The Radetzky March (Works of Joseph Roth)
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Manufacturer: Overlook TP
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Average Customer Rating:  
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Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 813
EAN: 9781585673261
ISBN: 1585673269
Label: Overlook TP
Manufacturer: Overlook TP
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 352
Publication Date: 2002-08-01
Publisher: Overlook TP
Studio: Overlook TP
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Editorial Reviews:
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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.
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Spotlight customer reviews:
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Customer Rating: 
Summary: Brilliantly Written Period Piece
Comment:
The Radetzky March is Joseph Roth's brilliant tale of the declining years of the Austro-Hungarian or more accurately the Hapsburg Empire as told through the fortunes and misfortunes of three generations of the Von Trotta family. The book opens in 1859 with young Lt. Joseph Trotta saving the life of the also young emperor Franz Joseph at the Battle of Solferino. That deed earned the `von' for Baron and began a connection between the Von Trotta's and the emperor that was intermittently called upon when the family's fortunes suffered. The book ends with the outbreak of World War I.
In addition to the slow motion disintegration of the Empire, the book focuses on the relations between successive generations of father and son. Strict notions of honor and duty figure in their thinking above all other considerations. The third generation Von Trotta, Carl Joseph leads a foolish and dissolute life, but still clings to honor and duty above all else. The decline in the family's fortunes traces the decline in the Empire.
A New York Review of Books piece by J.M. Coetzee called Roth the `emperor of nostalgia', a phrase which summarizes my own sentiments (the article is freely available on the Internet). While the writing is excellent, at the end of the day the book is simply an examination of a mostly forgotten time and place. An enjoyable read, yes, but do not look for lasting or universal insights. (The Radetzky March was recommended by fellow Amazonians and I enjoyed the book and appreciate the recommendation.) If an extraordinarily well-written period piece on the decline of Hapsburg Empire meets your fancy, then you must not miss The Radetzky March.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Enter Hollywood
Comment: Yes, yes to all of the above (and below). Interestingly, the author came from the poorest region of the dual monarchy, Galicia, a region that would also produce a Nobel prize in literature for the Israeli writer, S.Y. Agnon (who wrote in Hebrew). And many of the founders of Hollywood came from Galicia. The time period covered by Roth's book has been a fertile field for the movies and for literature: There is Mayerling, played by Boyer(based on the highly suspicious death of the crown prince), La Ronde (adapted quite freely by Max Ophulus from the grim short story by Schnitzler; speaking of whom, there is "Leutnant Gustl," which offers inflamatory criticism of the Imperial army), The Burning Secret (from the Zweig novella), and recently Szabos's Colonel Redl (played with athletic cogency by Klaus Maria Brandauer). But I cannot find a film version of Roth's outstanding novel. And, oh yes, the book
obtains wholeness and harmony, but falls short of radiance.
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Summary: Radetzky March
Comment: Interesting view of Austro-Hungary in the period leading up to WWI. Not exactly joyful, but riveting. Very good translation,
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Summary: Polished Boots and Empty Gods
Comment: Critics seem to have taken Joseph Roth's portrayal of the Austro-Hungarian Empire at the brink of its collapse as nostalgic. In his introduction to this translation, Alan Bance speaks of Roth's "undeniable tendency to idealize the past." I beg to differ. My reading of "The Radetsky March" is not an elegy, in the sense of praise for the dead -not for the dead Hero of Solferino, not for the Emperor he saved from a foolish death, and certainly not for the wounded Leviathan of Empire. The sigh of relief that the reader hears from most of the minor characters at the end of the novel - from the aristocrat Chojnicki to the peasant Onufrij - expresses the dominant sense that the burden of repression which the Empire laid on its peoples was never as tolerable as everyone pretended. Rather, it was an Empire of false ideals and false idols. Loyalty was corrupt, honor indistinguishable from folly. Yes, every belt was buckled and every fork was polished daily, but what of real value did such punctiliousness represent? All hollow formalism, and the hollowest of all was the Kaiser himself, Franz Joseph, first shown to us as a smug peacock, later as a confused relic of his own personal insignificance, musing about his impotence while still practicing his arbitrary absolutism. Underlying the Empire is a structure of ethnic hierarchy, with the Germans and the 'honorary' Germans at the top, and the bizarre red-bearded borderland Jews at the bottom. All order depends on the willing acknowledgement of this hierarchy, yet each component seethes with resentment, making unity no deeper than the gloss on a man's boots. Likewise, society depends on the hierarchic 'satisfaction' with social class boundaries - the faithful servant and the responsible master - yet on both sides of the boundary, humanity is stunted. The masters feel their own inadequacy in the eyes of their servants, and the servants gauge their own mean condition by the emptiness of their masters' lives. The Radetsky March is a processional of gaudy futility.
The novel begins at the Battle of Solferino in 1859, when a Slovene soldier, barely elevated from the peasantry, saves the life of the young Emperor Franz Joseph. It ends at the beginning of World War 1, with the almost simultaneous deaths of the hero's son and grandson and the senile Hapsburg ruler. Another secondary character, Doctor Skowronneck, has the last word; speaking of the dead, he says "I don't think either of them could have outlived Austria." His insight, if I understand him correctly, as that the hollow power of the empire and the hollow virtues of its upholders were inseparable.
Perhaps the most constant personage in this novel of three generations is an icon, and I mean "icon" in its orthodox religious sense. The icon is a portrait of grandfather Trotta, the Hero of Solferino, painted by the school friend of the second generation Trotta, the civil servant. The painter is another sort of self-shaping failure, re-encountered as a street artist by Trotta II with his cadet son, thereafter a shadowy presence likely to cadge money and croak a profundity at random moments. Trotta III, the lieutenant grandson of the Hero, in fact knows the Hero only from his portrait, which haunts his reveries and chides his shortcomings at every turn. Just as the Hero's portrait resembles the universal state portrait of the Kaiser, found in every barracks and every taproom in the Empire, so Trotta II, the bureaucrat, resembles his iconic ruler more and more as he ages, until they metaphorically fuse at death. Death also quicksteps to the Radetzky March in every major phase of the narrative, and it's clear that the face in the portrait is indeed the face of Death. One after another, characters aware of their impending death request two things, Last Rites of the Church and a last look at the portrait of the Hero. Empty faith, empty idolatry!
Published in 1932, The Radetsky March seems to me to be the last great novel of the Nineteenth Century. It's a far more profound 'novel of generations' than Thomas Mann's Buddenbrooks. Or I can equally perceive it as a modernist experiment, in which the challenge to the reader is not stylistic but empathetic. Certainly the style is adamantly classical, devoted to writing with near perfection, word by word, rather than to novelty. And it's written with breathtaking beauty of language. Metaphors are few but invariably crisp. Sentences are as disciplined as the shrubs in the gardens of Schoenbrunn. The language always fits the character whose point of view is exposed. I haven't read this novel in German, but I can't imagine that this translation is far inferior; few native Anglophones write English as fresh as Joachim Neugroschel's version of Joseph Roth.
Customer Rating:
Summary: So-So as Literature - Great as History
Comment: No better portrait of the German martial psyche leading up to WWI. The depth of the characters was amazing and the historical detail kept me reading.
Still, tough to get through this sort of multi-generational saga. I have the same reaction to Thomas Mann. Probably a better read in the original German.
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