The Death of Virgil—final thoughts

BC is far too kind to thank me for his challenge. I think it goes without saying at this point that The Death of Virgil is the kind of novel it’s very, very hard to get through on your own, and certainly a “project.” And that’s a very big project I’ve now completed thanks to him, and with much help.

The final section of the novel is less than 42 pages long in the Vintage edition, about 9% of the total, and its seven (yes, 7) paragraphs are the only possible capstone to the work. Jean Starr Untermeyer, whom BC discussed yesterday, writes in her translator’s note that one of the main characteristics of the novel’s form 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.” Thus “Air—The Homecoming” is the inevitable wrapping up of all the themes and motifs of the whole, ending in perfect harmony and peace.

The formal properties of The Death of Virgil are the most appealing to me, but also I think the easiest to appreciate for anyone. The symphonic unity of the work is clear, even on what for me was a very extended reading. On a smaller scale, Broch’s use of juxtaposition, repetition, and morphological alteration is also fascinating. The Death of Virgil has a language very much its own. And other elements are inserted, like the Socratic dialogues in Part III.

The content, though, is more difficult to penetrate, and on my only sincere reading rather bleak (but surely I am not even at the forecourt of reality). To take a phrase BC used yesterday, Broch is exploring “the possibilities of, and the requirements for, a new literature appropriate to a ‘time of crisis.’” And the answer apperas to be that “art was incapable of achieving a cosmic unity.” Virgil reaches unity only in the obliteration of his self; what can this do to help us? Names and knowledge and anything outside of a nameless unity must drop away as we approach the shores of the underworld, and once there, the remaining aspects of personhood begin to disappear. As Virgil discovers he and Plotia are naked now, in the Garden:

…Plotia’s nakedness was likewise unremarkable, for without this detracting from her bodily charm, he was scarcely able to see her any more as a woman, he saw her as it were from within, and beheld from the core of her individual essence, she was scarcely any longer a body but rather a transparent intrinsic substance, no longer a woman, no longer a virgin, but rather a smile, the smile which gives meaning to everything human, the human countenance opening in a smile, freed of shame, and exalted through a forlorn preparation incapable of consummation, sublimated to a transported-transporting love; strangely touching, strangely wintry, was this smiling, loving gesture toward the star swimming there in cool, virginal light, and strangely cool, aye, almost childish in its virginal, sex-stripped lucidity was this yearning gesture sent up to the utter clarity of the remotest spheres.

These sorts of “resolutions” strike me first as profoundly anti-human, and second as signs of a lack of willingness to engage with reality. Can Plotia’s transportation into immanence have any message other than that of a vague, ascetic mysticism? (In case it hasn’t been at all clear, the book The Death of Virgil most reminds me of is Siddhartha.) More than telling me art has no real meaning, it seems instead that Broch is trying very hard to send me a message that seems meaningless.

The last line of the novel embodies this problem for me. As Virgil is reborn, he “floated on with the word,” Logos, “incomprehensible and unutterable for him: it was the word beyond speech.” This is, I think, the sort of thing that is often called a Mystery, and Mysteries like this are exactly what The Death of Virgil inhabits. Some people find profound meaning in these spaces; I find meaningless contradictions. I believe they are reaching toward something, but I’m never very sure what. Most likely, it seems, darüber muss man scheiben.