Death of Virgil

by Hermann Broch

  to that unique space of the source, likewise

  sheltering the self, only to be sheltered by it,

  embraced by the soul while yet embracing it,

  at rest in time, conditioning time,

  bound by the law of perception and creating perception,

  floating along in its streaming growth,

  swimming with it as it floats and grows and develops,

  the sole source of reality;

  oh, so supernally great

  were these tides of the self and the universe

  flowing out of and into each other,

  that floating and being held, liberation and imprisonment,

  were merged in this tide to an inseparable common transparency,

  oh, so eternally necessary,

  oh, so immeasurably transparent,

  that in the severed upper spheres,

  accessible only to the glance, accessible only to time,

  familiar to both,

  reflected in both, reflected in the opened human countenance

  tilted upward by the gentle-unyielding hand,

  encircled by fate,

  encircled by stars,

  the promised gift of confirmation shone out,

  the gift of time, delivered from chance and enduring forever,

  opened to perception, the comfort upon earth—,

  and, consoling in a universe flooded in moonlight, the spheres joined each other, the spheres of heaven and earth united forever, consoling as the breath that shall return to the breast from over there, announcing as solace that nothing has been in vain, that whatever had been done for the sake of understanding was not done in vain, and could not have been done in vain because of its necessity. Hope lay in the unaccomplished as well as in what was impossible of accomplishment, and pressing close, very timidly, the hope of finishing the Aeneid. Hope-resounding echo of the promise upon earth, reverberating in earthly confidence; and the mortal surrounded by earthly existence was ready to receive it.

  Solace and confidence indeed, the solace of confirmation, although the crystal cover of the heaven-secret had not parted, no image had appeared there, least of all the ultimate image; the eye of night remained veiled, his own eye had not faltered, and now as before the zones of immensity were to be joined only in reflection and counter-reflection, now as before the vast separation above and below were to be brought into a unity only by glimpse or surmise, now as before it was only the fore-court of reality in which he stood, it was merely the place of the earthly question in the immediacy of which he was held, debarred from reality in its fullness and unity, and nevertheless—solace and confidence. The moonlight streamed like a cool dust through the heat of night, saturating it without lessening it, without merging with it, a blind-cool reflection of the heaven’s stony gleam painted upon the heated darkness. Oh, human certainty, knowing that nothing has happened in vain, that nothing was happening in vain, although disappointment seems to be all, and no way leads out of the thicket; oh, certainty, knowing that even when the way turns to evil the knowledge gained by experience has grown, remaining as an increment of knowledge in the world, remaining as the cool-bright reflection of that estate beyond chance to which the earthly action of man can penetrate whenever it conforms to the necessity determined by perception and attains in this way a first illumination of earthbound life and its herdlike sleep. Oh, certainty full of trust, not streaming hither from heaven but arising as from earth in the human soul because of the perceptive task laid on it—, then must not the fulfillment of certain trust, if fulfillment be at all possible, be realized here on earth? the necessary is always consummated in the simple way of earth, the streaming round of questions will always find its closure only upon earth, even though the perceptive task may concern itself with uniting the separate spheres of the universe, still there is no genuine task without earthly roots, none possible of solution without an earthly starting point. The world of earth spread out before him had escaped into moonlight, humanity had withdrawn under itself, escaped into sleep, hidden in the sleep-sated houses and fallen below itself, separated from the up-sunken stars, and between the upper and lower zones the stillness of the world was doubly desolate; no voice broke into the breathless silence, nothing could be heard except the soft rise and fall of the crackling bivouac-fires and the heavy bored steps of the guard on patrol along the outer wall coming nearer in his rounds, then dying away again, and if one listened intently it seemed as if here too a soft echo from somewhere was vibrating in unison, an accompanying sound, scarcely an echo, scarcely refracted, only diffused in order to be refracted against the house walls at the edge of the plaza, refracted in a net-work of streets and dwelling-caves, against the stone fields of town after town, refracted on the walls of mountains and seas, refracted on the murky crystal vault of heaven, refracted on starlight, refracted on the inscrutable, breathed hither and diffused by refraction, swinging, swinging to this side, but vanishing at once if one attempted to capture it. But earthly and at hand, yet strangely connected to the spheres, the fire behind the walls continued to crackle faintly, and though often it too ebbed off into something like echo, and into the invisible, it too taking its place in the chain of images and more images, it was like a pledge confirming the human effort, pointing to the earthly source of the titanic will for unity born into the human soul; it was like a demand upon perception to turn toward earth and earthly things in order to find there its strength for renewal, the Promethean element that stems from regions here below and not from those above. Yes, he had to direct his attention to the realm of earth, and he waited attentively, tired of breathing, bent over the window ledge, awaiting that which was necessary and would have to come.

  Below him the narrow space between the palace and the outer wall yawned in moat-like blackness, the windows giving on it were unlit and dead, the black bottom of the shaft unfathomably deep, while behind the wall, completely overshadowed by it, visible only by its reflection, one of the bivouac-fires was burning, and when the watch on guard crossed the small flickering region on his path, one could see the shadow of the man gliding indistinctly over the dull, ruddily-lit, stone pavement, a dark breath of shadow that often sprang up jaggedly on the walls of the building opposite, lasting for the flicker of an eyelid, unreal in its strange, unexpected movement. What went on there, though hidden by the walls, was the merest discharge of a military duty, but nonetheless, like every human performance of duty, strangely connected with the basis of perception, with the simple task of perception itself, and therefore not in vain; what happened there preceded itself in the fore-court of reality, near to the realm of consummation. Yet the breach into the ultimate reality would not be made from the sphere of the stars, nor from the spheres in the interstellar spaces; not there would the promised confirmation redeem itself, but rather from the sphere of humanity; the impetus to break through the boundaries would proceed from man; for this was man divinely destined, for this, confidence was bestowed upon him, for his divine necessity; and although the great moment for the attainment of reality might not be fixed in time, undiscoverable in the obscurity of fate, and whether the event took place in a not-to-be-lived future or in the immediate present, if indeed it might not already have come to pass, the command to vigilance was heard, ringing out peremptorily from an occult fate, urgent and admonishing, the command to hold fast to every moment in preparation for the moment of revelation, revelation in the realm of the chanceless, in the realm of law, in the realm of humanity. The order rang out from the realm of the unsearchable and it resounded, inaudible and lost, from out the clamorous ringing of the heat-weary, feverish, moon-drenched black glair encircling the earth and flowed impassively across the roofs, flowed toward the windows and held in embrace even him who stood there, enveloping him in the command to vigilance, as if this very command were a part of the fever. And feverishly he directed his vigilance to the visible in sheer yearning for the sight of a living creature somewhere. Nothing appeared. Toward the lan
d at the southwest the warning, brightly-lustrous image of the Scorpion stood over a glimmering earth, the border between the city dwellings over there and the half-hidden, wavering night-hills of the landscape glimmered out; the rising and falling surf of fields and groves and meadows, their grass-waves, their leaf-waves drenched by the stone-cool flood of moonlight glimmered out, overcast in the final blackness of immensity; they glimmered out in the stonily-resounding, stonily-chilling, stonily-trembling fever-waves of the enflooded starry spaces, night-drenched, light-drenched, gliding hither and yon, streaming to and fro, and the pale sheen did not end with invisibility. Thus it flowed out and back again, hot and cool, shadow and light from a twofold source, submerged in blackness, flowing down into the shaft of the courtyards, the squares, the streets, spread out over the visible-invisibility of all things earthly. Obliquely opposite a street opened into the square; it was swept through brightly by the moon in that straight track open to the view, darkened only here and there by higher houses, and it could be ascertained by the sweep of the roofs that in its far straying the street extended to the outskirts of the town in a slight double-curve like that of the Scorpion to which it led, seductive in the similitude of its form, seductive in its ongoing, indeed so seductively alluring that it became a trepidant yearning to be allowed to wander through the street, hurrying lightly through its turns, out into the country toward the constellations, wandering through homeland after homeland, crossing the groves of fever-light and fever-shadow—blithe the dream-step that flits through them—oh to wander out there, over those glimpsed streets containing their origins in their goals, to wander out there and never to turn back! One needed no guide on such an easy path, and also no stern awakener, for the incandescent, shimmering sleep of the world endured without interruption; one needed only to stride forth, to wander out into the realm of the unrecallable; all boundaries were opened and nothing was able to halt the wanderer, nothing would overtake him, nothing confront him, the divine would not precede him and he would not encounter the bestial, his foot unhindered by either, but the path that he followed would be that of comfort and confidence, the path of necessity, the path of the god. Was this really so? Was there no longer an alternative course? Would there really not be another path leading back to the animal, falling back into the sub-animal?

  This meant waiting, waiting with great patience, patience that lasted a long, unbearably long time. Then, however, something presented itself, and, strangely enough, that which was approaching, even though the opposite of everything which could have been expected, seemed as if called here by necessity. At first it came as a sound-image, that is as the sound-image of shuffling steps and indistinct murmuring detaching itself slowly from the silence, and it remained hidden in the shadows for some time before there emerged the shapes to which the sounds pertained, three indistinct white spots, staggering and often at a standstill, closing in together and then wandering apart, visible in the moonlight, drowned in the darkness, pushed on as if against their will. Breathless from the strained vigilance, breathless from the oppressiveness of the stuffy night-glair, his hands clasped together, his fingers clasped convulsively over his ring, he leaned stiffly out of the window and stretched out his head, intent on the approach of the three apparitions. Now for a time they remained speechless, then, however, in contrast to the previous indistinct murmuring, a voice broke out, sudden, sharp and extremely distinct, a crowing tenor voice, almost shouting as if its bearer had roused himself to an irresistible, final decision, announcing: “Six sesterces.” Again there was silence, and it seemed as if such finality permitted of no further reply, still, for all that, it was imparted: “Five,” came in a quiet, almost sleepy bass, from a second voice, the malicious yet jolly voice of a man who intended to cut short further negotiations: “Five.”—“Shit, six!” cried the first voice, undaunted, whereupon the bass voice, after some unintelligible haggling settled quietly on the last offer: “Five, and not a dinar more.” They halted. Until now it could not be ascertained for what they were bargaining, now, however, a third voice intervened, the voice of a drunken female. “Give him six!” she ordered in a tipsy, greasy sort of shrieking, and something servile and soliciting lay behind its impatient, pandering urgency, without accomplishing much, to be sure, for now the answer consisted only of a throaty, scornful laughter. And irritated at once by the laughter and the unassailable mockery, the female voice pitched into fury: “Guzzling the most and paying nothing … meat you want, and fish you want, and everything else …”; and as there followed only the yelping male laughter, she went on: “Flour I should buy and onions and the rest of it, and eggs and garlic and oil, and garlic … and garlic …” panting drunkenly to the accompaniment of the inciting male laughter that was suppressed to a broadly-chuckling gurgle, she stuck to the exorbitance of garlic—, “garlic, you want … garlic …” “Right you are,” crowed the tenor, interrupting, and with an immediate change of thought decided on a “shut up!” She, however, as if the word possessed some clarifying power, went right on: “garlic … garlic I’m supposed to buy …” Once more they were engulfed by the darkness, and from out the darkness the cry for garlic continued, and really, as if responding to a cue, the feverish gloom was laden and impregnated at once with all the combined kitchen odors that the city was able to emanate—heavy, sated, rank, oily, settled and horribly digested and decomposed, scorched, unsavory, regurgitated—the sleep-inducing nourishment of the city. For a few moments it became still, strangely stifling as if even the three down there had been swallowed in the stale fumes, and even after their re-entry into the light they had nothing more to say; the argument over the garlic was exhausted, they approached silently, becoming more and more distinct, yet for all their silence having become in no way peaceful: to the forefront there appeared a conspicuously lean fellow with hunched-up shoulders, limping on a stick which he raised threateningly whenever he had to stop for the other two to catch up with him; at some distance behind him followed the woman, fat and compact, and finally, fatter if possible, more drunken if possible, in any case more ponderous, the other man, a broad-bellied tower, who being unable to make up the constantly increasing distance between himself and the woman, attempted to stop her at last with a whiny sort of whistling and a childish holding up of hands; so they came on, a staggering doubtful spectacle that became even a little more doubtful when they arrived at the mouth of the street in the flickering light of the camp-fire; in this manner they brought up before his very eyes, in the midst of a fresh outbreak of their haggling, as their hobbling ringleader with a left turn toward the harbor tried to cross the square, whereupon the woman yelled after him “Stinker!” so that, arrested and desisting from his purpose, he turned about to attack her with his brandishing stick, not, however, intimidating the undeterred woman who continued with her carping, but seeming to perturb the fat tower who, whimpering to himself, turned to flight, and thus compelled the woman to run after him and drag him back—, her success proved so gratifying to the other one that he dropped his stick and now really succumbed to that yelping, thick-throated laughter that once before had driven the woman into a rage. Immediately the same thing occurred, the woman became enraged: “Go home,” she dictated to the lean laugher, and as he with a wagging outstretched finger pointed to his former destination in the direction of the harbor, she stretched out her arm in the opposite direction, panting with excitement and babbling the while: “See to it that you get home, you’ve no business in the city … You don’t fool me, I know what you’ve got there, I know all about your slut …” “Ho?” the wagging finger came to rest, the hand shaping itself to a cup and to the gesture of drinking. This meant so much to the fat one who leaned against the house wall that he found his way back to his last decision. “Wine,” he chuckled, transfigured, and started to move. The woman barred his way. “Hmm, wine,” she bickered, “wine? … he should go to his slut and I’m supposed to cook for him … he wants to have pork and what not …” “Piggy-meat,” crowed the
tenor. Contemptuously she pushed him back against the wall, but almost tearfully she approached the other one: “You want everything of me but not to pay for it …”—“I pay him five. I’ve said it … come along, you’ll get some wine.”—“A hoot for your wine … six is what you pay him.”—“He gets wine too.”—“He don’t need your wine.”—“That’s none of your dirty business, you carrion; I’ll pay him five and not a dinar more, and he gets his wine.”—“Five,” commented the fat-paunch at the wall with dignity. The woman flew at him: “What ’dya say? what ’dya say?” Alarmed he sought for a subterfuge: at last he observed with friendly courtesy: “Shit.”—“What ’dya say t’him?” She did not let him loose, and driven into a corner he repeated with forced courage in accord with his new conviction: “Five.”—“You dare say that, you sluice, you wine-belly … and I’m supposed to produce your fodder … without cash I’m supposed to get it …” This made no impression on the fat one: “Wine … you get wine, too,” he piped blissfully, as if now he would have to be praised for his courage. She had clutched his tunic: “He takes all his money to that slut … he must pay six, do you hear, six …”—“Six,” said the tower, obediently, and made an attempt to sit down, which to be sure, was not successful as the woman still gripped him. For the lean one this was the source of unending, boisterous, stick-brandishing pleasure: “Five is what he said, and five I’ll pay him; I stick to that!”—“That’s not true,” she hissed, still holding the fat-paunch by the tunic, she screamed in his face: “Tell him it’s six, tell him!” With all this her voice, even though it was so very unbalanced, did not lose its insinuating, wooing undertone; only one could not determine toward whom this was directed. At all events, the lean one interrupting his hilarity became a shade more conciliatory: “What do you want anyway? As it is, you get your flour for nothing from Caesar …” She stopped short, and this afforded the fat one who twisted under her tugging grip not only a pause for breath but also an opportunity to get away from the troublesome matter of the sesterces: “Hail to Augustus!” he crowed toward the imperial residence, and with high-brandishing stick the other one, who likewise turned toward the palace, stressed the joyful, quavering shout with a rousing “Hail to him!,” and again, quavering with enthusiasm there resounded, “Hail to Augustus!” and still again the lean one saluted with a rousing “Here’s to him!”—“Shut your mouths, shut your mouths, the both of you,” interrupted the woman, disgusted and angry, and actually for a few moments this had an effect: not exactly out of respect for the woman’s command but more out of respect for the Caesar who was being celebrated, the two became speechless, yes even transfixed, the fat one with open mouth, the lean one with stick held high, and while the stick-armed shadow flickered upon the wall in the crackling firelight and the woman, with heavy arms akimbo, observed the fine effect, one could have thought that this lull would endure for all eternity, even as it was being shattered by a fresh outbreak, a fresh rumbling up of the yelping derision, abruptly cut off by a laughter in which the lubberly pair joined, a laughter at first tenorishly clear, followed by the gleeful warbling of the fatpaunch after which came the uncontrollable, giddy, babbling cackle of the woman, while the stick beat the time: three-mouthed the shaking laughter that gurgled up from an unknown fiery depth and shook them, three-headed the scorn with which they derided themselves and each other, three-bodied the unknown, the most unkown god. The laughter mounted to a climax and the thin one caused it: “Wine,” he shouted, “You’ll get yours, Fatty, wine for everybody, wine to toast Caesar!”—“Hee, hee, hee,” cackled the woman, and her laughter tumbled into anger and then really into whorish lewdness, “Your Caesar, I know about him …” “Flour from Caesar,” the patriotic tower informed her graciously and began to move away from the wall, “flour from Caesar, you heard it yourself … here’s to him!” It was such a circling round the same old point that one almost expected her to belch out again her cry of “garlic,” and when in addition the other one, bawling and gulping, drew near with the corroboration: “Yes, indeed, they’ll dole it out tomorrow, tomorrow he’ll let it be distributed … cost you nothing!” then her patience failed: “Filth is what they’ll dole out,” she screamed so that it resounded over the whole plaza, “filth is what Caesar is going to give us … and filth is what your Caesar is, filth, that’s what he is. All he knows is dancing and singing and fucking and whoring, your fine Caesar, but that’s all he can do and he won’t give a speck away!”—“Fucking, fucking, fucking …” repeated the fat one rapturously, as if this one chance word had disclosed all the lewdness of the world and all its lust, “Caesar is fucking, hail to Caesar!” Meanwhile the lean one had limped along a few steps, possibly worried that the guard might come nearer, and though his night-laughter held now as before to its throaty bawling, he sounded uneasy as he called back over his hunched-up shoulder: “Come on … you’re getting wine, come on!” To be sure this accomplished nothing, and it is possible that nothing could have been accomplished anyway, for the fat-paunch, obstinately enchanted by the dancing and fucking Caesar, was unmistakably set on imitating the sublime one, patriotically careful to support his amorous efforts by hailing Augustus the father, Augustus the Caesar, Augustus the savior, as he attempted, hands outstretched in lewd imploring, to lay them on the scolding, cursing, retreating woman, clumsy and droll and emitting little crowing sounds—a contented, twittering Colossus, ready for copulation, who in the course of his drunken desire had fallen into a hopping, almost light-footed dancing, deaf and blindly set upon his goal, and certainly not of a mind to abandon it, had not an unexpected blow from the stick of the softly approaching limper put a sudden end to the game: it all happened with such indescribable speed and silence that one heard nothing, it was as if the stick had struck into a heap of down and not even a single sound of pain or fright had been audible, no groan and no sigh was to be heard, the fat one had only plumped down, turned over a little and then lay quiet—, the murderer, however, gave him no further concern, and taking himself off without even looking back, he limped calmly away, but still not in the direction of the port or the wine or the slut, but followed the homeward path as bidden him by the woman, paying no attention to her who, undecided—perhaps struck and moved by the suddenness of the extinguishment or by the so suddenly extinguished chance lust—had lingered, bent over the corpse, before she deserted it after a few seconds, and with quick decision hurried to overtake the vanishing cripple; all this happened with such speed and yet with such remoteness, so deeply implicated in the febrile, impassive night-glair that perhaps no one—least of all an invalid who, bound by his pain, bound by the imposed vigilance, had been compelled, bound and transfixed, to follow the occurrence from the window—would have been able to prevent it by an outcry, a beckoning or by any sort of interference; but even before it had been possible to become conscious of it all, even before the murderous pair had vanished behind the pinnacle-crowned, sharply protruding corner of the outer wall, the fallen one stirred, and after he had succeeded in turning round on his belly he started crawling hurriedly on all fours after his companions like an animal, like a big clumsy insect that had lost a pair of its legs. Not comedy, no, but terror and awe hovered about the grovelling beast, and the terror and awe still went on when he stood himself at last upon his hind legs to urinate on the house wall, afterwards, however, losing his balance with every step and pawing the wall as he staggered along beside it. Who had the three been? had they been sent out from Hades, sent out from those miserable slums into the windows of which he had looked, pitilessly impelled to it by fate? What else must he witness? what else must he encounter? was it not yet enough? Oh, this time he was not the butt of insult, the sneers and laughter that shook the three were not meant for him; this bawling, yelping, compelling male laughter had nothing in common with the female laughter of Misery Street, no, this laughter contained something worse, terror and awe, the awfulness of the matter-of-fact that did not concern itself with the human, neither with him who looked on
and comprehended here from the window, nor indeed with any human being; this was like a language that is no longer a bridge between people, like an extra-human laughter, its range of scorn playing about the factual worldly-estate as such, that in reaching beyond the realm of all things human no longer derides humanity but simply destroys it by exposing the nature of the world; oh, this was what the laughter of the three apparitions had accomplished, expressing horror, bringing horror to pass, the male laughter, the bantering, bawling laughter of horror! Why, oh, why had it been sent to him? Through what necessity had it been sent here? He leaned out of the window to listen after the three—there on the southern heaven was Sagittarius, unmoved and mute, his bow bent toward the Scorpion; the three had vanished in the direction of the Archer and from out the silence there fluttered now and then, at first rudely torn then delicately fringed, at first highly colored then becoming gray, the filthy rags of their insults, fluttering off at last as a slimy, greasy, carping guffaw of the female voice, wooing and servile in its whining lament, as a few words in the throaty bass of the cripple, his laughter yelping out now and again, finally as a mere vague cursing, becoming almost nostalgic, almost gentle; and this was absorbed into the remaining sounds of the nocturnal distance, spun into and unified with every tone that the night released as a last reminder, unified with the dreamy crow of a cock in silvery sleep, unified with the forsaken yelping of two dogs that somewhere beyond in the shimmering distance, perhaps on a building lot, perhaps at a country house, acclaimed their moon-existence to one another, the animal dialogue joined over the gap with the tones of a human song coming in snatches from the harbor district, its source indeed recognizable as blown from the north and yet almost without direction, tender this too, although probably just part of a song sung by an obscene sailor roaring with laughter in a tavern reeking of wine, yet tender and nostalgic, as if the silent distance, as if the benumbed other world inherent in it were the spot where the unspoken language of laughter and the unspoken language of music—the one, a language above the border of human limitation, the other, one that is below this border, both languages beyond that of speech—had joined to form a new speech, joined to a language in which the dreadfulness of laughter was absorbed into the graciousness of beauty, not nullified but intensified with a double dread, to the mute language of the most benumbed distance and desolation, unspeakably removed from humankind, to the tongue beyond any mother-tongue, to the inscrutable speech which is completely untranslatable, sent inarticulate into the world, penetrating the world unintelligibly and inscrutably with the sense of its own remoteness, existing in the world by necessity and hence doubly unintelligible, unspeakably unintelligible as the necessary unreality within the unaltered real!