The Death of Virgil QUOTES

1 " … for overstrong was the command to hold fast to each smallest particle of time, to the smallest particle of every circumstance, and to embody all of them in memory as if they could be preserved in memory through all deaths for all times. "

― Hermann Broch , The Death of Virgil

3 " ...he knew of the innermost danger of all artists, he knew the utter loneliness of the man destined to be an artist, he knew the inherent loneliness which drove such a one into the still deeper loneliness of art and into the beauty that cannot be articulated, and he knew that for the most part such men were shattered by this immolation, that it made them blind, blind to the world, blind to the divine quality in the world and in the fellow-man, that--intoxicated by their loneliness--they were able to see only their own god-likeness, which they imagined to be unique, and consequently this self-idolatry and its greed for recognition came more and more to be the sole content of their work--, a betrayal of the divine as well as of art, because in this fashion the work of art became a work of un-art, an unchaste covering for artistic vanity, so spurious that even the artist's self-complacent nakedness which it exposed became a mask; and even though such unchaste self-gratification, such dalliance with beauty, such concern with effects, even though such an un-art might, despite its brief unrenewable grant, its inextensible boundaries, find an easier way to the populace than real art ever found, it was only a specious way, a way out of the loneliness, but not, however, an affiliation with the human community, which was the aim of real art in its aspiration toward humanity, no, it was the affiliation with the mob, it was a participation in its treacherous non-community, which was incapable of the pledge, which neither created nor mastered any reality, and which was unwilling to do so, preferring only to drowse on, forgetting reality, having forfeited it as had un-art and literarity, this was the most profound danger for every artist; oh how painfully, how very painfully he knew this. "

― Hermann Broch , The Death of Virgil

5 " WAS THERE STILL SOMETHING MURMURING? WAS IT still the kind murmuring of Plotius, protecting and kind and strong? oh, Plotius, oh, that it might endure, oh, that it might endure murmuringly, quiet and quieting, welling up from the unfathomable depths within and without, now that the labor was over, now that the labor sufficed, now that nothing need follow, oh, that it might go on forever! and verily it went on, murmuring and murmuring, rolling in softly in endlessness, murmur-wave after murmur-wave, each of them tiny yet all of them radiating in a boundless cycle; it was simply there, no sort of hearkening, no effort whatsoever was needed to hold on to it, indeed this murmurousness was not to be held onto, for it strove onward, mingled with the trickling of the fountain, with the trickling of the waters, merged with them in the vast and colorless might of a rest-bearing stream, itself the thing carried, itself rest, itself a moving stream, softly lapping the keel and sides of the boat with slithering foam. "

― Hermann Broch , The Death of Virgil

7 " Çünkü aslında hiçbir şey gelmiyordu şairin elinden, hiçbir kötülüğün ortadan kaldırılmasına yardımcı olamıyordu; yalnızca dünyayı ihtişama boğup yücelttiğinde kulak veriliyordu ona, yoksa olduğu haliyle anlattığında değil. Sadece yalan, ünün ta kendisiydi, yoksa bilgi değil "

― Hermann Broch , The Death of Virgil

9 " Du bist immer allzu bescheiden gewesen, Vergil, doch kein Mann falscher Bescheidenheit; es ist mir klar, daß du deine Gaben absichtlich schlecht machen willst, um sie uns schließlich hinterrücks zu entziehen.'

Nun war es ausgespochen, ach, nun war es ausgesprochen – unbeirrbar und hart ging der Cäsar auf sein Ziel los, un nichts wird ihn hindern, die Manuskripte zu rauben: 'Octavian, laß mir das Gedicht!'

'Sehr richtig, Vergil, das ist es ... Lucius Varius und Plotius Tucca haben mir von deinem erschreckenden Vorhaben berichtet, und gleich ihnen wollte ich es nicht glauben ... gedenkst du tatsächlich deine Werke zu vernichten?'

Schweigen breitete sich im Raume aus, ein strenges Schweigen, das fahl und dünnstrichig konturiert in dem nachdenklich strengen Gesicht des Cäsars seinen Mittelpunkt hatte. Im Nirgendwo klagte etwas sehr leise und auch dies so dünn und geradlinig wie die Falte zwischen des Augustus Augen, dessen Blick auf ihn ruhte.

'Du schweigst', sagte der Cäsar, 'und dies heißt wohl, daß du dein Geschenk tatsächlich zurückziehen willst ... bedenke, Vergil, es ist die Äneis! deine Freunde sind sehr betrübt, und ich, du weißt es, ich rechne mich zu ihnen.'

Plotias leises Klagen wurde vernehmlicher; dünn aneinandergereiht, betonungslos kamen die Worte: 'Vernichte die Dichtung, gib mir dein Schicksal; wir müssen uns lieben.'

Das Gedicht vernichten, Plotia lieben, Freund dem Freunde sein, seltsam überzeugend fügte sich Verlockung an Verlokkung, und doch war es nicht Plotia, die daran teilnehmen durfte: 'Oh, Augustus, es geschieht um unserer Freundschaft willen; dringe nicht in mich.'

'Freundschaft? ... du sprichst, als ob wir, deine Freunde, unwert wären, dein Geschenk zu behalten. "

― Hermann Broch , The Death of Virgil