Perlefter E-Book

Joseph Roth

• Herausgeber: Peter Owen Publishers
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2013

Beschreibung

Now available for the first time in English, Perlefter: The Story of a Bourgeois is a novel fragment that was discovered among Joseph Roth's papers decades after his death. The book chronicles the life and times of Alexander Perlefter, the well-to-do Austrian urbanite with whom his relative, a small-town narrator, Naphthali Kroj, has come to live after becoming orphaned. The colourful cast of characters includes Perlefter's four children: Foolish Alfred, with his predilection for sleeping with servant girls and widows and boasting of the venereal diseases he contracts; the hapless Karoline, whose interest in math and physics and employment at a scientific institute seem to repel serious suitors; the flamboyant Julie, a sweet, pale and anemic girl who likes any man who is inclined toward marriage; and the beautiful and flighty Margarete, besotted with a professor of history. Written circa 1928-30, Perlefter represents Joseph Roth at the very peak of his literary powers - it was penned just after the publication of The Silent Prophet and just before his masterpieces Job and The Radetzky March. Rich in irony and exemplary of Roth's keen powers of social and political observation, Perlefter is an important addition to the Roth canon.

Leseprobe

‘One of the most significant European authors of the twentieth century’ – Sunday Times

‘Roth has earned his place among the giants of modern German literature.’ – Jewish Chronicle

‘A concise, powerful writer who brilliantly evoked the social, political and intellectual turmoil of his era’ – Publishers Weekly

‘Roth is a very fine writer indeed.’ – Angela Carter, Guardian

Now available for the first time in English, Perlefter: The Story of a Bourgeois is a novel from between 1928 and 1930 discovered among Joseph Roth’s papers decades after his death.

Alexander Perlefter is a well-to-do Austrian Jewish urbanite with whom the narrator, his relative Naphtali Kroj, has come to live after being orphaned. In the Perlefter household Kroj finds a colourful cast of characters that includes Perlefter’s emotionally fragile wife, his four children (foolish Alfred, hapless Karoline, flamboyant Julie and flighty Margarete) and a pretty maid with whom Kroj becomes hopelessly smitten. Kroj watches with amusement as Perlefter tries to advance his career, marry off his children and fend off a newly arrived distant cousin, the brusque ex-wrestler Leo Bidak.

Perlefter represents Roth at the very peak of his literary powers, penned just after The Silent Prophet and just before his masterpieces Job and The Radetzky March. Rich in irony and exemplary of Roth’s keen powers of social and political observation, Perlefter is an important addition to the Roth canon in English.

Joseph Roth, c. 1932

JOSEPH ROTH was born in Brody, Galicia – then part of Austria-Hungary and now in Ukraine – in 1894. He served in the Austrian Army between 1916 and 1918 and worked as a journalist from 1923 to 1932 in Berlin and Vienna. When the Nazis came to power in 1933 he emigrated to Paris, where he drank himself into an early grave in 1939.

Roth also wrote The Antichrist, The Hundred Days, Weights and Measures, Flight Without End and The Silent Prophet, which have also been published by Peter Owen, as well as The Radetzky March, String of Pearls and The Legend of the Holy Drinker.

Contents

Translator’s Note

Introduction

I

II

III

IV

V

VI

VII

VIII

IX

X

Translator’s Afterword

Also by Joseph Roth

About the Translator

Copyright

Some Authors We Have Published

TRANSLATOR’S NOTE

While I was hard at work translating Joseph Roth’s The Hundred Days I vowed it would be my last Roth translation. But all the while the question lurked in the back of my mind – dare I attempt one final challenge? Should I take on Perlefter? Was it a worthwhile endeavour? Indeed, it existed in German, but the effort required by Kiepenheuer & Witsch to publish it was limited to deciphering and transcribing Roth’s longhand. Translation is another story entirely.

Was this partial manuscript, one that Roth had abandoned ten years before he died, one that was probably between halfway and two-thirds completed, worthy of publication in English? It helped somewhat knowing that Roberto Bravo de la Varga had deemed it a worthy project to translate Perlefter into Spanish (published in 2006 together with Strawberries, which, incidentally, also features a character named Napthali Kroj). Was there anything inherently wrong with translating an unfinished work?

The first thing that came to mind as I considered the latter question was Franz Kafka, who had instructed that all his manuscripts be burned after his death. Max Brod ignored his instructions, and only because of that do we have Kafka’s rich literary legacy available to us today. But Roth, unlike Kafka, was a successful writer during his lifetime, with many books to his credit and an established literary reputation. Would Perlefter contribute anything positive to the existing Roth oeuvre in English? I began to read the book, and I soon discovered that the answer was a resounding yes.

It is impossible to know how much refinement and revision the existing chapters of Perlefter would have gone through had the book been finished. The mere fact that it remained unfinished means that the previous question may be moot. A sort of ‘what-if’ line of questioning that can only lead to frustration. In effect, every translator is an editor, negotiating the nuances between two languages and making the transition as smooth as possible. But a translator’s challenge is even greater than usual with such a manuscript. A translator must strive to bring a work into its new language with elegance and style to make it readable and digestible without completely rewriting or changing the meaning. So any curt or cryptic moments had to remain so. The published German book as it stands is certainly surprisingly cohesive, but there are clearly moments when the narrative feels rushed and dismissive or lacking in detail, as if parts of Perlefter were more or less an outline. I have not crossed any lines here, in the translation of this unfinished book. I have approached the project the same way that I approached my other two Roth translations – to create the English version of Roth’s distinct voice.

I would like to thank Peter Owen and Antonia Owen for their belief in this important project, as well as Simon Smith, my excellent editor, and Michael O’Connell.

INTRODUCTION

Joseph Roth’s (1894-1939) prodigious output included numerous novels, novellas, short stories and newspaper articles in the space of only sixteen years between 1923 and 1939. Born Moses Joseph Roth of Jewish parentage in the town of Brody, Galicia (present-day Ukraine), about fifty-four miles north-east of present-day Lviv (then called Lemberg), Roth was a product of the Austro-Hungarian Empire who first lived in Vienna then moved to Berlin. After Hitler came to power in early 1933 Roth fled Germany permanently, spending the rest of his life living out of hotels in France and other locales in Western Europe. Generally speaking, his life before 1933 was happier than his life post-exile, although use of the word ‘happy’ to describe Roth might be misleading. Burdened by financial worries and increasingly dependent on alcohol, he became an old man while still in his thirties (a fact he freely and frequently admitted and bemoaned) and died at the age of forty-four in 1939.