The Death of Virgil

by Hermann Broch

  "Friendship?—, you act as though we, your friends, were unworthy to keep your gift."

  Caesar's lips, barely moving, guided speech and reply, although he had the power and no doubt also the will simply to have the manuscripts taken away, and Plotia was silenced, as if awaiting the outcome of the conversation: unshatterable, stubborn, fixed, and stern in its shape was the moment that rose up and encompassed them, and though all that occurred at this moment took place in conformity to the will of Augustus, he too was included in its order.

  "Oh Augustus, it is rather I, or my poem, that is not worthy of my friends: yet do not again accuse me of false modesty; I realize that it is a great poem, though little compared to the Homeric cantos."

  "Since you admit so much, you cannot deny that your plan of destruction is criminal."

  "That which happens by the command of the gods cannot be criminal."

  "You are evasive, Virgil; when one is in the wrong he takes refuge in the will of the gods; I for my part have never yet heard of them ordering the destruction of public property."

  "It is an honor to me, oh, Caesar, that you exalt my work to the level of public property, but I make bold to say that I wrote it not only for the reader but primarily for myself, that this innermost necessity brought it to pass, that it is my work and that, therefore, I must and may dispose of it as I deem necessary, just as it has been determined for me by the gods."

  "Can I, on my side, set Egypt free? Can I strip Germania of troops? Can I surrender the frontiers to the Parthians? Or renounce the Peace of Rome? Are these things permitted me? No, they are not; and even though I were given the order by the gods, I should not dare obey it, even though it is my peace, my work, and I have fought for it . .."

  The comparison was lame, because the victories had been those of Caesar and all the Roman people, backed by their legions, whereas he had finished his poem by himself; but it did not matter whether the comparison was contradictory or not, the mere presence of Caesar made it free of contradiction and incontrovertible.

  "Your work will be measured by standards relevant to the state, mine by those of artistic perfection."

  Artistic perfection, that gracious compulsion of work which permitted of no choice and reached beyond all that was human and earthly.

  "I fail to see the difference; even the work of art has to serve the needs of the people and, in so doing, of the state . . . the state itself is a work of art in the hands of one who has to build it up."

  A certain aggrieved weariness became noticeable, making Caesar's manner which with all his worldliness was always very reserved, even more so; dissertations on works of art were not important to him, and it was a little unwise to stress the point: "Even though the state may be considered as a work of art, it is one which has to remain in movement, allowing for greater perfection; poetry, on the other hand, must be in seclusion, reposing to a certain extent in itself, and until it has reached its consummation its creator is not free to take his hand away from it; he is compelled to alter, to strike out the inadequate, he is charged to do this, he must do it even at the risk of ruining his entire work; there is but one standard, and that is the aim of the work; one can judge what may remain and what must be destroyed only if one knows at what the work is aiming; this goal is the one concern, not the work which has been done, and not the artist . . ."

  Impatiently Augustus cut short this discourse: "Nobody will begrudge the artist the improvement of inadequacies or even the elimination of them, but nobody will believe you when you declare your entire work to be inadequate . . ."

  "It is inadequate."

  "Listen, Virgil, you have long since renounced your right to such a verdict. More than ten years ago you revealed to me the plan of your Aeneid, and you may recall with what intense pleasure we, who were able to share in it, agreed with you and your project. During the ensuing years you read the work aloud to us, bit by bit, and when you became discouraged by the magnitude of your project and the power of your design—and yet how often this happened—then you gained new strength from our admiration, or rather from the admiration of the whole Roman populace; consider, that already substantial portions of the work are generally known, that the Roman people are aware of the existence of the poem, a poem that glorifies them to an extent never yet achieved, and that they are entitled, absolutely entitled, to be given the entire work. It is no longer your work, it is the work of all of us, indeed in one sense we have all labored at it, and finally it is the creation of the Roman people and their greatness."

  The light became more livid; one might almost imagine an eclipse of the sun to be in progress.

  "It was a weakness in me to show unfinished work, the groping vanity of the artist. But it was also my fondness for you, Octavian, which made me do it."

  There was a familiar twinkle in Caesar's eye; it was boyish, almost crafty: "Incomplete? is that how you speak of your work, unfinished, eh? So you could have done it better, or should have?"

  "It is just as you say."

  "A while ago I had to be ashamed of my poor memory, now let me redeem my honor ... I shall let you hear a few of your own verses."

  Small and friendly, malicious, yet very boyishly came the wish that Caesar might fail again, although at the same time— oh, the vanity of the poet—a praise-avid curiosity asserted itself immodestly: "Which verses, Octavian?"

  And beating time with lifted finger, accompanied by a soft tapping of his sandal, the ruler of Rome, the sovereign of the world, recited the lines:

  "Others I doubt not will hammer the flexible bronze to soft features;

  Skilfully draw from the marble a latent and livelier resemblance;

  Plead with a craftier tongue, each his cause; in tracing the sky-way,

  Measure with rods, thus truly foretelling the course of the planets.

  Thou, though, O, Roman, consider as thy task the ruling of nations,

  This be thine art: to found and to foster a law that is peaceful,

  Sparing the vanquished and vanquishing any who dare to oppose thee."

  The time-beating finger remained uplifted as though pointing out the lesson that was to be drawn from the verses, and to be heeded: "Well, Virgil, are you caught in your own net?" This was, of course, an allusion, a very transparent allusion, to the insignificance of the pure work of art, which was negligible compared to the real concerns of Rome, but it was too gratuitous; one need not go into that: "Yes, Augustus, that is how it goes, you have rendered the verses with absolute fidelity; those are the words of Anchises."

  "Is that any reason for their not being yours also?" "I have nothing to say against them." "They are flawless."

  "And even if they were, they do not constitute the entire poem."

  "That is irrelevant. Just the same I do not know by what shortcomings the rest of the poem could be considered marred; you yourself admit that the Roman spirit is above small deficiencies of form and there can be no question of anything else . . . your poem emanates the spirit of Rome, is not at all artificial, and that is the important thing . . . , indeed, your poem is the very spirit of Rome, and it is magnificent."

  What intimations had Augustus of the real inadequacies? what did he know of the deep incongruity which stamps all life, the arts before all? how could he judge of artificiality? What did he really understand of such matters? and even though he called the poem magnificent, thus flattering the author—alas, that no one is able to resist this sort of praise—, the praise was impaired because a person who fails to take note of its evident deficiencies cannot understand the poem's hidden grandeur! "The imperfections, Augustus, go deeper than anyone suspects."

  Caesar paid no attention to this interruption: "You have interpreted Rome and therefore your work belongs to the Roman people and the Roman state which you serve, even as we all must serve it ... , only what is unfinished remains our possession, perhaps also the failures and those deeds which were unsuccessful; but what has actually been accomplished belongs to everyone, and to t
he whole world."

  "Caesar, my work remains undone, terrifyingly undone, and nobody wants to believe me in this!"

  Again the familiar intimate twinkle appeared in the reserved countenance, this time with a touch of superiority: "All of us are acquainted with your fits of doubt and despondency, and it is understandable that you are more subject to them now that you are confined to bed by illness; but you want to make a sly use of them for your own hidden purposes, and these still seem dark, to me at least . . ."

  "This is not the sort of despondency you think it is and from which, it is true, you have rescued me often enough, Octavian; it is no depression over the unmastered or unmaster-able . . . no, I am surveying my life and I perceive all that remains undone in it."

  "To this you must resign yourself ... in the life and work of every man lurks some undone remnant; this is the lot that we all must bear." It was said sadly.

  "Your work will continue to fulfill itself; it will be carried on by your followers just as you wish it to be, but for me there is no successor."

  "I would entrust my succession to Agrippa . . . but he is too old; otherwise he would be the best one." And apparently seized by a sudden worry, Caesar stood and went to the window as if he could gain solace by scanning the far reaches of the landscape.

  Men relieve one another, their mortal bodies follow, one after the other; perception alone flows on as an entity, flowing into an uttermost distance and into an inexpressible encounter.

  "Agrippa will arrive soon," said Augustus, looking down toward the street which Agrippa was bound to take.

  Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa with his morosely intelligent soldier's face, his simple frame, ponderous with power; it rose up in a sudden awareness that was prompted by some voice, perhaps that of the slave, suggesting that the consuming quality of this life dedicated to force would soon consume itself, snuffed out prior to that of Augustus. However, the latter certainly wished to hear something else: "You yourself are young, Octavian, and you have sons, perhaps even some yet unborn; your line will endure."

  A weary gesture was the response.

  Then all became calm and silent. Augustus stood there at the window, narrow and quite slender, a mortal with a mortal body divided into members, wrapped in a toga, thus he stood there against the light from the window, a narrow human back, covered in the draped folds of a toga, and suddenly one no longer noticed whether a front view existed, even less if there was a countenance, graced with the power to see and therefore radiant, least of all whither its glances strayed. Was it not Alexis who had stood there not long since on the selfsame spot? But yes, it had been Alexis, childishly slim and with an almost touching beauty, almost like a son, the son whose future fate and unfolding he had intended to take upon himself, nursing him not only like a father, no, also as a mother nurses her child, but whom, in spite of this, he had formed with parental strength after his own image: he had stood there with averted face as if he still resented this misguidance and this fateful hold upon him, but still he had been dreaming out into the dreaming landscape, into the flower-woven dream-sun, into the laurel-scented dream-peace, and for him, the beautiful boy, the fauns, inebriate of the fields, intoxicated by the lute, had danced their measures; for him the landscape, moved to its very core by the dance, had opened out, even the oaks keeping time by the mighty swaying of their leafy tops; all this transpired for the boy, the whole creation unto its final borders moving in the dance of desire, the invisible had become visible, the averted had turned into view, woven into one great aspect by virtue of an incessant in-and-outflowing desire which was full of recognition, enveloping the seen as well as the unseen and unseeable in its trembling flow, so that in this wise it might be moulded to a recognizable shape: ah, indeed, enveloped in perceptive desire, himself desiring, Alexis had stood there, and since he had become moulded into shape everything surrounding him took shape also, becoming a recognizable unity, so that mid-day and evening might flow together simply as a single manifestation of light; however, nothing of all this was now to be seen; even the ranging mountains of the night had faded away to emptiness, absorbed by the emptiness of the surrounding landscape which was only a mutely sparse tangle of lines, almost severe in its sharpness, engraved into the declining, brownish, nebular light of the sun's growing eclipse; alas, duller and duller became the colors of the blossoms, Caesar's purple toga turned a black-violet in this light which was as dry as scorched paper, but it was utterly severed, without relevance or counter-view, cut off because of the stubborn one-sidedness that emanated from the narrow figure over there near the window, cut off by severity, by obduracy, by sharpness, sheerly unreal despite its palpable, superficial efficacy, and even the humane, ah, even the human relationship seemed to be subjected to the one-sidedness of a secretive, free-flowing surface that covered nothing; for strangely unsensual, strangely desireless, a curious, sober, almost disapproving attachment was stretching across to the lean figure which stood there motionless, was a bond with it, a bond irrelevant and strange in that it could not be dissolved. Nothing stirred any more, even the twittering of the birds had died away in the darkened shadows, alas, the dream would never return. For all that, Plotia, bending down from the dream to such immediate nearness that one could almost feel her breathing, whispered as though in secret promise: "I recognize you in the unsung future, you are not bound to anything that has been; return to me, my beloved"—, thus she whispered as if she were whispering into the gentle exhilaration of the dream-peace, too fine to be heard, out into the palpable world that had become heavy and dim, whispering thus into a benumbed world and then dying off into speechlessness as if the task were too great for her waning strength. The silence lasted for a long time, unmoved the man at the window peered out, he who ruled the world in the name of the gods, he, the meagre-mortal vessel of divinity, peered unmoved into the landscape of roofs and lines becoming more and more shadowy; all remained quiet and peaceful, but it was no longer the peace of the dream, the buoyancy of which had previously surrounded him, it was the stern and inflexible peace of Augustus, and only the scent of the laurel lingered, pervading the room with dreams now as before, lingered as a reminder of the delicate flower-like animation, although the laurel, almost affected by the inflexibility, standing now as it stood then, served as a boundary.

  Augustus turned around impulsively with an unusually vehement gesture: "Stick to the point, Virgil, . . . why is it that you want to destroy the Aeneid?"

  This came as such a surprise that for a moment he did not know what to answer.

  "You have talked of inadequacies; I grant them to you although I do not believe in them, but there are no artistic inadequacies that Virgil should be unable to cope with . . . that was only quibbling."

  "I have not achieved my goals ... I have not reached them."

  "This is another explanation that means nothing to me . . . what goal is it that you seek?"

  This was said quite sharply and directly; Augustus had again come nearer the bed, he seemed like a stern, questioning father, and the intimidation that he inspired was strange in the extreme, not only because of the actual difference in their ages, but still more because everyone who knew Augustus had to be, and was, far too familiar with this habitual sort of cross-questioning to regard it as frightening. Perhaps the intimidation lay in the unavoidable justness of the question; he who does not know how to answer is intimidated; where did his goals lie? they were not to be found, they had evaporated under the palpable weight of the moment! "Alas, where are they? Oh, Plotia, oh, sibylline voice, which goals?!"

  And Plotia said, and it sounded like recollection: "I bear your destiny; in my knowledge lies your goal."

  Again Augustus—and this was something he liked to do in a cross-examination if he was trying to gain a certain point— changed his tone and shifted to the winning amiability which was so much his: "There are many aims, Virgil; I myself have a goodly number of them, and among them your friendship is truly not to be reckoned as least, indeed,
it will yet be part of my future fame that I was the friend of Virgil . . . but now confess to me what dreadful goal is that which lures you on, permitting you to harbor such an inconceivable resolution . . ."

  The fever was mounting again, he could feel it between his hot fingers, the ring hurt; nevertheless he must answer: "My aims? . . . knowledge . . . truth ... the end of all searching . . . perception . . ."

  "And this is the goal you believe you have not attained?"

  "No one has attained it."

  "Well ... as you confute yourself, it is inconceivable that you continue to have qualms; . . . mortals are not meant to achieve everything."

  "But I have never even taken the first step toward perception, nor once made an attempt to take the first step ... it is incongruous, everything has been incongruous."

  "What do you mean? you do not even believe that yourself; no more of that." The voice of Augustus had become annoyed; he was displeased.

  "It is true."

  "My Virgil . . ."

  "Yes, Octavian . . ."

  The lamp swung softly, although there was not a breath of air stirring, the silver chains tinkled softly: Was an earthquake coming along with the eclipse? He felt no fear; like a lightly swaying bark was his body, like a bark making ready to sail, and from the shore Augustus reached a friendly hand, while outside the mirror-like sea, smooth and unruffled, reflected the livid light in its unbroken surface as it moved up and down.

  And Augustus, also giving no heed to the earthquake, said pleasantly: "Listen Virgil, listen to me as your friend and also as a connoisseur of your work: your poem is filled with the most exalted knowledge; Rome is proclaimed in it throughout, and you comprehend Rome, comprehending it in its gods, its warriors, as well as in its peasants, you encompass its glory and its piety, you encompass the whole extent of Rome and the time of Rome as far back as its powerful Trojan ancestors, for you have retained everything . . . isn't this perception enough, even for you?"