Joseph Roth- a Life in Letters
Page 43
(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 right
s 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.