Death of Virgil

by Hermann Broch

  Was the sun-eclipse once more threatening? or the heaving of earth and ocean, shaken by the steeds of Poseidon? was there now a new threat of these? was this why the stillness had passed? no, there was no fear of these; gentle and earthly and peaceful the cooing doves walked along the window-sill, the song remained gentle, the gentle light held to its ivory hue, and even the voyage was again progressing, there was nothing to fear as long as the barks glided on so slowly and steadily. Nevertheless the hoof-beats of a horse became audible and it did not take long for it to appear, galloping hither across the air, carrying a boy in high spirits who held onto the rippling mane, tearing at it gaily. It was not a black horse but one that was snow-white, with black fetlocks however, and after the boy had dismounted in mid-gallop before Caesar, the horse continued on its way and sped through the window. But the boy stepped up to Caesar like a herald of yore, his head wreathed like a gift-bearer, and as such he was received.

  “I greet you,” said the Augustus, still leaning against the candelabrum with his hands among the laurel-leaves, “you want to present me with a poem and I accept it at your hands because you are Lysanias; I recognize you although I have never been in Andes, and you recognize me also.”

  “You are Caesar Augustus, the holy one.”

  “How did you find your way to me?”

  And the boy recited:

  “… Behold Caesar there and his issue,

  All of the Julian line that is destined to mount to the heavens,

  This is the man, this is he whom so often you heard the fates promise,

  Caesar Augustus, the son of a god who shall give back to Latium,

  Back to those fields where once Saturn was reigning a new age, a golden;

  His is an empire shall stretch past the Indian and Garamantian,

  On to a realm beyond stars where the sun and the year take their courses;

  Heav’n-bearing Atlas is there and revolves the bright orb on his shoulders;

  Aye, even now, the Caspian realms are aghast at his coming,

  Scythians cower there too in fear of the gods’ divinations,

  Meanwhile the mouths of the sevenfold Nile are in tumult with terror …”

  Thus declaimed the boy, and the picture that, disquieting and almost breath-taking, arose along with the verses did not have its origin in memory, neither in that of the boy nor his own, but instead emerged from the strangeness of that which was ever at hand, livid and mute though indicated by scarcely a line, yet full of terror, thunderous as a brewing storm.

  But there was no time left to reconsider because Augustus who had listened to the verses with an assenting countenance now said: “Yes, that is how you wrote it, that is how you wrote it for me … or have you changed your mind again, my Virgil?”

  “No, Octavian, my mind is unchanged, the poem is yours …”

  NOW Augustus clapped his hands twice and almost at once the chamber began to fill with people, with very many people who no doubt had been waiting behind the door for this very signal. Plotius Tucca and Lucius Varius were among them, but so were the doctor and his assistants, the slave too was now visible in the flesh, standing in a row with the other slaves. Only Plotia was missing, although she had certainly not gone away. Possibly, she was only frightened by the mass of people, and remained in hiding.

  But it was Caesar who said: “Were I speaking before an assemblage of the people I should strike a higher and stronger note; but as I stand before friends whom I love and who are of one mind with me, I can only ask them to share in my joy that our poet has resolved to continue his work on the Aeneid as soon as he shall have recovered, that is to say, very soon …”

  Did Augustus really love these friends? He imagined that he spoke differently to them than to the people whom he guided but by no means loved, yet the address did not vary in any way from the beginning of a people’s address and now he paused cannily to let his words ripen and take effect.

  Lucius Varius promptly filled the gap: “We knew that you would succeed, oh, Augustus; you are blessed in everything.”

  “I am only the mouthpiece of the Roman people of whom all of us are a part; in their service and that of the gods I have presented their claims to the Aeneid, and Virgil, who loves the people, has recognized their proprietory right, the irrevocable and eternal right of possession.”

  But the slave standing there among the others with his stern unmoved lackey’s face, unnoticed and certainly unheard, added: “The way toward true freedom has been opened, the people will take it; eternal alone is the way.”

  “I am the people’s advocate,” continued the Augustus, in a voice of dissembling sweetness that vibrated with a warmth difficult to evade, “a mere advocate here as everywhere, and Virgil too has acknowledged this, making me proud by that acknowledgment, happy that, because of it, the poem has been entrusted to me for safe-keeping …”

  “The poem is yours, Octavian.”

  “Only insofar as I am the advocate of the Roman people; others possess private property, not I, as you know.”

  Holding a small laurel branch plucked from the wreaths in his ever restless fingers, there stood Augustus beside the candelabrum, as though among the shadows of a murmuring laurel; he stood there dapper and majestic, and what he said was pure falsehood, although he believed in it himself; for he took great pains and was quite successful in increasing the holdings of the Julian family to gigantic proportions, as everyone knew. And the slave said properly, though luckily without being heard: “You are lying, Caesar.” And yet, had the one so addressed not heard him? For now, casting his eyes on the manuscript-chest, he smiled as though in answer.

  “In whatever character you accept it, Octavian, I have given the poem to you, but I must ask a favor in return.”

  “Conditions, Virgil?… I thought it was a birthday present.”

  “It is an unconditional present; it rests with you whether you will grant the favor I ask, or not …”

  “Then let me hear these conditions; I submit to them beforehand, but call to mind your own words, Virgil,”—a sly, friendly twinkle appeared in Caesar’s eyes—, “be lenient to the conquered and temper your arrogance to that end.”

  “The future!” exclaimed the slave in the midst of the crowd.

  Yes, the future; that is how the words were meant; the infinite, unplumbed future of man and man’s virtue, the future of humility—, yet how slyly Octavian had made use of them for his temporary and superficial ends, but nevertheless the Aeneid should and must belong to him: “You have limited the emancipation of slaves, Augustus; permit mine to go free.”

  “What? At once?”

  What a curious question! at once or not at once—, was it not all the same? “Not at once, Augustus, but immediately after my death; that is how I shall designate it in my will and on your side I beg you to sanction this bequest.”

  “Of course, I shall do so … but consider, Virgil, will your step-brother, who, as far as I remember, takes care of your property in Andes, be in agreement with this bequest? you will create difficulties for him if you take away all of his slaves at one stroke …”

  “My step-brother, Proculus, will know how to help himself. Besides which he is a kind man and the servants will be likely to stay with him even as free men.”

  “Good, that is not my affair; I have simply to give my signature … in truth, Virgil, if this was the only condition you had to make we could have been spared our long arguments!”

  “Perhaps it was good to have had them, Octavian.”

  “It was good,”—the Augustus smiled—“in spite of the time you made me lose by them.”

  “But there is still the will, Octavian.”

  “Unless I am mistaken you deposited one a long time ago with my archivist.”

  “Certainly, but I must add to it …”

  “Because of the slaves? Make haste slowly; you can take care of this later in Rome.”

  “There are a few other changes; I do not like to put them off.”<
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  “You are in a hurry for yourself, but not for me … still, you are the only one to decide on the urgency of your document, and I neither dare nor shall I hinder you from drawing it up now; but as I cannot wait for it, I must ask you to give it to me later or send it on so that I can affix my seal to it in testimony and confirmation …”

  “Plotius or Lucius, or both together, will bring you the will, Augustus; be thanked.”

  “My time is limited, Virgil; I sense the impatience with which they await me over there … Vipsanius Agrippa should have come in the meantime … I have to leave …”

  “You have to …”

  Enigmatically the room had suddenly become empty; they were quite alone.

  “Alas, I must go.”

  “My thoughts go with you, Octavian.”

  “Your thoughts as well as your poem.”

  A sign from Caesar and there, conjured out of the void, stood two slaves beside the chest, their hands gripping the handles.

  “Are these going to carry it off?”

  Lightly, swiftly, Augustus came to the bed, and bending over it almost imperceptibly he became Octavian once more: “It will be kept in safety, not carried off; take this as a pledge.” And he laid the bit of laurel that he had held between his fingers on the bed-cover.

  “Octavian …”

  “Yes, Virgil …”

  “Accept my thanks for so many things.”

  “My thanks go to you, Virgil.”

  The slaves had raised the chest, and now as they started to carry it off someone sobbed, not very loudly, but still violently, and with that fervor one meets when eternity breaks suddenly into human life, as when pall-bearers are shouldering the coffin to bear it from the room and the relatives feel themselves stricken for the first time by the inexorable power which has already begun to take its course. It was the same eternity-sob which is wont to be sent after a coffin, it was this eternity-cry and it came from the broad and powerful chest of Plotius Tucca, from his kind and powerful human soul, from his moved and mighty heart, sent toward the manuscript-chest which was being borne away and which actually was a casket, a shell, bearing the remains of a child, of a life.

  And now again the sun had really darkened.

  Reaching the door Augustus turned around once more; once more friend’s glance sought friend’s glance; once more their eyes met: “May your eyes rest on me always, my Virgil,” said Octavian, standing between the wide-opened wings of the door, here still Octavian, only to hasten off as Caesar, svelte, proud and masterful; at his heels a tawny lion, which followed the casket with steps heavy and slow, and many of those present joined in the procession.

  THE goodly moist sobbing of Plotius persisted a little while before passing over into a breathy gulping, interspersed with many an “Ah, yes!” and it only completely subsided when the sun came out again and the doves on the window-sill went on once more with their cooing.

  “Let your eyes rest on me always.” Those were Octavian’s words, that is the way they sounded or something like that, and that is how they continued to sound, remaining in the room, floating there, imperishable by their bond with him who had vanished, imperishable by their fulness of meaning. Imperishable the bond, but Octavian was gone—, why, why had he gone away? why had Plotia gone? Alas, they had gone like so many others, vanishing into their own fates, vanishing into their activities, into their aging, into their increasing tiredness, into their graying and their senility, vanishing into a dunness from which a voice no longer issued, and despite that, those invisible bridges had remained, and likewise those invisible chains that had linked them together once and seemingly forever, the invisible laurel-bridges, the invisible silver-enchainments, and the bond had remained, indestructible, built and forged for eternity, binding with, and reaching—where? Toward an invisible nothingness? No, the invisible thing on the opposite shore, that was no nothingness, no, for all its invisibility it was true existence, it was Octavian as he had always been, Plotia as she had always been, except that they had been most curiously and completely stripped of their names and their bodily forms; oh, deep, very deep within us, not to be reached by our bodily disintegration, unharmed by the fading of our senses, immune to all change, immune in the most unthinkably far regions of our selves, of our hearts, of our souls, perception lived on, imperceptible, unevocable, unexplorable, unrecognizable to itself, and it sought the counter-perception in the other soul, in the other heart, in the invisible depths of the other, sought to call it out just there in order that it might become forever perceptible to itself, eternal the bridge, eternal the spanned chain, eternal the encounter, lasting beyond all transfigurations, because the full significance of the word, the full significance of the world, relied on the encounter alone, perception perceived in its echo; nothwithstanding that his lids were closed, immensity lay outside, visible and full of meaning, breath-golden, wine-golden, transported in the stilled, shimmering glare of the sun’s noontide, washed over the brownish-red, black-striped, dirty, spongy roofs of the city, visible and invisible at once, a mirror waiting for its reflection, waiting for the floating word, the floating perception, which although not quite revealed, was already at hand within the room, a care-free state, participation in which would not be a perjury, beauty risen from true knowledge, its existence permitted again, within the law of the pledge-protecting, the unknown god; and then, yes, and then, some of the doves left the window-sill with a puffing, almost pompous, fluttering and flew up, whirring their wings in the sunlit blue, sinking upward in the fever-heat of day’s prime; thus they sank upward in the circle of the glance and dropping below it they disappeared—Oh, let your eyes rest on me always.

  Plotius wiped the tears from his plump cheeks: “Too stupid,” he remarked, “it is too stupid to be so moved just because Virgil has finally recovered from his lunacy.”

  “Perhaps it was Octavian’s behavior that caused your emotion.”

  “Not so far as I know …”

  “I want to make my will now.”

  “That is no reason for being emotional … everybody makes wills.”

  “It has nothing to do with your emotion; I must draft it now and that is all there is to it.”

  Lucius it was who now objected: “Augustus is perfectly right, one can only agree with him that you could leave such things to the time when you will have recovered, and you have all the more time as we understood there was already a valid will.”

  Plotius and Lucius were present in actual visibility, and Lysanias must also have been present even though he might be hiding in some corner of the room, perhaps annoyed that because he had not been summoned earlier the slave had been left in possession of the field—, but where was the slave? even so, where was he? there was nothing to indicate he had joined the train of Augustus, on the contrary, if he were anywhere it was presumably in this room, since this in a certain sense was his natural place, and yet in spite of it, he could not be found; however, this was not entirely true; if one began to look a little more intently, if one strained one’s sight just a little more, in addition to the complete visibility of the two friends, some invisible things could be seen, things unready for living or for viewing, perhaps even unready for both—the ability to differentiate being insufficient—there especially where strips of sun-dust came in, there various motes of human-like invisibility were swarming so thickly it seemed the crowd that had left the room in Caesar’s wake had streamed back into it, at least in part; nothing was likelier than that the one sought for was among these images, certainly not to be summoned, having been unwilling to disclose his name.

  “Lysanias …”—even though the slave could not be called, one could call the boy; he ought to come and give some explanation.

  “Again and again you mention this Lysanias,” remarked Plotius, “you speak of him, yet he never appears … or has he some connection with the will you are so urgent about drafting?”

  It was not to be denied that neither the boy nor the slave had any di
rect connection with the will; however, he was still unable to explain the association to Plotius and could only take refuge in a seeming motive: “I want to bequeath to him some object or other.”

  “The more then is it his duty to show himself at last; otherwise I shall feel obliged to doubt him and his existence.”

  The boy appearing at that very moment proved the implication unjust; anyone who was willing to see him could, and the reproach redounded upon Plotius. Nevertheless it would have been better if Lysanias had not been summoned, for now, having actually arrived, he had come in the twofold guise of slave and boy, just as if both bore the same name, to which each, whether slave or boy, had to respond. On the one hand this was not very remarkable; on the other it was remarkable that this twofold advent lacked concord, that the boy, although at pains to approach the bed, was not able to get ahead of his larger and stronger companion; again and again the way was barred to him and one would have thought that the boy Lysanias had lost all his wily skill.