The Death of Virgil

by Hermann Broch

  SILENCE greeted the sacred one; only the birds twittered in the hushed landscape, only the doves on the window-sill, puffed up and pecking, cooed on unconcerned; yonder where the fauns had been dancing, one of them still piped his lay as though uncaring that his companions had left him, but his flute had a broken sound. The storm had passed but the world had not won back its color, because the two-toned cloud of dusk hung in a blanching silence over it and its muteness, like a relic of the storm caught into immobility; and even though the draught, caused by the abrupt opening of the door, came in from the stone-cool corridor for a moment, setting the lamp in quivering motion, it too came to rest and everything waited for the word of Augustus.

  "Leave us alone."

  Stepping backward before the majesty of the ruler, but as before the majesty of death as well, one after another of those present left the chamber, bowing reverently, and even the landscape, as though participating in this act of reverence, dismissed all the creatures from its domain, indeed, it faded also to such an extent that, although its main features remained, it was progressively losing all assurance and finally it was just an intimation, like a pen and ink sketch drawn into the universe, the groves, the grottoes, simplified to mere pen strokes, the thinly drawn bridge swinging between shores no longer to be seen, denuded of color, shadow, and light; for even the cloud of dusk had changed to a papery pulp of scarcely contoured whiteness, and the wide-open, colorless eye of heaven was empty, was nothing but the empty sorrow of dream. The room, however, had become quite palpable, for walls and furnishing, floor, candelabrum, raftered ceiling, and hanging lamp had entirely recovered their firmness of color and dimension, and Plotia had vanished before this heavy palpability: crushed under the weight of reality, her lightness had fled, and although she who had come to stay forever did not belong with the others, and therefore had not gone with them and was certainly somewhere in the room, she had become invisible.

  But Augustus was visible, standing palpably before him, a familiar sight with his slightly undersized figure, which although almost foppish succeeded in being majestic, with his face still boyish beneath the already graying shortcut hair, and he said: "As you did not feel like taking the trouble to come to me, I had to seek you out; I greet you on Italian soil."

  It was strange that from now on speech and reply should have to alternate, yet the surrounding tangibility which, however, was already giving rise again to the feeling of illness, made speech seem easier: "By means of your doctors, Octavianus Augustus, you have forced me to this bad state of grace, but at the same time you have rewarded me by coming here."

  "This is my first moment of leisure since landing, and I am happy to be able to devote it to you. Brundisium has always brought luck to me and mine."

  "In Brundisium, as a youth of nineteen coming from Apol-lonia, you stepped into the inheritance from your divine father, in Brundisium you closed the treaty with your adversaries which cleared the way for your blessed reign; there were only five years intervening, I remember that."

  "They were the same five lying between your Culex and Bucolics; you dedicated the one to me, the other to Asinius Pollio, who came off far better than I, though he may have deserved it, just as much as Maecenas deserved the dedication of the Georgics, for without these two the Treaty of Brundisium could hardly have been so favorably concluded."

  What was the meaning of the gentle smile accompanying these words of the Caesar? Why did he speak of the dedications? Caesar's words were never without significance and intention; it might be better to lead him away from the poems: "From Brundisium you marched against Antonius in Greece; had we returned but two weeks earlier you would have been able to celebrate the anniversary of the Attic victory here at its starting point."

  "Actium's strand shall also be honored by contests at Ilium. This is about the way you put it in the Aeneid. Isn't that correct?"

  "Yes, your memory is admirable." The Caesar was not to be diverted from the poems.

  "There are few things that memory holds so dear. Was it not soon after my return from Egypt that you submitted the first draft of the work to me?"

  "You are right."

  "And in the middle of the poem, truly its crux and high-point, on the shield of the gods which you presented to Aeneas, at its center, you placed a picture of the Attic slaughter."

  "Yes, that I did. For that day at Actium marked the victory of the Roman spirit and its customs over the evil forces of the East, to whose dark secrets it had almost succumbed. This was your triumph, Augustus."

  "Do you know the passage by heart?"

  "How should I? My memory is not as good as yours."

  Oh, no evasion was possible: Augustus had turned his eyes unmistakably to the manuscript-chest, and kept them fixed there, oh, there was no evading it, he had come to take the poem away!

  And the Augustus smilingly gloated over his terror: "How is it that you know your own work so little?"

  "I do not remember that part."

  "Then for the second time I shall have to tax my memory; I hope I shall succeed."

  "I am convinced of that."

  "Well then, we shall see: 'But there stood Caesar Augustus in the middle of the shield directing the naval engagement of the Italian people who . . .'."

  "Pardon me, Caesar, that is not how it goes; the verse begins with the armored ships."

  "With the armored ships of Agrippa?"—Caesar was evidently annoyed—"just the same the armoring was a clever invention of Agrippa, in a certain sense a master-stroke, one with which he turned the tide of the battle ... so my memory has not failed after all; now I remember . . ."

  "Since you are depicted at the center of the battle and of the shield, your person is placed in the center of the verses; that is as it should be."

  "Read the verses to me."

  To read aloud? To take out the manuscripts and unroll them? Caesar was after the manuscripts and it was a cruel game that he was playing. How was it possible to defend one's manuscripts against such designs? Would Plotia do this? In no case should the chest be opened: "I shall try to recite the part."

  And as though Caesar had guessed his thoughts the smile did not disappear from the beautiful face, only it was hardly a smile but rather something malicious and cruel. However he still stood in his characteristic gracefully-free attitude near the bed, he did not sit down, and it was so hard to guess what his next move would be, that suddenly the suspicion arose that he wanted to frighten Plotia away from the manuscript-chest. Perhaps this was a figment of the imagination, such as a high temperature sometimes produces, it was most certainly just a figment of fancy, for here everything was firmly real and strongly colored; one need take scarcely any notice at all of the limned landscape out yonder, but if one looked at it a little more closely, one became aware that the papery white light, though somewhat grayly shadowed, came even into the palpability of the room and penetrated into all things that were there, lending them an ever so strange note of unreality; the evil was engraved in the things, it could be seen even in the colors of the flower wreath, as finely-drawn as a lovely temptation; and finely-drawn it stood in the wrinkle between the eyes of Augustus; but now he only said: "Begin, my Virgil, I am listening."

  "Will you not sit over here near me; I must recite lying down since your doctors have forbidden me to get up."

  Fortunately Augustus showed himself willing to comply to the request, not choosing to sit on the chest, he took instead a chair near the bed, and it almost seemed that he had only waited to be asked; reaching between his outstretched legs with a most un-Caesarly gesture, he pulled the chair under his buttocks and sat down with a small, comfortable sigh of relief and with no thought of his great ancestor, Aeneas, whose custom it must have been to seat himself in a more dignified fashion; this first sigh of relaxation in the grandson of Aeneas, this gentle weariness which was like the first sign of approaching age, was rather touching and conciliating, and also conciliating was the way he leaned back his head and crossed his
arms, preparing himself to listen: "Well, let me hear you."

  And the verse took sound:

  "There on the shield was the bronze-armored fleet in the Attic encounter;

  Strewn with the trappings of warfare were also the shores of Leucate;

  Blazing with gold were the waters, and there stood the Caesar Augustus,

  High on the poop with his chieftains to lead the Italians to battle;

  There midst the spirits of gods and Penates he stood, and his temples

  Burst into flames at each side, his father's star shone on his forehead.

  Yonder Agrippa departs, by winds and the gods too well-favored,

  Leading the squadron to war; and see on the brow of the hero,

  Glittering, a sign of his combats at sea, the crown etched with ship-prows.

  Here, with barbarian might, and laden with all sorts of armor,

  Full of his triumph, Antonius brings from Aurora's red beaches

  Tribes out of Egypt, the men of the east from as far off as Bactra,

  All in his train; and there follows—oh horror—his consort from Egypt."

  The Caesar was silent, as though continuing to listen. It was some time before he said: 'Tomorrow is my birthday."

  "A blessed day for the world, the blessed day for the Roman Empire. May the gods give you eternal youth and preserve you."

  "I can reciprocate with the same wish for you, my friend, since you will celebrate your fifty-first birthday in exactly three weeks, and therefore you are my senior by only seven years. I only wish I had found you more fit to travel, I have to leave very soon in order to be in Rome tomorrow, at least for the evening celebration, and I should have liked to take you with me.

  "This is farewell, Octavian, and you know it."

  A somewhat demurring gesture was the answer: "Farewell, yes, for at most three weeks; you will be in Rome for your birthday at the latest, but it would have been pleasanter if you could have read the Aeneid aloud for mine, much pleasanter than the state celebrations to which I am committed. I have ordered great games to take place again the day after tomorrow."

  The Caesar had come to take his farewell, yet it was more important for him to take the Aeneid with him, and he wanted to hide both intentions behind a wall of words; even Caesar lived in the midst of unreality, and the light—was the sun so far along its course?—had become paler; "Your life is one of duty, Caesar, but the love that awaits you in Rome is your compensation."

  Caesar's habitually so reticent glance became quite candid: "Livia is waiting for me, and it will do me good to see my friends again."

  "Happy you, to love your wife—" floated hither from a soft nowhere in the voice of Plotia.

  "And to have you missing from our circle during just these very days, Virgil, will be very painful for all of us."

  He who truly loves a woman is able to be a friend and a help to others, and no doubt this was also true of Augustus: "He is a happy man, Octavian, who has the solicitude of your friendship."

  "Friendship makes one happy, my Virgil."

  Again this was said so frankly and warmly that one could almost hope that the design upon the manuscripts had been abandoned: "I am grateful to you, Octavian."

  "That is both too much and too little, Virgil, for friendship does not consist of gratitude."

  "As you have always taken the role of giver there is no other response left for your friends than that of gratitude."

  "The gods have granted me the grace of being able to be useful to my friends, but their grace in letting me find friends was even greater."

  "These are all the more in duty bound to be grateful to you."

  "You are obliged simply to make some return on your own terms, and such you have tendered, generously and more than generously, by your existence and through your works—, why have you changed your mind, why speak of an empty gratitude which is apparently not inclined to acknowledge any obligations?"

  "My mind is unchanged, oh, Caesar, even though I cannot admit that my accomplishments have ever offered a sufficient return."

  "It is true that you have always been too modest, Virgil, though not a person of false modesty; it is clear to me that you are intentionally minimizing your gifts so that you can withdraw them behind our backs."

  Now it had been uttered, oh, now it had been uttered—, unerringly and stubbornly Caesar was pursuing his goal and nothing would hinder him from appropriating the manuscripts: "Octavian, let me keep the poem!"

  "Yes, Virgil, that's it. . . Lucius Varius and Plotius Tucca have informed me of your terrifying plan, and I did not want to believe it any more than they did . . . are you actually planning to destroy your work?"

  Silence spread over the room, a severe silence, pale and finely-contoured, that centered itself in the thoughtfully stern face of the Caesar. Something was lamenting very softly from a nowhere and this also was as fine-drawn as the crease between the eyes of Augustus, their glance resting upon him.

  "You say nothing," said the Caesar, "and this probably means that you actually wish to take back your gift—, consider, Virgil, it is the Aeneid! your friends are greatly pained, and I, as you know, reckon myself one of them."

  Plotia's gentle plaint became more audible; thinly strung together, the words came without stress: "Destroy the poem, let me have your destiny; we have need to love each other."

  To destroy the poem, to love Plotia, to be a friend to his friends; strangely convincing, temptation followed upon temptation, and yet it was not Plotia who was allowed to participate in it: "Oh, Augustus, it is being done for the sake of our friendship; do not press me."