The Death of Virgil

by Hermann Broch

  Nothing held firm any longer, nothing had to be held onto, there was no more incongruity, and he who had taken the drink, he Publius Vergilius Maro, he likewise was no longer in need of the name, he might cast it off from himself, he could let it fade to a mere knowledge, to an indistinct and actually knowl-edgeless knowing, to a gentle and wondrously chaste forgetting, because lonely if not alone the journey continued through the second immensity. No trepidant longing drew him on now, there was no longer the need for encounter. The light too was lonelier, purer and chaster even than before, it had turned to dusk, to a strange and almost miraculous dusk of indefinite duration, uncertain the hour of its beginning, inestimable its duration, for the sun having sunk down to the immeasurable border of the waters could not decide to dip under them, but unmoving, as though in gentle indecision, as though spellbound by the image of the Scorpion which it had been pursuing, hung with a dull gleam in the cloudlessness, surrounded by the dome a-twinkle with the whole galaxy of stars. Time was exempted of duration, and the voyage went on and on over the empty stillness in a peaceful, almost imperceptible gliding devoid of all speed, its destination unknown although the direction in which the journey continued could be ascertained by the stars. The boy stood forward at the bow encompassed by the dusk, yet his figure stood out clearly from the firmament, its over-distant clarity already beyond the border of clarity, and while it could not be determined whether the gesture was that of way-showing or of longing, he lifted his arm, his body inclining toward its outstretched motion, wishing for the goal to appear without being able to reach it. Could this still be called a voyage, this drifting without aid of oar or sail? was it not rather a standstill, a make-believe of sham motion caused by the opposite movement of the starry cupola? Voyage or no voyage, it constituted an interstate of knowledge, it was still that, and the steersman back there stayed quietly at his post, his presence not less felt now than before, all security came from him and not from the far too fugitive, far too transient boyish figure, no, the steersman determined the course of the voyage, he alone, even if in reality it depended on the course of the star. Deeper and deeper sank the sun, flaming into the dark red of its fire; its glow became duller, notwithstanding the cloudless, fogless view, so dull that the evening clarity became more and more nocturnal, more and more sparkling the starry spaces. Though it was nocturnal it was not yet night; the silent song of the spheres became more nocturnal, richer and richer the night, permeated by the mute cymbal-tone of the starlight, and the more fully this resounded through veil after veil of sound, the more perceptible became the boy, the more he detached himself from the darkness; for meanwhile it had become plain that this perceptibility was wrought by a silent radiation, the source of which lay in the outstretched way-showing hand of the boy, and which deepened with soft increasing intensity to the. central point of its emanation: it was the ring, the very ring intended for Lysanias, and now held proudly aloft by him, which sent out this radiance, a mantle of light over his shoulders, and if in the beginning it had been only like the blinking of a star, flaring up and fading out in the gray light of morning or evening, it was now like a way-showing gleam floating on ahead, the way-showing smile of a star held aloft in the hand of a boy, held high that it might shine, wafted hither like a blessed memory from the innermost space of earthly forgetfulness, the space that had been flooded by width, height and depth, flooded by time, by the pain of fire and ice; itself flooded by memory, wafted hither by the ring's shining, brought gently hither like echo, childlike as echo, belonging like echo to the throes of a blessed receptivity. For nothing any longer bore a name, only the boy Lysanias still bore his, and the memory which now twined through the memoryless present with fugitive blessedness, this memory in the interstate of the senses yet devoid of sensuality, this afterglow of a former doubling and halving, this afterglow at the fading point, in whose echoing call the boy Lysanias was allowed to participate because of his name, this died out in the calling as it entered a higher plane in the knowledgeless knowing of the second immensity, there where every other knowledge falls away; it faded out with the radiation of the ring, preserved in the radiation, flooded into the smile of Lysanias, into his voice that would speak no longer, into his glance which would look hither no more, flooded into him as a soundless music, streaming back as an insight of the boy, as a simultaneous knowledgeless knowing of nearness and far-ness, involved with the lightening of the dusk and with the spread of a dawn that without nearness or farness encloses all doubleness to oneness, which, even as he beholds it, fills the beholder with light. Oh dusk, oh interrealm, streaming and subsiding in the past, the inflow and outflow of soul! However, although it was not really night, the actual dusk had been left behind, the interrealm abolished; under a myriad stars gleaming in their full brightness the ball of the sun was resting coolly in a dark, reddish pool deep down on the watery horizon, leaden and golden together; one could almost imagine that it had actually dived under and was reflected upward by an unusual refraction of light, for, as if bound to the sphere below, and in a reflection of its under-oceanic course, it began to roll slowly along the horizon, cutting across one constellation after another, making for the eastern point where it would rise again bringing the morning, sun remaining in the night, night's image or the night itself, sun in reflected movement or that of its own, in earthly imprisonment or in spheric freedom, it was hard to tell which, circle.and counter-circle shrunk to a blankness, consummate and great in the majestic movement of the starry orb; as if the voyage were heading for the sun, as if this were its aim, the steersman, seemingly in response to the boy's longing gesture, followed the path of the red-glowing image, and the point of the boat in its gradual turning remained constant to the path of the sun, drawn by it in a real or sham turning, in a real or sham movement, now it was quite indistinguishable, because in the course of this most unnocturnal night the boat had indubitably lengthened to an extraordinary degree and was continuing to grow longer, plainly seen by the growing distance to the boy at the bow, plainly felt by the steersman's falling back at the rear, a lengthening of the ship both backwards and forwards, a growth that in and of itself claimed a part of the journey's speed and assimilated it, speed changed into growth, into such an irresistible, all-embracing growth that, were it to persist, must finally bring the voyage and even the night itself to a complete standstill, must bring revolving mutability to immutability; the voyage had become immeasurably slower and in equal quietude the roundness above and that below, reflected in the luster from the stars, had expanded on every side to meet this becalmed gliding, the quiet glance of the spheres reflecting itself in itself, the gray eye of the water and the darker gray of the heavenly eye above widening and merging to a day-impregnated night, to a dawn-dusk in which there was no duration or occurrence, no name, no chance, no memory, no fate. And soon lying there was no longer a lying, neither a sitting nor a standing up, rather a bodiless beholding in drifting onward, still bound, it is true, to the middle of the boat while yet being loosened from it, and so very detached that it seemed as if the last fetters were being struck off, as if this were the final fulfillment of a long-forgotten, no longer rememberable premonition, a premonition of floating in freedom; ever stronger became the wish to take part in bringing this floating premonition to reality, to float within it, to float in a state of unrecollection which was at the same time that of a surmised future, to float onward to the radiance of the ring, to float freely on to Lysanias who alone still bore a name, fate and memory; ah, that it were given one to float on to him, to him flooded in radiance, who might still be a peasant boy, but also might already be an angel moving ethereally on spreading wings of a Septemberish coolness, ah, that it were given one to float on to him so as to touch those wings and to search again that once-more familiar countenance, the unveiled depths of the countenance in the kindly light of the star-ring, filling one depth after another; ah, ever stronger became the wish, the yearning for him of the yearning gesture, the longing toward the mild s
tir of a former flux, toward the soft gray trickling in which the past had lingered, alas, the woebegone wish that is but anguish at taking leave of the final face, woebegone yearning that wards off the final awareness, trembling in the anguish of farewell; for however much the soul, fore-knowing her future, thirsts to float free at last, yet it weighs heavily on her to leave forever the interstate of the voyage, to go irrevocably into the second immensity, and heavy the injunction not to turn around to the immensity of yore, still heavier the command to relinquish the many connotations of the past for the sake of the future's single import: even though the boy pointed so singly and so yearningly toward the future, yet the many connotations remained, the surrounding radiance was of manifold meanings in its reflections and counter-reflections—red-glowing the image of the sun, the constellations flickering, dull-gold the moon's disk, the diffused radiation of the ring—so that past and future criss-crossed into a single effulgence, the radiance of the dark-shimmering sea and sky dispersed and ambiguous, enmeshed with that of the pointing seraphic apparition, and even though this in itself remained consistent, consistent in his future-pointing gesture, it was filled with shimmering inconsistency, it was shot through by every sort of multiplicity and the whole complex meaning of the past; it was inconsistent by reason of his constantly changing shape, in his change of features which at one time assumed the likeness of Alexis and at another that of Cebes, and occasionally, though less capturable than all the others, even the likeness of Aeneas, yet all of them nameless, and repeatedly covered by his own Lysanias-face, being for all that no less an enticement to seek the past in the future, no less a seduction in its forward pointing to turn back, yet already ceasing to be seduction, being instead merely a new knowledge, for the boy was floating in the realm of the intangible, surely no misleader, scarcely any longer a leader, only a way-shower, one who points forward, one whose forward-pointing hand were it to be kept from falling was never once to be touched—a farewell; verily, this revelation of farewell, this consciousness of farewell, was also embedded in the floating in-turned smile of the boy, and the leave-taking became a knowledge shared between them, an awareness of the abolishment of the interrealm, an awareness of the second immensity in which the journey was to come to a standstill, an awareness of the steersman at the rear, of the pilot at the helm, the protection-giving, the help-giving, rest-giving one, who now had to become the sole guide, the serving, the final and perfect guide, because he alone, notwithstanding the growing distance, and over and above it, had the power to gather the soul into his guardian hand, to enable it while nestling into that hand, lying within it, leaning against it and upheld by it, while embraced by the loving command, to participate in this awareness without fear, poised in the tension between certainty and yearning, floating between the immensities, in readiness for knowledge, the knowledge-awaiting soul, waiting without anticipation. The premonitory, floating ardor began to be fulfilled, came to be floating fulfillment. Floating like the boy forward there at the bow, consciousness as well as the voyage tended to merge into a floating calm, and the longer this lasted, the longer the growth of the night and the nocturnal boat—incalculable the duration, incalculable a measure in the shadow-saturated, shadow-sated clarity of the night—the more evanescent became the evaporating boyish figure, more and more evanescent, naked and nakeder, drawn into the starry brightness, embraced by the shadows, divested of raiment and more than raiment, stripped to complete transparency, thus hovered the night and the boy, melting into each other, oh, transparent! Not quite here but yet at hand. Was this the fore-court to reality? the fore-court of a homeland above which circled all suns, all moons, all stars, filled with glory? The boy pointed yonder but it was toward a beaming uncertainty that he pointed, and thither the boat was heading, although things were almost at a standstill because the growth of the boat had apparently reached the borderline of immensity; it was cognizance, the knowledge of night, not yet of day, merely the apprehension of a knowledge to come, and yet a fully valid knowledge; it was an invading flood of knowledge, greater and milder than any streaming of air and water, though just as immutable as these and arched over by the self-same heaven, it was stillness about to turn into a new stillness on a loftier plane, stillness prepared for a new stillness, knowledge ready to be organized into a new knowledge, indeed prepared for this, and the gliding thing, carried as it were on stillness and knowledge, and borne as though aloft and disburdened of its weight, was now scarcely a boat, it had almost ceased to touch the water, it was an endlessly floating phantom of night on the point of dissolving into immensity, immense in itself and prepared for rest in the unimaginable uncertainty of increasing infinity, floating toward the rainbow of night, which afloat itself, the floating portal of time at rest, was spanned in seven colors from east to west, reflected in the liquid element without touching it. Retarded like the voyage, slowed down to a standstill, as slowly as the irresolute sun delaying at every stage of approach its course toward the point of its re-arising, delaying it more and more till it came to a standstill, most slowly, really unnoticeably, the boat was dissolving, becoming invisible, became invisible, and forward in the darkening distance the figure of Lysanias had detached itself and was flying ahead of the boat, flying radiantly out into the night, in the guise of a leader, as a guiding hand, as radiant guidance; thereupon, as though the night wanted to unfold once again to its full earthly magnificence before its inevitable vanishing, the stars increased in brilliance, the stars assembled as if in final greeting and attendance, fuller in number than ever before, assembled to a final earthly show of beauty, crossed over in their complete arch by the Milky Way, all of them simultaneously visible to the eye, although no permission had been given to turn round or to look back, all of the stars beheld and known, inexpressibly known, star-face after star-face, name after name, in spite of having long since passed with their names into the region of oblivion, transcendent in beauty beyond any beauty, a second memory-space of stars within the first one, wheeling about the frigid pole of the sky guarded by the sign of the dragon, and so complete in number and sign that even the vanished ones emerged mirror-like out of the flood: to the north was the crooked, flickering body of the Scorpion pursued by the pointing Archer, but to the east the outstretched serpent reared her sparkling head, and deep in the west, readier for leave-taking than all the others, lingered the Pegasic horse of the well-tapping hoof, lingering at the edge of the cupola, at the edge of the glittering multiplicity; transparent unto the last depths of the cupola, the multiplicity was only crystalline essence, curiously familiar, curiously unfamiliar, now also seen from within, far-near near-far also, changed into a waiting awareness—the waiting reproduced in the starry profusion of the celestial spaces, the universe seen from within, unlosable in its perception now perceived, the untouchable, unbeholdable, unevocable, inaudible face of the star—and in the transparent radiance of the heavens this became the fleeing figure of the boy, naked in its transparency although still that of Lysanias, wondrously changed, this figure heading onward yet arrested, the seraphic apparition, the image of a star, a symbol, was transmuted into the intrinsic substance itself, the intrinsic substance of the spark-showering universe into whose opened arch it was flying, entering the seven-colored portal of the rainbow and passing beyond it. And as this was happening, yes, even before it happened, the serpent blazed up in a glow of red, the whole eastern horizon blazing, the seven-colored thing disappeared into the glow of red, paling to a quickly vanishing strip of ivory, for the sun had detached itself from its quiet course, had mounted so slowly as to be almost imperceptibly, but in keeping with a complete stripping of weight, in a weightless upward floating, lifted up by the ceaseless turning of the starry orb, lifted up by the guiding gesture of the fleeting apparition of the seraph, lifted up by the common occurrence in which one thing is activated by the other, movement by counter-movement, quiescence by counter-quiescence, interknit, implicated, reflected one to another from the natural source of all substance;
this was in a simultaneous state of change and repose, was in its constant repose so changeable, in its constant changing so reposeful, but in both so vibrant, such a reposefully-changing vibrancy that it came to be the unity achieved by the mute song of the spheres, sounding as a mild cymbal-stroke emanating from the rising of the day-star, sounding as an ivory-colored lyre-tone emanating from the gesture of the seraphic image toward the flaming disk, and the star-throng, enveloped by the mute sound, was drawn toward the rising sun and its conscious ascending, the universe looking and listening. Not a star vanished, in spite of the increasing brightness of the advancing day by which their brightness was overtaken, they remained in their full number, starry-crystal in their dome, an enduring starry-countenance of an unspeakably clear expression, and flying on through the crystalline arch, flying to the sun, the seraphic apparition had finally freed itself, had finally separated from the dissolving, floating form that had once been a boat; and, wrapped in the gleaming mantle of its own radiance, becoming more and more luminous in a final transformation, in a final gladdening, becoming more and more compelling, more and more lovable, the same face though with a new name, the nameless, transported boyish face became that of Plotia Hieria, the boy inseparable from her, she inseparable from the boy, identical in the blurred and fading gesture she had taken over from him, pointing, the ring on her finger, to the east. The serpent glistening coil on coil had glided up a further stretch of the red-glowing firmament to receive her, the new guide, the serpent enflamed by the sun and commanding the east, while westward, yielding to the day, the winged horse sank down palely along with the steersman whom he took with him and who, now that his strict service was accomplished and the chains broken, gave way to the sun whither he had been leading the voyage. Oh, final transformation! The apparition of a seraph sent hither as a comforting memory from the first immensity, gone over into the second one for the sake of hope—, must she not also vanish, now that the day had dawned? must she not likewise turn homeward into the unknown, into and in deference to a higher consciousness on a loftier plane? She flew ahead, her body of shimmering ivory shimmered off into the incorporeal, her star-streaming hair a cool-soft flame; the distance to her kept growing, the pointing ring-hand already touched upon the unattainable, already touched the peak of heaven, but there was no vanishing, instead a tarrying, a spellbound abiding, spun into the light which was now day, as if this transformation of shape and that which had previously been experienced by the vanishing boy were one and the same, the one conditioned by the other, born from the other, blossomed from the other: the day had blossomed, a blossom in itself, and it unfolded to a gracious enchantment, resting in its own light, remaining in itself, since the fire of the beginning from which it had risen had been expunged, and the visible world along with the day had become bound in a spell of graciously changed permanence: the soft, golden light had changed, transfixed within the heavenly blue, and bore, together with this splendor, the crystalline dome of day, the lovely, pristine crystal of infinity, dissolving the crystal countenance to something like a gentle un-radiance, so that the abundance of stars, out-shimmered by the azure clarity in which they hung, gave forth no more light, and the radiance—silvery opal the stars, milkily silver the moon's soft disk, insubstantial as ivory vapor, like a memory of the night's splendor which had spread like a hoop over the heavens—the radiance which emanated from the hoop on Plotia's hand was dissolved into a no-gleam, to a still softer ivory vapor that enveloped her as she floated onward, shrouding her charm as in a cloud, yet, breath streaming into breath, lifted her to her transparent consummation, an opaline shimmer in the pearly blue. Had the journey ended? had one really come so far? there was no further need of a vessel; he floated, he stepped over the waters, and surrounding him was the stillness of morning, a spring morning of no season, surrounding him was the breath of quiet and the day of rest, breathed up to heaven by the liquid mirror, breathed back by heaven to the gilded waters, above and below inhaling each other, the stillness of sun and stars and sea in one, in a single breath of never-ending springtime; and there a landscape came into being, a landscape that was spring, as beneath the sunny arch, drawn upward by it, the existence of one dependent on the other, the shore emerged from the waters, growing out of the floods, and established itself as a reality entirely stripped of metaphor or symbol, the reality awaited without anticipation, the veritable journey's end. Thereupon what ensued was a wafting, a floating that became easier and changed effortlessly to a transference thither. There, washed round by the morning light, stood Plotia, descended from her former floating guidance; there she stood, she who had flown ahead to await him who had floated after; and about their heads, belonging to her and to heaven, gleamed a star of opaline softness, the star washed in the morning light. Had it not been for the starry luster, the mild splendor of this one star diffused over the entire cupola, persisting poignantly despite all its mildness even in the reawakened golden clarity, it could almost have been an earthly spring morning, a quiet re-awakening to life in limpid serenity; Plotia's figure was almost an earthly one, no gleaming mantle enveloped her, furthermore her hand was ringless, rayless, for all that she held to her pointing gesture, and this aimed heavenward as if she had left the ring in the star which shimmered upon her, as if the ring's gleaming had been drawn back into that of the star, transformed and united with the starry gaze to a soft eternal vigilance.