This novel’s plot spans the lives of three generations of the Trotta family, from its ennobling rise to its tragic fall. The family’s destiny in many ways mimics the arc of the Hapsburg Empire in general. The book was written by Roth in Austria during the inter-war years, but the story’s plot ends just before the First World War concludes. Roth’s characters very much inhabit the multitude and expansive breath of the Empire. “The German Austrians were waltzers and boozy crooners, the Hungarians stank, the Czechs were born bootlickers, the Ruthenians were treacherous Russians in disguise, the Croats and Slovenes, whom he called Cravats and Slobbers, were brushmakers and chestnut roasters, and the Poles, of whom he himself was one after all, were skirt chasers, hairdressers and fashion photographers.” Roth’s story deals with big themes, including military honor, duty to country, family and friends, political conservatism, and the meaning of life, death, and posterity. Women are almost totally left out of the picture, aside from the occasional romantic dalliance.
The grandfather Trotta saved the Kaiser’s life at the Battle of Solferino, earning the family its title. “His unshakable simplicity viewed death in the field as a necessary consequence of warrior fame.” He was later to become disillusioned with the propaganda and lies of the military and so retired to country life on his family farm, with his pension and the beneficence of the Kaiser assured. “Though a man in the prime of his life, he appeared to be aging swiftly. He had been driven from the paradise of simple faith in Emperor and Virtue, Truth, and Justice, and, now fettered in silence and endurance, he may have realized that the stability of the world, the power of laws, and the glory of majesties were all based on deviousness.”
The eldest Trotta made sure that his only son served the Kaiser in a civilian capacity, never to join the ranks of the army. “Fate has turned our family of frontier peasants into an Austrian dynasty. That is what we shall remain.” The son was industrious and spartan- loyal to his work, his family, and the empire. “Herr von Trotta und Sipolje ate very swiftly, sometimes fiercely. He virtually destroyed one course after another with a noiseless, aristocratic, and rapid malice; he was wiping them out.” This younger Trotta lived at the empire’s peak and was proud of the Hapsburg’s success and his small part in making sure the empire ran smoothly as a district captain far from Vienna. “Herr von Trotta had always made a point of appearing richer than he was. He had the instincts of a true gentleman. And in those days (and perhaps our day too) no instincts were more expensive than those. People favored with such curses do not know how much they possess or how much they spend. They draw from an invisible source. They never keep accounts. They assume that their wealth cannot lag behind their generosity.”
This middle Trotta named his only son Carl Joseph and bred him to be the success in the army that his own father had forbade of him. “Other officers talked about their orderlies with meticulous expertise, the way they talked about girls, clothes, favorite dishes, and horses. But whenever conversation turned to servants, Carl Joseph thought about old Jacques at home—old Jacques, who had even served Carl Joseph’s grandfather. Aside from old Jacques, there was no other servant in the world!” But with each generation of the Trotta family there was a foreboding sense that life could not go on as it was, despite each generation’s wishes to keep time and the Empire standing still. “And the world was no longer the old world. It was about to end. And it was quite in order that an hour before its end the valleys should prove the mountains wrong, the young the old, the stupid the sensible…. The world worth living in was doomed. The world that would follow it deserved no decent inhabitants.”
With the family’s fortunes so went the Empire’s. “Vienna already stinks of the sweat of the Democrats; I can’t stand being on the Ringstrasse anymore. The workers wave red flags and don’t care to work. The mayor of Vienna is a pious janitor. The padres are already going with the people; their sermons are in Czech…. This era wants to create independent nation-states! People no longer believe in God. The new religion is nationalism. Nations no longer go to church. They go to national associations. Monarchy, our monarchy, is founded on piety, on the faith that God chose the Hapsburgs to rule over so and so many Christian nations. Our Kaiser is a secular brother of the Pope, he is His Imperial and Royal Apostolic Majesty…. The Emperor of Austria-Hungary must not be abandoned by God. But God has abandoned him!”
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