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Von Trotta Family #1
Radetzkymarsch
Ein Buch über den Untergang einer ganzen Welt: Fast sechs Jahrzehnte des österreichischen Kaiserreichs, beginnend mit der Schlacht von Solferino, 1859, bis zum Tod von Kaiser Franz Joseph I., 1916, umfasst die Handlung des Meisterwerks von Joseph Roth. Es ist die Geschichte einer Familie: erst des Großvaters, der als kleiner Frontoffizier überraschend zum Helden und dafür vom Kaiser höchstpersönlich befördert und geadelt wird, doch einer weiteren militärischen Karriere missmutig entsagt; dann des Vaters, der es bis zum hohen kaiserlichen Verwaltungsbeamten bringt; und schließlich des Sohnes, der als junger Leutnant seinem Kaiser dient, dabei aber, von Kind an unter dem übermächtigen Bann des längst verstorbenen Großvaters stehend, an den Widrigkeiten eines Schicksals aus früh verlorener Liebe, unglücklichen Fügungen und bloßer Ignoranz zu scheitern droht, so wie um ihn herum nach und nach das ganze Reich des Kaisers dem Untergang entgegentaumelt. Joseph Roths bekanntester Roman ist erfüllt von der Trauer um eine längst versunkene Welt; gleichzeitig voller liebender Menschenkenntnis und durchzogen mit feiner Ironie und leise klingenden Sprachbildern unvergleichlicher Eleganz, in denen das alte Österreich der Habsburger noch einmal wiederaufersteht und für immer weiterlebt.
404 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1932
1134 people are currently reading
21013 people want to read
About the author
Joseph Roth
522 books778 followersJoseph Roth, journalist and novelist, was born and grew up in Brody, a small town near Lemberg in East Galicia, part of the easternmost reaches of what was then the Austro-Hungarian empire and is now Ukraine. Roth was born into a Jewish family. He died in Paris after living there in exile.
http://www.josephroth.de/
http://www.josephroth.de/
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 1,531 reviews
February 27, 2022
“Woe to the multitude of many people, which make a noise like the noise of the seas; and to the rushing of nations, that make a rushing like the rushing of mighty waters!” Isaiah 17:12
Empires rise and fall… Dynasties appear and dissipate… The Radetzky March is a story about a perishment of both an empire and a family.
Everything started this way:
The Radetzky March is mainly the story of the grandson who decided to follow in footsteps of his heroic grandfather.
This is the time and place:
And the main character was a weak man so he was doomed to disappear along with his fatherland. And all this was happening to the glorious military music…
Those who lack willpower are always full of idealistic dreams but their dreams never come to pass.
Empires rise and fall… Dynasties appear and dissipate… The Radetzky March is a story about a perishment of both an empire and a family.
Everything started this way:
The round years rolled by, one by one, like peaceful, uniform wheels. In keeping with his status, Trotta married his colonel’s not-quite-young well–off niece, the daughter of a district captain in western Bohemia; he fathered a boy, enjoyed the uniformity of his healthy military life in the small garrison, rode horseback to the parade ground every morning, and played chess every afternoon with the lawyer at the café, eventually feeling at home in his rank, his station, his standing, and his repute. He had an average military gift, of which he provided average samples at maneuvers every year; he was a good husband, suspicious of women, no gambler, grouchy, but a just officer, a fierce enemy of all deceit, unmanly conduct, cowardly safety, garrulous praise, and ambitious self–seeking. He was as simple and impeccable as his military record, and only the anger that sometimes took hold of him would have given a judge of human nature some inkling that Captain Trotta’s soul likewise contained the dim nocturnal abysses where storms slumber and the unknown voices of nameless ancestors.
The Radetzky March is mainly the story of the grandson who decided to follow in footsteps of his heroic grandfather.
This is the time and place:
Any stranger coming into this region was doomed to gradual decay. No one was as strong as the swamp. No one could hold out against the borderland. By this time, the high-placed gentlemen in Vienna and St. Petersburg were already starting to prepare for the Great War. The borderlanders felt it coming earlier than the others, not only because they were used to sensing future things but also because they could see the omens of doom every day with their own eyes. They profited even from these preparations. Any number of them lived from spying and counterspying; they received Austrian guldens from the Austrian police and Russian rubles from the Russian police. And in the isolated swampy bleakness of the garrison, one or another officer fell prey to despair, gambling, debts, and sinister men. The graveyards of border garrisons held many young corpses of weak men.
And the main character was a weak man so he was doomed to disappear along with his fatherland. And all this was happening to the glorious military music…
It would be best to die for him amid military music, easiest with “The Radetzky March.” The swift bullets whistled in cadence around Carl Joseph’s ears, his naked saber flashed, and, his heart and head brimming with the lovely briskness of the march, he sank into the drumming intoxication of the music, and his blood oozed out in a thin dark-red trickle upon the glistening gold of the trumpets, the deep black of the drums, and the victorious silver of the cymbals.
Those who lack willpower are always full of idealistic dreams but their dreams never come to pass.
October 7, 2018
“That was how things were back then. Anything that grew took its time growing, and anything that perished took a long time to be forgotten. But everything that had once existed left its traces, and people lived on memories just as they now live on the ability to forget quickly and emphatically.”
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There are eras when time seems to stand still and the period before the beginning of World War I was one of those times for the Austro-Hungarian empire. The empire was in decline, but not yet aware that their way of life was about to end. There was a way that things were done and any deviation was stressful and possibly scandalous. Reviewers have mentioned the dream like qualities of this book and I believe that is achieved by not only superb writing, but the evocation of a quality of life that is foreign to the fast track environment that exists today.
[image error]
Joseph Roth was quoted as saying that he only really cared about writing one great sentence a day. This book shows the painstaking self-editing that I usually only associate with F. Scott Fitzgerald. The imagery he creates out of the most mundane moments reminds me of the Dostoevsky ability to write about the nuances of a character getting out of bed in the morning and keeping the reader fascinated.
[image error]
This is a book about three generations of Trottas beginning with the Battle of Solferino. The last battle in world history by the way that both armies were lead by their supreme Monarch. Kaiser Franz Joseph lead the Austrians and Emperor Napoleon III lead the French. In the midst of the battle Franz Joseph approaches the front lines. He raises a pair of field glasses to view the enemy and Lieutenant Trottas, knowing that snipers were looking for anything indicating an officer throws himself in from the Kaiser and takes a bullet in the back that was meant for his Supreme Leader. He becomes known as the Hero of Solferino. Later he is incensed when he discovers that his act of heroism has been greatly distorted by writers for childrens books putting him in a much more heroic role than the actual event. He resigns his commission and asks the Kaiser to expunge the act of heroism from future books. For us, this might seem like an over reaction, but Trottas did not desire platitudes that he did not deserve. He found the whole business unseemly.
His son is not a military man, but does end up in a role of District Captain due to his position of a Baron, a designation that had been consigned upon the first Trotta by the Kaiser. His life is so consistently the same ever day that even the most minor deviation causes great trepidation.
"One morning in May Herr von Trotta sat down at the table in the breakfast room. The egg, soft-boiled as usual, was in its silver cup. The honey shimmered golden, the fresh kaiser rolls smelled of fire and yeast, the butter shone yellow, embedded in a gigantic dark-green leaf, the coffee steamed in the gold-rimmed porcelain. Nothing was missing. Or at least it seemed to Herr von Trotta at first glance that nothing was missing. But then he promptly stood up, put down his napkin, and scrutinized the table again. The letters were missing from their usual place. For as long as the district captain could remember, no day had ever passed without official mail. First Herr von Trotta went to the open window as if to convince himself that the world still existed outside."
As it turned out his man servant Jacques was very sick and could not perform his normal duties of fetching the mail. This was "highly annoying". Later we find out that Jacques is not his name, but the name conferred on him by the first von Trotta because the nobleman didn't want to have to remember a different name from the servant in that capacity before.
The grandson of the hero of Solferino does join the military and steps into the ranks as a Lieutenant. He becomes mired in a series of affairs with married women. The last being with Frau Von Taussig who is married to a noble, but the mistress of a wealthy friend of Trotta and yet she has a hunger for young lieutenants. Trotta first meets her when he is assigned to escort her on a trip.
"He doesn't have the nerve to ask who the woman is. Many faces of unknown women--blue, brown, black eyes, blond hair, black hair, hips, breasts, and legs, women he may once have brushed up against, as a boy, as an adolescent--they all sweep past him, all of them at once: a marvelous, tender storm of women. He smells the fragrance of these strangers; he feels the cool, hard tenderness of their knees; the sweet yoke of naked arms is already around his throat and the bolt of intertwined arms lies in back of his neck.
There is a fear of voluptuousness that is itself voluptuous, just as a certain fear of death can itself be deadly. Lieutenant Trotta is now filled with the fear of voluptuousness."
Okay I need to take a moment to fan myself. Is the room really warm suddenly or is it just me?
Trotta becomes mired in gambling debt much the same way he became mired in the latest elicit affair, second hand. A friend and higher ranking officer asks him to sign for his debts, and Trotta with barely a consideration signs away his life. His friend becomes more and more in debt and eventually kills himself (An event that was in vogue in this era of Austrian history. In fact at the time Vienna had the highest suicide rate of any European city.) leaving Trotta with responsibility for the owed money. He eventually ends up having to ask his father for the money. The father goes to the Kaiser and the Kaiser remembering the service of the family (well after a few false starts.) grants amnesty to the young lieutenant and has the moneylender (a Jew) deported.
Lieutenant Trotta disillusioned with his service quits the military, but then when war breaks out he of course rejoins. His father is feeling disillusioned as well, and some what embarrassed over the near scandal of gambling debts.
"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."
The book begins with an act of heroism and ends with an act of heroism. I will not reveal the final moments of our young Lieutenant in case there are those of you that will read this Austrian Masterpiece. A wonderful book, a book that captures a time precisely and leaves me with the continued belief that fiction is so important for our collective memory. Our desires, our thoughts, our way of speaking, and our history are recorded more accurately in fiction books than it is in nonfiction. Highly Recommended!!
[image error]
There are eras when time seems to stand still and the period before the beginning of World War I was one of those times for the Austro-Hungarian empire. The empire was in decline, but not yet aware that their way of life was about to end. There was a way that things were done and any deviation was stressful and possibly scandalous. Reviewers have mentioned the dream like qualities of this book and I believe that is achieved by not only superb writing, but the evocation of a quality of life that is foreign to the fast track environment that exists today.
[image error]
Joseph Roth was quoted as saying that he only really cared about writing one great sentence a day. This book shows the painstaking self-editing that I usually only associate with F. Scott Fitzgerald. The imagery he creates out of the most mundane moments reminds me of the Dostoevsky ability to write about the nuances of a character getting out of bed in the morning and keeping the reader fascinated.
[image error]
This is a book about three generations of Trottas beginning with the Battle of Solferino. The last battle in world history by the way that both armies were lead by their supreme Monarch. Kaiser Franz Joseph lead the Austrians and Emperor Napoleon III lead the French. In the midst of the battle Franz Joseph approaches the front lines. He raises a pair of field glasses to view the enemy and Lieutenant Trottas, knowing that snipers were looking for anything indicating an officer throws himself in from the Kaiser and takes a bullet in the back that was meant for his Supreme Leader. He becomes known as the Hero of Solferino. Later he is incensed when he discovers that his act of heroism has been greatly distorted by writers for childrens books putting him in a much more heroic role than the actual event. He resigns his commission and asks the Kaiser to expunge the act of heroism from future books. For us, this might seem like an over reaction, but Trottas did not desire platitudes that he did not deserve. He found the whole business unseemly.
His son is not a military man, but does end up in a role of District Captain due to his position of a Baron, a designation that had been consigned upon the first Trotta by the Kaiser. His life is so consistently the same ever day that even the most minor deviation causes great trepidation.
"One morning in May Herr von Trotta sat down at the table in the breakfast room. The egg, soft-boiled as usual, was in its silver cup. The honey shimmered golden, the fresh kaiser rolls smelled of fire and yeast, the butter shone yellow, embedded in a gigantic dark-green leaf, the coffee steamed in the gold-rimmed porcelain. Nothing was missing. Or at least it seemed to Herr von Trotta at first glance that nothing was missing. But then he promptly stood up, put down his napkin, and scrutinized the table again. The letters were missing from their usual place. For as long as the district captain could remember, no day had ever passed without official mail. First Herr von Trotta went to the open window as if to convince himself that the world still existed outside."
As it turned out his man servant Jacques was very sick and could not perform his normal duties of fetching the mail. This was "highly annoying". Later we find out that Jacques is not his name, but the name conferred on him by the first von Trotta because the nobleman didn't want to have to remember a different name from the servant in that capacity before.
The grandson of the hero of Solferino does join the military and steps into the ranks as a Lieutenant. He becomes mired in a series of affairs with married women. The last being with Frau Von Taussig who is married to a noble, but the mistress of a wealthy friend of Trotta and yet she has a hunger for young lieutenants. Trotta first meets her when he is assigned to escort her on a trip.
"He doesn't have the nerve to ask who the woman is. Many faces of unknown women--blue, brown, black eyes, blond hair, black hair, hips, breasts, and legs, women he may once have brushed up against, as a boy, as an adolescent--they all sweep past him, all of them at once: a marvelous, tender storm of women. He smells the fragrance of these strangers; he feels the cool, hard tenderness of their knees; the sweet yoke of naked arms is already around his throat and the bolt of intertwined arms lies in back of his neck.
There is a fear of voluptuousness that is itself voluptuous, just as a certain fear of death can itself be deadly. Lieutenant Trotta is now filled with the fear of voluptuousness."
Okay I need to take a moment to fan myself. Is the room really warm suddenly or is it just me?
Trotta becomes mired in gambling debt much the same way he became mired in the latest elicit affair, second hand. A friend and higher ranking officer asks him to sign for his debts, and Trotta with barely a consideration signs away his life. His friend becomes more and more in debt and eventually kills himself (An event that was in vogue in this era of Austrian history. In fact at the time Vienna had the highest suicide rate of any European city.) leaving Trotta with responsibility for the owed money. He eventually ends up having to ask his father for the money. The father goes to the Kaiser and the Kaiser remembering the service of the family (well after a few false starts.) grants amnesty to the young lieutenant and has the moneylender (a Jew) deported.
Lieutenant Trotta disillusioned with his service quits the military, but then when war breaks out he of course rejoins. His father is feeling disillusioned as well, and some what embarrassed over the near scandal of gambling debts.
"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."
The book begins with an act of heroism and ends with an act of heroism. I will not reveal the final moments of our young Lieutenant in case there are those of you that will read this Austrian Masterpiece. A wonderful book, a book that captures a time precisely and leaves me with the continued belief that fiction is so important for our collective memory. Our desires, our thoughts, our way of speaking, and our history are recorded more accurately in fiction books than it is in nonfiction. Highly Recommended!!
Read
June 19, 2018When my children were very little, one of their favourite games involved sitting on the foam-filled back of the family sofa pretending to be on horseback. They'd perch in a row, one leg on each side and bounce up and down to the rhythm of what they called 'the horsey music'. Whenever I hear The Radetzky March by Johann Strauss, that gorgeous memory comes back in a flash!
My kids were right. That nineteenth century military tune is definitely 'horsey' music! Listen to it yourself You can hear the high stepping cavalry launching from a trot to a gallop, hooves thundering, nostrils snorting, then wheeling around to gallop back to the starting point before beginning all over again. And you can hear foot soldiers too, standing to attention, clipping their heels, marching forward, swords jangling, sabres rattling, marching, marching, marching.
But for all that it is full of of the crashing and booming, the clanging and banging, the ringing and jingling of the battle field, it is uplifting music too. You smile, though you are anti-war, you clap your hands and tap your feet, though you think boys should never be sacrificed to meaningless causes.
As I read Joseph Roth's book, I reacted as I react to the Strauss music, uplifted by the spirit of it but downcast by the waste of lives in the service of a monstrous military machine. And Roth's tone throughout the book seems equally ambivalent. He holds the military machine that was the Austro-Hungarian Empire in fierce affection, but at the same time he is absolutely in favour of the ending of the tight control of peoples' minds and lives that such empires were built upon. His nostalgia battles with his humanity, and we hear the sound of that battle right through the book. Rainstorms thunder, train carriages smash and crash against each other, bells peal, bugles blare, the drumbeats of the Radetsky March boom out at regular intervals. And all the while, innumerable clocks count the story down towards the Serbian gunman whose ringing shot will mark the ending of an era.
As I turned the pages, I was reminded of the title of a book I read some years ago, coincidently by an author whose later books I've been reading recently: Julian Barnes. The Sense of an Ending begins with a reference to that same Serbian gunman, and I kept thinking that Barnes' title encapsulates Roth's book perfectly; there is the sense of an ending right from the beginning. Roth never allows us to forget that the book is about 'ending', the ending of a way of thinking, the ending of a way of living, and the ending of millions of lives in a meaningless war.
That Roth conveys all of that while simultaneously offering the reader exuberance, uplifted feelings, and enormous hope in humanity, is the achievement of this incredible book.
I'm very glad to have finally discovered Joseph Roth
My kids were right. That nineteenth century military tune is definitely 'horsey' music! Listen to it yourself You can hear the high stepping cavalry launching from a trot to a gallop, hooves thundering, nostrils snorting, then wheeling around to gallop back to the starting point before beginning all over again. And you can hear foot soldiers too, standing to attention, clipping their heels, marching forward, swords jangling, sabres rattling, marching, marching, marching.
But for all that it is full of of the crashing and booming, the clanging and banging, the ringing and jingling of the battle field, it is uplifting music too. You smile, though you are anti-war, you clap your hands and tap your feet, though you think boys should never be sacrificed to meaningless causes.
As I read Joseph Roth's book, I reacted as I react to the Strauss music, uplifted by the spirit of it but downcast by the waste of lives in the service of a monstrous military machine. And Roth's tone throughout the book seems equally ambivalent. He holds the military machine that was the Austro-Hungarian Empire in fierce affection, but at the same time he is absolutely in favour of the ending of the tight control of peoples' minds and lives that such empires were built upon. His nostalgia battles with his humanity, and we hear the sound of that battle right through the book. Rainstorms thunder, train carriages smash and crash against each other, bells peal, bugles blare, the drumbeats of the Radetsky March boom out at regular intervals. And all the while, innumerable clocks count the story down towards the Serbian gunman whose ringing shot will mark the ending of an era.
As I turned the pages, I was reminded of the title of a book I read some years ago, coincidently by an author whose later books I've been reading recently: Julian Barnes. The Sense of an Ending begins with a reference to that same Serbian gunman, and I kept thinking that Barnes' title encapsulates Roth's book perfectly; there is the sense of an ending right from the beginning. Roth never allows us to forget that the book is about 'ending', the ending of a way of thinking, the ending of a way of living, and the ending of millions of lives in a meaningless war.
That Roth conveys all of that while simultaneously offering the reader exuberance, uplifted feelings, and enormous hope in humanity, is the achievement of this incredible book.
I'm very glad to have finally discovered Joseph Roth
February 5, 2018
«...και αν το εμβατήριο Ραντέτσκυ χαρακτηρίστηκε ως
[η Μασσαλιώτιδα του συντηρητισμού], ο συντηρητισμός του Ροτ έχει μια γεύση γλυκιά και πικρή ταυτόχρονα, μια γεύση που δεν αφήνει κανέναν ασυγκίνητο».
Αυτό το λογοτεχνικό αριστούργημα του 20ου αιώνα γράφτηκε στις αρχές της δεκαετίας του 1930.
Πραγματεύεται την ιστορία παρακμής σε σύγχρονο παρελθόν της οικογένειας Τρόττα, μέσα απο τρεις γενιές (1859-1916). Καθώς και την επικείμενη παρακμή και κατάρρευση της Αυστροουγγρικής αυτοκρατορίας, με κληρονομιές και αξίες που εξακολουθούν να επηρεάζουν αυθεντικές κοινωνίες εως σήμερα.
Όλο το βιβλίο διαπνέεται απο μια σκοτεινή, μελαγχολική, κενή, μάταια και αναπόφευκτη διάθεση που επηρεάζει άμεσα και επώδυνα την ψυχολογία του αναγνώστη.
Δεν γίνεται να ξεφύγεις απο τη συναισθηματική φόρτιση που προκαλεί η αόριστη, θλιβερή και εντονότατα λυρική αφήγηση του συγγραφέα.
Παρακολουθείς ένα ορμητικό ποτάμι μνήμης κοινωνικών-πολιτικών και πολλαπλών συνδυαστικών γεγονότων και καταστάσεων, που παρασύρει την ανθρωπότητα, με μη αναστρέψιμη πορεία, στην τελική πτώση,στον καταρράχτη της παγκόσμιας ιστορίας.
Εκπληκτική γραφή, θλιβερή και τραγικά όμορφη. Συγκινητική και άκρως επικίνδυνη.
Οι χαρακτήρες άψογα δομημένοι και ποιοτικά ακέραιοι σε ότι εκπροσωπούν, μπορούν εύκολα να ταυτιστούν με τον αναγνώστη.
Απο τον πιστό, γλυκό και αφοσιωμένο υπηρέτη της οικογένειας Τρόττα, μέχρι την απεικόνιση των τελευταίων χρόνων ενός γερασμένου και άρρωστου πνευματικά αυτοκράτορα.
Ενός καταρρακωμένου και ξεμωραμένου στρατηλάτη που όσο εξελίσσεται η μυθιστοριογραφία γίνεται όλο και πιο σημαντικός χαρακτήρας.
Οι Τρόττα, απο ένα τυχαίο γεγονός ανέρχονται κοινωνικά και οικονομικά.
Ο παππούς,ένας ασήμαντος Σλοβένος αγρότης σώζει τη ζωή του χαρισματικού αυτοκράτορα Φραγκίσκου Ιωσήφ σε κάποια μάχη και χρίζεται Βαρόνος.
Ο γιος και ο εγγονός του ήρωα αποκτούν αυτή τη βαριά τιμητική κληρονομιά και συνεχίζουν την παρακμιακή πορεία της ζωής τους παράλληλα με τον ξεπεσμό της αυτοκρατορίας.
Ο Καρλ Γιόζεφ (εγγονός) σε αντίθεση με παππού και πατέρα δεν ήθελε να είναι Αυστριακός στρατιωτικός, υπηρέτης και υπάλληλος της αυτοκρατορίας των Αψβούργων.
Είναι αναγκασμένοι όμως, ο ένας, μέσα απο τις προσωπικές αποτυχίες του αλλού, να αποδεχτούν με σκληρές συνέπειες, τις αλλαγές του κόσμου και των αξιών που πίστεψαν και τίμησαν, μέχρι την τελική κατάρρευση.
Ορόσημο αποτελεί η έναρξη του
Ά Παγκοσμίου Πολέμου,
όμως η αποδόμηση των φρονημάτων της ζωής τους και η κατάρρευση των Αψβούργων αποτυπώνονται αριστουργηματικά απο τον συγγραφέα μέχρι την τελευταία σελίδα.
Ο Ροτ είναι μαγευτικός στο να καταγράφει την βαθμιαία απεικόνιση της επικείμενης καταστροφής και του θλιβερού διχασμού ανάμεσα στους υποταγμένους λαούς του Αυτοκράτορα, οι οποίοι ενώνονται μόνο απο το κοινό αίσθημα μίσους προς τους Εβραίους.
Σχεδόν όλοι οι πρωταγωνιστές είναι αρσενικού γένους, το εμβατήριο Ραντέτσκυ αποτελεί επανάληψη τραγικής νοσταλγίας και ο θάνατος που κυριαρχεί στην εξέλιξη της ιστορίας μας δεν δίνει ποτέ θέση στην χαρά της νέας ζωής.
Ο έρωτας παίζει ρόλο παρασκηνιακό και αποτυχημένο.
Συγκλονιστικός ο εσωτερικός μονόλογος του πατέρα Φραντς φον Τρόττα (η πιο τραγική φιγούρα της ιστορίας)για τον γιο του Καρλ Γιόζεφ.
Οταν πια οι βαριές αλυσίδες που έσερναν πάντα -ως εξέχοντα πρόσωπα- της πίστης, του πατριωτισμού και της οικογενειακής τιμής, χαλαρώνουν και πέφτουν αφήνοντας πίσω παράσημα, απόγνωση και θάνατο.
«... η παραφροσύνη δεν σήμαινε τίποτα το τρομακτικό, μολονότι βρισκόταν πρώτη φορά σε φρενοκομείο. Τρομακτικός ήταν μόνο ο θάνατος. Κρίμα! Σκέφτηκε. Αν είχε τρελαθεί ο Καρλ Γιόζεφ, εγώ θα μπορούσα να τον φέρω στα συγκαλά του. Κι αν πάλι δεν τα κατάφερνα, θα ‘ρχομουν κάθε μέρα να τον βλέπω. [...] μπορείς να κοιτάξεις και μέσα σε παρανοϊκά μάτια! Φτάνει να είναι τα μάτια του γιού σου. Ευτυχείς οι πατεράδες που οι γιοί τους έχουν τρελαθεί».
Η έντονη αίσθηση του συγγραφέα για μια αναχρονιστική αποσύνθεση προκαλεί δέος. Μια αποσύνθεση που υπαινίσσεται και μεταδίδεται μέσα απο τους χαρακτήρες σε έναν κόσμο που επιβιώνει χορεύοντας προς την άβυσσο.
*Κάθε αρνητικός συμβολισμός ή επικίνδυνος παραλληλησμός σχετικά με «εμβατήρια», «εθνικιστικά ιδεώδη»,
«άναρχοσοσιαλιστικά» και
«φίλομοναρχικά» ιδεολογικά πιστεύω του συγγραφέα, που ίσως
ενοχλήσουν κάποια ευνουχισμένα μυαλά, ειλικρινά με αφήνουν παγερά αδιάφορη και δεν απασχολούν το γνωσιολογικό και αναγνωστικό μου πεδίο.
Ως εκ τούτου σχόλια και απόψεις σχετικά με την δράση του Ραντέτσκυ ή μιλιταριστικά και εθνικιστικά συμπεράσματα που καταπνίγουν τις λαϊκές επαναστάσεις θα σβήνονται αναπάντητα.
Ευχαριστώ!!
🎼🎻🎻🎺🎺🥁🥁🎷🎷🎹🎹🥁🎻🎺🎼
Καλή ανάγνωση!
Πολλούς ασπασμούς!!
[η Μασσαλιώτιδα του συντηρητισμού], ο συντηρητισμός του Ροτ έχει μια γεύση γλυκιά και πικρή ταυτόχρονα, μια γεύση που δεν αφήνει κανέναν ασυγκίνητο».
Αυτό το λογοτεχνικό αριστούργημα του 20ου αιώνα γράφτηκε στις αρχές της δεκαετίας του 1930.
Πραγματεύεται την ιστορία παρακμής σε σύγχρονο παρελθόν της οικογένειας Τρόττα, μέσα απο τρεις γενιές (1859-1916). Καθώς και την επικείμενη παρακμή και κατάρρευση της Αυστροουγγρικής αυτοκρατορίας, με κληρονομιές και αξίες που εξακολουθούν να επηρεάζουν αυθεντικές κοινωνίες εως σήμερα.
Όλο το βιβλίο διαπνέεται απο μια σκοτεινή, μελαγχολική, κενή, μάταια και αναπόφευκτη διάθεση που επηρεάζει άμεσα και επώδυνα την ψυχολογία του αναγνώστη.
Δεν γίνεται να ξεφύγεις απο τη συναισθηματική φόρτιση που προκαλεί η αόριστη, θλιβερή και εντονότατα λυρική αφήγηση του συγγραφέα.
Παρακολουθείς ένα ορμητικό ποτάμι μνήμης κοινωνικών-πολιτικών και πολλαπλών συνδυαστικών γεγονότων και καταστάσεων, που παρασύρει την ανθρωπότητα, με μη αναστρέψιμη πορεία, στην τελική πτώση,στον καταρράχτη της παγκόσμιας ιστορίας.
Εκπληκτική γραφή, θλιβερή και τραγικά όμορφη. Συγκινητική και άκρως επικίνδυνη.
Οι χαρακτήρες άψογα δομημένοι και ποιοτικά ακέραιοι σε ότι εκπροσωπούν, μπορούν εύκολα να ταυτιστούν με τον αναγνώστη.
Απο τον πιστό, γλυκό και αφοσιωμένο υπηρέτη της οικογένειας Τρόττα, μέχρι την απεικόνιση των τελευταίων χρόνων ενός γερασμένου και άρρωστου πνευματικά αυτοκράτορα.
Ενός καταρρακωμένου και ξεμωραμένου στρατηλάτη που όσο εξελίσσεται η μυθιστοριογραφία γίνεται όλο και πιο σημαντικός χαρακτήρας.
Οι Τρόττα, απο ένα τυχαίο γεγονός ανέρχονται κοινωνικά και οικονομικά.
Ο παππούς,ένας ασήμαντος Σλοβένος αγρότης σώζει τη ζωή του χαρισματικού αυτοκράτορα Φραγκίσκου Ιωσήφ σε κάποια μάχη και χρίζεται Βαρόνος.
Ο γιος και ο εγγονός του ήρωα αποκτούν αυτή τη βαριά τιμητική κληρονομιά και συνεχίζουν την παρακμιακή πορεία της ζωής τους παράλληλα με τον ξεπεσμό της αυτοκρατορίας.
Ο Καρλ Γιόζεφ (εγγονός) σε αντίθεση με παππού και πατέρα δεν ήθελε να είναι Αυστριακός στρατιωτικός, υπηρέτης και υπάλληλος της αυτοκρατορίας των Αψβούργων.
Είναι αναγκασμένοι όμως, ο ένας, μέσα απο τις προσωπικές αποτυχίες του αλλού, να αποδεχτούν με σκληρές συνέπειες, τις αλλαγές του κόσμου και των αξιών που πίστεψαν και τίμησαν, μέχρι την τελική κατάρρευση.
Ορόσημο αποτελεί η έναρξη του
Ά Παγκοσμίου Πολέμου,
όμως η αποδόμηση των φρονημάτων της ζωής τους και η κατάρρευση των Αψβούργων αποτυπώνονται αριστουργηματικά απο τον συγγραφέα μέχρι την τελευταία σελίδα.
Ο Ροτ είναι μαγευτικός στο να καταγράφει την βαθμιαία απεικόνιση της επικείμενης καταστροφής και του θλιβερού διχασμού ανάμεσα στους υποταγμένους λαούς του Αυτοκράτορα, οι οποίοι ενώνονται μόνο απο το κοινό αίσθημα μίσους προς τους Εβραίους.
Σχεδόν όλοι οι πρωταγωνιστές είναι αρσενικού γένους, το εμβατήριο Ραντέτσκυ αποτελεί επανάληψη τραγικής νοσταλγίας και ο θάνατος που κυριαρχεί στην εξέλιξη της ιστορίας μας δεν δίνει ποτέ θέση στην χαρά της νέας ζωής.
Ο έρωτας παίζει ρόλο παρασκηνιακό και αποτυχημένο.
Συγκλονιστικός ο εσωτερικός μονόλογος του πατέρα Φραντς φον Τρόττα (η πιο τραγική φιγούρα της ιστορίας)για τον γιο του Καρλ Γιόζεφ.
Οταν πια οι βαριές αλυσίδες που έσερναν πάντα -ως εξέχοντα πρόσωπα- της πίστης, του πατριωτισμού και της οικογενειακής τιμής, χαλαρώνουν και πέφτουν αφήνοντας πίσω παράσημα, απόγνωση και θάνατο.
«... η παραφροσύνη δεν σήμαινε τίποτα το τρομακτικό, μολονότι βρισκόταν πρώτη φορά σε φρενοκομείο. Τρομακτικός ήταν μόνο ο θάνατος. Κρίμα! Σκέφτηκε. Αν είχε τρελαθεί ο Καρλ Γιόζεφ, εγώ θα μπορούσα να τον φέρω στα συγκαλά του. Κι αν πάλι δεν τα κατάφερνα, θα ‘ρχομουν κάθε μέρα να τον βλέπω. [...] μπορείς να κοιτάξεις και μέσα σε παρανοϊκά μάτια! Φτάνει να είναι τα μάτια του γιού σου. Ευτυχείς οι πατεράδες που οι γιοί τους έχουν τρελαθεί».
Η έντονη αίσθηση του συγγραφέα για μια αναχρονιστική αποσύνθεση προκαλεί δέος. Μια αποσύνθεση που υπαινίσσεται και μεταδίδεται μέσα απο τους χαρακτήρες σε έναν κόσμο που επιβιώνει χορεύοντας προς την άβυσσο.
*Κάθε αρνητικός συμβολισμός ή επικίνδυνος παραλληλησμός σχετικά με «εμβατήρια», «εθνικιστικά ιδεώδη»,
«άναρχοσοσιαλιστικά» και
«φίλομοναρχικά» ιδεολογικά πιστεύω του συγγραφέα, που ίσως
ενοχλήσουν κάποια ευνουχισμένα μυαλά, ειλικρινά με αφήνουν παγερά αδιάφορη και δεν απασχολούν το γνωσιολογικό και αναγνωστικό μου πεδίο.
Ως εκ τούτου σχόλια και απόψεις σχετικά με την δράση του Ραντέτσκυ ή μιλιταριστικά και εθνικιστικά συμπεράσματα που καταπνίγουν τις λαϊκές επαναστάσεις θα σβήνονται αναπάντητα.
Ευχαριστώ!!
🎼🎻🎻🎺🎺🥁🥁🎷🎷🎹🎹🥁🎻🎺🎼
Καλή ανάγνωση!
Πολλούς ασπασμούς!!
November 30, 2017
4.5 stars
This classic tale of the end of an era, the decline of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and the start of the Great War, is one that deserves a time of reflection after reading the last page. It’s not a tome by any means, coming in at less than 400 pages, but it is nearly epic in scope when one considers that it seems to take in the entirety of a way of life, a civilization that is doomed. Like a fine red wine, I needed to leave this book to sit for a while, and it has indeed grown markedly more satisfying. The writing is excellent and Joseph Roth bares the souls of his protagonists, namely the district captain Herr von Trotta and his son, Carl Joseph.
Descendants of the Hero of Solferino, a Slovenian peasant knighted for saving the life of the Kaiser during the Battle of Solferino, the Trottas are now an aristocratic family. Upon the insistence of the Hero himself, the son Franz von Trotta obtains a political office as a district commissioner. Likewise, district captain Franz von Trotta chooses the career for his own son; therefore young Carl Joseph attends military school and is awarded with a lieutenant’s commission, despite the fact he ‘distinguished’ himself as perhaps mediocre at best. The district captain’s life is steeped in tradition. He follows the same routine each day, he is waited on by the devoted servant, Jacques, he wears his whiskers "as proof of his dynastic conviction", and he does not exhibit outward signs of affection towards his son either in public or in private. The ‘Radetzky March’, a march composed by Johann Strauss Sr. and well-known among the Austrian regiments, features prominently in both the father and son’s lives as a symbol of the era in which they were born.
"The rugged drums rolled, the sweet flutes piped, and the lovely cymbals shattered. The faces of all the spectators lit up with pleasant and pensive smiles, and the blood tingled in their legs. Though standing, they thought they were already marching. The younger girls held their breath and opened their lips. The more mature men hung their heads and recalled their maneuvers. The elderly ladies sat in the neighboring park, their small gray heads trembling. And it was summer."
As he sits on his balcony listening to Kapellmeister Nechwal’s band perform the famous march week after week, the district captain fails to recognize the whisper of things to come in the empire. Only when his own regulated life starts to slowly deteriorate in parallel with the gradual decay of his homeland does Herr von Trotta begin to perceive changes on the horizon. Lieutenant Carl Joseph von Trotta, with the portrait of his grandfather the Hero of Solferino always in his mind and the sounds of The Radetzky March lingering in his ears, suffers from a different sort of foreboding. A young man completely out of his element as a soldier, Carl Joseph yearns for friendship, love and freedom to do as he pleases, not as his father commands. And yet, his sense of duty to father and grandfather compels him to remain in a position that leads him to unhappiness and one disaster on the heels of another. When he is forced to transfer to a remote outpost near the Russian border, the young lieutenant is pursued by his fate and the destiny of the crumbling Austro-Hungarian Empire.
"Any stranger coming into this region was doomed to gradual decay. No one was as strong as the swamp. No one could hold out against the borderland. By this time, the high-placed gentlemen in Vienna and St. Petersburg were already starting to prepare for the Great War. The borderlanders felt it coming earlier than the others, not only because they were used to sensing future things but also because they could see the omens of doom every day with their own eyes."
There is so much more that could be said about this brilliant novel, but there is no way I could succinctly or eloquently express all that Joseph Roth managed to convey within these pages. It is not an easy read, but a highly rewarding one. If you are at all inclined to invest some additional time and contemplation to learning about a period that seemed to simultaneously stand still and yet in the blink of an eye hurl the world into one of the greatest wars of all time, then I would recommend you grab a copy of this. Reminiscent in tone to some of the great Russian classics, The Radetzky March will likewise endure the test of time.
"So strange, so mutable, and so confused is the human soul."
This classic tale of the end of an era, the decline of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and the start of the Great War, is one that deserves a time of reflection after reading the last page. It’s not a tome by any means, coming in at less than 400 pages, but it is nearly epic in scope when one considers that it seems to take in the entirety of a way of life, a civilization that is doomed. Like a fine red wine, I needed to leave this book to sit for a while, and it has indeed grown markedly more satisfying. The writing is excellent and Joseph Roth bares the souls of his protagonists, namely the district captain Herr von Trotta and his son, Carl Joseph.
Descendants of the Hero of Solferino, a Slovenian peasant knighted for saving the life of the Kaiser during the Battle of Solferino, the Trottas are now an aristocratic family. Upon the insistence of the Hero himself, the son Franz von Trotta obtains a political office as a district commissioner. Likewise, district captain Franz von Trotta chooses the career for his own son; therefore young Carl Joseph attends military school and is awarded with a lieutenant’s commission, despite the fact he ‘distinguished’ himself as perhaps mediocre at best. The district captain’s life is steeped in tradition. He follows the same routine each day, he is waited on by the devoted servant, Jacques, he wears his whiskers "as proof of his dynastic conviction", and he does not exhibit outward signs of affection towards his son either in public or in private. The ‘Radetzky March’, a march composed by Johann Strauss Sr. and well-known among the Austrian regiments, features prominently in both the father and son’s lives as a symbol of the era in which they were born.
"The rugged drums rolled, the sweet flutes piped, and the lovely cymbals shattered. The faces of all the spectators lit up with pleasant and pensive smiles, and the blood tingled in their legs. Though standing, they thought they were already marching. The younger girls held their breath and opened their lips. The more mature men hung their heads and recalled their maneuvers. The elderly ladies sat in the neighboring park, their small gray heads trembling. And it was summer."
As he sits on his balcony listening to Kapellmeister Nechwal’s band perform the famous march week after week, the district captain fails to recognize the whisper of things to come in the empire. Only when his own regulated life starts to slowly deteriorate in parallel with the gradual decay of his homeland does Herr von Trotta begin to perceive changes on the horizon. Lieutenant Carl Joseph von Trotta, with the portrait of his grandfather the Hero of Solferino always in his mind and the sounds of The Radetzky March lingering in his ears, suffers from a different sort of foreboding. A young man completely out of his element as a soldier, Carl Joseph yearns for friendship, love and freedom to do as he pleases, not as his father commands. And yet, his sense of duty to father and grandfather compels him to remain in a position that leads him to unhappiness and one disaster on the heels of another. When he is forced to transfer to a remote outpost near the Russian border, the young lieutenant is pursued by his fate and the destiny of the crumbling Austro-Hungarian Empire.
"Any stranger coming into this region was doomed to gradual decay. No one was as strong as the swamp. No one could hold out against the borderland. By this time, the high-placed gentlemen in Vienna and St. Petersburg were already starting to prepare for the Great War. The borderlanders felt it coming earlier than the others, not only because they were used to sensing future things but also because they could see the omens of doom every day with their own eyes."
There is so much more that could be said about this brilliant novel, but there is no way I could succinctly or eloquently express all that Joseph Roth managed to convey within these pages. It is not an easy read, but a highly rewarding one. If you are at all inclined to invest some additional time and contemplation to learning about a period that seemed to simultaneously stand still and yet in the blink of an eye hurl the world into one of the greatest wars of all time, then I would recommend you grab a copy of this. Reminiscent in tone to some of the great Russian classics, The Radetzky March will likewise endure the test of time.
"So strange, so mutable, and so confused is the human soul."
February 9, 2017
I want to single out The Radetzky March as my favorite book of 2011. It is the story of the fall of the Austrian Empire as reflected in the fortunes of the Trotta family through three generations. Our story largely centers around young Carl Joseph von Trotta of the third generation and his father, the District Captain of W. To get to that story, however, Roth compresses into the first 35 pages or so, a beautifully patterned and nuanced story of Carl Joseph's forebears. That is, first the story of Joseph Trotta, the peasant from Sipolje, who, on saving the life of the Austrian Emperor Franz Joseph I at the Battle of Solferino is raised to the rank of captain and ennobled, and his father. (Carl Joseph's great grandfather.)
Carl Joseph von Trotta is a sensitive fellow capable of deep love and friendship whose time in the Army is a mistake from the start. We watch him endure his upbringing by a widower father who has even less intellectual acumen than himself. Carl Joseph is the grandson of the Hero of Solferino. He cannot sit a horse, nevertheless he is in cavalry. He is allowed to skate through academic challenges he would otherwise fail. Opportunities are open to him that his fellow officers could never attain. We see the empire though his eyes as one of empty pomp and immense drunkeness which leads to a terrible entropy that pervades everything. The multi-cultural empire's time is passing. No longer will such a vast heterogeneous stew of ethnic groups (Magyars, Poles, Ukranians, Czechs, Serbs, Croats, Romanians, etc. representing all three monotheistic faiths) allow themselves to be artificially melded together by foreign force. We are at the onset of the age of nationalism and sectarian violence. Hitler and Stalin are in the wings.
This political context is important but it is the narrative of the Trottas that brings it home and gives it tragic immediacy. Everyone is so locked into their roles. When Carl Joseph writes his father to announce the news that he will leave the army, his father's world, much like the son's, comes tumbling down. All the assumptions about the correct path to dignity and honor are changing. Indeed, the District Captain simply looks up one day and notices that everything has changed--and he never saw it coming. The District Captain then says something that for me encapsulated the thrust of the whole novel. When he is told by a club crony, Dr. Skowronnek, that he is starting to play chess like a champion, he says: "Maybe I could have become one!" Dr. Skowronnek then sums it all up:
It is about this time, too, rather late in the book, that the tone turns elegaic. It's as if we're seeing the past glories of the Empire rushing past like the lives of the dying are said to do. From the start the writing is vivid and sustained over great stretches in a way that seems almost miraculous. Highly recommended.
Carl Joseph von Trotta is a sensitive fellow capable of deep love and friendship whose time in the Army is a mistake from the start. We watch him endure his upbringing by a widower father who has even less intellectual acumen than himself. Carl Joseph is the grandson of the Hero of Solferino. He cannot sit a horse, nevertheless he is in cavalry. He is allowed to skate through academic challenges he would otherwise fail. Opportunities are open to him that his fellow officers could never attain. We see the empire though his eyes as one of empty pomp and immense drunkeness which leads to a terrible entropy that pervades everything. The multi-cultural empire's time is passing. No longer will such a vast heterogeneous stew of ethnic groups (Magyars, Poles, Ukranians, Czechs, Serbs, Croats, Romanians, etc. representing all three monotheistic faiths) allow themselves to be artificially melded together by foreign force. We are at the onset of the age of nationalism and sectarian violence. Hitler and Stalin are in the wings.
This political context is important but it is the narrative of the Trottas that brings it home and gives it tragic immediacy. Everyone is so locked into their roles. When Carl Joseph writes his father to announce the news that he will leave the army, his father's world, much like the son's, comes tumbling down. All the assumptions about the correct path to dignity and honor are changing. Indeed, the District Captain simply looks up one day and notices that everything has changed--and he never saw it coming. The District Captain then says something that for me encapsulated the thrust of the whole novel. When he is told by a club crony, Dr. Skowronnek, that he is starting to play chess like a champion, he says: "Maybe I could have become one!" Dr. Skowronnek then sums it all up:
Things were different back then, he says. Now not even the Kaiser bears responsibility for the Monarchy. Why it even looks as though God himself no longer wishes to bear responsibility for the world. It was easier in those days. Everything was so secure. Every stone lay in its place. The streets of life were well paved. Secure roofs rested on the walls of the houses. But today, Herr District Captain, the stones of the street lie askew and confused, and in dangerous heaps, and the roofs have holes, and the rain falls into the houses, and everyone has to know on his own what street he is taking and what kind of house he is moving into. When your late father said you would become a public official rather than a farmer, he was right. You became a model official. But when you told your own son he had to become a soldier, you were wrong. He is not a model soldier.
It is about this time, too, rather late in the book, that the tone turns elegaic. It's as if we're seeing the past glories of the Empire rushing past like the lives of the dying are said to do. From the start the writing is vivid and sustained over great stretches in a way that seems almost miraculous. Highly recommended.
November 20, 2017
The slow disintegration of an empire, told through the lives of three generations of the Trotta family. All serve the empire in various ways. Narrowly focused lives, regimented, narrow, depending on routine, thrown if anything is out of order. Unemotional, lives dedicated to duty, , and I still something unexpected happens that forces them to change focus, they are very seldom introspective.
All events happening are seen through the eyes of this family. When the second Trotta visits his son at the border, he realizes the empire is diminishing, "Now returning home alone, from a lonesome son and from this borderland, where the collapse of the world could already be seen as one sees a thunderstorm on the edge of the city, whose streets lie still unaware and blissful under a blue sky." Hose posted on the border, wait for a battle that never comes. It is a life of boredom, gambling, drinking and visits to houses of ill repute. They are all just waiting for the end to come, which of course it eventually does with an assassination.
This is a wonderful rendering of a sociological novel. I didn't expect to enjoy this as much as I did. The prose is wonderful, yes sometimes repetitive in thoughts but such is the nature of the men who they belong to. These are men who have a very small imagination, though as the novel goes on one see them change in slow ways, displaying more feelings, but never acting without thinking something through over and over again. Excess feelings are squelched, they have no place in regimented lives. There is humor of an ironic nature, observations that fit the man but struck me as amusing. Of course the Radetzky March is played at various points and even when it seems pointless, the men like the March continue on.
All events happening are seen through the eyes of this family. When the second Trotta visits his son at the border, he realizes the empire is diminishing, "Now returning home alone, from a lonesome son and from this borderland, where the collapse of the world could already be seen as one sees a thunderstorm on the edge of the city, whose streets lie still unaware and blissful under a blue sky." Hose posted on the border, wait for a battle that never comes. It is a life of boredom, gambling, drinking and visits to houses of ill repute. They are all just waiting for the end to come, which of course it eventually does with an assassination.
This is a wonderful rendering of a sociological novel. I didn't expect to enjoy this as much as I did. The prose is wonderful, yes sometimes repetitive in thoughts but such is the nature of the men who they belong to. These are men who have a very small imagination, though as the novel goes on one see them change in slow ways, displaying more feelings, but never acting without thinking something through over and over again. Excess feelings are squelched, they have no place in regimented lives. There is humor of an ironic nature, observations that fit the man but struck me as amusing. Of course the Radetzky March is played at various points and even when it seems pointless, the men like the March continue on.
September 14, 2017
'The world was no longer the old world. It was about to end'
Joseph Roth dazzles with irony and pathos looking at the dying Austro-Hungarian Empire through the eyes of three generations of the Trotta family, a once proud dynasty devoted to King and Country that had total faith in military life, which slowly starts to disintegrate as times change heading towards the Great War. This had both elements of a sweeping grand epic albeit on a smaller scale that galloped along in tune with it's characters, and a sad intimate account of how living in the shadows of past close family can have an effect of trying to leave an important legacy of ones own.
The Radetzky March (Johann Strauss), is used as the dedicated piece of music for the war-horse of the Empire, and is seen as a symbol of greatness within the regiments. The story predominantly looks at the youngest and last member of the Trotta family, Carl Joseph, which he lives paralleled with the glory of his Grandfather, the hero of Solferino, Joseph Trotta, who famously saved the life of the Emperor. After his promotion and ennoblement, Baron Joseph von Trotta degrades into rural obscurity, and stubbornly opposes his son, Franz', who has aspirations to a military career, thus following in fathers footsteps. Franz is a conservative man and pillar to the nation, who takes to his son Carl Joseph better in terms of a military career. The grandson, Carl Joseph, has a character that is very different from his forefathers, that lands himself in bother throughout, consistently with disastrous results.
The life of Carl Joseph is not a happy one, he stands bitterly with a frivolous and doomed generation, where the temptations of the flesh, heavy drinking, dangerous gambling and debts are all to often difficult to stay away from, a relationship with the wife of a police commander would leave him in turmoil, along with an affair with the wife of his best friend, resulting in a senseless duel. It seems as if everything Carl Joseph does, crumbles expeditiously in his hands. He sinks into despondency, becoming old and melancholic before his time, living mostly in an alcoholic daze, burdened with having have let his forefathers down. Ending up in a remote military outpost near the border with Russia, Carl Joseph is thrust into action as the Great War breaks out, with the proud Trotta name heading towards triviality.
Roth has clearly put so much effort into The Austrio-Hungarian Empire way of life, a world with a clear order, clear rules and tight regulations, and he uses historical persons and events in a most imaginative way with a voice that is always full of compassion, he treats the death of a small thing like a canary with as much feeling as he does with man. I am not entirely sure it worked as the novel I was hoping for, but he puts his heart and soul into writing this, that's definitive.
The fact that those bloody evil Nazis had to prohibit Roth's work because he was of Jewish ancestry is a travesty, and after remained long in obscurity, taking far too long for him to be rehabilitated, I am happy to have finally read what is regarded as his best work.
A vigorous and deep-rooted piece of writing, but layered with a sadness of Roth's own problematic life.
Joseph Roth dazzles with irony and pathos looking at the dying Austro-Hungarian Empire through the eyes of three generations of the Trotta family, a once proud dynasty devoted to King and Country that had total faith in military life, which slowly starts to disintegrate as times change heading towards the Great War. This had both elements of a sweeping grand epic albeit on a smaller scale that galloped along in tune with it's characters, and a sad intimate account of how living in the shadows of past close family can have an effect of trying to leave an important legacy of ones own.
The Radetzky March (Johann Strauss), is used as the dedicated piece of music for the war-horse of the Empire, and is seen as a symbol of greatness within the regiments. The story predominantly looks at the youngest and last member of the Trotta family, Carl Joseph, which he lives paralleled with the glory of his Grandfather, the hero of Solferino, Joseph Trotta, who famously saved the life of the Emperor. After his promotion and ennoblement, Baron Joseph von Trotta degrades into rural obscurity, and stubbornly opposes his son, Franz', who has aspirations to a military career, thus following in fathers footsteps. Franz is a conservative man and pillar to the nation, who takes to his son Carl Joseph better in terms of a military career. The grandson, Carl Joseph, has a character that is very different from his forefathers, that lands himself in bother throughout, consistently with disastrous results.
The life of Carl Joseph is not a happy one, he stands bitterly with a frivolous and doomed generation, where the temptations of the flesh, heavy drinking, dangerous gambling and debts are all to often difficult to stay away from, a relationship with the wife of a police commander would leave him in turmoil, along with an affair with the wife of his best friend, resulting in a senseless duel. It seems as if everything Carl Joseph does, crumbles expeditiously in his hands. He sinks into despondency, becoming old and melancholic before his time, living mostly in an alcoholic daze, burdened with having have let his forefathers down. Ending up in a remote military outpost near the border with Russia, Carl Joseph is thrust into action as the Great War breaks out, with the proud Trotta name heading towards triviality.
Roth has clearly put so much effort into The Austrio-Hungarian Empire way of life, a world with a clear order, clear rules and tight regulations, and he uses historical persons and events in a most imaginative way with a voice that is always full of compassion, he treats the death of a small thing like a canary with as much feeling as he does with man. I am not entirely sure it worked as the novel I was hoping for, but he puts his heart and soul into writing this, that's definitive.
The fact that those bloody evil Nazis had to prohibit Roth's work because he was of Jewish ancestry is a travesty, and after remained long in obscurity, taking far too long for him to be rehabilitated, I am happy to have finally read what is regarded as his best work.
A vigorous and deep-rooted piece of writing, but layered with a sadness of Roth's own problematic life.
November 13, 2018
There's a moment in The Radetzky March when a soirée at a country estate is being broken up in the early hours of the morning. Word has just arrived of the shooting of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, and the host tells his staff to silence the band and usher his guests off the property. But the musicians are so drunk that they won't stop playing even when their instruments are plucked from their hands by footmen: violinists keep drawing their bows ‘over the unresponsive material of their sleeves’, and a drummer continues ‘to beat and swish his various sticks about in the empty air’.
It's an exquisite little metaphor of life during the late Austro-Hungarian empire, where armies of civil servants, aristocrats and, indeed, soldiers continued to go through the motions, not realising that their world was already functionally dead, and they had long stopped making any ‘music’ at all. Not the least striking example of this is Joseph Roth himself, who simply could not come to terms with what had happened. Year after year, from exile in Berlin and then in Paris, he went back over the same ground in his fiction and journalism. And, for that matter, in his non-writing life, too: as late as March 1938, he was heading to Vienna on some insane scheme to convince the Chancellor to cede power back to a coterie of Habsburg ‘Legitimists’. He was turned away at the border – and three days later came the Anschluss.
The fact that what followed was so much worse has, perhaps, made it difficult for us to feel how baffling Roth's love of the empire was. At least, I find it rather baffling. This novel's primary mode is one of ironic but heartfelt nostalgia; it's presented as an elegy to a lost mitteleuropäisch paradise; and yet, reading between the lines, it's clear that Roth's Austria-Hungary was a dreary, hidebound, odorously masculine place, hamstrung by outdated codes of behaviour, paralysed by bureaucracy, and riven by inter-ethnic hatreds. It would be easy enough to claim that he understood all this and that he is simply ‘problematising’ it, but I don't know – it really feels like he wants to view the empire with undiluted approbation and simply can't make it work. As a consequence, the politics of the book are all over the place: he has liberal instincts, but he is forced into a position of essential conservatism (Roth referred to Strauss's ‘Radetzky March’ as ‘the “Marseilleise” of conservatism’).
Perhaps what mattered was that in the end, the Empire was his home – and after its dissolution his home just didn't exist any more, however much the towns themselves still showed up on maps. Reading Roth talking about Austria-Hungary reminds me of reading certain Pakistani writers talking about the Delhi of their childhood, pre-Partition, which cannot be returned to because it's a civilisation that no longer exists. The point was its multiculturalism, and Roth deliberately ranges around the full extent of imperial geography and linguistics in The Radetzky March. The central family, the Trottas, are from the south of the empire: the original patriarch spoke Slovenian, but his grandson, a district commissioner, speaks only ‘the nasal Austrian of upper officialdom’; his housekeeper speaks High German, and his son is stationed off in the boondocks surrounded by peasants speaking ‘Ruthenian’ (i.e. Ukrainian) and overseen by a Polish-speaking landowner.
All this is offered up as a kind of flawed Eden, with nationalism as the lurking serpent. Roth seems to sympathise with the feelings of District Commissioner von Trotta, who opines that, in imperial terms, there are ‘plenty of peoples, but no nations’. This may indeed be a utopian outlook, but it's striking that the novel makes it only too clear why the various constituent peoples wanted some autonomy. The dissolute Count Chojnicki, who is presented sympathetically and who pops up now and then to make gloomy, accurate predictions about the future, talks at some length about how abhorrent Czechs, Hungarians and Slavs are, how the state should take an iron grip over their lives, and how local peasants ought regularly to be shot. Nationalism might well seem promising in that context, which Roth nevertheless seems determined to extol.
Of course Roth was Jewish, and when nationalism finally blew the empire into a constellation of nation-states, the Slovenians, Hungarians, Slovaks et al. at least had patches of Europe to which they could stake their Tolkienesque claims of historical ownership. The Jews did not. In that sense they gained more from Austria-Hungary's existence, and suffered proportionately from its break-up. Maybe that is why he writes in such rosy tones about the otherwise soulless Silesian border towns that loom so large in his work.
The unnamed burg in which Carl Joseph, the youngest von Trotta, is stationed in The Radetzky March is a perfect example, but variants on the theme recur in many of his books (at least according to summaries and synopses – I haven't actually read any others). A tiny town near the Russian border; a Polish count in his castle; a bored military garrison whose officers are drunk on the local schnapps; a large Jewish population; and all of it surrounded by swamps full of croaking frogs. It's a perfect description of – surprise, surprise – Roth's home town of Brody. After the war and the break-up of the empire, Brody became part of interwar Poland (it's now in Ukraine), and Roth, engaged in a slow suicide-by-alcoholism in Paris, applied himself to recreating it over and over again in fictional form.
I find that riveting – more riveting, frankly, than the novel itself, which is shot through with extraordinary moments but which I can't help feeling could have benefited from a smidgen more in the way of actual plot or incident. Perhaps its main flaw though seems to me to be a slight heavy-handedness when it comes to dramatic irony. At the end of something like – oh, I don't know – Siegfried Sassoon's Memoirs of a Fox-Hunting Man, when the heroes head off cheerfully to the war, that feels properly ironic because we know so much better than they do what they have in store for them. Roth, by contrast, rather overdoes it by having characters simply come right out and explain what's going to happen: ‘The age doesn't want us any more! This age wants to establish autonomous nation states!’ as the Count says in one of his many infeasible outbursts. The pinnacle of this comes when a man looks at his sleeping children and somehow predicts the terrors of the 1930s:
Dun-dun-dunnnn! Now come on, that is cheating. But again, it comes back to Roth's conflicted feelings about how shitty the world around him was, and how all of it could (he felt) be traced back to the end of this multiethnic superstate, which even he can't portray as anything but fucked-up in the first place. From this point of view, The Radetzky March takes the form of a bleak joke: ‘It was awful, and then it was replaced by something worse.’ Roth was astute enough to see that disaster was inevitable one way or another – the only choice, as one character here puts it, ‘was between a sudden catastrophe and a more gradual one’. The catastrophe had already overtaken Roth, but he kept playing all the same.
It's an exquisite little metaphor of life during the late Austro-Hungarian empire, where armies of civil servants, aristocrats and, indeed, soldiers continued to go through the motions, not realising that their world was already functionally dead, and they had long stopped making any ‘music’ at all. Not the least striking example of this is Joseph Roth himself, who simply could not come to terms with what had happened. Year after year, from exile in Berlin and then in Paris, he went back over the same ground in his fiction and journalism. And, for that matter, in his non-writing life, too: as late as March 1938, he was heading to Vienna on some insane scheme to convince the Chancellor to cede power back to a coterie of Habsburg ‘Legitimists’. He was turned away at the border – and three days later came the Anschluss.
The fact that what followed was so much worse has, perhaps, made it difficult for us to feel how baffling Roth's love of the empire was. At least, I find it rather baffling. This novel's primary mode is one of ironic but heartfelt nostalgia; it's presented as an elegy to a lost mitteleuropäisch paradise; and yet, reading between the lines, it's clear that Roth's Austria-Hungary was a dreary, hidebound, odorously masculine place, hamstrung by outdated codes of behaviour, paralysed by bureaucracy, and riven by inter-ethnic hatreds. It would be easy enough to claim that he understood all this and that he is simply ‘problematising’ it, but I don't know – it really feels like he wants to view the empire with undiluted approbation and simply can't make it work. As a consequence, the politics of the book are all over the place: he has liberal instincts, but he is forced into a position of essential conservatism (Roth referred to Strauss's ‘Radetzky March’ as ‘the “Marseilleise” of conservatism’).
Perhaps what mattered was that in the end, the Empire was his home – and after its dissolution his home just didn't exist any more, however much the towns themselves still showed up on maps. Reading Roth talking about Austria-Hungary reminds me of reading certain Pakistani writers talking about the Delhi of their childhood, pre-Partition, which cannot be returned to because it's a civilisation that no longer exists. The point was its multiculturalism, and Roth deliberately ranges around the full extent of imperial geography and linguistics in The Radetzky March. The central family, the Trottas, are from the south of the empire: the original patriarch spoke Slovenian, but his grandson, a district commissioner, speaks only ‘the nasal Austrian of upper officialdom’; his housekeeper speaks High German, and his son is stationed off in the boondocks surrounded by peasants speaking ‘Ruthenian’ (i.e. Ukrainian) and overseen by a Polish-speaking landowner.
All this is offered up as a kind of flawed Eden, with nationalism as the lurking serpent. Roth seems to sympathise with the feelings of District Commissioner von Trotta, who opines that, in imperial terms, there are ‘plenty of peoples, but no nations’. This may indeed be a utopian outlook, but it's striking that the novel makes it only too clear why the various constituent peoples wanted some autonomy. The dissolute Count Chojnicki, who is presented sympathetically and who pops up now and then to make gloomy, accurate predictions about the future, talks at some length about how abhorrent Czechs, Hungarians and Slavs are, how the state should take an iron grip over their lives, and how local peasants ought regularly to be shot. Nationalism might well seem promising in that context, which Roth nevertheless seems determined to extol.
Of course Roth was Jewish, and when nationalism finally blew the empire into a constellation of nation-states, the Slovenians, Hungarians, Slovaks et al. at least had patches of Europe to which they could stake their Tolkienesque claims of historical ownership. The Jews did not. In that sense they gained more from Austria-Hungary's existence, and suffered proportionately from its break-up. Maybe that is why he writes in such rosy tones about the otherwise soulless Silesian border towns that loom so large in his work.
The unnamed burg in which Carl Joseph, the youngest von Trotta, is stationed in The Radetzky March is a perfect example, but variants on the theme recur in many of his books (at least according to summaries and synopses – I haven't actually read any others). A tiny town near the Russian border; a Polish count in his castle; a bored military garrison whose officers are drunk on the local schnapps; a large Jewish population; and all of it surrounded by swamps full of croaking frogs. It's a perfect description of – surprise, surprise – Roth's home town of Brody. After the war and the break-up of the empire, Brody became part of interwar Poland (it's now in Ukraine), and Roth, engaged in a slow suicide-by-alcoholism in Paris, applied himself to recreating it over and over again in fictional form.
I find that riveting – more riveting, frankly, than the novel itself, which is shot through with extraordinary moments but which I can't help feeling could have benefited from a smidgen more in the way of actual plot or incident. Perhaps its main flaw though seems to me to be a slight heavy-handedness when it comes to dramatic irony. At the end of something like – oh, I don't know – Siegfried Sassoon's Memoirs of a Fox-Hunting Man, when the heroes head off cheerfully to the war, that feels properly ironic because we know so much better than they do what they have in store for them. Roth, by contrast, rather overdoes it by having characters simply come right out and explain what's going to happen: ‘The age doesn't want us any more! This age wants to establish autonomous nation states!’ as the Count says in one of his many infeasible outbursts. The pinnacle of this comes when a man looks at his sleeping children and somehow predicts the terrors of the 1930s:
‘They're still so young, my children! One of them is eight, the other ten, and when they're asleep, they have round rosy faces. And yet there's cruelty in those sleeping faces. Sometimes I think it's the cruelty of their time, the future, that comes over them. I don't want to live to see that time!’
Dun-dun-dunnnn! Now come on, that is cheating. But again, it comes back to Roth's conflicted feelings about how shitty the world around him was, and how all of it could (he felt) be traced back to the end of this multiethnic superstate, which even he can't portray as anything but fucked-up in the first place. From this point of view, The Radetzky March takes the form of a bleak joke: ‘It was awful, and then it was replaced by something worse.’ Roth was astute enough to see that disaster was inevitable one way or another – the only choice, as one character here puts it, ‘was between a sudden catastrophe and a more gradual one’. The catastrophe had already overtaken Roth, but he kept playing all the same.
April 20, 2020
Anyone else lost in the dark forest of midlife who keeps searching for a path by marching to the enthusiastic tunes of various composers to revisit books long forgotten - just because SOME OTHER book came yelling/singing/marching in the direction pointing down memory lane?
So which book led me back to Joseph Roth's Radetzkymarsch, via the captivating Strauss tunes?
There was a bit of letter and tone confusion in the forest where I was lost before I found my way...
Let's put it this way:
Some witches had a lot of boiling water in their cauldron, and they started mixing ingredients of decay and nostalgia. First they put in my corona-times reading of Der Zauberberg, to the tunes of Schubert's Lindenbaum, mumbling curses over the naiveté of Hans Castorp before the fall from the Magic Mountain at the start of the First World War. Then the witches took on Faust, First Part via the Faust Waltz in Gounod's opera, which had me dancing alone in my isolated forest, before they finally started whispering:
We hear the the tune changing, ...
We hear it turn into a march, ...
We can see a century of culture marching towards the bitter end ...
... and all that music turned into a path leading straight to Joseph Roth, whose take on the Trotta family is mirrored in all the beauty and pain of "what came before we lost it".
If you are currently feeling the wind has changed and the world has taken a hit, try reading Joseph Roth or Thomas Mann! They are masters of the art of losing the sense of belonging to a specific time and space. And they are masters of exile and confinement as well! So to the tunes of glory, we clap and we clap and we clap while the violins work harder and harder under the yoke of Strauss to create the sense of urgency that will eventually lead to a musical and literary catharsis (which is a good placebo as long as no medical such is available).
All roads lead to literature!
So which book led me back to Joseph Roth's Radetzkymarsch, via the captivating Strauss tunes?
There was a bit of letter and tone confusion in the forest where I was lost before I found my way...
Let's put it this way:
Some witches had a lot of boiling water in their cauldron, and they started mixing ingredients of decay and nostalgia. First they put in my corona-times reading of Der Zauberberg, to the tunes of Schubert's Lindenbaum, mumbling curses over the naiveté of Hans Castorp before the fall from the Magic Mountain at the start of the First World War. Then the witches took on Faust, First Part via the Faust Waltz in Gounod's opera, which had me dancing alone in my isolated forest, before they finally started whispering:
We hear the the tune changing, ...
We hear it turn into a march, ...
We can see a century of culture marching towards the bitter end ...
... and all that music turned into a path leading straight to Joseph Roth, whose take on the Trotta family is mirrored in all the beauty and pain of "what came before we lost it".
If you are currently feeling the wind has changed and the world has taken a hit, try reading Joseph Roth or Thomas Mann! They are masters of the art of losing the sense of belonging to a specific time and space. And they are masters of exile and confinement as well! So to the tunes of glory, we clap and we clap and we clap while the violins work harder and harder under the yoke of Strauss to create the sense of urgency that will eventually lead to a musical and literary catharsis (which is a good placebo as long as no medical such is available).
All roads lead to literature!
January 20, 2024
Achingly beautiful and melancholy description of the decline of the Austro-Hungarian empire under Franz Joseph, both in the German original (reread) and the English translation (first read many years ago). Three generations of the Slovenian von Trotta family are described, starting with infantry lieutenant von Trotta, who saves Franz Joseph’s life at the Battle of Solferino (1859). Starting out as a typical military family, subsequent generations of the von Trottas struggle with their suitability for soldiering, as well as the appropriateness of militarism in modern life. Masterful juxtaposition between the Emperor’s decline in old age, the disillusionment of the von Trottas, and ultimately the irrelevance of imperial Austro-Hungary in the opening 20th Century.
October 4, 2023
رمانى از ميانه ودل تاريخ وسقوط يك امپراطورى ولى غير تاربخى همچون عنوان كتاب كه برگرفته از شخصيت تاريخى مى باشد و همچنين نگاهى به سه نسل از يك خانواده،اثرى كه با ترجمه خوب جناب همتى و پانويس هاى آن بى شك از نظر ترجمه،توضيحات ضرورى و روانى متن نقص كمى مى توان بر آن گرفت ولى بى شك همانطور كه مترجم در مقدمه اشاره كرده يكبار خواندن آن كفايت نمى كند،هرچند احتمالا براى خواننده ايرانى وفارسى زبان انتظار لذت بيشتر وبهترى از موفق ترين ومعروف ترين اثر يوزف روت،اين نويسنده اتريشى مى رفت و شايد اين بازخوانى مجدد به سالهاى آينده دورى وعده داده شود؛البته اگر شوق و ذوق خواندن دوباره اين رمان مدرن در خواننده باقى بماند.و به اين عامل مى توان تكيه كرد كه همين سير تاريخى در پادشاهى اتريش مجارستان وناشناخته بودن آن ودرنهايت بيهودگى و بلاتكليفى روايت هاى تاريخى همچون شخصيت هاى داستان سبب عدم رضايت كافى خواننده باشد.
رمان از مرگ و زوال خانواده تروتا در گذر سالها مى گويد(خانواده اى كه از مهر واحساس ونيكى به يكديگر در اعمال و رفتار خود چيزى بروز نمى دهند و گويا بلد هم نيستند)كه هرچه زمان مى گذرد اين سقوط در نگاه شخصيت ها رنگ وجلاى بيشترى به خود مى گيرد. سومين نسل از اين خانواده كه بيشتر حجم رمان به او اختصاص دارد بر خلاف پدر وپدر بزرگ خود كه شخصيت هاى غير قابل تغيير و ثابت دارند واز اصول وخط مشى هاى خود پا پس نمى كشند(حتى به غلط)انسانى است كه در پى تغيير وتحول است واز اين ميراث و سرنوشت خود كه خدمت به امپراطور و دستگاه نظامى و…كشور است منجزر مى شود و بر خلاف شوق وذوق كودكى از آن گريزان است وآنجااست كه سرعت و شدت اين نابودى و سقوط با مستى وميخوارگى،قمار،بدهى و دل دادن به زنان شوهر دار بيشتر وبيشتر مى شود.و در سوى ديگر همانند نوه ى پدر بزرگى كه جان پادشاه را نجات داد،خود پادشاه فرانتس يوزف است كه از زيستن وروزگار خود لذتى نمى برد و از شرايط وتغير اوضاع جهان خويش در رنج است؛جهانى كه در اواخر كتاب و شروع جنگ جهانى اول شكل آن در كل تغيير مى كند.
رمان از مرگ و زوال خانواده تروتا در گذر سالها مى گويد(خانواده اى كه از مهر واحساس ونيكى به يكديگر در اعمال و رفتار خود چيزى بروز نمى دهند و گويا بلد هم نيستند)كه هرچه زمان مى گذرد اين سقوط در نگاه شخصيت ها رنگ وجلاى بيشترى به خود مى گيرد. سومين نسل از اين خانواده كه بيشتر حجم رمان به او اختصاص دارد بر خلاف پدر وپدر بزرگ خود كه شخصيت هاى غير قابل تغيير و ثابت دارند واز اصول وخط مشى هاى خود پا پس نمى كشند(حتى به غلط)انسانى است كه در پى تغيير وتحول است واز اين ميراث و سرنوشت خود كه خدمت به امپراطور و دستگاه نظامى و…كشور است منجزر مى شود و بر خلاف شوق وذوق كودكى از آن گريزان است وآنجااست كه سرعت و شدت اين نابودى و سقوط با مستى وميخوارگى،قمار،بدهى و دل دادن به زنان شوهر دار بيشتر وبيشتر مى شود.و در سوى ديگر همانند نوه ى پدر بزرگى كه جان پادشاه را نجات داد،خود پادشاه فرانتس يوزف است كه از زيستن وروزگار خود لذتى نمى برد و از شرايط وتغير اوضاع جهان خويش در رنج است؛جهانى كه در اواخر كتاب و شروع جنگ جهانى اول شكل آن در كل تغيير مى كند.
June 2, 2023
مارش رادتسکی کتابی ایست از یوزف روت ، نویسنده مشهور اتریشی . او در این کتاب زندگی سه نسل یک خانواده سرشناس در امپراتوری اتریش - مجارستان را به تصویر کشیده است . روت راوی زندگی سه نسل از خانواده فون تروتا شده و زندگی آنها شامل بنیان گذار خانواده ، پدربزرگ ، پسر و فرزند پسر دنبال کرده است . کتاب روت گرچه با جنگ سولفرینو شروع می شود اما داستان روت را نمی توان تاریخی دانست . روت ازنبرد سولفرینو استفاده کرده و داستان خانواده فون تروتا را همگام و هم آهنگ با فراز و نشیب امپراتوری اتریش – مجارستان و شخص امپراتور فرانتس یوزف اول پیش برده است .
آنچه در کتاب می بینیم را می توان تفاوت نسل ها هم دانست ، در حالی که قیصر برای تروتا بزرگ و پسر او شخصیتی تقریبا مقدس است اما به تدریج و در پایان کتاب قیصر به مردی پیر و نه چمدان محترم تبدیل می شود . گویی زوال امپراتوری را در سقوط شخصیت قیصر می توان دید . بخشی دیگر از تباهی و نافرجام بودن امپراتوری را می توان در گفت و گوهای تکراری و ملال آور پدر و پسر دانست ، گویی همگام با به بن بست رسیدن رابطه میان پدر و پسر ، امپراتوری هم از سرنوشت مقدر شده خود راه گریزی ندارد .
تیر خلاص به خاندان تروتا را کارل یوزف می زند ، او با باختن در قمار سبب از دست رفتن ثروت و آبرو خاندان تروتا شده و آنها را به این گونه نزد قیصر بی اعتبار کرده ، گرچه بی ارزش شدن تروتا ها هم زمان با بی قدر و منزلت شدن قیصر هم زمان شده است .
روت روحیه جوانان و البته ارتش اتریش را هم شرح داده . آنان گرچه بدون جنگ احساس پوچی و بیهودگی دارند و در حسرت جنگ می سوزند اما احساسات آنها احتمالا با شروع جنگ اول و فرسایشی شدن آن تغییر خواهد کرد .
به باور من ،اما تمامی توصیفات و یا پر گویی های روت که البته با ترجمه خوب محمد همتی همراه شده سبب جذابیت مارش رادتسکی نشده است . روت با کلامی سرشار از نشانه ها و البته نسبتا سنگین و کسالت بار به موضوع تغییر نسل ها و دگرگونی ارزش ها پرداخته . نمادها و نشانه ها به کار رفته در کتاب و ارجاع و مقایسه دائمی خاندان تروتا با قیصر در بستر خشک و شاید پر ملال ادبیات آلمان همراه با نیاز به دانستن بخشی از تاریخ امپراتوری اتریش مجارستان سبب کاستن گیرایی کتاب شده است .
آنچه در کتاب می بینیم را می توان تفاوت نسل ها هم دانست ، در حالی که قیصر برای تروتا بزرگ و پسر او شخصیتی تقریبا مقدس است اما به تدریج و در پایان کتاب قیصر به مردی پیر و نه چمدان محترم تبدیل می شود . گویی زوال امپراتوری را در سقوط شخصیت قیصر می توان دید . بخشی دیگر از تباهی و نافرجام بودن امپراتوری را می توان در گفت و گوهای تکراری و ملال آور پدر و پسر دانست ، گویی همگام با به بن بست رسیدن رابطه میان پدر و پسر ، امپراتوری هم از سرنوشت مقدر شده خود راه گریزی ندارد .
تیر خلاص به خاندان تروتا را کارل یوزف می زند ، او با باختن در قمار سبب از دست رفتن ثروت و آبرو خاندان تروتا شده و آنها را به این گونه نزد قیصر بی اعتبار کرده ، گرچه بی ارزش شدن تروتا ها هم زمان با بی قدر و منزلت شدن قیصر هم زمان شده است .
روت روحیه جوانان و البته ارتش اتریش را هم شرح داده . آنان گرچه بدون جنگ احساس پوچی و بیهودگی دارند و در حسرت جنگ می سوزند اما احساسات آنها احتمالا با شروع جنگ اول و فرسایشی شدن آن تغییر خواهد کرد .
به باور من ،اما تمامی توصیفات و یا پر گویی های روت که البته با ترجمه خوب محمد همتی همراه شده سبب جذابیت مارش رادتسکی نشده است . روت با کلامی سرشار از نشانه ها و البته نسبتا سنگین و کسالت بار به موضوع تغییر نسل ها و دگرگونی ارزش ها پرداخته . نمادها و نشانه ها به کار رفته در کتاب و ارجاع و مقایسه دائمی خاندان تروتا با قیصر در بستر خشک و شاید پر ملال ادبیات آلمان همراه با نیاز به دانستن بخشی از تاریخ امپراتوری اتریش مجارستان سبب کاستن گیرایی کتاب شده است .
September 1, 2023
3,5
مارش رادتسکی قصه ی سه نسله: پدربزرگی که در جوونی منجی قیصر میشه، پدری که بی چون و چرا، زندگیش رو در مسیر تایید و تحقق خواسته های این ناجی پیش میبره، و پسری که آرزوی رهایی از این زندگی دیکته شده ی نظامی رو داره...
سبک زندگی، پرتره ی با ابهت پدربزرگ، مارشی که از کودکی ملکه ی ذهن کارل یوزف شده و عظمت تزلزل ناپذیر قیصر (مردی که هیچ متوجه تغییر زمان و اتفاقات اطرافش نیست)، در مواجهه با تعارض ها و آرزوی شکستن این قالب تحمیلی، اونو درگیر تشویش های روحی، توهم و رابطه های اشتباه میکنه، ...به سر بردن در دنیای مردگان و خاطراتشون، خلوت با یادگارهای اونها و سنگینی این افتخار موروثی، باعث تشدید ناامیدی ها و حسرت های کارل یوزف میشه...
اما در این بین دوستی و درک عمیق بین کارل یوزف و دوست از دست رفته اش "دکتر دمانت" و نصیحت او برای رها کردن ارتش، استیصال و احساسات فروخورده ی پدر که محرمی جز تنها دوست تازه یافته اش نداره و توصیه ی او برای احترام گذاشتن به خواسته ی کارل، شخصیت و روحیه ی غیرنظامی و لطیفی از این پدر و پسر رو هم ترسیم میکنه، اما در نهایت عشق و محبت بینشون پشت غرور سرد نظامی و خجالتی بیجا برای همیشه ناگفته می مونه،...
مارش رادتسکی،فقط قصه ی افتخارات، اوج و افول امپراتور و این سه نسل وفادار به امپراتوری نیست، بلکه یوزف روت در کنار توصیف احساسات و عواطف ظریف انسانی، روایتگر تغییر ارزش ها، باور ها و دنیای رو به تحول ه .. دنيايی که برتری و تقدس رو منحصر به یک انسان در راس قدرت نمیدونه و با یک جمله ی ساده و عميق، نگاه دیگه ای از نسل جدید رو نشون میده:
"نشانشان خواهیم داد. زمانه زمانه ی خرد و آگاهی است."
مارش رادتسکی قصه ی سه نسله: پدربزرگی که در جوونی منجی قیصر میشه، پدری که بی چون و چرا، زندگیش رو در مسیر تایید و تحقق خواسته های این ناجی پیش میبره، و پسری که آرزوی رهایی از این زندگی دیکته شده ی نظامی رو داره...
سبک زندگی، پرتره ی با ابهت پدربزرگ، مارشی که از کودکی ملکه ی ذهن کارل یوزف شده و عظمت تزلزل ناپذیر قیصر (مردی که هیچ متوجه تغییر زمان و اتفاقات اطرافش نیست)، در مواجهه با تعارض ها و آرزوی شکستن این قالب تحمیلی، اونو درگیر تشویش های روحی، توهم و رابطه های اشتباه میکنه، ...به سر بردن در دنیای مردگان و خاطراتشون، خلوت با یادگارهای اونها و سنگینی این افتخار موروثی، باعث تشدید ناامیدی ها و حسرت های کارل یوزف میشه...
اما در این بین دوستی و درک عمیق بین کارل یوزف و دوست از دست رفته اش "دکتر دمانت" و نصیحت او برای رها کردن ارتش، استیصال و احساسات فروخورده ی پدر که محرمی جز تنها دوست تازه یافته اش نداره و توصیه ی او برای احترام گذاشتن به خواسته ی کارل، شخصیت و روحیه ی غیرنظامی و لطیفی از این پدر و پسر رو هم ترسیم میکنه، اما در نهایت عشق و محبت بینشون پشت غرور سرد نظامی و خجالتی بیجا برای همیشه ناگفته می مونه،...
مارش رادتسکی،فقط قصه ی افتخارات، اوج و افول امپراتور و این سه نسل وفادار به امپراتوری نیست، بلکه یوزف روت در کنار توصیف احساسات و عواطف ظریف انسانی، روایتگر تغییر ارزش ها، باور ها و دنیای رو به تحول ه .. دنيايی که برتری و تقدس رو منحصر به یک انسان در راس قدرت نمیدونه و با یک جمله ی ساده و عميق، نگاه دیگه ای از نسل جدید رو نشون میده:
"نشانشان خواهیم داد. زمانه زمانه ی خرد و آگاهی است."
Read
October 31, 2017DNF-- subject matter is slow and boring to me. It is regarded as a modern classic but this is a book that I would slog through and would take away from other books on my tbr. I hope the others participating in the buddy read I was in enjoy it better than I did.
November 18, 2018
Rating: 4* of five
The Publisher Says: The book description from Amazon is unusually cryptic. It says:
The Radetzky March, Joseph Roth's classic saga of the privileged von Trotta family, encompasses the entire social fabric of the Austro-Hungarian Empire just before World War I. The author's greatest achievement, The Radetzky March is an unparalleled portrait of a civilization in decline, and as such, a universal story for our times.
My Review: The Trotta family, beneficiaries of the gratitude of the most inept politician and soldier ever to lead an empire, rise to dizzying social heights based on a misunderstanding of an actual brave and generous act. The First Baron saves the Emperor's life by knocking the fool off of his horse in the course of losing a battle. The Emperor's gift of a title to his Slovenian savior sets in motion a long, slow decline and fall, paralleling the Empire's own fate.
The Second Baron, excited by Papa's rep as a war hero and having no other information about the subject than other peoples' gossip, wants to be a cavalry officer like his papa. Papa, who was actually an infantry lieutenant and who is revolted by the gossipy fate of his deed, refuses either to discuss the matter or to allow his son into the military. So the second baron becomes a bureaucrat ruling the lives of people he feels superior to. He and the rest of the Trotta family are firmly convinced they are to the manor born. Papa sighs to himself, keeps his lip zipped, and dies.
The Baron-in-waiting becomes the cavalry officer his papa wanted to be. What a complete wastrel this goofball is. He truly buys in heavily to the privilege and prerogatives of being titled and in the Army. YUCKAPOOVICH. And then, in the course of duty, the scales fall from shoulda-been Third Baron Lieutenant Trotta's eyes. The story of how that happens is a spoiler, so I have to leave it out of this review, except to say that it was at this point that my flagging interest in finishing this tome woke right back up and I wanted to read more.
I read the ending of the book in a rush, saddened and hurting for the Second Baron whose life was ending as his world was too. It was 1916, the Empire's effective end, and it is told in the simplest and most moving terms, in a scene of touching misdirected loyalty and typically unanswered love.
Joachim Neugroschel translated the edition I read. It was a pleasure to read...when the story could be bothered to perform its parlor tricks to keep me interested. There are stretches of the Second Baron's life that made me want to scrub my eyelids with witch hazel to tighten them into the open position. But as I read on, lulled by the gentle rocking of the style-train Roth sent me to war aboard, I realized that this, the warm velour first-class seat in the wood-lined first-class compartment, was a comfortable place to be, and I was content to trust the train's course would end in a place I'd want to be.
It did. It's a pleasure to have taken the journey at last.
The Publisher Says: The book description from Amazon is unusually cryptic. It says:
The Radetzky March, Joseph Roth's classic saga of the privileged von Trotta family, encompasses the entire social fabric of the Austro-Hungarian Empire just before World War I. The author's greatest achievement, The Radetzky March is an unparalleled portrait of a civilization in decline, and as such, a universal story for our times.
My Review: The Trotta family, beneficiaries of the gratitude of the most inept politician and soldier ever to lead an empire, rise to dizzying social heights based on a misunderstanding of an actual brave and generous act. The First Baron saves the Emperor's life by knocking the fool off of his horse in the course of losing a battle. The Emperor's gift of a title to his Slovenian savior sets in motion a long, slow decline and fall, paralleling the Empire's own fate.
The Second Baron, excited by Papa's rep as a war hero and having no other information about the subject than other peoples' gossip, wants to be a cavalry officer like his papa. Papa, who was actually an infantry lieutenant and who is revolted by the gossipy fate of his deed, refuses either to discuss the matter or to allow his son into the military. So the second baron becomes a bureaucrat ruling the lives of people he feels superior to. He and the rest of the Trotta family are firmly convinced they are to the manor born. Papa sighs to himself, keeps his lip zipped, and dies.
The Baron-in-waiting becomes the cavalry officer his papa wanted to be. What a complete wastrel this goofball is. He truly buys in heavily to the privilege and prerogatives of being titled and in the Army. YUCKAPOOVICH. And then, in the course of duty, the scales fall from shoulda-been Third Baron Lieutenant Trotta's eyes. The story of how that happens is a spoiler, so I have to leave it out of this review, except to say that it was at this point that my flagging interest in finishing this tome woke right back up and I wanted to read more.
I read the ending of the book in a rush, saddened and hurting for the Second Baron whose life was ending as his world was too. It was 1916, the Empire's effective end, and it is told in the simplest and most moving terms, in a scene of touching misdirected loyalty and typically unanswered love.
Joachim Neugroschel translated the edition I read. It was a pleasure to read...when the story could be bothered to perform its parlor tricks to keep me interested. There are stretches of the Second Baron's life that made me want to scrub my eyelids with witch hazel to tighten them into the open position. But as I read on, lulled by the gentle rocking of the style-train Roth sent me to war aboard, I realized that this, the warm velour first-class seat in the wood-lined first-class compartment, was a comfortable place to be, and I was content to trust the train's course would end in a place I'd want to be.
It did. It's a pleasure to have taken the journey at last.
September 28, 2023
It is a fun yet futile exercise to imagine what would have happened if the German Empire had been subjected to its Southern and Eastern cousin, the Austrian Hapsburg Empire. What would the 20th century have been if Austria had been allowed to exist and Germany had been reduced to northern insignificance?
Roth believes that the Austrian Empire was a milder, civilized form of Imperialism. Absurd, yes, because all power has something absurd in it, and ultimately inefficient, but still better than its German counterpart. Less brutal, more tolerant and understanding. Roth does not blindly believe in the Austrian Empire. He loves Franz Joseph with a certain detachment, like one loves an elderly grandfather who holds forth on subjects of which he has only the vaguest idea. Yet The Radetzky March is an elegy to a world where Slovakian peasants became Barons, where Jews became officers and gave their blessings to the Emperor, where the Empire was the only thing preventing half a continent from sliding into war. A striking example is the aftermath of Franz Ferdinand’s murder. Immediately after the news arrive at the garrison where the main character is stationed, the officers dissolve into nationalistic factions, foregoing German for their own languages while saluting the death of the heir to the throne.
The novel is split between the three last male members of the Trotta family, travelling from the grandfather to grandson. In the middle there is the father who, unlike the other two, is not in the military. Rather, he’s a local official dealing in a very direct way with the dissolution of the Empire. At its heart, The Radetzky March is the story of a decaying family whose decay accompanies that of the institutions they are serving. What is exceptional, however, is how personal this downward spiral feels. The Empire and its Emperor are not distant entities. The Trottas are not affected in an indistinct or solely practical way by the end of their world. It touches them intimately. They feel the demise of their Empire as they would feel the weakening of their own bodies. An insult to the Emperor is personal. The physical similarity between the father and the Emperor is remarked upon several times. The Trottas do not survive their Empire. Nor they should. They would be useless in a post-1918 world.
Roth’s brilliancy consists in his attention to detail, which sometimes borders on the obsessive. Nothing seems to go undescribed. This can be a bit grating, a bit too much, but it is overwhelmingly compensated by the times Roth gets it right. A whole exposition chapter is dedicated to Franz Joseph, his routine and his inner thoughts. It is, I think, the best chapter in the book and perfectly showcases Roth’s talents. In many ways, The Radetzky March is one of those books I always wanted to read. Aesthetically and thematically, I am fascinated by mitteleuropa at its brightest and darkest. Like the Trottas, Roth was too enamoured of his Empire to expand on its dark side. But in spite of its rosy hues, The Radetzky March is a testament to how anything, no matter how great, can become redundant. And that is perhaps the core lesson of European History.
Roth believes that the Austrian Empire was a milder, civilized form of Imperialism. Absurd, yes, because all power has something absurd in it, and ultimately inefficient, but still better than its German counterpart. Less brutal, more tolerant and understanding. Roth does not blindly believe in the Austrian Empire. He loves Franz Joseph with a certain detachment, like one loves an elderly grandfather who holds forth on subjects of which he has only the vaguest idea. Yet The Radetzky March is an elegy to a world where Slovakian peasants became Barons, where Jews became officers and gave their blessings to the Emperor, where the Empire was the only thing preventing half a continent from sliding into war. A striking example is the aftermath of Franz Ferdinand’s murder. Immediately after the news arrive at the garrison where the main character is stationed, the officers dissolve into nationalistic factions, foregoing German for their own languages while saluting the death of the heir to the throne.
The novel is split between the three last male members of the Trotta family, travelling from the grandfather to grandson. In the middle there is the father who, unlike the other two, is not in the military. Rather, he’s a local official dealing in a very direct way with the dissolution of the Empire. At its heart, The Radetzky March is the story of a decaying family whose decay accompanies that of the institutions they are serving. What is exceptional, however, is how personal this downward spiral feels. The Empire and its Emperor are not distant entities. The Trottas are not affected in an indistinct or solely practical way by the end of their world. It touches them intimately. They feel the demise of their Empire as they would feel the weakening of their own bodies. An insult to the Emperor is personal. The physical similarity between the father and the Emperor is remarked upon several times. The Trottas do not survive their Empire. Nor they should. They would be useless in a post-1918 world.
Roth’s brilliancy consists in his attention to detail, which sometimes borders on the obsessive. Nothing seems to go undescribed. This can be a bit grating, a bit too much, but it is overwhelmingly compensated by the times Roth gets it right. A whole exposition chapter is dedicated to Franz Joseph, his routine and his inner thoughts. It is, I think, the best chapter in the book and perfectly showcases Roth’s talents. In many ways, The Radetzky March is one of those books I always wanted to read. Aesthetically and thematically, I am fascinated by mitteleuropa at its brightest and darkest. Like the Trottas, Roth was too enamoured of his Empire to expand on its dark side. But in spite of its rosy hues, The Radetzky March is a testament to how anything, no matter how great, can become redundant. And that is perhaps the core lesson of European History.
January 28, 2021
Obwohl dieser Roman schon ein Jahrhundert auf dem Buckel hat und wahrscheinlich auch vielen Schülern in Österreich, die einfach noch zu jung dazu waren, im Rahmen der Pflichtlektüre in der Schule den letzten Nerv gezogen hat, muss ich feststellen: Es ist ein Meisterwerk.
Ihr kennt ja meine Angewohnheit, doch des Öfteren auch bei guten Büchern ein kleines Haar im Süppchen zu finden. Vor allem vor etwas angestaubten Klassikern und großen Autoren hatte ich noch nie einen Funken von Respekt, sondern hab ausschließlich das Werk bewertet, so als ob ich einen völlig unbekannten Jungautor vor mir hätte.
Aber hier gibt es einfach nix zu kritisieren, gar nix:
Da springt zuerst der köstlichste Humor ins Auge, der nicht brachial sondern immer total feinsinnig daherkommt manchmal sogar in den groteskesten Analogien, von denen mir nicht einmal alle aufgefallen sind (Danke an meinen Lesefreund Armin, der mich da auf etwas hingewiesen hat). Das ist ganz großes Kino! Roths ganz feine Ironie ist quasi mit scharfer Florett-Klinge gezogen. Vergleicht man hierzu andere berühmte österreichische Literaten, so nimmt Musil in seinem Mann ohne Eigenschaften hierzu schon eine Holzfälleraxt und Doderer in der Strudelhofstiege einen hölzernen Schnitzlklopfer, der beim ersten Kontakt mit dem Leser gleich in seine Einzelteile auseinanderfällt und durch die nervtötende Wiederholung des ewig gleichen Witzes wieder zusammengebastelt werden muss.
Die Sprache des Radetzkymarschs ist auch wundervoll und der Plot, dieser Plot ist Wahnsinn! Weisen einige Werke von den genialen österreichischen Sprachfabulierern, wie Doderer, Musil oder sogar Schnitzler (ab und an) im Bereich Handlungsaufbau und Dramaturgie riesige Defizite auf, so läuft Roth hier zur Höchstform auf. Abgesehen davon, dass der Roman von der ersten bis zur letzten Zeile sehr spannend ist, nicht episch breit unnötig also respektive geschwätzig herumgefaselt wird, stellt der Aufbau der Geschichte mit dem Kaiser als Roten Faden und der ultimativen Klammer im Finale des Romans eine grandiose Idee und höchstes Schreibhandwerk dar.
So aber nun zu einigen Belegen meiner Einschätzung, Am Beginn des Romans will der alte erste Baron von Trotta seine eigene übertrieben ausgeschmückte Heldengeschichte - wie er dem Kaiser das Leben rettete - zurückgeben, die er in einem Schulbuch gefunden hat. Köstlichst versucht der in den Adelsstand erhobene ehemalige Soldat den offiziellen Behördenweg der österreichischen Bürokratie zu gehen und die Geschichte wahrheitsgemäß richtigzustellen, was sich als sehr schwierig erweist. Das erinnert ein bisschen an Michael Kohlhaas Kampf mit der Bürokratie, ist aber weniger ernst und weitaus vergnüglicher. Die meiste Ähnlichkeit weist Roths kleine Episode aber mit Marc Uwe Klings groteskem Szenario auf, als Peter Arbeitsloser im Qualityland der nahen Zukunft einen rosa Delphinvibrator zurückgeben möchte. Der Baron Trotta besteht auf der Änderung der Schulbuchheldengeschichte auf die simple, nicht gerade spannende Wahrheit und geht nervend und unbeirrt alle Instanzen bis zum Kaiser hoch, dem in dieser Angelegenheit aber auch die Hände gebunden sind. Diese winzige Szene offengart unterschwellig sowohl die österreichische Identität, die sowohl Charme als auch die größte Schwäche beinhaltet. „A bissal was geht immer“. Typisch österreichisch schludrig kommt Trotta im Gegensatz zum Kohlhaas durch den Kaiser und das persönliche Gespräch mit der obersten Autorität indirekt doch zum Ziel, die Heldengeschichte wird irgendwann einfach verloren und kommt aus dem Schulbuch raus, auf formalem bürokratischen Behördenweg biss Trotta sich die Zähnt aus, informell ist aber immer was zu machen. Das ist übrigens heute noch so - Diese Medaille hat auch eine riesige Schattenseite, Korruption ist ein Parade-Handicap des Österreichers, das hat er seit den Habsburgern nicht mehr abgelegt, daher ist unser Korruptionsindex auch so hoch
Der Plot fliegt dann recht rasant durch das Leben des Sohnes von Baron Trotta dem Ersten, der als Bezirkshauptmann eine doch eher ereignislose Karriere und ein etwas langweiliges Leben zu bieten hat und mündet fokussiert in den Ereignissen um den Enkel Carl Joseph, der von Jugend an eigentlich so gut wie gar nichts auf die Reihe bekommt und seiner Familie nichts als Schande bereitet.
Das Unheil beginnt schon mit Beginn der Pubertät als Carl Joseph von der Frau des Bezirksgendarms verführt wird. Im Prinzip kann man die schiefe Bahn, auf die Carl Joseph nach und nach gerät, und diese unglaubliche Lebensuntüchtigkeit, die ihn treffend charakterisiert, eigentlich gar nicht ihm selbst anlasten, denn sein Vater, der Bezirkshauptmann, bestimmt alle lebenswichtigen Entscheidungen, wie Schule, Ausbildung, Beruf etc. für seinen Filius im Alleingang, ohne sich irgendwann einmal zu fragen, ob diese überhaupt auch für Carl Josephs Talenten und Neigungen entsprechen. Und jede einzelne dieser lebensverändernden Anordnungen des Bezirkshauptmanns ist so etwas von falsch. Dem Sohn kann man zu Beginn der Geschichte nur vorwerfen, dass er sich schweigend und unterwürfig in alle Pläne seines Vaters fügt, ohne jemals den Mund aufzumachen oder zu rebellieren. Und weil er auch gar nicht talentiert ist für den vorgezeichneten Weg seines Vaters, vergeigt er natürlich alle beruflichen und privaten Chancen. Mein Lesefreund Armin bezeichnete es folgendermaßen „Der junge Leutnant bekommt eine Lektion, wie sehr er bislang gelebt wurde.“ Das trifft den Nagel auf den Kopf er wird die ganze Zeit gelebt und lebt nicht selbst.
Zuerst muss sich Carl Joseph beim Militär respektive bei der Kavallerie verdingen, obwohl er für den Beruf als Soldat kein Talent aufweist und zudem auch noch Pferde und das Reiten nicht wirklich leiden kann. Baron Trottas Enkel schlittert dann auch noch in so eine verzwickte Duellsituation hinein, die Roth ganz trefflich und wieder mal extrem grotesk konstruiert hat und aus der es kein Entrinnen gibt. Sein bester Freund Doktor Demant muss sich durch Trottas Schuld gemäß der Regeln der K&K Militärs um die Ehre seiner Frau duellieren, obwohl ein Ehebruch gar nicht stattgefunden hat, nur eine unkluge Aktion, deren besoffene Anprangerung in bürgerlichen Kreisen keine Konsequenzen gehabt hätte. Beim Militär wird das dann zur Groteske auf Leben und Tod hochstilisiert. Auch hier brockt der lebensunfähige Trotta eine Suppe ein, die zwei seiner Kameraden auslöffeln und mit dem Leben bezahlen müssen.
Entnervt von den Umständen, seinen besten Freund durch die eigene Dummheit verloren zu haben, will Carl Joseph sein Regiment verlassen und trifft erstmals in seinem Leben eine eigene Entscheidung ganz für sich selbst, die auch noch so etwas von falsch ist. Anstatt das Militär ganz zu verlassen, so wie es ihm sein Freund Demant empfohlen hat, oder sich in der Hauptstadt Wien stationieren zu lassen, lässt er sich in den wilden Osten in die Ukraine an die russische Außengrenze zur Infanterie versetzen. Dort am Arsch der Welt herrscht gähnende Langeweile, die von den zermürbten Soldaten mit 90 prozentigem Schnaps und anschließend auch mit Glücksspiel vertrieben wird. Allgemein werden hier die Auflösungserscheinungen der Monarchie, der Militärs und der Moral am Beispiel des kleinen Grenzdorfs sensationell beschrieben. Minutiös wird geschildert, wie fast die ganze Garnison Schritt für Schritt in die Spielsucht hineinschlittert und junge Männer durch den Alkoholismus dem stetigen Verfall anheimfallen. Obwohl der junge Trotta sich nur am Schnaps und nicht am Glücksspiel beteiligt, häuft er wieder einmal durch seine Naivität und Lebensuntüchtigkeit atemberaubende Schulden an, denn er unterzeichnet blind Wechsel und Garantien für seine spielsüchtigen Kompaniegefährten. Irgendwann eskaliert der Schuldenberg und bedroht das Leben von Carl Joseph, der sich eigentlich ob des Bankrotts nach den Regeln der K&K Armee selbst entleiben müsste. Nach einer persönlichen Audienz des Bezirkshauptmanns beim Kaiser, für deren Realisierung der alte Bezirkshauptmann Trotta erneut die Bürokratie und den Dienstweg durch Beharrlichkeit und gute Beziehungen austrickst, bürgt der mittlerweile schon sehr alte und ein bisschen senile Kaiser Franz Josef für den jungen Adelsspross und dessen Schulden, um dessen militärische Ehre wiederherzustellen.
Es wäre aber nicht das Genie Roth, wenn er fast am Ende des Romans diese in Pflicht erstarrte Figur des greisen Bezirkshauptmanns, seine Fehler mit dem Filius leise reflektieren lassen würde. Vater und Sohn finden endlich ein bisschen Zugang zueinander und Carl Joseph rafft sich endlich viel zu spät dazu auf, seinen Abschied von der Armee nehmen, obwohl schon der Krieg droht, denn der Thronfolger Franz Ferdinand wurde bereits ermordet. Carl Joseph verbringt ein paar Wochen recht glücklich im Dorf an der Ostfront in Diensten seines neuen Freundes des Grafen Chrojnicki. Das Schicksal muss selbstverständlich erneut zuschlagen, denn Leutnant Trotta stirbt nach der Mobilisierung zum Krieg, der er sich nicht entziehen kann, in den ersten Tagen des ersten Weltkriegs in einer Kampfhandlung. Heroisch ist der schwere Alkoholiker beim Wasserholen für die Kameraden gefallen (Danke Armin diese Analogie hätte ich fast übersehen.) So hat der Junge Trotta im Sinne seines Großvaters und der Familienehre endlich die geforderte Heldentat vollbracht, wenn sie auch total sinnlos war.
Stilistisch hat Roth zusätzlich zum spannenden Plot auch noch einen genialen roten Faden eingebaut. Kaiser Franz Josef, dem die Trottas ihren Adelstitel verdanken, kreuzt permanent die Wege der Familie, sei es durch persönliche kurze Treffen, sei es auch durch zufällige Anwesenheit am selben Ort, oder auch als Symbol der Trottas bildet der Kaiser die Verbindungsschnur durch den Roman. Diese Verbindung wird aber nicht an den Haaren herbeigezogen sondern sehr liebevoll in den Plot eingewebt. Einmal entführt Trotta ein Bild von Franz Josef aus dem Bordell, ein anderes Mal inspiziert der greise Kaiser seine Garnisonen an der Ostfront. Dort wird total liebevoll beschrieben, wie sich der Monarch zwei Stunden seines durchorganisierten Tages abknapst und um Mitternacht die Sterne beobachtet, bevor er am nächsten Tag das Regiment von Carl Joseph besucht und ein kurzes Gespräch mit dem jungen Leutnant führt. Am Ende wird die Klammer zwischen Kaiser und Familie Trotta am offensichtlichsten. Der Bezirkshauptmann, der Franz Josef auch äußerlich mit seinem Backenbart wie ein Ei dem anderen gleicht, und der Kaiser sterben nahezu gleichzeitig. Irgendwie kommt sogar ein kleiner sportlicher Wettkampf auf dem Totenbett zustande, wer als erstes in die ewigen Jagdgründe eingeht. Am Ende ist es aber egal, wer gewonnen hat, denn „beide konnten Österreich nicht überleben.“
„Der Kaiser war ein alter Mann. Er war der älteste Kaiser der Welt, Rings um ihn wandelte der Tod im Kreis, im Kreis und mähte und mähte. Schon war das ganze Feld leer, und nur der Kaiser, wie ein vergessener silberner Halm stand noch da und wartete“.
Fazit: Weltklasseklassiker absolute Leseempfehlung von mir! Ich glaube aber, aus der Perspektive eines älteren Erwachsenen, hat man viel mehr von Roths Weltkriegsliteratur, als wenn man in der Schulzeit gezwungen wurde.
Ihr kennt ja meine Angewohnheit, doch des Öfteren auch bei guten Büchern ein kleines Haar im Süppchen zu finden. Vor allem vor etwas angestaubten Klassikern und großen Autoren hatte ich noch nie einen Funken von Respekt, sondern hab ausschließlich das Werk bewertet, so als ob ich einen völlig unbekannten Jungautor vor mir hätte.
Aber hier gibt es einfach nix zu kritisieren, gar nix:
Da springt zuerst der köstlichste Humor ins Auge, der nicht brachial sondern immer total feinsinnig daherkommt manchmal sogar in den groteskesten Analogien, von denen mir nicht einmal alle aufgefallen sind (Danke an meinen Lesefreund Armin, der mich da auf etwas hingewiesen hat). Das ist ganz großes Kino! Roths ganz feine Ironie ist quasi mit scharfer Florett-Klinge gezogen. Vergleicht man hierzu andere berühmte österreichische Literaten, so nimmt Musil in seinem Mann ohne Eigenschaften hierzu schon eine Holzfälleraxt und Doderer in der Strudelhofstiege einen hölzernen Schnitzlklopfer, der beim ersten Kontakt mit dem Leser gleich in seine Einzelteile auseinanderfällt und durch die nervtötende Wiederholung des ewig gleichen Witzes wieder zusammengebastelt werden muss.
Die Sprache des Radetzkymarschs ist auch wundervoll und der Plot, dieser Plot ist Wahnsinn! Weisen einige Werke von den genialen österreichischen Sprachfabulierern, wie Doderer, Musil oder sogar Schnitzler (ab und an) im Bereich Handlungsaufbau und Dramaturgie riesige Defizite auf, so läuft Roth hier zur Höchstform auf. Abgesehen davon, dass der Roman von der ersten bis zur letzten Zeile sehr spannend ist, nicht episch breit unnötig also respektive geschwätzig herumgefaselt wird, stellt der Aufbau der Geschichte mit dem Kaiser als Roten Faden und der ultimativen Klammer im Finale des Romans eine grandiose Idee und höchstes Schreibhandwerk dar.
So aber nun zu einigen Belegen meiner Einschätzung, Am Beginn des Romans will der alte erste Baron von Trotta seine eigene übertrieben ausgeschmückte Heldengeschichte - wie er dem Kaiser das Leben rettete - zurückgeben, die er in einem Schulbuch gefunden hat. Köstlichst versucht der in den Adelsstand erhobene ehemalige Soldat den offiziellen Behördenweg der österreichischen Bürokratie zu gehen und die Geschichte wahrheitsgemäß richtigzustellen, was sich als sehr schwierig erweist. Das erinnert ein bisschen an Michael Kohlhaas Kampf mit der Bürokratie, ist aber weniger ernst und weitaus vergnüglicher. Die meiste Ähnlichkeit weist Roths kleine Episode aber mit Marc Uwe Klings groteskem Szenario auf, als Peter Arbeitsloser im Qualityland der nahen Zukunft einen rosa Delphinvibrator zurückgeben möchte. Der Baron Trotta besteht auf der Änderung der Schulbuchheldengeschichte auf die simple, nicht gerade spannende Wahrheit und geht nervend und unbeirrt alle Instanzen bis zum Kaiser hoch, dem in dieser Angelegenheit aber auch die Hände gebunden sind. Diese winzige Szene offengart unterschwellig sowohl die österreichische Identität, die sowohl Charme als auch die größte Schwäche beinhaltet. „A bissal was geht immer“. Typisch österreichisch schludrig kommt Trotta im Gegensatz zum Kohlhaas durch den Kaiser und das persönliche Gespräch mit der obersten Autorität indirekt doch zum Ziel, die Heldengeschichte wird irgendwann einfach verloren und kommt aus dem Schulbuch raus, auf formalem bürokratischen Behördenweg biss Trotta sich die Zähnt aus, informell ist aber immer was zu machen. Das ist übrigens heute noch so - Diese Medaille hat auch eine riesige Schattenseite, Korruption ist ein Parade-Handicap des Österreichers, das hat er seit den Habsburgern nicht mehr abgelegt, daher ist unser Korruptionsindex auch so hoch
Der Plot fliegt dann recht rasant durch das Leben des Sohnes von Baron Trotta dem Ersten, der als Bezirkshauptmann eine doch eher ereignislose Karriere und ein etwas langweiliges Leben zu bieten hat und mündet fokussiert in den Ereignissen um den Enkel Carl Joseph, der von Jugend an eigentlich so gut wie gar nichts auf die Reihe bekommt und seiner Familie nichts als Schande bereitet.
Das Unheil beginnt schon mit Beginn der Pubertät als Carl Joseph von der Frau des Bezirksgendarms verführt wird. Im Prinzip kann man die schiefe Bahn, auf die Carl Joseph nach und nach gerät, und diese unglaubliche Lebensuntüchtigkeit, die ihn treffend charakterisiert, eigentlich gar nicht ihm selbst anlasten, denn sein Vater, der Bezirkshauptmann, bestimmt alle lebenswichtigen Entscheidungen, wie Schule, Ausbildung, Beruf etc. für seinen Filius im Alleingang, ohne sich irgendwann einmal zu fragen, ob diese überhaupt auch für Carl Josephs Talenten und Neigungen entsprechen. Und jede einzelne dieser lebensverändernden Anordnungen des Bezirkshauptmanns ist so etwas von falsch. Dem Sohn kann man zu Beginn der Geschichte nur vorwerfen, dass er sich schweigend und unterwürfig in alle Pläne seines Vaters fügt, ohne jemals den Mund aufzumachen oder zu rebellieren. Und weil er auch gar nicht talentiert ist für den vorgezeichneten Weg seines Vaters, vergeigt er natürlich alle beruflichen und privaten Chancen. Mein Lesefreund Armin bezeichnete es folgendermaßen „Der junge Leutnant bekommt eine Lektion, wie sehr er bislang gelebt wurde.“ Das trifft den Nagel auf den Kopf er wird die ganze Zeit gelebt und lebt nicht selbst.
Zuerst muss sich Carl Joseph beim Militär respektive bei der Kavallerie verdingen, obwohl er für den Beruf als Soldat kein Talent aufweist und zudem auch noch Pferde und das Reiten nicht wirklich leiden kann. Baron Trottas Enkel schlittert dann auch noch in so eine verzwickte Duellsituation hinein, die Roth ganz trefflich und wieder mal extrem grotesk konstruiert hat und aus der es kein Entrinnen gibt. Sein bester Freund Doktor Demant muss sich durch Trottas Schuld gemäß der Regeln der K&K Militärs um die Ehre seiner Frau duellieren, obwohl ein Ehebruch gar nicht stattgefunden hat, nur eine unkluge Aktion, deren besoffene Anprangerung in bürgerlichen Kreisen keine Konsequenzen gehabt hätte. Beim Militär wird das dann zur Groteske auf Leben und Tod hochstilisiert. Auch hier brockt der lebensunfähige Trotta eine Suppe ein, die zwei seiner Kameraden auslöffeln und mit dem Leben bezahlen müssen.
Entnervt von den Umständen, seinen besten Freund durch die eigene Dummheit verloren zu haben, will Carl Joseph sein Regiment verlassen und trifft erstmals in seinem Leben eine eigene Entscheidung ganz für sich selbst, die auch noch so etwas von falsch ist. Anstatt das Militär ganz zu verlassen, so wie es ihm sein Freund Demant empfohlen hat, oder sich in der Hauptstadt Wien stationieren zu lassen, lässt er sich in den wilden Osten in die Ukraine an die russische Außengrenze zur Infanterie versetzen. Dort am Arsch der Welt herrscht gähnende Langeweile, die von den zermürbten Soldaten mit 90 prozentigem Schnaps und anschließend auch mit Glücksspiel vertrieben wird. Allgemein werden hier die Auflösungserscheinungen der Monarchie, der Militärs und der Moral am Beispiel des kleinen Grenzdorfs sensationell beschrieben. Minutiös wird geschildert, wie fast die ganze Garnison Schritt für Schritt in die Spielsucht hineinschlittert und junge Männer durch den Alkoholismus dem stetigen Verfall anheimfallen. Obwohl der junge Trotta sich nur am Schnaps und nicht am Glücksspiel beteiligt, häuft er wieder einmal durch seine Naivität und Lebensuntüchtigkeit atemberaubende Schulden an, denn er unterzeichnet blind Wechsel und Garantien für seine spielsüchtigen Kompaniegefährten. Irgendwann eskaliert der Schuldenberg und bedroht das Leben von Carl Joseph, der sich eigentlich ob des Bankrotts nach den Regeln der K&K Armee selbst entleiben müsste. Nach einer persönlichen Audienz des Bezirkshauptmanns beim Kaiser, für deren Realisierung der alte Bezirkshauptmann Trotta erneut die Bürokratie und den Dienstweg durch Beharrlichkeit und gute Beziehungen austrickst, bürgt der mittlerweile schon sehr alte und ein bisschen senile Kaiser Franz Josef für den jungen Adelsspross und dessen Schulden, um dessen militärische Ehre wiederherzustellen.
Es wäre aber nicht das Genie Roth, wenn er fast am Ende des Romans diese in Pflicht erstarrte Figur des greisen Bezirkshauptmanns, seine Fehler mit dem Filius leise reflektieren lassen würde. Vater und Sohn finden endlich ein bisschen Zugang zueinander und Carl Joseph rafft sich endlich viel zu spät dazu auf, seinen Abschied von der Armee nehmen, obwohl schon der Krieg droht, denn der Thronfolger Franz Ferdinand wurde bereits ermordet. Carl Joseph verbringt ein paar Wochen recht glücklich im Dorf an der Ostfront in Diensten seines neuen Freundes des Grafen Chrojnicki. Das Schicksal muss selbstverständlich erneut zuschlagen, denn Leutnant Trotta stirbt nach der Mobilisierung zum Krieg, der er sich nicht entziehen kann, in den ersten Tagen des ersten Weltkriegs in einer Kampfhandlung. Heroisch ist der schwere Alkoholiker beim Wasserholen für die Kameraden gefallen (Danke Armin diese Analogie hätte ich fast übersehen.) So hat der Junge Trotta im Sinne seines Großvaters und der Familienehre endlich die geforderte Heldentat vollbracht, wenn sie auch total sinnlos war.
Stilistisch hat Roth zusätzlich zum spannenden Plot auch noch einen genialen roten Faden eingebaut. Kaiser Franz Josef, dem die Trottas ihren Adelstitel verdanken, kreuzt permanent die Wege der Familie, sei es durch persönliche kurze Treffen, sei es auch durch zufällige Anwesenheit am selben Ort, oder auch als Symbol der Trottas bildet der Kaiser die Verbindungsschnur durch den Roman. Diese Verbindung wird aber nicht an den Haaren herbeigezogen sondern sehr liebevoll in den Plot eingewebt. Einmal entführt Trotta ein Bild von Franz Josef aus dem Bordell, ein anderes Mal inspiziert der greise Kaiser seine Garnisonen an der Ostfront. Dort wird total liebevoll beschrieben, wie sich der Monarch zwei Stunden seines durchorganisierten Tages abknapst und um Mitternacht die Sterne beobachtet, bevor er am nächsten Tag das Regiment von Carl Joseph besucht und ein kurzes Gespräch mit dem jungen Leutnant führt. Am Ende wird die Klammer zwischen Kaiser und Familie Trotta am offensichtlichsten. Der Bezirkshauptmann, der Franz Josef auch äußerlich mit seinem Backenbart wie ein Ei dem anderen gleicht, und der Kaiser sterben nahezu gleichzeitig. Irgendwie kommt sogar ein kleiner sportlicher Wettkampf auf dem Totenbett zustande, wer als erstes in die ewigen Jagdgründe eingeht. Am Ende ist es aber egal, wer gewonnen hat, denn „beide konnten Österreich nicht überleben.“
„Der Kaiser war ein alter Mann. Er war der älteste Kaiser der Welt, Rings um ihn wandelte der Tod im Kreis, im Kreis und mähte und mähte. Schon war das ganze Feld leer, und nur der Kaiser, wie ein vergessener silberner Halm stand noch da und wartete“.
Fazit: Weltklasseklassiker absolute Leseempfehlung von mir! Ich glaube aber, aus der Perspektive eines älteren Erwachsenen, hat man viel mehr von Roths Weltkriegsliteratur, als wenn man in der Schulzeit gezwungen wurde.
January 18, 2016
...
So..I mean...
I'm as surprised as you are.
My particular edition of this book, a 1974-yellowed Penguin Modern Classics edition with pages falling out, boasts what is perhaps the most boring back summary ever written:
Grandfather, son and grandson are equally dependent on the [Austro-Hungarian] empire, it begins, the first for his ennoblement; the second for the civil virtues that make him a meticulous servant of admini...oh wait....did everyone STOP READING??! Well I DON'T FRICKIN BLAME YOU this sounds SO BORING. ~Old Europeans fighting wars. The struggle of one generation pushing back at the next. WHITE DUDES. Who cares.
Yeah, well -- and all the better because I picked it up expecting unrelinquishing tedium -- this is one of the best books I have ever read in my goddamn life.
It shows. It does not tell. It is a book that must be read carefully, with attention to detail and gesture, because if you expect obvious expression of anything, you will find none. The power of voice, of character, of shifting narrators and narrative, explodes off the pages. What is magic to one character is hell to another, and in that oh so stereotypically Austrian way, they can never explain what they really mean.
But between the lines, everything bleeds.
You could write a PhD thesis on this book, I thought breathlessly as I rushed to finish it -- you could write so much. You could write about the allegory of the end of empires, the generation gap, the press of progress, the absurdity of war, about death and dignity and honour and antiquated ideals and traditions ------ and you would never even touch all there is. Because this book bleeds. Not because it is pierced with war stories ---- because the emotion -- in a carefully-constructed chapter, a perfectly-placed sentence, a stunning gesture -- will make your heart race. And all that blood has to go somewhere.
I finished this book and I threw it across the room and I cried for ten minutes. My mom laughed at me for the duration as I snapped things like: "FUCK this stupid book it was supposed to be BORING" and "GODDAMN THESE OLD AUSTRIAN MEN" through tears. There is allegory; there is brilliance -- and there is the fire of sobs building at the back of your throat as you finish a book that's wrenched your heart new.
I mean I don't know. What the hell. I am cradling this book in my lap. There is no accounting for expectations.
So..I mean...
I'm as surprised as you are.
My particular edition of this book, a 1974-yellowed Penguin Modern Classics edition with pages falling out, boasts what is perhaps the most boring back summary ever written:
Grandfather, son and grandson are equally dependent on the [Austro-Hungarian] empire, it begins, the first for his ennoblement; the second for the civil virtues that make him a meticulous servant of admini...oh wait....did everyone STOP READING??! Well I DON'T FRICKIN BLAME YOU this sounds SO BORING. ~Old Europeans fighting wars. The struggle of one generation pushing back at the next. WHITE DUDES. Who cares.
Yeah, well -- and all the better because I picked it up expecting unrelinquishing tedium -- this is one of the best books I have ever read in my goddamn life.
It shows. It does not tell. It is a book that must be read carefully, with attention to detail and gesture, because if you expect obvious expression of anything, you will find none. The power of voice, of character, of shifting narrators and narrative, explodes off the pages. What is magic to one character is hell to another, and in that oh so stereotypically Austrian way, they can never explain what they really mean.
But between the lines, everything bleeds.
You could write a PhD thesis on this book, I thought breathlessly as I rushed to finish it -- you could write so much. You could write about the allegory of the end of empires, the generation gap, the press of progress, the absurdity of war, about death and dignity and honour and antiquated ideals and traditions ------ and you would never even touch all there is. Because this book bleeds. Not because it is pierced with war stories ---- because the emotion -- in a carefully-constructed chapter, a perfectly-placed sentence, a stunning gesture -- will make your heart race. And all that blood has to go somewhere.
I finished this book and I threw it across the room and I cried for ten minutes. My mom laughed at me for the duration as I snapped things like: "FUCK this stupid book it was supposed to be BORING" and "GODDAMN THESE OLD AUSTRIAN MEN" through tears. There is allegory; there is brilliance -- and there is the fire of sobs building at the back of your throat as you finish a book that's wrenched your heart new.
I mean I don't know. What the hell. I am cradling this book in my lap. There is no accounting for expectations.
October 4, 2022
Vaya clásico bueno. A pesar de las inmejorables referencias que tenía y de dejarlo pendiente desde hacía años, me había dejado llevar de nuevo por los prejuicios (yo que sé, el título, la portada, olor a rancio...tonterias).
Joseph Roth es un pedazo de escritor con todo el oficio y saber hacer de los grandes. Recordar que era coetáneo y amigo de Zweig, escribieron cosas juntos y tiene la misma valentía y heterodoxia para tratar sin miedo y cuestionarse algunos de los temas sagrados de principio de siglo, a saber: la función del ejército, las relaciones familiares, la guerra (en concreto la l Guerra Mundial en ciernes), el concepto de imperio, o la previsible caída del imperio austro-húngaro. Todo ello marcado con cierto existencialismo que posteriormente se desarrolló en toda Europa (y en Francia en concreto) con mayor intensidad.
La apararicion del protagonista, el teniente Trotta, ese personaje joven, frágil y superado por unos ascendientes tan poderosos como una abuelo héroe de guerra y un padre alto cargo del gobierno, hace que el lector sienta una atracción inmediata por el.
Joseph Roth es un pedazo de escritor con todo el oficio y saber hacer de los grandes. Recordar que era coetáneo y amigo de Zweig, escribieron cosas juntos y tiene la misma valentía y heterodoxia para tratar sin miedo y cuestionarse algunos de los temas sagrados de principio de siglo, a saber: la función del ejército, las relaciones familiares, la guerra (en concreto la l Guerra Mundial en ciernes), el concepto de imperio, o la previsible caída del imperio austro-húngaro. Todo ello marcado con cierto existencialismo que posteriormente se desarrolló en toda Europa (y en Francia en concreto) con mayor intensidad.
La apararicion del protagonista, el teniente Trotta, ese personaje joven, frágil y superado por unos ascendientes tan poderosos como una abuelo héroe de guerra y un padre alto cargo del gobierno, hace que el lector sienta una atracción inmediata por el.
December 19, 2025
None of the Von Trottas
Are bound to remain soldiers
All too hypersensitive
Delicate and pensive
From he declared a hero
To his grandson the great zero
And the Baron in between
With the whiskered old-man spleen
Neither feels at ease in
The uniform he’s squeezed in
That makes him speak a certain way
And keep his inner thoughts at bay
A father who can’t tell his son
I love you for that would sound wrong
A son who cannot tell his dad
The choice he made for him was bad
So he drinks the livelong day to weep
The tears that otherwise would keep
Growing like a rising tide
Slowly up his seawall’s side
Even the Emperor of Austria
Experiences nostalgia
And longing to be someone else
Is prone to melancholic spells
And once a Habsburg has collapsed
The whole world also will—perhaps
August 22, 2019
Beautifully written and therefore an outstanding translation by poet Michael Hofmann.
The last years of the Habsburg Empire under the long lived Emperor Franz Josef I. The fortunes of “The Monarchy” are paralleled with those of the (von) Trotta family, inextricably linked with the Habsburgs. TheTrottas originated from Slovenia, a distant outpost of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. We meet three generations of Trotta, grandfather, son and grandson. Grandfather saves the life of the young Franz Josef. Ever thereafter this modest young soldier, ennobled by a grateful Emperor (and the family then becomes von Trotta), is known as “ the Hero of Solferino”. The family is in the service of the Monarchy more than most of its subjects. The behaviours of the von Trottas will mirror the rigid protocol which runs down the Imperial spine. Their fortunes similarly reflect each other and intertwine at a time when even autocrats must change.
The second von Trotta, a District Commissioner, resembles Franz Josef: they look and act alike. Joseph Roth’s prose is masterly and the imaginative insight he gives us into the coping mechanisms of an aged Emperor who has exceeded his sell by date is inspired. It manages to reveal his “Imperial and Apostolic Majesty”, as Franz Josef was officially styled, as very human, almost mischievously so, certainly in his last years.
“The creases in his face were a tangled shrubbery where the decades lived...
He filled his eyes with an unnatural goodness, and with the true quality of imperial eyes: that of appearing to look at anyone who looked at the Emperor, and to greet anyone who greeted him. But in reality, the faces fluttered and flew past him, and his eyes remained fixed on the fine line that marks the border between life and death….Sometimes he feigned ignorance, and was glad to be enlightened about things he understood perfectly well. For with the cunning of small children and the old, he loved to mislead people. And he was glad of the vanity with which they kept trying to prove to themselves how much cleverer they were. He hid his cleverness in simplicity: for it is not right for an emperor to be as clever as his ministers. He would rather appear simple as too clever.”
The third von Trotta would dare to question the role in life assigned to him and take the consequences...
Both Emperor and District Commissioner have outlived their shared world, which is very rapidly changing; but each will carry on going through the motions to the bitter end, knowing in their heart of hearts that they have become irrelevant. Personal tragedy further unites them as does theRadetzky March which plays from time to time throughout the book. Written in 1848, the year Franz Josef ascended the throne, ostensibly to celebrate Field Marshall Radetzky von Radetz’s victory for Austria at the Battle of Custoza. But Johann Strauss the Elder’s composition was almost an alternative Imperial anthem. Victories for Austria would become a thing of the past and it would be on the losing side of the Great War. This and the rise of nationalism throughout the diverse empire would ensure its downfall. Published in 1932 just before Hitler’s rise to power, it reflects another age and world.
No apologies for the recommendation which will land in your in-tray!
The last years of the Habsburg Empire under the long lived Emperor Franz Josef I. The fortunes of “The Monarchy” are paralleled with those of the (von) Trotta family, inextricably linked with the Habsburgs. TheTrottas originated from Slovenia, a distant outpost of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. We meet three generations of Trotta, grandfather, son and grandson. Grandfather saves the life of the young Franz Josef. Ever thereafter this modest young soldier, ennobled by a grateful Emperor (and the family then becomes von Trotta), is known as “ the Hero of Solferino”. The family is in the service of the Monarchy more than most of its subjects. The behaviours of the von Trottas will mirror the rigid protocol which runs down the Imperial spine. Their fortunes similarly reflect each other and intertwine at a time when even autocrats must change.
The second von Trotta, a District Commissioner, resembles Franz Josef: they look and act alike. Joseph Roth’s prose is masterly and the imaginative insight he gives us into the coping mechanisms of an aged Emperor who has exceeded his sell by date is inspired. It manages to reveal his “Imperial and Apostolic Majesty”, as Franz Josef was officially styled, as very human, almost mischievously so, certainly in his last years.
“The creases in his face were a tangled shrubbery where the decades lived...
He filled his eyes with an unnatural goodness, and with the true quality of imperial eyes: that of appearing to look at anyone who looked at the Emperor, and to greet anyone who greeted him. But in reality, the faces fluttered and flew past him, and his eyes remained fixed on the fine line that marks the border between life and death….Sometimes he feigned ignorance, and was glad to be enlightened about things he understood perfectly well. For with the cunning of small children and the old, he loved to mislead people. And he was glad of the vanity with which they kept trying to prove to themselves how much cleverer they were. He hid his cleverness in simplicity: for it is not right for an emperor to be as clever as his ministers. He would rather appear simple as too clever.”
The third von Trotta would dare to question the role in life assigned to him and take the consequences...
Both Emperor and District Commissioner have outlived their shared world, which is very rapidly changing; but each will carry on going through the motions to the bitter end, knowing in their heart of hearts that they have become irrelevant. Personal tragedy further unites them as does theRadetzky March which plays from time to time throughout the book. Written in 1848, the year Franz Josef ascended the throne, ostensibly to celebrate Field Marshall Radetzky von Radetz’s victory for Austria at the Battle of Custoza. But Johann Strauss the Elder’s composition was almost an alternative Imperial anthem. Victories for Austria would become a thing of the past and it would be on the losing side of the Great War. This and the rise of nationalism throughout the diverse empire would ensure its downfall. Published in 1932 just before Hitler’s rise to power, it reflects another age and world.
No apologies for the recommendation which will land in your in-tray!
January 2, 2024
https://kansasbooks.blogspot.com/2024...
"Fue un puñetazo en la memoria de Carl Joseph, una llamada desde los tiempos perdidos. Recordó el camino que iba hacia la casilla de los gendarmes, la habitación de techo bajo, el camisón floreado, la cama ancha y blanda, percibió el olor de los prados y al mismo tiempo aquel perfume de reseda de la señora Slama."
Hacía tiempo que quería ponerme con esta novela de Joseph Roth, pero entre unas cosas y otras, siempre me daba algo de pereza, pero cómo me he dedicado esta última parte del año a conocer a los austríacos más de cerca, pensé que había llegado el momento, y la verdad es que me ha pillado un poco por sorpresa, no tanto por la temática, sino por la aproximación que hace el autor a sus personajes centrales. Ha sido el último libro de un año que no ha sido fácil para mí, bastante complicado en muchos aspectos, así que la opresiva melancolía del teniente Carl Joseph Trotta me ha pillado de lleno. En un mundo militar como éste, de encorsetados códigos de honor, masculinidad rampante y rigidez opresiva, me ha conmovido que haya sido capaz de crear a un hombre que en varios momentos llore con desesperación, ni síquiera íntimamente y a puerta cerrada como se esperaría, sino Roth lanza a un llanto angustioso a este teniente incluso en público. El panorama que describe Joseph Roth es muy inquietante en muchos momentos, totalmente claustrofóbico porque los hombres de esta novela, militares, oficiales en su mayoría pertenecientes a la aristocracia bajo la apariencia exterior de un uniforme que era un postureo máximo, con un sable que debía ser un engorro, se escondia un falsísimo espiritu de códigos de honor que era capaz de arruinar vidas enteras. La “Marcha Radetzky”, que lleva el nombre de una composición de Johann Strauss será usada por Joseph Roth como simbolo de los tiempos a la hora de acompañar (simbólicamente) a sus tres personajes protagonistas Trotta (abuelo, padre e hijo), tres personajes estrechamente ligados a su patria, una patria imperial real: el imperio austro-húngaro.
"Todas las mañanas esperaba, sabiendo también que esperaba en vano. Cada mañana sentía que le llegaba el esperado y temido silencio, y no que le faltase la esperada carta. "
Joseph Roth describe la desintegración del imperio austro-húngaro a través de tres hombres de la familia Trotta, y justo la comienza con el héroe de Solferino, hijo de un agricultor del pueblo esloveno de Sipolje. El capitán Trotta arriesga su propia vida para salvar la vida del emperador en plena batalla de Solferino, será ascendido y se construirá una leyenda a su alrededor que marcará los destinos de su hijo y su nieto con todo lo que esto implicará como presión social. Joseph Trotta, el héroe de Solferino, por una parte simbolizará uno de los pilares donde se asienta este imperio, el éjercito. Y su hijo, Franz, como jefe de distrito, simbolizará la fidelidad al servicio civil imperial. Sin embargo, es con Carl Joseph, el nieto del héroe de Solferino e hijo de Franz, cuando realmente comienza la desintegración. Hasta ahora, Joseph Roth había narrado a través de su familia lo que había significado la fidelidad ciega al Imperio de los Habsburgo pero el marcado contraste estará en Carl Joseph, que en ningún momento se identificará con esta vida militar: ha sido educado y preparado para servir sin cuestionar al emperador ni las instrucciones de su padre, siempre se ciñó a ellas y sin embargo, y aunque se beneficia de la protección del antiguo sistema y de sus privilegios, el análisis de su entorno, de la injusticia que comportan ciertas actitudes adquiridas en el mundo militar, irá convirtiendo su vida en una especie de sufrimiento crónico. “Se ha roto; algo se ha roto. Es como si oyera romperse algo, un golpe seco, astillas. ¡Se ha roto la confianza! Recordó esta frase que había leído en algún lado. Amistad rota. Sí, era una amistad rota. De repente comprendió que desde hacía varias semanas el comandante médico era su amigo; un amigo. Se habían visto todos los días." La fama del abuelo, de quien todo niño conoce la historia, aplasta al joven que, durante toda su vida, no fue más que el sucesor de aquel héroe. El pasado fue tan glorioso que Carl Joseph no sabe cómo encontrarse a sí mismo, y su lugar en el mundo. No puede salir de la sombra de sus antepasados. Lo único que le queda es cumplir con su deber. En el ejército, por supuesto. Pero no ha nacido para el ejército y se arrastra por las etapas de la vida militar con desgana, solo porque es lo que le han enseñado desde pequeño.
“Pero ahora, al pensar que tenía que volver, se sentia acosado como un prisionero por sus guardianes. Trotta se rebelaba contra las leyes militares que dominaban su vida. Llevaba obedeciendo desde su más tierna infancia. Y ya no quería obedecer más. Ciertamente no conocia el significado de la libertad...”
El teniente Carl Joseph Trotta es consciente de que en el futuro que está a punto de irrumpir, no habrá cabida para estos taconeos, duelos y esa fe ciega en un emperador que parece una entidad abstracta y es esta conciencia de que es un mundo abocado a desaparecer, lo que marcará este sufrimiento interno, no tanto por el hecho de que se encuentre cómodo en este mundo, todo lo contrario, sino porque ha perdido mucho en este camino, innecesariamente. La unidad del estado que estaba formada por eslovenos, checos, croatas, rumanos, húngaros, austríacos, además de los judíos a los que como en todas las épocas, se los veía con desdén, va deshaciéndose frente a los ojos de Carl Joseph, testigo ya de esta desintegración, hasta que estalla la guerra, buscada, casi como una excusa para que esta unidad se convierta en separación y masacre.
“ - Disponemos aun de un ejército, dijo el conde, señalando al teniente -y de funcionarios, señaló al jefe de Distrito. - Pero la monarquía se está destruyendo de vivo en vivo. Ya se nos ha destruido. Nuestro siglo no nos quiere ya. Los tiempos quieren crearse ahora Estados nacionales. Ya no se cree en Dios. La nueva religión es el nacionalismo. Los pueblos ya no van a la iglesia. Van a las asociaciones nacionalistas. La monarquía, nuestra monarquía, se basa en la religiosidad, en la creencia de que los Habsburgo fueron escogidos por la gracia de Dios para reinar sobre tales y tales pueblos, muchos pueblos de la cristiandad. El emperador de Austria-Hungría no se puede permitir que Dios le abandone. Pero ahora Dios le ha abandonado.”
Confieso que el personaje de Carl Joseph me ha producido mucha ternura y me ha conmovido en muchos momentos por esa especial sensibilidad de Joseph Roth a la hora de describirlo como una especie de hoja azotada por los vientos cambiantes de la época, y por ese continuo desajuste con la época que le ha tocado vivir y Roth tiene un estilo accesible, sin pretensiones, de una fínisima ironía, incluso a la hora de hablar de un tema siempre presente como es la muerte, a veces incluso rozando lo poético al usar algunos símbolos como el del canario o incluso la forma en la que retrata la amistad, o la añoranza por algo que no se sabe ni qué es..., describe los acontecimientos casi sin esfuerzo. Las mujeres apenas desempeñan un papel importante en este mundo de hombres, casi la de meros satélites, o la excusa perfecta para un duelo grauito, hombres continuamente esforzándose por simular una masculinidad parapetada tras pura apariencia y un código de honor que no vale para nada. Toda esta visión del mundo en el que Carl Joseph trata de encajar y le es imposible, es lo que dota a esta novela de una melancolía presente en cada página, quizás por la añoranza de Joseph Roth por ese estado multiétnico que fue el imperio austro-húngaro.
"Todo cuanto crecía necesitaba mucho tiempo para crecer, y también era necesario mucho tiempo para olvidar todo lo que desaparecía. Pero todo lo que había existido dejaba sus huellas y en aquel tiempo se vivía de los recuerdos de la misma forma que hoy se vive de la capacidad para olvidar rápida y profundamente."
♫♫♫ Piano Trio No 2 in E flat major - Franz Schubert ♫♫♫
"Fue un puñetazo en la memoria de Carl Joseph, una llamada desde los tiempos perdidos. Recordó el camino que iba hacia la casilla de los gendarmes, la habitación de techo bajo, el camisón floreado, la cama ancha y blanda, percibió el olor de los prados y al mismo tiempo aquel perfume de reseda de la señora Slama."
Hacía tiempo que quería ponerme con esta novela de Joseph Roth, pero entre unas cosas y otras, siempre me daba algo de pereza, pero cómo me he dedicado esta última parte del año a conocer a los austríacos más de cerca, pensé que había llegado el momento, y la verdad es que me ha pillado un poco por sorpresa, no tanto por la temática, sino por la aproximación que hace el autor a sus personajes centrales. Ha sido el último libro de un año que no ha sido fácil para mí, bastante complicado en muchos aspectos, así que la opresiva melancolía del teniente Carl Joseph Trotta me ha pillado de lleno. En un mundo militar como éste, de encorsetados códigos de honor, masculinidad rampante y rigidez opresiva, me ha conmovido que haya sido capaz de crear a un hombre que en varios momentos llore con desesperación, ni síquiera íntimamente y a puerta cerrada como se esperaría, sino Roth lanza a un llanto angustioso a este teniente incluso en público. El panorama que describe Joseph Roth es muy inquietante en muchos momentos, totalmente claustrofóbico porque los hombres de esta novela, militares, oficiales en su mayoría pertenecientes a la aristocracia bajo la apariencia exterior de un uniforme que era un postureo máximo, con un sable que debía ser un engorro, se escondia un falsísimo espiritu de códigos de honor que era capaz de arruinar vidas enteras. La “Marcha Radetzky”, que lleva el nombre de una composición de Johann Strauss será usada por Joseph Roth como simbolo de los tiempos a la hora de acompañar (simbólicamente) a sus tres personajes protagonistas Trotta (abuelo, padre e hijo), tres personajes estrechamente ligados a su patria, una patria imperial real: el imperio austro-húngaro.
"Todas las mañanas esperaba, sabiendo también que esperaba en vano. Cada mañana sentía que le llegaba el esperado y temido silencio, y no que le faltase la esperada carta. "
Joseph Roth describe la desintegración del imperio austro-húngaro a través de tres hombres de la familia Trotta, y justo la comienza con el héroe de Solferino, hijo de un agricultor del pueblo esloveno de Sipolje. El capitán Trotta arriesga su propia vida para salvar la vida del emperador en plena batalla de Solferino, será ascendido y se construirá una leyenda a su alrededor que marcará los destinos de su hijo y su nieto con todo lo que esto implicará como presión social. Joseph Trotta, el héroe de Solferino, por una parte simbolizará uno de los pilares donde se asienta este imperio, el éjercito. Y su hijo, Franz, como jefe de distrito, simbolizará la fidelidad al servicio civil imperial. Sin embargo, es con Carl Joseph, el nieto del héroe de Solferino e hijo de Franz, cuando realmente comienza la desintegración. Hasta ahora, Joseph Roth había narrado a través de su familia lo que había significado la fidelidad ciega al Imperio de los Habsburgo pero el marcado contraste estará en Carl Joseph, que en ningún momento se identificará con esta vida militar: ha sido educado y preparado para servir sin cuestionar al emperador ni las instrucciones de su padre, siempre se ciñó a ellas y sin embargo, y aunque se beneficia de la protección del antiguo sistema y de sus privilegios, el análisis de su entorno, de la injusticia que comportan ciertas actitudes adquiridas en el mundo militar, irá convirtiendo su vida en una especie de sufrimiento crónico. “Se ha roto; algo se ha roto. Es como si oyera romperse algo, un golpe seco, astillas. ¡Se ha roto la confianza! Recordó esta frase que había leído en algún lado. Amistad rota. Sí, era una amistad rota. De repente comprendió que desde hacía varias semanas el comandante médico era su amigo; un amigo. Se habían visto todos los días." La fama del abuelo, de quien todo niño conoce la historia, aplasta al joven que, durante toda su vida, no fue más que el sucesor de aquel héroe. El pasado fue tan glorioso que Carl Joseph no sabe cómo encontrarse a sí mismo, y su lugar en el mundo. No puede salir de la sombra de sus antepasados. Lo único que le queda es cumplir con su deber. En el ejército, por supuesto. Pero no ha nacido para el ejército y se arrastra por las etapas de la vida militar con desgana, solo porque es lo que le han enseñado desde pequeño.
“Pero ahora, al pensar que tenía que volver, se sentia acosado como un prisionero por sus guardianes. Trotta se rebelaba contra las leyes militares que dominaban su vida. Llevaba obedeciendo desde su más tierna infancia. Y ya no quería obedecer más. Ciertamente no conocia el significado de la libertad...”
El teniente Carl Joseph Trotta es consciente de que en el futuro que está a punto de irrumpir, no habrá cabida para estos taconeos, duelos y esa fe ciega en un emperador que parece una entidad abstracta y es esta conciencia de que es un mundo abocado a desaparecer, lo que marcará este sufrimiento interno, no tanto por el hecho de que se encuentre cómodo en este mundo, todo lo contrario, sino porque ha perdido mucho en este camino, innecesariamente. La unidad del estado que estaba formada por eslovenos, checos, croatas, rumanos, húngaros, austríacos, además de los judíos a los que como en todas las épocas, se los veía con desdén, va deshaciéndose frente a los ojos de Carl Joseph, testigo ya de esta desintegración, hasta que estalla la guerra, buscada, casi como una excusa para que esta unidad se convierta en separación y masacre.
“ - Disponemos aun de un ejército, dijo el conde, señalando al teniente -y de funcionarios, señaló al jefe de Distrito. - Pero la monarquía se está destruyendo de vivo en vivo. Ya se nos ha destruido. Nuestro siglo no nos quiere ya. Los tiempos quieren crearse ahora Estados nacionales. Ya no se cree en Dios. La nueva religión es el nacionalismo. Los pueblos ya no van a la iglesia. Van a las asociaciones nacionalistas. La monarquía, nuestra monarquía, se basa en la religiosidad, en la creencia de que los Habsburgo fueron escogidos por la gracia de Dios para reinar sobre tales y tales pueblos, muchos pueblos de la cristiandad. El emperador de Austria-Hungría no se puede permitir que Dios le abandone. Pero ahora Dios le ha abandonado.”
Confieso que el personaje de Carl Joseph me ha producido mucha ternura y me ha conmovido en muchos momentos por esa especial sensibilidad de Joseph Roth a la hora de describirlo como una especie de hoja azotada por los vientos cambiantes de la época, y por ese continuo desajuste con la época que le ha tocado vivir y Roth tiene un estilo accesible, sin pretensiones, de una fínisima ironía, incluso a la hora de hablar de un tema siempre presente como es la muerte, a veces incluso rozando lo poético al usar algunos símbolos como el del canario o incluso la forma en la que retrata la amistad, o la añoranza por algo que no se sabe ni qué es..., describe los acontecimientos casi sin esfuerzo. Las mujeres apenas desempeñan un papel importante en este mundo de hombres, casi la de meros satélites, o la excusa perfecta para un duelo grauito, hombres continuamente esforzándose por simular una masculinidad parapetada tras pura apariencia y un código de honor que no vale para nada. Toda esta visión del mundo en el que Carl Joseph trata de encajar y le es imposible, es lo que dota a esta novela de una melancolía presente en cada página, quizás por la añoranza de Joseph Roth por ese estado multiétnico que fue el imperio austro-húngaro.
"Todo cuanto crecía necesitaba mucho tiempo para crecer, y también era necesario mucho tiempo para olvidar todo lo que desaparecía. Pero todo lo que había existido dejaba sus huellas y en aquel tiempo se vivía de los recuerdos de la misma forma que hoy se vive de la capacidad para olvidar rápida y profundamente."
♫♫♫ Piano Trio No 2 in E flat major - Franz Schubert ♫♫♫
April 24, 2025
The Radetzky March
Late in the United States Civil War, in July, 1864, a small Confederate army under Jubal Early attacked Washington, D.C. President Lincoln watched the attack from Fort Stevens and looked at the position through field glasses. Lieutenant Oliver Wendell Holmes is said to have shouted at the president, "Get down, you damn fool!" Many years later, Holmes would serve as a Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. This alleged incident has become a famous Civil War story while most scholars doubt that it happened.
I was reminded of the Holmes/Lincoln story in the opening scene of "The Radetzky March", Josef Roth's great novel. During the 1859 Battle of Solferino, the young emperor Franz Joseph stands in front of the line and exposes his person to view the enemy. Lieutenant Joseph Trotta, a man of humble birth, jumps up, shields the emperor, and takes a bullet in the shoulder. He saves the emperor's life. The grateful Franz Joseph confers nobility on the Trotta family. Roth's novel tells the story of Trotta who becomes known as the "Hero of Solferino", his son, and his grandson. At one point in the story, Trotta objects to the embellishment of his role in history books given to children. The story becomes embellished in a way, perhaps, comparable to Holmes, who did not try to get Lincoln out of harm's way at Fort Stevens.
"The Radetzky March" was written in 1932 and constitutes a look back at the Austria-Hungarian Empire prior to its dissolution during the Great War. Most of the story takes place in the years before the outbreak of the War. Roth weaves the story of the Empire into the story of the Trottas. The primary character is Carl Joseph Trotta, the grandson of the "Hero of Solferino" who becomes an army lieutenant. His father, who becomes a high public official, the District Commissioner, is also an important figure. The "Hero of Solferino" himself appears as a great influence throughout the book but after the opening pages assumes an almost misty, legendary status.
The enoblement of the Trottas, meant as a reward of gratitude, leads to their demise. The three generations do not handle their status well. There is a rigidity in their conduct, an undue and awkward formality, and a lack of awareness on the part of each of the three Trottas of feeling and self. Culminating in the young lieutenant, Carl Joseph, the Trottas show a lack of commitment to the lives they have and a tendency to wander and to lack a sense of purpose in life. The individual stories of the Trottas mirror the history of the Empire which was large, diverse, and increasingly disunited under the aging Franz Joseph. In Roth's book, the Empire had ceased to exist as a cohesive entity before the outbreak of WW I. It had deteriorated due to its sheer size and diversity, to the rise of nationalism, and to the presence of many sharply competing ideologies.
Roth's book moves deliberately with characters, scenes, and places described in great detail. The book meanders, much as did the Empire. Roth describes the dull, unfulfilled life of Carl Joseph, primarily, with his lack of interest in the military, his brief affairs and inability to form a deep relationship with a woman, and his descent into alcohol and debt. The book describes many different places and people in the Empire from Vienna to small towns to remote outposts on the border with Russia.
The book has a melancholy, reflective tone. The author understands the demise of the Empire and sees its inevitability. Without overlooking its flaws and weaknesses, Roth is fond of the old Empire and the Emperor and its attempt to provide culture, unity, and stability for its broad component elements. He appears skeptical of the nationalism and individualism that virtually brought the Empire to an end before its defeat in the Great War.
The book can be read as a story of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and also as a story of the demise of other established orders or beliefs, political, social, or religious. The sense of the book, for me, is of the value of shared value and loyalty in the face of diversity and change. There is a sense of the value of cosmopolitanism in the book and of the Empire's stumbling attempt to bring a degree of liberality and unity to people of widely divergent backgrounds and beliefs. With the demise of the Empire and the rise of nationalistic, radical elements following the Great War, Roth had reason to be concerned. Perhaps, in a broad way there is a lesson in this book for our polarized, divided country as well. In any event, "The Radetzky March" in an outstanding, sad, and beautifully written novel. I read the book in this translation by the poet Michael Hoffman. Other translations are also available.
Robin Friedman
Late in the United States Civil War, in July, 1864, a small Confederate army under Jubal Early attacked Washington, D.C. President Lincoln watched the attack from Fort Stevens and looked at the position through field glasses. Lieutenant Oliver Wendell Holmes is said to have shouted at the president, "Get down, you damn fool!" Many years later, Holmes would serve as a Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. This alleged incident has become a famous Civil War story while most scholars doubt that it happened.
I was reminded of the Holmes/Lincoln story in the opening scene of "The Radetzky March", Josef Roth's great novel. During the 1859 Battle of Solferino, the young emperor Franz Joseph stands in front of the line and exposes his person to view the enemy. Lieutenant Joseph Trotta, a man of humble birth, jumps up, shields the emperor, and takes a bullet in the shoulder. He saves the emperor's life. The grateful Franz Joseph confers nobility on the Trotta family. Roth's novel tells the story of Trotta who becomes known as the "Hero of Solferino", his son, and his grandson. At one point in the story, Trotta objects to the embellishment of his role in history books given to children. The story becomes embellished in a way, perhaps, comparable to Holmes, who did not try to get Lincoln out of harm's way at Fort Stevens.
"The Radetzky March" was written in 1932 and constitutes a look back at the Austria-Hungarian Empire prior to its dissolution during the Great War. Most of the story takes place in the years before the outbreak of the War. Roth weaves the story of the Empire into the story of the Trottas. The primary character is Carl Joseph Trotta, the grandson of the "Hero of Solferino" who becomes an army lieutenant. His father, who becomes a high public official, the District Commissioner, is also an important figure. The "Hero of Solferino" himself appears as a great influence throughout the book but after the opening pages assumes an almost misty, legendary status.
The enoblement of the Trottas, meant as a reward of gratitude, leads to their demise. The three generations do not handle their status well. There is a rigidity in their conduct, an undue and awkward formality, and a lack of awareness on the part of each of the three Trottas of feeling and self. Culminating in the young lieutenant, Carl Joseph, the Trottas show a lack of commitment to the lives they have and a tendency to wander and to lack a sense of purpose in life. The individual stories of the Trottas mirror the history of the Empire which was large, diverse, and increasingly disunited under the aging Franz Joseph. In Roth's book, the Empire had ceased to exist as a cohesive entity before the outbreak of WW I. It had deteriorated due to its sheer size and diversity, to the rise of nationalism, and to the presence of many sharply competing ideologies.
Roth's book moves deliberately with characters, scenes, and places described in great detail. The book meanders, much as did the Empire. Roth describes the dull, unfulfilled life of Carl Joseph, primarily, with his lack of interest in the military, his brief affairs and inability to form a deep relationship with a woman, and his descent into alcohol and debt. The book describes many different places and people in the Empire from Vienna to small towns to remote outposts on the border with Russia.
The book has a melancholy, reflective tone. The author understands the demise of the Empire and sees its inevitability. Without overlooking its flaws and weaknesses, Roth is fond of the old Empire and the Emperor and its attempt to provide culture, unity, and stability for its broad component elements. He appears skeptical of the nationalism and individualism that virtually brought the Empire to an end before its defeat in the Great War.
The book can be read as a story of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and also as a story of the demise of other established orders or beliefs, political, social, or religious. The sense of the book, for me, is of the value of shared value and loyalty in the face of diversity and change. There is a sense of the value of cosmopolitanism in the book and of the Empire's stumbling attempt to bring a degree of liberality and unity to people of widely divergent backgrounds and beliefs. With the demise of the Empire and the rise of nationalistic, radical elements following the Great War, Roth had reason to be concerned. Perhaps, in a broad way there is a lesson in this book for our polarized, divided country as well. In any event, "The Radetzky March" in an outstanding, sad, and beautifully written novel. I read the book in this translation by the poet Michael Hoffman. Other translations are also available.
Robin Friedman
August 29, 2017
Η παρακμή της αυτοκρατορίας των Αψβούργων, μέσα από την ιστορία μιας οικογένειας. Πρόκειται για βιβλίο του "Κανόνα", κυρίως για τους γερμανόφωνους, και όχι μόνο. Θεωρείται το αριστούργημα του J. Roth, αν και κατά την ταπεινή μου άποψη δεν μπορεί να συγκριθεί με τους "Μπούντεμπροκς" (παραπέμπει θεματικά, τρόπον τινά). Θα μπορούσε να θεωρηθεί ως εξαίρετη επιλογή/ εισαγωγή, προτού κάποιος/α δοκιμάσει την τύχη του με το Απόλυτο Αριστούργημα του Τ. Μαν.
December 30, 2024
“Death hovered over them, and they were completely unfamiliar with the feeling. They had been born in peacetime and became officers in peaceful drills and maneuvers. They had no idea that several years later every last one of them, with no exception, would encounter death. Their ears were not sharp enough to catch the whirring gears of the great hidden mills that were already grinding out the Great War.”
A pungent evocation of a crumbling empire’s doom, but few of the characters really came to life for me, and even with the frequent portents of impending collapse, I longed for something, anything, to happen and compensate for the tedium of reading about peacetime garrison duty (nothing does happen until the very end). I did like the austere yet lyrical style; there were several striking pieces of imagery that made the aspiring writer in me jealous.
A pungent evocation of a crumbling empire’s doom, but few of the characters really came to life for me, and even with the frequent portents of impending collapse, I longed for something, anything, to happen and compensate for the tedium of reading about peacetime garrison duty (nothing does happen until the very end). I did like the austere yet lyrical style; there were several striking pieces of imagery that made the aspiring writer in me jealous.
November 6, 2021
La caída de un imperio, la oscuridad crepuscular que va envolviendo a sus ciudades, habitantes, dignatarios… eso siempre ha sido materia literaria. En este caso, Joseph Roth hace arte en esta crónica del final de la monarquía austro-húngara, que se desintegró a raíz de la primera guerra mundial. Este tema, ya de por sí interesante, está envuelto en el encanto de la Viena de principio de siglo, de los valses, los cafés, las modas y las nuevas corrientes de pensamiento – de todo hay en esta narración. Un tercer atractivo es el estilo de Roth, que nos embelesa con la simple descripción de un plato de sopa:
Vagaba por los platos un brillo cálido, dorado; era la sopa: sopa de fideos. Transparente, con fideos pequeños, suaves, entrelazados, amarillos.
Todas las descripciones son magistrales y nos trasladan a una época llena de encanto decadente:
Las señoras fueron en furgones cubiertos con lonas. Llevaban vestidos veraniegos sobre rígidos corsés y grandes sombreros con pájaros disecados. Sonreían a pesar del calor, y cada una era una fresca brisa. Sonreían con los ojos, los labios, los pechos prisioneros detrás de vestidos olorosos y cerrados a cal y canto; sonreían con los guantes de encaje que les llegaban al codo, y con los diminutos pañuelos en la mano, con los que a veces daban ligeros toquecitos en la nariz, como si temieran romperla.
Eso sí, esta obra no es para lectores con prisa, la acción es lenta y predominan las descripciones, aunque también hay diálogos magistrales. Planea una sensación de absurdo, de impotencia ante un desastre que se aproxima y que no se sabe cómo afrontar.
La historia sigue a la familia Trotta, en especial al joven teniente Carl Joseph, nieto de un oficial que salvó la vida del Emperador en la batalla de Solferino en 1859. A raíz de esta acción los Trotta fueron distinguidos con un título nobiliario y gozaron de la protección de Francisco José.
A través de la vida militar del joven Trotta, conocemos a los oficiales que son la espina dorsal del Imperio – vacíos de ideales llenan su ocio con el juego, la bebida y asuntos galantes que a menudo acaban en trágicos duelos. Al mismo tiempo, el emperador es una cáscara vacía, un simulacro de lo que una vez fue, lleno de ominosos pensamientos:
Durante unos minutos se sintió orgulloso de su ejército y también durante unos minutos sintió pena por su pérdida. Porque lo veía ya destruido y disuelto, esparcido entre las muchas naciones de su vasto imperio. Veía ponerse el gran sol dorado de los Habsburgo, que estallaba en el fondo abismal del universo, fragmentándose en muchos diminutos soles que iluminarían como astros independientes las independientes naciones.
Los acordes brillantes y llenos de colorido de la marcha Radetzky, de la misma manera que los uniformes militares, llenos de plumas y adornos inútiles, tan anacrónicos e incómodos en el tiempo que se adivina, llenan toda la novela, que es un auténtico retablo de una época de cambio. Se la ha comparado a ‘Guerra y paz’, pero aquí hay muy pocas batallas, es más bien un estudio psicológico de una época, a través de unos personajes que son poco más que marionetas vacías con una dependencia irracional respecto a la figura del emperador.
La lectura no es fácil; aunque está muy bien escrita, a ratos se puede hacer lenta y algo pesada y es difícil empatizar con los personajes. Pero vale la pena.
Vagaba por los platos un brillo cálido, dorado; era la sopa: sopa de fideos. Transparente, con fideos pequeños, suaves, entrelazados, amarillos.
Todas las descripciones son magistrales y nos trasladan a una época llena de encanto decadente:
Las señoras fueron en furgones cubiertos con lonas. Llevaban vestidos veraniegos sobre rígidos corsés y grandes sombreros con pájaros disecados. Sonreían a pesar del calor, y cada una era una fresca brisa. Sonreían con los ojos, los labios, los pechos prisioneros detrás de vestidos olorosos y cerrados a cal y canto; sonreían con los guantes de encaje que les llegaban al codo, y con los diminutos pañuelos en la mano, con los que a veces daban ligeros toquecitos en la nariz, como si temieran romperla.
Eso sí, esta obra no es para lectores con prisa, la acción es lenta y predominan las descripciones, aunque también hay diálogos magistrales. Planea una sensación de absurdo, de impotencia ante un desastre que se aproxima y que no se sabe cómo afrontar.
La historia sigue a la familia Trotta, en especial al joven teniente Carl Joseph, nieto de un oficial que salvó la vida del Emperador en la batalla de Solferino en 1859. A raíz de esta acción los Trotta fueron distinguidos con un título nobiliario y gozaron de la protección de Francisco José.
A través de la vida militar del joven Trotta, conocemos a los oficiales que son la espina dorsal del Imperio – vacíos de ideales llenan su ocio con el juego, la bebida y asuntos galantes que a menudo acaban en trágicos duelos. Al mismo tiempo, el emperador es una cáscara vacía, un simulacro de lo que una vez fue, lleno de ominosos pensamientos:
Durante unos minutos se sintió orgulloso de su ejército y también durante unos minutos sintió pena por su pérdida. Porque lo veía ya destruido y disuelto, esparcido entre las muchas naciones de su vasto imperio. Veía ponerse el gran sol dorado de los Habsburgo, que estallaba en el fondo abismal del universo, fragmentándose en muchos diminutos soles que iluminarían como astros independientes las independientes naciones.
Los acordes brillantes y llenos de colorido de la marcha Radetzky, de la misma manera que los uniformes militares, llenos de plumas y adornos inútiles, tan anacrónicos e incómodos en el tiempo que se adivina, llenan toda la novela, que es un auténtico retablo de una época de cambio. Se la ha comparado a ‘Guerra y paz’, pero aquí hay muy pocas batallas, es más bien un estudio psicológico de una época, a través de unos personajes que son poco más que marionetas vacías con una dependencia irracional respecto a la figura del emperador.
La lectura no es fácil; aunque está muy bien escrita, a ratos se puede hacer lenta y algo pesada y es difícil empatizar con los personajes. Pero vale la pena.
Read
July 25, 2021Reading Beter wordt het niet. Een reis door het Habsburgse Rijk en de Europese Unie, Caroline de Gruyter mentioned Joseph Roth several times, reminding me that I had never read any of his novels not even Radetzky March, fortunately the library was kindly able to supply me with a copy to remedy this gap in my reading.
Maybe I could write a lot about this novel, though I feel it is possibly best not to do so. My short review would be that it is: 453 pages of the Titanic going down while the band endlessly plays the Radeztsy march. But I can hardly leave it as that, as it sounds too negative.
It is the curious saga of three generations of men of the noble Trotta family (Grandfather, father, grandson) which mostly concerns the grandson, while he is our point of view character he is often on the sidelines of the action. The physical similarity of the father to his Imperial Majesty, kaiser Franz Josef is stressed , he was the central figure of the Austrian Hapsburg Empire, but a figure who was also symbolic - indeed within this novel even fictionalised for political purposes - and so as the Trottas can be observers in this novel which may not be about them, the Emperor too was, or appears, sidelined from the power that he represented. The Emperor was a lonely figure - his son had committed suicide and his wife, the Empress Sisi had been murdered, the Trottas too are a lonely bunch, their wives die quickly, and most of the people the grandson builds a connection with die or he can only come occasionally into contact with, so we have this powerful sense of this very visible, public figures who are isolated in the midst of people.
The masculine focus and the near complete absence of female characters suggest a certain sterility and unreality - this can't be a sustainable society unless like Jupiter this man can start to give birth from their heads to the next generation.
The central myth of the novel is that grandfather Trotta saved the Emperor's life, but there was a slightly Philip K. Dick feeling that perhaps this was a terrible mistake which had distorted reality, that the kaiser and the empire that depended upon him were the living dead, carrying on through inertia and lacking a real life of their own. Which is emphasised by the fact that the emperor has become a fictional character within his own lifetime - he remembers as one night he looks dreamily out of a window at distant light that the school books say that he is not a Romantic. There is an official lie too, propagated through school books, about how Grandfather Trotta saved the Emperor's life which romanticises and fantasises the situation - this is an empire that is standing not on feet of clay, but on feet made of stories.
The Trottas were originally a Slovene family, but due to their promotion through the imperial service they lost their born identity and have become German speakers dependant upon this empire and Emperor who are we see effectively dead. Symbolism, imagery and description throughout the novel emphasises this. At times I felt this was a bit too much as it felt as though Roth had shovelled everything into his book without discrimination. Grandson Trotta joins a regiment stationed in a small town at the end of the railway line, there one of the two main roads runs from the railway station direct to the cemetery - we are continually reminded of finality, that this is an empire that is running out of road, of death, the Radetzky march itself suggests that - the music composed in honour of the aged general who lead Austrian troops against the rebellious Hungarians in 1848/9. At times I thought this was slightly too much the imagery and symbolism feels relentless at times, how about on page 187 the preparation for a duel, sitting in the kitchen of a bar - picture of the Kaiser on the wall, Radetzky march playing. The doctor who is due to fight the duel is shortsighted and determined to fight a duel without his glasses on. He is drinking Slivovitz, and is pleased to have discovered string liquor before his death, referring to himself in the past tense already. Yes this is Austro-Hungary before 1914, drunk and ready to go into a fatal war.
Roth writing in 1932 comes across as having an ambivalent attitude to the old empire, it was ridiculous and comical, but there is no optimism about what comes after it.
For all the sense of impending doom, this is also a mildly comic novel, the chorus of frogs I presume alludes to Aristophanes, the Father thinks of his substantial meals as Spartan, the grandson readily signs himself as a guarantor for his Captain's gambling debts, though neither have anyway of ever paying for them - the Polish noble who has a customised insult for every nationality of Empire. The father who is the senior administrator for a region who prides himself on knowing what is going on, who can't remember the most basic facts about the men he works with, to the point that he is greatly surprising to find out that his old retainer was not really called Jacques after all - and when he tries to hire a new servant it is no the condition that the new man allows himself to be called Jacques as well.
By the end of the book the first world war has begun in grand style with an initial advance followed by a slightly more rapid retreat. I wondered if here Roth was in dialogue with Rilke's 1912 The Lay of the Love and Death of Cornet Christopher Rilke ? The advice of one character to the grandson is "Ich ratte dir, verlass diese Armee!" (p.151), but in the face of an inevitable catastrophe even living the army would provide no escape.
Maybe I could write a lot about this novel, though I feel it is possibly best not to do so. My short review would be that it is: 453 pages of the Titanic going down while the band endlessly plays the Radeztsy march. But I can hardly leave it as that, as it sounds too negative.
It is the curious saga of three generations of men of the noble Trotta family (Grandfather, father, grandson) which mostly concerns the grandson, while he is our point of view character he is often on the sidelines of the action. The physical similarity of the father to his Imperial Majesty, kaiser Franz Josef is stressed , he was the central figure of the Austrian Hapsburg Empire, but a figure who was also symbolic - indeed within this novel even fictionalised for political purposes - and so as the Trottas can be observers in this novel which may not be about them, the Emperor too was, or appears, sidelined from the power that he represented. The Emperor was a lonely figure - his son had committed suicide and his wife, the Empress Sisi had been murdered, the Trottas too are a lonely bunch, their wives die quickly, and most of the people the grandson builds a connection with die or he can only come occasionally into contact with, so we have this powerful sense of this very visible, public figures who are isolated in the midst of people.
The masculine focus and the near complete absence of female characters suggest a certain sterility and unreality - this can't be a sustainable society unless like Jupiter this man can start to give birth from their heads to the next generation.
The central myth of the novel is that grandfather Trotta saved the Emperor's life, but there was a slightly Philip K. Dick feeling that perhaps this was a terrible mistake which had distorted reality, that the kaiser and the empire that depended upon him were the living dead, carrying on through inertia and lacking a real life of their own. Which is emphasised by the fact that the emperor has become a fictional character within his own lifetime - he remembers as one night he looks dreamily out of a window at distant light that the school books say that he is not a Romantic. There is an official lie too, propagated through school books, about how Grandfather Trotta saved the Emperor's life which romanticises and fantasises the situation - this is an empire that is standing not on feet of clay, but on feet made of stories.
The Trottas were originally a Slovene family, but due to their promotion through the imperial service they lost their born identity and have become German speakers dependant upon this empire and Emperor who are we see effectively dead. Symbolism, imagery and description throughout the novel emphasises this. At times I felt this was a bit too much as it felt as though Roth had shovelled everything into his book without discrimination. Grandson Trotta joins a regiment stationed in a small town at the end of the railway line, there one of the two main roads runs from the railway station direct to the cemetery - we are continually reminded of finality, that this is an empire that is running out of road, of death, the Radetzky march itself suggests that - the music composed in honour of the aged general who lead Austrian troops against the rebellious Hungarians in 1848/9. At times I thought this was slightly too much the imagery and symbolism feels relentless at times, how about on page 187 the preparation for a duel, sitting in the kitchen of a bar - picture of the Kaiser on the wall, Radetzky march playing. The doctor who is due to fight the duel is shortsighted and determined to fight a duel without his glasses on. He is drinking Slivovitz, and is pleased to have discovered string liquor before his death, referring to himself in the past tense already. Yes this is Austro-Hungary before 1914, drunk and ready to go into a fatal war.
Roth writing in 1932 comes across as having an ambivalent attitude to the old empire, it was ridiculous and comical, but there is no optimism about what comes after it.
For all the sense of impending doom, this is also a mildly comic novel, the chorus of frogs I presume alludes to Aristophanes, the Father thinks of his substantial meals as Spartan, the grandson readily signs himself as a guarantor for his Captain's gambling debts, though neither have anyway of ever paying for them - the Polish noble who has a customised insult for every nationality of Empire. The father who is the senior administrator for a region who prides himself on knowing what is going on, who can't remember the most basic facts about the men he works with, to the point that he is greatly surprising to find out that his old retainer was not really called Jacques after all - and when he tries to hire a new servant it is no the condition that the new man allows himself to be called Jacques as well.
By the end of the book the first world war has begun in grand style with an initial advance followed by a slightly more rapid retreat. I wondered if here Roth was in dialogue with Rilke's 1912 The Lay of the Love and Death of Cornet Christopher Rilke ? The advice of one character to the grandson is "Ich ratte dir, verlass diese Armee!" (p.151), but in the face of an inevitable catastrophe even living the army would provide no escape.
March 22, 2023
Йозеф Рот был большим приверженцем Австро-Венгерской Империи. В своем романе «Марш Радецкого», пропитанном ностальгическими нотками старой Вены, он рассказывает о трех поколениях семьи фон Тротта, как символическое изображение этапов правлении Франца-Иосифа и судьбы всей империи. Родоначальник новой дворянской фамилии, происходящий из словенских крестьян, Йозеф спасает жизнь императору в битве при Сольферино и получает титул. О нем пишут в школьных хрестоматиях, как о подвиге, на примере которого детей нужно учить патриотизму и готовности жертвовать собой во имя родины. Все бы ничего, но в хрестоматии указали, что свой подвиг он совершил на лошади, а он был пехотинец. Он был до смешного честен, что в погоне за правдой дошел до самого императора, который не нашел ничего удивительного, что подвиг слегка приукрасили. «Лгут вообще немало», - в утешение сказал ему император. Но за такую честность, он пожаловал ему титул барона и деньги. Вскользь Рот вставляет весьма примечательный эпизод, когда сын Франц обращается к барону на словенском, но получает ответ на немецком. У Троттов весьма деспотичный стиль общения отцов с сыновьями, возможно, так было во всей стране того времени. Йозеф фон Тротта не захотел военного поприща своему отпрыску. Сын героя битвы при Сольферино, Франц, отучился на юриста, стал чиновником, окружным начальником и символизирует бюрократию, оплот монархии. Жизнь окружного начальника упорядочена и проходит по однажды и навсегда заведенному ритуалу и распорядку. Внук героя битвы при Сольферино Карл Йозеф, напротив волею деспотичного отца отправляется в кадетское училище и становится кадровым военным. В первые годы отец держит его в ежовых рукавицах, не позволяя иметь достаточно свободы. Роман наполнен символами, как внешними, предназначенными для читателей, так и внутренними, которые являются значимыми для героев. Таким внутренним символом являет портрет родоначальника династии, написанный в годы юности приятелем Франца, Мозер, С этим портретом мысленно разговаривают, глядя на него, представляют, как бы поступил старый барон – это как голос или мерило совести, образец для подражания. Другим внутренним и внешним символом является исполняемый по воскресеньям Марш Радецкого Штрауса. Это символ всей империи, ее расцвета и славы. С годами, по мере взросления лейтенант становится более свободен в своих поступках, но так же почтителен с родителем. Несмотря на внешнюю безэмоциональность, отец и сын очень привязаны друг к другу. Так, когда Карл Йозеф поиздержался частью на карточные долги, частью на женщин на чудовищные 7250 крон, отец дошел до императора, который благосклонно разрешил это дело.
И все же самой главной идеей этого романа является то, что империя себя изжила и начала путь упадка, разрушения и краха задолго до убийства наследника престола Франца Фердинанда в Сараево и начала Первой мировой войны. Свидетельством тому являлись факты протеста бедных слоев населения, который подавлял Карл Йозеф, а также многократно упоминаемые в романе факты, с одной стороны, роста национального самосознания, такие как объединение в национальные союзы, требование прав, (например, фон Тротта-отец пренебрежительно относился к отдельным национальностям, «автономиям», считал их крикунами, поджигателями, предвыборными агитаторами, и требовал от окружного комиссара разгонять все эти собрания, особенно если они собирались принять резолюцию, страшась похожего слова «революция»), использование своего языка при общении, особенно в присутствии австрийцев, а, с другой стороны, негативные факты бытового национализма и, особенно, антисемитизма, навешивания ярлыков и наличия предубеждений. Австрийская империя объединяла огромное количество народов и даже обращение императора к своим подданным было во множественном числе: «Народы!». Показательны настроения людей на известие о смерти наследника – они никак не хотят отказываться от праздника и даже вальсируют под траурный марш. Этот эпизод, с никак не могущей разразиться грозой, создает очень сильный акцент. С началом Первой мировой войны начинается полный и неотвратимый крах империи, символизируемый в романе смертью сначала сына, затем смертью Франца-Иосифа, и через три дня отца фон Тротта.
И все же самой главной идеей этого романа является то, что империя себя изжила и начала путь упадка, разрушения и краха задолго до убийства наследника престола Франца Фердинанда в Сараево и начала Первой мировой войны. Свидетельством тому являлись факты протеста бедных слоев населения, который подавлял Карл Йозеф, а также многократно упоминаемые в романе факты, с одной стороны, роста национального самосознания, такие как объединение в национальные союзы, требование прав, (например, фон Тротта-отец пренебрежительно относился к отдельным национальностям, «автономиям», считал их крикунами, поджигателями, предвыборными агитаторами, и требовал от окружного комиссара разгонять все эти собрания, особенно если они собирались принять резолюцию, страшась похожего слова «революция»), использование своего языка при общении, особенно в присутствии австрийцев, а, с другой стороны, негативные факты бытового национализма и, особенно, антисемитизма, навешивания ярлыков и наличия предубеждений. Австрийская империя объединяла огромное количество народов и даже обращение императора к своим подданным было во множественном числе: «Народы!». Показательны настроения людей на известие о смерти наследника – они никак не хотят отказываться от праздника и даже вальсируют под траурный марш. Этот эпизод, с никак не могущей разразиться грозой, создает очень сильный акцент. С началом Первой мировой войны начинается полный и неотвратимый крах империи, символизируемый в романе смертью сначала сына, затем смертью Франца-Иосифа, и через три дня отца фон Тротта.
Read
December 6, 2025Each year, as a family we plan to do something different for summer holidays, but end up doing more or less the same routine. In essence, we end up driving between different mountain places in France and Spain. I mention this in the middle of winter not only because i miss summer and the mountains: while we drive we listen to an audio book, hopefully a story that three of us enjoy. We do have a very disparate literary sensitivities, but somehow it usually works out. Having two males in the car, I usually end up as a minority, but expert vote. This summer I wanted something different from our usual mixture of mysteries and thrillers. And after a short deliberation, we’ve picked up Flesh.
At the beginning, faced with its matter-of-a-fact style competing for my attention with French landscapes, I’ve quickly tuned out. When i’ve tuned in again the amount of ‘okays’ and ‘yeahs’ made me restless and bored. But, to my surprise, i’ve noticed that both my husband and my teenage son were totally engaged: a pin could drop in that car. I’ve asked how could they find a protagonist who barely could speak so fascinating. And my son gave me the answer. He said: ‘the fact this man cannot express stuff does not mean he does not feel it.’
That simple phrase has made me reconsider a few assumptions in my life, including what i know about boys, men and even what i consider an expressive power of literature. Maybe ‘reconsider’ is too strong a word. But certainly it made me notice certain aspects of masculinity i was happy to ignore before. Namely that for some people, predominantly males, it is difficult not simply to express themselves in words, but to be self-aware in a way their relatives and friends and the broader society often expect them to be: to think about themselves in words. They do not feel with words. But they do feel and deeply. But without language as a tool, it is much harder to share those feelings.This has reminded me a line from the old song I knew since my teen years: ‘Every time you put him to the floor why do you surprise to see he is breakable.
Flesh has not managed to convince me as a novel, though my boys both ‘got’ it. But i wasn’t surprised when it was nominated and won the Booker prize. It has become zeigahtweisty. It might have happened for more superficial reasons like so called perceived ‘crisis of masculinity’. But i think the author has successfully managed to show this, otherwise inexpressible, vulnerability of a certain type of manhood. Partly it is shaped by the time; but partly it seems to be there in any epoch and always silently calling to be understood but the call is rarely heard.
I was thinking about all of this when i was reading Radetsky March, a novel that is almost hundred years old. Flesh and The March are very different books. While I’ve found the former almost stilted in a way how it is written, I loved Roth’s novel for its excesses, big scenes and almost shakespearian scale of using dramatic irony. More to the point, the authors use very different strategies how to depict this type of drifting, unarticulated man in particular and manhood in general. But there are some striking similarities. Both books start a story with a fifteen year old being ‘initiated’ into sex life by the older married woman. Both boys end up falling in love with the woman and being shaped by this experience; and both stories end up predictably tragically, though in different ways. In more general terms, in both novels women are minor characters; but at the same time they are depicted a bit akin to a force of nature. They are far from being weak though their roles are far from being positive.
And the last but not least, strong loving relationships between two males are appeared to be the focus of the most poignant episodes in each of the narratives. In Flesh the main character tries to protect his ten year old son from bullying by trying to explain to him how to stand up for yourself. It is almost painful to watch how he tries to put into the words what is that the boy needs to go through to become stronger. The words just do not help. In The March there is also a very strong bond between the father and the son that is absolutely impossible for both of them to convey with the words. However, this deep connection is bursting into the open notwithstanding their awkwardness with each other, their formality and a set of fixed rituals.
The March also depicts male friendship, in this case, tinted with betrayal and sense of ending. Many might find the plotting of this episode almost melodramatic. But beyond the melodrama i sense yet again very authentic quality pertinent to a true friendship: this inexpressibility in words, this presence of unsaid things, being with the person and feeling complete, but sad that inevitably this sense of togetherness is going to end. And no words would be enough. This how Roth conveys this:
Occasionally, listening to ‘Flesh’ and even more so, reading this book, i would silently scream say it, just try to go ahead, you would feel better. But of course the whole point that they just can’t. Their feelings are almost subconscious and certainly cannot be articulated. That is the whole irony of this situation. That is how otherwise strong person might feel very vulnerable.
Also, would everyone lack the words sometimes when faced with something big? Ludwig Wittgenstein, the man from the same epoch and even the same country was affirmative. And in contrast, he was very powerful with words:
Now when i read this thought, my mind conjures the image of two young men in uniform silently walking away at night with their backs to me under full moon into the future both known and unutterable to them.
Amazingly, I’ve written all of this without actually even mentioning the characters’ names never mind providing any context. Okey. At the centre of the novel is young Lieutenant Trotter. The time is just before the Great War. The place is Habsburg Empire that would disappear from the map after the War. Trotter is in active service, but finds himself very conflicted between what he was taught to believe and his reality. He does not seem to be consciously aware of this conflict and of the reasons for his unhappiness. But he feels something and it causes him to drift. He drinks, gets himself into silly debts, follows ridiculous orders and bad advice.
It is a story about myth-making and its inevitable crush. Trotta’s grandad was a Slovenian peasant-soldier who appeared to safe the Emperor’s life in the battle. Due to this he has become a Baron. However the story as it was presented to the wider public had made a cartoonish hero out of him of a farce. He has fought fiercely against this personal-political myth. This cost him a career. A few decades later, his grandson has been brought up solely on glorifying myths of this kind. Margate Perlov described the scale of this in her book Edge of Irony: Modernism in the Shadow of the Habsburg Empire:
She refers to post-war period. But i suspect it was not that different before the war. So, the Grandad fought with myth-making. The Grandchild internalised it and made a part of his identity. But then this has stopped to make sense to him. And he suffered. Roth is so good expressing this feeling, this atmosphere and the general mood. Inexpressible turmoil inside is met with crumbling turmoil outside. Someone would dab it later as “the crisis of authenticity’.
Allegedly there was an epidemic of suicides among young men at that time in Vienna. But it did not have to be that extreme. Many just drifted like the young Trotta. And when the war happened they went to fight. Many had a choice in the matter. But they still went. Wittgenstein did, for an example. He did not need to fight. The story goes that he was the one of those looking for this ‘authenticity’, or maybe more broader - looking for a new definition of his manhood stripped of false mythology. Such a high price to pay. D. H. Lawrence wrote about that mood:
Being on the front line, Wittgenstein has found the meaning exactly in this way: I am spirit and therefore I am free: what happens to me in the world of events is of little moment compared with the purity of my soul. Or maybe being acutely self-aware he has just managed to delude himself into believing that. Trotta and many young men like Trotta were not Wittgensteins. They were not actively looking for a purity of their souls. Brought up with myths and sense of duty, they simply fought the last fight for what they feel rightly or wrongly was the remainder of their dignity.
If i think of this novel in one word, it would be dignity. How many people can live a relatively good life never realising they need dignity; or in more exact terms, they have a privilege not to face a situation when they need to make a choice whether to defend their dignity or to accept humiliation and cut the loses. In more stark cases, the choice is far simpler: dignity or survival.
There is an scene in the novel when the father of young Trotter, a respected District Commissioner, needs to ask the powerful and rich for money to repay the debts of his son:
Also the novel made me think how often a person can deprive the others of their dignity without even realising it. In another scene, the Trotta ends up giving the order to shoot into an unarmed workers’ protest, a culmination of dreadful situations he sleepwalks into. In the aftermath shock, his colleague regrets about the events: A horrible death. Horrible business altogether! I feel sorry for the poor buggers really. Maybe they’re right!’ It hadn’t occurred to Lieutenant Trotta that they were poor buggers, and that they might be right. What made me pause over this episode is not the cruelty and injustice of the whole thing but this last comment of Roth’s narrator: Trotta did not even think for a second that these protesting people might have dignity and be right having a courage defending it.
This has also reminded me of other ‘point view’ and how entrenched it is still in the society: I prefer to commit an injustice than to endure disorder. A perfect succinct formulation by Goethe. Not everyone deserves dignity if the fight for it creates ‘disorder’.
In spite of being so fallible, Trotta himself occasionally stands up for what he considers dignified, especially taking into the account how difficult is for him to distinguish a myth from what really matters. That is why i find his character so poignant.
There is currently war in Europe where the Ukrainians try to prove that dignity is not for sale. It is hard to watch how the world around them proves otherwise. Before the war, they’ve had a revolution. It is known the Revolution of Dignity. They pay such a high price with their blood for something that should be taken for granted in every human.
Coming back to Roth’s novel, I might have created an impression with these last remarks that it is full of pathos. This is not the case. If anything it is full of irony. Dramatic irony plays a big role: some scenes with storms and lightening, frogs and crows are grand in scale and very atmospheric. There is also a bitter irony in his social commentary, in his sketches from the frontiers of the crumbling empire. This is reflected in aphoristic sentences like this for example: Lieutenant Trotta was like a man who had lost not only his home, but also his homesickness.
The one of the characters is a Polish Duke, Chojnicki, who is a member of the Reichstag but does not believe in anything any more and spends his days on ranting and alchemical experiments. This is a short part of his monologue:
In the novel the officers are drunkards and gamblers; the merchants traffic humans and enslave people for debts, an absurd, bitter but also grotesquely funny atmosphere is prevailing.
At the end, Trotta finds strengths to leave the army. He takes pleasure and relief in getting out of the uniform he was put into since age ten. He starts living. However, Gavrilo Princip kills the inheritor to the throne. At this point of the narrative, Roth conjures a scene that is more cinema than a text. A switch from the past to the present tense in the middle of the paragraph slows the action almost to stand still; shot sentences like cinematic cuts cut deep through all my emotional defences. Chojnicki knows what is coming. Trotta knows what is coming. I know what choice he would make:
And this is how it is.
At the beginning, faced with its matter-of-a-fact style competing for my attention with French landscapes, I’ve quickly tuned out. When i’ve tuned in again the amount of ‘okays’ and ‘yeahs’ made me restless and bored. But, to my surprise, i’ve noticed that both my husband and my teenage son were totally engaged: a pin could drop in that car. I’ve asked how could they find a protagonist who barely could speak so fascinating. And my son gave me the answer. He said: ‘the fact this man cannot express stuff does not mean he does not feel it.’
That simple phrase has made me reconsider a few assumptions in my life, including what i know about boys, men and even what i consider an expressive power of literature. Maybe ‘reconsider’ is too strong a word. But certainly it made me notice certain aspects of masculinity i was happy to ignore before. Namely that for some people, predominantly males, it is difficult not simply to express themselves in words, but to be self-aware in a way their relatives and friends and the broader society often expect them to be: to think about themselves in words. They do not feel with words. But they do feel and deeply. But without language as a tool, it is much harder to share those feelings.This has reminded me a line from the old song I knew since my teen years: ‘Every time you put him to the floor why do you surprise to see he is breakable.
Flesh has not managed to convince me as a novel, though my boys both ‘got’ it. But i wasn’t surprised when it was nominated and won the Booker prize. It has become zeigahtweisty. It might have happened for more superficial reasons like so called perceived ‘crisis of masculinity’. But i think the author has successfully managed to show this, otherwise inexpressible, vulnerability of a certain type of manhood. Partly it is shaped by the time; but partly it seems to be there in any epoch and always silently calling to be understood but the call is rarely heard.
I was thinking about all of this when i was reading Radetsky March, a novel that is almost hundred years old. Flesh and The March are very different books. While I’ve found the former almost stilted in a way how it is written, I loved Roth’s novel for its excesses, big scenes and almost shakespearian scale of using dramatic irony. More to the point, the authors use very different strategies how to depict this type of drifting, unarticulated man in particular and manhood in general. But there are some striking similarities. Both books start a story with a fifteen year old being ‘initiated’ into sex life by the older married woman. Both boys end up falling in love with the woman and being shaped by this experience; and both stories end up predictably tragically, though in different ways. In more general terms, in both novels women are minor characters; but at the same time they are depicted a bit akin to a force of nature. They are far from being weak though their roles are far from being positive.
And the last but not least, strong loving relationships between two males are appeared to be the focus of the most poignant episodes in each of the narratives. In Flesh the main character tries to protect his ten year old son from bullying by trying to explain to him how to stand up for yourself. It is almost painful to watch how he tries to put into the words what is that the boy needs to go through to become stronger. The words just do not help. In The March there is also a very strong bond between the father and the son that is absolutely impossible for both of them to convey with the words. However, this deep connection is bursting into the open notwithstanding their awkwardness with each other, their formality and a set of fixed rituals.
The March also depicts male friendship, in this case, tinted with betrayal and sense of ending. Many might find the plotting of this episode almost melodramatic. But beyond the melodrama i sense yet again very authentic quality pertinent to a true friendship: this inexpressibility in words, this presence of unsaid things, being with the person and feeling complete, but sad that inevitably this sense of togetherness is going to end. And no words would be enough. This how Roth conveys this:
They march along in step, their spurs jingle, their sabres rattle. The lights of the town blink at them, yellow and cosy. Both of them wish that the street would never end.They would like to be marching side by side like this for a long long way. Each of them has got a lot to say, but they keep silent. A word, one word is so easy to say out loud. But it just refuses to come out. This is the last time, the Lieutenant thinks, this is the last time we’re walking along side by side.(*)
Occasionally, listening to ‘Flesh’ and even more so, reading this book, i would silently scream say it, just try to go ahead, you would feel better. But of course the whole point that they just can’t. Their feelings are almost subconscious and certainly cannot be articulated. That is the whole irony of this situation. That is how otherwise strong person might feel very vulnerable.
Also, would everyone lack the words sometimes when faced with something big? Ludwig Wittgenstein, the man from the same epoch and even the same country was affirmative. And in contrast, he was very powerful with words:
And this is how it is: if only you do not try to utter what is unutterable then nothing gets lost. But the unutterable will be—unutterably—contained in what has been uttered!
Now when i read this thought, my mind conjures the image of two young men in uniform silently walking away at night with their backs to me under full moon into the future both known and unutterable to them.
Amazingly, I’ve written all of this without actually even mentioning the characters’ names never mind providing any context. Okey. At the centre of the novel is young Lieutenant Trotter. The time is just before the Great War. The place is Habsburg Empire that would disappear from the map after the War. Trotter is in active service, but finds himself very conflicted between what he was taught to believe and his reality. He does not seem to be consciously aware of this conflict and of the reasons for his unhappiness. But he feels something and it causes him to drift. He drinks, gets himself into silly debts, follows ridiculous orders and bad advice.
It is a story about myth-making and its inevitable crush. Trotta’s grandad was a Slovenian peasant-soldier who appeared to safe the Emperor’s life in the battle. Due to this he has become a Baron. However the story as it was presented to the wider public had made a cartoonish hero out of him of a farce. He has fought fiercely against this personal-political myth. This cost him a career. A few decades later, his grandson has been brought up solely on glorifying myths of this kind. Margate Perlov described the scale of this in her book Edge of Irony: Modernism in the Shadow of the Habsburg Empire:
For a young child, even a Jewish child, brought up as I was in the shaky little Republic of Austria between the two world wars, nothing was more glamorous than the tales of the Habsburg emperors, from Rudolf I (1218–91), to the bold Emperor Maximilian (1459–1519), immortalized in Dürer’s great portrait, who secured the Netherlands, Hungary, Bohemia, and Spain for the Habsburgs, and especially to Empress Maria Theresa (1717–80), that powerful sovereign who presided over her vast empire, orchestrating both the War of the Austrian Succession and the Seven Years’ War (both against Prussia), while bearing her husband Francis I sixteen children, one of whom was Marie Antoinette. Stories about Maria Theresa were the stuff of legend and fairytale. The child Mozart, for example, having performed for the empress, evidently jumped on her lap and kissed her; she rewarded him with a little suit decorated with gold braid. A devout Catholic, Maria Theresa was staunchly anti-Protestant and even more virulently anti-Semitic, but as Austrian children, we knew only the tuneful songs and happy anecdotes about the great empress.
She refers to post-war period. But i suspect it was not that different before the war. So, the Grandad fought with myth-making. The Grandchild internalised it and made a part of his identity. But then this has stopped to make sense to him. And he suffered. Roth is so good expressing this feeling, this atmosphere and the general mood. Inexpressible turmoil inside is met with crumbling turmoil outside. Someone would dab it later as “the crisis of authenticity’.
Allegedly there was an epidemic of suicides among young men at that time in Vienna. But it did not have to be that extreme. Many just drifted like the young Trotta. And when the war happened they went to fight. Many had a choice in the matter. But they still went. Wittgenstein did, for an example. He did not need to fight. The story goes that he was the one of those looking for this ‘authenticity’, or maybe more broader - looking for a new definition of his manhood stripped of false mythology. Such a high price to pay. D. H. Lawrence wrote about that mood:
Awful years—’16, ’17, ’18, ’19—the years when the damage was done. The years when the world lost its real manhood. Not for lack of courage to face death. Plenty of superb courage to face death. But no courage in any man to face his own isolated soul, and abide by its decision. Easier to sacrifice oneself. So much easier!
Being on the front line, Wittgenstein has found the meaning exactly in this way: I am spirit and therefore I am free: what happens to me in the world of events is of little moment compared with the purity of my soul. Or maybe being acutely self-aware he has just managed to delude himself into believing that. Trotta and many young men like Trotta were not Wittgensteins. They were not actively looking for a purity of their souls. Brought up with myths and sense of duty, they simply fought the last fight for what they feel rightly or wrongly was the remainder of their dignity.
If i think of this novel in one word, it would be dignity. How many people can live a relatively good life never realising they need dignity; or in more exact terms, they have a privilege not to face a situation when they need to make a choice whether to defend their dignity or to accept humiliation and cut the loses. In more stark cases, the choice is far simpler: dignity or survival.
There is an scene in the novel when the father of young Trotter, a respected District Commissioner, needs to ask the powerful and rich for money to repay the debts of his son:
And for the first time in what was now his long life, the District Commissioner was forced to experience the difficulty of being helpless and retaining one’s dignity. This experience came down on him like a stroke of lightning, and immediately shattered the pride that Herr von Trotta had carefully tended and looked after for such a long time, the pride he had inherited and was determined to bequeath.
Also the novel made me think how often a person can deprive the others of their dignity without even realising it. In another scene, the Trotta ends up giving the order to shoot into an unarmed workers’ protest, a culmination of dreadful situations he sleepwalks into. In the aftermath shock, his colleague regrets about the events: A horrible death. Horrible business altogether! I feel sorry for the poor buggers really. Maybe they’re right!’ It hadn’t occurred to Lieutenant Trotta that they were poor buggers, and that they might be right. What made me pause over this episode is not the cruelty and injustice of the whole thing but this last comment of Roth’s narrator: Trotta did not even think for a second that these protesting people might have dignity and be right having a courage defending it.
This has also reminded me of other ‘point view’ and how entrenched it is still in the society: I prefer to commit an injustice than to endure disorder. A perfect succinct formulation by Goethe. Not everyone deserves dignity if the fight for it creates ‘disorder’.
In spite of being so fallible, Trotta himself occasionally stands up for what he considers dignified, especially taking into the account how difficult is for him to distinguish a myth from what really matters. That is why i find his character so poignant.
There is currently war in Europe where the Ukrainians try to prove that dignity is not for sale. It is hard to watch how the world around them proves otherwise. Before the war, they’ve had a revolution. It is known the Revolution of Dignity. They pay such a high price with their blood for something that should be taken for granted in every human.
Coming back to Roth’s novel, I might have created an impression with these last remarks that it is full of pathos. This is not the case. If anything it is full of irony. Dramatic irony plays a big role: some scenes with storms and lightening, frogs and crows are grand in scale and very atmospheric. There is also a bitter irony in his social commentary, in his sketches from the frontiers of the crumbling empire. This is reflected in aphoristic sentences like this for example: Lieutenant Trotta was like a man who had lost not only his home, but also his homesickness.
The one of the characters is a Polish Duke, Chojnicki, who is a member of the Reichstag but does not believe in anything any more and spends his days on ranting and alchemical experiments. This is a short part of his monologue:
Austrians of German stock crooned waltzes in their cups, Hungarians stank, Czechs were born to clean shoes, Ruthenians treacherously disguised Russians, Croats and Slovenes, whom he called ‘stoats and ravens’, were broom-makers and chestnut-roasters, and Poles, of whom he himself was one, fornicators, barbers and fashion-photographers. Whenever he came home from Vienna, or wherever else in the wide world he’d been disporting himself, he would deliver a lugubrious lecture, which would go roughly as follows: ‘This empire’s had it.
In the novel the officers are drunkards and gamblers; the merchants traffic humans and enslave people for debts, an absurd, bitter but also grotesquely funny atmosphere is prevailing.
At the end, Trotta finds strengths to leave the army. He takes pleasure and relief in getting out of the uniform he was put into since age ten. He starts living. However, Gavrilo Princip kills the inheritor to the throne. At this point of the narrative, Roth conjures a scene that is more cinema than a text. A switch from the past to the present tense in the middle of the paragraph slows the action almost to stand still; shot sentences like cinematic cuts cut deep through all my emotional defences. Chojnicki knows what is coming. Trotta knows what is coming. I know what choice he would make:
They drove to cottage. Chojnicki sat down. He looks on as Trotta takes off his civilian clothes, and gets into his uniform. Item by item. Just as only a few weeks ago – but it feels like an eternity! – he had watched as Trotta took off his uniform.(*)
And this is how it is.
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