, further, that, for all the friendly feeling between us, you would do well to avoid looking at your best friend in too predictable and summary a fashion: I am not just a Jew inclined to “lostness” but also a savvy Jew; I am not just a disinherited lieutenant of the old army, used to shelling out 60% of everything, but also one of those used to lending money to officers of my type; it’s not Huebsch on the one side (caricature version thereof) and me (caricature version thereof) on the other.
3. Straining myself to the utmost, in feverish agitation, tormented by the thought to whom and why I have to pay money in 8 days’ time—terrible, terrible—you have no idea how terrible!—I am writing to you with colored crayons, and in the hope you might break free of the iced-over notions of me that you have formed. (This isn’t a game, you know.)
4. I have always told you the truth. What I didn’t like about you, what I did. But desperation and torment and what has offended and hurt and upset and destroyed me was never so strong as now, in all the time I’ve been fond of you. And I tell you now, with the justification of the condemned friend that you are unfair to me, unfair, UNFAIR!!—You do NOT have the right to judge me from your privileged knowledge of my person in the way one (you too, alas) judges other people whose external situation may resemble mine.
5. Even if I’m pissed, I’m still sufficiently sober to understand who’s trying to diddle me and who isn’t.
6. You’re smart. I’m not. But I see things you can’t, because your smartness blinds you to them. You have the grace of reason, and I of unhappiness. Don’t give me any more advice—help me, act for me. I’m going under.
Is it possible you have so much brilliant insight into dead figures—and none for your living friend? Or am I dead to you? Listen, I am still alive, I am a human being, I can see for instance that Gollancz shows solidarity with Heinemann, and is therefore withdrawing his offer.
And you have no right to distrust my insight as if it were some grocer’s.
Oh, what do I care! Just tell me you don’t like getting letters from me.
I know the process:
Gollancz doesn’t want to antagonize Heinemann.
The Antichrist could be a success!
They don’t want to step on each other’s toes. Solidarity! You withdraw your offer and call a man of honor a cheat.
Not with me you don’t!
I DON’T WANT YOU going through my affairs with a publisher.
Believe me or don’t believe me. See for yourself! And while you’re going through my affairs, just set aside for a while your preconceptions regarding my character.
Don’t you worry, I’m as clever as your Huebsches, your Gollanczes, your Heinemanns and your Landauers!
I was just lazy, and easily deceived.
I’ve had it anyway.
In my will I will write down the names of all those I mistrust.
(I’ll send you a copy.)
None of my tormentors will take any pleasure in my end.
Gollancz has offended me—I am going to challenge him. What do I care about his “bond” with Heinemann. Heinemann gave bad information. Landauer and Landshoff never gave me any statements.4 I destroy all my manuscripts. I’m making a will. It won’t be any good for anyone if I die. But before that, I’m going to kill at least 2 grocers who have the cheek to accuse me of cheating. No apologies! And that’s called “solidarity.” It’s the Antichrist. Mr. Reece is in the picture. I’ve lost because I was careless—lost my life. Well, soit. The war was no fun either. I was doomed 15 years ago.—Write to me straightaway, and tell me you wash your hands of me. Go with God. I am very fond of you. I embrace you. Believe me,
your J.R.
1. Orcovente: The laws governing foreign exchange, and the efforts of the Third Reich to seize the funds of exiled German writers, made the arrangements of such companies as Orcovente too complicated for their beneficiaries and authors to follow.
2. Rosner was a young Communist and protégé of Egon Erwin Kisch; he fell on the Republican side in the Spanish Civil War.
3. inconsistencies: Hermann Kesten writes, “I do not recollect any ‘inconsistencies’ on Rosner’s part, and I certainly didn’t throw him out, being neither his employer nor his hotelier.”
4. L. and L. never gave me any statements: Here, Kesten—a onetime publisher as well as author—writes, “Like many authors, Roth was sometimes subjectively right and objectively wrong in his remarks about his publishers, sometimes objectively right and subjectively wrong, often plain right, and often plain wrong. In conversation, one could listen to his polemics against his publishers, and either agree or disagree with him. So far as Landshoff and Landauer were concerned, there were not many publishers who were so close to their authors, and there was no author for whom they took more trouble and expense than Joseph Roth.”
281. Stefan Zweig to Joseph Roth
[July 1934]
[. . .]
I implore you, don’t1 do anything in your present state, don’t post letters without showing them to a friend first, you are overstrained. Don’t send any telegrams at all, pretend the telegraph has been disinvented. It won’t make the desired impression, it will do you harm. It will disadvantage you, because others will feel your impatience, your inability to wait. I beg you: please calm down! Don’t drink. Alcohol is the Antichrist and money, not the wretched cinema. They’re not stealing your shadow, it’s you making yourself into a shadow, a pale shadow of yourself, by your drinking—please, my friend, take my offer, take a cure for a month, and under strict supervision. . . .
1. don’t: Zweig might as well have written to Don Quixote, asking him to desist. The expression “dialog of the deaf” comes to mind. At the bottom, at the root of everything is temperament.
282. To Carl Seelig
Nice
c/o Hermann Kesten
119 Promenade des Anglais
17 July 1934
Dear Mr. Carl Seelig,
thank you! My friend, Hermann Kesten, invited me here; how long I’ll be able to stick it out, I’ve no idea. I’m feeling so wretched, I’ve no alternative but to endure everything. I’m penniless, otherwise I’d be back in Rapperswil. The Antichrist is paid for. I’m not getting anything more out of it. I’m morally washed up too—so people tell me.
Oh, I’m so wretched! I can’t write it all down.
Allert de Lange will send you the Antichrist.
Sincerely,
your old Joseph Roth
283. To Stefan Zweig
[Summer 1934]
[. . .]
my friend Kesten, as a suitable representative in my business affairs. Only, Kesten is a close friend of Landshoff’s as well. In addition, he’s a writer himself, who rates me—as a writer, not as a human being—much lower than he does himself. Part envy, part inferiority. You know human beings are not straightforward, nor do they want to be. And all that’s easily squared with friendship. I can SEE it.
So he can’t be my representative.
None of which matters.
What matters is this:
What matters, and this is all that matters, is that I have a guaranteed income between 1 August 1934 and 1 August 1935.
Only that will allow me to draw a deep breath, and begin to think.
What if Huebsch together with one of those English publishers were to leave you a sum of money to last me a year, and you send me a fixed amount each month—I’d be happy with that!
End of October I’m to deliver my novel.1 It’s terrific material. I won’t tell you about it just yet. I was really into it. When that shit happened, I completely lost the thread.
It’s done, I haven’t written a line for 3 weeks!
You’re leaving Europe, and you’re my only real friend!
You will leave, and I must have a secure income for a year, and with you not there, and your authority vis-à-vis others, and toward me, I’ll be up against it.
Will you promise me the following:
That you leave me 12,000 marks for one year, before you go.
It’s the only thing that matters. Oh God, I can’t write a line without some security.
And then I’ll promise you in return that I won’t put myself out for strangers any more.
I will lock myself away. But I need to have that security.
Surely I can have 1,000 marks, if I’m responsible for 8 people?
If you like, I can make do on less, but I have to be able to rely on it.
The “whip” is very bad. It’s at the point where it’s no longer driving me on, but killing me instead. How would you like to write my obituary?
I’m through anyway, I’m too serious, you know, I wouldn’t be able to say something like that glibly.
Give me your exact address for the near future. I’ll send you my will. You decide what’s to be done with it if you’re not there either. Will you be so kind? Please. Tell me, honestly.
I beg you sincerely not to go away before I’ve got a year ahead of me. I can’t deal with Landshoff and Landauer any more. I’m finished. And I can’t write a line, unless I have some security.
The most pressing debts are important! Please tell that to Huebsch!
I embrace you sincerely
Your J.R.
I’d like to write a big novella before this next novel. It’s a lovely thing, and it’s been preoccupying me.2
Please believe me, I’ve been so maltreated by Kiepenheuer.
1. my novel: presumably The Hundred Days, published by Allert de Lange in 1935.
2. preoccupying me: possibly The Leviathan.
284. Stefan Zweig to Joseph Roth
[July 1934]
Dear friend,
as your friend I’m going to be honest with you—for the first time, I’m really afraid for you. You’re overwrought, it’s alcohol or it’s something else, I can see it in your (senseless) letter to Gollancz, in your whole being. I must beg you, please not to be so impatient always. Those wires going out every which way were a sign of it. A letter would have had the same effect—no, it would have settled the matter much more calmly and clearly. You can’t write to Gollancz like that. He never made a contract with you, he just declared himself in principle willing to pay you a certain amount, and then, when he learned that future books of yours are going to be with Heinemann, he took a step back. No contracts were signed; he never made an offer for your book, it was offered to him, and he tried to do the best he could. And then you write him an idiotic letter which is the first thing that could really harm you in this whole affair. I’m sure Kesten never saw that letter. A plea to him might have been a different matter, asking him to stick to his original position, but instead in the second part of the letter you start to threaten him! Left to ourselves, Huebsch and I could have come up with a compromise solution—but come on, you’re an examiner of souls, you must see that your wires and express letters are symptoms. You wanted everything quicker and more excitably than the natural course of things allows. You sought to force time, as you seek to force money. Just think how much energy you’ve wasted in this continual haggling and back-and-forth; I’ve been imploring you for years, adjust to the reality that as a German Jewish author nowadays you’ll only be lucky enough in certain exceptional circumstances to earn money, and that the writer’s life is historically a pretty unprofitable one. Don’t try to force an income for yourself that’s impossible, that’ll only get you into warped contracts, tangles, and these unceasing difficulties! For God’s sake, man, get a grip on yourself, since that Gollancz letter I’ve begun to really fear for you. You’ve got to stop boozing. You’ll have to go on a proper cure for a month and get dried out—please believe me. I wouldn’t say it otherwise. You know I’ve been urging you to do it for a year, only that can help you, nothing else.
And calm down, my dear fellow! It’s your haste and panic and nervousness that makes everything so difficult. I can’t go back to Gollancz after your latest letter, but I will talk everything through with Huebsch, and think of what’s best to do as soon as he’s here.
Sincerely,
your St. Z.
Please take it easy. Stay in bed if you must, but don’t drink.
285. Stefan Zweig to Joseph Roth
[postmarked: London, 18 July 1934]
Dear Roth,
I hope you’ve calmed down again. You take a wrong view of everything—there is a thousand times more punctilio among publishers here than in Germany, it’s viewed as a gross breach of decorum to snatch an author away from someone else, and Gollancz’s interest in the book was first and foremost a way of getting you all to himself. You really need to suppress all those telegrams and express letters (that stem from your inner unrest)—the more calmly you negotiate, the better it is. Huebsch will be here soon, and I want to talk everything through with him. But please stay calm, you must save yourself for your work, nothing is more important than that, in every sense.
Sincerely,
your St. Z.
I am leaving here as soon as I have seen Huebsch. Regards to Kesten, and thank him for his letter.
286. Stefan Zweig to Joseph Roth
11 Portland Place
London W 1
[July 1934]
Dear friend,
got your express letter (but why express, Huebsch won’t be here for another 6 days!) plus contents. Dear dear Roth: clarity, common sense! Please! Won’t you see that no one wants to offend you or cheat you, not Landauer, not Gollancz, not Heinemann—the two last-named are enormous enterprises where some clerk passes a memo to an undermanager: as a realist or man of imagination, you need to see it in the correct proportions. But the idea that Gollancz or Heinemann (basically not actual persons, but concerns) wanted to “offend” you, is completely bizarre!!!
I know you are extraordinarily clever. But cleverness has never been enough to save someone from stupidities that stem from some inflammable part of his emotions. My dear friend, can’t you feel me suffering because of the compulsive way—even at times you earned a lot—you were always thinking about money, WITHOUT really EVEN BEING GREEDY. If you were a miser, a Harpagon, I would see it as lust, for you it’s a torment, only partly created by circumstances, partly by you yourself, and from which I fear it won’t be possible to free you in this life. Believe me, I rack my brains over how to help you, and when I say you can’t be helped by money alone, you have to give up these self-destructive self-lacerating urges! Allow me, your true friend, to tell you one symptom. I have letters from you over many years. They were often full of bitterness. But never full of hatred. Now all of a sudden, I see in your letters hate and vengefulness against individuals, threats to denounce them even in your last will—Roth, I implore you, you’re a kindly, helpful, understanding soul: don’t you feel the evil in them, an evil that isn’t in you, but that comes from outside? THAT’s what alarms me for you now, the fact that you see evil, and feel evil intentions everywhere around you, and that evil is already inside you. Yes, initially as a fantasy and resistance, but to be forever thinking of the evil coming from others means to hoist it into you, to let it nest in you and grow like a cancer, like a tumor. No, Roth, I don’t want that, it’s not you, it’s—though you may deny it till you’re blue in the face—alcohol, which has made you more irritable and choleric than you are by nature, which has falsified your true being. I don’t want the author of Job to go writing books and letters fueled by resentment: the Antichrist was a yell, magnificent, but now you must defend yourself against yourself! As before, I remain convinced you should take a cure, just to be taking steps against yourself, and especially because the moment is not yet at hand when you need to withdraw, but merely should and ought and not have to, and that would be the best moment.
I will only discuss the publishing questions with Huebsch. Perhaps he’ll still be able to turn everything round. Don’t despair. You know that I will help you financially if need be, but I am loath to do it in such a way that it melts in your hands (or in your mouth). I would rather have helped you once and for all, with the month’s cure that would mend your health.
Sincerely, in haste
your S.
A copy of my Erasmus has gone from Vienna to Paris. An idiotic misprint drove me wild: on page 224 it should of course say Machiavelli’s amoral politics, not moral.
287. To Stefan Zweig
[Marseille] 19 July 1934
Dear friend,
read the enclosed, the copy of a letter I wrote to a friend,1 an old Russian aristocrat, a consul in tsarist times (has money—between ourselves: he wanted to give it to me once, but I thought L. could use it—then through my agency lent it to Landauer—strictly between ourselves.) You’ll see from it the sort of things that befall me. I fear you’re overestimating Gollancz, just as you overestimate my dipsomania.
You can give or show it to Huebsch too. I want him to be in the picture.
I can see the time coming when you won’t want any more letters from me.
I am doomed, that much is clear.
You think I’m mad, when I’m rational. I’m not imperiled either.
I’m just furious when my honor is impugned. Mr. Gollancz did that. He owes me an apology.
Since you’re not sitting facing me, eye to eye, you of course jump to the conclusion that I’m self-destructive. The enclosed is a little supplemental proof of what it is that’s actually destroying my life.
It’s too late, I’m sick of this world.
I embrace you warmly, your old
J. Roth
I can’t show dear Kesten everything, for instance not the enclosed letter. He is close to Landshoff, and I mustn’t destroy their thing. I see everything, Kesten only sees some things, albeit more clearly than I do at times.
1. friend: Konstantin Leites.
288. Stefan Zweig to Joseph Roth
[July 1934]
Dear friend,
you’re getting too excited. Gollancz already knows you weren’t ill-intentioned, but that you were the victim of a misunderstanding. But English publishers insist on fair dealing among themselves, and G. hopes that Heinemann will publish the book, and then all the others as well. His principal interest in the Antichrist was that it would have given him on option on your subsequent work, and precisely that is ruled out by your contract with H.
My dear fellow, I implore you: (I have been imploring you for years) don’t always try and market yourself to six people at once. It’s Huebsch, it’s Landauer, it’s Alexander, it’s yourself, it’s Albatross, it’s de Lange, and Tal—confusions are bound to result. What you’re doing is crazy, negotiating with firms on three unwritten books at once, and making deals that resemble the IOUs of officers (madness giving away 60% of your foreign rights). You need to draw up a schedule with a friend like Kesten. Put everything on it exactly as it is, a list of all your obligations to various publishers, and tabulate it, so that it can be taken in at a glance, and then Huebsch and I can look it over1—what the position is with de Lange, with Querido, to whom have you offered, sold, part-sold future books of yours. My dear fellow, you must make clarity, get Kesten to help you, and sign off on the paper. Then I’ll go through it all with Huebsch.
And as regards the future. Don’t scare away publishers by putting money front and center. You will harm yourself if you are too urgent and insistent about money (remember your psychology). It scared me in your letter to Gollancz that, even before the contract was signed, you were asking him to wire you the money. Of course something like that is bound to set a publisher’s alarm bells ringing, he won’t have much faith in an author who’s so desperate.
So don’t worry! No one thinks badly of you. I’ll straighten out the Antichrist business with Huebsch. But please—a clear statement of your obligations, in graph or table form, and Huebsch and I will look at it.
Ginzburg must be somewhere in your vicinity, in the south of France, only I don’t know where
Sincerely, S.
In haste
1. look it over: absolutely well-meant, utterly demeaning, and completely impossible.
289. Stefan Zweig to Joseph Roth
[July 1934]
Dear friend,
don’t let’s argue about morality! That’s not immoral, what’s immoral is you proposing to write a novel by October, when you sat over your Radetzky March for two years! You, Joseph Roth, will face your ultimate judge alone, not the 8 persons you always mention. Let them wreck your life if they must, but not your art.
Second, I can sense your rising fury. You are beginning to see people like Landshoff, Landauer, and Kesten as your enemies. One day you will see me as your enemy. It won’t break my friendship for you. Only add to my regret that the Antichrist has you in his claws. It’s a dangerous thing, to sup with the devil.
Huebsch has been chasing around like a mad thing. I’m meeting him tomorrow, Saturday. There’s no question of income for a year, but I hope to be able to secure something. The book trade over there is in terrible shape. The numbers of 1931 are a distant dream, just as they are in Germany.
Erasmus set off on his way from Vienna to Paris long ago. I have no idea where he’s gotten stuck.
I enclose a little something. Just to make sure you have no anxieties, if Huebsch’s money gets delayed.
In haste, your S.
No, I won’t enclose it, I’m going to send it to Kesten instead, with the request that he buy you the needful.1
1. the needful: at this point, the demeaning takes over.
290. To Stefan Zweig
Nice, 20 July 1934
Dear dear friend,
every day you are kind enough to write me a few words, and every day I repay you with some bêtise or wickedness. Please try to understand how much this Gollancz business has thrown me off-kilter, after your telegram and your letter with the hundred pounds made me dance with joy.—You must understand that I’m getting horrible demands by mail every day. I have borrowed money in a really foolish way, from a waiter, from my translator—and worst of all, on behalf of a poor crippled painter at the Austrian consulate, where they wouldn’t have given him any themselves. So I borrowed 1,000 francs against my good name (with tricksterish self-confidence), and again at table, again sinfully, another 1,000 from a little man by the name of Grünberg who called on you in London, with my recommendation. Dear friend, you’re the only one I can tell all this to, and may God forgive me for doing so, because you are so unmoving in your incomprehension of me (no doubt therapeutic, because at heart you must know what’s going on with me). If anyone finds himself in urgent need, I go into a panic, God forgive me for saying so—and even writing it down—maybe 50% of my debts are incurred for others, just as half of my life belongs to others.1 You reproach me with being a professional expert on the human soul and committing mistakes—and you are an expert, and an expert in particular on my soul—and the mistakes that you make are also considerable.—You see, I can’t go somewhere and say: help so-and-so! Instead I say: help me! His pregnant wife is my pregnant wife, and at that moment I’m not really lying. But the outcome is that I get into spectacular difficulties, because I don’t calculate for myself either. And since I’m not a true saint, but a human being with ideas of being decent, I become furious and unreasonable. And it seems unfair to me that Gollancz can plead solidarity, and I think it’s unfair too that you, my friend, make common cause with the clever people. Be clever, be as clever as you like, but leave me out of it—I’m past repairing. I work like an ox, I live badly, I feed 8 people dear to me, and sometimes as many as a dozen strangers, I am honest, neither Mr. Gollancz nor anyone else has any right to say otherwise. I shit on his solidarity with Heinemann, he knew I was Heinemann’s author before he wanted to buy Antichrist, he has no moral or legal right to retract his offer subsequently. I don’t like it—not for my sake—but out of principle. It can’t be right that I write an Antichrist for the public, and suffer from anti-Christian wheezes in private. So I’m going to fight it, using all the means of worldliness, the duel, the court case, the insult, I don’t know what else. This “solidarity” among messrs publishers in London is a work of the Antichrist, just like the lack of solidarity among publishers in Germany. And—unless my ear trained from Russian descent and Austrian birth deceives me—then a gentleman by the name of Gollancz is going to be a Jew from Budapest, or Keeskemet, or Pressburg.2 Just by the by. When old Fischer once asked me where I was from, and I replied: Radziwillow, he confided: “Between you and me—I wasn’t born in Germany either!”3—I have the feeling that this Mr. Gollancz is Hungarian. It’s not the cz in his name. It’s the tone of his letters. But I know: this too is hubris. Without the grace of God, one may not be a prophet. Anyway what does it matter, perhaps Gollancz is English, and Chamberlain4 is a Magyar. What’s important is not doing the Antichrist’s bidding, not in England and not in Hungary. To return to the case in question: I can see the devil’s grimace in the way that Gollancz, in spite of knowing that I was Heinemann’s author, begins by taking the book; then—later—thinks to himself he is being uncollegiate against Heinemann; thereupon asks him, and without so much as checking the veracity of his information, suddenly allows “solidarity” to obtain. It’s more honorable to give 100 pounds to the author of Antichrist than to believe a colleague who was manifestly telling an untruth. I don’t have the least respect for the good morals of these Magyar Englishmen—who could be bona fide Englishmen for all I care (my business is not geography, but moral geography)—who are capable of insulting a man of honor, but incapable of apologizing to him. No! I must say I can’t see any distinction between the sell-you-down-the-river Germans and the my-word-is-my-bond English. It’s not a nice thing to call an author a cheat, because you prefer to believe your lying brother publisher. And [you my] friend and comrade, fourth estate like me, we have no cause to acknowledge these worldly values, which do not even obey the world’s laws. Maybe I am not behaving “sensibly.” But I behave the way I write. And what sort of inconsequence do you expect from a man who has written the Antichrist? I will not allow a lie to stand—and then not because it happens to be directed against me, but because it’s a lie, and because tomorrow it may be directed against others. And it’s an even worse lie if it makes appeal to solidarity or morality or British royal family la-di-dah. And money—I know—is the Antichrist (just like the cinema, which you take under your wing)—but I have never spent more on myself than a bookkeeper. And I work more than ten bookkeepers, and need money for others. That’s the law of my life, and it’s the only way I know.
In practical terms, this Gollancz business has wrecked a year of my life. Mr. Reece was all set to pay me for a year. Maybe the solidarity craze will take hold of him now as well. And for the rest of my life I’ll be tied to a certain publisher whom I don’t like any more—purely because his colleagues showed solidarity. I don’t know what you find to admire in it. It’s legally and morally reprehensible.
You’re going away, and who knows if we’ll ever see each other.
Please try and see that Huebsch pays me for the Antichrist right away—preferably before the first. I’m dying. And—what’s worse—others are dying too. And I’m not at all too proud to ask a second time for the money to be wired. At least with Huebsch that wouldn’t be a psychological error. He should be with you soon. Please, don’t waste a moment, you will really be helping me. (And that’s the only way you have of helping me.) I embrace you, and beg your pardon!
Your Joseph Roth (very sober and very desperate)
1. to others: Hermann Kesten writes, “I was witness on dozens of occasions when Roth gave—for him—considerable sums of money to some needy individual.”
2. from Pressburg: Victor Gollancz was born in London. Ceteris paribus, Roth tends to have it in for Czechs and Hungarians most of all—see his later outburst against Budapest in no. 378—because he blames them for the breakup of the Dual Monarchy. Villains in his books are very often Hungarians.
3. Fischer—S. Fischer the publisher—was born in Lipto Szent Miklos, in present-day Slovakia. Joseph Roth was not born in Radziwillow.
4. Neville Chamberlain (1869–1940)—or Czamberlain?!—was the prime minister of Great Britain from 1937 to 1940.
291. Stefan Zweig to Joseph Roth
11 Portland Place
London W 1
21 July 1934
Dear friend,
of course the setting up of the company1 was a specious business. [. . .] It’s not possible to judge these things from outside. In general, I see only two alternatives: either you don’t go into business with friends, or you only do business with friends you can trust implicitly, like Huebsch.
You chose something like the middle way, which will always be the worst. [. . .] You’re magnanimous and suspicious at one and the same time, which is a bad mixture.
You’re going to have to steer one course or the other, either purely commercial or purely on trust, and the best thing would be if you didn’t take personal charge, but had someone like Kesten work on your behalf. I know how clever you are, but your cleverness is forever being crossed by emotional complexes and points of honor. That’s why you ought to keep everything to do with money separate from yourself, and leave it in the reliable hands of someone you trust. Of course it was idiotic to wire Viking when you knew Huebsch was going to be here in 6 days. [. . .]
I’ll be in touch again when Huebsch is here. I have a lot to get through in my last days in London. From the beginning of August my address will be Salzburg again for a while, even though I won’t be there in person.
Sincerely,
your St. Z.
1. the company: Orcovente.
292. To Stefan Zweig
Nice, 2 August 1934
Dear friend,
I beseech you urgently, because the publisher is pressing, please give me a few apt lines from your work for my Antichrist. I don’t have your books to hand. Or kindly write me something new.
Kesten got the 10 pounds. He gave me none of it. I am torn, so to speak, between shirts and a suit. I’m thinking a shroud would be a useful acquisition.
Unless Huebsch gives me something, I won’t get through September. He’s offering 250 dollars for the American rights, 500 for English and American.
I’m left with 40% of that, i.e., 1,500 or 3,300 French francs, respectively.
Huebsch deducts another 20% from the English rights.
(Gollancz would have given me 100 pounds for the English rights, as you know, but for the Huebsch-Heinemann mess-up. Please don’t call me a complainer again now.)
I’m reconciled to it now, by the way, I’m happy to atone for the mistakes of others—if only I knew how I’m supposed to write the novel. Of course you’re right, I mustn’t write so quickly, especially not now, when I’m so exhausted.
But what else can I do?
I have another 6,000 francs to come from de Lange.
Even without a family, I couldn’t possibly stretch such a sum so that I could write a novel on it, in the requisite peace and quiet.
Reece has been frightened off, and he wanted to pay me for a year. He has gone to Berlin, by the way, and doesn’t write me from there, only briefly, to say that he begs your pardon. He had had to leave suddenly, and hadn’t been able to visit you.
Well, what do I do?
You’re right in everything you say about me.
But that applies to my general errors, and not my specific plight during these hours. Even if we assume I could correct my general errors constitutionally, so to speak, then I can’t do it now, not when I don’t know what next week will bring: bread or dead.
There’s no sense in thinking about generalities when the particular situation is as acute as mine is now.
You’re thinking strategically, like a general, I’m thinking tactically, like a lieutenant. You’re right, like a good general. And, like any good general, you don’t pay any attention to the tactical details, any one of which could make the difference between life and death for me.
I hope this letter still reaches you in London. You won’t be going to S.1 now.
I implore you urgently for a reply. (NB please note first sentence.)
Sincerely,
your Joseph Roth
1. S.: Salzburg.
293. Stefan Zweig to Joseph Roth
[postmarked: London, 4 August 1934]
Dear friend,
just got your letter. Please inquire, Erasmus should have arrived at the Foyot long ago, everyone else has gotten it and confirmed. Huebsch will do his best for you, I can only repeat that the prospects in America are not so good as they were two years ago. Today I am leaving for Switzerland, where I will see if I’ll have to go to Salzburg for a day or two at most, I’m engaged in breaking up the household. I have another three months’ work on a book. Huebsch will visit you in Nice! Or meet him in Sanary!1 I’m off in half an hour. Greetings from your fully packed
St. Z.
Write to Salzburg—everything will be forwarded from there.
1. Sanary-sur-Mer, a fishing village near Bandol and Toulon in the south of France, was to become the headquarters, so to speak, of the German literary exiles, who remained a riven bunch. W. H. Auden, the son-in-law of one of them, Thomas Mann, speaks of “‘the malicious village of exile.’”
294. To Stefan Zweig
10 August 1934
Dear friend,
excuse the paper, I’m writing in a boutique.
The Erasmus finally came, and I read it right away.
It’s the noblest book you’ve ever written. It’s the biography of your mirror image—and I must congratulate you on your mirror image. It’s wonderful when I think that one and the same person has written on Fouché and Erasmus!
Very noble. The style “sobre,” as simply and precisely as you’ve ever written.
Very clever and deft, your opposition of Luther and Erasmus.
Clever the way the bulk of history is left in the background, and so to speak the aroma of events alone is described.
Spiritualized history.
Very moving, the ending quite shattering, the handling of the last 3 pages exemplary.
When I saw that you wouldn’t get my letter in London any more, I copied out a few quotations from Erasmus for my Antichrist.
If you want to give me more lines besides, please send them directly to de Lange.
It’s very urgent.
(Damrak 62, Amsterdam.)
No sign of Mr. Huebsch.
He’s no good to me anyway. I won’t be able to finish the novel.
I’ll say no more at this point.
Please confirm safe arrival of letter.
God knows whether it’ll get to you.
Warm embrace and congratulations.
Your old J.R.
295. To Carl Seelig
c/o Hermann Kesten
119 Promenade des Anglais
Nice
11 August 1934
Dear Mr. Carl Seelig,
I’m very late in replying to your letter, please excuse me! I don’t even have any particular grounds: it’s just that having been one of the most punctual of men, I have become dilatory. I’m in a bad phase, demoralized by poverty, I have no strength left, I am rebelling against myself, my skepticism is stronger than my faith, I’m, so to speak, in no good skin. You wrote far too kindly about my Tarabas. Thank you. Any praise I get is more like an advance to me than a royalty. And following ancient habits, I rate advances more than I do royalty payers.
Did you get my Antichrist yet?
Your rather reduced, but very grateful
Joseph Roth
296. To Blanche Gidon (written in French)
Nice
20 August 1934
Madam and dear friend,
thank you for your postcard! I have no news, just the perceived impossibility of writing. Austria is deeply worrying to me. I am now brouillé1 with the Austrian monarchists. They are happy to let time go by, keep the emperor at a distance—me, I am his only subject. You must recall the poor young man in King in Exile by Daudet?2—And apart from that? My finances are going from bad to worse. Those Kiepenheuer fellows have tricked me and fleeced me. I can’t burden you with these difficult and disgusting things. In a word: they’ve cost me almost 18,000 francs. They bought up my rights from Kiepenheuer for 5,000 marks. My American publisher paid them directly. I have no say whatever. Then there were the other publishers: the English, the Hungarian, the Italian, etc. In the end I decided there’s no point in hopeless court actions. At least I am free at the present moment. But how do I finish a book by the 1 October? I’m in need of a miracle. And I’m too much a believer not to know there are no miracles in these matters. Write to me, my dear, Mr. Kesten is leaving, and I’m not sure how much longer I’ll be able to stay here. How is Mr. Gidon? Is he with you? Have you seen Mr. Poupet? Mr. Zweig has written to tell me he saw a full account of Radetzky in the Matin, did you know that? And the Antichrist? Did you get a proof copy?
Your friend, the old
Joseph Roth
Give me the dates of your return to Paris, if you will.
c/o Kesten, 119 Promenade des Anglais.
1. brouillé: (French) literally “scrambled”—oeufs brouillés are “scrambled eggs”—but here used in the sense of “through” or “on the outs with.”
2. Daudet: Alphonse Daudet (1840–1897).
297. Stefan Zweig to Joseph Roth
[end of August 1934?]
Dear friend,
yes, friend, thank you so much! It was a clever essay and not malicious in its technical observations, but what happens to these things is best shown by the enclosed: the local Nazi rag grinning under its ban, and endlessly happy at the way that in 1934 the Jews are still beating each other up. If only the émigré press would finally understand that if it hails the Reichswehr as a potential savior (two months ago), it kills it as a real factor. If it so much as suggests Schleicher as successor, it murders him. If it attacks an intellectual ally, even from the highest or deepest standpoint, it paves the way for Blut und Boden1 literature. But it was ever thus. I personally have reached my personal limit: to be attacked from left and right at once, just like Erasmus. Don’t believe I was so stupid as not to realize that in advance: that’s precisely where the courage of such a book lies. I’m not surprised, just irked. I understand Marcuse2 completely, just from the tactical point of view, I wish he hadn’t.
Did you read the wonderful story about the police chief of Berlin confiscating the “Burning Secret” (apparently by Stefan Zweig)? Of course not my novella,3 but some Communist leaflet that was sold under the same title.
I have a lot to report to you, but as soon as I have a hand to write with, I’ll be off to Salzburg tomorrow, we’re expecting Toscanini,4 and then on. On 10 September I’ll be in London.
Sincerely your
St. Z.
Till soon!
1. Blut und Boden: literally “blood and soil”—the sort of violently patriotic writing that was acceptable to the Nazis.
2. Ludwig Marcuse had reviewed Zweig’s Erasmus on 18 August in the Neues Tagebuch, and accused Zweig of urging the exiles to remain neutral in their writings.
3. my novella: Burning Secret, an old story by Zweig, published as Erstes Erlebnis, 1914.
4. Toscanini: Arturo Toscanini (1867–1957), the Italian conductor, who was vehement in his opposition to Fascism, chose exile in London and New York, in contrast to other prominent Italian musicians, like Victor de Sabata, the conductor of La Scala, who chose to remain in Italy despite being half Jewish.
298. To Stefan Zweig
[Nice] 26 August 1934
Dear friend,
from my enclosed reply to M.1 you will glean more or less what he replied to my first letter.
Oh, I know the whole thing isn’t that important! But there are times when I take it seriously, and think it may even prove decisive.
Maybe those times are right.
Then I can get rather beastly—and I’m not sorry for instance that Ossietzky is in a concentration camp. Think of the damage he would do if he were still at large!
I hate those types. And if I have some feelings for the odd one among them, as with Marcuse, I never trust them.
My grandfather—and every other Jew—used to say: if a fool throws a stone into a garden, a thousand wise men will be unable to remove it.
Be careful, my dear friend, in friendly conversations. It might be good to be a little standoffish, just out of caution—next time. As an individual, Marcuse is fine. As a type he’s unbearable. As an individual, he has a thousand virtues, as a type: jealousy, [. . .] etc.
Write soon! Huebsch hasn’t written, I don’t know where to reach him, I’m desperate.
Sincerely,
your old loyal Joseph Roth
I kiss your wife’s hand. (It may be she is very unhappy herself—she appears so to me.) Forgive me.
1. M.: Marcuse.
299. To Ludwig Marcuse
26 August 1934
Dear Marcuse,
here in black and white are the consequences of your cleverness: the Austrian press is having a field day with your article on Zweig. I quote, under the title “A Traitor” the following: “Stephan Zweig is an epicure——The Jewish émigrés take no pleasure in Zweig’s Erasmus. Their spokesman is Ludwig Marcuse, who in the latest number of the Tagebuch, lays into Zweig———It’s possible to understand the émigrés’ rancor against Zweig——perhaps Marcuse and his party are even prepared to believe the rumor according to which Zweig shows his manuscripts to a professor, and has him improve his German for him . . . Sic transit Gloria mundi.”
I’m just quoting a couple of sentences. Now, think of the damage you’re doing! What it means for Zweig, to have that appear in Austria, in cozy little Salzburg, where he has so many enemies among the German Aryans! Think of what you’ve done to yourself! The spokesman for the Jewish émigrés. Querido is mentioned in the German article. Imagine Landshoff’s embarrassment! Imagine the harm to yourself! Then tell me again that I’m just sensitive, and write pretty sentences, and I’m the one who’s doing the damage. Come on, Marcuse, admit it, in this world, you’d have done better to listen to me. In the other, you could be right, if God is as intransigent as you are. There’s no disgrace in being stupid now and again. You know how often I am. You know a lot about me. Now admit that in these matters, I’m cleverer than you!
In your article, which I have in front of me, I read: “. . . just as Christianity averts its gaze from the world . . .” and you write to me: “Where did I say that Christianity averts its gaze from the world?” Have you lost your marbles? Can you no longer remember today what you wrote yesterday?
Are you a writer or aren’t you?—If you tell me I write “pretty sentences” and am a stickler for good grammar, then you must know that these qualities are a direct expression of reason, perhaps the only reason in the world!
Dear Marcuse, I know you have accumulated much wisdom, and you have a lot of character, but you direct your gifts against the world, and against yourself, like weapons. They bring you no profit. I tell you again you are the eternal Protestant, just as there is an eternal Jew. You refuse to bow to the laws of the world, you are like a guest behaving badly in the house of his host. You are subject to bad influences, without knowing it. Believe me, I can feel it.
The fact that Strauss’s operetta1 was banned you take as proof that Zweig couldn’t have been published by Insel. And you even say “even.” What use to you is all your philosophy if you can’t get your head around simple logic: Strauss is the president of the Musikkammer. His operetta therefore has official status in the Third Reich—a book by Zweig is not “official.” And you say: how can Zweig appear in the Insel when EVEN Strauss isn’t performed! Oh, the logic of it!
(Furthermore, I know that Strauss personally struck Goebbels as suspiciously Jewish. He is said to have Jewish relations.)2
What to do now, I mean, in practical terms? Will you write to the Tagebuch, to tell them I will write a reply to your article? Is it right to expose Zweig to attack from the nationalist press? Undefended? Betrayed? Do I reply to you in another paper, and thus give the Nats even more ammunition? Are we to fall out over this? Zweig’s house, family, descent, and passport, are all Austrian. Am I to abandon him to his vilifiers there? Or do you want to take issue with these anti-Semitic attacks? Then you will have to say clearly that you have been misunderstood. I don’t know which is most sensible:
a. either I defend you and Zweig together against the Aryans. Or
b. you admit your words lent themselves to misinterpretation. All I want is for our enemies to have least occasion to crow.
Don’t underestimate them. They are concerned with everything that happens in our camp:
Only we, unfortunately, underestimate our camp.
Write me a reply—or else come here!
Your old
Joseph Roth
1. Strauss’s operetta: Richard Strauss’s Die schweigsame Frau, libretto by Stefan Zweig.
2. In fact, Strauss was not Jewish, but he did have a Jewish daughter-in-law, whose family he was instrumental in saving during World War II. Toscanini questioned Strauss’s principles, remarking in 1933, “To Strauss the composer I take off my hat, to Strauss the man I put it back on again.”
300. To René Schickele
[September 1934?]
Dear esteemed René Schickele,
we always see each other in the company of many others, and so there are things I’m unable to tell you that I think would interest you. This table where we sit together so often is like an orchestra, in which every musician plays a different tune, or seeks to play, or MUST play. (Perhaps we could meet at quieter times, if it suited you. Mornings in the Monod,1 perhaps.)
What I have to say to you is that the Habsburgs will be coming to Vienna soon, and that the Wittelsbachs are closely involved with them. The Catholic clergy in Germany, at least in Bavaria, is informed. The Protestants in Austria have swung around from supporting the National Socialists to supporting Austria. Evangelical pastors in Austria have even switched sides. Perhaps our pessimism is premature, Germany can still be saved by Christ—almost directly—a new wonder for another 1,000 years. Marcu2 is mistaken, like many students of history. A further war is not inevitable.
Sincerely,
Wednesday
Your J.R.
1. Monod: The Café Monnot on the Place Masséna in Nice.
2. Marcu: Valeriu Marcu (1899 Bucharest–1942 New York), Jewish Communist writer.
301. To René Schickele
8 September 1934
Dear René Schickele,
thank you.
“Old Germania” was evidently a hope. Not even Heine was free of that optimism.
In the latest issue of the Sammlung another scandalous piece on the majesty of Russia. Criminal stupidity!
It makes me sick with fury.
Sincerely
Joseph Roth
302. To Stefan Zweig
Nice, 9 September 1934
Dear friend,
not a squeak from Huebsch. He swore he wasn’t going to drop me.
Now he has dropped me. As of 15 September, I will be without means.
He didn’t reply to my registered letter.
The Antichrist has appeared. With crude misprints.
I don’t know, I don’t know what to do.
You are not such a complete friend either, my friend. I have to tell you that.
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 that 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?
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 draws 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
Monnot
Café Restaurant
Tuesday
[Nice]
Dear friend,
you must forgive me for writing instead of telling you the following. But it’s not easy to say, and those are further grounds for recriminations with myself.
It seems to me that sometimes in your dealings with people, with colleagues in particular, you adopt a stance that is capable of harming you. Innocent, without side, and magnanimous as you are, you make yourself too accessible, you are on too relaxed a footing with the world. I know that none of us is able to see himself at his or her true worth. You, though, underestimate yourself, and I am for absolute hierarchy, externally as well as privately. It’s not good that you are on too intimate terms with shits. In Germany, you almost criminally squandered intimacy and trust. Outside Germany, you seem to me to display the same inclinations. You are wholly unable to deny credit—not me. I allow myself to be rough with people at times. At certain moments, I can be quite brutal, and let the person concerned see how much separates me from him. I don’t stop short of insults. You are incapable of that. That doesn’t mean that you should be familiar with certain people, or allow them to gain the impression of your being familiar with them. You are a prince ès letters—as the French so beautifully put it—and they are little skivvies. I rule out any imputation that I may be speaking to you thus out of personal devotion to you, and from a sort of possessiveness. I have gone into myself. If there was the least possibility of that being the case, I would never have been able to write to you in this way.
Don’t, please, say: well, it’s no skin off my nose. It is skin off your nose. You don’t hear it, but I hear it, what little shits say about you, their envy, their foolishness—and I watch them lying, how honored they are to be on brotherly terms with you, and how they then have to get their own back on you, for the feeling of having been honored. My indulgence works differently. I remain suspicious. I don’t scruple to slap faces either, metaphorically, or—sometimes—actually. But not you. Please, I beg you, be aloof, as you ought to be, and not too democratic.
Now forgive me,
your Joseph Roth
Please destroy this letter.
324. To Blanche Gidon (written in French)
Nice, Alpes-Maritimes
Hotel Imperator
Boulevard Gambetta
15 February 35
Madam and dear friend,
thank you for your kind letter. I venture to enclose these hasty lines to Plon, with the request that you translate them for me. It seems to me that cowardice and fear of going against current politics are hindering them from publishing my Antichrist.
As for my novel, I don’t know what to do. I am working in real panic and anguish. I haven’t had any money from the publisher for two months now. My unhappiness is too great for me to be able to describe it, and I beg you, my dear, also to excuse the typewriter. Mrs. Manga Bell sends you her best wishes. She is terribly unhappy. I don’t know how all this is going to end.
Your old faithful
Joseph Roth
Kindly greetings, please, to Mr. Gidon.
325. To the publishing house of Plon
[Nice, 15 February 1935]
Gentlemen,
the translator of my Antichrist informs me that she has not yet heard from you when you are planning to publish my Antichrist. Since this work has just appeared in the United States and is shortly to appear in England, I ask you to tell me when it will appear in France. My American publisher asks that I inform him of the date.
Respectfully, your humble
[Joseph Roth]
326. To Stefan Zweig
[Nice] 15 February 1935
Hotel IMPERATOR (NB: not Imperial)
Dear friend,
I just received your postcard. I’ve moved, after various complications, without Huebsch’s money it would have been impossible. You were quite right, I’m not cut out for apartment life. It’s the last time I’m going to let myself be drawn into foolish experiments like that.
I can’t write you a detailed letter, of the sort you request, without bursting into tears, in a way you abhor.
My novel is advancing every bit as slowly as I thought it would. It can’t be helped. I am not able to cheat and deceive myself. I tried to in Tarabas, the book failed in literary terms, and didn’t succeed in other ways either. A simple infantryman like me can’t expect to pull off cavalry stunts. The Antichrist was a failure—except in Holland. Both were rushed—counter to my literary rhythm. Now I can’t run the risk a third time, of being slapdash. That would be literary—and physical—suicide. If I remain scrupulous, at least it will only be physical.
And it will be physical, because Mr. de Lange—legally speaking, he has a point—claims he has already paid out too much. It was my fault, for concluding a cheap contract over seven months. All my fault. I acted in the panic that governs most of my life, and from ill-advised affection for the two striplings from the Kurfürstendamm.1 Mea culpa.
Out of panic I have written hurriedly and badly since your departure. It’s worth nothing. Behind each sentence I write, I can already see the sentences of the begging letter I will have to write to de Lange. My pathetic “business correspondence” betrays itself in my prose.
The hotel has given me a little alleviation. Today I rented a small study, to have the illusion of a cell, and so as not to have to sit in the café any more. It even comes out cheaper: ten francs a day, undisturbed by friends checking up on me, and with a bottle of marc thrown in. Tonight I’ll start the second part over again. I have the courage of desperation. (I have only the courage of desperation.)
Still, it means: in spite of my hopeless and panic-stricken position, I am relieved. It’s like having a very high fever, and getting up to go to the toilet. Is that a feeling you know?
I owe you so much, as I always do, in every crisis. You give me confidence, and rescue me from (practically) desperate situations. If Huebsch hadn’t sent me the money, I would have cut my throat in that wretched flat.
I thank you, but what does it mean to thank you? What meaning do thanks have in a situation like this?
I wrote to Huebsch to send me another 100 dollars. It’s no telegraphophilia on my part if I ask you to wire him to send them to me. He only does what you tell him. Not me. (I got the American reviews of Tarabas today. Lots of savagings, with lots of respect.)
I need to know that I will certainly be able to stay alive for another 3–4 weeks, to be able to write. This horrible book—I wish I’d never embarked on that wretched story—must be brought to an end quickly. And I’m so slow! And on top of my slowness, there’s my crippling fear, slowing me down.
If you wire Huebsch, he’ll send me 100 dollars, before the Antichrist flops.
Because it will, in America—and then Huebsch will be grumpy, and not send me any more money.
What should I do? I beg of you. I can be finished in 4 weeks, so long as I know those 4 weeks are in the bag, promise, promise.
Please write back immediately, sincerely,
your old Joseph Roth
1. two striplings from the Kurfürstendamm: Roth’s moody, bitter, and anti-Semitic (anti-Western Jews) description of Landauer and Landshoff.
327. Stefan Zweig to Joseph Roth
Salzburg
Kapuzinerberg 5
16 February 1935
Dear friend,
I’m back, and wanted to get in touch with you right away. Tell me first whether you’ve finished your book, and whether you got my postcard from New York. It made me so happy to see how good your Antichrist looked in its U.S. edition. Mary Stuart is being printed even now, and I can’t wait to have that book behind me (instead of always in front of me), and be able to embark on something new.
Now my dear friend, I have a discreet request to put to you, but please not a word to anyone. You remember how at the time I wrote several letters to Strauss, but—sign of the times—he didn’t get them all. There was one in particular which I sent him registered from Nice, and I would be very thankful if you could apply to retrieve this letter for me from the post office. They’re sure to have the other part of the form in case it did reach him; otherwise, they would have to pay damages. Since I think a public dispute is likely in the affair sooner or later, it’s very important to me (you will understand this) that I have proof of postage. The letter, like the others, will have been intercepted en route. Once again, please be absolutely discreet; I don’t want to have to read about it in the newspaper, which would certainly happen if you were to tell anyone at all about it.
As of the day after tomorrow, I’ll be in Vienna. Sincerely, your loyal
Stefan Zweig
Post receipts enclosed.
328. Albert Einstein1 to B. W. Huebsch
Princeton, N.J., 24 February 1935
To Mr. B. W. Hübsch, The Viking Press Inc., 18 East 48th St., New York City
Esteemed Mr. Hübsch,
I am truly grateful to you for sending me this consoling book2 by a real mensch and great writer. As I read it, I was able to share the pain of a clear and kindly human soul, inflicted upon it by the callousness and spiritual blindness of the present age, and felt myself strangely shriven by the sort of objective invention of which only an artistic genius is capable.
Friendly greetings from your
[A. Einstein]
P.S. Please forward this note to the respected author. You have my permission to use it to publicize the book in any way you see fit.
1. Albert Einstein (1879–1955), physicist.
2. this consoling book: JR’s novel Job, translated by Dorothy Thompson. No American journalist in the 1930s was more steadfast in her opposition to Hitler and her support of the German Jews than Thompson.
329. To Blanche Gidon (written in French)
27 February 1935
Nice
Hotel Imperator
Madam and dear friend,
thank you for your kind letter. Mr. Gidon’s condition1 makes me very sad. So it’s true what people write about suffering being the badge of noble men and great souls! It’s sad, so very sad. I fear that Mr. Gidon may not have enough “faith” to appreciate any “religious” sentiments, otherwise I should have written to him already. But I imagine he is probably very fixed and certain, and I would find myself in the state (give or take) of an abbé chased off by an invalid. Tricky, even, or especially for a friend. At least, my dear, tell Mr. Gidon that I am very devoted to him, and feel very much for him in his suffering. Thank you!
My story will reach you one of these days. Perhaps it’s too long. If so, I’ll send you another one tomorrow, a better one, it seems to me, written in Marseille. That one is short enough to go in the Nouvelles Littéraires. Since my agent hasn’t paid me any money yet, I’m in a truly desperate situation. I can’t wait for things to improve! If M. Lefèvre will publish one of the stories, and pay for it in advance, he can have it. Because—in truth—I’m at the end of my rope. I don’t want to go into details, not at the moment.
I hope Plon really does owe me 3–400 francs. I beg you, my dear, for you and Mr. Poupet to go and cash them.
I’m working 8–10 hours a day. This will be my Waterloo. I’m “finished, finished,” a writer who promised more than he could keep. Such is “a Russian soul.”
I don’t know the story of Wetzlar.
As to the anti-Semitism in those right-wing papers: believe me, my dear, Mr. Blum’s2 brand of it is more dangerous. It’s the Jews—you know I have the right to speak frankly about the Jews—who have introduced Socialism and catastrophe into European culture. “novarum rerum cupidissimi”: that’s the Jews for you. They are the real cradle of Hitler and the reign of the janitors. One shouldn’t always believe that “the Left” is good and “the Right” is wicked. If I was in your shoes, I would talk to Mr. Bailby,3 and show him that blind and vulgar anti-Semitism is not of the “Right.” The Jews have unleashed the plebs. There’s progress! But I’m “philosophizing” too much.
Warm greetings, my dear friend, and thank you, thank you!
Your old and wretched
Joseph Roth
1. Mr. Gidon’s condition: the radiologist Ferdinand Gidon underwent several finger amputations; he eventually died in 1954, a victim of his research.
2. Mr. Blum: Léon Blum (1872–1950), leader of the French Socialist Party. He was several times elected minister president, and was in Dachau between 1943 and 1945.
3. Mr. Bailby: Léon Bailby, an extreme right-wing journalist.
330. To Stefan Zweig
[March 1935]
Dear friend,
while seeing to your business with the post (Strauss) I had occasion to be in your hotel, and there this letter was given back to me; no one had picked it up.
As for S. (whether he ever got your letter or not) I will know more in a few days. The German post hasn’t written back yet, in 8 days. Perhaps it is censorship.
I embrace you,
your Joseph R.
331. To Blanche Gidon
Hotel Imperator
Nice
4 March 1935
Madam and dear friend,
I don’t want to wait for your promised letter to come because I am in the middle of the third section of my book,1 and I have absolutely got to finish it tomorrow or the day after.—Thank you so much for the 650 francs, it’s a real lifesaver, but I need to know for which story I am being paid. Write and tell me, please. Tell me, too, my dear, how Mr. Gidon is faring. Is he calmer in himself? Give him my warmest regards, please.
Yours sincerely (and longing to see you again soon),
Your old Joseph Roth
1. my book: The Hundred Days.
332. To Stefan Zweig
Hotel Imperator
Nice, Alpes-Maritimes
Boulevard Gambetta
6 March 1935
Dear friend,
thank you for your lines, and please excuse the fact that I’m dictating these to you now. It dawned on me that I was being perhaps too demanding of you with my affairs. You probably have lots of other things that need your attention in Vienna. Please tell me whether your mother’s condition is as grave as it seemed to you before.
Please, my dear friend, don’t push me with the novel. I can only write at my own speed. An inadequate book would mean literary and physical suicide for me. A slow book that refuses to be finished is merely physical. I am very industrious these days, and mindful of you.
Don’t be upset if my letters are full of impatience and even irritations. It so happens I live and write in a continual state of confusion.
I send you lots of kind and fond wishes—please write me before you leave for Salzburg.
Yours sincerely
[Joseph Roth]
333. Stefan Zweig to Joseph Roth
[Vienna, March 1935]
Dear friend,
this will have to be brief, I have the final proofs to correct,1 no secretary, and forty phone calls to make, I am frantically busy. You’ll have a letter from me next week, I can’t do anything now, I need to supervise the typesetters at their work.
I’m sorry I can’t help as I’d like to. It’s like this: as long as I’m in Austria, I’m obliged to adhere to the (unusually pedantic) currency regulations, i.e., can’t send funds abroad beyond a certain minimum, and have no funds with Hella at the moment. You must understand, you know I insist on obeying all regulations absolutely to the letter, especially here, so that I can’t have any accusation leveled against me that would mask the earlier injustice done to me. In April, though, it looks as though I’ll be in Italy, and will be better able to act from there.
Dear friend, I don’t have the peace of mind to go through this all with you, the telephone is ringing off the hook—you can have no idea, by the way, how badly off authors are here, how much even small sums mean to them, nor again how many of them get in touch, including a few I would never have expected. It’s ghastly, and I’ll be glad when the book is printed, and I can leave. The arrangement with your wife will be extended with good old Csokor’s2 help, but it will become doubly acute in two or three months; but the only thing that matters now is that you finish the novel, and that’s it. Everything else can be sorted out more easily after that.
One thing, Roth, don’t name figures to anyone but me. You have no idea on what tiny amounts people get by here, and how much resentment it causes when (to them) fantastic amounts are referred to deprecatingly. The newspapers pay 20 schillings for a feuilleton, and people come to blows over royalties. More anon. I am frantic in a way I haven’t been for years, please forgive me.
Sincerely, Z.
Don’t worry about the R.S.3 affair any more. I’ve found what I wanted to know.
1. the proofs: of Zweig’s Maria Stuart (Vienna: Reichner, 1935).
2. Csokor: Franz Theodor Csokor (1885–1968), Austrian playwright and essayist, friend of JR’s.
3. R.S.: Richard Strauss.
334. To Stefan Zweig
15 March 1935
Dear friend,
thank you for your letter. The R.S. business is in the hands of the post now, I can’t do anything about it. I’ll get an answer in a day or two. It’s no extra trouble for me, the wheels are turning.
Forgive me for burdening you with financial stuff. Not because it matters, but to clarify things let me tell you that of course I name sums only to my closest friends, and secondly, that if compelled to by some necessity, I would not scruple to say how much money I need or think I need, even in front of other needy persons or beggars. I myself allow Rothschild to tell me he’s short of a million to develop his goldfields, for instance. Neither in my personal nor my public life is there anything I have to hide, if occasion should demand that I say everything. The consideration that more wretched individuals than I might view my particular wretchedness with envy is not one that I will permit myself to indulge. Even if I had to assume the presence of envy, or resentment, or something of the kind, I would of course still have to speak the truth. (And so would you!) I have written bad books, but never lying books. I can’t and mustn’t, not even in personal life, pay false regard. It’s foolish—however “prudent” it might appear. Besides, even on an objective look and closer inspection, I don’t believe I am any less miserable than others are. My “helpfulness” and my “comradeliness”—horrible words by the way, that need to be encased in quotation marks—you yourself are so familiar with that you would never suspect me of not having such virtues. They are all as natural to me as breathing: giving, needing, and being open about needing.
All this is said for reasons of principle—lest any misunderstandings occur. AT LEAST not between the two of us.
I am working hard, at night, by candlelight, this letter too. Candles are rather stimulating. (The ceiling light is poor here.)
Please, write me something personal to you, that’s what matters.
I embrace you, your old
J.R.
335. To Stefan Zweig
Café de France
21 March 1935
Hotel Imperator
Nice
Dear friend,
here is the R.S. bumf for you. I can’t understand why you don’t write. I am going under, and haven’t the strength any more to explain everything to you. Bad things have happened, Mr. de Lange is ill, I can’t have any more money, I have become Beierle, only without Beierle’s penchant for naughtiness.
Sincerely your
J.R.
Please observe that the receipt is the property of the post office, and you are merely permitted to keep it, but are not allowed, much less obliged to return it. Madness!
336. Stefan Zweig to Joseph Roth
Hotel Regina
Vienna, 29 March 1935
Dear friend,
thank you very much for sending me the receipt. I’m unable to write proper letters, because I had to finish correcting the proofs, and do many other things in between. Pretty much everything has now been seen to. The book1 will be a very handsome object, and in no way inferior to the “Insel” in terms of production standards. I do feel very happy with the choice of Reichner, because he publishes good things, Lernet-Holenia’s2 poems and a lecture by Bruno Walter3 on “the moral force of music.” Someone told me de Lange isn’t as happy with his house as he once was, but perhaps that’s just tittle-tattle, and your new book4 will re-enthuse him. (If only it was finished!) Curiosity is making me impatient, and also for your sake. I so want you to clear your decks again. I’m staying here another week or two, then Budapest for a couple of days, and then away from Austria, either to Italy, or else London, and the next book. We have to work now. If you pay attention to the world, it makes you very melancholy, here too every conversation automatically turns to politics . . . Well, you’ll have my book in a fortnight, and by that time I’ll be able to write you a proper letter, wherever I end up going.
This just as a sign of life, so you don’t go demented at
your Stefan Zweig
1. the book: Maria Stuart.
2. Lernet-Holenia: Alexander Lernet-Holenia (1897–1976), Austrian writer.
3. Bruno Walter (1876–1962), the noted conductor and friend of the Mann family, who emigrated to the United States in 1939.
4. your new book: The Hundred Days.
337. To Blanche Gidon (written in French)
Café de France
Nice
[postmarked: 11 April 1935]
Madam and dear friend,
I’m interrupting my work to make you the following offer: Mr. Schalom Asch (whom you will surely have heard of, as the greatest Jewish writer of our day) would like to be translated into French. He suggests that you translate him (his book Trost des Volkes, published in German in 1934, with Zsolnay), and he will pay you 2,000 francs for the translation. But you must also try and find him a publisher, Plon for example. Schalom Asch is the “classic” among contemporary Jewish authors, the successor to PEREZ,1 “the grandfather” of non-Hebrew Jewish literature. Schalom Asch—who is my friend, and is not at all Left—is looking for a French publisher. Do you think Plon would do it, my dear? (And how is Mr. Gidon? I am very worried about him.) Why have you not written me in such a long time? WHY? Please write back straightaway, and let me know if you would like to translate SCHALOM ASCH for 2,000 francs!
Always your loyal
Joseph Roth
As for me, I will write you properly soon.
Mr. Schalom Asch’s address is:
Lanterne, Nice, Villa Schalom
1. Perez: Itzhak Leib Perez (1851–1915), Yiddish writer and dramatist.
338. To René Schickele
[undated]
Dear dear Mr. René Schickele,
I’d like to see you, but I am horribly busy and even weighed down with my stupid book. This is the first and last time I’ll ever tackle anything “historical.” Devil take it—in fact, I think it was the Antichrist in person who got me into it. It’s improper, simply improper to want to form existing, historical events all over again—and it’s disrespectful too. There is something godless about it—only I can’t quite say what.
Please, come soon. And, for “practical reasons,” before S.Z. goes to America.
Thank you so much for the beautiful Klopstock.
Sincerely your
Joseph Roth
339. To Erika Mann1
[Spring 1935]
Dear Madam,
I want to thank you for the wonderful evening in your theater.2 I feel I should tell you that you do ten times as much against the barbarians as all we writers put together. I am a little ashamed, but also powerfully encouraged. I thank you, and kiss your hand. Your humble
Joseph Roth
1. Erika Mann (1905–1969), actor, writer, rally driver, daughter and later amanuensis of Thomas Mann.
2. evening in your theater: from 1933 to 1936, Erika Mann ran the anti-Fascist Peppermill cabaret in Zurich, in which she appeared, with Therese Giehse, Klaus Mann, Sibylle Schloss, and others. For a vivid description of the troupe and its ambience, see Wolfgang Koeppen’s novel A Sad Affair, first published in English in 2003.
340. To Blanche Gidon
Hotel Bristol
Vienna
26 May 1935
Madam and dear friend,
don’t be surprised you haven’t heard from me of late. I suddenly had to leave Amsterdam for Paris,1 on account of my wife. I am having awful days here. I am very, very unhappy. It’s an awful thing the way the calamity keeps overtaking me.
Sincerely, your old
Joseph Roth
Please remember me fondly to Mr. Gidon
1. Paris: recte, Vienna.
341. To René Schickele
13 June 1935
Dear, esteemed Mr. Schickele,
now I “really” am leaving, and I’m sorry we didn’t see each other first.
You were wrong: my chance meeting with your son an hour after my return doesn’t “prove” at all that I wasn’t going to call on you.
The fact that you are capable of believing something of the sort “proves” rather that you harbor suspicion of me “in the depths of your soul,” which is something I deeply regret.
It probably was unmannerly of me to leave Nice without saying goodbye to you. But I had to leave in a hurry, and I knew that I would be back. It is NOT TRUE to say that I was ever indifferent to you, not even for a moment.
I am too conceited, and too clever, to bother with lying. I would be really sorry if you still thought otherwise after this letter. I like you very much, the writer especially, “the human being” I wasn’t able to “get to know,” possibly through my own fault, possibly through yours as well. Kiss your lovely wife’s hand for me,
Sincerely, your
Joseph Roth
I am going to Marseille, then to Paris.
342. To Blanche Gidon (written in French)
Dégustation Cintra
Marseille
17 June 1935
Hotel Beauvau
Dear friend,
as I didn’t think I’d be back in the south again, I had my mail forwarded to Paris. But I didn’t get your letter at the Hotel Foyot. Was your second letter mailed to the Foyot as well? If it’s anything urgent, then please write to me here at the Beauvau, express. I will be in Paris at the end of the week. Unfortunately, I have to go to Amsterdam again. It’s a difficult thing to explain in a letter. I have a ghastly thing going on in Vienna, over my wife. I have taken steps to start to divorce her, which is horribly difficult, like everything in that area. Mrs. Kolb probably heard of my return from Mr. Schickele. It’s barely a week ago now. Between you and me, it’s starting to bother me. It’s like a hornet’s nest, this agitation among the “émigrés,” these letters, this noise, this tittle-tattle. Mr. Schickele has adopted an attitude toward me that’s simply incomprehensible—that’s the kindest way I can put it. Mr. Kesten too. All these gents are starting to view me with something approaching hatred. And I’ve done my best for them. It’s not my fault that Schickele sent Fischer a telegram after Hitler’s takeover—nor am I responsible for the lack of success of his books. Even Annette Kolb has something against me. I know I’m “uncomfortable” because I have no truck with “compromises” with Germany. And I mean to do all I can to remain just as unyielding as hitherto, and to fight those others who want to “understand everything,” basically because they’re cowards, JUST COWARDS, with their “profound humanity.” In fact, it’s profound cowardice.
But we’ll talk before long.
All yours, loyally,
Joseph Roth
343. To Blanche Gidon (begun in French)
Hotel Beauvau
Marseille
20 June 1935
Dear friend,
forgive me for writing to you in German, it’s too difficult to explain otherwise:
First of all, I want you not to think for a moment that I’m angry with you. I’m just sad. Because while it takes me a very long time to get used to a human being, once I have, it’s equally impossible for me to detach myself from him. After I had done so much that was disagreeable to you, and you continued to give me proof of your friendship, I felt doubly beholden to you. You knew that, and you would also have known that thenceforth, come what may, I was bound to remain loyal to you, and that there was between us something resembling a comradeship-in-arms. Allow me to tell you that you tried to sacrifice your sensitivity to this comradeship a little too quickly. Mr. Gabriel Marcel, to whom I spoke quite openly about your mistakes in the translation of the Radetzky March, would have understood quite clearly that you couldn’t have given up the translation of my Antichrist without my agreement. Mr. Gabriel Marcel is sensitive and clever, he would have understood. You, though—as the Germans say—threw your rifle in the corn, and to some extent it was my rifle too. Why the haste, when the book has been waiting for long enough? I am responsible to my French readership. And I would have revised the translation with you, with Marcel, and perhaps with some other writer. As it is now, I am open to chance. All this I tell you as your friend, and as your true friend. On Saturday I’ll be in Paris. Can I see you and Mr. Marcel? I’ll be staying at the Foyot, for 2 days.
Give my best to Mr. Gidon.
I kiss your hand,
your old Joseph Roth
344. To Blanche Gidon (begun in French)
[July 1935]
The very unhappy Joseph Roth
greets you, Madam and dear friend, with all his heart, and asks you please to come and see him.
I am very unhappy. Please don’t let it show, my dear friend!
My best to Mr. Gidon
345. To Blanche Gidon
[postmarked: Paris, 13 July 1935]
Dear friend,
you probably won’t have understood why I was so sad yesterday. Something terrible had transpired shortly before, and I wasn’t able to cancel our meeting.
Please tell Mr. Gidon for me.
Sincerely, and till soon. I’ll tell you about it.
Your old J.R.
I’m writing away from home, and have only envelopes1 with me.
1. This note was scribbled on a Hotel Foyot envelope.
346. To Félix Bertaux
Hotel Foyot
Paris
15 July [1935]
Dear friend,
I’ve been here for two weeks. You haven’t replied to two letters of mine from Marseille and Nice. Would you at least care to see me?
Ever your old friend
Joseph Roth
347. To Stefan Zweig
24 July 1935
Hotel Foyot
Paris 6e
My dear friend,
your dear letter, which confirms you almost as much as it shakes me, will not be put off. I am therefore replying to it straightaway, I’d be grateful if you did the same with a couple of lines to confirm arrival of this one. Of late, lots of mail seems to be getting lost in Germany.—Maybe you’re right in saying that you were unable to take the steep fall that Romain Rolland did.1 It’s a plunge into darkness. But you’re not right when you describe my defensive fury as an aggressive hatred. That’s not well thought out by you, who are supposed to know me well. That I, Yossl Roth from Radziwillow, am defending Germany with all its past glories is perfectly clear to me. My Jewishness never appeared as anything else to me but an accidental quality, like, say, my blond mustache (which could equally well have been brown). I never suffered from it, I was never proud of it. Nor is it the fact that I think and write in German that bothers me now—but the fact that 40 million people in the middle of Europe are barbarians. I share this sorrow with quite a lot of other people, including most of the remaining 20 million Germans, inasmuch as these things can be quantified. I believe in a Catholic empire, German and Roman, and I am near to becoming an orthodox, even a militant Catholic. I don’t believe in “humankind”—I never did—but in God, and in the fact that mankind, to whom He shows no mercy, is a piece of shit. (Though of course, I hope for his mercy.) “Palestine” and “humankind” have been repulsive to me for a long time. All that matters to me is God—and, for now, on earth, in the area where I am permitted to labor and discharge my duty, a German Catholic Empire. I will do all in my feeble powers to bring about a Habsburg return. I don’t want to “convert” you to my persuasion, because I have too much respect for you. But I don’t want you to go imputing hatred and aggression to me, as you do to the Weltbühne of miserable memory, and the “émigrés.” Mine is not hatred, but righteous fury. And I will be proved right, because Hitler won’t last more than another year and a half, and then, slowly but surely, we shall have a new German Empire.
You see, my dear friend, you believed in “humankind,” and, had you been as foolish as your “maitre” Rolland, you’d still be a Bolshevik now. But you’re more sensible than that, you can’t be a Communist. But nor do you wholly and firmly believe in God. Therefore you are in despair. Only God can help you. And free you from the errors of your ways, some of which you even see yourself.
(I don’t know what to do with my two novels. I am completely exhausted, in terms of writing. My two books: I don’t know, I’m fiddling around with the first of them, it’s a scandal, not a work of literature. I’ll write you about it under a separate cover.)
You’re not right when you say we’ve all been driven mad. There is a balance in the world between madness and logic. At any rate, we, who have been given the sword of reason, have noright to throw it away.
The Habsburgs will return. Please don’t deny what’s all too evident! You see I’ve been right thus far. Austria will be a monarchy. I’m right. I foresaw the madness and excess of Prussia. Because I believe in God. And you, you didn’t see it, because you believe in “humankind,” a concept so unclear that by contrast with it, you could think to meet God on the nearest street corner.
Of course friendship is our true home. And you may be sure I will observe it more faithfully than anyone else.
Sincerely,
your old Joseph Roth
1. the steep fall that Romain Rolland did: (Stefan Zweig’s admired friend) Rolland went to Moscow in 1935, visiting Gorki, and publicly approved Stalin’s show trials of Zinoviev and Radek, etc. By pointing this out in such a way, JR hopes to keep his friend from becoming a Soviet sympathizer—even once removed.
348. To Blanche Gidon
[Paris] 7 August 1935
Dear friend, dearest friend,
I am full of anxieties and very unhappy. I cannot write. One catastrophe after another befalls me.
But I love you dearly, and Mr. Gidon too. Believe me!
Your old Joseph Roth
349. To Stefan Zweig
Paris
Hotel Foyot
14 August 1935
Dear friend,
thank you for your kind letter. Of course your plan1 is completely right. But you should bear in mind the following: (a) there are various efforts in hand to bring together Hitler’s enemies. The spectrum goes from the Catholics to the Communists, in Paris alone I have had communications from 3 different sides. A few “Leftists” would like to use me as a “bridge” to the Catholics. Even though all these attempts remain purely political, they would disrupt the much more measured campaign which you have in mind, through simultaneity, if nothing else; (b) this campaign must not be restricted to the circle that decks itself in the following adjectives: liberal, freethinking, Jewish, cosmopolitan, or socialist. These people have been quiet for too long, some of them have even thrown in the towel. For the last 2 months it has been clear to the world that Catholicism alone is taking the fight to the Third Reich—I don’t know if this view is correct, but there it is. You were surely right not to indulge in petty polemics. That’s not at issue here. Where you were wrong was in the matter of restraint. With the vae victis that you blurted out, with the resignation, in other words, that you showed all too clearly. You were not alone there, since Thomas Mann and others of your stamp have adopted the same position, resignation has infected most thinking people, who had pinned their hopes on you (plural). Since then, the Communists have taken up the fight, admittedly in their familiarly stupid way; and, more cleverly, of course, the Catholics. Bear in mind the not unjustified view in those affected, that all those listed above, the liberals et al., are themselves partly to blame for Hitler, then you will see that an appeal, however well prepared, exclusively from these, now, after their long silence, is likely to provoke a certain muteness of response. They have been kept waiting for too long. Too long those who embodied the “world’s conscience” were themselves mute and expectant. When they now, finally, find their voices, the others will be silent. Quite apart from the fact that I personally don’t have much time for the so-called world’s conscience. The world never had a conscience, if you ask me. The world had phases of clemency and inclemency. (You know my believing skepticism.) (c) So far as Mr. Weizmann2 goes, he is certainly one of the most genial men of our day. (Once, when the FZ wanted to send me off to meet him, on the occasion of his visit to Frankfurt, and I was standing in for the feuilleton editor, I sent Mr. Kracauer instead. I didn’t want to expose myself, journalistically, to such an inspired nationalist.) (Personally, I’d have done it happily.) A Zionist is a National Socialist, a National Socialist is a Zionist. I willingly believe, I’d even assert that Mr. Weizmann is “more than just a Jew.” But his role locks him into Judaism, and into its national form. I’m sure he is large-hearted and generous enough that he shouldn’t be confused with a “Nationalist.” I know: he’s not merely a Jew. But his name bears the association: Jewish nationalist. Clever Weizmann himself suggests: foolish Einstein.3 (I mean of course: politically foolish Einstein.) I am of course aware of W’s organizational genius. But for the thing that you’re planning, his organization is useful only if he remains anonymous. Don’t forget that the Jewish boycott has collapsed; that the Zionists—unlike all the other Jews—are in some proximity to the Nazis; that there are relationships between them of all kinds; that even sympathies between them exist, as might be expected among nationalists of various stripe; but that the most powerful urge of the Nazis is anti-Semitism, because Jews are not liked anywhere, and, if there were to be a world conscience anywhere it wouldn’t be roused by Jews; if a goy is a friend to Zionists, then it will be out of anti-Semitism. Whereas if we, you and I and the likes of us, support Zionism, it’s because we’re human beings, not Jews or non-Jews. In this point there is no understanding between Mr. Weizmann and me. (To be concrete, if we were to meet, I would be in his eyes—magnanimity here or there—I would be a “defector.”) I am delighted to be a defector, from Germans and Jews. I am proud of it. As a consequence I am not a defector from the lists of Christians and human beings.
(d) Therefore I fail to understand why you would turn to a brother of the National Socialists, namely a Zionist, never mind how clever he is, in the fight against Hitler, who himself remains just a stupid brother of the Zionists. Maybe he’ll help you protect Judaism. But what I want to do is protect Europe and humanity, both from the Nazis and from the Hitler-Zionists. I don’t care about protecting the Jews, except as the most imperiled advance guard of mankind. If that’s what Mr. Weizmann has in mind, then I will agree to participate, with my feeble strength—which isn’t a manner of speaking.
(e) I am convinced that nothing will have any effect, today, that is drawn up and signed only by the so-called liberals. They have failed, been silent, grubbed for compromises, failed to find them, and lost all credit. The Jewish boycott was another failure. The Social Democracy of the intellectuals has played out, like that of the politicians before them. The only thing that will have any effect is this: an appeal of the kind you are planning, closely worked on with conservatives of all faiths. To be “symbolic”: from Weizmann to Faulhaber.4 The symbolic name of Thomas Mann doesn’t do much any more. From both flanks, the attitude he incorporates, is, if not despised, then at least ignored.—It’s too late! Under certain circumstances, even reflection can be suicide.
(f) Even though I’m in full agreement with you about the absurdity of scattered and improvised polemics in silly and unworthy journals, one mustn’t underestimate the importance of drain-cleaning labors. Hundreds of foreign newspapers take denunciatory material against Hitler from them. Thousands of journalists writing against Germany help themselves from that crap. It’s good, it’s very good. (I myself haven’t been averse to clearing the odd drain.) And I am ready to go on doing it, pro nomine Dei. What’s important—but that will have occurred to you too—is that some foreign names (example: Toscanini) join in from time to time.
(g) Personal: any journey I undertake will have to be thoroughly planned in advance. I’ve got my adopted children5 in Normandy, I’ll have to send my wife there, there’s a whole crazy tangle of complications, but I’ll tell you about it sometime.
I don’t want to interrupt your enthusiasm (so pleasing to me) any more. How long will you stay in Marienbad? Please let me know, right away!
I embrace you sincerely, and kiss the hand of your dear wife.
Your old J.R.
1. your plan: Stefan Zweig had been going to lend his name to a declaration, but later withdrew it. As ever, Roth—see no. 347—wanted to steer his influential and somehow will-less friend.
2. Weizmann: Chaim Weizmann (1874–1952), chemist by profession. Zionist leader, and the first president of Israel, in 1949.
3. Einstein: Albert Einstein.
4. Faulhaber: Michael von Faulhaber (1869–1952), cardinal of Munich from 1921.
5. adopted children: Manga and Tüke Manga Bell.
350. To Stefan Zweig
Hotel Foyot
Paris 6e
19 August 1935
My dear friend,
I am delighted by your splendid élan. (At the same time, I permit myself to send you the most recent number of the Christliche Ständestaat,1 and ask that you read the article about Jews in it; apart from my piece in it, and the note on the Olympics,2 which I also wrote.) Your sensibility may be appalled to see a lousy Jew like me, printed straight after His Holiness the Pope. But please bear in mind that I am very, very much in earnest about all this. I see no other way than the ascent of Calvary, and no greater Jew. I may even go further, if I have the strength, and join an order. Call it a type of suicide if you like. I can see nothing other than the Christian faith (no literature). I don’t believe in this world, and I don’t believe we can achieve anything in it. If God wills, you can shoot with a broomstick, and if He doesn’t not even a cannon will fire.
Of course I’m always at your disposal. But we can do what we like, it will always remain a “manifesto” and I don’t think anyone in the League of Nations (say) has any time for our style or our precision. It will just be another manifesto. And even if the League of Nations—which has never yet stopped a war—were to acknowledge us, will they do anything to hinder a pogrom?—The only practical thing we might achieve would be passports, Nansen passports for the poor refugees I often meet, because I work in the committee here—and the papers are always the worst of it! We’ll protest: fine! Another protest. A good protest! And people will sit up and take note. And then what? What is it we want to achieve?
You underestimate or ignore a couple of major things:
1. the urge to humiliate Jews didn’t begin yesterday or today; it’s been part of the platform of the Third Reich from the very start. Everyone knows that. Streicher is no different from Hitler, and you didn’t need to wait for Streicher to make his way from Nuremberg to Berlin! The founding principle, so to speak, of National Socialism, is none other than contempt for the Jewish race! Why did it take you this long to grasp that? How come you didn’t get it 2 years ago? 2¾ years ago? That bestiality was there from the start. It didn’t suddenly set in a couple of months ago, the vilification of Jews. We were insulted and humiliated from Hitler’s very first day! Why is this protest so tardy?
2. I don’t believe in politicians and their parties, but I see there the last vestiges of power. And if I should succeed in bringing Catholics and Communists together in a campaign within Germany, and outside, I will have done a great deal to combat that hell. Why not? Why not try?
I think, my dear friend, that your enthusiasm is just as abrupt as your previous resignation was baffling, to me anyway. We were insulted and dishonored from the first day of Hitler. Why does it take you this long to wax indignant? But let it go. Better late than never.—But do you really think a manifesto can do something so late in the day? Which of the affected parties would believe us, even if the League of Nations should—which no longer exists, any more than the world conscience? It’s late, it’s all so late. We were insulted and dishonored immediately—do we wait 2¾ years to react to a slap? What were you thinking when Hitler took over? When the Third Reich was proclaimed? Was your sense of honor not just as offended as mine was? Yes, it was!—But you were an optimist, and I wasn’t. That’s why I swallowed hard and took on disagreeable allies.—But there’s no sense in going over all that old stuff. (Whatever you want to undertake, I stand at your disposal.)
Nor should you underestimate the technical difficulties: it will take you 8 days—not 3! It’s terribly hard to draw up a document like that.
Please be careful not to lose weight too fast! That can be very dangerous.
Tell your dear wife, please, that I didn’t get her letter. (Another one lost.) And that I kiss her hand.
Greetings and embraces,
your old J.R.
1. the Christliche Ständestaat: an Austrian monarchist publication, edited by Professor Franz von Hildebrandt and Klaus Dohrn.
2. the note on the Olympics: unsurprisingly, JR opposed the holding of the Olympic Games in Berlin.
351. To Stefan Zweig
Hotel Foyot
Paris 6e
21 August 1935
Dear friend,
I want to set out my personal predicament to you—as so often before. I am compelled to by an alarmingly vulgar letter I’ve received from Mr. L.1 I want to ask you for an effective remedy, namely whether I might not become an author of the Reichner-Verlag.2 Since the sudden death of Mr. de Lange,3 the situation is completely transformed. I owe the de Lange Verlag: (a) the 100 days, which are finished, (b) the “regular”4 which still needs a fortnight’s work or so. Thereafter I am free, and I want to start work on the great “Strawberries” novel5 that I told you about in Nice once—you remember, in the little bistro—which will take me at least a year, it’s the novel about my childhood. Well, for the two books I’m getting paid 4,225 French francs per month till the end of 1935 (all rights are with the publisher). At the end of September I hand in the second book. Thereafter I’m free. But I see my material end looming even before that, because I will have to draw on my advance to pay for hotels, children, schools, and so on. Well, after that coarse letter from L., I will not be able to work with him again, after the present contract has run its course. Following Mr. de Lange’s sudden death, L. is now playing the publisher with me—and it was I who got him the job in the first place; remember, he came to Amsterdam holding a signed promise from me that he had the exclusive rights to my next book. Thereupon Mr. L. got his job, and his salary of 1,000 marks a month. And I got advances. Not to mention the “Orcovente” business that I told you all about in Nice. I enclose his letter with this. Please return it to me. A callow Kurfürstendamm Jew who has done nothing makes so bold as to write to me, who gave him his start in life, in that tone. It’s of a piece with those Jewesses with lacquered nails you see in Marienbad. Please read the letter. The chutzpah of it! Exacerbated by the circumstance that L. let it lie for a long time, before sending it off, and forgot to change the date. The chutzpah was stronger than he was.
So I am facing my end. I don’t want to have anything more to do with those shits from the Kurfürstendamm. My question is this: can you help me secure a home and a contract for my “Strawberries”?
Please answer as soon as possible.
Sincerely,
your old Joseph Roth
1. Mr. L.: Walter Landauer.
2. The Reichner-Verlag: but see no. 321 . . . !
3. Gerard de Lange died on 25 June 1935 of a heart attack; he was just 41.
4. the “regular”: JR’s working title for the book that became Confession of a Murderer.
5. the great “Strawberries” novel: one of Roth’s long-standing novel plans, which he had talked about with Kiepenheuer, etc. See the exquisite fragment in Collected Shorter Fiction. Other material for it found its way into Weights and Measures and The Leviathan.
352. To Stefan Zweig
Paris, 27 August 1935
Dear friend,
thank you for your letter of the 23rd inst. I am not in a tizzy about the letter from [. . .]. In view of the approaching end of the world, it’s no big deal. But even then, in the trenches, staring death in the face 10 minutes before going over the top, I was capable of beating up a son of a bitch for claiming he was out of cigarettes when he wasn’t. The end of the world is one thing, the son of a bitch is another. You can’t put the son of a bitch down to the general condition of things. He’s separate.1
My obligations to Huebsch are not of a contractual nature, but I feel myself bound to them, because we have an agreement: out of gratitude I will give him everything I write that he can use for the rest of my life.
Aside from that, I have no ties that affect the novel “Strawberries, Part I.”2
On 1 December my funds dry up. That’s why I asked you about Reichner. But I’m not asking you to give me any weighty recommendation.
Write and tell me when we can meet!
Your faithful old
Joseph Roth
1. he’s separate: this too gets to the core of JR’s predicament in the 1930s: where to begin!?
2. “Strawberries, Part 1”: is JR teasing Zweig here? Or is he leaving options open for another round of contractual backsliding?
353. To Stefan Zweig
Paris, 1 September 1935
Hotel Foyot
Dear friend,
thank you for having a word with Mr. Reichner. In theory you’re quite right that I should seek to reserve all foreign rights. But if I don’t achieve a certain minimum for German rights that would enable me to live, then what choice do I have but to sell the foreign rights! And how are the German rights ever going to add up to that minimum! I never earn anything above and beyond my advances anyway. I can work out roughly what I would earn from German rights: maybe 1,000 to 1,500 francs per month. And I have a wife and two children. (My legal wife is currently being put up free of charge at an institution in Baden. But the sanatorium [. . .] is asking for 7,000 schillings.) The children can’t live on fresh air. Nor can I stick the whole caboodle in a pokey 1½-room flat either. Even though I’m perfectly sure that none of them will ever thank me for all I have done for them, I can’t abandon them now. In my case, love goes through the conscience, the way with others it goes through their stomachs. What do you mean by “sensible separation”? I can see that my inclination to be swayed by passion—and how rarely does that happen—I mean, my private passion to give in, and not to think about it—isn’t sensible. (A couple of months later, I bump into reality, it feels like an old bruise.) But separation? I don’t separate, I give. And if I don’t do that, I’d have to live alone. In other words, I violate my conscience and abandon the 3 poor people who live off me. I could do it. But it would take me a year to get over such an act, just as it took me two years to get over my wife’s illness, for which I still feel responsible. What else is there I could cut myself adrift from? Is it possible to live more cheaply than I do, 600 francs for two people, at the Foyot? Should I have a house key in my pocket? Live in fear of the taxman? Have dealings with concierges? Cooking smells and “family life”? I have to be free, but I don’t want to be a bad man. I can’t give up either humanity or freedom. In theory you’re completely right, in practice it’s all rubbish. But perhaps you’re right in suggesting that to keep freedom, one has to jettison humanity. (It’s not possible to reserve “a portion” of it, it’s indivisible.)—So what to do?—I would draw it to your attention, my dear friend, that you are able to speak to me from a certain comfort; you may be very clever, very faithful, very friendly, but you have never experienced my sort of collision with reality. You keep forgetting what a light-headed person I am, and you allow yourself to be misled by my experience to suppose that I was sensible. I’m not, not at all, and you persist in thinking I am, and so you write to me accordingly.
I will ask you to bear in mind my practical circumstances:
a. I must and want to leave [. . .];1
b. I still need to be able to live;
how can these two be combined?
Should I start looking around for other publishers?
[. . .]
I don’t want to take any steps until both my books have been handed in. I’ll write to you again, as and when.
My 100 days look as bad in print as they did in manuscript.
The other novel will take me another fortnight.
Sincerely,
your old Joseph Roth
1. [ . . .]: de Lange.
354. To Stefan Zweig
12 October 1935
Dear friend,
thank you for your kind letter. I will have finished my other novel on or around the 25th. (The Regular.) Then I will have to go to Amsterdam for at least a fortnight, so that I can “impress” my Dutch friends and the press.—My novel The Hundred Days came out yesterday. I’m sending you a copy today. If you would, please confirm arrival of both book and letter.
I’ve put the girl with the nuns for 300 francs a month. The boy in a school (where his Negro uncle works) also for 300 francs. But, as per contract, I am only getting money from de Lange till 1 November. I refuse to enter into a new contract with him. So I don’t know what to do.
I want to and I have to go to Amsterdam after finishing the second book. After that I should like to be alone somewhere for a week, and rest. I don’t know what to do. If I were a hysteric, I would take refuge in illness.
What shall I do? I have nothing to eat—not even anything to drink.
Please give me an answer.
I beg you sincerely, VERY earnestly, please reply immediately to
your old Joseph Roth
355. To Stefan Zweig
Paris
18 October 1935
Please, the stories referred to in this letter will follow immediately.
Dear friend,
do I need to tell you that your telegram and dear letter made me blissfully happy? I have no sense of the novel at all, I couldn’t even bring myself to read the proofs, I’ve hardly opened it since, every word and comma reeks to me of ghastly torments, bills presented by porters and waiters, and sundry other ritual humiliations. I have no idea, perhaps you overestimate it, or I underestimate it, everything’s possible. On top of which, I’m busy with the next book,1 completely engrossed in it. As for sales, etc., I’m not optimistic. The only place I have readers is Holland. In Switzerland I’ve been so far ignored by the leading newspapers. In Austria, I’m between two stools, the reactionaries taking me for a left-wing Jew, and the Lefties for a “renegade.” For German refugees, Heinrich Mann, Feuchtwanger, and Arnold Zweig are all important writers. It would take a miracle, I think, for the book to be a success. In film terms, Mussolini snuck in ahead of me. You don’t film the same stuff twice in two years. So much for my “prospects.”
For the umpteenth time I want to take advantage of your friendship, and ask you to write to your French publishers about the book. I broke with Gabriel Marcel, the editor at Plon, for not publishing Antichrist after he had contracted to do so. It would also help if you could draw the attention of various Swiss and Austrians to the Hundred Days; and write Huebsch about your impressions.
I know I’m taking advantage of you. But I need you too, and I can’t go on living without your help. Literally: can’t go on living. I’ll explain my life to you, shall I? You will believe me that I write with a clear conscience—not even disturbed by alcohol—now that you’ve seen that I have a literary conscience. My dear friend, you surely won’t suppose I’m any more unclear in my personal speech than I am in what I write. I beg you therefore to give this letter the same credence as you would any book of mine. I give you my word of honor that I write letters no less conscientiously than books. And letters to you at that!
That’s why I beg you, my dear friend, to attend to this letter with good will and utter confidence; at least as much as you brought to my book: (I will write numbered headings, for the sake of clarity, and invite you to answer me point by point.)
1. I am not purposing my destruction. Only it so happens that in my case, self-destruction is the same as (my admittedly feeble efforts at) self-preservation. (More of which later.)
2. My material situation is as follows:
a. On 1 November I will be getting my last and final installment from Allert de Lange;
b. I have already borrowed 2,000 francs against this installment; [. . .]
1. the next book: i.e., Confession of a Murderer.
356. To Stefan Zweig
[end of October 1935]
My dear friend,
I thank you from the bottom of my heart. There is no other way of saying this in my vocabulary. Admittedly, 2,000 francs are not enough to save me, but even so, it’s like a convict getting his chains not taken off him, but at least loosened. If they are loosened for two weeks, to me that feels like a scent of freedom, and I can at least look out my cell window. Would you be able to write to Mr. Hella sometime before the 1st?—Tomorrow I’m seeing Mr. Sabatier.1 Thank you for that too, with all my heart.—We’ll see. I have yet to hear anything! I am very much afraid you will be one of just 3 stray individuals who admire my book.2 You will have made a mistake, I fear.
Whether it is a good book or not, I now have enough strength in me to finish the Regular and to go on to “Strawberries.” I could have “Strawberries” finished within a year. What matters to me isn’t so much being able to rest, as being allowed to work in complete peace and quiet. Work under such circumstances is better for me than sanatorium and vacation. Above all I need to be free of the exploitative contracts and humiliating bossiness of Landauer. It was so stupid of me to sign all those émigré contracts, and so sensible of you to steer clear of them. Everybody now resents me for my big advances,3 and they hate me and will ruin my book with their hatred. Hate is even more magically powerful than love.
Why do you think I don’t want to make any promises to you? As your friend and as I believe in God and in your friendship, I promise to stop killing myself if I can have the certainty of being left alive for another 3 months following 15 November. That’s what I drink to forget! Only for that reason, and because instead of 6 or 8 I have to write 15 or 20 pages a day. I have found places for the children costing, all told, 650 francs per month. Perhaps that could be reduced eventually to 300 or so, by special dispensation. My room costs 700 francs per month. I beg you, I beg you, please rescue me. I am doomed, I can’t go on selling myself tout compris, with all subsidiary rights, I can’t wake up night after night from dread of what the morning will bring, the hotel manager, the mail, don’t think when you see me that I live the way I appear, my life is atrocious, atrocious. I slink around like a wanted man, my hands shake and my feet shake, I only calm down a little once I have had a drink. Free me from my trembling and apprehension, if you can, and I will need only beer and wine to write with, not schnapps.—I have another fortnight clear in front of me, and then nothing, nothing thereafter, and I don’t believe my book will be a success, but I still would like to go on living.
I am so sick, forgive me for begging you to confirm that you’ve received this letter. I no longer believe that letters arrive. I am inconsolable if I don’t get word from you, my true, my one true friend! Are you upset with me for some reason? Have you had enough of me?
I embrace you sincerely,
your old J.R.
1. Mr. Sabatier: an editor at Grasset.
2. my book: The Hundred Days.
357. To Stefan Zweig
Paris, 7 November 1935
Hotel Foyot
My dear best friend,
thank you for your dear letter, and for Mr. Hella’s visit. You have no idea how oppressive I find small and tiny improvements; especially as I am only able to secure them from such a good and noble friend as you are, and nowhere else. I know, for instance, as a member of the German Hilfskommittee, who among the writers gets money, and how much. You would be surprised at the names, and the sums, too. These men of thought and imagination don’t have the imagination to picture the hundreds of simple but very valuable people queuing every day for a work card, a piece of paper, a free meal, a paltry sum to appease the hotelkeeper—only for a short time. Perhaps I wouldn’t have the imagination either if I didn’t go over there from time to time myself, even though I can do so little to help. I admit I always go on days when I feel particularly wretched, and then I sinfully gorge myself on the sight of someone skipping out because I’ve slipped him a carnet of bus tickets. They are so hard there with those poor wretches that I need to pull myself together if I am not to burst out crying—and they have to be hard, otherwise there wouldn’t be something for everyone. The office is run by one Mr. Fritz Wolff,1 he’s a hard and kindly man, everybody hates him, I happen to know that he needs pills to help him sleep at night, because otherwise his conscience would keep him up. Thus far, I am almost the only one of the impecunious “artists” who hasn’t accepted support from him. And how could I, even if I wanted to? How could I sit there like that, and receive beggars? One author, who lives in the south of France, got a sizable sum—not knowing I’m on the committee. Then he told me his wife had come into some money, and she went back to Germany, and the net result was the purchase of an automobile on the installment plan. That was a heavy blow to me. I can’t get my head around that.
Well, enough cursing! You won’t strengthen but perhaps lengthen our friendship if you try to order my life for the next 1–1½ years so that I don’t have to fear the next decade. Another 6 months like the last, and I’m certain to be in hospital. I can’t manage it any more, not physically. I can finish my next book by mid-December, and it would be nice if we could be together for once, without one or the other of us working on a book. Well, please be sure to come then, my dear friend.
Your dear wife spoke to the Humanitas Verlag in Zurich2 for me. It so happened my good friend Leites went there too, and he came back with the following terms:
a. 18% royalty
b. 2,000 Swiss francs (in installments)
for a book of stories. I am to answer the Humanitas person3—he seems to be genuinely humane (and well-off) this week still. The only contracts I have outstanding are for the Regular with de Lange, and for 3 stories (with conditional acceptance) with Reece. I have a choice, I can either give him 3 stories or 6,000 francs. I have about 8, and when I’m done with the Regular, another two already sketched out. So, I’m not short of material.—For the reply to Humanitas I only need to know whether there’s any prospect of your getting me publication in England—and what I then do about Huebsch, to whom I feel at least a moral obligation?
He hasn’t written to me yet. Nothing on my book, except a long article in the Basler Nationalzeitung, and a very laudatory advance notice, with excerpt, in the Prager Presse. Not a squeak from the publisher, who hasn’t even started selling. After chivvying me with about 100 letters to finish, it turns out it’s the others who aren’t ready, and he wants to put the whole print run on the market at once. But that of course allows the good publicity to wear off.
Please reply soon, I need to hear that you haven’t forgotten me. How horribly lost I’d be without you.
Thank you, my friend, embraces,
your old J.R.
1. Fritz Wolff: an exiled lawyer, a friend of Roth’s.
2. The Humanitas Verlag was founded in 1934.
3. the Humanitas person: Simon Menzel, who founded the publishing house.
358. To Stefan Zweig
Hotel Foyot
Paris
12 November 1935
Dear friend,
Mr. Paul Frischauer was passing through town yesterday. He promised me to talk to you very soon. He will have told you my idea about Moses Montefiore.1 He is full of optimism, but I have to say I don’t believe in it, at least not in the possibility of my getting hold of money to survive the next couple of weeks.
Also I’d like to ask you to tell me whether you think Heinemann would raise any objections, though of course he doesn’t have an option as such.
You’re quite right about the stories. I’ll try and negotiate accordingly with the gentleman from Humanitas. But whether he agrees is debatable. I would have to pay out Mr. Reece immediately.
Nothing from Huebsch still. Even if he’s contractually bound to de Lange, couldn’t he pay me a little money toward the next novel, he must know by now that I’m industrious and diligent, if not always punctual?
It seems I don’t have much alternative to Humanitas. I can’t stay in the same horrible association with Landauer and Landshoff as hitherto. Please say hello to Joachim Maass,2 if he’s still in London.
I don’t think I can do business with Bermann Fischer. I dislike him personally, because he tried pointlessly and for far too long to compromise with the Third Reich. It’s the same reason I broke off relations with the Frankfurter Zeitung. I don’t see why I should judge Bermann Fischer’s behavior any differently than, say, Heinrich Simon’s.
Dear friend, today’s date is 12 November. If you tell me that we should have a detailed and practicable plan by December or January, please don’t forget that there are 6 or 8 weeks till then. It’s a long time to be writing, in such a pickle. I don’t know how I can get through such an interval without taking the Humanitas offer. I’d rather sell a couple of stories and live, than sign a contract that may be more beneficial to my reputation—but only once I’m dead.
Don’t worry about my drinking, please. It’s much more likely to preserve me than destroy me. I mean to say, yes, alcohol has the effect of shortening one’s life, but it staves off immediate death. And it’s the staving off of immediate death that concerns me, not the lengthening of my life. I can’t reckon on many more years ahead of me. I am as it were cashing in the last 20 years of my life with alcohol, in order to gain a week or two. Admittedly, to keep the metaphor going, there will come a time when the bailiffs turn up unexpectedly, and too early. That, more or less, is the situation.
What you say about the attempt to replace the planned manifesto makes me sad. Even at the time I thought the manifesto was pointless. Even more pointless is replacing it with something else. Basically, the Jews are small and petty. Only the great reflection of Jehovah sometimes lets them appear generous and magnanimous. At the decisive moment, their courage fails, and they run away. I don’t blame them for it, you understand, my dear friend, weaklings are always bound to run away at the decisive moment. I am just trying to save you from an undertaking that could end up as a bitter disappointment to you. I have completely stopped believing that any undertaking involving more than two like-minded individuals could be the least use anyway. The collectivism of the few isn’t going to cut much ice against the collectivism of the many. A couple of individuals have as much chance as anyone against the madness that results from the collectivism of the world today. One would have to organize a sort of guerrilla war of decent people. You wrote perhaps truer than you knew when you said: “If only it would come off, more or less.” That’s a form of words. It’s very apparent that you have nothing beyond a vague hope. Things don’t come off, “more or less,” they come unstuck.
It’s too late is all it is. Back then when the great shit started, a great and united front of decency might have achieved an extraordinary turnaround in no time. But intellectual forces fail, for instance the Vatican. It would have made a decisive impression on Europe, and on the League of Nations, if the Holy Father had said openly and courageously, as befits a pope, that he forbade all support for an Italian war of conquest. But today’s pope is to Christians what Thomas Mann is to Nobel laureates, and Bermann Fischer is to publishers, and Gottfried Benn3 to doctors, and Rothschild to rich Jews.
I would beg you, my dear friend, not to fritter away your strength in some collective; it only has a value when it is alone.
Forgive me these rather lengthy disquisitions. But I had to tell you, and I would have written in far greater detail, had I written by hand. It costs me too much time.
Please answer as soon as you are able.
Sincere embraces
[Joseph Roth]
1. Moses Montefiore (1784–1885), English philanthropist, whose early support of Palestine is considered influential in the founding of Zionism. Roth was thinking of writing an essay or book on him.
2. Joachim Maass (1901–72), German writer, went into exile in the United States in 1939, became professor at Mount Holyoke College, biographer of Kleist.
3. Gottfried Benn (1886–1956), doctor, essayist, and poet.
359. To Stefan Zweig
16 November 1935
Dear friend,
you’re probably right with your doubts about the Montefiore. If I get only 100 pounds as advance, there’s no point. According to Frischauer’s account, that was “salvation.”
No, it’s not your tone that’s “harsh,” but your argumentation—generally correct and even faultless—but here not fitting the case. You can use any tone you want with me, whatever tone happens to suit you, any one; it’s almost absurd to think that I might misunderstand your tone. All I sense there is a pedagogy that won’t quite fit me, an attempt to influence me in a way that’s all too “logical” and inflexible.
I can’t come to London. I couldn’t stand London. I detest the maritime and Protestant world. I hate the stiff collars and that deceitful “Gentlemen!” I would get sick there inside 3 days. There wouldn’t be any point. I wouldn’t be able to work there.
Since I’ve begun to write, I haven’t been able to work without an advance. It’s a great sin, but an even greater one is the suicide of writing nothing at all. I am now 41 years old. For 15 years I ate dry bread. Then I ate bread and butter. Then there was the war. Then ten more years of bread. Then there were the advances. Journalism. Revolting work. Humiliation. 16 books. “Success” only in the last 5 years—associated with personal unhappiness, and therefore invalidated. Loans and being swindled. Hitler. All the time looking after other people.
I can’t live on dry bread any longer. (I eat almost nothing as it is.) I can’t live in a village. People who order their lives by their income, at least have an income. The least of my income was always my advances. And then I fail to see why they had to be so small. Humility has nothing to do with economizing myself to death, which is a false economy. No one lives as economically as I do. A man in a cell is hardly as lonely as I am, sitting in a café to write. I don’t need seclusion. I am secluded. Go tell a snail to get itself a house in the country.
What use is it to me if I run away with a guilty conscience? With my work? I’m always working, everywhere I go, so long as my conscience is clear. I can’t work if I’m on the run.
How am I to live without an advance? Should I go to the baker, and ask him for an advance, instead of the publisher? Is it better, or more moral, if the cheese seller sends me threatening letters, instead of de Lange? Where exactly do you think I should economize? Most people who don’t drink spend their money on food. What’s the difference. Or on women; or gambling. That’s right: “this is what I have, and I’ll cut my cloth to fit.” But I don’t have anything. What cloth am I going to cut?
If I had ever had anything, it would never have occurred to me to cut my cloth according to what I need. But as it is I don’t have anything, I never had anything.
I am not resisting, I see everything perfectly clearly. Everyone has his mistakes. I want to live in such a way that I can still bear my mistakes. They are a part of me. With all my mistakes, I still need 5,000 francs per month, and security for 2 years. Without my mistakes, I can’t call my life my own. As little as I could without my virtues. I need security still more than money. I can’t live in a continual state of panic. But I do live in a state of panic. Have done for years. As long as I’ve lived in my state of panic, I can’t even see the correctness of a bit of advice. And I can’t help it either if my reaction to it is wrong.—I SIMPLY DON’T KNOW. You can’t tell a man sitting in a burning house to be a good fellow and fetch his coat before he jumps. It’s pointless; even if he wanted to obey, he couldn’t hear you.
I sense how many worries you have. Don’t go worrying about me as well, to the extent that I become a burden for you. That would be a sin I couldn’t bear.
My novel will not sell. I am sure of that.
I embrace you sincerely, never think that I don’t hear your voice, and your splendid heart,
your old J.R.
360. To Stefan Zweig
17 November 1935
Dear friend,
I am chasing my last letter with another, because I fear I haven’t been clear enough. If you think a “harsh” tone on your part might hurt me in some way, then I counter by being afraid you will still misunderstand me when I’m pretty clear with you.
Of course there can be no possibility—I’m not that cheap—of my ever supposing you had things easy, giving me cheap advice—or dear—from a position of security. The one who thinks like that is a scrounger. I never see you “in the box seat” but always in the tragic fog that shrouds us as writers, and I never see your bourgeois existence. (If I did, I would tell you.)
The way in which you seek to connect God to my writing is inadmissible. Writing is a terrestrial thing, and, from a “metaphysical” vantage point, is in no way different from shoemaking. Say.
If I want to do nothing but serve God, then I must become a monk. (I hope to end my days like that.) As long as I do terrestrial things like write novels, then I don’t see why I should live any worse than a bad shoemaker who makes useless boots. Only when you write something like the Imitation of Christ do you refuse an advance.
It’s unpractical to accept advances. But you can’t avoid the unpractical on the grounds that it’s also impious. All those shit writers I see around about me live more practical lives than I do, and get bigger advances, and, perfectly literally, are less shat upon than I am.
If twenty bad shoemakers live splendidly, then a twenty-first will surely scrape a living too. The shoes he makes aren’t any worse because he happens to be a fool in his personal life as well.
I have far too low an opinion of writing for your appeal to my faith to have any weight with me. Writing isn’t a question of election or selection. That would be hubris. There are no “artists” and no “genius” in the whole Bible; none in the New Testament; none in the long line of the saints. What we do, my dear friend, is worth little or nothing, in God’s eyes.
One ought not to confuse—this seems to me a very grave sin—the practical advance with the heavenly “advance” that God also gives the shoemaker. In His eyes, shoemakers and writers are of equal worth.
Tell me this: if a poor shoemaker accepts a sum of money from a customer to go and buy leather to make the customer a pair of boots, is that not perfectly natural? And “unpractical”?
I do exactly the same thing. (Quite apart from the fact that I was one of those rare unworldly shoemakers, who is cheated by his customers all his life.)
I can’t live like that. You can’t be a saint, and at the same time make profane things. You may say to me that it’s my duty to serve literature. I don’t serve literature. Literature is a terrestrial matter; it’s my job. A marriage: worth such and such, or such and such, like a wife. A terrestrial matter. You need God’s grace even for a tuppenny fuck. (Excuse pencil, my pen’s run out.)
I don’t want to live a profane life any more. I’ve had enough of it. Profane and miserable: It’s too much. The profane, which is miserable, is killing me. That’s suicide. I am NOT being modest and devout here. An author is a worldly figure. He has, if he has my qualities, to live at least as well as the least of his colleagues. It isn’t absolutely necessary, but in an earthly sense it would be justified.
I embrace you,
your Joseph Roth
361. To Stefan Zweig
Paris, 26 November 1935
Dear friend,
Mr. Sabatier has just written to tell me Grasset will take my novel, so long as de Lange’s conditions aren’t too steep.—Now I hear that Sabatier is leaving Grasset, and going to Albin Michel.
Thank you very much for interceding in the thing just now coming about. Probably you’re thinking of a type of publisher that could help me. Please God I’ll be saved.
Dear friend, if you don’t come till January, I fear you’ll only find me half alive. The Christmas holidays in particular I will NOT be able to survive. You can have no idea how much I dread them. My whole tribe of Negroes is descending on me, perversely and needlessly decked out with German Christmas trees and Aryan sentiments. There is nothing I hate so much as the smell of pine sap on an empty wallet, when I don’t even have small change with which to take myself to a restaurant. It’s physically impossible for me to survive that without being autonomous. Even surviving until then, without money, is impossible. I have 200 francs a week for myself till 23 December. I suffer the plagues of Egypt if my wife cannot go to the cinema. I must be free in the evening, I must be alone, and alone with a clear conscience. In that woman—as in all of them—there is the deadly and perfectly natural urge to constrain me, to make me into a sort of family pet, and the only way I can protect myself from that with a clear conscience is if I provide for her in some sort. Without a clear conscience, I cannot go and be free. My sufferings would be redoubled.
There’s no point, my dear friend, all my strength is frittered away in this pettiness. I spend three-quarters of my day on foolish things, ridiculous worries, there is no one, far and wide, who could free me of so much as a telephone conversation. Nor do I even want my wife to do it. Everything would then be presented to me one day as “work,” “deserving,” and so forth. I do not want someone to cook, or type or phone for me; save me from services. They will all come home to roost one day. I must be as autonomous as a pasha in his harem. I don’t pay with sex, or by the acceptance of so-called services. I don’t care.
I wish a higher force would free me, so that . . .
362. To Stefan Zweig
Paris 6e
Hotel Foyot
33 rue de Tournon
6 December 1935
Dear friend,
I’ve had piles these past three days, and am unable to sit at a table and write. Forgive the dictation, therefore. Grasset bought the book. According to my contract, Mr. Brun had to deal with de Lange directly, and not with me. I would like to look him up, but can’t find a plausible pretext for a visit.
I understand that you can be here on or about 14 December, and that you have no more than 3 or 4 hours to spare for me. I don’t think that it is possible to gain a true picture in so short a time. At any rate, I should like to ask you to set aside at least one of these hours for my friend, who will give you exact information, better and more clearly than I can.
Thank you very much as well for your comforting postcard. My state is much too bad for me to get anything out of Döblin, thanks all the same. He was always a shouter, and belongs for me with those deeply detested “activist writers” that Germany was crawling with in those years. He knows this, too.
I embrace you warmly,
Your faithful old Joseph Roth
I beg you to please come and help me.
I want to live, but I can’t go on. I am getting sicker, and I have no one. My loneliness is such that I will cling to anyone at all, so as not to sleep, or rather not to lie in bed, not sleeping. Poverty would be happy [. . . illegible] and no guilt. And no material obligations. I am humiliated every day, and my self-contempt takes the form of physical illnesses of all sorts. Who am I to call to, if not you? You know that God answers very late, generally after death. I don’t want to die, although I have no fear of death.
Your J.R.
As a curiosity, I enclose a cutting from the Vienna Journal where it says that the gangster Schulze had tried to read Shakespeare and you. Gangsters evidently have a better taste in books than American millionaires. You should send the cutting to Huebsch.
363. To Stefan Zweig
Hotel Foyot
Paris
[December 1935?]
Dear friend,
thank you so much for your help and your letter. Why do you call me not very good? You left me for 3 weeks without a line or an address, and I might have gained the impression you were as anxious to avoid me as success itself. You don’t know how much a letter means to me, and how little I deserve only to be found good, once I have been measured against others. You don’t know—and will never learn—how darkness, strife, ugliness, and hatefulness are destroying my life, or how impenetrable the [. . . illegible] of futility is. All work, and no success at all. I yearn for it with something like homesickness. You are the only one with the strength to tear me away from where I am—if you even want to, that is. I can’t write as I would speak. If your mind isn’t set on my rescue, I am certainly doomed.
I don’t know what misfortune befell Jacob,1 but I don’t care for him, and I don’t understand, frankly, why you do. There’s a sort of ambivalent halo around his personal and literary life. The death of Alban Berg2 is certainly more tragic than the bad luck of Jacob. I hear that he got involved in changing money. There’s bound to be resentment in those accounts, but what does a writer have to do with exchange rates or percentages and those things? Why does he get involved in things like that? But I’m only talking off the top of my head, and you’re sure to know some justification for it. So I’ll expect you, yes? I’ll be finished with the new novel on the 20th. I am working regularly, but badly. I’ll await you. Others are as well, I know, and I’m confused and depressed that you want to lump me with them in your cauldron of worries and embarrassments.
Your old Joseph Roth
Please will you give the accompanying letter to Mrs. Zweig.
1. Jacob: Heinrich Eduard Jacob.
2. Alban Berg (1885–1935), the composer of Wozzeck and Lulu, died impoverished and unable to afford treatment for an insect bite.
364. To Thea Sternheim1
4 January 1936
Dear, esteemed Madam,
I’m sending you the Tolstoy with the same post, and I beg your pardon for my dilatoriness.
It wasn’t so much distraction, as sadness, which led to casualness.
Belatedly, but sincerely, I wish you a happy new year, and kiss your hand as your devoted
Joseph Roth
1. Thea Sternheim: ex-wife of the author Carl Sternheim.
365. To Stefan Zweig
20 January 1936
Dear friend,
please forgive me, another registered letter. Thank you for your most recent letter, and for the regards that your dear wife conveyed to me. She hinted to me why you won’t be able to stay in Paris beyond the end of January. If your mind weren’t already made up, I would ask you myself to stay away from any disgusting manifestation. But I am unable to absolve you of the friendly duty of rescuing me. You will learn from the accompanying letter that the end is nigh, if not already at hand. Please take me absolutely at my word. The letter will fill you in. It is impossible that I go on living and writing, after 5 books in 3 years. This letter here makes it impossible for me to go on working on my current book. I was 5 days from finishing it. It’s possible that here and there a person may still like me, but you are the only one who is yoked to me. You are the only one who can actually help me. Only with you can I change and save my life. Please come to me. I beg you earnestly, de profundis. I don’t want a shabby death. I implore you, answer me right away. Don’t go interpreting my words, don’t analyze me please, and don’t make me still unhappier than I already am. Don’t write to me, talk to me. I have experienced myself how with the writer’s pen, the primary feelings of the human being and friend tend to “overformulation.”
Please write back right away, and help me, and save me really. Your
Joseph Roth
366. Stefan Zweig to Joseph Roth
Hotel Westminster
Nice [no date but 1936]
Dear friend,
our letters crossed in the post. What Landauer wrote was what I was always afraid might happen—I’ve known for a long time that the next movement in your royalties wasn’t going to be up, but down. That’s what made me so anxious when I saw you failing to get by on relatively high sums. With the grim foresight that I have, I knew that the next trend for the émigrés was down (it will go up again when there is no fresh blood, when the overcrowding has stopped, and people like you appear at your true worth).
But as I say—we need a plan for the next few months. You’ve got to get over the dead point. I fear you will once again have incurred obligations. Couldn’t Dr. Wolff1 or Leites send me a full list, so that we can make a plan together in Paris? I don’t know to what extent the agreement with Huebsch has panned out, how much you have sold or compromised in advance, whether you are able to count on anything at all in the months ahead, or whether everything has been paid out already. You’ll have to help too. Your daily alcohol consumption will have to be reduced. I can see it in myself—nicotine is as indispensable to me as schnapps is to you—that will power gets you partway there. Then (in your interest) we will have to force alcoholic reductions upon you. You will curse us and call us names, but for your sake we’ll have to do it. We can’t prevent your collapse by ourselves. You’re going to have to help. You’ll have to consent to a plan, you mustn’t (quite apart from your health) exceed a certain sum for alcohol—simply because it’s immoral to spend more on booze than a normal family spends on living. My dear good fellow, don’t forever be arraigning the times and the wickedness of other people, admit that you bear some responsibility for your state, and help us to help you. Don’t come up with new sophistries to the effect that schnapps makes you noble, lucid, productive—il avilit, it debases. As you want to live (thank goodness for that) you will have to put your shoulder to the wheel. I’m just looking back on an awful week from not-smoking (normally I get through a dozen big cigars a day!)—at last the pressure is finally reducing, I feel as light and relieved as after a colonic irrigation. My own chastening gives me the right to demand that you stop, or at least reduce your intake of alcohol. And above all, finish the novel, so that you can rest.
I was here yesterday with Jules Romains:2 I think his novel is the best of recent years. Today I’m seeing Schickele—Heinrich Mann appears not to be around.
Sincerely, your Stefan Zweig
1. Dr. Wolff: Fritz Wolff.
2. Jules Romains (1885–1972), poet and novelist. Zweig’s reference is to the novel cycle Les hommes de bonne volonté (1932–56, 28 vols.).
367. To Stefan Zweig
[January? 1936]
Dear friend,
I don’t understand why you don’t reply to my last letter. If you’re angry with me, then our close old friendship demands that you tell me. If you don’t, then, for the first time, I don’t understand you.
But that isn’t the reason why I’m writing. I’m worried something might have happened to you.
This worries me. Why don’t you answer? You could just tell me: I’ve had enough of you, leave me alone. Why don’t you say anything?
Another thing: the dubious Lampel1 is staying in your hotel. Please, don’t say a word to him!
I don’t give a damn about Marcu (or Schickele either). I know exactly what you’re worth, and the way you like to cast your nobility before swine. I can explain the difficulty and the wailing of Schickele. Please don’t be led up the garden path by your sense of justice. And don’t listen to Marcu’s lies.
But maybe it’s too late. I have no other explanation for your not-replying than your uncertainty whether to tell me now or later that our friendship is over. I’d rather you told me now. In my condition, the pain and uncertainty of waiting for word from you is worse than the knowledge itself. You don’t care for my friendship? Tell me, then! I’ve known for a long time that my friendship must become burdensome, one day. That it would become burdensome to you I still can’t bring myself to believe.—Why the silence? Why don’t you answer? Has something happened to you? What? And why not tell me about it? Please, tell me the truth, all of it right away. I am waiting for every mail delivery. You make me terribly unhappy. I can’t stand it. Your silence is unaccountable to me. I can’t go on living like that, with you, with the knowledge that you are supposed to be my friend, my silent friend. What do you want? Say! And say it right away,
Your Joseph Roth
1. Lampel: Peter Martin Lampel (1894–1965), the leftist homosexual playwright and screenwriter, was described as “one of those curious characters who came very close to the Nazis before being arrested by them.” JR accuses him of involvement in Vehmic murder, a Nazi reinstatement of an old Westphalian custom from the Middle Ages, involving the collective “lawful” killing of an outlaw.
368. Stefan Zweig to Joseph Roth
[Nice, no date]
Dear friend,
well, things are a little clearer now—I will be in Paris next week, around the 7th, stay for a couple of days, and am looking forward very much to seeing you. I hope your advisers have worked out a plan, then I will do my best to see that you get at least a little quiet. Rely on me!
Aside from you, the only German I want to see is Ernst Weiss. What an awful schism there is right now—the campaign against Thomas Mann, Hesse, Kolb, mostly conducted by people who, if they’d been able to borrow a foreskin from somewhere, would still be sitting in Germany, quietly or otherwise. Why the internecine venom of the other Germany—like Kerr and Kraus just the other day. Imagine Goebbels chuckling over it. It’s such a pity, and so unpolitical!
Here I’m spending time (a privilege) with Jules Romains and Roger Martin du Gard.1 Clever minds, especially when unembittered, are always a tonic.
Till soon, my dear fellow!
your St. Z.
I am VERY proud that I, the most fanatical chain-smoker, a veritable Joseph Roth of nicotine, have been completely off smoking the last 14 days. It can be done, if you want! And you’ve got to want, and you’ve even got to got to want, my dear friend, this time (since my struggle with the angel of nicotine) I’m demanding action from you.
1. Roger Martin du Gard (1881–1958), French historical novelist, who won the Nobel Prize in 1937, was at André Gide’s bedside when he died. Today, he languishes in obscurity in the English-speaking world.
369. To Stefan Zweig
Sunday [2 or 9 February 1936]
Dear friend,
at last your good letter arrived, I really thought you had had enough of my bitterness. I am a great burden on you, but who else can I go to, who am I to confide in, all around me are traitors and worms. What did I ever do to anyone? I always helped people. Now I see a letter from Schickele to de Lange, where he writes that other authors get nothing, because Roth gets such enormous advances.1 How can he do such a thing? I am vehement at times, but never behind backs, I am capable of hate, but never hateful. Marcu wrote to Kesten in the same way. What’s going on? All the work I did in the committee for my poor colleagues. I even collected money for them, and they’re all sore at me, from Heinrich Mann to Soma Morgenstern.
The quarrel about Bermann2 is a bad business. Now we have one publisher less, and have provoked the anti-Semitic instincts of Korrodi.3 But Bermann bears a lot of responsibility. Firstly, the journalistic émigrés have their spies too, someone from the Sureté générale is even a member of the journalists’ union, and Bernhard4 is organized in France, and is a power in the land. [. . .] Secondly, it’s not right that Bermann, instead of replying in person,5 always sends his élite authors out to do battle for him. It’s undignified and vulgar. [. . .] He wheels out Thomas Mann with all his dignity for a rag where Heinrich Mann is pissed at in 4 offensive columns. He makes Thomas Mann into an ally of Korrodi’s. Oh, it’s all such a tangle of filth and craziness. Sense has moved out of our heads, without giving notice. We are mad and in hell, we are crazy shades, dead but still stupid. This world is in limbo. At the Rolland celebration,6 they yelled out the “Internationale,” 2,000 people, loathsome Comintern figures among them, today the papers are full of the execution of 5 disloyal Soviet officials in Petersburg, and what does the great man do: he protests against one lot of murders and uses his dignity to suppress the other. And is happy to be celebrated by people you could describe as principled murderers. Does it get any worse? I was happy you weren’t there, I think it was the spirit of Erasmus that did it, it was his way of thanking you.
I’m drinking almost only wine, promise. I just want peace—3 months of it—and not these debts and worries! I won’t be able to write anything after this novel. I’m physically drained from writing. If I’m to carry on, I need to stimulate myself—and that depletes me further. Do you think I don’t know?
I see Ernst Weiss from time to time. He is both bitterer than I am and more contented. I am a little nonplussed by him. Often he is very, very sad. He likes you, one of the few honest likers. He has a lot of the virtue of justice, which is why I admire him. But it’s not real affection.
Today it says in the paper that Laetitia7 has been dead for 100 years. Her picture, which I’ve never seen before, is oddly close to my description of her. Nor did I know that she’d died blind, I made her weak-sighted in my book. Come along, come along.
Sincerely your
Joseph Roth
1. such enormous advances: one editor is quoted in Bronsen as saying, “I had a vision of whole generations of beggars when I saw Roth cadging an advance.” In a letter dated 10 May 1935, René Schickele wrote, “Roth has left us. Gone to Amsterdam to sit beside the till. He was cross with [Valeriu] Marcu for giving him only half the travel money, instead of all of it. For us de Lange authors, Roth is a sort of vacuum cleaner. No speck of dust, no crumb from the master’s table that doesn’t get sucked into that bottomless hole. What’s left for the rest of us?” It wasn’t a good idea to turn up with a manuscript after Roth had been by.
2. the quarrel about Bermann: Samuel Fischer’s son-in-law and publishing heir, Bermann Fischer, had just gone into exile, first to Vienna and then Stockholm, where he set up his own publishing company and continued to publish Thomas Mann and Stefan Zweig.
3. Korrodi: Eduard Korrodi, feuilleton editor of the Neue Zürcher Zeitung.
4. Bernhard: Georg Bernhard (1875 Berlin–1944 New York) was the editor and founder of the German exile newspaper Pariser Tageblatt.
5. instead of replying in person: but Bermann couldn’t have replied from within Germany (where he was still based) to items in exile publications without making things hot for himself and the firm whose custodian he was, following the death of Samuel Fischer in 1934.
6. Rolland celebration: Romain Rolland’s seventieth birthday was on 29 January 1936.
7. Laetitia: Marie-Laetitia Bonaparte, Napoleon’s mother, a character in Roth’s novel The Hundred Days.
370. To Stefan Zweig
Hotel Foyot
Paris
Wednesday [February 1936?]
Dear friend,
I am not at all offended, your wife must take my extreme despair for antagonism. It’s most peculiar. You’re tired out, I know, and I am inconsolable about the fact that I only tire you out more. I’m too shaky to be able to put it better and more delicately than that. I’m too confused at the moment, I’m not sure I shouldn’t just go to bed, and wait for the end. But I do know this, that it’s not possible for me to do anything else, as you suggested. For whom do I write articles? Or films? How do I make the time? Where’s the money to tide me over? I’m running around with my tongue hanging out, a scrounger with drooling tongue and wagging tail. How do I avoid signing new contracts for new books? I don’t even get offered those. What do I do, now, today, next week? All your perfectly correct thoughts have nothing to base themselves on. You just need to put yourself in my shoes, you can do that, in my typical day, I’ve told you what that’s like. I have no more nights. I [sit?] around till 3 a.m., I lie down fully dressed at 4, I wake up at 5, and I wander around the room. I haven’t been out of my clothes for two weeks. You know what time feels like, an hour is a lake, a day is a sea, the night is an eternity, waking up is a thunderclap of dread, getting up a struggle for clarity against fevered nightmares. That’s what it’s all about, time, time, time, and I don’t have any. In two weeks I’ll have a contract, in three weeks, I’m told, there’ll be a reply from America—and how much of my life do I lose in those 2 weeks! For nothing! For nothing! Humiliated, disgraced, indebted, smiling, smiling through gritted teeth—an acrobatic stunt—so that the hotel proprietor doesn’t notice, my pen clamped, cramped in my hand, desperately clinging to the idea I’ve just had, because it’s galloping away from me, sometimes starving, falling asleep in my chair after 3 sentences, but what do you want, what do you want from a man who’s half madman, half corpse? What else am I to do, if I don’t write books? I’m old and sick, I can’t go back to the army, which is the only job I ever had. Debts, ghosts, privation, and writing, talking, smiling, no suit, no shirt, no boots, hungry open mouths, and scroungers to stuff them, and ghosts, ghosts, wall-to-wall ghosts. And what a life behind me! What do you want, my friend? How well you are able to describe it, and how alien it sounds to me, your clever counsel. You know everything, don’t you! You know everything! You can sniff out the deepest secrets, and the things that lie around on the surface, you see those too! Or do you miss them? I can’t sell film ideas, I can’t compete on the English market with Lania, etc., with [. . .] Frischauer—I’m not up to it. Please, my dear friend, take me at my word. Either I’ll be sick to death, or go crazy, or perhaps I am already. Don’t be angry, and remember I love you
Your J.R.
371. To Stefan Zweig
17 February 1936
Dear friend,
it was kind of you to reply to me at once. I’ll write you in more detail as soon as the novel’s finished.—I only want to tell you this, quickly, that I am not bitter or embittered, not for a moment. You’re mistaken there. My respect for human beings is immense—and so every disappointment, the least instance of harshness or obstinacy—not to me, but to others—shakes me, enough to make me curse. I just don’t understand the world, I suppose. I demand too much—too much literature of myself, too much humanity of others. I don’t understand why so much evil happens on a daily basis, and the fact that such a thing is possible makes me question each individual. I sense squalor and betrayal. I think I can only understand the world when I’m writing, and the moment I put down my pen, I’m lost. Alcohol isn’t the cause, perhaps a consequence, though it makes things worse. That’s the truth. You give people too much credence, I too little. Both are bad. What pains me with you is that you believe strangers sooner than you’d believe me. I have never broken my word. I’m too loyal. It worries me. You worry me every bit as much as I you, no more, no less. Your magnanimity worries me as much as my own pettiness. My night porter1 is a decent man, more honest than ten authors, and I certainly prefer him to Kesten, say. That’s just, that’s not bitter. In the 60 years of his life, my night porter has committed fewer skulduggeries than Marcu has in 10. Which in my eyes makes the porter Auguste noble, and Marcu not. Quite apart from the fact that Auguste understands his job better than ten mediocre writers. I cannot give up my respect for Auguste, or his affection for me. Vous êtes un bateau surchargé, vous coulez à pic, he said to me yesterday. Mon pauvre vieux, venez chez moi. Those are my Nobel prizes.—In the whole of German literature, I don’t know of anyone, besides yourself, who understood that, precisely that. There is only moral hierarchy, not intellectual, much less pseudo-intellectual. In all literature, I love only you, only you are my friend, everyone else isn’t worth shit, in spite of my respect, which some of them deserve.—I’ll write you soon, after the novel’s done. (And how badly will that turn out, in such a time!)
Your Joseph Roth
1. my night porter: the night porter at the Hotel Foyot, invariably hailed by Roth as “mon cher Auguste.” He advised Roth on money and personal matters, publishing questions, etc. A true friend of Roth’s.
372. Stefan Zweig to Joseph Roth
11 Portland Place
London W 1
3 March 1936
Dear friend,
in haste, my congratulations! At last you’ll be able to stop and draw breath, a completed book is a happy boon—I hope to be where you are now in another week, but for now I’m still in a state that makes a half-decent letter a near-impossibility. You feel so vulnerable when you’re supposed to be concentrated on your work, people pressing and oppressing you on all sides. Sometimes I get quite desperate, and I see where you’re coming from. If only one could put one’s entire strength in one’s work, and not fritter it away in a hundred trivialities—imagine what that would be like! I am increasingly convinced that only purely selfish people are able to use the full measure of their talent.
Tell me what your plans are. I take it you probably will be going to Holland. I think it would do you a world of good to get out of Paris, if only for a few days. You need to be able to lose yourself and those around you every so often. I have very high hopes of your novel, and from what you tell me of the contents, it will be of interest—and in terms of the financial reward this is critical, nowadays—to the film industry. Your final liberation can only come from that quarter, I believe. Zuckmayer1 and Bruno Frank2 have been here for a week or two, and both came away with gigantic sums. That’s where I notice how clumsy you and I are by comparison, and how you in particular struggle for tiny sums, whereas canny authors earn as much at a stroke as for five or ten novels.
Don’t worry about Manga Bell, it would be surprising, the way you live, if her nerves didn’t get frazzled. When you’re better, she’ll feel better too.
My exhaustion greets yours, my book greets yours, and once again, with all my heart, my joy firstly at the fact that your book is finished, and secondly that you’ve managed to keep your promise to yourself,
your faithful Stefan Zweig
1. Zuckmayer: Carl Zuckmayer (1896–1977), popular German playwright and novelist, friend of Brecht’s. Went into exile in Switzerland, then the United States.
2. Bruno Frank (1887 Stuttgart—1945 Beverly Hills), playwright, novelist, screenwriter.
373. Stefan Zweig to Joseph Roth
49 Hallam Street
London W 1
16 March 1936
Dear friend,
your letter arrived just now. I’m hoping you just overreacted to a strain within your generally overstrained condition. Remember, you have a great book newly completed, and an indescribably difficult struggle with yourself every day. That will lead you to see things unduly pessimistically. You know I often urged you to take a month off. Two people living on top of each other, always sharing the same space, you can’t work like that in the long run, and you will need an occasional break. I’m sure you will have completely recovered in two or three days alone in Amsterdam, and I’m sure you have friends in Paris who will keep you posted. Our work unfortunately keeps our imaginations exercised, and like all Jews, we have pessimistic imaginations. Just try and avoid delusions. Things will sort themselves out, and probably by the time you get this, you will have heard better news from your friends. But overall, you know my belief that you need to be away from Paris for a while, never mind where, and live by yourself with reduced commitments. Ideally, we should have been able to talk all this through face to face, only I can’t break off now, or else I should have come over to see you. I have just moved apartments, and am settling into my new place. Note the new address and phone number,
sincerely your Stefan Zweig
I must beseech you, my dear friend, not to fall prey to gloomy delusions. You’ve finished a book, and it’s bound to be a beautiful book, that has to be the important thing—what would a marriage be without crises, they’re an essential part of things. Don’t go running back to Paris now, you need to recuperate, nothing matters more than that you keep yourself going, seeing as you keep all those other people going!! More soon from your
St. Z.
374. To Stefan Zweig
Thursday, 19 March 1936
Amsterdam
Eden Hotel
Dear friend,
there is news, but wretched news. Mrs. Manga Bell [. . .] was unable to stay in the hotel. She had a temperature [. . .] I’m afraid I wasn’t wrong. I’m a burned child.
On top of everything else, the new publisher, Mr. van Alfen,1 has a flu. I won’t know my fate till the middle of next week. So I’m wasting two weeks in Amsterdam. I couldn’t stay with Landauer, he has his girlfriend2 with him. I don’t even have the strength, with all this uncertainty and panic, to dictate. Because I must patch my novel. It’s all full of holes.
I made the lowest tender offer I could. Who knows whether it will be accepted. If it isn’t—Mr. van Alfen is a completely unliterary type, he comes from the advertising world—then I don’t know what will happen. If only I weren’t so enfeebled. Even if he does give me money, that would mean I have to give him a novel by September. How will I do that? With whose head and what hand?
I’m leaving my wife at Gottfarstein’s3 for a time. It’s a poor part of town, St. Martin, she’ll see how Gottfarstein lives, and the almighty struggle he has every day to earn 10 francs. He is a good man. His girlfriend is Polish, and a good girl. My café life has spoiled the woman. [. . .]
I can only hope to make a plan once I know the fate of my novel and contract. But how am I supposed to write the next one so quickly? Nothing from Huebsch. I’ll write to him again today. I implore you, write to him please yourself, please, now! He must know that I’m dependent on his sticking by me. He’s silent as the grave. What can I do?
Please write me, at this address.
I enclose a letter to your wife. Show her this one as well, please.
I long to hear what she has to say, and I want her to be informed. Especially because Mrs. M.B. likes her.
Where shall I go? I won’t go to London. I’m afraid of the language, and the people, and I have no connection to the cinema either.
Sincerely your old
Joseph Roth
1. Mr. van Alfen: Philip van Alfen (1894–1969), on the death of Gerard de Lange in 1935, took over the publishing firm of Allert de Lange; previously he had been in charge of an advertising agency.
2. his girlfriend: Thea Sternheim (who was furthermore addicted to drugs at the time—see no. 393).
3. at Gottfarstein’s: Gottfarstein was a Talmudist, a Yiddish journalist in Paris, and a devoted friend to JR.
375. To Stefan Zweig
Sunday
22 March 1936
Amsterdam
Eden Hotel
Dear friend,
thank you for your kindness and promptness. You are quite right, of course an elevator attendant here is better than a parliamentarian in Africa. But, to explain Mrs. Manga Bell’s behavior, what was at stake for her was readying her son for a not inconsiderable inheritance. I can’t say how great or small his expectations are, or what his repulsive father has already sold or hocked. But the mother has the duty, really, to prepare the son in class terms in case he one day comes into the inheritance. Negroes won’t have the same respect for a servant. There’s nothing to be done about that. No, the one thing I do hold against her is that never in all those years did she think to enter him in a military academy, or in the navy, or, as I tried once, in a monastery. [. . .] and she’s more afraid of discipline than he is. I understand her when I think of my own mother, and the way she looked the first time she saw me in uniform. Outside the barracks on the main street . . . I don’t remember if I told you that my wife, in those days when I was writing desperately around the clock, came down with pleurisy, and was suddenly lucid, and asked after me. I was so rattled. I sent my sister-in-law a little money. Now it’s gotten better—i.e., worse—again. I couldn’t have borne it if my wife had died sane, and me not with her.—That just by the by.—I don’t know why I am so tormented.—Why someone torments me further when he can see that fate is already doing enough to finish me off.—I am so feeble, so wretched, it’s really true.
You’re right, we do weigh others down, but when we leave them, they are devastated.1 I’ve seen it myself.
I’d like to be alone for three months, but how, and where? In Vienna I’d run into all my wife’s relations, all 60 of them, and I’d have to visit her in the asylum, and so forth. I wouldn’t mind Salzburg, except I’d be reminded of you wherever I went. That wouldn’t be relaxing. Maybe Marseille—I tend to work quickly and well there.
Mr. van Alfen is a problem, the new publisher. He doesn’t know what a book is, or an author. Nor does he care about time, just money. (For me they’re the same thing.) He’ll give me at the most—I’ll learn finally on Tuesday—money to see me through to September. Which means the book must be done by September. And here I have at least another 2 weeks of patching the old one. I CAN’T send it to Huebsch as it stands. I can only send something when it’s properly finished! And if Huebsch doesn’t stand by his word, I’m done for. How do I get out of that?
Amsterdam is terribly expensive. I live terribly cheaply. (I cut the pages you wrote on out of the notebook, and send them to you.) I’ve seen that, for myself alone, I get through about 2,500 French francs a month. I’ve also seen that my advance is only 1,000 gulden. The accounts for the goddamned Hundred Days aren’t in yet, and I have the second novel, which I’m just finishing now. I don’t see why I am being continually tormented on all sides. Useless little writers get as big an advance as I do. People exaggerate my lack of responsibility. They exaggerate my strength.
I’m afraid of London. Maybe, without my fear, I might have had a chance of escaping from all my worries, with a film. I have lots of “ideas.” But how, how, with my fear? You’re right, I don’t belong there. But how are you going to get here in time? How I need you, and how far away you are. And you go and put further miles between us, God knows, why do you do it.
You are unfair to me, you exaggerate my drinking and my foolishnesses. You have your own foolishnesses, you know. I am fairer to you than you are to me.—I’ll write you on Wednesday, after the meeting with the publisher on Tuesday. But write to me in the meantime! I need it urgently.
Sincerely,
your Joseph Roth
Please give the enclosed letter to your wife.
Please write to me. I will need to be very strong on Tuesday, when I see Mr. van Alfen.
Also, please let your wife read what I write to you. I want her to see it—I want you both to see everything.
1. devastated: Friedl Roth, Andrea Manga Bell, but also the pending case of Friderike Zweig (see no. 388).
376. Stefan Zweig to Joseph Roth
49 Hallam Street
London W 1
24 March 1936
Dear friend,
I hope I’ll hear good news from you tomorrow. My only fear is that you’ll show the people too clearly how much you depend on them. Perhaps I’ll get some word of you from Marcuse, who’s supposed to be over here. Seriously, try not to think too much about domestic matters. You have every right just to be ill for a fortnight, and not to correspond. And be careful with the novel too. What you refer to as “patching”1 seems not without its dangers to me. Your patching on the Antichrist didn’t do that book much good, it seems to me. And when you told me the story of your novel, it was beautifully clear in outline, ornamentation would only weight it down.
Think hard about where you want to be. I wouldn’t go for Salzburg, you would suffer in the atmosphere there, unless you were to go completely Catholic. Vienna wouldn’t do either, if you have relations there. I personally felt very well in Czechoslovakia, with Marienbad as a workplace, and I’m sure Yugoslavia would be excellent, and perhaps even better for you. I always have the sense that a Slav environment stimulates you. Budapest is an extraordinarily charming city, unbelievably cheap and full of cafés. For the likes of us, not speaking the language, it’s an ideal place to work. I thought about it once myself.
I need to read my proofs now, and am just feeling very dissatisfied. Well, I’ll see how I get out of it. Warmly
St. Z.
Please read the enclosed.
1. “patching”: Not that JR is a habitual “patcher,” but SZ prided himself on his technique of reducing, cutting, sweating out words; his first drafts could be many hundreds of pages long. No wonder he reacts so allergically to JR’s term. That remains the fundamental difference between the two writers: JR is fast and impulsive; in SZ one always hears the slowly ticking metronome.
377. To Stefan Zweig
25 March 1936
Amsterdam
Eden Hotel
Dear friend,
I have to tell you that I am absolutely washed up: de Lange won’t give me a contract. The new publisher left me in the lurch for 14 days before telling me. All my work is for nothing, my life, my crazy industry, my diligence: every little shit gets a contract from de Lange, I don’t. Alfred Neumann1 gets 500 gulden a month, Gina Kaus2 gets 300, but what can I say! Do you see now that I’m a beaten man, and don’t need any more censure from you. Please be good to me at least, I’m so badly in need of a real friend. I’m lost. I beg you for a word.
Your Joseph Roth
After 3 weeks’ work on the novel such a blow, such blows. I am being beaten. I’m finished, truly finished. It’s all up with me, I have no more ideas. I’ve had a temperature of 38 since yesterday. All I can do is get me to a monastery, because I mayn’t kill myself.
1. Alfred Neumann (1895–1952), novelist, playwright, and scenarist. Lived in Fiesole, near Florence, from 1933 to 1938, then Nice, then Los Angeles.
2. Gina Kaus (1894 Vienna–1985 Los Angeles), writer, biographer, went into exile in 1938 in Paris and London. Between 1933 and 1937, Allert de Lange published five of her books.
378. To Stefan Zweig
26 March 1936
Amsterdam
Eden Hotel
Dear friend,
forgive me for burdening you like this. I just got your letter with the extract. I think it’s a report from the Reichspost1 and therefore a distortion. Everyone knows that the Reichspost has been bought by Papen. But that’s not to say that the Jesuits haven’t been caught up in the general folly.
Here, it was exactly as I told you: Landauer is powerless, like a little employee. Mr. van Alfen, the new executive at the house is an advertising agent [. . .] He’s never read a book in his life, he even boasts about it. Your letter to Landauer didn’t do anything, even though he passed it on up. All Landauer’s points about my silly life, and so forth, were unavailing. I’ve been here for two weeks for nothing, though at 800 francs expenses. I’ve worked for nothing, to get the Regular into shape. On the contrary: since it is finished, and is due to appear in autumn, no other publisher can come and offer me a new contract. You can tell me advances are ruinous or immoral till you’re blue in the face. It seems to me it would be more immoral to give up writing and living altogether. It’s just a fact that I don’t have any money. I can’t live without advances. Fate is oppressing me in a terrible and tawdrily symbolic way, as if it were aping a stupid romantic novelist. I’m even ashamed of the blows it deals me. Such low blows.
I don’t know what to do. (I know: it’s my refrain.) For a long time I’ve had the feeling you can’t stand to hear it any more. I have too much respect for your achievement not to understand that you don’t care for unlucky friends like me; that we might even do you harm. But all I say to you is, don’t keep it from me. That would be an unnecessary humiliation. Don’t do it. It would really be a sin.
I can’t go to Marienbad for the “season.” Spas are sterile. I hate Budapest. And in Yugoslavia I’d be afraid of war breaking out. It’s a barbarian country. I can only go to Austria. I know Belgrade, Zagreb, Dubrovnik very well. It’s a police state. I’d have to get a residence permit, and suffer searches, etc. I was a reporter there once for the FZ,2 they know all about me. In my condition police states are a non-starter.
But perhaps you’ll let me tell you about that on some future occasion.
Sincerely,
your old Joseph Roth
1. the Reichspost: a reactionary Viennese newspaper.
2. the FZ: the Frankfurter Zeitung. Roth was in Albania and Yugoslavia in 1927.
379. Stefan Zweig to Joseph Roth
49 Hallam Street
London W 1
27 March 1936
Dear friend,
I can only hope what you wrote me was mistaken, perhaps based on some initial disappointment on your part. I can’t imagine that de Lange and Landauer would drop you like that, and I’m sure things will be sorted out to your satisfaction. You must remember that in the last resort these are business people, who do sums, and buy and sell wares. It’s the way of the world, and we can’t change it. Probably it’s just a sort of transition, and then they’ll make you an offer that’s more in keeping with their calculations. But don’t let yourself be driven mad, there’s only one thing that can save you, namely a good book, and I’m sure your new book will do the trick for you. And then you will have to switch over temporarily, and think film thoughts for a couple of weeks. That’s the only way of getting at larger sums, since our old seventy million readership has deserted us.
Stay as calm as you can. Lamenting won’t help, and you’ll need all your strength for your work. I’m sure Landauer, who knows you and likes you, won’t drop you. I wrote to him right away. I am more sanguine than you, and I’m sure it was just what theater people call a fausse sortie. Sincerely your
St. Z.
My dear friend, don’t despair. I, as a professional pessimist, have known for years that you are bound to go from one crisis to the next. But on this occasion I feel optimistic. They won’t drop you. But then, when it’s all right again, you will need to get yourself properly in grip. Perhaps the only reason they’re hesitating is to focus your mind properly.
380. To Stefan Zweig
28 March 1936
Amsterdam
Eden Hotel
Dear friend,
I’ve just gotten your nice letter. Unfortunately, you’re wrong. I’ve already written to you that it pains me in my soul if you spend time, ingenuity, and energy writing letters to the helpless Landauer. The only reason he didn’t write to say perfectly candidly that there was absolutely nothing he could do, was to save face. Perhaps he’s too punctilious. But he’s a mensch at least.
When will you finally believe that I have an incorruptible eye and an unerring nose for disaster! I can see Landauer being treated like a serf by the new boss. He’s worried for his job and salary. I can see it! How can you still think people always approach me in a spirit of pedagogy, like so many trainers!—I don’t understand you, you’re always right about everything else.—You don’t want to accept that, in spite of everything, I’m smart. I know Landauer! The janitor of the building he lived in for 20 years in Berlin always yelled at him when he forgot to wipe his boots in the corridor when it was raining—he stood for it. He is gentle and decent and submissive. He is a gentleman, but only among gentlemen. Otherwise he’s a serf to serfs. Just by the by. I only mention it, so that you don’t waste more of your time writing to a junior official. You demean yourself, and me with you. You don’t even hear me when I say something true, because I say so much that’s wrong.
But it’s even worse than that. I went to Querido. But he and Dr. Landshoff won’t give me a penny either. I won’t be given a contract, not by anyone. Querido would pay 1,500 gulden, for a finished manuscript. Well, it’s not finished, is it?—I can get a contract, if I want, from Querido, 1,500 gulden on delivery of a manuscript. What use is that to me? From the goodness of his condescension he bought one of my best stories1 off me for 200 gulden, with all rights, including film. What else could I have done? At least I’ve now paid for my stay here. My room costs 2 gulden. No less than 14 days de Lange’s successor made me wait, only to tell me that he didn’t want me. Landauer lent me 2 gulden a day on which to get by. Of course I’m grateful to him, but I also can’t forgive him for playing the “publisher” in front of you and Dr. Wolff and Leites. Yes, he likes me. But he’s a young dog, and a subordinate, and he likes to play at being something he’s not.
What do I do now? Rattle a can outside a church? Go to a monastery? They won’t have me there, you know, not until my affairs are in order. I’m so tired, and so clear-sighted at the same time. Crazy imaginings accompany my lucidity and my exhaustion.
You don’t believe me. Then there’s no point. If you’re my friend, why don’t you believe in my sense, the way you believe in my character and gift? We probably fritter away 50% of our friendship on that. Pity, eh?
I don’t know why you take me for a fool. A madman isn’t a donkey. You would know that best. I see clearer, straighter—personal things included.
But what’s the point of rehearsing all this now! I see no way out, and if you want to think fast and true for me now, then tell me. It’s a great sacrifice, I know that. I’m ashamed, too.
But, please, let’s not go on at cross-purposes. Trust me at last, won’t you. I beg you to, so that our precious friendship doesn’t break over it. I have nothing more to say except my dying words. I love you and don’t want to lose you, is what I’m saying. Just please stop not believing in my clarity of mind. Don’t talk past me any more.
I am your sincere
Joseph Roth
1. one of my best stories: The Leviathan, first published by Querido in 1940, after Roth’s death; the edition fell into the hands of the Germans, and was largely destroyed.
381. Stefan Zweig to Joseph Roth
49 Hallam Street
London W 1
31 March 1936
Dear friend,
I see you’re subconsciously angry with me for not coming up with any sensible ideas. You have the feeling that I don’t understand you, or appreciate the difficulties of your position. But, my dear friend, that’s the awful thing about it, it’s not that I don’t understand the position now, but that, like all your friends, I’ve seen it coming for years. Everything you’re experiencing now, we’ve experienced in advance for you, shared your worries, and more, we’ve anticipated the bad liver that drinking was bound to give you and the bitterness with which you will inevitably turn against us. You didn’t have to be a prophet to see it all coming. Dear friend, if you really want to be clear-sighted, then you must concede there is no salvation for you unless you lead an utterly secluded life in some very cheap place somewhere. Not Paris, not the Foyot, no metropolis at all, some voluntary cloister. You saw how shocked we were when you failed to get by on two and three times what you’re going to be reduced to now, and some secret sixth sense tells me you will begin to feel much better once you’ve left Paris, and are in some retreat somewhere, when you’ve performed the decisive adjustment you seemed not to want to undertake willingly. You must get it out of your head, the idea that we’re somehow being rough with you, or hard on you. Don’t forget we’re living in a period of general doom, and we can count ourselves lucky if we get through it at all. Don’t go accusing publishers, don’t blame your friends, don’t even beat your own breast, but finally have the courage to admit that however great you are as a writer, in material terms you’re a poor little Jew, almost as poor as seven million others, and are going to have to live like nine-tenths of the human beings in the world, on a small footing and with a tightened belt. For me that would be the only proof of your cleverness: don’t always “fight back,” stop going on about the injustice of it all, don’t compare your earnings to those of other writers who don’t have a tenth of your talent. Now is your chance to show what you call modesty. And if you reproach me with not thinking you clever enough, then I just say to you: all right then, prove it! Be clever enough finally to give up all your false notions of “obligations.” You have ONE obligation, which is to write decent books, and not to drink too much, so that you remain among us for as long as possible. I implore you not to waste your strength in futile rebellions, don’t go accusing other people, decent business people who calmly and quite rightly do their sums, which is something you never learned to do. Now or never is the moment for you to change your life, and maybe it will have been a good thing that you were finally brought to a point where the old road didn’t go on any more, and you were forced to turn back.
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 contemporary. 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,
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 you 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.)
I will probably be staying in the Hotel Siru in Brussels. It’s supposed to be one of the cheapest and best [?] there.
Even so: a telegram from you to here will follow me there by wire. You can—it would be nice if you did—write here if you don’t have my address in Brussels before your departure.
You’re much too worked up about Calvin. How is it that you, who especially in your books shows the superior calm of great men, get so worked up as soon as the slightest mishap befalls you?—My dear friend, there’s something not quite right there! You can’t be agitated, not after you’ve depicted so much really tragic agitation so classically and perfectly. What do you care about the delight of the Calvinists and the Morgensterns? Don’t you have to live, at least part way, like the characters you portray?—What is it that bothers you?—Please, keep your dignity.—In Holland, from what I hear, your book has been picked up very favorably and respectfully, certainly among the Catholics.—I beg you, please come here, here or to Belgium, and don’t leave me a single day without your address. And reply to me here! I am completely shattered again. Yet again.
I embrace you warmly,
your Joseph Roth
For Mme Friderike Maria Zweig:
My dear friend,
everything you write here will reach me. Mrs. M.B. hasn’t replied to another two telegrams I literally had to squeeze out of myself. I don’t even know where my—very important—correspondence and manuscripts—are. I don’t know what’s going on. So many years, and so much humanity in vain. I feel terribly sad that a person can drop me like unnecessary ballast. I feel terribly sad.
Sincerely,
your old J.R.
401. To Stefan Zweig
Eden Hotel
Amsterdam
2 July 1936
My dear good friend,
for certain reasons I couldn’t write before today, and I couldn’t go to Belgium before Monday. I got the visa yesterday (after appeals from the PEN Club in Brussels). As a result of the accompanying telegram, signed by Manga Bell’s daughter, probably without the mother’s knowing, I had to telephone my translator, and ask her to look and check, and then to call me back. This phoning back and forth cost me half my travel money, the money for my lecture doesn’t come till Monday, and then I’ll go straight to Brussels, Hotel Siru. The telegram was a crude shock tactic. It made me ill for 2 days. Awful. How bitterly one pays for any humanity and any human half-joy. Please write, so I’ll have word at the Siru on Tuesday, and won’t have to wire you too.
Sincerely,
your loyal old J.R.
P.S. It will be very embarrassing for me to run into Kesten and Kisch in Ostend—certainly not to be avoided. I can’t stand any more jokers.
402. Stefan Zweig to Joseph Roth
46 Promenade Albert 1er
Maison Florial
Joseph Roth, Amsterdam, Eden Hotel
[postmarked 4 July 1936]
Dear friend,
I’ve just come from Brussels, where I spoke to Huebsch on his way through. Brussels is impossible to work in, you’ll like Ostend better, there are hundreds of cheap hotels, and, as in the rest of Belgium, that for you very advantageous prohibition of spirits. We can help each other in our work, and I think could both use such help—let’s bring back the old days of Job! And don’t be upset about Ma. Be. It’s lucky when things come undone quickly like that, it’s better than a slow rending.1 I’m looking forward very much to seeing you, come straight on, and forget dull old Brussels,
warmly your St. Z.
1. a slow rending: spoken with feeling, in view of Zweig’s—on the face of it, mostly “amicable”—breakup with Friderike.
403. To Stefan Zweig
Saturday [July 1936]
My dear good friend,
I have to tell you in the manner of teenage girls1 or schoolboys how nice you were to me today, with the hotel and everything, and so I’ll say it to you the way I would have said it if I’d tried at age 18 to look you up in your apartment in Vienna. Thank you for a slice of youth and the sweet folly of saying it in writing, instead of speech,
your J.R.
1. JR’s note seems to be strangely colored by Zweig’s novella Letter from an Unknown Woman, which was often taken as being “about” Friderike, whose first approach took the form of an unsigned letter.
404. To Blanche Gidon
Hotel Siru
Brussels
8 July 1936
My dear kind friend,
forgive me for writing to you so late. Sorry too that I telephoned you on Sunday, and bothered you. I didn’t know what else I could do, after the alarming telegram from Mrs. Manga Bell’s daughter. It was signed by her, and she wrote: prière venir immédiatement. What else was I to think, other than that the very worst had befallen Mrs. M.B.? I spent the last 8 days lying down, unable to write. I had to have Zweig summoned on the telephone. He’s coming here, and will whisk me away to Ostend for a fortnight. I’m going tomorrow, as soon as he gets here. I won’t write any more now, but all my post will be forwarded to Ostend, from the Eden Hotel, Amsterdam; please write to me there. I’m very upset about Mrs. Manga Bell. Once I’ve said goodbye to Zweig—who’s going to South America, and will leave me money for 2 months—I can take her with me to Brussels, because it’s so cheap. I suggested it to her once. I’ll write to her again. If you want to do me another kind turn, please help her morally. The woman is in pieces. I have the feeling the children are trampling all over her. Their trying to frighten me is senseless. I can’t come. I spent half the travel money on telephone, telegram, and replies. The children still seem to think I can get by, even though I’ve been living off charity for the past 4 months. All I can do is work, and hope I’m offered a new contract in October. Hope!—And stay alive till then!—I’m feeling better, I’ve just arrived.—I’ll talk to St. Z. about alcohol withdrawal. Excuse the bluntness.—I am so tired, and so fizzing. Give my best to Mr. Gidon.—Thank you for your grand kind friendship.—I have no other way to thank you but saying so. It hurts me really.
Sincerely your
Joseph Roth
405. To Blanche Gidon
Ostend
Hotel de la Couronne
15 July 1936
Dear friend,
thank you so much for everything! The story is unfortunately sold, along with the English rights. But if you are able to sell it, and send the royalty to Querido Verlag, Landshoff, then 60% of it will make its way back to me. Any interested party should apply to: Querido Verlag, Amsterdam, 333 Keizersgracht.
I sent Mrs. Manga Bell 200 francs. At the beginning of August, Stefan Zweig is going to South America. I could spend August in Brussels with Mrs. Manga Bell on the money he’s leaving me. I put it to her, but she hasn’t replied. The money’s not enough for Paris. I have to work in peace and quiet, otherwise my life will be completely wrecked. I have endured a superhuman portion of work, of turbulence, of humiliation. Mrs. Manga Bell has steadily refused to adapt to the rules of my life. Her children were and are much more important to her than I am. I will not sacrifice myself to her children. The boy is old enough, and the girl could have the money that M.B.’s Swiss girlfriend unnecessarily sends the boy. They aren’t children any more at all, but two adults who call me boche, and poison Mrs. Manga Bell against me. I myself am the lost, sick child. I can keep Mrs. Manga Bell on her own, but I’ve had it with the children. I’m standing on the brink of the abyss. I can no longer bear the least psychological pressure, it would kill me. And I don’t want to die. And I don’t want anything more to do with people who call me boche. That sort of thanks is unbearable.
I’m having my feet treated. I’m not drinking any alcohol, and for the last week I’ve eaten once a day. Zweig is so sweet to me, he’s like a brother. Only I don’t know how I’m going to finish in October, when I have money only through August. Zweig won’t be back till November.
I haven’t heard anything from Mr. Wasserbaeck. If you should happen to speak to him, please give him my address.
I hope you and Mr. Gidon have a good summer. Please drop me another line from Paris. No politics, afterward, from Austria! I’ll be at this hotel—vide supra—till 1 August. I’m going to Steenockerzeel1 for a couple of days. Keep quiet about this, but don’t spend longer than 4 weeks in Austria. End of August is the deadline, it now appears. The friendship with Germany isn’t real. Little Red Riding Hood is back to life as well.
I kiss your hand, and thank you for your friendship,
Your loyal
Joseph Roth
1. Steenockerzeel: where Archduke Otto von Habsburg and the loyalist court were based. See no. 454.
406. To Stefan Zweig
[Ostend] 8 August 1936
Dear friend,
thank you very much for the writing paper. I cadged a loan of this paper here,1 I hope you like it. I wanted to write you something cheerful, but unfortunately it’s going to be sad. Huebsch has dropped me. At a time when my reputation with the Amsterdam publisher could have been rescued only by interest from America. My book2 wasn’t that bad either. I’m sure Huebsch has been unjust to me, humanly, literarily, and in publishing terms.
I dog you with these things, you’re already in a different world, but whom else am I to tell it to? Can you think of any consolation? It’s set me back at least a fortnight in my writing. Landauer has written to tell me that even if I hand in the manuscript, I’m not getting any more money.
In sincere friendship,
All the best,
your Joseph Roth
1. this paper here: the letter paper is marked, “Bond Street Birch. A paper that is inexpensive but subdued in character. Smython of Bond Street.” The noted collector Zweig liked his paper, and JR—see no. 403—when not antagonizing his patron, went to considerable lengths to try and please him.
2. my book: presumably Confession of a Murderer (1936).
407. To Blanche Gidon (written in French)
[Ostend] 4 September 1936
Dear friend,
I was invited to Calais by my friend Wagner, who has left for London, which is why I didn’t get your last letter. I am awaiting the return of Mr. Zweig to see it. I am hard at work, my novel1 will be good, better than my life. I don’t want to list any of the sorry details.
But it’s important that you know I love you. Unhappy people have the right to remain silent. I am writing this in the tram. Excuse the shaky hand. My best wishes to Mr. Gidon.
Please continue to write to the Eden Hotel Amsterdam.
Your very true and old
Joseph Roth
1. my novel: Weights and Measures.
408. To Stefan Zweig
1 November 1936
Dear friend,
forgive me for not writing. I am in indescribable trouble. My health is shot. Please, if you would give me two weeks’ time.
Thanks for the book.1 Great delight to see again what in the “old,” early years gave me such pleasure. It’s still fresh. Your older things as much as the new ones.
Sincerest greetings,
your old Joseph Roth
1. the book: a second, expanded edition of Zweig’s Sternstunden der Menschheit, originally translated as Decisive Moments in History.
409. To Blanche Gidon
Vilnius, 28 February 1937
Dear dear friend,
I owe you a detailed letter, but I feel so wretched. I can’t say anything more than that I assure you of my loyalty. For months I’ve been eking out my paltry life with lectures in tiny places, an awful life. I have no idea how I’ll ever get back to western Europe. My life is appalling.1 I want to thank you for your first letter, and the second. You are more than kind: you are forgiving. Unless I die soon, I’ll find an opportunity to thank you most sincerely. I go from place to place like a traveling circus, every other evening in penguin suit, it’s terrible, every other evening the same talk. The PEN Club has fixed it for me,2 otherwise I’d have been dead long ago.
If you can, try and hold on to the first serial payment. Contractually, it’s mine. But I’ve quarreled with de Lange—I’ve taken an advance from him—and if it falls into his hands he will pocket it. If you can, try and prevent that happening—fast.
(My address till 15 March is: c/o Miss Paula Grübel, Lvov, Hofmana 7/1.)
Your letter about Mrs. Manga Bell and the children has followed me all the way here. Thank you for it. If she’d expended half her energy on the children while we were living together—and less on being malicious against me—we would never have gotten into that situation. If you see her still, please greet her from me. I’m sorry to say I have the feeling some mishap has befallen her, or threatens to. Those children will be the end of her.
I know that I owe you information about myself, and more than that.
But please, stay friends with me, even if I say nothing.
I’m coming from Warsaw, and writing this in Vilnius.
I’m going to the border towns.
I have 4 more talks to give.
(You perhaps saw in the paper that the royalty for my novel was stolen from an Amsterdam hotel room.) It’s the novel that the Gemeenschap is publishing.3 Then I got the invitation from the PEN Club. Hotel Bristol should be a safe address—even if by then I’ll be training elephants in Australia.
Give my best to Mr. Gidon. I’m sure he’s laughing at me. He’s right.
My only hope is Marlene Dietrich, who gave an entire interview4 about me. Perhaps she’ll buy one of my novels.
Write soon, but don’t be surprised if I don’t reply often.
I remain your old, true, and very grateful
Joseph Roth
1. My life is apalling: cf. Joseph Brodsky’s distich “My life’s grotesque / I sit at my desk.”
2. The PEN Club has fixed it for me: a lecture tour of cities in Poland and the East. JR was accompanied by Irmgard Keun (1905–1982), who left a fictionalized record of her experiences—the locations, and some of the ambience—in the novel Child of All Nations (1938).
3. the novel that the Gemeenschap is publishing: The Emperor’s Tomb, 1938.
4. an entire interview: not so, but as well as listing her favorite colors and prized attributes in men (sense of humor?), she did say that her favorite novel was Roth’s Job.
410. To Friderike Zweig
Lvov, 9 March 1937
Dear dear friend,
I wrote to you by registered mail from Warsaw or Vilnius.
I hope you got the letter.
I don’t dare write to Stefan.
I should be in Vienna on the 15th inst., please make life a little easier for me by asking Gabriel the porter at the Hotel Bristol whether I’ve gotten in yet.
Thank you very much for the invitation to Salzburg.
I don’t think it would be good if you took on new staff in the wake of your servant’s departure.
Of course I’ll speak in the Urania,1 if there’s some money in it.
For example, I could give my Catholic-conservative talk about faith and progress.
Thank you again, and I hope you got my first letter.
Give my best to the girls,2 always your
[Joseph Roth]
1. the Urania: a Viennese lecture club.
2. the girls: FZ’s two daughters from her first marriage.
411. To Blanche Gidon
Hotel Bristol
Vienna, 2 April 1937
Dear dear friend,
I enclose the carbon of the letter I’ve just sent to Landauer, and also the letter to Candide,1 which you should feel free to use in the event that de Lange doesn’t pay me.
First serial rights are not covered in my contract with de Lange, so Candide had no right to send the royalty to the publisher.
I’d sooner the thing didn’t appear at all, than that the publisher gets the sizable royalty.
If the royalty isn’t paid to me, I can complain about the serialization, on the basis that the novel will appear in altered, abbreviated form.
Please write and tell me what you think, excuse typewriter, I promise I’ll write you a personal letter by hand soon.
Best wishes to you and Dr. Gidon, from your always loyal friend
Joseph Roth
1. Candide was a conservative literary-political weekly in Paris. Roth is exercised about the fee for the French translation and serial rights for Confession of a Murderer.
412. To Blanche Gidon
Salzburg, Hotel Stein
20 April 1937
Dear dear friend,
please excuse typewriter (I’m now in Salzburg, at the Hotel Stein). This is important to me: de Lange has agreed that I should get a quarter of the fee that Candide is paying him. If you could manage to see that the money is sent immediately, and tell me (because I don’t trust the publisher), I’d be very grateful for word at the Hotel Stein in Salzburg. I’ll write you a detailed letter by hand, tomorrow or the day after.
In any case, my dear friend, you see I was right, and that the serialization rights belonged to me. It’s a breach of contract to take them away from me (I didn’t have money for a lawyer to contest this). At least by issuing a threat, I managed to secure a quarter of the money.
In old fondness, I remain your own and Dr. Gidon’s old friend
Joseph Roth
413. To Stefan Zweig
Hotel Stein, Salzburg
[May? 1937]
Dear friend,
it’s quite extraordinary what you’re doing to me.
It’s your DUTY to accept me as your friend, whether I don’t write to you for ten or twenty or two hundred years; or whatever. You’re on closer terms with shits than you are with me. (As I happen to know.) Your wife has NOTHING to do with it. If that were so, I would tell you (and above all, tell HER). At once!
The moment you begin to question my friendship is the moment you’d better end it. I will think the better of you for that, and not “take it amiss.”
You don’t know, you have no idea, how wretched I am; how I lose more and more of myself from day to day; you have NO CLUE. I remain, until you decide to terminate our friendship,
your old J.R.
414. To Blanche Gidon
Vienna, 18 May 1937
Dear dear friend,
by chance, I’m just reading the second installment of my novel in Candide.
Thank you ever so much for the wonderful translation. It shows your ability as much as your friendship with me.
I still haven’t received any money from All. de Lange Verlag. He told me that an unbelievably small sum had been agreed upon. I don’t believe him! I would be extremely grateful to you if you could find out what Grasset was paid for it. In my current destitution it would be of major importance. Stefan Zweig has confirmed that the sum reported by the publisher is far too small for Candide.
I kiss your hand, and thank you again, and send the professor my warm regards.
In old true friendship, your
[Joseph Roth]
415. To Mr. and Mrs. Gidon (written in German and French)
Hotel Cosmopolite
Brussels
20 June 1937
Dear friends,
you don’t know what a pleasure you gave me. It was wonderfully generous of you to send me the photos, and at a moment when I was very ill, toxified, with swollen legs and bloodshot eyes, and my heart full of anguish. I’m a little better now. There is some hope from Holland.
You didn’t understand me: I know that Candide paid 8,000 francs, and that of these, 4,000 are going to de Lange. But he WON’T pay me 2,000. He only wrote loosely to say he would give me “something” once the money has arrived. All I want to know is whether the 4,000 has already been paid to him. Even if he only gives me 500 francs, I’d be satisfied—though it’s all flagrant breach of contract.
I got through the winter by giving talks, and in Austria by writing articles for Legitimists, on whose instructions and at whose expense I have come here. The books no longer bring in anything. A new one has just been set: The Story of the 1002nd Night, but not yet corrected and revised. I’ll have to start a third, if I’m to stay alive. There’s nothing else I can do. In Vienna my wife’s sanatorium set the bailiffs on me. I do believe it is absolutely impossible to know or understand the folly in which I live my life.—But don’t let me talk about those things! We’ll speak in Paris. Are you going away this summer? Where to?
I’m looking at you both at the moment, your picture is on my desk. I have the feeling you can see me too.
Thank you for your friendship and LOYALTY.
Thanks to Mr. Matveev as well. He hasn’t forgotten me. That’s a further consolation.
Very warmly in old troth, to you and the dear doctor. His spectacles are glinting in the picture. His beard gleams, and his kindly skepticism shines forth
To your old
Joseph Roth
416. To Hermann Hesse
Brussels
5 July 1937
Esteemed Mr. Hermann Hesse,
today I got your sweet book of poetry. It had taken its time getting to me. It shames me as much as it honors and delights me. Because it seems that I am left owing the now sexagenarian poet of my youth respectful and comradely congratulations. Please accept the word “comradely” as the expression of my happy feeling to have consecrated myself to the service of the language whose sweetness and strength I learned to love in your writings twenty years ago. Back then I was a soldier in the trenches, [. . . illegible] and resolved to remain in the army, and end my life as a major in Teplice or Brunn, if I should be spared. It was therefore as a layman twice over that I read your works then: not only was I not a writer, but I was a soldier. I will admit to you today in your festive year, that I reread your early works ten years later, then already an aspiring writer myself. They were as fresh as on the day they were printed, and they offered the “expert” the noble satisfaction of enjoying your “craft” and mastery with insightful admiration.—I beg you, to whom I owe so much, to forgive me for not having sent you a birthday telegram. For weeks I’ve been lying in bed with swollen feet, not so much unhappy as almost in despair and sometimes furious at my disobedient body. It’s only in the past few days that I’ve recovered a little alertness. Alert enough to feel the doom doubly that threatens our world, our little islet of world where we will die, the last 10 of the Fourth Regiment.1
In continuing gratitude and admiration,
your Joseph Roth
1. the last 10 of the Fourth Regiment: from an Austrian soldiers’ song. One imagines that the pacifist Hesse (then celebrating his sixtieth birthday) will have been bemused and alienated by the martial reference in particular and the letter altogether.
417. To Stefan Zweig
Grand Hotel Cosmopolite
Brussels
10 July 1937
Dear friend,
I received your grumpy letter. Why are you so afraid of words that won’t come? They have less meaning than pebbles dropped into the sea. Haven’t I written you worse things before? I’m a little concerned about you, and your letter added to my concern. Silly your suspicion I might have crossed your name off the list. I don’t keep lists. With the number of friends I have, I don’t need a list. But for a year now, since our melancholy goodbyes in Ostend, and more particularly since your return from South America, you’ve been in a state where either you don’t respond at all to my communications, or you respond badly. You react a little egocentrically. You blame God for your aging, instead of thanking Him for it. You don’t understand that people have gotten worse, because you were never willing to see them as good and bad and as human until Judgment Day, which you are so slow to believe in. How can I talk to you? Because you notice it getting darker, you stand there bewildered by the approach of night; and you think, furthermore, that it’s something personal to do with you. Even currency devaluations you take as a personal affront, because you had thought you could save yourself by living in the isles of the blessed. Now, for the sake of money, you want to return to the Continent, and to its darkest part. (Mind you don’t stay there too long!) You are independent of publishers and advances. You can afford to write nothing at all for two years. You truly are a “freelance.” Who else can say that of himself? Rolland has disappointed you. My Lord! He always was a false prophet and in thrall to noble errors and idealistic self-deceptions. Just before the World War he idolized the Germans and put to sleep whatever alertness the Continent had. After the war he proclaimed the absolute goodness of humankind, and today he’s a lackey of the Russian executioners. In the truest sense of the word, he has never known where God dwells, and he never will till his dying day. You already have a clear notion—being of the tribe of Asra, who have God, even if they never get him—of the inadequacy of all human idealisms that you bathed in from the time of your youth, and in which you have steeped yourself. You’re bound to be disappointed. The nonviolence of Mahatma Gandhi is just as unhelpful to me, as Hitler’s violence is detestable. Of course you shouldn’t sign up for any party or group. I don’t see why that should even occur to you. You are an unregistered member of a motley group as it is, with tumblers, men of the world, rascals and dilettantes and liars, all coexisting with a small handful of decent individuals. You think you have already withdrawn from it. Oh no, you haven’t! Why for instance did you send a statement to be read out at the PEN Club? An organization where Communists and Fascists shoulder the yoke of politics and the state, and you come along and intone your: Down with politics! You’re not serious. Don’t you understand? That might be the way to speak in front of a republic of ghosts, but not to a lurid organization where assholes have seats and votes alongside brains. Do you think you’ll tug at Feuchtwanger’s conscience? Will you hell! Why do you do these things! You can’t get over the loss of Germany! It’s only if Germany exists that you can be a cosmopolitan.1
Show equanimity to the world and give what you have in the way of goodness to three or four individuals, not to “humankind,”
your old
Joseph Roth
I am going to Ostend again. It will remind me of you.
1. a cosmopolitan: these are all wounding and pertinent strictures to Stefan Zweig.
418. To Blanche Gidon
Hotel Cosmopolite
Brussels
13 July 1935
[postmarked: 13 July 1937]
Dear friend,
please excuse me for writing in German. I’m interrupting my work. It’s difficult for me to make a sudden switch into French. Well, I thanked you from Salzburg for the sweet and lovely photos. I won’t repeat my “witty” remarks. But I also asked you for 2 practical things: 1. de Lange promised me of his charity to pay me “something” (my guess is 300–500 francs) of the Candide money, as soon as Grasset has remitted it. I ask you again please tell me if you can find out from Grasset when the money was dispatched to de Lange. The 2. question was: I’ve been asked for a couple of short stories by an American publication. I had a list of subjects written down somewhere, but I can’t find the piece of paper. I now think Mrs. Manga Bell has it, and I think you see her from time to time. I’ve also forgotten the name of the lawyer in Nice to whom I gave all my papers. I’m sure Mrs. Manga Bell will remember it. In case she wants to keep hold of the original piece of paper (I know she likes her little memorials), she could copy it out for me. It would help me a lot.—If it’s difficult for you to see Mrs. M.B., then just leave it. Querido does nothing for me in France. You could perhaps hawk the book1 around, it might be more suitable for serialization than the Confession.—In any case, I’ll write to Querido, even though we’re brouillés. As the mail is so unreliable, as you see, I beg you for a speedy reply.—My best regards to Mr. Gidon. With all my heart, your old and grateful
Joseph Roth
1. the book: Weights and Measures.
419. To Blanche Gidon (written in French)
Hotel Cosmopolite
Brussels
[postmarked:
Ostend, 21 July 1937]
Thousand thanks, my dear friend, for your letter and your great kindness. Please excuse the pencil. I would like this postcard to reach you before your departure. I’ve sold just 1,100 copies of Weights and Measures. I don’t think I will ever have a year in which I can take a rest from writing. I’m writing again now. I am battered and half demented at the same time.—Thank you for speaking to Mrs. Manga Bell, and thank her too—if you see her. The lawyer’s name was Feblowicz, that’s right. But Mr. Dohrn1 must be away from Paris, just now. He doesn’t reply to me. I don’t think you’ll have a moment to speak to him. But thank you in any case, from the bottom of my heart!
Drop me a LINE, please.
Happy holidays! to you and Mr. Gidon. I remain your very loyal and grateful, also very old
Joseph Roth
(Landauer is honest, but evil.) Will you be staying in the mountains for long?
I await your reply! Thank you for the translation! Weights and Measures is set in Bukovina, and not in the old Polish part of Austria.
1. Mr. Dohrn: Klaus Dohrn, who edited the Austrian monarchist publication (to which Roth contributed), Der Christliche Ständestaat.
420. To Stefan Zweig
[Ostend] 28 July 1937
Dear friend,
thank you for thinking of me with the obituary. Tschuppik1 was much closer to me than you thought, and for many reasons, and the news of his death—conveyed to me by a telegram at 7 in the morning from the editorial office of a newspaper: “Please hurry obituary Tschuppik,” robbed me of all strength. I am completely crazed. Angina pectoris in my heart. Everyone’s dying, so far: Hermann Wendel, Walter Rode, von Gerlach, Stefan Grossmann, Wassermann, Werner Hegemann, and others besides.2 Broken hearts: Hitler will have to pay for those at a dearer rate than for the simple murders. You’ve no need to call out to me: We must stick together. I don’t think fucking Prussia is going to kill me off. I’ve always despised it. Ebert3 or Hitler, I don’t give a shit. For me that shitty country was what California is to the gold digger. If I survive my penury, then I’ll outlive Germany.—But it won’t be any help from Querido, de Lange, Huebsch—who, let me say, is my personal backstabber—that will see me through.—Ostend without you, the same bars, completely different. Very familiar, very remote, terrifyingly both at once. I stagger from one week to the next. Please write and tell me where you’ll be on 1 September.—And confirm receipt of this card, please, sincerely
Your old
J.R.
Grasset didn’t remit any money for the serialization in Candide. Do you know whom I can turn to?
1. Tschuppik: Karl Tschuppik (1877–1937), Austrian journalist and author of biographies of Maria Theresia and Ludendorff. A friend of Roth’s, and another author in the Allert de Lange stable.
2. Wendel, Rode, von Gerlach, Grossmann, Wassermann, Hegemann: all German writers in exile.
3. Ebert: Friedrich Ebert (1871–1925), the first president of the Weimar Republic: an impressive if not altogether believable diatribe against Germany.
421. To Stefan Zweig
2 August 1937
Dear friend,
thank you so much! Your letter is a wonderfully comforting witness to your recovery: style and atmosphere bespeak your health and clarity of mind.—If you will, please read my second obituary to my dearly beloved Tschuppik in the Christl. Ständestaat. But don’t imagine for a moment that I’ll write you one, should I happen to outlive you. You are not just intellectually close to me, but physically. It’s the umbilical cord of friendship, there is such a thing. With you I don’t have the distance that is the prerequisite for an obituary.—You can’t excuse Huebsch. He has destroyed me materially, and wrecked my credit (all senses) with the Dutch boss. He could have arranged a meeting between the three of us, but he doesn’t want to see me, and the fact that you wanted the meeting doesn’t excuse him. A man who embraces me and kisses me on the cheek has to take my side, even if he doesn’t have the financial clout. But he wrote to tell me that my Weights and Measures was a literary disappointment! And, having once had the authority to offer me 100 dollars a month—for a year—he didn’t have the right, purely legally, to suddenly withdraw it. That’s what you should have held against him. In your place, that’s what I would have done. It would be absurd to say: this isn’t a reproach. It is—and it won’t detract from our friendship.
I’ll meet you wherever and whenever you want. I can’t make plans. I am now writing my fifth book in 3 years. It was a long time ago that I wrote you to say I’m all washed up. The ending is a little protracted. I take more time dying than I ever had living.
I embrace you,
your J. R.
Greetings from Almondo,1 Ostend
And Floréal2 asks after you every day. I just ran into Almondo in the Café Flynt in the corner where I’m writing this. He gave me a bottle of Verveine!
1. Almondo: owner of the Café Almondo in Ostend.
2. Floréal: owner of the Café Floréal in Ostend.
422. To Stefan Zweig
4 August 1937
Dear friend,
an illustrated Yiddish paper in Riga asks me for 5 short stories of mine, at 1 pound apiece, and says they have discussed it with you. Is that—true? Please let me know. I can’t imagine you gave the matter much attention—and why would you. But bear in mind that this Latvian Jew—surely no idealist—quoting your low price, also “depresses” the prices of the others. Imagine such an offer made to Ernst Weiss, or other noble souls who are befriended by you. You are by no means entitled to make yourself so available—on behalf of other people. You can give away their works for nothing, if you want to be generous. But remember that you know only extremes of liberality and expensiveness. You don’t help the Riga Jews by being cheap. And to your friends (forgive me for using this rather loathsome but unambiguous business parlance in haste!) you “spoil the market,” some obscure jobsworth who wants to make money out of photographs, and who lives better than you do, gets a staggering advance—from you. You don’t need that one pound, thanks be to God, not yet. You are obliged to be either dear or free.
I can’t bring myself to write to Mr. Brun. Unless Landauer’s lying, Brun hasn’t yet sent the 4,000 francs to Amsterdam, because the franc might fall further. Nor would it be correct on my part to chase him on behalf of my publisher. I know Mr. Brun too little, and Mr. Landauer too well. I have an offer from Niehans’s Mass und Wert.1 But the rates are absurd: 7 Swiss francs for “cultured prose.” 8 days’ work for 50 francs = 1 chapter of a novel that won’t be bought.—I know you’re inclined to see modesty as one of the primary attributes of the writer. But penury surely isn’t. Your writing doesn’t improve if you allow yourself to be suckered. Poverty is only a virtue if it’s a grace. And that doesn’t depend on us, alas. It’s just as possible to go under through paltriness as through immoderation.
Sincerely, your old
Joseph Roth
1. Niehans’s Mass und Wert: Mass und Wert was a bimonthly journal for free German culture, edited by Thomas Mann and Konrad Falke, in the Niehans Verlag, in Zurich, a somewhat more settled and conservative affair than Klaus Mann’s Sammlung.
423. To Stefan Zweig
8 August 1937
Dear friend,
it will be difficult for you, perhaps even, God forbid, impossible, to pull me out of my worst situation thus far—and the one for which I am least to blame myself. It’s hard for me to say it, as you know. See from the enclosed letter what’s happening to me, only happens to me. I’m getting 125 gulden per month. Everything is adjusted to that, the hotel, all my personal needs. The publisher, the new one,1 after Querido and de Lange, hasn’t sent me this month’s money and has gone away on vacation. I have nothing, except a couple of stamps bought in advance, and as if fearing the worst. The hotel, booked for 8 weeks, room payable every other week, is getting nasty. On the 15th I need to renew my Belgian visa in Brussels. I have 40 francs in my pocket. I don’t know what to do. Should I not turn to you?2 Perhaps it would have been right. There is so much unappetizing baggage, in terms of my poverty, my constantly varied little catastrophes which to me are earthquakes, in this rope that so long disdains to kill me once and for all, and just tightens spasmodically around my neck, it’s soaked already in the sweat of my fear; nothing but the vacation of just one man who won’t know any of this—I am his only German author—a puff of wind, some woman falling ill so that the managing editor can think of nothing else—takes me to the brink of Salvation Army and jail, unfortunately only in installments to the brink of the grave. I’ve finished my long novel 1002nd Night, the other one is three-quarters done, I have to hand it in at the beginning of September. In Poland I was writing all winter—the lectures on the side—I was happy and cheerful to be getting 125 gulden till the end of ’37. And for the past 4 weeks here I’ve been calm and industrious. Then yesterday the enclosed letter came. Whom can I send it to? Not to you, I know that. For almost a whole year I didn’t bother you with my shitty little affairs. Excuse me! If you can excuse me. I hope at least you’ll reply promptly. If you can somehow arrange for me to get the money through Belgium or Paris, then I can send 125 gulden back to your address (if it’s still right?) on 1 September. What shall I do? Answer me, I beg you. Just now, two policemen are dragging a man across the street. I am so wound up that I can see myself there in their midst, with no visa, being schlepped to the German frontier, the directest way back to Austria. Almondo has asked me around, but if I take so much as one meal from someone like that I’d feel I was practically a con artist.—I have such huge fear of falling into the depth of those latrines. See how it pulls me in. Please see, it’s not my fault. I’ve wrecked my reputation by industry, too many books in short succession. I’ve got this publisher to agree to publish my next book not at Christmas, but in 1938. But in order to live till the end of ’37 I’ve promised to deliver yet another novel by the beginning of September.3—Oh, it’s all shameful, pitiful, degrading. I’d seen the end so many times already, please believe me it’s not being delayed through any doing of mine. I mustn’t shoot myself—left to myself I would have done it, to spare you the undignified spectacle of a lamenting friend. Please believe me, I haven’t done anything irresponsible, I came here for 3 months with exactly 1,800 Belgian francs, to be in the cheapest country and in the proximity of this strange publishing house, which doesn’t understand the least thing about packing, or printing or distribution, whose typesetters don’t even know German. I have to correct their exotic misprints myself, there is no one else to do it. And Mr. Lion4 turns up and says he would never have thought someone who had put out so many books could be any good. And there are many who think like that. You still believe in my literary virtue. But you can see I can’t work in a latrine.
I know that your mind, used to stability and to thinking in terms of continual improvements, will view this catastrophe of mine—and rightly—as a consequence of my overall situation, and that you will first think how to improve the overall situation. Please bear in mind, though, that this acute difficulty may make a subsequent overall situation impossible. Even a sort of reconciliation with Huebsch, which nothing suggests he wants or is ready for, wouldn’t help. He is certainly not the object of my bitterness, you don’t need to take him under your wing. He has only followed the rules of my fate, he is a cat’s-paw in the hand of the destiny that has prepared all this for me.—But all this is not now. At this moment I can see the policemen escorting the man back toward the station. I feel a sudden desire to relieve him, to take his place and say there has been an error, a mistaken identity—and so bring about the final catastrophe. I can’t go on. I see right away that there’s such a thing as literary honor. The reality is that I’ll get another letter from the hotel tomorrow, that the laundry bill hasn’t been paid, and that I won’t be able to write anything any more, not even a letter. Today is Sunday. On Tuesday you will have this disgusting letter, does that feel like a long time! It’s three years! Can you, will you send me a telegram?—And then I’m afraid of the post. What if this doesn’t find you? I’ll send it express, and then a postcard as well. It’s cheaper than registered. But believe me that, in this whole calamity, your saying that you forgive me remains the most important element. Please send me a wire. (I am not responsible for the nonsense that may appear here.) All I know is that these are the 8th, 9th, 10th, 11th, and that it’s 24 days till I next get money from Holland.
I am so full of loathing for me, it’s so awful, soon I won’t care any more—and that frightens me.
I embrace you, send me a wire on Tuesday, I will go home late for fear of not finding one,
your J.R.
1. the publisher, the new one: the Catholic press De Gemeenschap, in Bilthoven, Holland.
2. should I not turn to you: Hermann Kesten remarks that, in addition to being one of the best-selling and most-translated authors in the world at that time, Stefan Zweig had substantial private means.
3. another novel by the beginning of September: this is The Emperor’s Tomb, which ended up overtaking The Tale of the 1002nd Night in JR’s choked production schedule.
4. Mr. Lion: Ferdinand Lion (1883–1965), essayist, critic, playwright. There is something in what he says. Thomas Mann, for instance, saw Roth primarily as a drunk, which Roth repaid by seeing Thomas Man(n) as primarily neuter (see no. 210).
424. To Blanche Gidon (written in French)
Ostend
Hotel de la Couronne
13 August 1937
Dear friend,
thank you, thank you for all the good you do me, I don’t deserve it.
My life is constant trouble. I would like to see you in Paris again. But it’s out of my hands.
The little I write to you—it comes from a good heart, and a silent heart. It’s the first time I’ve experienced a deepening attachment. To this point all I’ve known of other people were either the stable ones or the others who slowly weaken and lose their way.
Excuse my French! Give the doctor my best wishes. Your devoted old
Joseph Roth
I am just completing a book you will like very much. I know it—in the midst of my misfortunes I know it.
425. To Stefan Zweig
18 August 1937
Kind thanks from an oppressed heart,1 my friend! Don’t reproach me for railing at myself. It’s the only thing I can do, I involve you in my catastrophes, which I probably deserve, though I do nothing to provoke them. Instead of the most exalted, I make merely the most putrid demands of you. I want to be near to you, and probably only succeed in being intrusive. Next follows a break-in to your restricted bank account, and the shameless imposition of further economies, all caused by me. I know you take far greater pleasure in sensual things than I do, a good express train, a decent meal, a spoonful of caviar, and I take the spoon away from you and I know what it feels like, to have one’s wine glass taken away. No brother would do that to you. The counterweight is this: you have to imagine suddenly, with the help of one banknote, waking up from a coma, the women are once more walking down the avenues, the trees are green again, laughter and tears are back, the beloved pain returns that had been anesthetized by banal squalid worries. Your life returns to you, the hotel was a prison in which one was not allowed to be locked up, worse thereby than the others. Suddenly it becomes your airy bower again. These are actual sensations, my dear friend, if only I weren’t so desperate to have them. It’s too much, too often, I rack my brains for ways of breaking free of my publisher, but racking one’s brains doesn’t produce miracles. It’ll be the death of me, this mixture of brain, hand, begging, advance, eager promises of works that my head isn’t certain of being able to write—and all in vain, without readers, without the trust that comes from outside, an echo to the one within. I can feel myself having to violently regenerate morally and physically, in two months I have to be well, then abysmal feeling, panic and derangement, anguish, heart pain, darkness. Two or three proper catastrophes, the death of someone near to me, and I’ve had it.2 Such loose talk as Lion’s is very detrimental to me—in monetary terms too—believe me, it damages me with publishers, with Oprecht,3 with Huebsch, with Querido, in Vienna, it builds up like an avalanche, and it crushes me. My productivity is taken amiss, my blocked colleagues take it for proof of lack of talent.
We will [see] each other whenever it suits you, God knows how I need to have you there, at hand, and how much I need you to need me. Even though the unhappy propensity to see each meeting as a farewell is becoming a real disease. I am half done in, and at the same time eerily taut. It doesn’t go.
Please confirm receipt of this letter, and the date of your departure.
Your warm and trusty
Joseph Roth
1. an oppressed heart: JR’s old friend on the FZ Friedrich Traugott Gubler used to say, half jokingly, that Roth should always be sad; the sadder he was, the better he wrote.
2. and I’ve had it: indeed, it was the news that Ernst Toller had hanged himself in New York that brought on JR’s fatal collapse in May 1939.
3. Oprecht: Emil Oprecht, publisher and bookseller in Zurich.
426. To Stefan Zweig
Ostend
Hotel de la Couronne
26 August 1937
Dear friend,
I am VERY disquieted, because I have no reply.
Cordially,
your old J.R.
427. To Stefan Zweig
Ostend
Hotel de la Couronne
29 August [1937]
Dear friend,
where will you be going?
Perhaps we could meet anyway?
Loyally, to you both
Joseph Roth
428. To Blanche Gidon
Ostend
Hotel de la Couronne
[postmarked: Ostend, 3 September 1937]
My dear friend,
no good news. Au contraire! I force myself to write, purely so that you know I am loyal, and that I’m resting. My worries are unending. I’d like to talk. I can’t write any more.
Wretched, and very sad
your old Joseph Roth
429. To Stefan Zweig
Ostend
Hotel de la Couronne
4 September 1937
Dear friend,
if you want to see me, it will be possible only in Brussels. I have to go to Amsterdam on the 18th, at the latest. On the 15th I have to have the bulk of my novel finished. (My publisher still isn’t back yet.) I should have had it ready on 20 August (at last I got some ink)—I’m unable to finish it, and then I won’t have any money, not even through November, wretchedly. My Belgian visa (extended) runs out on the 20th inst. I have to write 10 pages a day, for the next 10 days here. I can only get to Brussels, and for one or two days. You can easily get a transit visa for 3 days. If you should need to extend it, it’s inexpensive. All we need is a 4-hour block of time, intensive, undistracted, for our most important things. Dear friend, wouldn’t it feel absurd to be flying over my head, or rattling past me in a train.—You write, “above all, tell me what your plans are”—and you don’t feel how that pains me. What plans could I possibly have? The man won’t pay me anything, he’s on vacation. What am I supposed to do? My freedom just about stretches as far as Brussels; and then only until my visa gives up the ghost. I’m expecting your answer to the effect that you’ll expect me in Brussels BEFORE the 20th. Place? Hotel? Time and place?—If you can’t, then please drop me a line to say so. I’m on tenterhooks.
Warmly and sincerely,
your J.R.
430. To Stefan Zweig
Hotel de la Couronne
Ostend
7 September 1937
Dear friend,
thank you for your card. You should have heard from me by now. I can’t get to Paris, but you can very well go to Brussels. I need to go there on the 20th to renew my visa again. Which is absurd, seeing as I have to go to Amsterdam from here. I can only sketch things in, it’s a waste of ink to go into detail. I hope very much that we do see each other. At least for a single day. But it mustn’t be wasted either. So let me now talk about my essay in the Christliche Ständestaat that you were critical of, I don’t quite know why. I didn’t “adopt” the distinction between Christian and Jewish publishers; it was the Jewish publishers in Austria who were the first to adopt Hitler’s distinction between Aryan and non-Aryan authors. It was the publishers who undertook that discrimination, not me. It’s my duty to call to order those Jews who do Goebbels’s bidding for him. Zsolnay, Horovitz, the silly idiot Tal, your jumped-up Reichner, who had the chutzpah to advertise you in Germany: they’ll wreck the last few “Aryan” writers and publishers. Because these rightly make appeal to the fact that even the Jews follow the demands of the Reichsschrifttumskammer.1 Quite the contrary: it’s my duty to put a spoke in the wheel of those Jews who are making the calamity worse. And that’s what I’ll do.
You shouldn’t attack me for doing it either. It wasn’t Hitler or me who undertook this discrimination, but our old Jehovah. The Jews may not become anti-Semitic or anti-Christian, less than others. A Jewish publisher who won’t publish a book because he can’t sell it in Goebbels’s Reich; who only publishes books that will do well with the anti-Semites: that publisher is the lowest worm, and I will inevitably always try to crush him. And for the rest: tua et mea res agitur.2 We can’t permit ass-kissers, true Jewboys, chutzpah-chappies, and weeping willows of Jewish origins not to publish me, because Goebbels doesn’t like me. We have enough “Aryan” anti-Semites. We don’t need Jewish ones. As long as it’s possible for me to hurt them, I will do so: with delight. In order to hurt them, I wouldn’t shrink from allying myself with “Aryan” anti-Semites. A non-Jew who does what Goebbels says is a poor son of a bitch. But a Jew, a publisher in Vienna, who turns me down, is vile scum. Mr. [. . .] a recent immigrant, anti-Semite from a safe distance, a Jewish spear-carrier for the Reichsschrifttumskammer; the widow Tal, who says: we must all start over again, under pseudonyms; that Horovitz, who delights in the name of “Phaidon”; the toilet manufacturer Zsolnay, whose Werfels have gone up; your chutzpah Reichner, whom you—bafflingly, for me—treat as if he were the Insel Verlag: those serfs of Pharaoh, those betrayers of Moses, that filthy shit is what you defend, you Jewish poet, against me? You, my friend, who have God in your heart. Whom you have long forgotten, and are now learning to love again? I would have thought my article should have given you pleasure.
But no: you’re still on the side of “common sense.” You’ve experienced repulsive things with me: but the terror is still ahead (believe me!).
In the Ständestaat there is only room for One. I am with Him. God asked for ten just men. I am a man: I am satisfied with one. This Ständestaat has at least kept going until today. Sufficient of a miracle. But if Jewish publishers upset the miracle, if Werfel-Mahler3 embraces the Reichspost,4 I won’t hesitate to hurt those desecraters. May lightning strike them, and I will try to get there before the lightning.
I hope that’s all that needs to be said on that head, which might disturb our meeting.—
If I had a brother, I wouldn’t wait for him any differently than I am waiting for you now. You know that—but that doesn’t mean you have to come.
Sincerely your
Joseph Roth
1. Reichsschrifttumskammer: the organization, established by the Nazis in 1933, to which all writers had to belong in order to be able to publish in Germany.
2. tua et mea res agitur: (“it concerns us both”) adapted from Horace’s line “Nam tua res agitur, paries cum proximus ardet,” “You yourself are in danger when the wall of your neighbor is on fire.”
3. Werfel-Mahler: a scornful dubbing (and unmanning) of Franz Werfel, who was married to Alma Mahler.
4. the Reichspost: Viennese newspaper financed by Hitler’s ambassador at the time, Franz von Papen.
431. To Stefan Zweig
[Ostend] 8 September 1937
Dear friend,
our letters will cross in the mail: I don’t want you to be uncertain or—which is worse—ambivalent about me for a single day.
Do you know me so little as that? Don’t you know that hatred is foreign to me, yes, since my devoutness, something sinful; and are you really so remote from me that you fail to see that the purest intentions animate my indignation, my rage, don’t stoke my hatred?—Something in me rebels at the idea that a man who trades in books is just as capable of villainy as one who sells celluloid. And where does your forgiveness get you? Don’t you see that you’re doing exactly the same thing as all the politicians who left Hitler and Mussolini and Stalin to wreak their destruction? They say: “Get used to it, it’s the way dictators are.” And you say: “Get used to it, that’s the way publishers are.”—I say, one may be called to become a writer, but not a publisher. And someone who only wants to calculate, and to calculate with betrayal, who deals with Hitler, such a person should stick to celluloid. Apart from the fact that some publishers are swindlers—[. . .]—I don’t even insist that they keep honest accounts; but that they don’t shop us to the Reichsschrifttumskammer is the least I can ask for. If I had hatred in me, then I’d be sterile, and I’d know it. What it is is rage. I don’t hate any man. I hate evil and its tools and weakness. Who’s left to stand up for goodness, if even you want to make your peace with the wretchedness that permits a man who deals in our heart’s blood to have the morals of a sock seller?—Have you so little respect for your own work, and in front of them?—My dear friend, it’s too simple, the way you’ve made your peace with these terrible facts. I can’t do it. I really feel no hatred, or, if you prefer, no more than Voltaire—no friend of mine—for the instigators of witchcraft trials. No more and no less. If you like: as much hate and as little as St. Boniface. You surely won’t think I’m moved by personal spite? Me, just now undergoing my novitiate?
It would be serious if you couldn’t come to Brussels. You are removing yourself from me before my very eyes, you are becoming too worldly, I love you and your cleverness, but I will cease to love you the moment you become a child of the world. For a long time, for some 8 months, I had that suspicion, and kept my distance from you. I’m embarrassed for you that you think you can tell me that publishers do sums—I know that, that’s why I denounce them as sons of bitches—and the easy indulgence with which you accept a given set of circumstances strikes me as every bit as sterile as the hatred you warn me against. I have the feeling you don’t seem to realize how much of your personal and professional dignity is sacrificed when you begin to show comprehension of the swine. Tout comprendre c’est tout confondre.1
I don’t like it when you become complaisant, you least of all. And please forgive me if I’m being unfair, perhaps.
I’m writing you all this, purely so that we don’t waste any of our precious time together, if we meet.
Be assured I know neither hatred nor resentment. They are mortal sins.
I hope we do meet up.
My situation is desperate. But I don’t want to burden you with that, in this context.
Your loyal
Joseph Roth
1. Tout comprendre c’est tout confondre: (To understand everything is to mix everything up, or get everything wrong), JR’s personal variant on the familiar Tout comprendre, c’est tout pardonner.
432. To Stefan Zweig
Hotel de la Couronne
Ostend
21 September 1937
Dear friend,
I am leaving today. I have hung on in vain, in the hope of seeing you.
Thanks to your secretary’s mistake, your last letter (dated the 10th) only reached me on the 18th. But that was about a Zweig-Toscanini1 meeting, not one between Zweig and Roth. The splendidly furious outburst of the old man against Furtwängler2 reminded me somehow of you. Toscanini was certainly not “embittered.” One has to oppose meanness, dilution, cowardice. In my place, Toscanini would have written exactly the same things against the Austrian publishers as I did. I am sure you didn’t remonstrate with him.—When will you finally see what posture accords to your dignity and my love for you?
I am always your friend
Joseph Roth
1. Toscanini: Arturo Toscanini was opposed to Fascism and National Socialism.
2. Furtwängler: Wilhelm Furtwängler (1886–1954), who was often compared with Toscanini, was the most successful conductor in the Third Reich. His support for the Nazis and his decision not to leave Fascist Germany made him a deeply contentious figure after the war.
433. To Stefan Zweig
[Amsterdam] 23 September 1937
Dear friend,
I’ve just received the address from your card sent to Querido. I have waited till now (7 in the evening, 23 September, Thursday). If I succeed in getting a contract in Amsterdam, I’ll come to Brussels or Paris.—I’m faring very badly, dismally in fact. I don’t understand why you preferred seeing Toscanini to me: or were prepared to miss seeing me for his sake. I’ve written to you in London, to tell you how much I admire and endorse his position.
Sincerely your
J.R.
434. Stefan Zweig to Joseph Roth
25 September 1937
Dear Roth,
why, oh why are you so easily offended—aren’t we beaten about enough without baring our teeth at one another, even if . . . I am so consumed by my own fallibility that I have no more strength to defend myself against others. No, my friend, not articles now—for us it would be best to get ourselves wiped out by a gas bomb in Shanghai or Madrid, and maybe rescue someone with more joie de vivre. I was only in Paris for a day and a half, didn’t see anyone except Masereel1 and Ernst Weiss, saw some wonderful paintings, and am now back at work. This year ’37 is a bad one for me, everything claws at me, I feel half flayed, my nerves are exposed, but I carry on working, and I would do better if it weren’t for family and others’ affairs that lame me, and demand twice the energy I have. Don’t forget that I’m past 55, and since we seem to be living in wartime, I get tired some of the time—I positively fled back to my desk, the only support for the likes of us. You have no idea how much I needed to speak with you, I’ve just gotten another blow in the guts from a so-called friend, and I’m choking back gall with clenched teeth. It would be important to spend good time together, and if the conspiracy between dictators doesn’t lead to the planned concentric assault on Russia (first the Bolshevists, then the Democrats, that’s the way it was done in ’33), if a frail sort of peace still endures, then I want to go to Paris in January for a month; I need my friends as never before and there are a few there, and you would come too, it would be lovely! From time to time I need to breathe in the air of conversation, and strengthen and intensify myself: we forfeit too much of ourselves in the current madhouse. Toscanini was forced to stay in Gastein at the last moment, I’m seeing him here; I am continually shaken at the way he, who celebrates the greatest “successes” on the planet, instead of egoistically enjoying them, suffers from all that happens around him—well, my novel2 may have something to say about the suffering from pity. No, Roth, don’t grow hard from the hardness of the times, that would mean assenting to it and strengthening it! Don’t get pugnacious, implacable, just because the implacable ones are triumphing through their brutality—rather refute them by being different, permit yourself to be mocked for your weakness, instead of going against your nature. Roth, don’t become bitter, we need you, for the times, however much blood they drink, remain anemic in terms of their intellectual force. Preserve yourself! And let’s stay together, we few!
Your St. Z.
1. Masereel: Frans Masereel (1889–1972), Flemish illustrator and etcher, friend of Zweig’s.
2. my novel: Ungeduld des Herzens (Beware of Pity).
435. Stefan Zweig to Joseph Roth
[autumn 1937]
My dear fellow,
got your letter a moment ago. It saddens me. I remember how we once wrote to each other; telling each other of our plans, celebrating our friends, and rejoicing in our mutual understanding. I know nothing now of what you are working on, what keeps you busy; in Italy people were telling me of a new novel of yours, and had read it, and I didn’t know about it. Roth, friend, brother—what does all the shit going on have to do with us! I read the paper once a week, and that’s enough for me of the lies of all countries, the only thing I do is try here and there to help an individual—not materially, but to try and get people out of Germany or Russia or out of some trouble: that seems to be the only way in which I can remain active. I won’t deny it when you say I’m hiding. If you are unable to impose your own decisions, you should avoid them.—You forget, you, my friend, that I state my problem PUBLICLY in my Erasmus, and only stand by one thing, the integrity of individual freedom. I’m not hiding myself, there is Erasmus, where I portray the so-called cowardice of a conciliatory nature without celebrating it—as fact, and as DESTINY. And then Castellio—the image of a man I SHOULD LIKE TO BE.
No, Roth, I was never disloyal to a true friend for a second. If I wanted to see Tosc., then it’s because I honor him, and because one should take every opportunity one gets of seeing a 72-year-old, and then in the end I didn’t even see him (you must have missed that in my letter) because I had to go, Amsterdam wasn’t anywhere on my route, and I had no idea if you were there or in Utrecht. Roth, there are so few of us and you know, however much you push me away, that there can be hardly anyone who is as devoted to you as I am, that I feel all your bitterness without opposing it with any bitterness of my own: it doesn’t help you, you can do what you like against me, privately, publicly diminish me or antagonize me, you won’t manage to free yourself of my unhappy love for you, a love that suffers when you suffer, that is hurt by your hatred. Push me away all you like, it won’t help you! Roth, friend, I know how hard things are for you, and that’s reason enough for me to love you all the more, and when you’re angry and irritable and full of buried resentments against me, then all I feel is that life is torturing you, and that you’re lashing out, out of some correct instinct, perhaps against the only person who wouldn’t be offended thereby, who in spite of everything and everyone will remain true to you. It won’t help you, Roth. You won’t turn me against Joseph Roth. It won’t help you!
Your St. Z.
436. Stefan Zweig to Joseph Roth
17 October 1937
Dear unfriend,
I just wanted to tell you that, finally, thanks to Berthold Fles,1 whom I saw yesterday, I’ve managed to get some news of you, and I’m delighted to hear that you are so hard at work: I know you will manage to write those two books, and they will be a success. He told me you’d had an invitation to Mexico,2 and I can’t tell you how important it would be in my view for you to get a change of air, of scene, of place, to fill your lungs again, and how wonderfully you would depict such a new world—something like that, as I said to Fles, must be reasonably easy to finance as well. The smell of Europe’s putrefaction is in all our nostrils: a little fresh air and you, my dear, my important friend, would feel refreshed in your soul. I am glad that at least you are in Paris—don’t forget to take a look at the literary pavilion in the exhibition3 (“ébauche d’un musée de littérature”) the most impressive in the whole exhibition for me. Yesterday I completed the first draft of my novel, 400 pages, of course a completely inadequate rough sketch, the proper work will begin now, and how useful it would be for me to be able to consult you at such a moment! But you won’t come to London (even though it would be important) and I will have to sit here till mid-December, when I will go to Vienna for a fortnight, and then maybe Paris for a month. When will we see one another? Now you know all my plans. In the next few days, you will get copies of two of my books, the essay collection and the Magellan.4 I’ve really been hard at work these last few years, and done what I could in terms of quantity and energy; I hope the quality is acceptable! This is just a hello to the Foyot, and don’t forget your unhappy lover, and discarded friend
St. Z.
1. Berthold Fles, a Dutch literary agent in New York, represented many of the exiled German writers.
2. Mexico: “pyre of Bierce and springboard of Hart Crane,” where Malcolm Lowry (1909–1957) was currently at work on his epochal novel of alcoholic decline, Under the Volcano (1947). It must be considered doubtful whether JR could have thrived there for any length of time.
3. exhibition: the World’s Fair Exhibition in Paris in 1937. Here, as so often, one gets the impression that Zweig and Roth simply inhabited different planets, and couldn’t open their mouths without wounding each other—Roth with acuteness, his intemperate malice and fury, Zweig with obtuseness, a kind of airy and spoiled imperviousness to everyone and everything. It is really hard to imagine the penurious Roth, whose orbit was down to one or two bars in what he called his république Tournon (the area around the café in whose upstairs he had a small bedroom), with swollen feet and in the last stages of alcoholism, doing something as otiose as taking himself to a literary exhibition.
4. the Magellan: Magellan, der Mann und seine Tat (Vienna, 1938).
437. To Rudolf Olden
Paris, October 1937
Dear friend Olden,
thank you very much for the obituary of Karpeles. It’s an obituary for us all: the last ten of the fourth regiment. Hail to you, the ninth, in sincere comradeship.1
Your old
Joseph Roth
1. This note, written on the letterhead of the Neues Tagebuch (New Diary), the Paris-based exiles’ paper, suggests a group elegy. Benno Karpeles was the initiator and editor of the paper, to which Roth and Olden and others—Tschuppik, Kisch, Polgar, etc.—contributed. Almost twenty years before, they had all worked together on another paper, in Vienna, Der Neue Tag. Rudolf Olden died on the crossing to the United States, when the ship he was traveling on, The City of Benares, was torpedoed by the Germans on 17 September 1940.
438. To Stefan Zweig
Hotel Paris-Dinard
2 November 1937
To Mr. Stefan Zweig, London W 1, 49 Hallam Street
Dear friend,
this isn’t a letter, just a notification of my new address.
The Hotel Foyot is being demolished on the instructions of the city magistrates, and yesterday I left it as the last of its guests. The symbolism is all too apparent.1
I am very much afraid that something of yours on its way to me may have gotten mislaid. I will be grateful for a prompt reply.
Your old
Joseph Roth
1. all too apparent: see Roth’s piece “Rest While Watching the Demolition,” first published in the Neues Tagebuch on 25 June 1938, included in Report from a Parisian Paradise.
439. To Stefan Zweig
Hotel Paris-Dinard
3 November 1937
To Mr. Stefan Zweig, London W 1, 49 Hallam Street
Dear friend,
in haste: the two manuscripts I sent you today are the only things I have found that might qualify as short stories.
Thank you very much. A proper letter will follow.
Your old
Joseph Roth
440. To Stefan Zweig
Hotel Paris-Dinard
14 November 1937
To Mr. Stefan Zweig, Hallam Street, London W 1
Dear friend,
please excuse the hurried dictation. I hear from Mr. Fles that fourteen Jews were organized to help me, among them apparently yourself.
I find firstly the fact of it unbearable, and secondly the circumstance that you did not inform me of this yourself.
Sincerely, your old
J.R.
441. To Stefan Zweig
Hotel Paris-Dinard
23 November 1937
To Mr. Stefan Zweig, 49 Hallam Street, London W 1
Dear friend,
I’m sorry, typewriter again. I was bedridden until yesterday, with a sleeping-pill poisoning. I am still barely able to eat anything. Work is out of the question.
Drop me a line if you would, to your old
[Joseph Roth]
442. Stefan Zweig to Joseph Roth
[December 1937?]
Dear friend,
I am shocked and alarmed at your letter—I had so hoped Paris would focus and stimulate you, instead of offering you endless irritations. I often think of you, always with love, and usually with concern. What will become of us? The plan that so upset you seems to have fizzled out, and I was sadly not at all sure I could participate fully in it—if Austria folds, then we are all done for. No more books of ours will appear in German and what I own there in stupid decency and honest patriotism will be futsch, and I have a dozen people’s welfare depending on me. I too took sleeping pills tonight—the notion that the “democracies” would give us up just like that I simply can’t get over, and Russia alone is unfortunately not strong enough to oppose that rapaciousness. I will probably go to Vienna this week1—I want to see it once more (and my old mother). Then back here, and in January a little place in the south. I don’t want to see anyone, I don’t want to read any newspapers, I’ll probably go to Portugal, where my knowledge of the language is poorest. Dear friend, everything is at stake now, we are almost at the end! Gather up all your strength, don’t waste yourself—the ultimate stands before us.
your St Z.
1. Vienna this week: The Anschluss, the annexation of Austria to the German Reich, occurred in February 1938.
443. Stefan Zweig to Joseph Roth
[London, January 1938]
Dear friend,
I feel a little calmer, because your latest letter (which I wish had been longer) once again was written in your clear firm hand; if everything goes well, we’ll be seeing each other in just a fortnight, and then I hope (!!) all will be well with you. I have had problems with Reichner;1 not only that he is ungrateful toward me and sometimes impossible, he does things that revolt me. It’s a shame that being persecuted has brought out the worst in the Jews. I really don’t know how I should assert myself in this relationship, not least as he has almost my entire opus in his hands—his continual truckling to Nazi Germany (which I don’t profit from, I have my own number on the German index) turns me into someone who in his particular case is compelled to agree with Streicher. Ach, my friend, when I think of all the disappointments I have endured in these years, and you refuse to understand how painful your remoteness and silence are to me; that two friends each scrape open their own hearts without being brought closer doesn’t make sense to me. Well, in a few weeks—I’ll be going to Portugal, where there are no newspapers and no mail (everything a week old and more digestible in its staleness).
Sincerely
your loyal St. Z.
1. Reichner: but JR, by his own inspired methods, had reached the same conclusions 4 years earlier. See no. 321.
444. To Stefan Zweig
Hotel Paris-Dinard
Monday [postmarked: 10 January 1938]
Dear friend,
it’s good that you’re going somewhere where you won’t get letters. That way, you’ll be spared possible news of me. Go with God! It’s in His hands whether we see each other again or not.
Sincerely, always
Your old
Joseph Roth
445. Stefan Zweig to Joseph Roth
49 Hallam Street
London W 1
[January 1938?]
straight after getting your letter.
Dear friend,
I am terribly alarmed by your letter: the handwriting looked really sick to me, and I’ve sensed for a long time that you are desperate (perhaps still more than I, who is being driven demented by this time, in which EVERYTHING our arch-enemies attempt seems to come off). Can I do anything for you? It’s so hard, because I know nothing of what you’re going through. Couldn’t kind Irmgard Keun1 write to me about you—you have no idea (quite irrespective of your feelings for me) of how I cling to you, and am really permanently concerned about you. Perhaps I will come to Paris now, I had intended to go first to Lisbon, Estoril, and then work on the quiet Riviera there. The novel is basically done in outline, a first draft is also complete, but now it’s at the second stage. But I am still unhappy about much of it, the dialog, the style. Tired as I am, it will take me longer than I thought, and I admire your penetration—though admittedly you’re 15 years younger than me, and what years! My dear fellow, I’m blathering, but that should show you my deep need to sit with you again, to talk things over, and above all to hear about you and your work. I know nothing of you, and I don’t want to lose you, it offends me when a new book comes out, that you, my friend, have struggled over for a year, and I don’t know about it, I am the last to get to hear of it, when once I was proud to be the first and nearest and most involved.
Please look after yourself. Is Paris good for you? Mightn’t the Midi be better? Ach, I’m asking you questions, and I know you won’t answer me any more. But I go on asking, or rather my heart asks after you.
Warmest best wishes your old
St. Z.
As soon as I know when I’ll be going, I’ll write to you.
1. kind Irmgard Keun: German novelist who lived with Joseph Roth in Ostend and Paris from 1936 to 1938, and accompanied him on a PEN-funded lecture tour of Poland. Keun returned to Germany in 1940, where, aided by false reports of her death, she managed to stay concealed with her family.
446. To Pierre Bertaux
Paris-Est
Buffet-Bar
[24 February 1938]
Dear friend,
1. before my departure:
In Austria probably a state of siege,
to keep internal affairs in Skubl’s1 hands. 2. Jesuitical-typical: half the Austrians Nazis who were set free, now locked up again. 3. For France MY advice:
a. WITH Russia;
b. WITH Czechoslovakia OPEN DECLARATION of a MILITARY ALLIANCE;
c. Intercede for Austria, openly
d. Pyrenees.2
Sincerely, my train’s leaving
Your old
Joseph Roth
And please: Let Ce Soir3 know that I’ll be in touch from Vienna!
1. Skubl: Michael Skubl (1877–1964), from 1934 to 1938, Austrian chief of police. With the Anschluss looming, he resigned his post.
2. Pyrenees: remote southwest France, where Bertaux had a house
3. Ce Soir: pro-Communist evening paper in Paris.
447. To Blanche Gidon
18 rue de Tournon
Paris
[postmarked: 12 May 1938]
Dear friend,
please, if at all possible, try and do something for Dr. Broczyner. He is the model for my Dr. Demant1 in the Radetzky March.
Also, I have a wonderful Austrian seamstress:
Elisabeth Streit,
23 rue de Liège
Very deserving and unhappy.
Also I have many suggestions to make to you. I myself am wretched.
Could you call me between 12 and 1? Danton 16-16.
Always your loyal
Joseph Roth
and Dr. Gidon’s humble servant as well.
1. the model for my Dr. Demant: not so, apparently. Eduard Broczyner was a fellow pupil of JR’s in Brody, and also knew him later in Vienna and during the emigration in Paris.
448. To Blanche Gidon
rue de Tournon 18
[postmarked: Paris, 28 May 1938]
Dear friend,
Morgenstern1 told me of your kindness. Of course I ask you, must unfortunately ask you again, to help me.
Can you call me today between 3 and 5? At 8 o’clock tonight the best German actor Ludwig Hardt will be reading from the best German writers at Rue de Rennes 44.
Can you make it? Please do call me!
Sincerely,
your old Joseph Roth
1. Morgenstern: Roth’s friend and neighbor at the Hotel de la Poste, Soma Morgenstern.
449. Stefan Zweig to Joseph Roth
[summer 1938?]
Dear friend,
your silence is obdurate, but I think often and always kindly of you. My life of late is too crowded, I successfully went over the first draft of the novel (which with me is almost tantamount to rewriting the whole thing), then collected material for a novella (or a sort of symbolical novella)1 that I am now already working on, though subject to many disturbances. I have to be alone for that sort of work (the creative, conceptual part), and for the past 10 days wanted to hole up in Boulogne, but the weather hasn’t let up at all. In Germany, Castellio has cast a shadow, also the delivery of supplies to Hungary, Poland, etc.—Austria has no contract with those states—that hitherto went out to that noble land is now impossible, and there’s no shortage of other minor irritants—I’m surprised still to be able to work at all. Here I’m living as in a cave, know about a tenth of the people I knew two years ago, and lots of leaves are blowing down from the old bands of affection. Well, the German ax has taken hefty swings at the tree!
And you! I am always filled with impatience when I think of you. Your first novel2 must be finished by now, and I’m wondering how the work on the second is going. Where will you be? Where can I find you. I’m wary of Amsterdam, because I’d have to call on some 15 people there, and anyway only German Lufthansa flies there. How long are you staying there? Have you made any resolutions? Roth, I hope you keep it together, we need you. There are so few human beings, and so few real books in this overcrowded world!
Sincerely your Stefan Zweig
1. symbolical novella: this sounds like Zweig’s Chess Novella, written between 1938 and 1941, published posthumously in 1942.
2. your first novel: The Tale of the 1002nd Night, with The Emperor’s Tomb as the second.
450. To Stefan Zweig
18 rue de Tournon1
Paris 6e
Paris, 19 September 1938
Dear friend,
this just provisionally, to let you know that I’m always thinking of you, and especially in these days. Please forgive the typewriter.
I am overloaded with Austrian matters, refugee committees, and the like.
Please don’t be offended by the dictation, but won’t you come here for a day. It’s high time—and perhaps the last time—that we could see each other.
I heard your mother died. I would like to convey to you my really sincere commiseration.
I see your wife from time to time. Please, won’t you come here for a day. It’s easier for you than for me.
Sincerely,
your old Joseph Roth
1. 18 rue de Tournon: this is Roth’s “last address,” the Hotel de la Poste, around the corner from the now demolished Foyot. It was from there that he was taken on 23 May 1939 to the HÔpital Necker, where he died four days later. He told Soma Morgenstern, “I have finished my last book. I don’t want a doctor, just a priest.” It was not the easy death evoked in The Legend of the Holy Drinker. Friends reported seeing Roth strapped to his bed with delirium tremens, but he was denied alcohol by the hospital staff. That was a contributory cause of his death, whose official cause was given as pneumonia. He was buried on 30 May 1939 in the Cimetière Thiais, in the remote south of Paris.
451. To Leo Cenower
18 rue de Tournon
Paris 6e
Paris, 27 September 1938
To Mr. Leo Cenower, c/o Mandle, Zürich, Konradstrasse 51
Dear friend Cenower,1
ten days ago I might have been able to do something for your wife, but you didn’t write me in time. Now there’s mobilization, and there’s nothing I can do. I myself am at risk. I might have to leave Paris any day now.
Try—this is my advice to you—to leave Switzerland yourself. It will be impossible for you there. Somewhere in the French provinces would be better. Do as follows. Perhaps you could cross over into France with the electrical tram, make inquiries about it . . . Unfortunately, that’s all I can suggest.
Write to me straightaway, and if you come to Paris, let me know a day in advance.
Sincerely
Your [Joseph Roth]
1. Cenower was a war comrade of JR’s.
452. To Blanche Gidon
[Paris] 5 October 1938
Madame Blanche Gidon
Dear friend,
poor thanks to you for showing so much heart: I have another young Austrian to commend to you, a Mr. Walter Ringhofer. He is one of the best tailors. I have been trying vainly to help him for the past fortnight. You will see for yourself how nice he is. Please, if you can, try and find him a place somewhere. At the very least, I would beg you to listen to him. He is unfortunately one of very many to have come to me from the committees.
Please forgive me for taking advantage of your goodness, and till soon, I hope,
Sincerely,
your old Joseph Roth
453. To Stefan Zweig
[Paris] 10 October 1938
Dear friend,
of course I’ll talk to your wife. I have never—long before the catastrophe—had any understanding of furniture and the like. I shit on furniture. I hate houses. I will tell your wife.
I don’t see, dear friend, why you describe our situation as “hopeless.” If it is, then only because you make it so: we have the duty, the absolute duty, to show not the least pessimism.
The Mexican president of police wrote to me spontaneously. I can befriend him right away. He is an old Austrian officer.
Our situation is by no means as hopeless as you would have it. You are a defeatist.
In spite of which, I remain sincerely
your Joseph Roth
454. To Heinrich, Count Degenfeld
18 rue de Tournon
Paris 6e
Paris, 6 November 381
His Grace,
Heinrich, Count Degenfeld2
Chateau Steenockerzeel near Brussels
Your Grace,
my friend Mr. Klaus Dohrn tells me that His Majesty, our Emperor, expresses the wish that I may recover my health, and accept medical advice.
I beg you, Your Grace, to give His Majesty my sincerest thanks, and assure him that I will of course obey any order3 he cares to give me.
In particular I am delighted that His Majesty calls upon me to visit you in the course of the next week. I am moved in the extreme by the kindness of His Majesty in drawing your attention to me.
With thanks for your trouble, and your humble servant,
Your [Joseph Roth]
1. Paris, 6 November 38: one day later, Herschel Grynszpan, a young Polish Jew, shot a secretary of the German embassy in Paris. That provided the Nazis with the pretext for instigating pogroms against Jews in what became known as Kristallnacht (9–10 November).
2. Count Degenfeld: Count Degenfeld-Schonburg (born 1890) was first Otto von Habsburg’s tutor (in 1922), then became his adjutant and private secretary.
3. any order: the “order” that Otto von Habsburg communicated to his loyal subject Joseph Roth, and which he was in no position to carry out, was that he should take better care of his health.
455. To Blanche Gidon
Paris
rue de Tournon 18
[postmarked: 15 November 1938]
Tuesday
Dear friend,
my eyes are in grave danger. May I count on you to find a moment to advise me in the course of the afternoon. I am very fearful. Please.
Your old
Joseph Roth
456. Stefan Zweig to Joseph Roth
49 Hallam Street
London W 1
[end of 1938]
Dear Josef Roth,
I have now written to you three or four times, always without reply, and think our old friendship gives me the right to ask you what you mean by this obstinate and hopefully not ill-intentioned silence. It is probable that I will pass through Paris on my way out or back, in January or March, and I would simply like to know which you prefer: that I try to visit you, or that I avoid you (as you so sedulously avoid me). I write without the least trace of chilliness, but purely and simply for information; your silence is too striking, too protracted and oppressive for me to be able to explain it away, say, by business on your part.
All best wishes and that the year ahead (in spite of everything) may be no worse than the one just gone.
Your Stefan Zweig
457. The American PEN Club to Joseph Roth1
The P.E.N. Club
(written in English)
American Center
January 21, 1939
Mr. Joseph Roth, c/o Querido Verlag, Keizersgracht 333, Amsterdam, Holland
Dear Mr. Roth:
On behalf of the American P.E.N. Club, I have the honour to invite you to be a special guest at the World Congress of Writers to be held on invitation of the New York World’s Fair on May 8, 9 and 10, 1939.
When the four basic freedoms—the right to speak, to publish, to worship, and to assemble—are being denied and threatened over an increasingly large part of the world, it seems to us particularly urgent that writers from all countries should gather to consider ways and means of defending free expression under difficult circumstances. We believe that this is the psychological time and the New York World’s Fair—which is celebrating 150 years of democracy in America and emphasizing these four freedoms—is the logical place for such a meeting.
The P.E.N. Centers each have been invited to appoint a representative and we have compiled, in addition, a list of distinguished men and women of letters, such as yourself, to be invited as guests of honor.
We very much hope you will attend. Living expenses will be paid and entertainment provided for the three days of the Congress at the Fair and for three or four days more when we expect to entertain P.E.N. representatives and our guests of honor in New-York City and in country residences belonging to members of the American P.E.N. Club, their friends, and important patrons of literature.
We will also arrange a series of optional excursions of various lengths at reduced costs—including a trip to Washington where we expect the President of the United States to receive us—and hope to arrange for reduced steamship rates from Europe to New York. Details of all these arrangements will be sent later.
This Congress will provide an opportunity for the writers of the world to publicly and freely state their belief in the personal freedoms without which the creation of literature is impossible in a setting commanding international attention.
We would like you to be present and hope your plans will allow a visit at this time. May we have your early acceptance?
Sincerely,
Dorothy Thompson
President
1. This invitation, from Dorothy Thompson, who had translated Job and was an admirer of Roth’s work, was found among Roth’s papers at his death. It was marked in Roth’s hand with the words “best thanks for the copy, dearest Friederike [Friderike Zweig?]. Your J.R.” The sixth act of Roth’s life begins here.