Book Review: "Weights and Measures" by Joseph Roth

Ever since I read “The Radetzky March”, I have been totally and utterly interested in the works of Joseph Roth. Unfortunately, I kind of put him to one side in order to finish my TBR. But now we’re back and I am going to be reading more of him. I know people who have read quite a bit of Joseph Roth and know far more than I do about his works. “Weights and Measures” is one of those books I have seen talked about a lot. It is a very short book and much shorter than what I’m used to. Standing at about one hundred pages, there is not much to take in since the typeface is also quite large. But, this means that you have to focus on what the story actually is. Unlike his book “The Radetzky March”, Joseph Roth now crams in one man’s partial lifespan into this tiny book and is able to cover storylines and emotional breakdowns at an efficiency rate that you will not even realise it is happening. Anselm goes from being the model citizen to being a man in need, to being a man corrupted. Whilst he works at the border, whilst he conducts his life which is crumbling, he quickly tries to keep it together by any means necessary. When it becomes impossible, he turns to the implausible and at first, it seems entirely out of character, but as the book progresses, it is more and more normalised.

Let’s have a look at some quotations that I thought were really thought-provoking, harsh and brutal whilst also explaining to us what Anselm’s position was at that moment in this tiny novel:

"Honest as he was, he felt above all an invincible desire to discover the whole truth, to ascertain in some way the measures and weights of events and to evaluate them.”

It’s explaining that though he is honest, there is a strange something within him which knows that honesty can only get you so far in his social and historical context.

“[...] Not even the deserters coming from Russia contracted cholera. After all, what power did some tiny bacilli have in the face of man's bottomless longing for freedom?- And yet, he would give everything to find his lost self again. One could say that he missed old Aibensic much more than human companionship. […]”

Russia, Germany, France etc. all these European countries are crumbling around him and well, he’s in the middle trying to be honest, caring, loving etc. and eventually, he just can’t take it anymore. Honestly, I can definitely relate to this.

But this is one of my favourite passages because something is happening, and he is feeling and yet, there is a dim silence about it as if it is being spoken in a big, empty cathedral:

“He left. And it became very lonely in the room. The nun suddenly stood up to straighten the pillows., and this seemed like a great event. The she immediately sat down again and froze into immobility. The rain sang softly on the window sill. Sometimes, one could also hear the sound of heavy wheels outside. The two municipal freight wagons were rolling past, piled with corpses and covered in black. The drivers wore black hoods, the rain-moist black glistened, and although it was still day, the lanterns at the back of the wagons had been lit. They gleamed dimly and swung and tossed; one could almost hear them vibrate although this was only an illusion because of the heavy wheels. The horses wore a festoon of surprisingly delicate little bells which whimpered softly. Occasionally, the half-open wagon passed by the parsonage. In there, the priest sat with the Holy of Holies…”

If you read that out in a big, empty room, I guarantee you will definitely feel like a kind of shiver down your spine. This is a very strange image because when you think about it, there is social context of war, there is priests and nuns going about their business in religion, there are horses and undertakers, there are all these characters and yet, it is still a surprisingly silent scene.

It is common of Joseph Roth to make you feel like if you made a sound during these scenes, you would be committing some sort of grand crime against the characters.