Joseph Roth - Joseph Roth - A Life in Letters

I can’t bring myself to write to Mr. Brun. Unless Landauer’s lying, Brun hasn’t yet sent the 4,000 francs to Amsterdam, because the franc might fall further. Nor would it be correct on my part to chase him on behalf of my publisher. I know Mr. Brun too little, and Mr. Landauer too well. I have an offer from Niehans’s Mass und Wert .1 But the rates are absurd: 7 Swiss francs for “cultured prose.” 8 days’ work for 50 francs = 1 chapter of a novel that won’t be bought. — I know you’re inclined to see modesty as one of the primary attributes of the writer. But penury surely isn’t. Your writing doesn’t improve if you allow yourself to be suckered. Poverty is only a virtue if it’s a grace. And that doesn’t depend on us, alas. It’s just as possible to go under through paltriness as through immoderation.

Sincerely, your old

Joseph Roth

1. Niehans’s Mass und Wert: Mass und Wert was a bimonthly journal for free German culture, edited by Thomas Mann and Konrad Falke, in the Niehans Verlag, in Zurich, a somewhat more settled and conservative affair than Klaus Mann’s Sammlung .

423. To Stefan Zweig

8 August 1937

Dear friend,

it will be difficult for you, perhaps even, God forbid, impossible, to pull me out of my worst situation thus far — and the one for which I am least to blame myself. It’s hard for me to say it, as you know. See from the enclosed letter what’s happening to me, only happens to me. I’m getting 125 gulden per month. Everything is adjusted to that, the hotel, all my personal needs. The publisher, the new one,1 after Querido and de Lange, hasn’t sent me this month’s money and has gone away on vacation. I have nothing, except a couple of stamps bought in advance, and as if fearing the worst. The hotel, booked for 8 weeks, room payable every other week, is getting nasty. On the 15th I need to renew my Belgian visa in Brussels. I have 40 francs in my pocket. I don’t know what to do. Should I not turn to you?2 Perhaps it would have been right. There is so much unappetizing baggage, in terms of my poverty, my constantly varied little catastrophes which to me are earthquakes, in this rope that so long disdains to kill me once and for all, and just tightens spasmodically around my neck, it’s soaked already in the sweat of my fear; nothing but the vacation of just one man who won’t know any of this — I am his only German author — a puff of wind, some woman falling ill so that the managing editor can think of nothing else — takes me to the brink of Salvation Army and jail, unfortunately only in installments to the brink of the grave. I’ve finished my long novel 1002nd Night , the other one is three-quarters done, I have to hand it in at the beginning of September. In Poland I was writing all winter — the lectures on the side — I was happy and cheerful to be getting 125 gulden till the end of ’37. And for the past 4 weeks here I’ve been calm and industrious. Then yesterday the enclosed letter came. Whom can I send it to? Not to you, I know that. For almost a whole year I didn’t bother you with my shitty little affairs. Excuse me! If you can excuse me. I hope at least you’ll reply promptly. If you can somehow arrange for me to get the money through Belgium or Paris, then I can send 125 gulden back to your address (if it’s still right?) on 1 September. What shall I do? Answer me, I beg you. Just now, two policemen are dragging a man across the street. I am so wound up that I can see myself there in their midst, with no visa, being schlepped to the German frontier, the directest way back to Austria. Almondo has asked me around, but if I take so much as one meal from someone like that I’d feel I was practically a con artist. — I have such huge fear of falling into the depth of those latrines. See how it pulls me in. Please see, it’s not my fault. I’ve wrecked my reputation by industry, too many books in short succession. I’ve got this publisher to agree to publish my next book not at Christmas, but in 1938. But in order to live till the end of ’37 I’ve promised to deliver yet another novel by the beginning of September.3—Oh, it’s all shameful, pitiful, degrading. I’d seen the end so many times already, please believe me it’s not being delayed through any doing of mine. I mustn’t shoot myself — left to myself I would have done it, to spare you the undignified spectacle of a lamenting friend. Please believe me, I haven’t done anything irresponsible, I came here for 3 months with exactly 1,800 Belgian francs, to be in the cheapest country and in the proximity of this strange publishing house, which doesn’t understand the least thing about packing, or printing or distribution, whose typesetters don’t even know German. I have to correct their exotic misprints myself, there is no one else to do it. And Mr. Lion4 turns up and says he would never have thought someone who had put out so many books could be any good. And there are many who think like that. You still believe in my literary virtue. But you can see I can’t work in a latrine.

I know that your mind, used to stability and to thinking in terms of continual improvements, will view this catastrophe of mine — and rightly — as a consequence of my overall situation, and that you will first think how to improve the overall situation. Please bear in mind, though, that this acute difficulty may make a subsequent overall situation impossible. Even a sort of reconciliation with Huebsch, which nothing suggests he wants or is ready for, wouldn’t help. He is certainly not the object of my bitterness, you don’t need to take him under your wing. He has only followed the rules of my fate, he is a cat’s-paw in the hand of the destiny that has prepared all this for me. — But all this is not now. At this moment I can see the policemen escorting the man back toward the station. I feel a sudden desire to relieve him, to take his place and say there has been an error, a mistaken identity — and so bring about the final catastrophe. I can’t go on. I see right away that there’s such a thing as literary honor. The reality is that I’ll get another letter from the hotel tomorrow, that the laundry bill hasn’t been paid, and that I won’t be able to write anything any more, not even a letter. Today is Sunday. On Tuesday you will have this disgusting letter, does that feel like a long time! It’s three years! Can you, will you send me a telegram? — And then I’m afraid of the post. What if this doesn’t find you? I’ll send it express, and then a postcard as well. It’s cheaper than registered. But believe me that, in this whole calamity, your saying that you forgive me remains the most important element. Please send me a wire. (I am not responsible for the nonsense that may appear here.) All I know is that these are the 8th, 9th, 10th, 11th, and that it’s 24 days till I next get money from Holland.

I am so full of loathing for me, it’s so awful, soon I won’t care any more — and that frightens me.

I embrace you, send me a wire on Tuesday, I will go home late for fear of not finding one,

your J.R.

1. the publisher, the new one: the Catholic press De Gemeenschap, in Bilthoven, Holland.

2. should I not turn to you: Hermann Kesten remarks that, in addition to being one of the best-selling and most-translated authors in the world at that time, Stefan Zweig had substantial private means.

3. another novel by the beginning of September: this is The Emperor’s Tomb , which ended up overtaking The Tale of the 1002nd Night in JR’s choked production schedule.

4. Mr. Lion: Ferdinand Lion (1883–1965), essayist, critic, playwright. There is something in what he says. Thomas Mann, for instance, saw Roth primarily as a drunk, which Roth repaid by seeing Thomas Man(n) as primarily neuter (see no. 210).