Ticking clocks and power plays

Joseph Roth’s classic of German literature is a reminder, if we need one, that time does not care for human frailties and romances.

Recently, I was standing on the handsome wooden staircase of the Paliyam Palace near Kodungalloor, listening to a serious young man tell us about the history of this perfect amalgamation of 17th-century Dutch and Kerala architecture. The Paliyam Achans used to be, in the era when much of central Kerala was ruled by the Kochi royal family, a powerful political force as prime ministers to the kings. When the Portuguese and Dutch were battling for control of trade in the area in the 1600s, the Paliyam Achan at the time helped the Dutch, and in return, they redesigned, rebuilt and gifted him this edifice that is now a museum in the Muziris Heritage Zone.

Going through the palace it was impossible not to reflect on the impact such a gift can have on a family over time. Literature abounds with multi-generational family sagas charting the rise and fall of clans that are closely tied to reigning political powers. While the Paliyam descendants have long outlasted squabbling colonial powers, the same cannot be said about the family at the centre of Joseph Roth’s classic of German-language literature, The Radetzky March.

The Trottas are the beneficiaries of royal gratitude in Roth’s work, which was first published in 1932. The grandfather Trotta, a Slovene, had, in the Battle of Solferino in 1859, jumped in front of the Habsburg emperor Franz Joseph I and saved his life by taking a bullet in the shoulder. For this valiant deed, Trotta is given the rank of Captain in the imperial army, the Order of Maria Theresa, and a knighthood. For someone whose grandfather had been a peasant and father a mere paymaster, this was a dizzying elevation to the nobility.

As the years progress and Captain Trotta’s dynasty is established, the cons of the emperor’s gift soon outweigh the pros. The Captain, who’d never lost sight of his humble origins, is disturbed to find that the schoolbooks his son’s generation is studying have mythologised him to an unrecognisable extent. He goes to complain and get this rectified but is rebuffed by the emperor himself. Surely the more dashing version of the cavalry officer (the Captain was actually an infantryman) who saves the Kaiser’s life is a more inspiring tale on which empires can be sustained. Captain Trotta doesn’t allow his son to follow him into the military and forces him into the career of a civil servant. When the Captain’s grandson comes of age though, he follows his illustrious ancestor's path into the military. There, haunted by that ancestral act of valour, the martial flourishes of Strauss’s The Radetzky March (the piece of music that gives Roth’s novel its title), and an inability to time any of his actions right, the third generation of the noble Trotta family lives a dissipated life that hastens the dynasty’s inevitable end.

Roth’s own short, chaotic life — he lived a peripatetic existence as a journalist and writer, bouncing from city to city and country to country across Europe — informed much of the mood music of his writing. The splintering of the Austro-Hungarian empire at the start of the First World War meant Roth lost a homeland at a very young age and which he yearned for the rest of his life. So it’s little wonder that an overwhelming sense of doom casts such a long shadow over each page of The Radetzky March. Time, Roth is telling the reader through the congruent fates of the Trottas and Habsburgs, doesn’t care for human romances and power plays. It is an inexorable force that not even emperors can stop.

The author is a writer and communications professional. When she’s not reading, writing or watching cat videos, she can be found on Instagram @saudha_k where she posts about reading, writing, and cats.

That One Book is a fortnightly column that does exactly what it says — it takes up one great classic and tells you why it is (still) great.