The Death of Virgil by Hermann Broch

Author:Hermann Broch [Broch, Hermann]
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3
Published: 2010-11-25T16:00:00+00:00

ENRICHED yet robbed, yes, so had they left him, left him alone; the scornful and well-meaning friend had bestowed calmness upon him and taken away his anxiety, but beyond the anxiety something more had been taken away, a piece of himself as it were, and it seemed to him that Plotius had expelled him from adulthood and had turned him again into a child, thrown him back into the plan-forging callowness with which they had both been seized as youths in Milan, and from which Plotius alone had had the wit to extricate himself; oh, he felt himself plunged back so completely into the unfinished that it would have seemed quite natural to him if his friend had taken the Aeneid upon his strong shoulders and born it away together with the anxiety. Was the chest still standing there untouched and well-locked, or was this merely a delusion? It almost seemed wiser not to make sure; this was a state of defenselessness and of felicity; but it was also shame. And it was all the more shame because this strange belittlement of himself had just happened in front of Lysanias, for, most amazingly though not surprisingly, the boy was sitting exactly as he had sat there in the night, and in the self-same easy chair. Was is possible that the chair could suddenly offer room for a second occupant? Just a moment ago Plotius had been sitting there too. Truly, it would have been more desirable and even more fitting had Plotius never set foot in the room. The boy reclined there, gracious in forgetfulness, sorrow-freed and sorrow-freeing, and sounding afar was the sunny sea; if one peered at it closely one could see that the face was that of a hobbledehoy and nimble peasant lad, and on looking still more closely it appeared full of dreaminess and quite lovely. On the boy's knees lay the rolls of manuscript from which he had read aloud during the night.

And as if he had only been waiting for an invitation, the boy began to read:

"Twofold the portals of sleep, and twofold 'tis said in their nature;

One of them fashioned from horn releases the true visions skyward;

Carven from elephants' tusks the other is gleaming and candid,

Through this, however, the spirits are sending up false apparitions.

Sage in his discourse and counsel, Anchises his son and the Sybil

Leads to this place, and releases them both through the ivory portal.

Straightway Aeneas repairs to the ships and meets there his comrades,

Skimming the shore in an even course to the bourne of Cajeta.

Anchor is dropped from the prow, the sterns lie at rest on the sea-shore."

This was what he had composed in honor of Cajeta; he recognized the section: "Cajeta is soon to be buried, Cajeta the nurse . . . now that Aeneas is back from below, matured, resurrected . . ." The speech proceeded with surprising ease, as if the air had become more fluid.

"Was it not your path, oh, Virgil, that which was trod by

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