The Death of Virgil

by Hermann Broch

  "Do these two get nothing else?"

  "But yes . . . It is no secret to anyone, least of all to both of you, that my assets in currency are far in excess of my needs, and I dare say have increased to several millions, much against my wish, however much in accord with that of my friends, . . . well, from this fortune Cebes and Alexis are to receive each a legacy of a hundred thousand sesterces, just as I have set forth some other small legacies that I need not enumerate here, and to these will be added a few more for my slaves . . ."

  "All as it should be," agreed Plotius, "moreover, many of your decisions will be changed in the course of the next years, as, for all your alleged contempt of money, you are still a peasant, convinced like every peasant in the depths of his heart that the gods are often quite disposed to bestow their blessings by way of gold; accordingly your property is bound to grow still greater . . ."

  "We shall not go on arguing this matter now, Plotius . . . but whatever may be, or will be, after the deduction of these legacies I want half of my current funds to go to Proculus, a quarter to Augustus, and the remaining quarter to be divided equally between you, Lucius and Maecenas ... so that is the general picture."

  The back of Plotius' neck, his bald-spot and his face were suffused with a dark, purply red, and Lucius threw up both his hands: "What has gotten into you, Virgil! we are your friends, not your heirs!"

  "You yourselves have given me leave to dispose of my property as I deem best."

  A limping man with an upraised stick came threateningly nearer to the bed: "Whoever has money gets more; and who has none, gets none!" he shouted, and had the slave not disarmed him so that, still shouting, he had to withdraw again into nothingness, without doubt he would have started a fight.

  "Yes, I am forgetting that I want to add to the legacies another of twenty-thousand sesterces to feed the people of Brundisium."

  "You may as well add my portion to it at once," muttered Plotius, wiping his eyes.

  "What you are to receive can in no way measure up to what I have received from you."

  The mobile actor's face of Lucius Varius became ironic: "Virgil, will you assert that you have ever seen much of my money . . . ?"

  "And will you maintain that you did not precede me in epic poetry? that I have not learned an enormous amount from you? Well, Lucius? Can this be repaid with money at all? it is just lucky that you are never in funds and always need something, for in this way the legacy is not entirely useless . . ."

  The flush had not faded from the face of Plotius; now his heavy jowls were taut with scornful resentment: "You are not indebted to me for any of your verses, and I am blessed with enough riches to be able to renounce your money . . ."

  "Oh, Plotius, shall I let you stand back for Lucius, this giddy person?! For thirty years you have been my friends, and you have advanced me no less than he, with all his verses; I do not want to speak of what I have had from you in money's worth . . . you are my oldest friends, you have always been united, and so it must be with this inheritance, and you will accept it, you have to accept it, because I ask you to do so."

  "I am your oldest friend," objected the boy.

  "Incidentally, you too are a peasant, Plotius, and so it follows that everything you said about me must hold good for you as well. . ." ah, gradually speech became quite painful—, "but I wouldn't like my friends to be reminded of me only by cyphers ... in my apartments at Rome and Naples you will find some furniture and my personal belongings . . . and my friends, that means you Plotius and you Lucius, but Horace and Propertius likewise . .. my friends are to take from them any objects, especially books, that please them and that might help to keep me in memory . . . what remains shall be given to Cebes and Alexis . . . my seal-ring . . ."

  Plotius struck his lusty thigh with a clenched fist; "Now that's enough . . . what else are you going to fling at us . . . ?"

  The visible world moved off further and further, and Plotius' blustering, loud though it was, came out of a haze; it would have been good to have done with everything, but there was still so much, so very much to say: ". . . from you I ask still another service in return."

  "And do you not ask anything of me? are you dismissing me offhand?" asked Lysanias plaintively.

  "Lysanias..."

  "Tell us at last where that boy is hiding . . ."

  Yes, where was he hidden? but Plotius himself was not much more visible or audible than Lysanias, suddenly he too was hiding within the unreachable, and that was as though behind a thick pane of glass that became more and more cloudy, as though turning into a leaden wall.

  "Shall we seek him for you, perhaps?" joked Lucius. "Is that what you want of us?"

  "I do not know . . ."

  "I am standing in front of you, Virgil; I, Lysanias, stand in front of you and you have only to stretch out your hand, oh, that you might take mine!"

  It required an endless time to lift one's hand; it did not want to obey one at all, and then it grasped into emptiness, into blindness, into utter blindness.

  "Every eye, I replace every torn-out eye," said the doctor, "look in my mirror and you will again begin to see."

  "I do not know it any more . . ."

  Could these be words? what was it that had suddenly fallen into nothingness? was it these words or something quite different? Just a moment ago it had been intelligible, and certainly one's own speech, and all at once the words were no longer here, having glided off into nothingness, an alien mumbling, lost in the voice-thicket, imprisoned in ice and fire.

  But the limping one was again on the spot, and with him an enormous train of shadow-shapes, a procession so long that one life would not have sufficed to figure out this multitude; verily, a whole city was coming along, no, rather many cities, all the cities of the world, their steps shuffled over the stony floor and a fat hag shouted: "Go home now, march on, go home!"

  "Go on," ordered the limping one, "go on, you, taking yourself for a poet or something extraordinary; go on, you belong to us . . ."

  "Along with him who has forgotten how to walk and has to be carried," the fat female followed up the command, to make it more effective.

  A roar of laughter from the rest of the women accompanied this speech, and their outstretched fingers pointed lewdly, yet not in actual lewdness, toward the street of misery into which the procession now turned. The way led down the steps, the end of the alley was not to be sighted because it went down so far, but there, amid the band of children who, scrambling between the goats, the lions, and the horses, raced up and down the steps, there was Lysanias, gaily armed with his torch— it was an extinguished, cold, and sooty stump of a torch that he held in his hand—squabbling with the others as if nothing beyond such play existed.

  "So you have brought me back anyway, Lysanias, although you have never admitted it."

  And behold, Lysanias offered no reply; he gazed up as though confronted by a stranger, only to turn back immediately to his play.

  The descent continued, step by step.

  Plotius, however, who was also seated on the litter, his stout legs dangling, said warily: "Back? oh, indeed, we are taking you back into life."

  "Come away from here," said Plotia, "it smells bad here, dreadful."

  Yes, it reeked; each single door-gap yawning in the mouldy walls exhaled overpowering excremental fumes from the body of the house, and the dying gray-beards reeked in their blackened prison-cells. Augustus lay there too, whimpering.

  Step by step the descent continued, haltingly, but not to be halted.

  There were masses and masses of people, greedy for metaphors, greedy for victory. And there in their midst, in the midst of these pushing and crowding people, in the midst of turmoil Lucius sat writing; he sat there entirely given over to his task, writing down everything, everything that occurred inside or outside, and continuing to write he lifted his head: "What is it that we are to do for you, Virgil? What was it that you asked for?"

  'Take down everything, everything . . ."
<
br />   "Your will?"

  "You need no will,"—Plotms' voice darted over, hard and thin like a gnat, only to waver off like a dragon-fly—, "oh, you need no will for you will live on forever, forever living with me." A little black Syrian, a broken chain hanging from his neck-ring—where had his one-eyed fellow remained?—came leaping up the steps, slipping between the sundry figures, crying out the while: "The golden age has begun . . . what was on top is now at the bottom; what was below is above ... he who has remembered must now forget; he who has forgotten may now remember . . . down with you, down with you, you overgrown piggling.. . past and future are one, forever, forever, forever !"

  Meanwhile the crowd had become more and more dense. But that the litter floating above it had been forced to stop was a surprise, and beyond that, a surprising glimmer of hope, the more as hope was indubitably strengthened by the doctor's behavior; for despite his corpulence he moved lightly and fleetly through the conglomerate human mass, taking with a quick sleight-of-hand the money which the ailing held out to him, and his smiling lips with the instant quickness of a mirror, offered the recompense: "You have recovered . . . and so have you there . . . yes, you have also recovered . . . and you over yonder have gotten well again, too . . . you hive recovered, all of you, all of you . . . terrible is death, but you are all well again ..."

  "Terrible is life," said the slave who, although he had not changed his shape, must evidently be standing by himself on a very elevated spot, for he was looking down upon the litter.

  Now Augustus lifted himself from his ragged couch; he staggered with uncertain tread, on his neck-ring bobbed—as though he were the missing erstwhile mate of the little Syrian— the end of a chain, of silver it is true, and his speech came, uncertain and tremulous: "Come Virgil, come with me, lie there with me on my couch, for we must go back; we must keep on going back, we must reach beyond the first forefathers; we must return into the mass that sustained us, we must go back into the humus of the beginning ..."

  "Away with you . . . !" ordered the slave.

  Thereupon everything was wiped out, and even Caesar, hastening to become dwarfed, shriveled to nothing; the human likenesses dwindled away to mere shadows of puppets whose wires had suddenly been cut, indeed, it was like the abrupt severance of every worldly filament, a general collapse within and without simultaneously, just beginning or reaching its peak —one didn't know which because of the speed with which it occurred—came about as one sank back once more into the pillows of the bed-boat, which had immediately resumed its placid journey: truly, one felt a sense of release, both inwardly and outwardly, like the relaxation of a clutching hand, a hand that had once been a brazen fist and that now, quietly-quieting, had turned into soft repose.

  "Are you coming now?" asked Plotia, almost impatiently, giving herself in nearly the same breath the disappointed and disappointing answer: "Alas, you do not wish to come . . ."

  "Out with you .. . !" ordered the slave again. "Even you are not able to bring help . . ." and thereupon—for a moment perfectly visible—Plotia floated off as though she were a fury, her ivory body crowned with hair that was streaming flame.

  Who would bring help? No one had been allowed to remain, not even Plotia; all of them had been frightened away, and yet the isolation was like rest, yes, it was very quiet now with a quietness that bade fair to grow beyond itself, foretelling a ramble among flowery groves under the shade of laurels, a promise of that prenatal land into which it would blossom, to be meted out in a mild flow to the wanderer who would no longer have to pursue it in himself, absolved of the torment of searching, absolved of existence, absolved of his name, absolved of his anguish, absolved of his blood and his breath, he a wanderer in the forgotten land, and in the purity of forgetfulness!

  "Forgetfulness will bring no help to you either," said the slave.

  Oh, who would bring help if there was no surety even in forgetting; oh, who could comfort one for one's inability to rectify what had been done, or retrieve what had been left undone,—the done and the undone, one like the other, were forfeited and sealed—, what effort was still required for the redeeming and redeemed help to come? Once a voice had spoken, but it was only an annunciation, not yet the deed, and even the voice could no longer be heard, even the voice was forgotten, as forgotten as one's own voice, forfeited and sealed in the irrevocable.

  And now the slave said: "Only he who calls out for help by name shall partake of it."

  To call out for help? to call out once more? Once more to struggle for breath, once more to fight against the taste of blood on the tongue, once more, gasping with fatigue and fatigued with gasping, to have to call back one's self and one's own voice? Oh, what was the name, for the name had been forgotten! For a moment, for just a short moment came the vision of a face that could not be lost, that face of hard, brown, stiffened clay, kind and strong in its farewell smile, the never-vanishing parental countenance in its last calm—and then it faded away into the unforgettable.

  "Call," urged the slave.

  The mouth was full of blood thick enough to stifle one, and all that was or could be outside of oneself remained imperceptible, remained behind endless, paralyzing layers, dim, opaque and impervious to sound. If there was no telling the call's goal, there was no way to detect the name!

  "Call!"

  The call had to be forced out through the stifling, the paralysis, through strain; oh, voice calling out for the voice!

  "Call!"

  — Father!—

  Had it been called?

  "You called," said the slave.

  Had it been called? The slave affirmed it as if he were the mediator to one who should have received the call, and who perhaps had already heard it, even though he did not choose to answer.

  "Ask him for help," said the slave.

  And with recaptured breath, the plea came without effort, without premeditation, of its own accord: "Come to me . • ."

  Was this the moment of judgment?—Who would pronounce it? Or had it already been pronounced? On what would it fall? Would it ring out and be audible? would it appear as a deed? When, oh, when? The judgment between good and bad, separating guilt from innocence, the judgment which calls up the name and joins it to the innocent one, the law's truth of reality, the last and only truth—, oh, the sentence had been pronounced and now one must wait until it was executed.

  But nothing followed, neither a deed nor a voice, but despite that something did follow, something that one could scarcely capture; for messengers were coming from there where the call had penetrated, they were coming through the air on silent, soft-hooved horses, coming like an echo or its herald, and they were approaching slowly, ever more slowly, so that one could almost think they would never arrive. But even their non-coming was an oncoming.

  Then, however, dimmed by many intervening clouded panes of glass, only barely visible, a kind round face was bending over the bed and saying in a sound-distant, sound-deadened voice: "How can one help you? Would you like another drink?"

  "Plotius, who sent you hither?"

  "Sent me? ... if you want to put it like that, our friendship . . ."

  Plotius was not the messenger; he was perhaps just the forerunner of the messenger, or perhaps a still further link of the chain. And besides it was not a question of this or that kind of succor, even though it would have been comforting to be allowed to drink once more; the blood-taste would not subside. But at the beginning of the chain stood he who had sent Plotius hither, stood he who sends water to the thirsting; even the non-coming was oncoming.

  "Drink, if you are thirsty," said the slave. "Water wells from the earth, and the service that you are consummating is still an earthly one."

  In the breast something fluttered with too great speed, and, despite this too great and disquieting speed, something was there akin to joy, because it was the heart, the heart that was still beating, yes, that could even be curbed again to a quiet and more regular beat; it was almost an awareness of an imminent
, ultimate victory, the victory of complete serenity: "Curbed to duty . . . once again to earthly duty . . ."

  "You have only to curb yourself for your health; beyond that no other duties exist for you at the moment."

  "The Aeneid . . ."

  "That will become your task once more when you will have fully recovered . . . until then the poem is well protected in Augustus' care, and you will find it again, unharmed."

  It seemed scarcely credible that Augustus would be able to guard the Aeneid under the couch of rags on which he was forced to lie, aged, naked and powerless, and anyway, Plotius' speech, although intelligible, sounded most strange, stiffly-hollow, even though the glass-pane had started to clear and to melt away. Everything was incongruous. All the works of men were incongruous. The Aeneid was an incongruity.

  "Let not a single word be changed . . ."

  Now it was Lucius who understood immediately what he meant: "No one would ever dare to touch a manuscript of Virgil or even to suggest a correction, not to mention that Augustus would never permit such a thing!"

  "Caesar will come to be powerless; he will not be answerable for anything."

  "For what should he be answerable? there is nothing to be answerable for; you give yourself too many worries."

  It was still an unfamiliar language that was being spoken here, the language of an alien people whose guest one was, a language that one was barely able to understand while one's own was already forgotten or still unlearned; certainly the words of Augustus, in spite of his raggedness, had been much more familiar.