Joseph Roth - Joseph Roth - A Life in Letters

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.