Weights and Measures ("Die Kapuzinergruft",) by Joseph Roth - 1937 - accompanied by Stefan Zweig's Funeral Observations- translated from the German by David la Fay- 2017 - 112 Pages

 Weights and Measures,  a novella by Joseph Roth, is part of my Participation in German Literature 

Hosted by Lizzy’s Literary Life 

https://lizzysiddal2.wordpress.com/2023/09/22/announcing-german-literature-month-xiii/

Weights and Measures  tells the story of Anselm Eibenschütz, an artillery officer in the Austro-Hungarian army who leaves his beloved post at the insistence of his wife to take up a civilian job as Inspector of Weights and Measures in a remote backwater near the Russian border.

At first, Eibenschütz attempts to carry out his duties with rectitude and diligence. However, he soon finds himself adrift in a world of petty corruption, bribery, and drunkenness. He is also undone by his passion for the beautiful gypsy Euphemia.

Over time, Eibenschütz's moral compass becomes increasingly corrupted. He begins to accept bribes and overlook irregularities in the weights and measures of the local merchants. He also becomes increasingly dependent on alcohol to numb his pain and loneliness.

In the end, Eibenschütz's downfall is complete. He is dismissed from his job, his wife leaves him, and he is left to live out his days in a drunken stupor.

Weights and Measures is a powerful and haunting novel that explores the themes of corruption, moral decay, and the loss of innocence. It is also a beautiful and evocative portrait of Eastern Europe's borderlands in the early twentieth century.

The novel is notable for its complex and well-developed characters, its rich prose, and its unflinching depiction of the human condition.

Weights and Measures is a very powerful unflincing account of a descent into alcohol to hide from despair, a feeling you have nothing to live for.

Mel u

I am also participating in Novellas in November 

Novellas in November is hosted by Cathy of 746 Books and Rebecca of Bookish Beck.

https://bookishbeck.com/

This is the 14th time I have posted on a work by Joseph Roth. I hold his work in very high esteem.

Their is an image of Joseph Roth and his very close friend Stefan Zweig in the header page of my blog 

JOSEPH ROTH 

Born: September 2, 1894, Brody, Ukraine

Died: May 27, 1939, Paris, France

Spouse: Friederike Reichler (m. 1922–1939)

Partner: Irmgard Keun

His works 

  • The Spider's Web (Das Spinnennetz) (1923, adapted in 1989 into a film of the same name)

Hotel Savoy (1924)

The Rebellion (Die Rebellion) (1924; some editions of the English translation call it simply Rebellion)

"April: The Story of a Love Affair" (April. Die Geschichte einer Liebe) (1925; in The Collected Stories)

"The Blind Mirror" (Der blinde Spiegel) (1925; in The Collected Stories)

Flight without End (Die Flucht ohne Ende) (1927)

Zipper and His Father (Zipper und sein Vater) (1928)

Right and Left (Rechts und links) (1929)

The Silent Prophet (Der stumme Prophet) (1929)

Job (Hiob) (1930)

Perlefter (novel fragment) (1930)

Radetzky March (Radetzkymarsch) (1932; some editions of the English translation call it The Radetzky March)

Fallmerayer the Stationmaster (novella) (Stationschef Fallmerayer) (1933)

The Antichrist (Der Antichrist) (1934)

Tarabas (1934)

"The Bust of the Emperor" (Die Büste des Kaisers) (1934; in The Collected Stories)

Confession of a Murderer (Beichte eines Mörders) (1936)

"Die hundert Tage" ("The Ballad of the Hundred Days") (1936)

Weights and Measures (Das falsche Gewicht) (1937)

The Emperor's Tomb (Die Kapuzinergruft) (1938)

The Legend of the Holy Drinker (Die Legende vom heiligen Trinker) (1939)

The String of Pearls (Die Geschichte von der 1002. Nacht) (1939)

"The Leviathan" (Der Leviathan) (1940; in The Collected Stories)

The Collected Stories of Joseph Roth, trans. by Michael Hofmann, New York: W. W. Norton & Company (2003)

Radetzky March is the acknowledged highest regarded of his novels, my sentimental favourite is The Hotel Savoy.

Weights and Measures is a very powerful unflincing account of a descent into alcohol to hide from despair, a feeling you have nothing to live 

Confessions of a Murderer by Joseph Roth - 1936 -

Joseph Roth on The Reading Life

Link to Posts for German Literature Month

“Prussia, the ruler of Germany, was always an enemy of the intellect, of books, of the Book of Books—that is, the Bible—of Jews and Christians, of humanism and Europe. Hitler’s Third Reich is only so alarming to the rest of Europe because it sets itself to put into action what was always the Prussian project anyway: to burn the books, to murder the Jews, and to revise Christianity."  Joseph Roth, 1933"

Works I Have So Far Read for German Literature Month, November, 2017

1. “You’d Have Larvae Too” by Nora Wagener, 2016
2. Vertigo by W. G. Sebald, 1990
3. The Last Weynfeldt by Martin Suter, 2006
4. “An Earthquake in Chile” by Heinrich Von Kleist, 1809
5. Who is Martha? by Marjana Gaponenko, 2012
6. “The Legal Haziness of Marriage” by Olga Grjasnowa, 2015
7. “Aladdin, COB” by Isabelle Lehn, 2015
8. “The Last Bell” by Johannes Urzidil, 1968
9. The Rings of Saturn by W. G. Sebald, 1995
10. Late Fame by Arthur Schnitzler, written 1892, published 2016
11. Blood Brothers by Ernst Haffner, 1933
12. Berlin Alexanderplatz by Alfred Döblin, 1929
13. Confessions of a Murderer by Joseph Roth, 1936

During German Literature Month November 2013 I read my first work by Joseph Roth, his acknowledged by all masterwork,  Radetzky’s  March.  He is now one of my “read all I can authors”. I have posted upon eight of his novels, three novellas, three collections of essays, and two short stories.  Roth was at one time the highest paid journalist in Europe.  His essays are gems, a delight to read.  (1894 to 1939, Roth died before the Holocaust had truly begun but he saw it coming.  The Nazis burned his books..  There is bio data in my prior Posts.)

Confessions of a Murderer is set in a Paris cafe, one for serious drinkers, a venue Roth knew well.  An older Russian exile (there is a great essay on Russians in Paris in Hotel Years) is known among other Russian habitué of the cafe as “The Murder”.   A journalist, having a late night drink, asks the man why he is referred to in such a fashion.  He begins a very long tale, starting in Czarist Russia with a claim that his real father was not his forester father but a count who had an affair with his mother.  This belief, it might be true, sets off a course of events that dominated his life.  He becomes a member of The Czarist Secret Police, assigned to protect the Czar from assisination.  I found Roth’s account of the workings and corruption of the Secret Police fascinating.  

The novel is a bit of a potboiler, O.K. a lot of one, at this point in his life Roth needed income, it goes as far as it could in depicting sex and really is quite exciting.  Roth is letting us see the consequences of the decline of the old empires.  

It has been compared to Conrad’s Secret Agent and to some of the work of Dostoevsky.

I would say first read Radetsky’s March, then the sequel to this, The Emperor’s Tomb and then my sentimental favorite Hotel Savoy.  My guess is by then you will be hooked on Roth.  Roth is as smart as they come.  

Mel ü

"The Czarist Emigres" by Joseph Roth (first published September 23, 1926, included in Hotel Days Wanderings Between the Wars, Edited And translated by Michael Hoffman, 2015)

Host Webpage for Paris in July 2016

My post also includes scenes from a movie perfect for Paris in July, Ninotchka.

Joseph Roth was born in Brody, now in the Ukraine, in 1894.  It was then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire

He left his beloved Vienna on January 30, 1933, the day Hitler became chancellor of Germany, moving to Paris.  Paris was his home for the remaining six years of his life.  He died in Paris May 27, 1939

His most famous work is The Radetzky March.  The Legend of the Holy Drinker, is, as far as i know, his only work of fiction set in Paris.  His novel The Hundred Days is set in the time of Napolean's brief escape but is nor centered in Paria.

For a time he was the best paid journalist in Europe.  Reading his journalism it is a pleasure and an honor to encounter such extreme intelligence and perceptivity.  His personal life can only be described as a "mess".  

I could not let Paris in July come to an end without posting on one of his articles about Paris.

In "The Czarist Emigres" Roth evokes the romantic figures of White Russians living in Paris, Grand Dukes driving taxis, counts working as waiters.  Roth knows that White Russians were almost all very anti-semetic.  Here are Roth's beautifully expressed thoughts

"We were armed with the old literary formula reflexively applied for every transgression and excess: “the Russian soul”. Europe was familiar with music-hall Cossacks, the operatic excesses of Russian peasant weddings, Russian singers and their balalaikas. It never understood (not even after the Russians turned up on our doorstep) how French romanciers—the most conservative in the world—and sentimental Dostoyevsky readers had deformed the Russian to a kitschy figure compounded of divinity and bestiality, alcohol and philosophy, samovar cosiness and the barren steppes of Asia. ....

The longer the emigration went on, the more our Russians resembled the notion we had of them. They flattered us by assimilating themselves to it. Their feeling of playing a part maybe soothed their misery. They bore it more easily once it was appreciated as literature. The Russian count as Paris cabbie takes his fares straight into a storybook. His fate itself may be ghastly. But it is at least literary. The anonymous life of the émigrés became a public production. And then they began to make an exhibition of themselves. Hundreds of them founded theatres, choirs, dance groups, balalaika orchestras."

A perfect movie to accompany this is Ninotchka, made in 1939.  Three Russian envoys have been send to Paris to sell some  Crown Jewels.  They get distracted by the opulence of capitalistic Paris and a special envoy is sent to follow up on the sale. The Grand Duchess who used to own them makes a legal claim on the jewels.  When Ninotchka, played to perfection by Greta Garbo arrives in Paris she is totally dedicated to Russia and abhors the decadence of Paris.  Slowly Paris seduces her.   Niniotchka is one of my favorite movies.  I must have seen it at least six times.  It is hilarious, poignant, the settings and clothes are marvelous.  It has all the Russian cliche figures Roth mentioned.  It premiered the year Roth died so I doubt he saw it.

Here are a few scene shots

      

     Greta researching some legal matters.

Do you have a favorite set in Paris movie?

Mel u

Rebellion by Joseph Roth (1924, translated by Michael Hoffman

My great thanks to Max ü for tne gift card that allowed me to read this book

Lizzy's Literary Life


Beauty is a Sleeping Cat


German Literature Month V 

I am estatic to once again be able to Participate in German Literature Month, elegantly and lovingly hosted by Lizzi's Literary Live and Beauty is a Sleeping Cat. This is my fourth year as a participant.   On the host blogs you will find the particularities of the event but the basic idea is to read literature first written in German (translated or not) and share your thoughts.  I began accumulating works for the event soon after the event ended last year and I began reading for it in mid-September.  

German Literature IV Post Event Celebration. Copiously illustrated

Works Read for G L V So Far

1.  Every Man Dies Alone by Hans Fallada. A brilliant recreation of life in Nazi Germany. 

2.  Ostend, Stefan Zweig, Joseph Roth and the Summer Before the End by Volker Weidermann. A fascinating social history 

3.  Buddenbrook Ths Decline of a Family by Thomas Mann.  Must reading 

4.  "The Governess" by Stefan Zweig

5.  Demian:  The Story of Emil Sinclair's Youth by Herman Hesse.  Read the major works first.

6.  The Tanners by Robert Walser. a serious work of art

7. The Hotel Years Wandering Between the Wars by Joseph Hoffman, a brilliant collection of feuilletons translated and introduced by Michael Hoffman

8.  "The Dandelioln" by Wolfgang Borchert. 

9.   "The Foundling" by Heinrich Von Kleist

10.  "A Conversation Concerning Legs" by Alfred Lichenstein 

11.  "The Criminal" by Veza Canetti

Earlier in the month I posted on a collection of essays by Joseph Roth assembled, introduced and translated by Michael Hoffman, Hotel  Years.  Rebellion was one of the earliest of Roth's sixteen novels.  Roth was too smart to be a simple ideologue, it is hard to pin down his ideas but he hated fascism and he loved his conception of old Vienna under Emperor Franz Joseph.

Rebellion is a brief work, 121 pages in my edition.  It focuses largely on one man, a veteran of World War One who lost a leg in the conflict.   He gets a license to operate a "hurdy gurdy", a musical instrument on wheels.  Operation of this was restricted to wounded veterans who rolled them around town seeking donations.   He meets a widow and takes up with her.  The relationship between him and the widow is very well done and lets us see how the massive killing of men impacted the matrimonial market.  He moves into her place, he buys a donkey to pull the cart and all is going well.  Then he gets in a fight with a police officer, and ends up in jail.

The story follows his fate.  It reads like a kind of dark Gogol influenced fable.   In it are many reflections on the nature of government and the law.   

Rebellion is a work for those who have already read and appreciated his more famous works like The Zandesky March, The Emperor's Tomb, Job, Leviathan and one of my very favorite Roth works, Hotel Savoy. 

Mel ü

The Hotel Years Wanderings in Europe Between the Wars by Joseph Roth (translated by Michael Hoffman, 2015)

Lizzy's Literary Life


Beauty is a Sleeping Cat


German Literature Month V 

I am estatic to once again be able to Participate in German Literature Month, elegantly and lovingly hosted by Lizzi's Literary Live and Beauty is a Sleeping Cat. This is my fourth year as a participant.   On the host blogs you will find the particularities of the event but the basic idea is to read literature first written in German (translated or not) and share your thoughts.  I began accumulating works for the event soon after the event ended last year and I began reading for it in mid-September.  

German Literature IV Post Event Celebration. Copiously illustrated

Works Read for G L V So Far

1.  Every Man Dies Alone by Hans Fallada. A brilliant recreation of life in Nazi Germany. 

2.  Ostend, Stefan Zweig, Joseph Roth and the Summer Before the End by Volker Weidermann. A fascinating social history 

3.  Buddenbrook Ths Decline of a Family by Thomas Mann.  Must reading 

4.  "The Governess" by Stefan Zweig

5.  Demian:  The Story of Emil Sinclair's Youth by Herman Hesse.  Read the major works first.

6.  The Tanners by Robert Walser.  

I greatly admire the work of Joseph Roth. I have so far  read nine of his novels, two other collections of essays besides Hotel Years, and three of his novellas.  I am hoping one day to have read at least all of his now in E book in translation works. .  Roth made a mess of his own life but the fire of his intelligence burns through in his writings.   Perfect man he wasn't, but they don't come much smarter.

The essays, translated and with an introduction by Michael Hoffman, were written between 1919 to 1939.  Roth was at one time the best paid journalist in Europe.  There are sixty four essays in the collection.

Roth lived for many years in hotels, he had no permanent home nor did he seem to want one for at least the last ten years of his life.  He loved living in hotels for the diversity of the staff and guest and, I think, for his ability and pleasure in thinking up stories about the people he encountered.  He did not stay at The Ritz, preferring and much of the time only able to afford low cost places where the management left you alone as long as you paid your bill.  

The essays are on a wide range of topics.  Arranged in several sections by subject matters, some are devoted to his observations on life in hotels.  He traveled a lot and there is an interesting section devoted to his impressions on his visit to the USSR.  He spent time in Slavic countries and overall he is near mocking of the people in these countries. 

I found his essay on Russian expats claiming nobility living in Paris to be exceptionally brilliant.  

Hotel Days at times is near lyrical, at times dark and dank but it is always wonderful to read the thoughts of Joseph Roth.  

There is background information on Roth in my prior posts on him.

        This should be your first Roth 

I was kindly given a review copy of this book.

Mel ü

Ostend, Stefan Zweig, Joseph Roth, and the Summer Before the Dark by Volker Weidermann, 2014, translation by Carol Janeway,forthcoming 2016)

Lizzy's Literary Life


Beauty is a Sleeping Cat


German Literature Month V 

German Literature IV Post Event Celebration. Copiously illustrated

Works I Have So Far Read for German Literature Month Five

1.  We All Die Alone by Hans Fallada.  Magnificent work on life in Nazi Germany

I have read a good bit of both Stefan Zweig and Joseph Roth and I will be reading at least two more of their works for G L V so I was very happy to be given a review copy of Ostend Stefan Zweig, Joseph Roth and the Summer Before the War by Volker Weidermann.

This is a book anyone with a serious interest in the work and lives of Joseph Roth and Stefan Zweig will find fascinating and very edifying.  I greatly enjoyed reading it.  

The author assumes you have a good familiarity with the work of both authors and I think it is a logical assumption about potential readers.

Besides being a cultural history of ex-Austro-Hungarian empire writers in the years just before World War II, it is a story of a  friendship between two great writers, Stefan Zweig and Joseph Roth, both flawed men, both deeply "old world" in their culture and both horrified by the vision of Nazi dominated Europe they see coming. The two men were very different in lots of ways but similar in others.  Both needed or used women as kind of crutches or muses.  It is set largely in 1936.

We see Roth's drinking more and more, his death is portrayed as suicide by alcohol.  Some writers, including Michael Hoffman and Hannah Arendt have been harshly critical of Zweig for his seemingly escapist attitude toward the ever growing power of Nazis.  The author  addresses this issue and talks about what he sees as the reason for the suicide of Zweig and his wife in Brazil.  Both writers saw the destruction of European culture as destroying the only world in which they wanted to live.  Of course if either could have lasted five more years they might have had twenty plus more productive years. 

Ostend, in Belgium, was at the time an allegedly neutral country where Jewish intellectuals could feel relatively safe.  There are lots of very interesting minor characters and the book is a treasure trove of reading ideas.

Publisher's description

 Summary

⇑

The true story of two of the twentieth century’s great writers, exiled from Nazi Germany to a Belgian seaside resort, and the world they built there: written with a novelist’s eye for pacing, chronology, and language—a dazzling work of historical nonfiction.

It’s the summer of 1936, and the writer Stefan Zweig is in crisis. His German publisher no longer wants him, his marriage is collapsing, and his home in Austria has been seized. He’s been dreaming of Ostend, the Belgian beach town—a paradise of promenades, parasols, and old friends. So he journeys there with his new lover, Lotte Altmann, and reunites with his semi-estranged fellow writer and close friend Joseph Roth, himself newly in love. For a moment, they create a fragile paradise. But as Europe begins to crumble around them, the writers find themselves trapped on vacation, in exile, watching the world burn. In Ostend, Volker Weidermann lyrically recounts “the summer before the dark,” when a coterie of artists, intellectuals, drunks, revolutionaries, and madmen found themselves in limbo while Europe teetered on the edge of fascism and total war.

 Contributor Bio(s)

⇑

VOLKER WEIDERMANN is the literary director and editor of the Sunday edition of Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung and the author of a number of works of literary history and critical biography.

Author Residence: Berlin

Tarabas A Guest on Earth by Joseph Roth (1934, translated by Winifred Katzin)

I offer my great thanks to Max u for the gift card which made reading this book possible.

My Posts on Joseph Roth

Joseph Roth's oeuvre  is one of the great treasures of 20th century European literature.  I started out with, as most do and neophytes should, with his acknowledged by all master work The Radetsky March.  Next I read the sequel to this work, The Emperor's Tomb, then one of my personal favorites of his novels, Savoy Hotel.  So far I have read nine of his novels, three novellas, and two collections of essays.  There are six more novels to go and I hope to read them all.  None of his novels are very long and there has not been one I had to drag my way through yet.   Some of his work, as does Tarabas A Guest on Earth partially,focuses on the fate of the Jews of Eastern Europe and Russia.  

Tarabas A Guest on Earth is set during the period of The Russian Civil War.  (I recently read a very good  book on this period, Former People The Final Days of the Russian Aristocracy by Douglas Smith and this book and Roth's work perfectly together.  I once had a romantic view of White Russians but this view did not withstand my exposure to the historical reality of the bloody pograms of the White Russians.

When we first meet Tarabas he is living in New York City.  He misses his home but has found a Russian girlfriend.  It was a great pleasure to read Roth's depiction of New York City life (I wish so much he could have moved there around 1932 when he left Austria for Paris, to escape the coming Nazi rule of Austria).  He gets in a jealousy caused fight with a bar owner in NYC and when he hears war has broken out in Russia he at once decides to fight in that war.  

We next meet Tarabas on his father's property in eastern Russia.  The country is in complete turmoil.  The Czar has been killed and there is not yet a viable government in place.  He and his father have a strained relationship.  He wants to marry a cousin who works on the farm but he is forced into a White Russian brigade.  He has no sense of the various ideologies involved,  but he does hate Jews, especially red haired ones.  He favorable impresses the commander and he makes him a captain.  He turns out to be an excellent leader, admired by his men.  We go along as the troops roam the anarchic Russian countryside.  The White Russians blamed Jews for the revolution and Tarabas and his men were involved in vicious pograms against totally harmless people.  He ends up being promoted to a colonel.   Many of his men begin to desert as the war makes no sense to them.  Many are killed.  He has a small cadre of soldiers who have been with him for a while and some few of these are loyal.

He ends up back on his father's farm.  Years have gone by.  His parents exhibit less than the joy he had hoped for on his return and the girl he loved married a German and has moved to Germany.  He accepts this.  He has perhaps gained some wisdom from his troubles.  The ending I will leave untold.

Tarabas   A Guest On Earth has lots of great details and marvelous descriptions of the events of the period.  It is the story of a man caught up in the turmoil of his times.  The characters are very well developed.  It has a kind of the feel of a fable.  

I will next read his novel Rebellion. 

Mel u

Job by Joseph Roth (1930, translated by Ross Benjamin)

I offer my great thanks to Max u for the Amazon Gift Card that enabled  me to read this book.

My Posts on Joseph Roth

Job - The Story of a Simple Man is the ninth book by Joseph Roth (1894 to 1939) I have so far read.  My goal is to read all his translated available as a Kindle works.  Sadly about six of his novels that I have not yet read that were just a couple of months ago available as Kindles are no longer on Amazon and the print editions are listed as temporarily out of stock with no idea when they will be available.  I don't know if this is from a publisher dispute with Amazon or if the publishers no longer have them in print.  I know I wished when I saw this that I had already acquired the unread Roth books on Kindle.  With the reading of the very powerful Job, I have now  read, hopefully just a temporary issue, all the works by Roth available in English as a Kindle edition.  

While reading Roth I have also been reading a bit of Yiddish literature, primarily  in the wonderful Yale Yiddish Library Collection.  It struck me as I read Job that it seemed more like Yiddish literature than any of his other works.  Inspired by the biblical character of great suffering Job, Mendel Singer, the lead character undergoes incredible loss and suffering, loses his faith in God and at last regains the wisdom to partially understand why God mad him suffer so much. 

Mendel Singer lives with his wife, his daughter Mariam and his two sons.  His wife gives birth to another son who has severe learning disabilities.  Mendel makes a modest living as a teacher.  Roth does a marvelous job of letting us see how the struggle to survive.  It is also a portrait of a marriage. We see how the birth of the new son puts a terrible strain on everyone in the family.  He causes conflict within the marriage.  His daughter Mariam becomes promiscuous, going so far as to sleep with the dreaded vehicle of Tsarist oppression, a Cossack, to her parent's great shame.  One of their two sons is drafted into the Russian army, almost tantamount to a death sentence for a Jew.  The other finds the means to move to New York City where his letters tell of his growing prosperity.  At about midpoint in the novel an American friend of their son, there on a business matter, tells them that their son is working on bringing the whole family to America.  The big issue is the handicapped son.  American authorities will not let him in the country.  The Singers at great anguish make arrangements to leave him with a couple, giving them their house in exchange for care of the son.

Now we begin a classic tale of immigration.  The ship passage is wonderfully told and the arrival in America and the reunion with their now married to an American woman son is very moving.  At first everything is wonderful then one terrible thing after another begins to happen.  Mendel is thrown into such despair that he curses God.  He descends further and deeper into despair and indifference to life until something completely miraculous happens.

The translator Ross Benjamin states that  Job is the second best work by Roth, after his acknowledged by all master work, The Radetzky March.

Joseph Roth is a person of great wisdom.  I wish he would have immigrated to New York City and given the world a novel a year for a long time.  

Mel u

                                     

The Wandering Jews by Joseph Roth (1926, translated 2001 by Michael Hoffman)

My Posts on Joseph Roth

The Wandering Jews is the eighth book by Joseph Roth I have so far have the honor of reading.  One of the most sincere compliments a reader can pay to a writer is simply reading all their books you can.  I am committed to reading all of the translated available as Kindle edition works of Joseph Roth. (There is some background information on Roth in my prior posts.)

The Wandering Jews is a briiliant and odd collection of articles on the place of Jews in European society and culture in the 1920s.  The composition history of the book is not made totally clear in Michael Hoffman's interesting introduction.  Roth was at the time one of the best paid journalists in the world.  It appears to me he probably wrote these first to be published in journals with inclusion in a book in mind.  Roth had his issues but he was of surpassing brilliance, as smart as they come.  

I cannot read anything wriiten in 1926 about European Jews without the coming Holocaust over writing the text.  Much of current world events is driven still by Anti-Semiticsm.  Roth's book will help to understand the place of Jews in world history. 

In the 1920s and continuing on culturally there is a divide of great importance between the so called European and The Eastern European or Yiddish Jew.  As later detailed by Hannah Arendt the Yiddish Jew or Shetl Jew did not want to assimilate.  The European Jew, in the words of Roth,  totally adopted the look, the clothes, the language and the ways of their host countries.  Many became ardent patriots. Roth heeps scorn on Jews who volunteer to fight in inter-European wars.  Above all other places, the European Jew most prospered within the Austro-Hungarian Empire.  Roth tells us that this in part happened because the Empire was so multicultural that Jews were seen by the authorities as just another group.

There is a great deal of valuable information in this wonderful book.  Roth explains why Jews were often found in certain lines of work.  He talks in a fascinating way about the work of the peddler and installment seller, the money trader, the Rabbi, and wonderfully about the love of reading deeply found within Jewish culture.  He talks about immigration, how older people might live for decades in New York City and speak little English while their grandchildren would rise to places of prominence.  There is an interesting chapter devoted to immigration to America and a lot of illuminating insights on Zionism and Palestine.

The Wandering Jews is a brilliant work.  A miasma of bitter sadness hangs over the book 

as you read of the very old fascinating culture of Eastern European Jews knowing what will soon happen in Europe.

In one really poignant line Roth said that behind the most sophisticated fully assimilated Eurooean Jew, there are just a bit back Yiddish Jews that would embarrass them in front of the Goy.

This book also gives us a lot to ponder about in terms of post colonial issues and contemporary Middle Eastern Issues.  In my opinion, much of the political trouble in the world  has its roots in European Anti-Semiticism.   Behind much terrorism lies Anti- Semiticism.  

One of the biggests pleasures in this book is the opportunity to come in contact with the brilliance of Joseph Roth.  

The Tale of the 1002nd Night by Joseph Roth (1939, translated by Michael Hoffman)

Joseph Roth is one of my favorite writers.  I have so far read his acknowledged best work, The Radetzky March, The Emperor's Tomb (a sequel), The Savoy Hotel, Leviathan, The Hundred Days (centering on Napolean's return to power), a collection of his Berlin journalism (Roth was at one time one of the best regarded and paid journalists in Europe) and three of his novellas.  Most who write on Roth describe him as largely focusing on the glory days of Vienna and the decline of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.  

The Tale of the 1002 Night is set in Vienna in 1873.  It begins with the Shah of Persia's royal visit to Vienna to pay an official call on the Emperor.  He brings a very large retinue, including his personal confidant of long standing, a eunuch.  The Shah has 365 beauties in his harem.  He is a complete autocrat and on fear of death none of his subjects ever say no to him.  The Shah cannot barely dream of being unable to get anything he wants.  In a kind of really interesting reverse Orientalizing, the Shah finds the Viennese women very exotic and intends to sleep with at least one. He is really struck by the delicate white skin and the flowing blond hair of many of the court ladies.  He is very taken aback by their to him very revealing ball gowns.  All of beau monde Vienna is in a whirl, there will be magnificent parties and lots of official meetings.  The last time Persians entered the Empire it was in an attempt to conguer.  Count Tanniger, an officer in the Horse Calvary, is appointed as head laison to the entourage of the Shah.  His chief contact will be the eunuch.

At an official reception the Shah spots a woman he decides he must have.  He tells his eunuch who tells Tanniger.  The problem is the lady is a very respectable wife of a count.  Both Tanniger and the Eunuch know they cannot tell the Shah his wish cannot be fulfilled so Tanniger arranges a very close look alike from a brothel he frequents.  The Shah is fooled and very satisfied.  He has the eunuch send a present to the woman, a string of pearls worth way more than enough for the woman to live on for life.  This sets off a series of misadventures that take us deep into the highs and lows of Viennese society. The story comes full circle at the end when the Shah comes back.  

There is a lot of interesting material on military life and mentality in this great novel.  We learn how a brothel works and get to know a Madame quite well.  Vienna was known for its great thinkers, musicians, food and also the huge number of brothels and street walkers that could be found there. We meet members of lots of professions. We get to know the eunuch.  Roth is very very smart and it shows.  

This is a very good, totally entertaining novel and I so much enjoyed read it.  I have read seven Roth novels and look forward to the remaining six.

Mel u

The Hundred Days by Joseph Roth (1936, forthcoming in translation by Richard Panchyk, 2014)

Josesph Roth (1894 to 1939, Austria, there is background information in my prior posts) is on my read everything I can by the author short list.  I started, as I recommend you do, with his acknowledged by all best work, Radetzky March and have so far also read and posted on his The Emperor's Tomb, Hotel Savoy, The Leviathan, The Legend of the Holy Drinker, and a collection of journalism, What I Saw:  Reports From Berlin.   

The Hundred Days, elegantly translated and illuminatingly  introduced by Richard Panchyk, is a historical novel focusing on Napolean and on a humble laundress who is is among a staff of thirty that does the Emperor's laundry while worshipping him.  The novel is structured in a fascinating way that lets us see the era from the top and the bottom.  There are four sections, two center on Napolean and two on the laundress.  Roth manages brilliantly showing the profound impact of Napolean and the mutual love/hate relationship he had with the people of France and they with him.  The sections on Naploean focus on the hundred days (March 15 to July 8, 1815) of his return from exile in Elba to his final exile to Saint Helena. (In 1936 when the work was first published, it had to have had strong echoes to Hitler.)  We see the horribly destructive impact he had on France, the millions of senseless deaths he caused and we marvel at, and are mystified by a bit, the love of the common people of France for him.  Roth lets us see how many in higher levels of French society switched their alliances depending on how the winds of politics were blowing.

I found the sections that focus on the laundress, Angelina the most interesting.    Her aunt is head of the laundry staff and is known for seeing the future of Napoleon's battles in the cards.  The staff is in occasional close contact with Naploean and the women often seem to fantasize on sex with him, reported to be a rapid experience and there are many stories of his encounters in the rumor mills.  Some personal secrets hard to keep from the staff that cleans your dirty laundry and bathrooms.  We follow a long period in her life, from her involvement with a sergeant that leaves her pregnant with a son to his eventual enrollment in the French army.  She goes through some very hard times but never gives up on her love of Napolean.  

Panchyk acknowledges The Hundred Days may not be on the level of Roth's  greatest works, little can reach this mark anyway.  To me the weak parts of this work are the relationships the laundress has with the men in her life and with her son whom she hardly knows.  Roth shows us the insane egoism of Napoleon, the wild fluctuations in his moods.  The core mystery of Napolean is the question of what gave him such magnetism, such power.  The Hundred Days can be seen as a savagely subtle attack on the "great man" model of history, on the leader as Father ideology that has come close to destroying Europe several times.  

I am very glad I read this book and I am grateful for Panchyk's elegant translation.  He maintains a very interesting webpage.

http://www.panchyk.com/

"The Bust of the Emperor" by Joseph Roth 1935 (translated by John Hoare)

 

Joseph Roth (Austria, 1894 to 1939) is universally considered one of the greatest European novelists of the 20th century.  He also wrote 1000s of newspaper observational articles and numerous short stories and novellas.  I have made it a life time goal to read all of his translated work, some sixteen novels, two collections of articles from newspapers in Berlin and Paris, a collection of short stories and a collection of his letters.  Much has been written about Roth.  I will just say for now I recently saw for yet another time the movie Casablanca and I can see Roth perfectly comfortable both in the upscale Rick's Cafe American or in the more noir Blue Parrot.  My favorite of his short fictions so far is "The Legend of the Holy Drinker" and of his books The Radetzky March and Savoy Hotel.  

One of the dominant recurring themes of Roth, and other Jewish Austro Hungarian writers like his good friend and sometimes patron, Stefan Zweig, was a nostalgia for the halcyon days of Vienna under the Emperor Franz Joseph.  The emperor was personally highly venerated.  The decline of the Austro Hungarian Empire along with the rise of Nazism destroyed incredible cultures like that of the Yiddish and Viennese society in which Jews were largely safe from prosecution.  

I read this story in Three Novellas by Joseph Roth (if you google it you can find older translations online and the German original.)   Basically it is a tribute to Franz Joseph and the era of tolerance, culture, and peace he represented to his citizens.  The story is very moving and shows the speakers love for the Emperor.  You can feel his pain at what society has evolved into without him as the titular head of society.    

Joseph and Mrs. Roth.