Joseph Roth

Joseph Roth (1926)

Joseph Roth (2 September 1894 – 27 May 1939) was an Austro-Hungarian journalist and novelist, best known for his family saga The Radetzky March (1932), about the decline and fall of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.

Quotes

The Radetzky March (1932)

All quotes are from the hardcover edition translated by Joachim Neugroschel and published by Alfred A. Knopf in the Everyman's Library (#197) in 1996; ISBN 978-0-593-65273-2

• The beauteous appearance of the victuals gave the old man as much pleasure as their simplicity. For he set store by good solid fare, a tribute he paid to both his taste and his conviction; the latter, you see, he called Spartan. With felicitous skill, he thus combined the sating of his desire with the demands of duty. He was a Spartan. But he was also an Austrian.
  • Chapter 2 (p. 25)

• The good man believed that shortsighted people were also deaf and that their spectacles would become clearer if their ears heard more sharply.
  • Chapter 5 (p. 71)

• Life seemed to flow along more swiftly than thoughts. And before he even made a decision he was an old man.
  • Chapter 6 (p. 80)

• He could never have put it into words, but we may say that he was unspeakably afflicted by the thought of having been a tool in the hands of misfortune.
  • Chapter 8 (p. 114)

• For years now he had been a deputy to the Imperial Council, routinely reelected by his district, beating all other candidates with the help of money, violence, and surprise attacks; a minion of the government, he despised to the parliamentary body to which he belonged. He had never given a speech and never heckled. Impious, derisive, fearless, and without qualms, Chojnicki used to say that the Kaiser was mindless and senile, the government a gang of nincompoops, the Imperial Council a gathering of gullible and grandiloquent idiots, and the national authorities venal, cowardly, and lazy. The German Austrians were waltzers and boozy crooners, the Hungarians stank, the Czechs were born bootlickers, the Ruthenians were treacherous Russians in disguise, the Croats and Slovenes, whom he called Cravats and Slobbers, were brushmakers and chestnut roasters, and the Poles, of whom he himself was one after all, were skirt chasers, hairdressers, and fashion photographers.
  • Chapter 9 (p. 135)

• This era no longer wants us! This era wants to create independent nation-states! People no longer believe in God. The new religion is nationalism. Nations no longer go to church. They go to national associations. Monarchy, our monarchy, is founded on piety, on the faith that God chose the Hapsburgs to rule over so and so many Christian nations. Our Kaiser is a secular brother of the Pope, he is His Imperial and Royal Apostolic Majesty; no other is as apostolic, no other majesty in Europe is as dependent on the Grace of God and on the faith of the peoples in the Grace of God. The German Kaiser still rules even when God abandons him; perhaps by the grace of the nation. The Emperor of Austria-Hungary must not be abandoned by God. But God has abandoned him!
  • Chapter 11 (pp. 161-162)

• “So,” he said, “you believe, you believe that we—”
  “Are doomed,” Chojnicki completed. “We are doomed, you and your son and I. We are, I tell you, the last members of a world in which God sheds his grace on majesties, and lunatics like myself make gold.”
  • Chapter 11 (p. 162)

• For life became easy as soon as you drank. Oh, miracle of this borderland! It made life hard for a sober man, but whom did it leave sober?
  • Chapter 11 (p. 166)

• In those days there were a lot of men like Kapturak on the borders of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy. They began to circle around the old empire like those black cowardly birds that ogle a dying man from infinitely far away. Dark and impatient, beating their wings, they wait for his end. Their slanting beaks jab into their prey. No one knows where they come from or where they fly off to. They are the feathered brethren of enigmatic Death; they are his harbingers, his escorts, and his successors.
  • Chapter 12 (p. 172)

• But old age was approaching with cruel, hushed steps and sometimes in crafty disguises.
  • Chapter 13 (p. 188)

• He was convinced—but whom could he tell?—that ten good sergeants are a lot more useful than twenty general-staff officers.
  • Chapter 15 (p. 217)

• Mass would be celebrated first by a Roman Catholic priest, then by a Greek orthodox priest. The most strenuous duties of all were the church ceremonies. He felt he had to pull himself together before God as if facing a superior. And he was old already. He could spare me any number of things! the Kaiser mused. But God is even older than I, and His decisions seem as unfathomable to me as mine seem to the soldiers in the army. And where would we be if every subordinate could criticize his superior?
  • Chapter 15 (pp. 219-220)

• He calmly fell asleep, believing the worst was over. He did not know—old Herr Trotta—that fate was brewing bitter grief for him while he slept. He was old and tired, and death was already lurking, but life would not yet let him go. Like a cruel host it held him fast at the table because he had not yet tasted all the bitterness that had been prepared for him.
  • Chapter 16 (p. 244)

• In those days an Austrian district captain like Herr von Trotta would have been less shaken by the news of the sudden death of his only child than by the news of even a seemingly dishonorable action of that only child.
  • Chapter 18 (p. 265)

• Herr von Trotta had always made a point of appearing richer than he was. He had the instincts of a true gentleman. And in those days (and perhaps in our day too) no instincts were more expensive than those. People favored with such curses do not know how much they possess or how much they spend. They draw from an invisible source. They never keep accounts. They assume that their wealth cannot lag behind their generosity.
  • Chapter 18 (p. 266)

• And for the first time in his very long life he realized how hard it is to be helpless yet maintain one’s dignity. This insight struck him like a lightning bolt, shattering the pride that he had so carefully nurtured and fostered for such a long time, that he had inherited and was determined to pass down.
  • Chapter 18 (p. 267)

• I’ve grown old; he has merely lived for many years.
  • Chapter 19 (p. 304)

• It was the face of a woman who had grown old but was still beautiful. Indeed, the nurse’s coif rejuvenated her, as it does all women, because it is in their nature to be rejuvenated by kindness and compassion and also by the external insignia of compassion.
  • Epilogue (p. 326)

• Dr. Skowronnek told the coachman to drop him off at the café. He went to his usual table as on any other day. The chessboard lay there as if the district captain hadn’t died. The waiter came to clear it away, but Skowronnek said, “Leave it!” And he played a game against himself, smirking, occasionally looking at the empty chair across the table, his ears filled with the gentle noise of the autumn rain, which was still running tirelessly down the panes.
  • Epilogue (p. 331; final paragraph)