¹ Hermann Broch: Der Tod des Vergil (New York: Pantheon Books, 1945). Also published as The Death of Vergil, translated by Jean Starr Untermeyer. This paper, while making use of the English title, is based on the German text, and all page references are made with the German edition in mind.

² “eine … Schöpfung, deren Magie jeden gefangen nehmen muß, der in ihren Bannkreis gerät.” This is rendered, perhaps a bit too loosely, on the jacket of the English version by: “A … performance, the magic of which must grip everyone who comes in contact with it.”

³ That Thomas Mann did not come under its spell would be a presumptuous thing for me to assert. But it must not be forgotten that a creative artist lives in a world of his own and casts spells and practices magic. He is not apt to surrender to a competitor's spell when the investment of an enormous amount of time is at stake. Artists are by inner necessity the most self-centered of humans. It is also well to remember that a public testimonial may differ considerably from an opinion confidentially expressed. We may take a leaf out of Broch's book to quote from an intimate literary conversation between Vergil and two close friends, one of whom having made a snide remark about Ovid hastens to add: “natürlich würde ich mich hüten derlei Urteile öffentlich kundzutun, denn, ob gut oder schlecht, wir Schreibenden gehören alle zusammen” (272).

⁴ Most immediately by an analysis of the thematic material and its development.

⁵ Meister Eckhart (†1327), the fountain-head of German mysticism, comes to mind with his disciples Seuse and Tauler; Paracelsus in the sixteenth, Jacob Boehme in the seventeenth century; also the later Fichte (Anweisung zum seligen Leben). The work of a contemporary popularizer, Ernst Bergmann, Die Entsinkung ins Weiselose (Breslau, 1932), contains interesting leads, to be used with caution. German poets steeped in the mystical tradition include Angelus Silesius and Novalis, as well as many recent and contemporary writers of note, Hauptmann, Hesse, Stehr, Hofmannsthal, Rilke among them. Most of the latter have assimilated elements of mysticism in an eclectic way.

⁶ It was certainly not the temper of Vergil's published work which gave Broch the cue for this book. Vergil's work does not manifest or even suggest that passion for the absolute with which Broch endows him. There are a great many quotations from Vergil's work and allusions to it interwoven with the narrative, but none of these many passages would have supplied the spark for conceiving of Vergil's personality in the terms of this book. He makes relatively little use even of the fourth Eclogue which the whole medieval church regarded as a prophecy of Christ and which is responsible for the unique position assigned by the middle ages to Vergil among the pagan poets. I would stress that Dante, rather than the Eclogues, Georgics and Aeneid was responsible for the formation of Broch's creative Vergil complex. Broch came to focus upon his hero by a process of deduction as stated above.

⁷ Even though it is largely stream-of-consciousness, as to subject matter, formally there is nothing chaotic or Joycean in the book at any time.

⁸ We are reminded of “Angst” as a term of peculiar significance in the philosophies of Kierkegaard and Heidegger.

⁹ The condemnation of art is hedged by one reservation, pp. 150-151. Art is legitimate to the extent that it explores still uncharted regions of the human soul on the one hand and of the universe on the other, the two being linked by the mystery of correspondence, “das Geheimnis der Entsprechung.” Every true work of art involves a permanent expansion of the sphere of mankind, for, according to Vergil-Broch's conviction, no element of experienced knowledge is ever lost. But for this reservation the reader would be haunted in all seriousness by the question: Why did Broch on his part not destroy the Death of Vergil?

¹⁰ In some respects a close parallel to the sensations of Book Four, but experienced there as vision without a trace of terror.

¹¹ The original force of the image underlying the concept of contrition is impressively experienced in Strindberg's To Damascus.

¹² In other scenes the same figure is charged with other functions.

¹³ The ambivalence of the word “Führer” in the German version is designed to keep us guessing (as well as Vergil), especially as the delirious cry of the masses for a “Führer” earlier had stamped the word with its connotation of leader. The English version had to sacrifice this double entendre, rendering the term alternately by guide and leader.

¹⁴ First mentioned in a quotation from the sixth book of the Aeneid (148), it is one of the most persistent themes ever afterward.

¹⁵ Vergil is facing forward, hence he cannot see the helmsman. But he does see some familiar faces left behind him. Such contradictions belong to the tissue of the dream.

¹⁶ Translation of Hermann Broch's letter of February 2, 1946 to Hermann Weigand.