Joseph Roth - The Hundred Days

Both Napoleon and Angelina struggle to find religion, with limited success. They, like Roth characters in other novels, are prone to believe more generally in fate (in this case represented by the stars in the heavens and the fortune-telling cards of Angelina’s aunt) than they are in God and the Church specifically.

The one being worshipped in The Hundred Days is not God but Napoleon himself. The Emperor is buffeted by cries of “Long live the Emperor!” throughout the book (in fact, fifty-two times), cries which vary in their veracity and meaning.

Despite the frenzied noise of devotion, it is often the moments of silence that carry the most emotional weight. One of the most poignant scenes in The Hundred Days takes place on the battlefield at Waterloo, when the Emperor’s soldiers are flying silently past him in retreat, no longer offering any cries of solidarity, passing like the scattering ghosts of the dead soldiers.

Had Roth’s novel been told strictly from Napoleon’s viewpoint, it would have been a far less interesting book. Remaining inside the Emperor’s head for the entire book would perhaps have been overwhelming, and the introduction of Angelina Pietri into the story provides a welcome, rich, and multi-dimensional fullness to the tale. Young Angelina comes to France from her native Corsica and immediately goes to stay with her aunt, who is the First Laundress (and occasional fortune-telling card-reader for the Emperor) at the imperial palace. Over the course of several years and a few brief moments with the Emperor, Angelina’s devotion to him does not waver: “Her heart commanded her to remain close to his gracious presence, lowly and ignored as she was.” She eventually comes to realize that much of her life has been lived within the Emperor’s great shadow, and all the major events — including her unpleasant relationship with a colossal sergeant-major, the birth of a son and his eventual death on the Emperor’s battlefield — have in one way or another stemmed from Napoleon. It seems the powerful Emperor and the powerless Angelina are both caught up in their own misfortune by relentless fate.

The most sympathetic character in The Hundred Days is neither Napoleon nor Angelina, but the kindly and patient one-legged Polish cobbler Anton Wokurka, with whom Angelina takes up residence once the Emperor is exiled in 1814 and her aunt flees the palace. Wokurka (who is referred to as both Jan and Anton in the German version) was originally slated to play a much more central role in the book; among Roth’s manuscripts was a typed, seven-page unpublished preface to The Hundred Days in which Roth introduces the Anton Wokurka character as a friend of his grandfather’s. Roth explains that he met this cobbler, a good twenty years older than Roth’s grandfather (himself seventy-three years old), as a young boy. The white-bearded, bald-headed, pipe-smoking Wokurka, a veteran of Napoleon’s great campaigns who lost a leg in his service, lived in a room decorated with pictures of the Emperor and his battles and palaces as well as a framed commendation from days of yore. Every year young Roth was sure to spend time with this interesting old man while visiting his grandfather’s village. When the Roths’ vacation was over, Wokurka would say: “Good-bye. See you in a year, punctually!” On one particular visit Wokurka asks Joseph if he has learned much about Napoleon. Joseph answers that he has and that the storybooks he has read either depict Napoleon as very evil or very noble: “I think they are all lies,” he says. Wokurka says that Joseph is right and that if the boy is patient he will recount for the him the true story of Napoleon’s one hundred days. “I knew the Emperor. . and if you are curious, I can tell you an instructive story. . but I will need a long time.” So Joseph visits Wokurka every morning at 9 a.m. over the course of four days. Thus Wokurka tells Joseph the tale of the Emperor’s last days in power, as the boy listens, entranced: “There sat Wokurka, a soldier of the Emperor, and it was as if he was already speaking from the grave. It was as if I myself sat in the crypt in which Wokurka lay buried. .” Years later the sound of Wokurka’s voice still rings in Roth’s head, and he realizes he should share the Emperor’s tale with the world, despite feeling woefully inadequate to recapture the great storytelling of the “splendid” Wokurka.

In 1934 and 1935, as he was writing The Hundred Days , Roth was consumed by work, sometimes even writing for twelve or fourteen hours a day. “It [writing] is truly my Waterloo,” he explained in February 1935, referring to himself as “old and miserable Joseph Roth.” He worried constantly about his precarious finances — when he would be paid and how much he was owed. Although several of his books met with substantial critical and commercial success, he was always in need of money. He complained that the Nazis, after he left in 1933, had confiscated 30,000 marks of his. Whatever level of comfort and success he had achieved during the German years, by 1934 Roth was desperate for money. He described himself in one letter as depressed, buried under “mountains of chagrin,” and in another letter said: “I work in a great anguish, a true panic.” Sick and full of misery over everything from financial troubles to the decline of civilization, the Roth of The Hundred Days — this fascinating book so unlike any of his other novels — was just forty years old, only four years away from his very premature, alcohol-induced death.

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In an interview for a French newspaper, Joseph Roth admitted that while writing his novels he was “always haunted by a musical theme.” His writing style was all about rhythm. “For me,” he claimed, “a good translation is that which renders the rhythm of my language. For me, a good translation is neither about the anecdotal contents nor the sentimental contents, it is about the rhythm.” I have tried my best to preserve the rhythm of Roth’s writing, being mindful of how the differences between German and English syntax occasionally make it a challenge to achieve the precise effect toward which Roth was striving. Roth’s manuscript featured heavy usage of exclamation marks. I have eliminated some of the most flagrantly unnecessary, but kept the great majority to be true to the spirit of the original, which is quite emphatic by virtue of Napoleon’s larger-than-life personality.

I would like to thank Barbara Epler, Peter Owen, Antonia Owen, and Simon Smith for their belief in this project. Thanks also to the Leo Baeck Institute — the Joseph Roth Collection there is invaluable to scholars — and in particular the resources pertaining to Die Hundert Tage , the typescript manuscript (AR 1764; series 2, subseries 1, box 1, folder 36) and contemporaneous reviews (AR 1764; series 2, subseries 4, box 2, folder 82).

Richard Panchyk

2014