Joseph Roth- a Life in Letters

by Michael Hofmann

  Before that you must permit me to talk you through the ghastly money business. Since Phaidon paid only half the advance, I have 500 in hand. Of those I have sent you none. So I have committed a sort of fraud, admittedly you’re a friend, but in a way that’s even worse. You will have counted on the money for other charitable purposes—which means other people will be suffering on my account. You will know how that torments me, first of all my deception, and second the sufferings of others. The worst was the airiness with which I borrowed from you, on the basis of a promise that turned out to be false. You were perfectly right: I’ve lost my head, I can’t do sums, I am beset with astronomic debts, and I commit one deception after another. Complaints keep rolling in, my lawyer, Dr. Wolf in Vienna, Teinfaltstrasse, who gets nothing from me either, has his hands full with them, and I don’t even dare write to apologize to him, that’s how much I am in his debt. For my peace of mind I urgently need you to give me in writing that you’ll let me owe you those 2,000 marks until February or March—and that, in spite of your generous fastidiousness. I’ve put Kiepenheuer in the picture. He knows I need that amount for you. If you want to upbraid me, please do it, I’ve earned it a thousand times over, perhaps it’s best that it be said out loud, lest it fester unspoken between us.

  A set date? In circumstances like mine? The FZ would be angry with me forever after if I left them now, as it was they put me through humiliations to get the 1,000 marks, they think they were generous in forgiving me the episode with the MNN. And then how? How? I need 1,000 marks, my wife needs 800, Kiepenheuer can’t run to more than 500. I need to pay off 200–300 a month. The BT and the Vossische don’t want me, I’m not famous enough for them.

  Dear Stefan Zweig, in your friendship and good nature you are apt to confuse your prestige with mine, your freedom with my captivity. Let’s talk about it sometime. I’ll be in Mitteldeutschland till 10 December, within easy reach of Leipzig or Dresden, just wire me when and where. I can be with you in 24 hours. My address is still c/o Grübel6 Leipzig Gohliserstrasse, 18 till December 10.

  I think it’s perfectly natural that you treat Freud with kid gloves. The only risk is if that became evident in your book. It’s a matter of technique. If it became evident, then it would be private. And if one couldn’t make it completely invisible, in my opinion a few words of private explanation would be called for. That would be honest. I don’t want anyone to accuse you of special pleading. Of course that’s what it is, objectivity is filth, but it mustn’t show.

  Another thing. A propos Rocca, you say: “his German is as good as mine, and almost as good as yours.” Please not to say anything like that again! It’s painful for me to have to blush, and then explain it to myself by reference to one of your magnanimous outbursts. You know and I know the sort of writer you are—it’s far harder to compliment you, because everything is far too obvious. Anyway, all this is much too official, and would fit better in my dealings with Thomas Mann (who is on record as having said something unkind about me, and claims only ever to have read 2 or 3 articles of mine, what do I care!). Please excuse this petition, and accede to it!

  Cordially as ever,

  your old Joseph Roth

  1. A book of essays on German writers by Zweig’s friend Enrico Rocca.

  2. LW: Die literarische Welt.

  3. Willy Haas (1891 Prague–1973 Hamburg), Communist critic, essayist, and editor of the LW.

  4. Landshoff: Fritz Landshoff (1901–1988), co-proprietor of the Kiepenheuer Verlag; started the German exile publishing house Querido in Amsterdam in 1933, and later fell in with Bermann Fischer in New York.

  5. First mentioned here.

  6. Grübel: JR’s maternal uncle, Salomon Grübel, a hop dealer, who left Brody for Nuremberg, and later settled in Leipzig.

  116. To Jenny Reichler

  Hotel Fürstenhof

  Leipzig

  Thursday [1930]

  Dear Mother, I’m feeling a little better.

  Please address any further news to Grübel, because I’m going in a few days. Thank Hedi for writing. I have to produce 5 articles by Christmas, and am incredibly busy.

  I hope to spend Christmas in Paris, a friend has invited me.

  The translations of Job will only begin to help in spring, once the book has appeared here and there. Admittedly, the only countries that matter are America and England, all other currencies are inconsequential. The only hope for all of us is a film version in America.1

  Please give me details about Friedl.

  Warm hugs

  your son

  1. a film version in America: this came to pass, only 4 years later, and far too late for JR. See no. 256.

  117. To Stefan Zweig

  Hotel Foyot, Paris

  27 December 1930

  Dear esteemed Stefan Zweig,

  I was an idiot: I thought you’d be in Frankfurt already, and wrote you there. Well, my best wishes for Christmas and New Year, and thank you both for the evidence of your friendship. Let’s arrange to meet at last:

  until 12 January I’ll be in Paris,

  from the 12th to the 15th in Frankfurt,

  after the 16th I’ll be in Paris again.

  Name your date! Everything else (Spain) can be settled verbally. I need your advice more urgently than ever. My homesickness for you, for your wife, for your clever words (for months I’ve been talking to dogmatic fools) is very great. Yes, I am sentimental. Alright! A rendezvous, with place and date.

  Enjoy your proofs.1

  Your old

  Joseph Roth

  Thank your wife, and kiss her hand tenderly for me!

  1. Of Heilung durch den Geist, the Freud, Mesmer, Baker Eddy book.

  118. To Friedrich Traugott Gubler

  Marseille, 31 January 1931

  As of: Hotel Foyot, Paris 6e

  Dearest Gubler,1

  I owe you so much news, I can hardly hope to fit it all into one letter. I’d better try and give you a situation report:

  After being in a terrible state in Paris unbeknownst to anyone, even Reifenberg, I have fled here, and am fleeing farther, to Antibes. I am fleeing from bills. Lately three suits have been brought against me. Kiepenheuer wants his novel, and threatens to suspend payments. Phaidon wants his “Orient Express,” or, failing that, the return of 2,000 marks. A bond I gave my father-in-law falls due on 15 February (for 1,000 schillings). I owe you 1,270 lines. Everything is collapsing around my ears. I have drunk a lot, eaten hardly anything, then the flu wiped me out. Only in the past week, since I’ve been here, have I started to come to terms with my situation. I hope to find some peace in Antibes. I have 100 francs a day. By 15 March I must have 4 chapters of my novel done. But how am I going to manage to write in this condition? I hope I’ll be better in Antibes.

  I owe you more than lines, namely my collaboration. If you still feel able to, trust me. I will send you 3 pieces a month. I want to write “Ghost of the Present.” (Using quotations from Picard.) Get P.2 to send me a paperbound copy of his Menschengesicht. Use the Hotel Foyot address, because I have no idea where I’m going to be here.

  One of my worst persecutors is Hermann Linden,3 to whom I can’t go on owing 500 marks. Ask him to tell you the story. Promise!

  I still have to tell you I don’t like the paper. Your nonsensical explanation, the whores of the present age, and cheek by jowl with the Tagebuch. It hurts me to see you and yours enmeshed in that kind of thing. I’ve come to the conclusion that you’ll only wear yourself out there, to no purpose. It’s just a paper, only slightly better than the others in Germany. It’s no longer absolutely good or essential. And neither you nor Reifenberg nor Picard will be able to fix it. You will sacrifice your personal lives, the only important thing. It’s a job for people who a priori have none, i.e., the likes of Brentano. Always do what your wife says, spend
time with her and the children, discuss everything with her, and don’t do anything just because your obstinate man’s head tells you to. I can feel you slithering into triviality and shit. There is nothing more important than being a private person, than loving your wife, taking your children on your lap as you did when we came for you. Public affairs are only and ever shit, whether it’s the nation, politics, the newspaper, the swastika, or the future of democracy. You should live like a peasant, and if you don’t make or do anything yourself, or don’t feel like it, then redouble your love for family and friends. In Paris I saw Picard separating me from Reifenberg: his identity with the paper. (Kracauer has finally become a buffoon.) I can’t have a relationship with a person who is prepared to sell my private friendship for the sake of some public totem. I can no longer tolerate do-gooders, people who, when their wife has a pleurisy, still find time to save the world. Don’t get drawn into all of that. It’s only God whom one may serve over and above one’s chosen ones. Not the “nation.”

  Forgive the homily. Forgive lots of things! Give your wife my very very warmest regards. Spend time at home with her. Don’t get annoyed, everything’s OK, so long as your family stays healthy. It’s irreligious, ungodly, and collectivist to take thought for public matters! Leave that to Glaeser and (pause) to Brentano.

  I haven’t told you all my worries. I can’t. We’ll talk.

  I remain your old devoted

  Joseph Roth

  Do you want to entrust Kesten’s new book4 to me? You know I won’t trash it. The fellow’s my discovery. And toward myself I’m not incorruptible. I tell you plainly, and I won’t mind if you tell me back that you don’t trust me. You know I’m not objective. I hate good books by godless fellows—Kren’s5 next book, for example—and I love bad books by reactionaries.

  I’d also like to write, if you’re agreeable, on Stifter and Lampel.6

  1. Gubler: the Swiss Friedrich Traugott Gubler (1900–1965) took over as feuilleton editor on the FZ from Reifenberg in 1930, when R. became Paris correspondent.

  2. P: Max Picard. The book is called Das Menschengesicht (The Human Face).

  3. Hermann Linden (1896–1963) edited a 1949 selection on the life and works of Joseph Roth.

  4. new book: Kesten’s novel Glückliche Menschen.

  5. Kren: Ernst Krenek.

  6. Lampel: Peter Lampel (1894–1965), painter and writer.

  119. To Jenny Reichler

  Thursday

  [early February 1931]

  Dear Mother,

  thank you!

  I’m going to join Stefan Zweig in Antibes.

  After you get this, don’t write to me here, but to Paris 6e rue de Tournon, Hotel Foyot. They’ll forward my mail. I’ll wire you from Antibes, after the 10th.

  It’s still cold. I hope to get better in Antibes.

  Hugs

  Your son

  Give Father my regards. He’s not to start conversations with Friedl, but wait to hear what she says. Don’t provoke utterances from her.

  120. To his parents-in-law

  Hotel du Cap d’ Antibes

  Antibes

  6 February 1931

  Dear Parents,

  thank you! Go on writing to me at the Foyot, I’m not sure whether I’ll be able to stay on here. Perhaps it’ll be good for me, I’m already feeling a little better. But my worries even eclipse my illness. I have to write a novel with a completely skewed head, Lord knows whether I can manage it. With all my debts, I had to stop writing for the paper, there’s a financial black hole, but what can I do, I can’t tear myself in half. Very good news that Friedl’s putting on weight. Maybe God will help, and she will become herself again. Is her expression changed? Her gaze? What does Father say? People ask after her everywhere in Marseille, in all the hotels and restaurants.

  Impossible to ignore the way pain has aged me. I’m going gray.

  If I don’t write, don’t worry about it. I’m working.

  Cordially, your

  Muniu

  121. To Friedrich Traugott Gubler

  Hotel du Cap d’ Antibes

  Very personal

  Antibes (A-M.)

  Please deliver immediately!

  Sunday

  [February or March 1931?]

  Dear, dear friend,

  thank you! I would surely write more, letters and articles both, which come to the same thing, if it wasn’t that I’m caught in a terrible fix. I can’t settle. I’ve fallen in love with a 20-year-old girl.1 It’s impossible, it’s a crime, I know it, to attach this girl to me, and to the dreadful tangle of my life. But I can’t desist. Even if I were free to marry her, her family—very rich, very Catholic, German-hating Flemish barons who suffered under the occupation—would never allow it. The girl (still underage) wants to leave her family after she comes of age in July. It will be a huge scandal there (in Bruges). I am perpetrating a cretinous stupidity at my age but for the first time since my wife’s illness, I feel alive again. It’s not something I can turn away. I think you’ll understand. My novel is going nowhere, I don’t have any income, I’m quite evidently insane. I can’t work, and yet I know I’ll become completely sterile if I can’t have that girl. And then there’s my still warm feeling for my wife. I would never have thought I could be so foolish as this. And the knowledge of my own folly gives me happiness to cancel out my unhappiness, and I am more confused than ever. Dear friend, it’s possible I’ll need your calm, and your kind and helpful heart. Will you promise them to me! Don’t mention this to anyone, except your good wife!—What shall I do? I have three chapters. I must be finished in July. I’m not enough of a novelist to go around thinking only of my book. With all my skepticism, for all my self-analysis, I’m in love. I’m incredibly fortunate. I need it as a thirsty man needs water. And I know it’s poison.

  I’m going back to Paris today, Hotel Foyot, rue de Tournon 33, and then Brussels for a few days. Letters please to Paris.

  In cordial friendship

  your old

  Joseph Roth

  Will you help me if I need you?

  1. 20-year-old girl: a wildly improbable, but wholly true story. Research by Dr. Els Snick in 2008 revealed her identity as Maria Gillès de Pélichy. See Wilhelm von Sternburg’s biography of JR.

  122. To Stefan Zweig

  Hotel du Cap d’Antibes

  Antibes

  24 March [1931]

  Dear esteemed Stefan Zweig,

  I hope you’re safely resettled in Salzburg, and enjoying a second spring. Here it’s finally exploded. Landauer has told me it doesn’t matter, and I should stay here, so obviously Job is still selling, and I’m happy to stay. The guardian has arrived, with long beard and big belly, a clueless man, dimmed by Catholicism. The little girl slips into my room at night, even though he’s sleeping next door, prays, crosses herself, and starts to sin. The guardian has no idea what she’s done with the dog. He says she’s right, it was wrong to try and get such a big animal to sleep in a bed, it remained a hunting animal, and was possibly infectious. He reads your books delightedly, he’s a historian, a beer table pontificator, he loves the little girl to bits, believes everything, is completely unaware of the erotic nature of his relationship to her, prays before and after meals and half an hour before bedtime, busies himself with gardening, drapes cloaks and things round sick trees, and doesn’t hold with shooting rabbits because he feels sorry for them. Goes to Mass every morning at 6 o’clock, sings in church twice a year, wears a shirt for a week, always in black, too tight pants. It’s getting more and more obvious. The mother is the lady mayor of the place, spends half the day praying, cries the other half, and has a relationship with a priest, who out of jealousy intrigues against the girl. The girl’s father hated the mother, and kept getting her pregnant to get him off sleeping with her. He was afraid to go to
brothels, in case someone saw him, or he got sick. I’m convinced he died of secondary syphilis. In his fever, he ripped up the girl’s clothes and blabbed about everything. Then the mother started hating her. The church is involved in everything, the whole house, makes everyone blind and deaf and hard. The girl is so soft at night, when the sun rises—different again, and her sex uncertain. She cries a lot, is sensuous and inventive, extraordinary predilection for perversities, extremely sensitive to pain in normal intercourse, probably all stemming from her sensitive psyche. Three Catholic hymens before the real one, a shouter, and I practice the art of deflowering whilst feeling little pleasure. How can I desist from such an interesting hobby? A great aunt of hers was canonized. She wore armor day and night. The bank employees have all propositioned her. Mr. Bridgemann is starting to hover around her, but for once I’m man enough not to be the amuse-bouche. Silent loathing between Bridgemann and me. He started it, of course. He doesn’t know what to do. Day before yesterday a magician came. When he went around afterwards to collect money, B. got up, borrowed 100 francs from the porter, and gave them to the little girl (to make sure she saw), to present them to the magician, B. was sitting too far away. Merci!, she said, and “c’est vilain,” and she pocketed the money, quite the chatelaine, which doesn’t keep her, when it gets dark, from draping her arm across my black dress trousers, she in her light-colored dress. Sella sees and grins at me. The guardian sits there and sees nothing at all. (The Danes want me to pass on their regards to you, the one they like best of yours is Amok.) The curé comes here for lunch, Sunday is sanctified, the little girl is to sell liqueur. Mme Burke has bought and read Job, and taken me violets up to my room, with the classic line: flowers say what the mouth denies. I’m starting to enjoy myself. Only I miss you, your shrewd eye, your shrewd heart. Am writing the fourth chapter with the regimental doctor,1 in bold, strong lines. Very good, I think. Don’t worry about me! I’m more of a writer than I’m prepared to admit. Tear this letter up when you’ve absorbed it all. Give my regards to your wife, I can’t write to her yet, she’s a woman. I feel very much a man, and empathize with manliness in all forms. The red-haired Irishwoman is stricken with yearning for you, she says she has dreams about you.