Joseph Roth- a Life in Letters

by Michael Hofmann

  Not that the real ones are any better. A second wave of Lombards. This time toting briefcases and sporting Schiller collars. Fat wives, heelless sandals, perms, hatless. Jews who aren’t Jews, because they have taken up the cudgels for some foreign proletariat; bourgeois who aren’t bourgeois, because they’re fighting for a foreign class. Continually steaming with activity and talk. The conference extended into the evening in the café, big groups and long tables, all to the horror of the waiters and the exotic foreigners of whom there are so many here. Nothing is so exotic as a German. No group is more eye-catching. But the Germans are social democrats to beat the band. If you don’t like Germans, you won’t like social democrats either. Half citizens, half politicians, half minds, moderate beer drinkers. Good old Stahl is here. He doesn’t have a clue about the true nature of this party of toothless dragons. He still gets excited about congresses. I’ve seen Friedrich Adler. No pistol in his briefcase any more, just checklists. Face gone flabby like dough. Once upon a time he shot Stürgkh. Beginning of the end for the monarchy. When I see Adler today, I understand Stürgkh was a martyr. Because his killer is the secretary of the Second International. They should have hanged him. One shouldn’t let heroes live.

  Not one of these representatives of the proletariat goes to the old harbor quarter as I, a so-called bourgeois intellectual, do. No one threatens me. They would quite rightly beat their brains out. Eck-Troll is here. Do you know him? A queer sort of idiot. He sits in a bar for three hours, and is fleeced, and they compliment him on his French, and afterwards he tells me he has done some wonderful “studies.” He pulls a photograph from his wallet: wife and child. He shows the photo to the objects of his studies. A German journalist on the job. Stahl says: Come with me to the harbor quarter! Shall I take a pistol? What a fighter. Shame there wasn’t a cinema handy.

  If you think of bluing laundry, you’ll have a sense of how blue the sea is here. The sky, on the other hand, is as pale as a sheet of paper.

  There are 700 vessels in the port. I’ve half a mind to suddenly take one of them. My wife cries every day, if it weren’t for her, I’d be long gone. It’s the first time I’ve had a feeling for the presence of my wife. It’s only in a port that you know you’re married.

  I had whooping cough as a grown-up as well. Look after yourself. The consequence is often swollen glands, as with me, and mumps, which is unpleasant, if harmless. Regards to mother and son. Have a look at the clipping from Le Matin2 enclosed. I give you my hands.

  I remain your old

  Joseph Roth

  I can’t permit this letter to go without the following.

  Last night they played L’Arlésienne at the opera. As in Paris, when you get a ticket, you get your “location” to go with it. As a result, no one finds his seat, because three-quarters of the audience have two. The foldaway seats are all full. The aisles are stuffed with people. Everyone is wandering about. Three ancient usherettes have been driven demented. But the people aren’t the least bit bothered. While they’re looking around, they all have smiles on their faces.

  The music starts, and the foldaway seats keep clacking up and down. People are yelling. Music is a bit like sweets. A component of an evening in the theater. Music is metaphysical, and the southern Frenchman doesn’t get it. The gorgeous women are loathsome, because they won’t shut up. The musicians don’t care about the noise. They play. When there’s a quiet passage, the audience thinks it’s over, and they go wild.

  The musicians go on playing through the interval, all the while they’re hammering at the set behind the curtain. The whole theater is like a country fair. Complete strangers start to tell me their life story, because they’re bored with the music. The actors are unbelievably hammy. They speak their lines in a kind of graveyard whisper. People laugh themselves silly. Which doesn’t prevent them from applauding once a speech is over. The desperate hero, resolved to take his own life, exits triumphantly, arm aloft.

  Doors open and shut all the time. People pop out for a smoke. Come back, clacking of chairs. Squeaking of benches. Laughter of women. Rustling of paper.

  You can’t imagine the lack of respect of the French. They obviously can’t understand that art is a form of reality. If you told them a fairy tale, I don’t think they would understand it. I should like to know how French children behave during fairy tales.

  The Viennese, who are of course besotted with theater and music, turned up in their droves. They thought the continual hubbub was somehow accidental, and kept going Sssh! For two whole acts. The locals laughed at them. Eventually the Germans gave up. Halfway through the act, all the French moved forward and took their empty seats.

  Every act is an interval. The whole performance is interval. The French roll around at a tragedy the way we do at a comic routine. They haven’t the least idea of art. The Germans at least show respect. It would have been good to have the Berlin police to keep order in the theater yesterday.

  Inevitably, the Germans and the French are going to intermarry. They are both desperately short of what the other have.

  1. Willo Uhl (1880–1925), feuilleton editor on the Frankfurter Zeitung since 1913.

  2. Le Matin, conservative French newspaper.

  22. To Benno Reifenberg

  Hotel Beauvau, Marseille

  30 August [1925]

  Dear Mr. Reifenberg,

  I really don’t mean to alarm you with these registered letters. They are the consequence of my morbid fear of things getting lost in the mail. I’m sure their content is in no relation to the care of their packing. The post makes a lot of money from me. I beg your pardon, and console myself with the fact that the content of this letter can’t be more displeasing to you than the fact of its being registered.

  It’s not easy to write this letter. Not least because I find it immoral—tactless at the very least—to burden our personal relationship with matters of business. I don’t want to abuse the fact that I am fond of you (and you, I hope, have a liking for me) to perpetrate the unfairness of leaning on you—influencing is too certain—in your relation to me as an employee. You’ll know what I mean. True, we only know one another through work, and thanks to work. But I refuse to relegate a relationship that has outgrown the professional to the merely professional again. But what else can I do? Should I take my case to a tribunal that a tribunal won’t understand, when I know a human being? That—to my way of seeing—would mean going over your head. There is still the chance that you will preserve the distinction: on the one hand, feuilleton editor, on the other, well-disposed human being. If such a thing should seem necessary to you, I would even ask that you do so. Please don’t show me any sort of private forbearance. You can always give me advice, as if you had nothing to do with the firm.

  I’m afraid you probably guess more than you know, and this introduction has been too clear. My stylistic affliction, not my personal one.

  My tour will be over in the middle of September. I have enough material for a book. There too, I would like to ask your advice: I should like to write a wholly “subjective” book, in other words something completely objective. The “confession” of a young, resigned, skeptical human being, at an age where he is completely indifferent whether he sees something new to him or not, traveling somewhere. Someone with nothing of the “travel romantic” in him at all. And he sees the last vestiges of Europe, places that are innocent of the ever more apparent Americanization and Bolshevization of our continent. Think of the books of the Romantics. Take away their tools and props, both linguistic and perspectival. Replace them with the tools and props of modern irony and objectivity. Then you have the book I want to write, and feel almost compelled to write. It’s a guide to the soul of its writer, as much as of the country he’s passing through. What do you think of the idea? It’s very creative, more than a novel. I think it’s a form that would be congenial to the house. To put it in a nutshell, in a way
that you don’t like, and I always do:

  Books with practical occasion elevated into the poetic sphere. Were I the publisher, that would be my motto.

  There would be something else as well, which you in the house are quite rightly not keen to see, but which is generally necessary, and in books quite indispensable. That is comparison. The first chapter would be called “The Other Side of the Fence.” But the book would be on far too high a level for it to contain a “critique” of Germany. Say perhaps that the critique would be on so high a level that it would no longer count as such or read like it.

  What do you say?

  I would like to spend two weeks in Paris, working on this book. I trust you are not party to that German prejudice that a good book cannot be written fast. Fast is the only way I can write well. The Germans write even literary books scientifically. Their feeling is scientific. That’s why they write slowly. The slow working of someone like Flaubert is based on completely different grounds: laziness, namely. You must remember from your schooldays that it’s possible to slog away all day with the greatest laziness inside you.

  During those two weeks I would write nothing for you. Then I would come to Frankfurt with my book. And not to deliver the book, but to talk to you about the coming months.

  Principally about money. It matters less to me than to the publisher. Three months are up, in the course of which I should have been paid 900 marks, 300 as expenses. It might have been more “sensible” not to mention it, but it would have been craven. Frankly I am too proud to behave in such a way. Had I been in Berlin now, I would probably have called for a raise because of the inflation, even though that too is craven, and disgusting moreover. I am not in Germany now. (I almost said thank God.) And, as you know, I don’t want to go back there this year.

  I see three possibilities:

  1. Either the firm demands my resignation and I offer it,

  2. or it gives me leave to stay,

  3. or I don’t offer my resignation, and the ball is back in their court, whether I starve as an even more occasional contributor, or manage to go on living, as I have lived the past 20 years. You know I don’t demand a steady income. Even so, the third possibility would be the worst, and it would be truly stupid of me not to try and go for the second.

  Nothing ties me. I am not sufficiently sentimental to believe in categories like future, family, etc. etc. But sufficiently sentimental to feel devotion to this house and this newspaper, the last vestiges of the old humanistic culture. I am being straight with you—this is entre nous. I know perfectly well I couldn’t work for any other German paper. I know none would have me. And I still couldn’t go back to Germany. It’s a tragedy, not a passing fancy. Perhaps it’s the height of “patriotism” not to stand to see the tip of a pyramid not formed by a tip, but by a shaved blockhead.1 I can’t stand to see the whole of Germany turning into a Masurian swamp. If I were there now, it would drive me crazy. Everything affects me personally. If they lock up Becher,2 it’s me that’s behind bars. I don’t know what would happen. I’m capable of shooting someone, or throwing bombs, I don’t think I’d last very long. I risk my life when I return to Germany. Physically, I can’t do it.

  But do you think I can say that to the newspaper? Ever since his letter to Stahl, I’ve had a great respect for Simon. I would like to talk to him, though it’s probably too personal. He might misunderstand, because he thinks of me as unscrupulous—when all I am is shrewd. I could never tell him. I always worry he doesn’t hear half of what I say. If he has ten minutes for me, eight go on all sorts of other stuff. I worry once I’m in Frankfurt again, sniff the air in the office, which has so little in common with the rest of Germany, that the newspaper can’t see Germany, and that I’ll weaken, and go back to Berlin, and it will finish me off. Berlin is bad for my liver, I have trouble with gall production. Should I not go to Frankfurt?

  Can I spend the winter in Paris then? I wouldn’t care to stay any longer than that. Can I go to some third country—Albania, maybe—and write another book? Should I forget about the 100 marks, and so free myself from Germany? Can I go to Moscow? Schotthöfer3 is back. Russia and the East are familiar to me.

  I am desperate. I can’t even go to Vienna since the Jewish Socialists have started clamoring for their Anschluss. What are they after? They want Hindenburg? At the time that Emperor Franz Joseph died, I was already a “revolutionary,” but I shed tears for him. I was a one-year volunteer in a Vienna regiment, a so-called elite unit, that stood by the Kapuzinergruft as a guard of honor, and I tell you, I was crying. An epoch was buried. With the Anschluss, a culture will be put in the ground. Every European must be against the Anschluss. And only those mediocre Socialist brains don’t get it. So little difference between German Nationalist and Socialist policies! Between Jew and Christian! The various camps are united by their mediocrity more firmly than by any principle or ideal. Can’t anyone feel that an independent Austria is still a gesture toward a united Europe? Do they want to become a sort of nether Bavaria? More than German reactionaries, I hate that obtuse German efficiency, decency, honesty, the Löbe4 type, the accountant who has found his way into politics. Those people should have remained civil servants. But just because there are no politicians in Germany, the civil servants go into politics, and the idiots occupy the chancelleries, and because the prisons are overcrowded the criminals have moved into the police stations. I can’t go to Germany, I can’t!

  I hope you liked my last three articles. If not, please tell me straight out. Someone who writes day and night as I do has no vanity. Nor is it vanity that is unhappy with an “appendix” to my essays. It’s the formal conscience of a journalist. There is such a thing as a typographical conscience. It insists on a preamble and won’t stand for an afterword. That would have to be in a different typeface. The newspaper is insufficiently expressive in that way. There is no smallest type size. I’ve just forgotten the name of it. Petit and leaded petit are too small. Formal technical resources allow for more expression. It’s terribly important for the paper to have a thousand faces; it has a thousand news stories. Congratulations, anyway, on the new masthead and design. Who is it who sets the paper now? The best-looking edition was the one with the French diplomatic démarche. Who set that? I like the layout of the world news as well. If only I could have that column to myself three times a week. With specifications as to layout. Would that be possible?

  How are your invalids? Give them my best, I mean it. I remain, come what may, your old Joseph Roth

  1. shaved blockhead: an unmistakable limning of Paul von Hindenburg (1847–1934), World War I general and then elected president of Germany in 1925 and again in 1932; the man who in January 1933 gave the German chancellorship to Adolf Hitler.

  2. Becher: Johannes Becher (1891–1958), poet, playwright, novelist, and member of the Independent Social Democratic Party.

  3. Schotthöfer: Fritz Schotthöfer, worked on the Frankfurter Zeitung from 1900. Retired in 1943, died in 1951.

  4. Löbe: Paul Löbe (1875–1967), member of the Social Democratic Party.

  23. To Bernard von Brentano

  Paris, 11 September [1925]

  Dear friend,

  I got your two letters before I left. I’ve been in Paris again since yesterday. I’m working very hard, starting my travel book tomorrow, and hoping to finish it by the end of the month. Hence just a few lines now. My address is the same. Please tell me right away that you’re better. I worry about you, not just for your sake, but because it’s important that decent people remain alive and in good health. My liver’s already packing up. The fools aren’t to remain unsupervised, and in the happy knowledge that the good people are getting sick and falling away. My relationship with the firm is being decided now. I’ll probably take the finished book with me to Frankfurt.

  Write if you must. I imagine you’ll have been paid, in accordance with the snail’s pace o
f everything in Frankfurt.

  Send me a detailed note.

  My best to your wife.

  Get well.

  When is Guttmann back?

  Your old

  Joseph Roth

  24. To Bernard von Brentano

  29 November 1925

  Dear friend,

  let’s start with your affairs:

  1. I’ve checked with R., I won’t be able to hear you speak in Offenbach. The paper doesn’t run to that kind of thing.

  2. Reifenberg will bring up your 5 mss. with Nassauer.1 There shouldn’t be a problem.

  3. Come here, I would be delighted. So would Reifenberg.

  4. Your articles will be out soon. The film [piece?] wouldn’t fit in the politics [section?].

  As for me, or rather my book,2 I’ve withdrawn it, and offered it to Dietz.3 Thus far—it’s too early still—no word. I wouldn’t have left it with this lot for all the tea in China. R. once remarked it was a pity I’d already sold it. R. apparently upset about the rejection. Upset is about as good as it gets with him. The degree of his upset might have made a difference, but probably not much. I’m still not sure who turned it down, even though I know Dr. Claassen,4 the editor. He’s a little Galician Jewish egghead—with German education, formerly a tutor in Simon’s employ. It’s possible the decision was his. Everything is possible.

  I’ve only had one conversation with Simon, which was chilly, almost hostile. He’s depressed that he isn’t allowed to spend any money. It’s very hard for me to get a wage rise put through here. A freeze has been slapped on everything, the atmosphere in the firm is gloomy. I’m unable to suggest any more jaunts, they all cost money. There is as yet no Paris correspondent in place.5 They are so desperate to make economies, they hope to find one who will double as a feuilleton writer, and all for 800 marks. I have half a mind to quit. Through my personal friendship with Nassauer, I might be able to get a few advances that I could earn out later. But I’m not looking for favors. I am looking for practical, material acknowledgment from the firm. But it’s in no position now to treat itself to what it sees as a luxury.