Death of Virgil

by Hermann Broch

  Flight, oh, flight! oh, dusk, the hour of poetry. For poetry was contemplative waiting in the twilight, poetry was the night-foreboding abyss, was lingering on the threshold, was at once participation and loneliness, was intermingling and the fear of intermingling, unwanton in intermingling, as unwanton as the dream of the slumbering herds and yet the fear of wantonness; oh, poetry was anticipation but not quite departure, yet it was an enduring farewell. He felt the shoulder of the crouching boy at his knee, barely touching it, he did not see the countenance but only sensed how it was sunk in its own shadow, however, he saw the dark rumpled hair played on by the candlelight, and he recalled that terrible, joyful-joyless night on which impelled by fate, even then a lover and harassed, he had come to Plotia Hieria who crouched in wintry expectation, wintrily unbudded, and all he did was to read his verses to her—, it was the Eclogue of the Enchantress which had been completed at the wish and order of Asinius Pollio, the Eclogue which would never have turned out so successfully had not his thought of Plotia, his longing and lustfulness for a woman stood sponsor to it, in the writing of which he had been so successful only because he had known from the very start that he would never be allowed to leave the threshold and enter into the night of perfect union; ah, because the will-to-flee had been imposed on him from time out of mind, he was compelled to read the Eclogue to her, and fear as well as hope had been fulfilled, it became their farewell. And it had been the selfsame farewell that once again and on a grander scale had to be experienced later on by Aeneas when, forced by the enigmatic, unfathomably fateful course of poetry, bound for the irrevocable with his departing ships, he had forsaken Dido, forever forsworn from lying with her, from hunting with her, eternally divorced from her who had been his sweet shadow of reality, his sweet shadow of desire, divorced eternally from the night-cave of love beneath the thunders. Yes, Aeneas and he, he and Aeneas, they had fled in a real departure, not only in the lingering farewells of poetry, from whose interrealm they had escaped as if it had no worth for the living, even though it was also the realm of love—, whither was this flight tending? from what depth came this fear of Juno’s motherly commands? Oh! love itself connoted sinking under the surface of night, sinking down to the nocturnal ground-soil on which the dream grows to timeliness, sinking under its own threshold to the primal source of the unformed and invisible, which always lay in wait to break out in storm and destruction: it was only the days which changed, time took its course only through days, and it was in movement that time could be beheld by the eye; the eye of night, however, was immovable, enormous, that eye wherein love reposed, and its depth, empty burning stark in the starlight, unchangeably unceasingly night after night throughout time renewing terrestrial timelessness in itself, creating and devouring the world from its deepest eye-pit, no longer beholding, being but the blinding lightning-cleft of nothingness, absorbed all eyes, the eyes of lovers, the eyes of the wakeful, the eyes of the dying, failing for love, failing in death, the human eye failing because it peered into timelessness.

  Flight, oh, flight! Taking shape of day, relaxing of night, turned in this relaxation toward the eventuality of timelessness! After a while the candles became encrusted and the gnats swarmed ceaselessly about them with their horrid-monotonous, shapeless-hard humming, ceaselessly the water of the wall-fountain drizzled on, and the drizzling was like a part of its unspeakably timeless, becalmed, oceanic on-flow; motionless the amorini played in the wall-frieze, frozen in an utter-peace, in an utter-silence that ceased to have a shape of its own but that seemed to merge into the wide-spread, austerely reverberating, other-worldly silence of the night, merging into its aeon-bound perseverance which, world-encompassing and breath-encompassed, shadow-bearing and shadow-overborne, erected about itself a cavern from the tide of dreams, the shapeless silence overbalanced by the noiselessness of the thunderbirds beneath the unclouded stars; for whatsoever reposed in the night, drinking in peace and drinking in one another, set a-tremble by shadows, lying in the shadow of one another, soul pressing against soul, husband and wife united, the maiden sheltered in the arms of the youth, the boy in the arms of the lover, whatsoever happened in the night was but the darkness-sharing reflection of its greater darkness, was but the image of its dark flashing lightning, was downfall into the thundery abyss, the coverlet of dreams torn asunder, and even if we cried for our mother to shelter us against the night-storms, she was so far removed, so lost to memory that only now and then a quiver from childhood was wafted to us, no longer a consolation, no longer a shelter, at best the familiar-strange breath of a long since vanished homeland, the breath of peace that preceded the storm. Yes, so it was, and though the night-breeze were ever so warm, ever so mild, though it were ever so cool as it streamed through the windows, even though it gathered all terrestrial things in its tides, olive-groves and wheat harvest and vineyards and fishing-banks, uniting as into a whole the undulant night-breath of lands and seas, bearing and mingling their harvests in the mild hand of the wind, and though this softly-blowing hand drooped ever so dulcetly, stroking across the streets and squares, cooling the faces, sundering the smoke, appeasing the ardor, yes, though this floating breath, with which the form of night was filled to its outermost surface, had even swelled beyond it, transformed into trembling cave-mountains, which beyond all conception, scarcely even external, rested in our innermost depths, within the heart and deeper than the heart, within the soul and deeper than the soul, in our innermost self that had become one with the night, yes, even though all this were so and continued to be so, it was of no use, the time for it was past, it was no longer of use. The sleep of the herds remained pregnant with evil, the earthly raging still unappeased, the fire unquenchable, and love delivered over to the lightning blast of nothingness, while timeless above the cave of night the tempest thunders.

  Flight, oh, flight! The mother was past invoking. We were orphaned when the herd came into being, we could invoke no name in our dreams, none had identity in the darkness of utter fusion—, and you, my little night-mate who have attached yourself to me as a guide, are you still there at my call? is it by your fate or mine that you are sent to me that I may talk to you? do you feel that you too are menaced by timelessness? is it hidden under your night as well?—and was it for this reason that you came to me? oh lean against me, my little twin-brother, oh lean against me; I turn away my eyes from the menace, I turn them to you in hope, hoping for the last time to return from my plight, hoping to return with you into the dark cavern which has been built in myself like a homestead I no longer know, oh, be lodged with me in this closeness that beats in my veins like something long estranged and now rewelcomed, and that I would fain have you share with me: then it may come to pass that even the most unfamiliar, that even myself will no longer seem strange to me; oh nestle close to me, my little twin-brother, nestle close, and should you lament your lost childhood, your lost mother, you shall find them again with me as I take you into my arms and into my care. Once more let us tarry in the floating cavern of night, but once again and together let us hearken to its dream-tremors, let us hearken to the “nevertheless” of its interrealm and its sweet reality—, you do not know yet, my little brother, for you are too young, from what profound depths within us the nightly hope mounts upward, so all-embracing, so whole-souled in its tenacity, with such tender-soft promise of yearning in its very distress that it takes us long to hear its hope and its dismay, which surround us like a mountain-chain of echoes, echo-wall on echo-wall, like an unknown landscape and yet like the summoning of our very hearts, yes “nevertheless and nevertheless” and still with such sovereignty as if the complete reflection of a past, long since lived through, would gleam out freshly and yet as unfaltering as though it contained all covenants of consummation—, oh little brother I have experienced it because I have become an old man, older than my years, because I sense every fragility and taint in myself, I have experienced it because I am coming to the end; ah, it is only when we begin to long for death that we really d
esire life, and in me the undermining, the frame-slackening process of an avidity for death goes on, never pausing, as far back as I can remember, clamoring ceaselessly, thus have I always felt it, anxiety for life and anxiety for death together, in these many nights on the threshold of which I have stood, on the strand of nights and more nights that have gushed past me, the awareness of them gushing and swelling, knowledge of separation and farewell that had its beginning with the dusk, and it was dying, every sort of dying, that coursed past me, grazing me with its mounting flood, saturating me, encircling me, coming from without yet born from within me, my own dying: only the dying understand communion, understand love, understand the interrealm, only in the dusk and at farewell do we understand sleep whose darkest communion is without wantonness, not until farewell do we know that our departure will be followed by no return, not until then do we recognize the seed of wantonness which lies embedded in returning and only in returning; ah, my little nightmate, you too will understand this one day, you will wait on the thresholding shore, on the shore of your interrealm, on the shore of farewell and dusk, and your ship too will be ready for flight, for that proud flight which is called awakening, and from which there is no return. Dream, oh dream! As long as we are at our versing we do not go away, as long as we remain steadfast in the interrealm of our night-day we present one another with every dream-hope, with all longed-for communion, with every hope of love, and therefore, my little brother, for the sake of that hope, for the sake of that yearning, never again depart from me. I have no wish to know your name, your shadow-casting name, I will not summon you, neither for the setting-out nor for the return, but uncallable and uncalled, abide with me so that love may abide in the covenant of its fulfillment, abide with me in the dusk, abide with me on the shore of the stream which we will behold without entrusting ourselves to it, far from its source, far from its estuary, shielded from the dim fusion of inception, shielded from the final, shadowless identification with Apollo’s brightness; oh, abide with me, sheltering and sheltered, as I shall bide with you forevermore; once again, love: do you hear me? do you hear what I am asking? is my plea still able to hear your answer, while answering itself, fate-delivered, divested of sorrow?

  Or had it become too late?

  The night lay without motion, formfast in its near and far apparence, locked here into this room, locked into ever-widening spaces, extending from the vicinity of the tangible to always further frontiers, away over mountains and seas, extended in a constant outflow even unto the unreachable dream-caverns, and this flood, springing from the heart, breaking at the periphery of the dream-caverns and flowing back from there into the heart, received the yearning into itself wave upon wave, dissolving even the yearning for yearning, bringing to a standstill the shrouded swaying of the maternal star-cradle where it began, and encircled by flashes of the dark lightnings below, of the bright ones above, it parted into light and darkness, into murk and glare; two-toned the cloud, twofold the source, thunder-close, soundless, spaceless, timeless—oh, riven cave of the inner and outer life, oh, mighty on-going earth!—, thus the night yawned wide, being’s slumber was snapped, dusk and poetry had been silently rinsed away, their realm rinsed away, the echo-wall of dreams shattered, and mocked by the silent voices of memory, guilt-laden and hopeless, inundated by the flood, washed away on the flood, life’s over-great travail sank to sheer nothingness. It had become too late, there was nothing left but flight, the ship lay ready, the anchor was being lifted; it was too late.

  Yet he waited, waited for the night to make its presence known, to croon him something final and comforting, once again with its meandering to awake his yearning. It could scarcely be called hope, rather a hoping for hope, scarcely any longer flight from timelessness, rather a flight from the flight. There was no more time, no more yearning, no more hope either for living or dying; there was no more night. There was scarcely any more waiting, at the most some impatience for the awaited impatience. He held his hands tightly clasped, the thumb of the left one touching the stone of his ring, thus he sat there, feeling the warmth of the boy’s shoulder which was shoved within leaning-distance yet not touching his knee, and he had a great longing to loosen his cramped fingers from their increasing spasm so that with imperceptible delicacy he might stroke the night-dark, tousled, childish hair on which he looked down, so that he might let the duskily sprouting night-human in the dark-soft crackling bloom glide between his fingers—night-yearning for yearning; however he made no move, but at length, although it cost him dear to break the tension of expectancy, he said: “It is too late.” Slowly, the boy lifted up his countenance full of understanding and questioning as if something had been read to him the sequel of which must follow, and in heed to this questioning, his own face gently approaching that of the boy, he repeated very softly: “It is too late.” Was there still some expectation? was he disappointed that the night no longer stirred and only the boy’s eyes, gray, childish, steadfast, remained fixed upon him, they too questioning. The impatience which he had wished for suddenly appeared: “Yes, it is late … go to the festival.” Of a sudden he felt excessively old, and the immediate and earthly manifested itself in the need for sleep and drowsiness, in the need, slumber-wrapt and unconscious, to forget that No-more; it manifested itself with the slackening of the lower jaw and furthermore with so violent a compulsion to cough that the wish to remain alone and unobserved became imperative: “Go … go … to the feast,” he brought out hoarsely, while his upturned palm only by a gesture and from a growing distance pushed the reluctantly departing boy in short shoves toward the door. “Go … go,” the words rattled in him again, his breath already failing, and when he was actually alone it seemed as if black lightning struck into his breast from which the coughing broke out mixed with night-blood, robbing him of consciousness; sprawling, shaken and benumbed, cleaving and bursting, a strangling convulsion on the edge of the abyss, and that he had not been hurled into it this time, that it had passed him by once more, that he could hear again the drizzling of the fountain, the crackling of the candles appeared to him afterwards like a miracle. With no little trouble he had dragged himself from the armchair over to the bed, had let himself fall into it, and remained lying there motionless.

  Again he held his hands clasped tightly, again he felt the stone of the ring, felt the winged figure of the genius that was engraved into the polished carnelian, and he waited, hearkening whether it would turn to life or to death. Then slowly it was better, he came again, even though still slowly, with much pain and exertion, to breathing, to peace, to silence.

  FIRE—THE DESCENT

  HE LAY AND LISTENED. FROM TIME TO TIME, ALTHOUGH at greater intervals and with no new showing of blood, the seizure came on again and at first he had even thought he should call the slave from the next room to summon the doctor; but calling cost effort, and to be disturbed by the physician would have been unbearable: he wanted to be alone—, nothing was more pressing than to remain by oneself, again and again to gather all existence within one so that one would be able to listen; this was all-important. He rolled on his side, his legs drawn up a little, his head resting on the pillow, the hip pressed into the mattress, the knees disposed one above the other like two beings alien to him, and very far off in the distance reposed the ankles and the heels as well. How often, oh, how often in the past had he been intent on the phenomenon of lying down! Yes, it was absolutely shameful that he could not rid himself of this childish habit! He recalled distinctly the very night when he—an eight year old—had become conscious that there was something noteworthy in the mere act of reclining; it was in Cremona, the time was winter; he lay in his room, the door which led to the peristyle was cracked, closed badly, and moved a little in an eerie manner; outside the wind rustled over the flower-beds, straw-covered for winter, and from somewhere, possibly from the swinging lantern under the doorway, the faint reflection of a light in pendular rhythm came gliding into the chamber like the last reverberation of an eternal tide, li
ke the last reverberation of eternally changing eras, like the last reflection of an infinitely distant eye, so lost, so broken, so threatening in its remoteness, so fraught with distance that it was a challenge to question oneself as to the reality or unreality of one’s own existence—, and just as then, though intensified and made more familiar by the subsequent, sedulous, nightly repetition, even today he felt every single point of support by which his couch carried him, and just as then they were wave-crests over which his ship skimmed, dipping lightly into them, while wave-hollows of unfathomable depth appeared between them. Certainly this was not the main concern, and if now he had wished to be alone it had not been in order to continue childish observations which he could have done without more ado while still retaining the little night-mate; no, it was for something more essential, for something more conclusive, for something the reality of which must be very great, so great that it must surpass even poetry and its interrealm, it was for something that had to be more real than dusk or night, surpassing them by its heightened reality even in earthiness, it was for something that made it worth while to gather all existence within oneself, and it was only to be wondered at that childishness and its irrelevance did not permit itself to be pushed further back, that it was still present with its succession of images just as of yore, that in the chain of memory into which we are forged the first links should be the strongest, as if they, just they, were the most real reality. It seemed almost impossible, nay more, it seemed almost inadmissible that our last-attained, our most real reality could limit itself thus to becoming a mere recollective image! Nevertheless human life was thus image-graced and imagecursed; it could comprehend itself only through images, the images were not to be banished, they had been with us since the herd-beginning, they were anterior to and mightier than our thinking, they were timeless, containing past and future, they were a twofold dream-memory and they were more powerful than we: an image to himself was he who lay there, and steering toward the most real reality, borne on invisible waves, dipping into them, the image of the ship was his own image emerging from darkness, heading toward darkness sinking into darkness, he himself was the boundless ship that at the same time was boundlessness; and he himself was the flight that was aiming toward this boundlessness; he was the fleeing ship, he himself the goal, he himself was boundlessness too vast to be seen, unimaginable, an endless corporeal landscape, the landscape of his body, a mighty, outspread, infernal image of night, so that deprived of the unity of human life, deprived of the unity of human yearning, he no longer believed himself capable of self-mastery, conscious as he was of the separated regions and provinces over which the essential ego had been compelled to distribute itself, conscious of a demonic possession that had assumed direction in his stead, isolated into districts in all their diversity; ah there were the disrupted, ploughed-up districts of the hurting lung, there were those of the distressing fever that wavered up to the skin from unknown, red-glowing depths and there were the districts of the bowel abysses, just as there were the more terrifying ones of sex, one like the other filled with serpents, intergrown with serpents, there were the districts of the limbs with their unbridled innate life, not last there were those of the fingers and all these districts of the demons, some of them settled near him, others at a greater distance, some of them more friendly, others hostile among themselves as well as toward him—nearest to him, belonging most intimately to him were still the senses, the eyes and ears and their districts—, all these domains of the physical and extra-physical, enveloping the hard and earthly reality of the skeleton, they were known to him in their complete strangeness, in their disintegrated fragility, in their remoteness, in their animosity, in their incomprehensible infinity, sensual and supra-sensual, for all together, and he along with them as by their mutual knowledge, were imbedded in that great flood that extended over everything human, everything oceanic, in that homing surge and the heavy swing of its ebb and flow which beats so constantly on the coast of the heart and keeps it throbbing so continuously, image of reality and reality of image in one, so wave-deep that the most disparate things are swept together within it, not quite unified but still united for future rebirth; oh surf on the shore of cognition, its ever-mounting tide brimming with the seeds of all comfort, all hope, oh, night-laden, seed-laden, space-laden flood of spring; and filled with the empowering vision of his real self, he knew that the demoniac could be overcome through the assurance of reality, the image of which lies in the province of the indescribable yet nonetheless contains the unity of the world. For the images were taut with reality, since reality was always to be symbolized only by reality—, image upon image, reality upon reality, not one of them actually real as long as it stood alone, yet each a single symbol of an inviolate, ultimate truth which was the sum of their totality. And if in the many years past he had followed with increasing avidity and curiosity the decay and fragility which he felt at work upon his body, if for the sake of this amazing and amazed curiosity he had gladly taken on the discomfort of illness and pain, yes, if he had—and whatever a person did became more or less distinctly symbolic—continuously borne within him the desire, the seldom conscious but always impatient desire, for his bodily unity, which he constantly perceived to be but a seeming unity, to be finally dissolved, the quicker the better, so that the extraordinary might follow, so that dissolution might come to be redemption, might come to be a new unity, a consummation, and if this desire had accompanied and pursued him from his earliest youth, at least since that night in Cremona, possibly even since his childhood in Andes, either as a little childish game of anxiety or as an oppressive, memory-quelling fear, one as unrecallable now as the other, yet the question as to the meaning of such occurrences had never left him, it had been inherent in all of his nightly pre-listening, pre-searching, pre-sensing, and just as formerly he had lain upon his bed, a child in Andes, a boy in Cremona, knee pressed on knee, his spirit sunk into his pre-dreaming, his spirit like his body sunk into the ship of his being that extended over oceans and over the broad planes of earth, himself a mountain, a field, the earth, the ship, himself the ocean, listening into the night inside and outside, perhaps having always had the premonition that his hearkening was directed toward the achieving of that knowledge for which his whole life must be lived through, so now in the same fashion it happened again, it happened here and now, it happened today; and that which had once happened, having constantly become clearer and clearer to him, continued to happen again and again, was happening now; he did that which he had done his whole life long, but now he knew what it was, he knew the answer: he was listening to dying.