The Death of Virgil

by Hermann Broch

  THEREUPON HE WAS PERMITTED TO TURN AROUND; THEREUPON CAME THE COMMAND TO TURN AROUND; AND THEREUPON HE WAS TURNED AROUND.

  And there, before his once more perceiving eyes, the nothing was infinitely transformed once more, turning into the present and into the past, widening out to the aeonic cycle once more so that this, having become infinite, might close once more; infinite the round of heaven, infinite the heavenly dome arching once more, infinite the endless shield of the world, surrounded by the seven-colored bow in endless recollection. Again there was light and darkness, again day and night, again nights and days, and again immensity was regulated according to height, breadth and depth, and the plan of the sky was defined, opening out to its four directions, again there was above and below, cloud and sea; and in the middle of the sea the land rose up once more, the green isle of the world bedecked with plants, with forests and with pastures, the mutation within immutability. And up came the sun in the east on its course over the round, and the stars followed at night, conforming to the northern pole with its star-free center, where righteousness maintaining the equilibrium was enthroned, beamed upon by the rays of the Northern Cross. Yet again in the morning light eagles and sea-gulls streaked through the upper air, hovering about the island, and dolphins emerged to hearken to the mute song of the spheres. From the west came a trail of animals, coming to meet the sun and stars, the beasts of the wilderness and those of the field mingling in a harmony innocent of conflict, lion and bull and lamb, and the goat with its bulging udder, streaming eastward all of them, seeking the eastern shepherd, striving toward the human face. And this face could be beheld in the middle of the world-shield, in its infinite depth, beheld there amidst infinite human life and human living, beheld for the last and yet as for the first time: peace without conflict, the harmonious human countenance innocent of conflict, beheld as the image of the boy in the arms of the mother, united to her in a sorrowful smiling love. Thus he saw it, seeing thus the boy and the mother, and they were so familiar that he was almost able to name them without being able to recall their names; yet, still more familiar than the face and the missing name was the smile that bound mother and child, and it seemed as if prescient in this smile the whole significance of the interminable occurrence were comprehended, as if the law of truth were proclaimed in this smile— the mild yet terrible glory of the human fate, begot from the word and, already in the begetting, coming to be the word's substance, the word's comfort, the word's blessing, the word's advocacy, the word's redemptive strength, the law-founding force of the word, the word's renewal, once more expressed and expressible in the insufficient but still sole sufficing representations of human actions and wanderings, made known and preserved and repeated in them forevermore. In loving perception the word received the yearning of the heart and that of the mind for their great communion, the word becoming the confirmation by force of innate necessity, assuming the yearning of the lodger who longed to become the son, his task fulfilled. Thus drawn hither by the summons of the word, the brooks and streams began to trickle, the surf with a soft booming struck the shore, the seas swelled steel-blue and light, ruffled by the nethermost fires of the south, and everything could be seen and heard in simultaneous depth because, turned round toward the immensity which he had once left behind him, he saw through it into the immensity of the here and now, looking backward and forward at once, listening simultaneously to what was behind and what was ahead, and the rustling of the past, sunken into the forgotten invisibility, was rising up again to the present moment and became the simultaneous stream of creation in which the eternal rests, the first image, the vision of visions. Thereupon he shuddered and it was a mighty shuddering, almost beneficent in its finality, for the ring of time had closed and the end was the beginning. The images sank down but, preserving them unseen, the rumbling continued.

  The welling fountain of the middle, gleaming invisibly in the infinite anguish of knowing: the no thing filled the emptiness and it became the universe.

  The rumbling continued and it was emitted from the mingling of the light with the darkness, both of them roused by the incipient tone which now actually began to sound, and that which sounded was more than song, more than the striking of the lyre, more than any tone, more than any voice, since it was all of these together and at once, bursting out of the nothing as well as out of the universe, breaking forth as a communication beyond every understanding, breaking forth as a significance above every comprehension, breaking forth as the pure word which it was, exalted above all understanding and significance whatsoever, consummating and initiating, mighty and commanding, fear-inspiring and protecting, gracious and thundering, the word of discrimination, the word of the pledge, the pure word; so it roared thither, roaring over and past him, swelling on and becoming stronger and stronger, becoming so overpowering that nothing could withstand it, the universe disappearing before the word, dissolved and acquitted in the word while still being contained and preserved in it, destroyed and recreated forever, because nothing had been lost, nothing could be lost, because end was joined to beginning, being born and giving birth again and again; the word hovered over the universe, over the nothing, floating beyond the expressible as well as the inexpressible, and he, caught under and amidst the roaring, he floated, on with the word, although the more he was enveloped by it, the more he penetrated into the flooding sound and was penetrated by it, the more unattainable, the greater, the graver and more elusive became the word, a floating sea, a floating fire, sea-heavy, sea-light, notwithstanding it was still the word: he could not hold fast to it and he might not hold fast to it; incomprehensible and unutterable for him: it was the word beyond speech.

  Translation begun November, 1940,

  finished October, 1944.

  J. S. U.

  TRANSLATOR'S NOTE

  The real significance of "The Death of Virgil" was borne upon the translator more than a year before she undertook the English version, through her reading and translation of the five elegies on fate. These elegies stand at the intellectual as well as actual center of the work, crystallizing both its meaning and method.

  It is conceded that no poem is entirely translatable, and "The Death of Virgil" is a poem, although neither in the sense of a single lyrical outburst nor a sequence of poems on a single theme, yet one that sustains its tension through nearly five hundred pages. The form of this poem, whose subject relates it to the antique epics, is consequent upon two inherent characteristics: Most salient, of course, is its poetical unity in which the fullness of expression lies not alone in the words themselves but quite as much in the spaces between. For in a poem the words are less integers than points in a configuration: indeed, one might well describe the structure of the lyric (and the nature of this work is unquestionably lyrical) as the expression of the interval. The second aspect is the musical composition of the work as a whole: the four main parts of the book stand in the same relation to each other as the movements of a symphony or quartette, and somewhat in the manner of theme and variations the successive part becomes a lyrical self-commentary on the parts that have preceded it.