Joseph Roth - Joseph Roth - A Life in Letters

2. Furtwängler: Wilhelm Furtwängler (1886–1954), who was often compared with Toscanini, was the most successful conductor in the Third Reich. His support for the Nazis and his decision not to leave Fascist Germany made him a deeply contentious figure after the war.

433. To Stefan Zweig

[Amsterdam] 23 September 1937

Dear friend,

I’ve just received the address from your card sent to Querido. I have waited till now (7 in the evening, 23 September, Thursday). If I succeed in getting a contract in Amsterdam, I’ll come to Brussels or Paris. — I’m faring very badly, dismally in fact. I don’t understand why you preferred seeing Toscanini to me: or were prepared to miss seeing me for his sake. I’ve written to you in London, to tell you how much I admire and endorse his position.

Sincerely your

J.R.

434. Stefan Zweig to Joseph Roth

25 September 1937

Dear Roth,

why, oh why are you so easily offended — aren’t we beaten about enough without baring our teeth at one another, even if. . I am so consumed by my own fallibility that I have no more strength to defend myself against others. No, my friend, not articles now — for us it would be best to get ourselves wiped out by a gas bomb in Shanghai or Madrid, and maybe rescue someone with more joie de vivre. I was only in Paris for a day and a half, didn’t see anyone except Masereel1 and Ernst Weiss, saw some wonderful paintings, and am now back at work. This year ’37 is a bad one for me, everything claws at me, I feel half flayed, my nerves are exposed, but I carry on working, and I would do better if it weren’t for family and others’ affairs that lame me, and demand twice the energy I have. Don’t forget that I’m past 55, and since we seem to be living in wartime, I get tired some of the time — I positively fled back to my desk, the only support for the likes of us. You have no idea how much I needed to speak with you, I’ve just gotten another blow in the guts from a so-called friend, and I’m choking back gall with clenched teeth. It would be important to spend good time together, and if the conspiracy between dictators doesn’t lead to the planned concentric assault on Russia (first the Bolshevists, then the Democrats, that’s the way it was done in ’33), if a frail sort of peace still endures, then I want to go to Paris in January for a month; I need my friends as never before and there are a few there, and you would come too, it would be lovely! From time to time I need to breathe in the air of conversation, and strengthen and intensify myself: we forfeit too much of ourselves in the current madhouse. Toscanini was forced to stay in Gastein at the last moment, I’m seeing him here; I am continually shaken at the way he, who celebrates the greatest “successes” on the planet, instead of egoistically enjoying them, suffers from all that happens around him — well, my novel2 may have something to say about the suffering from pity. No, Roth, don’t grow hard from the hardness of the times, that would mean assenting to it and strengthening it! Don’t get pugnacious, implacable, just because the implacable ones are triumphing through their brutality — rather refute them by being different, permit yourself to be mocked for your weakness, instead of going against your nature. Roth, don’t become bitter, we need you, for the times, however much blood they drink, remain anemic in terms of their intellectual force. Preserve yourself! And let’s stay together, we few!

Your St. Z.

1. Masereel: Frans Masereel (1889–1972), Flemish illustrator and etcher, friend of Zweig’s.

2. my novel: Ungeduld des Herzens (Beware of Pity).

435. Stefan Zweig to Joseph Roth

[autumn 1937]

My dear fellow,

got your letter a moment ago. It saddens me. I remember how we once wrote to each other; telling each other of our plans, celebrating our friends, and rejoicing in our mutual understanding. I know nothing now of what you are working on, what keeps you busy; in Italy people were telling me of a new novel of yours, and had read it, and I didn’t know about it. Roth, friend, brother — what does all the shit going on have to do with us! I read the paper once a week, and that’s enough for me of the lies of all countries, the only thing I do is try here and there to help an individual — not materially, but to try and get people out of Germany or Russia or out of some trouble: that seems to be the only way in which I can remain active. I won’t deny it when you say I’m hiding. If you are unable to impose your own decisions, you should avoid them. — You forget, you, my friend , that I state my problem PUBLICLY in my Erasmus , and only stand by one thing, the integrity of individual freedom. I’m not hiding myself, there is Erasmus , where I portray the so-called cowardice of a conciliatory nature without celebrating it — as fact, and as DESTINY. And then Castellio —the image of a man I SHOULD LIKE TO BE.

No, Roth, I was never disloyal to a true friend for a second. If I wanted to see Tosc., then it’s because I honor him, and because one should take every opportunity one gets of seeing a 72-year-old, and then in the end I didn’t even see him (you must have missed that in my letter) because I had to go, Amsterdam wasn’t anywhere on my route, and I had no idea if you were there or in Utrecht. Roth, there are so few of us and you know, however much you push me away, that there can be hardly anyone who is as devoted to you as I am, that I feel all your bitterness without opposing it with any bitterness of my own: it doesn’t help you, you can do what you like against me, privately, publicly diminish me or antagonize me, you won’t manage to free yourself of my unhappy love for you, a love that suffers when you suffer, that is hurt by your hatred. Push me away all you like, it won’t help you! Roth, friend, I know how hard things are for you, and that’s reason enough for me to love you all the more, and when you’re angry and irritable and full of buried resentments against me, then all I feel is that life is torturing you, and that you’re lashing out, out of some correct instinct, perhaps against the only person who wouldn’t be offended thereby, who in spite of everything and everyone will remain true to you. It won’t help you, Roth. You won’t turn me against Joseph Roth. It won’t help you!

Your St. Z.

436. Stefan Zweig to Joseph Roth

17 October 1937

Dear unfriend,

I just wanted to tell you that, finally, thanks to Berthold Fles,1 whom I saw yesterday, I’ve managed to get some news of you, and I’m delighted to hear that you are so hard at work: I know you will manage to write those two books, and they will be a success. He told me you’d had an invitation to Mexico,2 and I can’t tell you how important it would be in my view for you to get a change of air, of scene, of place, to fill your lungs again, and how wonderfully you would depict such a new world — something like that, as I said to Fles, must be reasonably easy to finance as well. The smell of Europe’s putrefaction is in all our nostrils: a little fresh air and you, my dear, my important friend, would feel refreshed in your soul. I am glad that at least you are in Paris — don’t forget to take a look at the literary pavilion in the exhibition3 (“ébauche d’un musée de littérature”) the most impressive in the whole exhibition for me. Yesterday I completed the first draft of my novel, 400 pages, of course a completely inadequate rough sketch, the proper work will begin now, and how useful it would be for me to be able to consult you at such a moment! But you won’t come to London (even though it would be important) and I will have to sit here till mid-December, when I will go to Vienna for a fortnight, and then maybe Paris for a month. When will we see one another? Now you know all my plans. In the next few days, you will get copies of two of my books, the essay collection and the Magellan .4 I’ve really been hard at work these last few years, and done what I could in terms of quantity and energy; I hope the quality is acceptable! This is just a hello to the Foyot, and don’t forget your unhappy lover, and discarded friend