Joseph Roth- a Life in Letters
Page 42
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.