I don’t think any book I’d read this year will be more beautiful than Roth’s meditative and nostalgic The Radetzky’s March, a novel about times long past that will never be regained, the obsession of the glory days and the deficit to relive them in the present day, but how the glory days continue to haunt us. It is a novel about decay. It is the decay of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the Emperor himself and man. Reading it will remind you of the first time you read Tolstoy — there’s a functional family drama here that is a parallel to the plights of society. It reminded me also of Turgenev, who was also obsessed with the relationships with parents and their offsprings. But Joseph Roth stands on his own. This is a beautifully written book. It is easy to underline the passages in the novel.
The inevitable rot of a lineage and an empire
The Radetzky March is the short lifespan of the Trotta family, from the war hero Baron von Trotta who by chance saved the young Emperor, to his grandson Carl Joseph von Trotta. Like his grandfather, Carl Joseph took a career in the military, becoming a Lieutenant. His father, Franz von Trotta ended up in civil service as a District Commissioner — a well respected post with significance influence in his own domain.
The shadow of Baron Joseph von Trotta de Sipolje trickles down to the following generations. “de Sipolje” is a significant addition to the name, not to mention the baronetcy that comes with it. The District Commissioner plays a straight bat. His life is routine, framed by the support of his age-long servant Jacques (not his real name) and raising his son with the expectation and the gravity of the von Trotta name. On coming home for his holidays, the District Commissioner would test his son on general knowledge during the school holidays before he can go out and play. But there is a cold distance between him and his son that can never be abridged.
We can say that Carl Joseph is the protagonist of the story, and a deeply flawed one. After an affair with the wife of one of his peers, he shipped off to the remote regions near the frontier, only to run into trouble again. The isolation and lack of entertainment is a lull at first, but once the distractions came about, he was unable to stop the inertia. This downward spiral is triggered by the coming of Frau von Taussig and the gambling den. Women and gambling have been downfall of men since time immemorial it seems.
The grandeur of the Radetzky March
I couldn’t recommend this book enough. Writing this review, I’m listening to the Radetzky March playing in the background. It is a tune that is familiar to the point that it has become a cliché, a symphony penned by Strauss, and something Austrians hold to pride to this day. Strauss’s tune is grandiose, verbose, maybe over the top. And perhaps the title is apt — listening to the Radetzky March invokes a feeling of nostalgia, of the invulnerability of the past, of pride. There is no flawed emotion, no false note.
Reality doesn’t work like it does in music though does it? Carl Joseph is taken back to the times spent in his father’s house listening to the distant throngs of the Radetzky March on the Sunday (“wanting to die for king and country”). The conductor is a regular visitor who drinks his father’s health. The painting of his grandfather hangs loud and imposing as the music — and it is the painting that is the embodiment of the expectations of anyone with the von Trotta blood — heroic, loyal to the service of his country, proud.
And it is to this expectation that Carl Joseph falters terribly. He is distant with his subordinates and convinced that he is talked about behind his back. In a mission to quell a labour strike, he messed up badly, only to be saved by his name and his family’s reputation. He is capricious and falls hard to entertain his flame, Frau von Taussig and is a chronic gambler. I wonder if Carl Joseph is a representation of the youth before World War I hit. That this generation had been spoiled and riding the coattails of their grandfather’s past.
The empire is crumbling, paralleled by the mental state of the Emperor, who are often forgetful and fumbling. Decay is ubiquitous — in the relationships between the comrades, in the wrinkles of Frau von Taussig, the lack of purpose behind the military drills and the insufferable youth convinced (rightly) of the end of the empire. The soul has long left the Weimar republic, but the machinations continue for a lack of better purpose.
and it struck him suddenly, and probably for the first time in his military career, that these men with their drilled precision were dead parts of dead machines that didn’t produce anything.
Roth recalls the glory days before the war, and not all of it is doom and gloom. Roth, I suppose, was searching for lost time as Proust had attempted to, succeeding in pockets of it, but it comes also with plenty of painful memories of folly and an overemphasis to honour, which didn’t matter in the end. It all came to shit anyway. For the District Commissioner, at one point, he would prefer to lose his son in battle than to have his son dishonour the family name.
By the lights of that vanished epoch, obscured from our view as by the fresh graves of the fallen, an officer of the K-and-K army who had failed to kill someone who had impugned his honour merely because he owed him money, was a calamity, and worse than a calamity: it was a disgrace for his father, for the army and the Monarchy.
I mentioned that the book reminded me of Tolstoy and Turgenev, but I can’t help drawing parallels with one of my favourite books — Buzatti’s The Tartar Steppe. There is a sense of isolation in the frontiers which reduce men to their follies and make them go mad.
And in the tedious swampy remoteness of the garrison, from time to time an officer would fall folly to despair, cards, debts and sinister contacts. The cemeteries of the border garrisons held the bodies of many weak young men.
I cannot quote anywhere near enough, but I’d have to leave another one to conclude:
I cannot quote anywhere near enough, but I’d have to leave another one to conclude:
Everything that grew too long to grow; and everything that ended took a long time to be forgotten. Everything that existed left behind traces of itself, and people lived then by their memories, just as we nowadays live now by our capacity to forget, quickly and comprehensively.
How gut-wrenchingly beautiful is that?
