Death of Virgil

by Hermann Broch

  “I deem the metaphor proper to all art, even that of Aeschylus; all art is symbolic … is that not true, Virgil?”

  Surely this was a sound argument: “We have no other means by which to express ourselves. All that art has is the metaphor …”

  “And death eludes the metaphor, or so you said.”

  “Of course … all language is just metaphor, all art of any kind, and even the deed is a metaphor … a metaphor of perception, or that is how it should be, what it strives to be …”

  “Good, then that goes for me as well as for Aeschylus”—Augustus smiled—“we agreed on this, ruling is a kind of art, it is the art of the Romans.”

  It was not easy to keep pace with the quick-witted slyness of Augustus; it was easier to comprehend the fact that he was sitting here at the bedside than to comprehend the things he said, and if they concerned the Roman state, the work of state which he had created and over which he ruled with such skill—where was it? finely-drawn, it was being built up outside there in the landscape, between landscapes, within men, between men, barriers there as here, correlation here as there, invisible and yet present, and it cost some effort to project oneself into all these spaces in order to find it: “Your work, Augustus … indeed, it is a metaphor … the state is yours … and it is the symbol of the Roman spirit.”

  “And in the profusion of all these symbols, in the profusion of all the metaphors that round out our life, are just those you have created so bad that they must be destroyed? Is it only you who have not reached your aim by their means? For myself, I ask that what I have done shall remain … in this too I want to be like Aeschylus, who most assuredly did not destroy his work … do you want to be the sole exception? or is it that you have still not garnered enough glory and wish to add the title, Herostratus, to your name?”

  The Caesar was greedy for glory, he kept on speaking of glory, he pursued glory, and therefore one could not tell him that glory, even if it outlasted death, could never annul death, that the path of glory was an earthly one, worldly and without perception, a false-path, one of reversion, of intoxication, a path of evil: “Glory is the gift of the gods, but it is not the goal of poetry; only minor poets regard it as a goal.”

  “At any rate you are not one of these … why, then, are just your symbols not to remain in existence? Your poem is comparable to the Homeric songs, and it would be absurd to maintain that your images have less power than those of Aeschylus. You, on the contrary, have been contending that you have only clothed perception instead of revealing it, and that in this way you have failed to get nearer it; were this the case, one should have to make a similar statement in regard to Aeschylus.”

  It was impatience, no doubt, which drove Caesar to such insistent, almost oppressive perseverance, and nevertheless the sharp, clear answer he expected could not be given him: “In the case of Aeschylus the perception preceded the poetry from the very beginning, whereas I meant to search for it through my poetry … his symbols, born from an innermost perception, are one in inner and outer meaning, and thus, like all great examples of the Greek art, they have passed into permanence; born from perception they have become a lasting truth.”

  “The same homage is due to you.”

  “Not to me … images which have been derived simply from externals are earthbound, and consequently they must of necessity be weaker than a primary vision of reality; they are too weak for the task of perception, unfit for the task of truth, they are not the same in their inner and outer meanings, but merely superficial … and the same thing holds true of me.”

  “Virgil,”—and now Caesar with his sudden and again very youthful movement was again on his feet—, “Virgil, you are beginning to repeat yourself, even though with new and very persuasive words. I can only gather from this that I have also repeated myself, that the mysterious objections to your work which you express, at one time saying you have missed your aim, at another calling it lack of perception, have to do basically only with formal shortcomings; no one except you will be able to feel your images as inconclusive, and the doubts that every artist harbors about the success of his work, in your case have almost degenerated to a mania; perhaps because you are the greatest of poets.”

  “That doesn’t hit the mark, Augustus.”

  “No, what then?”

  “You are in a hurry and I must not detain you with long-winded perorations, and such would be necessary to persuade you that the Aeneid, while possessing all the qualities of a finished work of art, is nevertheless unjustified.”

  “You are playing with words, Virgil, and if ever you moved only upon the surface of things, it is now.”

  “Oh, Octavian, do believe me.” Caesar stood there, at an incalculable distance; it seemed as if no word could reach him any more.

  “Long-winded arguments are always meant to conceal something, especially when, as is evidently the case now, they try to establish themselves on time-wasting philological arrangements.”

  “This is no philology, Octavian.”

  “But it sounds like a commentary that you should add to the Aeneid.”

  “Yes, it might be so described.”

  “A commentary by Virgil on his own work! Who would want to miss that! But we can’t exclude Maecenas from this, Maecenas who takes such a passionate interest in questions of this sort. Well, you shall give us a lecture on the subject in Rome and we shall order a slave-scribe for the occasion to take down your words …”

  “In Rome …?” —How strange it was that he was never to see Rome again! Still, where was Rome? Where was he himself? And this place where he was lying? Was it Brundisium? where were the streets of the town? did they not run off into a nowhere, tangled together, this way and that, tangled into those of Rome and Athens, and into the streets of all the other cities of the globe? doors, windows, walls, all were changing their locations, everything was involved in this series of permutations, outlook and way-out led into uncertainty, and the whole world seemed to be a single gigantic landscape, a single town-scape, devoid of shadows, the four points of the heavens lost; no one knew where the east lay.

  “Certainly, my Virgil, Rome is expecting us,” said the Caesar, “it is getting time for me to depart, and in a few days you are sure to follow me, and in the best of health … but until then, you are not to worry either about your recovery or your manuscript; no harm must come either to you or to it, we need you both, and it will not be hard for you to make me the promise if I ask it of you: to be responsible for yourself and your manuscript … where have you put it? very likely in there?” And, as if incidentally, but actually with deliberate intention, Caesar, making ready to depart, pointed to the manuscript-chest.

  Oh, it was extortion, sheer extortion, leaving no other choice open to him: “I am to promise you that?”

  “There are many portions of the poem of which no copies have yet been made … I have to save you as well as the poem from the rash step you think of taking. It may be that you will convince me and all of us of the rightness of your intentions; here too ‘make haste slowly’ is valid, and first of all we want to hear your commentary. If you think you cannot keep your promise, I am perfectly willing to take it into my own custody so that you will find it on your arrival.”

  “Octavian … I cannot part with the manuscript.”

  “It is painful to me, my Virgil, to see you disturbed in this fashion and yet I can assure you it is just a mania of yours; there is no reason for this perturbation, and there is no reason to justify the destruction of your work …” Now he was standing close to the bed, gentle in his encouragement.

  “Oh, Octavian … I am dying, and I know nothing of death.”

  Plotia spoke from afar: “The knowledge of death is closed to one who goes alone, it is open only to two who travel united.”

  The hand of Augustus stretched out and grasped his: “These are gloomy and unnecessary thoughts, my Virgil.”

  “I am not able to chase them away, nor am I allowed to do so.”
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br />   “There is still time enough before you, in which, with the help of the gods, your knowledge of death may increase.”

  Much there was that fluctuated about them, many things changing into each other; five-fingered, the hand of Augustus lay in his own, one self inclined to the other self, and yet it was not Plotia’s hand; at death’s portal there was no such thing as a long or short time, the last moment, if it brought illumination, should endure longer than all of the preceding life, and Plotia said: “Our union is timeless, timeless our knowledge.”

  “The poem …”

  “Well, my Virgil …” it was still the same gentle tone of encouragement.

  “The poem … I must attain perception … the poem stands there like an obstruction to perception; it is in my way.”

  Augustus drew back his hand, his manner became hard: “That is of no consequence.”

  Nothing remained of the hand’s pressure; only the ring could be felt again, and the high fever, and Caesar’s words were becoming distantly unintelligible: “You yourself spoke of the essential, Augustus … and it is death … it is the perception of death …”

  “All of this is unessential compared with duty … even though in your poetry you may have surrounded death with metaphors, as you said before …”

  Everything was fluttering away, one must try to call it back once more: “Yes … to retain life in order to find in it the resemblance to death …”

  “So be it, yes, so be it … no one asks the soldier in battle whether or not he has already found the symbol of his death or some knowledge of it; if the arrow strikes, he must die; regardless of knowing or not knowing he has to fulfill his duty … may the gods protect you from death, my Virgil, and they will do so, but what I cannot tolerate is your playing it out like the trick move in a game, for there is not the least connection between death, your knowledge or ignorance of it, and your duty toward humanity … if you do not change your mind you really force me to protect your work against yourself.”

  Caesar was impatient and angry; the thing hung on a thread: “Perception is not just a matter for the individual, oh, Caesar; perception is the concern of humanity.”

  His own perception had reached no depth, it had remained arrested on the surface, on the stony surface over which the mob clambered; his perception of death did not extend beyond the earth-realm, knowing only the stony earth-bound skeleton of death and therefore knowing nothing, a poor state of helplessness, and incapable of all help. But one could not come with such reflections to Caesar; he would have refused them in advance, with fury and without understanding.

  “And so you want to help humanity by destroying your work? are you in earnest? what has become of your duty, what of your consciousness of duty? I beg you, I earnestly beg you, not to start fencing with words again.”

  Something in the eyes of the angry man betrayed that his irritation was not very serious, that his benevolence was to be counted on now as before; if one succeeded in arousing it all could still be saved: “I am not evading my duty and responsibility, Augustus, and that you know; but I shall be able really to serve humanity and the state only when I first shall have pressed on to my own perception, for what is at stake is the task of helpfulness, and just this is impossible to perform without perception.”

  As a matter of fact Caesar’s anger was subsiding: “Then for the moment we are going to preserve the Aeneid as a kind of provisional perception … if not quite as a symbol of death, since you deny it this attribute, yet still as a symbol of the Roman spirit and the Roman people whose property it is, all the more, since despite what you call the unrightness of your symbols, by means of them you have been the best helper of your people, and will always remain so.”

  “Caesar, your work, your state, is the definitive symbol of the Roman spirit, the Aeneid is not; and that is why your work will remain, whereas the Aeneid is doomed to be forgotten and to be destroyed.”

  “Has not the world room enough for two valid symbols side by side? Has it not? And even though the Roman state may be a more valid one—I admit that much—is it not more than ever your reasonable duty and service to fit your own work into this more comprehensive one?” — Again wrath became apparent in the strained countenance, now it was a wrathful mistrust—, “but you, however, give it no heed, your pride is not satisfied that art, that is to say your art, be assigned to a role of service in the state, and rather than suffer it to serve, you would destroy art in its entirety …”

  “Octavian, do you know me as an arrogant man?”

  “Until now, no; but you seem to have become one.”

  “Well, Augustus, I know that man must be humble, and I hope I have learned how to be; but as for art, there I am arrogant, if you want to call it that. As a man I acknowledge every duty, for man alone is the bearer of duty, but I know that one cannot impose any duty on art, neither duties of state nor any other kind; for by so doing one makes art into a shamart, and should the duties of men go beyond the realm of art, as they do today, men have no other choice than to drop art, though not from disrespect … just our time demands the utmost modesty from the individual, and in utter modesty, aye, more, in self-effacement, he has to serve as one of the state’s many nameless servants, either as a soldier or in some other capacity, but not with works of poetry which have no enduring substance and are nothing but arrogant examples of a sham-art, compelled to be sham-art as long as they presume to serve the state by virtue of their superfluous existence …”

  “Aeschylus built his superfluous poetic work into the statecraft of Cleisthenes, and by so doing outlasted the Athenian state. I only wish that my work may endure as long as the Aeneid.”

  This was said quite frankly, only one had to discount the sweetness with which Caesar was wont to trick out his friendships.

  “What was true of Aeschylus, Caesar, does not apply to me; those were different times.”

  “Indubitably, Virgil, five hundred years have elapsed since then and no one will deny this, but that is all it amounts to.”

  “You spoke of duties, Augustus, and certainly the duty of helpfulness remains unchanged throughout time, but the means of helping change, and today art is not the means … duty remains, but the object of duty is altered by time … only in a realm without duty is time without significance.”

  “Art is not dependent upon time, and those five hundred years are a sign of the poem’s eternal merit.”

  “They testify to the eternal effect of a genuine art-work but not further, Octavian … Aeschylus was able to produce works valid for eternity because by means of them he fulfilled the task of his era, and therefore his art was the equivalent of perception … the time determines the direction in which the task lies, and he who goes contrary to it must collapse … an art that is consummated outside these limits, evading the real task, is neither perception nor help—in short it is not art and cannot endure.”

  Caesar paced back and forth over the swaying floor; with every dip of the wave he turned round so that he was always walking up-hill; but now he must have reached the top for he stopped—yet maybe he did feel the Poseidonian movement—and held on to the candelabrum: “Again you speak of things that cannot be proved.”

  “In art we are everywhere imitating the Greek forms, in the conduct of the state you are forging a new path. You are fulfilling the task of your time, not I.”

  “That proves nothing; the newness of my path may be argued, but eternal form remains eternal form.”

  “Aye, Augustus, you simply do not want to see, you do not want it to be true, that the poetical task no longer exists.”

  “No longer exists? No longer? You sound as though we were standing at the end of something …”

  “Perhaps it would be better to say, not yet! for we may assume that a time for artistic tasks will dawn again.”

  “No longer and not yet,”—Caesar, much dismayed, was weighing these words—“and between them yawns an empty space.”

  Yes, no longer and not yet; tha
t is how it sounded, how it had to sound, lost in nothingness, the lost, passed-away inter-realm of dream—, but had it not sounded different before, similar, but different? and already the boy’s voice was announcing itself, the voice of the boy, Lysanias. And it said: “Not quite here, but yet at hand”; that is how it had sounded and how it would sound.

  “The empty spaces between the epochs”—Caesar’s words continued, as if they were speaking by themselves, as if they were unfolding without his help, as if the words and not Caesar were soliloquizing: “the empty nothingness that yawns wide, the nothingness for which everything comes too late and too early, the empty abyss of nothingness beneath time and the aeons, which time tries to bridge over cautiously and on a hairline by stringing moment to moment in order to conceal the stony petrified crevice, oh, the abyss of unformed time must not become visible, must not be allowed to gape open; no interruption must occur, time must flow on incessantly, each moment simultaneously enclosing the end and the beginning, the moulded time …”

  Was it actually Caesar who had said this? Or had the words of his most secret fear been speaking? Time flowed past mysteriously, the empty, shoreless stream that led to death, always cut into by the present, the present that constantly and elusively was being washed away: “We stand between two epochs, Augustus; so call it expectancy, not emptiness.”

  “What happens between epochs is empty and without chronology, impervious to moulding, impervious to poetry; you yourself have maintained this, and at the same time, almost in the same breath, you have praised this time of ours, this time that I have been at pains to mould, as the culmination of human existence as well as of poetry, as a veritable time of burgeoning. I remind you of your Eclogue in which you declared that the glory of the ages had been fulfilled by our time.”

  “Fulfillment on the way is almost fulfillment. The tension lies in waiting, in expecting the fulfillment, and we who are blessed to wait and to watch embody that tension; we also ready for fulfillment.”

  Waiting between epochs while yet between the shores of time, these invisible shores; waiting between the unattainable shores of life! We stand on the bridge that is spanned between invisibility and invisibility, and nevertheless we are caught in the stream; Plotia had longed to check the mysteriously incessant flow, and perhaps she would have been able to check it, perhaps she would still do it. Oh, Plotia—