The Hotel Years: Wanderings in Europe between the Wars

by Joseph Roth, Michael Hofmann (Translator)

The hotel that I love like a fatherland is situated in one of the great port cities of Europe, and the heavy gold Antiqua letters in which its banal name is spelled out shining across the roofs of the gently banked houses are in my eye metal flags, metal bannerets that instead of fluttering shine out their greeting.

In the 1920s and 30s, Joseph Roth travelled extensively in Europe, leading a peripatetic life living in hotels and writing about the towns through which he passed. Incisive, nostalgic, curious and sharply observed - and collected together here for the first time - his pieces paint a picture of a continent racked by change yet clinging to tradition. From the 'compulsive' exercise regime of the Albanian army, the rickety industry of the new oil capital of Galicia, and 'split and scalped' houses of Tirana forced into modernity, to the individual and idiosyncratic characters that Roth encounters in his hotel stays, these tender and quietly dazzling vignettes form a series of literary postcards written from a bygone world, creeping towards world war; introduced and exquisitely translated by Michael Hofmann.

Genres: Nonfiction, Essays, History, Travel, Literature, Journalism, German Literature

245 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 1939

About the author

Joseph 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/

Reviews

[Σωτήρης Αδαμαρέτσος · Rating 5 out of 5]

Έχετε ερωτευτεί ποτέ ένα βιβλίο;
Ή μάλλον, έχετε ερωτευτεί έναν συγγραφέα μέσα από τη ματιά του, σε σημείο να καιγεστε να ζήσετε μες τον κόσμο που περιγράφει; όχι τον φανταστικό κόσμο ενός λογοτέχνη· τον πραγματικό κόσμο που βλέπει αυτός μέσα απ τα μάτια του και αναπαράγει μέσα απ την ψυχή του...

Γνώρισα τον Ροτ ως λογοτέχνη. Τον συμπάθησα γιατί ανάμεσα στις γραμμές του Εμβατήριου, της Κρυπτης, του Ιστού, του Χοτελ Σαβοϋ κλπ ψηλαφιζα την μελαγχολία του συγγραφέα για κάτι που έχει χαθεί οριστικά, έναν τόπο, μια χώρα, μια ζωή που είχε σαρωθει από την ιστορία· την παλιά αυστροουγγαρια. Την ανάμνηση μιας εποχής και μιας ζωής και αισθητικής, που καίει μέσα του σαν ανάμνηση νεανικού έρωτα! Και όμως αυτός ο μελαγχολικός φίλος ήταν παράλληλα ένας οξυδερκης παρατηρητής του καιρού του. Και της εποχής του. Έπρεπε να διαβάσω αυτή την συλλογή επιφυλλιδων* του Ροτ από τα ταξίδια του στο εξωτερικό αλλά και από την καθημερινή παρατήρηση του κόσμου του, για να ζήσω μέσα σε αυτόν! Σχεδόν με μετέφερε σε αυτή την εποχή, εν μέσω δύο πολέμων, μια εποχή που λατρεύω και αναζητώ σε κάθε ανάγνωσμα και σε κάθε...γραφή μου. Μάλλον ήρθε αυτό το βιβλίο την κατάλληλη στιγμή και ηλικία.

Ο Hofmann, που έκανε την επιλογή των κειμένων (μικρά 3-4 σελίδες το καθένα) ήξερε πολύ καλά τι ήθελε να δείξει στον αναγνώστη. Σκηνές από την Γερμανία λίγο μετά το πόλεμο και την ήττα, ζωντανεύουν μια χώρα με διαρκή ερωτηματικά. Απεικονίσεις αγνώστων προσώπων μέσα στην καθημερινότητα γεννούν "ήρωες" που κάθε συγγραφέας θα έψαχνε να ζωντανέψει. Μυθιστορηματικη καταγραφή της αυστριακής κοινωνίας μετά το πόλεμο κ της αναζήτησης νέας ταυτότητας των παλαιών υπηκόων! Ο καπνός από τα εργοστάσια ενώνει τους ανθρώπους που τους χωρίζουν τα σύνορα! Τα ξενοδοχεία και τα τρένα, οι πεδιάδες του Αστραχαν και τα βουνά της Σκηπιταρ!
Τα ταξιδιωτικά του κομμάτια απ τις ανταποκρισεις του στην ΕΣΣΔ και την Αλβανία του Ζογου αποδεικνύουν την διαισθητική ικανότητα του δημοσιογράφου να διαβάζει το μέλλον των εθνών κ το βάρος της ιστορίας τους - οι περιγραφές των αλλαγών στην ρωσική κοινωνία της πρώτης ΝΕΠ και η καταγραφή της αλβανικής περηφάνιας και παραδοσιακής αρνητικότητας σε κάθε νέο, αγγίζουν την έννοια του ψυχογραφήματος ενός λαού!

Η σκιαγραφηση των πόλεων, των ανθρώπων και των κοινωνικών συνθηκών της δεκαετίας του '20 δείχνουν έναν άνθρωπο που στέκεται και "διαβάζει" τους γύρω του. Απόλαυσα κάθε σελίδα από τα κομμάτια του για τα ξενοδοχεία και τους ανθρώπους τους! Ο Ροτ με έβαλε χωρίς να το καταλάβω να κάνω κάτι που κ εγώ απολαμβάνω· να στέκομαι στα φουαγιέ των ξενοδοχείων κ να παρατηρώ το κόσμο που δουλεύει εκεί αλλά και αυτόν που μένει εκεί, μέρος του και γω!
Και γύρισα αργά κάθε σελίδα από τις περιγραφές των ταξιδιών με τα αργά προπολεμικα τρένα, μια διηγηματική γευσιγνωσία σε αργό χρόνο, με σταθμούς, βαγόνια, ανταποκρισεις, κόμβους, ευκαιριακες γνωριμίες και εκνευριστικους συνταξιδιωτες!

Τελευταία κομμάτια του, αυτά που, περπατώντας μες στις πόλεις, καταγράφει με την ματιά ενός ανθρώπου που σηκώνει το κεφάλι να δει ψηλά κ "φωτογραφίζει" τις πόλεις σαν ζώντα πρόσωπα και όχι σαν άψυχα κτήρια κ μέρη. Ακόμα και τα μπαλκόνια στις πόλεις του Ροτ έχουν φωνή, ακόμα και οι στέγες κ οι κήποι και τα δρομάκια έχουν άποψη και λόγο και μουσική. Και τα "ακούς" αν θες· αρκεί να σηκώσεις το κεφάλι όταν περπατάς κάθε μέρα! Οι πόλεις μιλάνε...

Βάζω αυτό το βιβλίο δίπλα στο κρεβάτι μου· θα επιστρέψω...
Ορισμένες φορές νομίζω ότι διαβάζω για να ξεφεύγω από την εποχή μου σε μια άλλη εποχή. Όχι σε έναν λογοτεχνικό κόσμο· σε αναζήτηση άλλων ανθρώπων σε άλλους χρόνους!
Μακάρι να μπορούσα να σε συναντήσω, Γιόζεφ· έστω και για ένα ποτό σε ένα ξενοδοχείο των συνόρων, λίγο πριν πάρουμε διαφορετικά τρένα για διαφορετικές εποχές...

* για τους νεότερους, επιφυλλίδα ήταν κάποτε στις εφημερίδες ένα μοναδικό κομμάτι που απεικόνιζε στιγμές της καθημερινότητας και ταξιδιωτικά ρεπορτάζ που γράφονταν από εξέχοντες δημοσιογράφους - λογοτέχνες. Η ανάληψη μιας τέτοιας στήλης σε μια καλή ευρωπαϊκή εφημερίδα ήταν απόδειξη της πνευματικής αξιωσυνης του γράφοντος και απαιτούσε ευρύτητα πνεύματος και διορατική οξυδερκεια των καιρών.

[°°°·.°·..·°¯°·._.· ʜᴇʟᴇɴ Ροζουλί Εωσφόρος ·._.·°¯°·.·° .·°°° ★·.·´¯`·.·★ Ⓥⓔⓡⓝⓤⓢ Ⓟⓞⓡⓣⓘⓣⓞⓡ Ⓐⓡⓒⓐⓝⓤⓢ Ταμετούρο Αμ · Rating 5 out of 5]

Εμπλουτίστε την ψυχή και τη ζωή σας, διαβάστε τα ιερά κειμήλια κάποιου θλιμμένου και θλιβερού νοσταλγού.
Τα λαμπρά σύντομα κομμάτια περιγράφουν ανθρώπους, μέρη, στιγμές και διαθέσεις.
Βλέπει το παρελθόν με νοσταλγία, το μέλλον με φόβο, αλλά το παρόν με πνεύμα που αντηχεί στη λησμονιά.

Η θάλασσα της γραφής του Ροτ, είναι αιώνια καθαρή και ανέγχιχτη απο τα παιδαριώδη και φριχτά παιχνίδια της ανθρωπότητας. Αγναντεύεις διαβάζοντας και ξεχνάς, γαληνεύεις, νοσταλγείς, θλίβεσαι και χαίρεσαι παράλληλα.

Τα 65 περίπου δοκίμια που επέλεξαν οι συντάκτες του βιβλίου γράφτηκαν κυρίως ως κομμάτια εφημερίδας, μεταξύ του 1919 και του 1939. Ο Ροθ πέθανε το 1939 σε ηλικία 45 ετών λόγω αλκοολισμού, αλλά ο Αυστριακός-Εβραίος δημοσιογράφος είχε κάνει ένα όνομα για τον εαυτό του από το 1919 ως παρατηρητής του πολιτισμού και της πολιτικής στα μεσοπολεμικά χρόνια.

Ήταν ένας υπέροχος, οδυνηρός, προφητικός συγγραφέας. Η ιστορία της ζωής και του θανάτου του θα σπάσει την καρδιά σας

Το 1924 όταν αναφέρεται στην σημαία της σβάστικας που ανεμίζει και φουσκώνει με ξεδιάντροπη ξιπασιά χαρακτηρίζει τον άνεμο της ιστορίας που δεν ήξερε τότε τίποτα γι’αυτην τη σημαία.
Ο Ροτ μελοποιεί τα κύματα της θάλασσας στην Βαλτική τότε, μιας θάλασσας που καθρεφτίζει τη σημαία και τα χρώματα της και έτσι βεβηλώνεται και αυτή απο άγνοια, δεν φταίει.
Έφταιγαν και θα φταίνε πάντα οι άνθρωποι που είναι ανόητοι ή αχρείοι. Που η ιδιοτέλεια της ματαιοδοξίας τους υπερνικάει την δύναμη της περιέργειας για τα στοιχειωμένα μελλούμενα.
Αυτοί, οι ανόητοι άνθρωποι, που ατενίζουν πάντα την αιωνιότητα χωρίς να ταράζονται και να ριγούν. Αυτοί.
Οι δέσμιοι του εθελοντικού μαρτυρίου.

«Απαγορεύεται το πτύειν». Πολύ θα ήθελα !

Η πένα του Ροτ γράφει ένα πανανθρώπινο προσευχητάρι που σαν το διαβάσεις πονάς απο τα πέτρινα χαστούκια, απο τα γεμάτα βιομηχανικό καπνό καρτ ποστάλ ενός κόσμου που αναπνέει ανάμεσα σε δυο πολέμους.
Ο συγγραφέας ταξιδεύει, μας ταξιδεύει σε άλλες εποχές, σε άλλες χώρες σαρωμένες απο μελαγχολία και για κάποια όνειρα ζωντανά μα οριστικά χαμένα.

Πίνακες ζωγραφικής απο τον κόσμο, σκηνές και φωτογραφίες χωρίς χρώμα , χωρίς ήχο, μόνο με αισθήσεις και παραισθήσεις απεικονίσεων. Αντικατοπτρισμούς καθημερινών άγνωστων προσώπων χωρίς ταυτότητα με ιστορικά προκαθορισμένο προορισμό, με κοινωνικές συνθήκες που χορταίνουν πολιτισμό μέσα στην βάρβαρη καταγραφή της νέας πραγματικότητας.

Η Γερμανία της αυτοκρατορικής κατάντιας σέρνει το τρενάκι των εθνών και το βάρος των νεκρών της Ευρώπης, της οικουμένης.
Φορτίο υπέρβαρο, κίνδυνος υπερβολικής ταχύτητας προς την φυγή, την αποφυγή της διαισθητικής ικανότητας που ψυχανεμίζεται το μέλλον και κρατιέται απο το παρελθόν σε κάθε απότομη στροφή της εξέλιξης προς τα αναπάντητα ερωτήματα.
Χρονικά λαών, ψυχογραφήματα των καιρών, απαιτείται ενάργεια πνευματική και οξυμένη αντιληπτική ικανότητα για να μεταφερθεί γραπτώς η μυθιστορηματική καταγραφή της παρατηρητικότητας του περιβάλλοντος χώρου, χρόνου, τόπου, υπαρξιακής ερωτικής συνέρευσης ανθρώπων, υλικών κατασκευών και κοινωνικών συνθηκών.
Και ναι, η πρακτικότητα αναβαθμίζεται μου λέει ο συγγραφέας, γίνεται αξιοπρέπεια, μα πως, γιατί.
Διότι και η αξιοπρέπεια αρχίζει πλέον να συγχέεται με την χρησιμότητα.
Μου δείχνει ξεκάθαρα την απόπειρα οικοδόμησης της αξιοπρέπειας της μάζας. Πόσο τον αγάπησα γι’αυτό και για τόσα άλλα!..

Μια δημοσιογραφική παλέτα που αναλύει την θεωρία της σχετινοτητας, μια ανθρωπιστικά εξελιγμένη σε αποκτήνωση ανθρώπινη φυλή γράφεται η ιστορία που ανήκει ήδη σε παρελθόν και μέλλον με πένα δημοσιογράφου και ύφος ποιητικής ευαισθησίας.

💕💕💕💜💕💕💕

Καλή ανάγνωση.
Πολλούς ασπασμούς.

[julieta · Rating 5 out of 5]

Crónicas y viajes contados de una manera lúcida. Lleno de reflexiones sobre la guerra, retratos de personajes que se cruza, la situación política entre la primera y la segunda guerra mundial, su paso por Albania, por Austria, Alemania o la Union Soviética, o su descripción de los personajes que trabajan en el hotel en donde pasa una temporada. Roth es uno de mis escritores favoritos, y estas crónicas me hicieron sentirme identificada con su vida itinerante.

“Pero mi corazón de persona sentimental (y ya bastante pasada de moda) late especialmente ante los personajes menores que reciben órdenes y obedecen, obedecen obedecen, mientras que rara vez me permito sentir algo más que una fría objetividad hacia quienes dan órdenes, órdenes y más órdenes.”

[Ιωάννα Μπαμπέτα · Rating 5 out of 5]

Τι ωραίο βιβλίο! Τι φοβερός συγγραφέας! Έκανα υπέροχα ταξίδια πετώντας με την πένα του Ροτ. Μια συλλογή άρθρων τόσο αριστοτεχνικά γραμμένων που ζωντανεύουν όλα μπροστά στα μάτια του αναγνώστη. Συμπυκνωμένα κείμενα που μετά από λίγη ώρα απλώνονται στο μυαλό μας και το αγκαλιάζουν με την αύρα και τη γοητεία ενός κόσμου που δεν υπάρχει πια.
Αγάπησα ιδιαίτερα τις προσωπογραφίες. Ο τρόπος που στέκονται, που κινούνται, που μιλάνε, που σιωπούν οι ήρωες, λένε τόσα πολλά για εκείνη την εποχή.
Ταξιδιώτης, παρατηρητής, φιλόσοφος ο Ροτ.
Εξαιρετική η μετάφραση της Μαρίας Αγγελίδου. Να τα λέμε κι αυτά.

[Maria Bikaki · Rating 4 out of 5]

Δεν ξέρω τι έχει να διηγηθεί κάποιος, όταν πηγαίνει ταξίδι. Εγώ θα έμενα στο σπίτι μου, στον τόπο μου δε θα το κουνούσα ρούπι- και θα ήμον πέρα για πέρα ικανοποιημένος. Αλλά είναι οι σταθμοί των τρένων. Ακούς ένα στρίγκλισμα μέαα στη νύχτα και νομίζεις πως είναι το σφύριγμα της ατμομηχανής. Αλλά όχι στ’ αλήθεια είναι φωνή πόθου και λαχτάρας.

Ένα ακόμα βιβλίο λίγο πριν την εκπνοή και αυτού του αναγνωστικού έτους. Μου άρεσε πολύ. Άκρως νοσταλγικό, σαν μικρές καρτ ποστάλ με τη μορφή βιβλίου. Μια συλλογή άρθρων δημοσιευμένων από τον Ροτ παίρνουν τη μορφή ενός ελκυστικού βιβλίου και δίνουν τη δική του ματιά απέναντι σ’ ένα κόσμο που αλλάζει, σ’ ένα κόσμο που συγκλονίζεται από τη βία. Τα άρθρα του Γιόζεφ Ροτ αποτελούν κατατοπιστικά τεκμήρια αυτής της εποχής και διεισδύουν σε αυτή με ένα τρόπο ατμοσφαιρικό και εντυπωσιακό.

[Annetius · Rating 5 out of 5]

Αντί για κριτική, πλέξιμο εγκωμίου

A, la classe! Υπάρχει εδώ μια κομψότητα αβίαστη και χωρίς κόπο και επιτήδευση μεταφερμένη στα κείμενα αυτά, σαν να κινείσαι μέσα από το βαγόνι ενός μυθικού Οριάν Εξπρές στους δρόμους και την πιο πρόσφατη ιστορία της Ευρώπης, την καθημερινή ζωή εκεί εν τω μέσω των τρικυμιωδών δεκαετιών της∙ υπάρχει μια εσάνς λεπτή και κλασάτη που δεν μπορεί παρά να σε γοητεύσει διαβάζοντας αυτά τα υπέρκομψα συνοπτικά χρονογραφήματα, ημερολόγια ενός maître της τέχνης της γλώσσας, του στιλ και του αέρα της εποχής που έζησε. Αν είχα έναν φακό υπεριώδους ακτινοβολίας και περιδιάβαινα με αυτόν τις σελίδες, θα ανιχνεύονταν –φωσφορίζουσες- αναρίθμητες προτάσεις που λάμπουν το φως της ευφυΐας του παρατηρητικού διαβάτη, του διεισδυτικού παρατηρητή, αυτού που ξέρει να αναδεικνύει και να «βλέπει» αυτό που ο βιαστικός περαστικός δε θα δει και δε θα εκτιμήσει ποτέ του.

Ξεκινώντας να διαβάζω αυτό εδώ το βιβλίο, ήξερα ότι θα μ'αρέσει. Από τις σκόρπιες γνώμες, το εξώφυλλο, τη συνολική έκδοση και κυρίως την προσωπικότητα που περιέβαλλε το όνομα Γιόζεφ Ροτ δημιουργήθηκε ένα σύννεφο αίγλης και φινέτσας στον φαντασιακό μου μικρόκοσμο που τον βρήκα μπροστά μου χωρίς προσπάθεια από το πρώτο κιόλας κεφάλαιο. Και τι ευχάριστη συγκυρία -καθολου τυχαία πιστεύω- να επιλέξω αυτό το βιβλίο μετά από τη μικρή ιστορία του κόσμου του Γκόμπριχ: έπεσα πάνω σε μια άλλη μικρή ιστορία, αποσπασματική, αυτή της Ευρώπης του μεσοπολέμου, πιο λογοτεχνική αυτή τη φορά –για καλό μου.

Αυτό το βιβλίο είναι φτιαγμένο από έναν ξυπνητό ονειροπόλο για τους ονειροπόλους∙ παντού παραμονεύει ένα δέλτα που διακλαδίζει τον ποταμό της αφήγησης σε ένα παρακλάδι οξυδερκούς παρατήρησης και ένα άλλο ποιητικής ματιάς.

Περιμένεις στη γωνία να διαβάσεις το πνευματώδες σχόλιο, και να'το, το λέει, δε θα σε προδώσει κι έτσι δε σταματά να σε εκπλήσσει και να ασκεί γνήσια γοητεία επάνω σου.

Ρίχνει φως σε ένα φαινομενικά ασήμαντο fait divers, για να εξακοντίσει τελικά το βέλος της οξύνοιάς του σε μια ουσία μιας κατάστασης, να πιάσει αυτό το κάτι, το κάτι το σημαντικό που μόνο ένας ευαίσθητος και αληθινός ταξιδιώτης υπό δημοσιογραφική επήρεια εντοπίζει και καταγράφει.

Προικισμένος γενναιόδωρα με το συγγραφικό ταλέντο, σκανάρει υποψίες αισθήσεων, ζυγίζει ανεπαίσθητες κινήσεις, σαρώνει το εφήμερο και το αιχμαλωτίζει στην αιωνιότητα του γραπτού λόγου, προς τέρψη του τυχερού μελλοντικού αναγνώστη.

Ζήλεψα αφόρητα την ιδιότητα αυτού του ανθρώπου, και τη συγγραφική του δεινότητα, μαζί και τα δυο.

Chapeau bas, κύριε Ροτ.

[Chryssouline · Rating 5 out of 5]

Τεράστιος συγγραφέας!

[Constantinos Capetanakis · Rating 5 out of 5]

«Τι μου μένει λοιπόν, αν όχι να γράφω για τα άτομα που τυχαία συναντώ; Να σημειώνω ό,τι βλέπουν τα μάτια μου κι ό,τι ακούν τα αυτιά μου, αφήνοντας τη διάθεση και το κέφι μου να κάνουν την επιλογή; Η περιγραφή ιδιαίτερων στιγμών κι ανθρώπων μέσα από το γενικότερο χάος είναι ίσως η μικρότερη δυνατή προδοσία, η μικρότερη δυνατή απομάκρυνση από την αλήθεια. Και η τυχαία επιλογή, που ξεμπλέκει μία μόνο κλωστή από το μεγάλο κουβάρι, είναι ίσως ο καλύτερος τρόπος να μπει λίγη τάξη. Είδα κι αυτό κι εκείνο και το άλλο. Κι ό,τι μου έκανα εντύπωση προσπαθώ να το γράψω».

Πίστευα, όπως πολλοί, πως ο Ροτ έφτασε στο απόγειο της τέχνης του με το Εμβατήριο Ραντέτσκυ, ένα βιβλίο που όμοιο του, για μένα τουλάχιστον, δεν έχει παρά ένα ή δύο ακόμα, όχι άλλα. Λογοτεχνικά ναι, ακόμα το πιστεύω. Με τα Ταξίδια όμως γνώρισα με τη σειρά μου κι εγώ τον άνθρωπο, τον παρατηρητή, τον ανατόμο ψυχών, το μέντιουμ της ιστορίας των λαών, τον συμπονετικό άγνωστο φίλο, τον εστέτ, τον γυναικά, τον μελαγχολικό ταξιδιώτη που σιχαίνεται τα ταξίδια και παράλληλα ταξιδεύει με αγάπη (χωρίς υπερβολή) για κάθε τι που αντικρύζει. Ο Ροτ, ακόμα κι όταν μισεί, όπως κυρίως την πορεία που επέλεξε (έμφαση στο ρήμα) η χώρα του, παρόλα αυτά δεν χάνει την ψυχραιμία του, την ειρωνεία που αποτελεί ασπίδα στην απόγνωση, τη θέση του ως μύγα στον τοίχο που δεν χάνει ούτε ένα στιγμιότυπο, ούτε ένα βλέμμα.

Η Γερμανία, η Ρωσία, η Πολωνία, η Αλβανία (δεν περίμενα ποτέ, ποτέ όμως, ότι η περιγραφή της μεσοπολεμικής Αλβανίας θα αποδιδόταν με τόση καλειδοσκοπική ματιά, τόσο τεράστιο ενδιαφέρον και με τέτοιο αξεπέραστο χιούμορ), το αρχετυπικό κοσμοπολίτικο ξενοδοχείο, οι επιβάτες ενός τραμ, η αναζήτηση πετρελαίου (η περιγραφή αυτού του "μαύρου" πυρετού είναι συγκλονιστικά ακριβής) και άλλες πολλές εκφάνσεις της καθημερινότητας μίας εποχής που (δεν παύω να τονίζω) αποτελεί μία από τις πλέον διδακτικές για το σήμερα και το αύριο, όλα αποδίδονται από τον Ροτ όχι απλά με αριστουργηματικό συγγραφικό τρόπο, αλλά και με ειλικρίνεια που δεν μπορεί ούτε στιγμή να αμφισβητήσεις, ακόμα κι όταν είναι εμφανές ότι ο λογοτέχνης κάποιες φορές κερδίζει τον δημοσιογράφο .

Όπως έγραψε κι ένας φίλος εδώ, πολύ θα ήθελα κι εγώ να γνωρίσω αυτόν τον μελαγχολικό αλλά και τόσο πνευματώδη τύπο, να πιω λίγο (έως πολύ) μαζί του και να τον αφήσω να μιλάει. Και λίγο πιο δίπλα να κάθεται και ο φίλος του ο Τσβάιχ, για να επαναφέρει την τάξη και να βάζει υπότιτλους σε όλα όσα δεν λέγονται με λόγια. Αν και ο Ροτ τα λέει όλα - όσα έχουν σημασία τουλάχιστον. Ο θόρυβος είναι για όλους τους άλλους.

Πόσα ***** να βάλεις κανείς, ποιος ο λόγος; Μόνο 5 επιτρέπονται εδώ. Δυστυχώς.

[Susan · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is the first book I have read by Joseph Roth and makes me wonder what other gems lurk, unread, on my kindle, as this title has been on my ‘to be read,’ list forever.

This is a collection of articles that Roth wrote between the wars; the majority of them in the 1920’s. By the 1930’s, you can feel the shadow of war looming, but, certainly, there is a sense of disquiet which runs through many articles in earlier years too. Roth himself died in 1939, at the young age of only 44, but it is unlikely he would have been able to air his thoughts in print much longer; certainly not for the Berlin newspaper that he wrote for most often.

Although most of Roth’s articles are not overtly political, they paint a wonderful portrait of an era and of the places that he visits, and the people he meets. I loved his descriptions of hotels, trains and travelling. The beautiful woman who visits his train carriage, but then disturbs him by asking for a heavy case to be lowered and returned to the luggage rack. The long, last day before leaving a hotel, when it is impossible to settle, with a journey ahead.

Roth understood the joys and tribulations of travel. He obviously loved hotels, but understood that he could not stay too long. ‘I might degrade the hotel to a home if I no longer left it until I had to. I want to feel welcome here, but not at home.’ It was obvious that Roth loved the welcome he received, even if not sincere – and kind words were said with an eye to a tip – he rejoiced in them. He loved hotel foyers, the bustle and people watching, the cooks, waiters and receptionist.

So much of his writing also seems pertinent today and he writes scathingly of Goebbels – ‘the loud lie, based on the psychologically correct assumption that people will believe a shout when they doubt speech.’ Roth is intelligent, witty, sharp and scathing. He writes of fraternity students, with their duelling scars as, ‘a slogan on two legs, nourished on beer and tradition.’ I certainly need to read more by Roth and I am glad that I finally got around to reading this excellent collection.

[Lito · Rating 5 out of 5]

Λάτρεψα τη ματιά του...
Πόσο σπουδαίος!!!

[Vassiliki Dass · Rating 5 out of 5]

Μην εχοντας διαβασει το θεωρούμενο ως αριστουργημα του, το Εμβατηριο Ραντζεσκυ, θεωρω αυτή την συλλογη επιφυλλιδων του Ροτ ως το καλυτερο εργο του. Συνδυάζει την δημοσιογραφικη με την συγγραφικη του ταυτοτητα με έναν τρόπο τόσο αβίαστο, γλυκό και όμορφο, με μια ματιά ιδιαιτέρως διερευνητική, καυστική, και συνάμα τρυφερή και ανθρωπινη πάνω στην μοίρα των ανθρωπων και στις δραστηριότητές τους που για μένα ο τίτλος Τα Χρόνια των Ξενοδοχείων είναι περιοριστικός. Νομιζεις ότι θα διαβασεις για τις διάφορες περιπλανησεις του Ροτ ανά την Ευρωπη αλλά γεμάτος έκπληξη διαβάζεις για τόσα μικρά και ασήμαντα που όμως αποτελούν την καθημερινότητα των ανθρωπων τότε και σήμερα, για τόσα μεγάλα και σπουδαια περί πολιτικής, επιλογών, πεπρωμένου που δεν μπορείς παρά να θαυμασεις την οξυδερκειά του, το θάρρος και το θρασος του να τα εκθέται ωμά εμπρός μας, την γλυκύτητα του χαρακτήρα του, τον βαθύ ανθρωπισμο του, το χάρισμά του να διαβάζει το μελλον. Θαυμαζεις και απορείς και ζηλευεις τους τότε αναγνώστες εκείνων των σπουδαίων εφημερίδων οι οποίες πλήρωναν τόσο αξιόλογους δημοσιογράφους και συγγραφείς για τα αρθρα τους, άλλη μια φορά καταλαβαίνεις τι εστί αληθινή δημοσιογραφία και καταπληκτική πένα. Ένα μεγάλο μπραβο και στον Άγγλο μεταφραστη που έκανε την επιλογή των επιφυλλιδων καθώς και στην Ελληνίδα μεταφράστρια. Ένα αληθινό μπιζού που θα διαβάζεται και θα ξαναδιαβάζεται

[Lila Dimaki · Rating 4 out of 5]

Με εντυπωσίασε η διεισδυτική του ικανότητα στους ανθρωπινους τύπους και τα αποφθεγματικά του σχόλια που φανερώνουν εναν ιδιαίτερα οξυδερκή νου.

[Jeff Bursey · Rating 4 out of 5]

Introduction
Certain books aren’t meant to be read the day they enter your life. Their moment is unpredictable. In June of this year I chose The Hotel Years to read while travelling, and resumed it in August when travelling once again. This collection of feuilletons written between the early 1920s and late 1930s for mostly German newspapers contained, surprisingly, much relevance for these times, about which more later.

1.
Apart from translator Michael Hofmann’s helpful introduction outlining how he chose the 64 pieces from the hundreds Roth composed, the book comprises 10 sections: “Envoi”; “Germany”; “Sketches”; “Austria and Elsewhere”; “USSR”; “Albania”; “Hotels”; “Pleasures and Pains”; “Ending”; “Coda.” The most energetic passages, to my mind, and also the most ruminative, occur when Roth discusses European and Soviet culture and politics. As Hofmann puts it: “It is his mind, his graceful spirit, his leaps and flights, his noticings that he parlays into pieces here.” (xii-xiii) Spirited jumps from one state/State to another mean that no sooner does Roth clue up his impressions on, say, “millionaires [who] are gifted poseurs” (10) lolling in a lobby where “cocaine, sugar, political systems, revolutions and women are on offer” (11) (this is 1921) than he’s talking in 1923 about an underpaid Dresden policeman who chose to abandon his position to beg in the country as the economy tanks. That same year Roth is in Bremerhaven to observe emigrants, primarily Jews and Russians, leave Europe aboard the Pittsburgh, under the eye of a particular official who is painted in unforgettable colours:

"This policeman is a splendid instance of a half-terrestrial, half-marine authority. His round cheeks are of a red that seems to glow from within, as if he had a lit candle in his mouth like a paper lantern at a summer fete... The helmet, the dark cloak, and the sabre, none of them go with the salt water face. A great calm radiates from that broad, improbably luminous face, and a benevolence that denies the severity of the blinking badge on the helmet, and quite disavows the sabre. The policeman stands at the far end of the narrow bridge that connects terra firma to the great sea. The emigrants need to go past him with their heavy loads... But the policeman radiates the calm and ease of a traffic light; they look at him, and think they have all the time in the world, whatever the urgency of the ship... The policeman, by the light of his own countenance, studies them assiduously." (14)

As leisurely as that is, Roth can also be quite punchy: “The ‘season’—it’s a technical term—has begun very auspiciously on the Baltic coast,” (19) he writes in “Baltic Tour” from the summer of 1924. Here you can “run into a fisherman who might have lurched from the pages of Grimm.” (21) Providing a picture of a vacationers’ paradise complete with characters doesn’t mean that a nasty surprise can’t spring up, as in this description of Binz that pointedly concludes in diminuendo fashion: “Poetically inclined natures and canny admen have dubbed it ‘the Sorrento of the north’. It has twenty hotels and two hundred villas to let, a two-mile seafront promenade, is stuffed with make-up, powder, atropine, tennis racquets and sharp pleats, cocktail bars and tipsy customers; a spa hotel with dancing opportunities for black tie and evening gowns; and even some swastika flags.” (21) In Baabe: “The sea, meanwhile, is as it always is, clean and untouched by the childish and violent games of men. You gaze at the infinity of water and sky, and forget. The wind that billows out the swastika banner does so in all innocence. The wave in which it is reflected isn’t to blame for its own desecration. So foolish are people that even in sight of these eternal things, they do not shrink in awe.” (22) In June 2017 the swastikas recalled past history more so than any other time; in August they were very much now.

2.
In “Sketches” there are several word portraits of various citizens from this or that country or trade. Roth is attuned to the sorrows that lurk under the skin, as in “The Mother,” where he conjures up what is felt by the forgiving parent of a son who tried to kill her by axe, asphyxiation, and stabbing:

"The mother’s day is full of work and painstaking, sometimes dirty labour. But between each thing and the next, the scrubbing of the floorboards and the chopping of the kindling, there will be a brief, secretive folding of her hands. And each time she sits down to peel potatoes, as when the axe struck her, she will cry from pain; but stronger than her woe is her hope, stronger than her pain her faith, and slowly from her love of the child, like young leaves from fertile soil a kind of shy pride will sprout, without cause, she couldn’t say why, not based on qualities, but simply on the fact of the boy’s existence." (50)

Roth is under no illusions; the boy “has nothing to regret,” (50) and will come back in five years or so in prison feeling blameless to a home filled with love “[b]ecause the mother doesn’t stick to facts, she denies the solar calendar and the year.” (50)

“Two Gypsy Girls” from May 1924 relates the effect caused in an unnamed urban setting when two girls, “very brown and... wearing bright colourful clothes, red blouses and blue and white floral skirts, red ribbons in their hair and big yellow coral necklaces at their throats,” (54) are flummoxed by street traffic. Roth helps them cross and tips his hat good-bye. Then he notices a “gentleman with a large blond moustache that went out into a couple of butchers’ hooks [who] threw me an angry look from his sky-blue eyes, full of contempt and menace and inexpressible rage.” (55) Oblivious, the Gypsy girls walk on: “A puff of wind blew out their skirts, and they looked like two wandering flags.” (55) There is much in those compact descriptions: innocence greeted with frustrated, murderous xenophobia, and the neat evocation of strangeness caused by the clothing of the two women. Throughout The Hotel Years these almost incidental touches make a passage more lively and memorable than they might otherwise seem.

3.
“Austria and Elsewhere,” “USSR,” and “Albania” contain much sharp commentary. In the case of Albania, Roth gives us a set of pictures of its ruler, King Zog I. (Hofmann supplies the information that Zog, who ruled consecutively as prime minister, president, and king from 1922-1939 until he went into exile “was the object of some six hundred blood feuds—vendettas—and survived fifty-five assassination attempts.” [129]) These portraits are sharp-tongued and generally disparaging: ridiculing the habit of nation leaders to always sit behind needless desks, the “crown-prince-like banality” (130) of Zog’s remarks, a late comment that whoever replaces him—and it might be soon—“would be almost indistinguishable from him” (133), and a swipe at the court’s “politicians whose cunning was sharpened and whose character dulled in Turkish service...” (133) He touches on the Albanian army, the nation’s customs, its music, and how “[o]ver the centuries the Albanians have lost all pleasure in the right to an opinion. Even unambiguous circumstances become secret mysteries in their hands. They have no taste for the absence of danger.” (151)

When it comes to Austria, in similar vein as Robert Musil, his fellow Austro-Hungarian, Roth makes much of that empire’s hyphenated form, pithily summed up in “Bruck and Kiralyhida”:

"Bruck-Kiralyhida was once like so: hyphenated.
"Then came the revolution, it washed away the hyphen, and with that the Dual Monarchy was finished.
"If the hyphen had remained, we might still have had the Duality today.
"...I will never go to Bruck on the Leitha again. Ever since it’s stopped being Bruck-Kiralyhida, it’s become a little edgy. And all on account of one hyphen. (63-65)

The nostalgia felt for the dismembered empire runs through much of Roth’s work, such as in his descriptions of life and commerce in its former parts where simple things, like fairs, “occur like natural disasters. They break out like storms. And then the rooms cost more.” (79) His homeland is set in contrast to the more orderly and menacing Italy of 1928: “At the end of two days I have taken against the porter of my Roman hotel. His professional friendliness is vitiated with that ill-concealed curiosity that betrays the mediocre spy. He simply wasn’t born to serve the police.” (81) Without mincing words he calls the country a “police state” (82) where the “janitor has become, by police practice, a sort of conduit of opinion.” (84) He is hard as well on Sarajevo—perhaps, in his mind, a prime source for his empire’s destruction—in “Where the World War Began” from 1927:

"All the heroes’ graves, all the mass graves, all the battlefields, all the poison gas, all the cripples, the war widows, the unknown soldiers: they all came from here. I don’t wish destruction upon this city, how could I? It has dear, good people, beautiful women, charming innocent children, animals that are grateful for their lives, butterflies on the stones in the Turkish cemetery. And yet the War began here, the world was destroyed, and Sarajevo has survived. It shouldn’t be a city, it should be a monument to the terrible memory." (87)

“His K. and K. Apostolic Majesty” (as Hofman explains, K. and K. refer to kaiserlicn [imperial] and königlich [royal], titles for the Habsburgs as rulers of, respectively, Austria and Hungary) contains memories of Roth as a patriotic soldier in 1916 witnessing the coffin of the newly-dead Emperor Franz Joseph I as it proceeded through the streets:

"And while I bitterly measured the proximity of the death to which the dead Emperor was sending me, I was moved by the ceremony with which His Majesty... was being carried to the grave. I had a clear sense of the absurdity of the last years, but this absurdity was also part of my childhood. The chilly sun of the Habsburgs was being extinguished, but it had at least been a sun." (92)

When he turns from Austria-Hungary to the USSR, Roth writes, in “The Czarist Émigrés,” that “[l]ong before we thought of visiting the new Russia, the old one came to us. The émigrés brought with them the wild aroma of their homeland, of dispossession, of blood and poverty, of their singular romantic destiny. It suited our clichéd European notions of Russians that they had experienced such things...” (101) As the displaced son of another empire it is not difficult for him to identify with the arrivals. This does not mean he agrees with how some of the new arrivals dealt with their current condition:

"They all lost their way. They lost their Russianness and their nobility. And because that was all they had ever been—Russian noblemen—they lost everything. They fell out of the bottom of their own tragedy. The great drama was left without heroes. History bitterly and implacably took its course. Our eyes grew tired of watching a misery they had revelled in. We stood before the last of them, the ones that couldn’t understand their own catastrophe, we knew more about them than they could tell us, and arm in arm with Time, at once cruel and sad, we left these lost souls behind." (104)

In September 1926 Roth set out to see the new country, and commented that “towns on the Volga are the saddest I have ever seen.” (112) Further: “I am not surprised that these towns are only beautiful from a distance or from above; that in Samara a goat refused to let me enter my hotel; ... that the napkins are coloured packing paper. If only one could walk over the nice roofs instead of the bumpy cobbles.” (113) Astrakhan is to be avoided, and the oil well operations mentioned in “Saint Petroleum” unsurprisingly come in for much criticism. (Hofmann notes that this piece was never printed.)

“Hotels,” “Pleasure and Pains,” and “Ending” contain much that is worth reading, though, for me, “Hotels” dragged when Roth detailed the character of various employees. Each section contains fine turns of phrase, such as this in “Morning at the Junction”: “How time creeps, when observed like this through a magnifying glass! Another three hours—and the clock on the church tower is slow. A stream drives a mill, a shepherd his sheep, the wind the morning fog. The news-stand at the station is still closed. It has glass walls, like someone sleeping with their eyes open.” (228) This wide view overlooking nature descends through time, faith, agriculture, and then, at ground level, the conditions of the day, swiftly and poetically.

Conclusion
As stated at the start, a book finds its rightful time to be read. What I thought would be suitable material to accompany my stays in hotels and airplane travel—commenting on train travel in 1926, Roth mentions the backwardness of “railway authorities” (220), and casually remarks: “We’re living in the wireless age, and still they like to punch holes in cardboard!” (220)—turned out not so much to match my movements but to offer an historical parallel and a kind of commentary on events in Charlottesville and elsewhere, the fate of emigrants, the alt-right and Antifa outfits, and the increasing disgust (on one side) and entrenchment (on the other) of the 99/1 percenters. Here is Roth in 1939, nearly five months before his death, short of funds and drinking heavily as he moved restlessly from one place to another in Paris: “That a poor man—of all things—needs money is no longer new. A poor man needs at least a small amount of money, it’s the rich man who needs a lot. But it’s easier for a rich man to get a lot of money than for a poor man to get a little...” (252) Maybe that sums up what we’ve heard for the last several years.

When I came across what follows, written a year and a half after Hitler was appointed Chancellor of Germany, the contemporary relevance struck me:

"After seventeen months, we are now used to the fact that in Germany more blood is spilled than the newspapers use printers’ ink to report on it. Probably Goebbels, the overlord of German printers’ ink, has more dead bodies on the conscience he doesn’t have, than he has journalists to do his bidding, which is to silence the great number of these deaths. For we now know that the task of the German press is not to publicize events but to silence them; not only to spread lies but also to suggest them; not just to mislead world opinion—the pathetic remnant of the world that still has an opinion—but also to impose false news on it with a baffling naïveté." (234)

These words from 1934 bring to mind Kellyanne Conway’s alternative facts, Donald Trump’s classification of many media outlets as purveyors of false news (which seems, to an outside observer, a not wholly unexpected charge laid at the doors of the mainstream media who willingly propagated mistruths from Blair and Bush II to help build up support for the Iraq war and then embedded journalists in armies), Real News on Facebook, the Republican Party’s embrace of white supremacists, and so on.

The Hotel Years contains much that can be read in a variety of ways about environmental degradation, the plight of the dispossessed, casual cruelties, leadership, political movements, and the routines of a city and a people. I wonder, though, what was going on that, at times, it felt like I was reading a slightly warped (and better written) version of today’s op-eds.

[Angie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ενα βιβλίο που ομολογουμένως δεν διάβασα "απνευστί" αλλά μου πήρε καιρό να ολοκληρώσω. Πρόκειται για μια ανθολογία άρθρων του Ροτ, τα οποία συνέγραψε τις δεκαετίες 1920 και 1930 περιπλανώμενος στην Ευρώπη, επιλεγμένα από τον Μάικλ Χόφμαν. Ο πόνος, η αποξένωση, οι κακουχίες και η νοσταλγία κυριαρχούν στα κείμενά του. Ο Roth υποκύπτει στην γοητεία της "ασχήμιας" και μας μιλά για μια Ευρώπη η οποία βαδίζει προς έναν παγκόσμιο πόλεμο. Όλα αυτά έχουν αποδοθεί με την γνωστή, λυρική, καυστική, πολύπλευρη γραφή του.

📖 "Τα χρόνια των ξενοδοχείων" λοιπόν, δεν είναι απλά το πορτρέτο της εποχής του συγγραφέα αλλά και του ίδιου. Μέσα από τις προσωπικές του μαρτυρίες ο αναγνώστης μάλλον βγάζει περισσότερα συμπεράσματα για τον πολυδιάστατο χαρακτήρα του πάρα για την πολιτική κατάσταση της εποχής. Άλλωστε αυτά μας είναι λίγο πολύ γνωστά. Αυτό που δεν μας ήταν γνωστό όμως είναι ότι ο Roth ήταν ένας άνθρωπος προδομένος που αγωνιζόταν τίμια, ένας ευγενής και ακέραιος χαρακτήρας μέσα σε έναν κόσμο άδικο και "ελαττωματικό" από την φύση του. Ο Χόφμαν τον χαρακτηρίζει ως "έναν αδέξιο βλάκα,έναν ήρωα, έναν ανώτερο άνθρωπο μα ξεπεσμένο,χίλιες φορές νικημένο,μα πάντα νικητή."

[Andrew H · Rating 5 out of 5]

Moses Joseph Roth was a leading journalist in the 1920s-30s. He was a major critic of the Third Reich. The Hotel Years is a collection of his journalism and a testament to the quality of his writing. Roth is so unlike the journalists of today. There is no ego, no look at me and my clever ideas, and no attempt to confuse the written word and stand up comedy. Instead, there is a commitment to observing and recording in exact, detailed, spare prose. The strongest pieces are: "A Man Reads the paper"; "Melancholy of a Tram Car in the Ruhr"; "Guillaume the Blond Negro"; "The Chief Receptionist"; "The Patron"; "The Lady in the Compartment"; "The Third Reich, a Dependency of Hell on Earth". Many of the pieces focus on power and how it reveals itself -- in a train compartment, in a hotel, in the Nazi state. Roth died before the Third Reich reached its dismal heights. But Roth saw the danger: "the task of the German press is not to publicise events but to silence them"; "if Goebbels is to be credited with a stroke of genius it is this: he has caused official truth to walk with the limp he has himself." Roth is a marvellous truth teller.

[Georgi · Rating 5 out of 5]

Нищо по-малко от 5 звезди за тази прекрасна колекция!

"The hotel years" на Йозеф Рот е сборник с кратки негови статии предимно за немски печатни издания от 20-те и 30-те години. Част от тях излязоха на български в сборника "Пътувания из Украйна и Русия", но други не са издавани у нас. Селекцията е на преводача Михаел Хофман, един от хората, на които англоезичният свят дължи превода на голяма част от творчеството на Рот. Четенето на тази селекция е истинска наслада. Рот притежава очи, с които да види поезията и в най-прозаичната картина на ежедневието.

Българският читател би спечелил много, ако този сборник се появи и у нас...

[Steven Paul Leiva · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Roth’s own definition of what he did in these feuilletons, Hofmann reports in his introduction, was to say “. . . true things on half a page.” Condensed truth, then, or, possibly better stated, distilled truth—truth sharply defined, delineated, and detailed. But what truth? It is not the truth of facts and figures, of data, of concrete realities. It is more the truth one finds in good-to-great works of fiction, the truths of place, atmosphere, moments, tone, aftermaths; the truth of people, of countries, of travel; of hotel lobbies. It is in Roth’s manipulation of words, his inventive metaphors, his clarity of ideas, his powerful, palpable descriptions; his ability to surround you with all the sights and sounds and smells (even when some are not detailed) that he is reporting on, that qualify these short pieces as fine examples of the art of writing." - From my review at the New York Journal of Books, See more at: http://www.nyjournalofbooks.com/book-...

[Stefania · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ένα βιβλίο για όλα αυτά που μου έχουν λείψει,ταξίδια,ξενοδοχεία,τρένα και καινούργιες μυρωδιές ζωής...ο Ροτ μας μεταφέρει με τη γραφή του σε ταξίδια αναλύοντας συνάμα τη πολιτική κατάσταση της εποχής του,ένας οξυδερκής παρατηρητής καταστάσεων και της εποχής του,ένας πατριώτης των ξενοδοχείων, αυτό που ως όνειρο είχα πάντα και εγώ.

[Nigeyb · Rating 3 out of 5]

Hotel Years: Wanderings in Europe between the Wars is sporadically good. Joseph Roth certainly lived through interesting times and, as a peripatetic journalist, he was able to file short, first person reports to various German publications throughout the 1920s and 1930s from numerous different locations, and to reflect on the experience of travelling.

The articles are grouped thematically and many foreshadow the darkening clouds over Europe as nationalism and fascism were in the ascendancy.

Having written that it makes me wonder why I didn't enjoy it more but, for whatever reason, a lot of it felt a bit of a chore. When Roth is good he's great but a lot of this mixed bag seemed too inconsequential for my taste.

There are 64 articles in this collection and I'd estimate that I really enjoyed about a quarter of these.

I notice most other reviews are more gushing and rhapsodic so better to heed them. It's not Joseph Roth, it's me.

3/5



The hotel that I love like a fatherland is situated in one of the great port cities of Europe, and the heavy gold Antiqua letters in which its banal name is spelled out shining across the roofs of the gently banked houses are in my eye metal flags, metal bannerets that instead of fluttering shine out their greeting.

In the 1920s and 30s, Joseph Roth travelled extensively in Europe, leading a peripatetic life living in hotels and writing about the towns through which he passed. Incisive, nostalgic, curious and sharply observed - and collected together here for the first time - his pieces paint a picture of a continent racked by change yet clinging to tradition. From the 'compulsive' exercise regime of the Albanian army, the rickety industry of the new oil capital of Galicia, and 'split and scalped' houses of Tirana forced into modernity, to the individual and idiosyncratic characters that Roth encounters in his hotel stays, these tender and quietly dazzling vignettes form a series of literary postcards written from a bygone world, creeping towards world war; introduced and exquisitely translated by Michael Hofmann.,/i>

[Bevan · Rating 5 out of 5]

What makes Roth one of the great writers of the 20th century? His fiction, of course, but he was a great journalist. Absolutely nonpareil. He takes one's breath away in these short essays, an observer and a visionary.

[Marina Maidou · Rating 4 out of 5]

Η ιστορία πίσω από την Ιστορία είναι από τα πιο ενδιαφέροντα πράγματα για μένα. Η ατμόσφαιρα, οι άνθρωποι και στιγμιότυπα της ζωής τους στο πλαίσιο μεγάλων ιστορικών γεγονότων ή περιόδων αποτελούν το αλατοπίπερο που νοστιμεύει μια ξερή απαρίθμηση ιστορικών συμβάντων.
Ο Γιόζεφ Ροτ ήταν δημοσιογράφος για χρόνια, εκτός από συγγραφέας κι ίσως εκεί να οφείλεται η απαράμιλλη ικανότητά του να περιγράφει με εκτυφλωτικό λυρισμό π.χ. την εποχή της άνοιξης χωρίς να χρησιμοποιεί ούτε μια λυρική έκφραση. Θυμίζει το βιβλίο, Ένας Τζέντλεμαν στη Μόσχα, αν ο χαρακτήρας του Έιμορ Τόουλς ήταν δημοσιογράφος και δεν είχε καταδικαστεί σε κ��τ' οίκον περιορισμόν στο ξενοδοχείο Μετροπόλ της Μόσχας. Και σε όλα αυτά προστίθεται η από πρώτο χέρι περιγραφή του τι σημαίνει να ζεις σε ξενοδοχεία για χρόνια, όντας σε οικονομική ανέχεια αλλά διατηρώντας ωστόσο την οικειότητα με τον ιδιαίτερο μικρόκοσμο του προσωπικού του ξενοδοχείου. Παρότι ο ίδιος πέθανε πολύ πριν (1939) να επικρατήσει η θηριωδία του ναζισμού στην Ευρώπη ήταν ιδιαίτερα οξυδερκής και προφητικός στο τι επιφύλασσε ο Χίτλερ, όχι μόνο στους Εβραίους, αλλά και σ' ολόκληρο τον κόσμο.
Μου άρεσε αυτή η διαφορετική ματιά σε μια Ευρώπη που ακόμα σπαρασσόταν από διαφορετικές εθνότητες και όταν ακόμα τα σημερινά κράτη είχαν να λύσουν πολλά εσωτερικά προβλήματα ταυτότητας. Και μέσα σε όλα αυτά οι καθημερινοί άνθρωποι κινούνταν στο δικό τους σύμπαν προσπαθώντας να επιβιώσουν ανάμεσα από τις συγκρούσεις των μεγάλων και ηχηρών ονομάτων της Ιστορίας.
The story behind History is one of the most interesting points for me. The atmosphere, the people and moments of their lives in the setting of major historical events or periods adds zest to a desiccated list of events.
Joseph Roth has been a journalist for years, besides being a writer, and perhaps because of this he has a unique ability to describe springtime for example in a poetic way without even using any lyric expression. It reminds me of the book, A Gentleman in Moscow if Amor Towles had made his main character as a journalist that could travel anywhere except staying at the Metropol Hotel in Moscow. And also we have a straight description of what means to live in hotels for years, being in financial distress but still maintaining familiarity with the little world of the hotel staff. Although he died long before (1939), the atrocities of Nazism that prevailed in Europe, he was particularly keen and prophetic about what Hitler was maintained, not only for the Jews but for the whole world.
I liked this different view of a Europe that was still fraught with different ethnicities and when the present-day states still had many internal identity problems to solve. And in the midst of all this, everyday people were moving in their own universe, trying to survive amidst the clashes of history's big and loud personalities and events.

[Keith · Rating 5 out of 5]

Joseph Roth's accounts of life in Europe following World War I are truly mesmerizing. Roth was a poet and novelist, as well as a journalist for several German newspapers and this collection of his journalistic impressions of a changing world are enthralling. He tells charming tales of people clinging to the past as Europe attempts to recover from “the war to end all wars” but he observes the transition following a long history of rule by monarchy, as it approaches a new and sometimes frightening future. His annals of a bygone and often gentile era, are frequently more poetic, than journalistic in style and his lyrical descriptions provide us with a view of a world that's seldom seen in historical chronicles. His travels from Vienna to Paris and throughout Germany, Italy, and Poland as well as the newly minted USSR provide nostalgic reports, showing dramatic cultural change as people attempt to cling to their traditions in a world turned upside down. Covering the 1920's and 1930's. the reader often feels like a time traveler who wishes that a warning could be sent back to those that watch the events unfold but so often underestimate the outcome. This period of political assassinations, rampant inflation, and emerging dictators foretell a gathering storm and Roth captivates his readers with his luminous narrative.

[Chris · Rating 5 out of 5]

[page count is wrong — there are 264 text pages, not 192]

What brilliance! 64 short pieces written for newspapers — deft sketches of hotels, cities, people, moments, moods: all from his 20 years of travel around Europe, which came to an premature end in 1939, when he was only 44. There is regret for the passing of the old Empire, fear of the barbarity to come, and page after page of sparkling wit.

[Anastazi_ · Rating 5 out of 5]

Εξαιρετικό. Στενοχωρήθηκα που τελείωσε.

[Heronimo Gieronymus · Rating 5 out of 5]

I had the great privilege earlier this year, due to a new restoration and a Blu-ray from Arrow, of finally seeing Ermanno Olmi's 1988 film adaptation of Joseph Roth's THE LEGEND OF THE HOLY DRINKER. The film, a mythic work of freakish unearthly power, had a considerable impact on me, one of the results of which was the ascension of Joseph Roth to the forefront of my thinking. Roth was one of the most celebrated (and handsomely compensated) journalists of his day as well as a popular creator of literary fiction, but he died in alcoholic penury in Paris in 1939, the world once again directly on the brink of hellacious conflagration, and I cannot help but think his trajectory emblematic, historically expressive, and very moving to me in manners utterly personal. My suspicion is that THE HOTEL YEARS, edited and translated by lifelong Roth devotee Michael Hofmann, is an ideal place to start for those like myself who are fascinated by Roth but have not yet begun doing much substantive digging into the greater body of work. (For any writer, let alone one who died at age forty-four, the extant body of work is impressively large.) The book contains small pieces of journalism each emblematic of the form know as the "feuilleton." In some ways they look forward to New Journalism. Roth is explicitly the central organizing intelligence of these poetic dispatches as well as, for the most part, something like the main character. This is Journalism as Impressionism. Roth traveled across much of Europe (including the Soviet Union and Albania) during the interwar years, indeed living more or less out of hotels, and during his travels produced an extraordinary volume of sketches. These sketches are marked both with outstanding finesse of restrained literary technique and a strong assertion of individual personality. Both a product of the Austro-Hungarian Empire (which no longer existed as such after the First World War) and a Jew, Roth consistently represents himself as spiritually homeless and a committed outsider. In a number of pieces in THE HOTEL YEARS--see especially "The Emigrants' Ship"--Roth commiserates with emigrants, often fleeing persecution and pogroms, in a way he is unable to commiserate with most people. One senses it is those who flee and have nowhere to go with whom Roth most identifies. His voice is often saturated with bitterness and his wit can be extremely caustic. Often jokes are lamentations and lamentations jokes. Two pieces right at the very beginning of the book are especially emblematic: "Of Dogs and Men" circulates a brutal assessment of man's inhumanity around a fundamentally comic image, and "The Umbrella" gives delectable form outright to a strain of benevolent misanthropy. But we never get the sense that Roth rolls his eyes at what he sees. We believe ourselves always in the company of a man with a truly committed gaze; a gaze that is the basis of the work itself. Roth fought in the First World War and was marked by his experience forever thereafter. Reflection on war and premonitions regarding the inevitably of its eternal recurrence haunt the writer. "Furlough in Jablonovka," the penultimate piece in the book, is situated judiciously by Hofmann. It is a personal reminiscence of war distinguished in the context of the book overall by its portrait of quiet solidarity in adversity; a keen eye may notice that the piece was published slightly posthumously, and might well decide, as did I, that this is unspeakably touching. The large majority of the pieces compiled in THE HOTEL YEARS were written in the twenties. The book provides an especially interesting perspective on the upheavals and general disequilibrium of Weimar Germany. In "Millionaire for an Hour," Roth writes that in one particular hoity-toity Berlin hotel’s lobby “cocaine, sugar, political systems, revolutions and women are on offer.” (Last night a collaborator and myself performed publicly a piece of music that I decided to dedicate to Roth and named "Men in Canary-Yellow Gloves Should Be Treated with Suspicion," the title appropriated from that same essay.) Though there are only a very few articles from the thirties, in at least one Roth pulls no punches in detailing the irreversible and abjectly horrid turning of the tides in the form of the clamping-down of nationalist psychosis. In "The Third Reich, a Dependency of Hell on Earth," Roth sees in Goebbels the manifestation of a whole screaming, dishonest, club-footed nation converted into a living hell and a vile farce. It is clear to readers of THE HOTEL YEARS, however, that Roth was well aware from as early as 1919 of the unseemly underpinning dynamics that gave birth to the hydra. Modernity by and large produces in Roth a quality of free-floating melancholy, especially in its industrial aspect. In sequential pieces "Melancholy of a Tram Car in the Ruhr" and "Smoke Joins Up the Towns,"Roth sinuously bemoans how progress pollutes the air and disfigures the landscape. Perhaps the most indelible impression the book leaves regarding the interwar years is of a neurotic culture of surveillance seemingly found everywhere, populated by overzealous functionaries, nervous informers, and a generally paranoid citizenry. Fascist Italy especially comes off as a dim Kafkaesque nightmare. The only piece that very intimately reflects the tragic trajectory of Joseph Roth's life, taking on especial depth when one considers his ignoble end, is "The Bitter Bread." It is one of the rare pieces in which Roth makes it appear that another character is the star. Make no mistake: this portrait of poverty, desperation, and stubborn hope is heartbreaking, covert confession. It was published in January of 1939. Roth would die in May.

[Howard Mansfield · Rating 5 out of 5]

The great poet Joseph Brodsky said that there is a poem on every page of Joseph Roth’s books. Yes to that, and yes again. The Austrian writer who died in 1939 has enjoyed revival due to the elegant translations of Michael Hofmann. The Radetzky March is Roth’s greatest book. Seek it out. I’ve read almost all of Roth’s sixteen or so novels, short story collections and collections of Roth’s reporting. I owe Hofmann a great debt. The Hotel Years, Hofmann’s skillful collection, presents more than 60 of Roth’s short essays as he traveled around Europe and Russia in the 1920’s and 1930’s.

Roth’s observations of Germany coming apart are haunting. In a short essay from 1923, Roth notes that two high school kids are allowed to walk down the sidewalk signing an anti-Semitic taunt. No one says a word to them. They just step aside. And then Roth reports the hostile words a professor has for his new foreign students. It’s a non-welcome, a non-greeting. These are signs, says Roth, that Germany has lost it’s “regulating consciousness.” Eleven years later, with the Nazis in power, things are so much worse: “For hundreds of years, we have been accustomed to lies going around on tiptoe,” he writes in 1934. “The epoch-making discovery of modern dictatorships is the invention of the loud lie, based on the psychologically correct assumption that people will believe a shout when they doubt speech.”

But this is just one of Roth’s topics in The Hotel Years. There are descriptions of elegant hotels, rough Polish and Russian oilfield towns, the smoky towns of the Ruhr, music in the parks of German cities, and a loving essay about watching the Emperor of the Austro-Hungarian Empire getting into his carriage for a Sunday morning ride. That one scene is so distant now that it could have happened on another planet.

[Belinda Carvalho · Rating 5 out of 5]

These journalistic articles are an amazing product of their time. They have a certain innocence about them that predates the horror that ravaged Europe in WW2 but of course the nightmare of WW1 foreshadows everything and foreboding signs of the horror to come unfortunately accompany Josef Roth on his travels.
Roth is a perfect travel companion/guide for Europe in the interwar years . His descriptions of Russia and Albania were particularly fascinating. The articles are so literary, so beautifully crafted and insightful that it is sometimes hard to believe that these appeared in normal newspapers.
The translation by Michael Hoffman is superb and I don't feel I missed out by reading the book in English. The articles are nicely arranged and the final articles are sad, when Roth is living in exile in Paris and is living in poverty, with alcoholism. It is so sad, almost eery as you know what is coming and that he has almost become like people he witnessed on his travels.
I really look forward to reading his novels, he is a perfect writer .

[Jerrod · Rating 5 out of 5]

Incredible, Roth has no peers in the use of metaphor, using observation and juxtaposition to cast a careful, ennobling light on a disturbed world.

[Oni · Rating 4 out of 5]

Thematically, Europe during the interwar period dominated my latest reads and the book that best captured its spirit was The Hotel Years, a collection of 64 feuilletons written by Joseph Roth between 1919-1939. Feuilletons were a short-form, first-person report popular in German journals, and Roth excelled at writing them. He described them as “saying the truth on half a page” and under his pen, the genre became art. Not only did he say the truth on half a page, he often did it in one poignant sentence landing like a dagger.

Roth watched history unfold around him and captured both his epoch’s Zeitgeist and life’s minutiae in evocative vignettes. He travelled extensively throughout Europe, first to Germany, then France, and later to Poland, Albania, the Baltics and the Soviet Union in order to “paint the portrait of the age”. And paint it he did. With acute clarity, melancholy, anger, and perhaps most of all, with a profoundly humane eye. When Europe was in denial, hoping - despite the ominous signs and dark energies that were brewing everywhere – that the shadows that led to WWI have dissolved, Roth looked unflinchingly into the age’s reality and warned that a darker storm is coming. He denounced Hitler and the rise of nationalism, as well as fascism in Italy and the dictatorships budding all around. He excoriated racism and xenophobia and wrote about dislocation and trauma. He distilled the truth encountered during his travels and captured a continent in flux.

There’s a short scene in one of the feuilletons which I think is a distillation of what Roth achieves in this collection. Somewhere in Germany he witnesses a street brimming with people ridiculing two young Gypsy girls trying to cross the street but being intimidated by the hectic traffic. He registers sharply the cruelty of the passersby and then gently takes the two girls by the arm, helps them cross the street safely, and lets them continue their path after raising his hat to them. All of Roth is there – sharp observation, grace and generosity, his ability to remain a beautiful European at a time when Europe was ill, missing the “regulating consciousness” and teetering on the brink of tragedy.

[Joe · Rating 4 out of 5]

Certainly one of the best books I've read in a very long time, almost inclined to give it 5 stars. Joseph Roth was a very dignified and intelligent journalist who traveled through Europe after WW I and just before WW II, and recorded his experiences in almost a poetic manner, from Russia, Austria, Italy, Albania and beyond. Sometimes sad, humorous, and always in a mystical embrace of the places and people. This is one hellva book. The Hotel Years, Wanderings in Europe between the wars, is one of the best.

The Hotel Years gathers sixty-four feuilletons: on hotels; pains and pleasures; personalities; and the deteriorating international situation of the 1930s. Never before translated into English, these pieces begin in Vienna just at the end of the First World War, and end in Paris near the outbreak of the Second World War. Roth, the great journalist of his day, needed journalism to survive: in his six-volume collected works in German, there are three of fiction and three of journalism. Beginning in 1921, Roth wrote mostly for the liberal Frankfurter Zeitung who sent him on assignments throughout Germany - the inflation, the occupation, political assassinations - and abroad, to the USSR, Italy, Poland and Albania. And always: “I celebrate my return to lobby and chandelier, porter and chambermaid.”