Accademia Editoriale

Blanchot and the Death of Virgil

Author(s): Michle Lowrie
Source: Materiali e discussioni per l'analisi dei testi classici, No. 52, Re-Presenting Virgil:
Special Issue in Honor of Michael C. J. Putnam (2004), pp. 211-225
Published by: Fabrizio Serra editore
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Michle Lowrie
BUnchot and the Death ofVirgil*
Qu'est-ceque Virgilepour nous?
Et qu'est-ceque Rome?
Blanchot, Le livre venir 153

Maurice Blanchot is a committed modem. He asks the questions cited above in an analysis of Hermann Broch' s Der Tod des
Vergil1 Are thse questions his, or do they represent the skeptical modem reader? He marvels that Broch has written un rcit
d'un monde qui nous fut
capable de nous parler de nous partir
2
et
la fois proche
tranger (153). Virgil is, of course, dead. The
question is how dead.
Mais Virgile est-il, aujourd'hui, encore assez vivant pour porter la
gravit de notre destin? S'il fut au Moyen Age un mythe que Dante sut
veiller, n'appartient-ilpas une tradition littraire si lointaine et si
puise qu'elle n'est plus capable de nous dire mme notre propre
puisement?
(144)3

The classicgesture of the modem is the break with the past. This
gesture always has a past, and the rcognition of the inability to
make a break, when every break repeats past breaks, allows for
the peculiar characterof the modem as a locus for negotiation
between the new and the exhausted, where the exhausted returns as a ghost.4 Blanchot attributes to Broch a sensibilit latine that invites him to waken les ombres of a Roman her* This

paper owes much to Anselm Haverkamp and Ziad Elmarsafy.

1. Tod, Zrich 1958,hrst published 1945.
2. M. Blanchot, Le livrea venir, Pans 1959.
3. But is Virgil, today, still sufficiently alive to bear the weight of our destiny? If
he was in the Middle Ages a myth that Dante knew how to awaken, does he not belong to a literary tradition so remote and so exhausted that it is no longer capable of
telling us even our own exhaustion?
Translations of French and Latin are my own, except for L'instant de ma mort,
where I use Rottenberg (below, n. 6). For Broch, I use J. S. Untermeyer's translation,
The Death ofVirgil, New York 1995,first published 1945.
4. P. De Man, Blindness and Insight, Minneapolis 1983 , LiteraryHtstory and Literary Modernity;I discuss Horace and the modem in similar terms in Spleen and the
Monumentum:Memoryin Horace and Baudelaire,Comparative Literature 49, 1997,
pp. 42-58, and Beyond PerformanceEnvy: Horace and the Modem in the Epistle to Augustus, Rethymnon Classical Studies 1, 2002, pp. 141-171.

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MichleLovme

itage that was falteringin th Second World War, when Der Tod
des Vergil was composed.5 Blanchot's awareness of his own
ghosts is more questionable.
Jacques Derrida analyzes th Latinity of th European institution of literaturein a discussion of a piece by Blanchot about an
incident that also occurred in th Second World War.6 Neither
Blanchot nor Derrida shows any awareness that L'instantde ma
mort neatly reverses th fates of a man and a manuscript from
those in or about Virgil.7Aeneas hsittes over killing Turnus,
but kills him nevertheless; Blanchot's protagonist faces a death
squad, but due to an interruption,is released. Virgil decided to
bum th incomplete Aeneid,yet th text survived, while Blanchot
teils of a manuscript stolen and never recovered. The distance
between Virgil and Blanchot is one text, Broch's Der Tod des
Vergil,a lyric novel spanning the time between Virgil's certainty
of his upcoming death and the death itself. A large proportion of
this novel has to do with the dcision firstto destroy, then to save
the Aeneid.Both L'instantde ma mortand Blanchot'sbook of criticism, Le livre venir,revolve around gaps that open in time and
the things, ideas mostly, but also shifts in reality, that inhabit
thse gaps. While Broch focuses on th fate of Virgil's manuscript and the poet's own death, Blanchot'sveiled autobiographical account brings back Aeneas' hsitation and transfersTurnus'
death to the author. The shift from clemency denied to a contingent escape marks Blanchot as modem. His death sentence is
never annulled, and we cannot imagine Turnus in the resulting
position of the Irvingdead.
Blanchot instantiates the modernist break from antiquity. He
apprcitesthe value for Broch of a myth symbolizing le savoir
et le destin de toute la civilisation occidentale, and cites Joyce's
Ulyssesas a parallel to Broch's mythic appropriationof antiquity.8 In L'instantde ma mort, Blanchot overtly cites a modem
myth instead. The concidence of the date inscribed on the pro5. Livre(above, n. 2), p. 153.
6. M. Blanchot, L'instant de ma mort, bilingual dition, trans. E. Rottenberg,
Stanford 2000, originally published 1994; in the same volume, J. Derrida, Demeure:
Fictionand Testimony,trans. E. Rottenberg, pp. 20-25.
7. 1 suggest some parallels at Literatureis a Latin Word, Vergilius 47, 2001, p.
29.
8. G. Steiner, Homerand Virgiland Broch,review of S. J. Harrison, OxfordReadings
in Virgil'sAeneid, Oxford 1990, London Review of Books i2july 1990, p. 10, levtes

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Bfonchotand theDeathofVirgil

213

tagonist's chteau with the battle of lna spurs reflection on

Hegel's ability to distinguish between l'empirique et l'essentiel: he called Napoleon Tarnedu monde even though he pillaged Hegel's own house (6). This citation aligns Blanchot with
modern philosophy and occludes his literary debts, as if merely
empirical. This piece, however, itself exemplifies a myth of
Western civilization through reversai: the protagonist survives
and the work of art does not. He internalizes the question he
poses ofVirgil - is he still alive enough?
The modern negotiation with the ancient can take diffrent
shapes, and I will argue that Virgil returns in diffrent guises to
Broch and Blanchot. Broch remembers Virgil, while Blanchot
forgets him. Blanchot's intertextual engagement with Broch,
however, suggests a latent Virgilian prsence. Remembering or
forgetting Virgil helps define thse modems' relation to tradition, but it furtherassiststheir formulationof an argument about
the work of art within th politicai sphre. When life is at stake,
why worry about the aesthetic?What constitutes understanding?
Ail three authors are concerned with the survival of persons and
of manuscripts,and the terms of their survival.
The relative degrees of reality entailed in whether people or
manuscriptslive or are destroyed renders the fictional status of
the literary text itself part of the argument over the value of
the aesthetic in the face of politics and death. Derrida deconstructs the distinctionbetween fiction and testimony in his analysis of Blanchot's rcit,9 which is a literary account of an autobiographical exprience. This conjunction of fiction and testimony stands at the culmination of a tradition that keeps them
apart. VirgiTsnarration of the death of Turnus in the Aeneidis
clearly fictional, while the ancient testimoniaof th Vita Donati
aneti are the source for VirgiTsdlibration over destroying his
epic poem. Such testimony about ancient authors, however, can
hardly be taken as historical truth. For Virgil, Broch, and Blanchot, the Unes demarcatingreality - within both texts and lives
- shift according to their valuation of the work of art. A formai
feature linking thse texts is the temporal gap that opens when
a man confronts impending death. This space allows for the contemplationof art as a matter of life and death.
Joyce and Broch to two competing twentieth-century principles: the Homeric and
the Virgilian.
9. Demeure(above, n. 6)

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MichleLovme

Aeneas' hsitation before killing Turnus is such a gap. Turnus*

10
plea for mercy gives him pause (cunctantem, Aen. 12.940), until
he sees the baldric Turnus has despoiled from Pallas. Aeneas is
then overcome by fiiry and avenges Pallas in a metaphoric sacrifice (immolt, 12.949). The baldric is a work of art, described in a
brief ekphrasis when Turnus took it from Pallas' dead body
(10.495-509). Its beauty is apparent: it is embossed in gold; its
craftsman has a significant name, Clonus Eurytides, suggesting
wide confusion; it depicts the Danaids' morally reprehensible
(nefas, 10.497) slaughter of their husbands on their wedding night.
The narrative pause of ekphrasis does not belong in the rapid action of book 12,n but the emphasis in book 10 on Turnus' future
regret and hatred of thse spoils joins morality with aesthetics.
Since seeing this object tilts the balance from clemency toward
vengeance, the question is the effect of the work of art. Aeneas'
perception of it, though visual, is not aesthetic contemplation.
He rather sees it as spoils and a reminder of pain (oculis postquam
saeui monimenta doloris / exuuiasque hausit, 12.945-946). Its meaning for him is strictly personal. The reader must infer the monument's commemorative fonction, as well as the symbolism of the
Danaid myth for Pallas and Turnus, young men eut down before
marriage.12 For Virgil, the baldric's aesthetic quality yields to its
moral significance. Turnus committed nefas in despoiling Pallas,
and the object reminds Aeneas of his moral obligation of
vengeance. The object retains its beauty and its capacity to signify - it is an insigne (12.944), mark of honor and emblem - but
thse aspects are a surplus and do not contribute to Aeneas'
dcision.
The temporal gap of hsitation pertains not only to Aeneas as
killer, but to Turnus as he realizes he will die (cunctatur, 12.916).
His hsitation makes him vulnrable (cunctanti, 12.919). Strong
motions inhabit both characters at this moment. For Turnus, it
is confusion (12.914-915).Aeneas rather pauses in the midst of
frenzy and then passionately rsumes his anger (12.938-939;funis
10. M. C. J. Putnam, The Hsitation of Aeneas, in Virgis Aeneid. Interpretationand
Influence,Chapel Hill 1995, p. 166 n. 3, calls this moment a tense pause for contemplation of words before action.
11.M. C. J. Putnam, Virgil'sEpie Designs: Ekphrasisin the Aeneid, New Haven 1998,
p. 190 suggests time nearly stops in the balteusekphrasis.
12. S. J. Harrison, Virgil: Aeneid 10, Oxford 1997, corrected dition, ad Aen. 10.497499-

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Blanchotand the Death of Virgil

215

accensus et ira / ternbilis, 12.946-947). The plea for mercy (12.934935) and for a cessation of hatred (ultenus ne tende odiis, 12.938)
only temporarily calms passion. Virgil, though psychologically
acute, does not know the interiority of the modems. These motions are told, not shown.13
When Virgil faced his own death, according to legend, his concern was with the work of art. The most expansive of the accounts in the Vitae Virgilianae attributes VirgiTs desire to burn
the Aeneid strictly to aesthetics:
At which time, when he feit himself weighed down with illness, he often and with great insistence sought his scroll cases in order to bum the
Aeneid.When thse were refused him, he ordered it to be bumed in his
will, as a thing not corrected and unfinished. But Tucca and Var[i]us
wamed that Augustus would not allow that. Then he bequeathed his
writings to this same Var[i]usand also to Tucca on this condition, that
they not publish anything which had not been edited by him and that
they leave even the unfinishedUnes,if there were any.
M
(Vita Donati aneti 52-53)

Brodi follows this version,15 with two important exceptions. In

addition to aesthetic concerns, Broch's Virgil recognizes the
Aeneid's moral failings, and Augustus himself persuades him to
change his mind. Where Virgil separates the aesthetic from the
moral and politicai aspects of the work of art in the face of death,
Broch brings them together.
Broch's Virgil upbraids himself for a moral failure: he has not
helped humankind as a person or through his art. He rpudites
beauty for its own sake (wenn ... die Schnheit sich als Selbstzweck vordrngt, die Kunst in ihren Wurzeln angegriffen wird
154). His Aeneid is merely beautifi and should therefore be destroyed.
war er nun selber zum Wachen bestellt? Nimmermehr! nimmermehr
war er dazu fhig, er, der Hilfsunfhige, der Dienstunwillige, der
Wortemacher, der sein Werk vernichten musste, weil das Menschliche,
weil menschliches Tun und menschliche Hilfsbedrftigkeit ihm so
13.Putnam (Hsitation, above n. 10) sees Aeneas' hsitation as a rvlation of inner doubt and uncertainty (155),and emphasizes inwardness (156, 158). We observe
this inwardness, however, from without.
14. G. Brugnoli and F. Stok (eds.), Vitae VergilianaeAntiquae, Rome 1997, pp.
100-101.

15. For Brocn s knowledge of the ancient biographical sources, T. Ziolkowski,

Virgiland the Modems, Princeton 1993,pp. 211-213,217-218.

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2i6

MichleLowne

wenig bedeutet hatten, dass er davon nichts hatte liebend festhalten

oder gar dichten knnen, und alles unaufgeschrieben geblieben war,
lediglich unntz zur Schnheitverklrtund verherrlicht.
(248)16

The debate between Augustus and Virgil in the third part, ErdeDie Erwartung, revolves on whether art can achieve the same
moral status as politicai action. In VirgiTs view, Augustus has
achieved a true figure (Gleichnis 418, metaphor 379), while his
own is false.17 A metaphor for what, he does not say. Broch's
highest aim is to achieve understanding; this would help humanity, and hre Augustus falls short. The merely politicai, like the
merely aesthetic, is insufficient. Broch craves something fiirther
that would raise human endeavor to a higher level. Virgil in the
Aeneid marks the major ekphrases with some sign of incomprhension or incompletion.18 The most famous is of Aeneas as he
lifts up the shield prophesying Roman history: rerumqueignarus
imagine gaudet (8.730). Broch attributes to Virgil rsignation about
his capacity to join the beautiful to understanding, but a desire to
transcend this limitation.
Sacrifice and the law are areas of incomprhension touching on
art and morality for both Virgil and Broch. Aeneas and Broch's
Virgil hve greater respect for the law than the authority figures
in either work. Aeneas welcomes a duel with Turnus and calls
the treaty pads leges (12.112);he is dismayed when thse laws are
broken (12.314-315).Juno, however, takes advantage of fate's
omissions (nulla fati quod lege tenetur, 12.819) until Jupiter forces
her to yield. In Broch, Virgil raises the law to transcendence,
while Augustus takes it as merely mortai.
das Unendliche ist es, von dem aller Zusammenhang im Seienden getragen wird, von dem das Gesetz getragen wird und die Form des
16. Was he now placed on guard? Never! Never would he be fit for it, he who
was incapable of any help, unwilling for any service, he th mere word-maker who
must needs destroy his work because the humane, th round of human action and
the human need for help, had meant so little to him that everything which he should
have retained and depicted in love was never written down, but simply and uselessly transfigure!and magnified to beauty... . (225-226).
17. See F. Cox, Envoi: the Death of Virgil, in The CambridgeCompatitotito Virgil, ed.
C. Martindale, Cambridge 1997, pp. 331-332for Virgil's moral failure in Broch.
18. See A. Barchiesi, Virgilian Narrative: Ecphrasis,in The CambridgeCompatitotito
Virgil, ed. C. Martindale, Cambridge 1997, pp. 275-276and Rappresentazionidel dolore
e interpretazionenell'Eneide,Ant. u. Abend. 40, 1994, pp. 109-124;and Putnam (Designs, above, n. 11),passim.

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BUnchotand the Death ofVirgil

217

Gesetzes, ja ebendarum auch das Schicksalselber: das unendliche Verborgenseinder Unendlichkeit,dennoch die Menschenseele.
19
(VirgiTsthoughts 357)
Die Ordnung wird die des Menschen sein ... die des menschlichen
Gesetzes.
Gesetze? als ob wir damit nicht berreichlich gesegnet wren! In
nichts ist der Senat so fruchtbar wie in der Erzeugung schlechter
Gesetze ... das Volk will Ordnung, doch sicherlichkeine hinterhltigen
Gesetze, durch die es mitsamt seinem Staatzerstrt wird ... aber davon
verstehst du wirklichnichts.
20
(Virgilspeaksfirst,Augustus second, 416)
The Augustus of th Vita Donati aucti similarly disregards the
law. A sets of verses attributed to him argues that preserving a
work of art is good reason for breaking the law (frangaturpotius
legumuenerandapotestas, 58).
Broch's Virgil would obey a higher law and sacrifice the poem.
In killing Turnus, Aeneas makes the classic gesture of human sacrifice (12.948) in the foundation of a state.21 For Broch, however,
the sacrifice is of the work of art and the foundation that of a new
religion. His proto-Christian Virgil, himself incapable of performing the redeeming act, would prepare for the coming of 'the
bringer of salvation and rvlation' (382) with the Aeneid's sacrifice. Augustus' reaction shows how this idea boggies the pagan
mind.
Ich kann und darf sie nicht fertigstellen ... ich darf es um so weniger
tun, als dies die unrichtigsteVorbereitungwre.
Und wie wre die richtigezu bewerkstelligen?
Durch das Opfer.
Opfer?
So ist es.
Wofr willst du opfern?Wem willst du opfern?
Den Gttern.
19. it was the infinite which bore all the connotations within existence, bearing
the law, bearing the form of the law, and precisely for this reason bearing faith itself;
the infinite forever hidden, but for all that the soul of man (325).
20. The order will be a human one ... the order of human law.'
'Laws? As if we were not more than blessed with them! In nothing is the Senate
so fruitful as in the enactment of bad laws ... the people wish for order but certainly
not for insidious laws by which they and their state are endangered ... you speak of
things you do not understand.' (377)
21. H. Arendt traces th link between violence and beginning to both bibhcal and
classical traditions, On Revolution,London 1963,p. 20.

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2i8

MichleLowrie

Die Gtter haben die ihnen genehmen Opfer geregelt, sie haben sie
dem Staate zur Obhut bergeben, und ich sorge dafr, dass sie im
ganzen Reichsgebietpnktlich vollzogen werden, wie es ihre Ordnung
verlangt.Ausserhalbder Staatshoheitgibt es keine Opfer.
(422-423)"

Augustus' circumscribing religion within the state's purview is

another instance of his lack of vision. For Broch, the problems
with VirgiTs sacrifice are neither moral, nor politicai, but aesthetic. When Virgil first conceives of burning the Aeneid, he worries about the act's purity. It cannot be done in his furienverseuchten Zimmer (203) - we wonder, is Aeneas' sacrifice of
Turnus fiinis accensus (12.946) also contaminated? But his ruminations on purity yield to aesthetic concerns:
so sollte es geschehen am Meeresstrande,verzehrt das Gedicht in der
bebenden Flamme -, und doch, war solches Vorhaben nicht verruchtes
Wiederaufleben jenes glatten Schnheitsspieles mit Worten und
Geschehnissen, das schicksalhaftden Eidbruch des Lebens bestimmt
hatte?
(203)23

Sacrifice initially appears as an escape from the snare of the aesthetic, but hre Virgil becomes entangled again.
Broch consistently sublates some Virgilian limitation, whether
his Separation of aesthetics from morality, dismay at the insufficiency of law, or horror at foundational sacrifice. His Virgil's
drive to the transcendent encapsultes the diffrence between
pagan and Christian, and this diffrence also inhabits the ancient
and the modern author's treatments of hatred. Turnus asks Ae22. cannot and I dare not finish it ... I cannot do it because this would be just
the wrong sort of prparation.'
'And how would you accomplish the right one?'
Through sacrifice/
'Sacrifice?'
'Just so.'
'To what end will you sacrifice?
whom?'
' the gods.'
'The gods hve stipulated the sacrifices which are acceptable to them, they have
given them over to th care of the state, and I see to it that they are punctiliously carried out in th whole empire. There are no sacrifices outside the state's sovereignty.'(383).
23. thus it should corne to pass on the seashore, the poem consumed in the
trembling flame -, but was such an intention not th grievous revival of that slick,
aesthetic playing with words and events that had constituted the fateful treachery of
life? (183).

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Bfonchotand theDeathofVirgil

219

neas to give up his hatred:ultenusne tendeodiis(12.938).Authorial

comment reveals that Turnus would one day himself hte (pderit,
10.505)th spoils he took and th day he took them. But Aeneas
does not give up his hatred,because of Turnus' own hatred in despoiling Pallas (10.490-500).Broch's Virgil, however, cannot tolerate Augustus'accusationof hatred.
Vergil...
Ja,Augustus.
Duhassestmich.
Octavian!
NennemichnichtOctavian,dadu michhassest.
Ich... ichhassedich?
Und wie du mich hassest! Schrill vor Schrfewar des Csars
Stimme.
(426-427)

Virgil soon capitultes (430-432).VirgiTssusceptibilityto Augustus' accusationforms the heart of Broch's criticismof the Aeneid.
The ancient poet views people from the outside; his vehicles for
expressingmotion are metaphor, simile, and the speech. He has
not yet attained the interiority first found in Augustine. Brodi's
Virgil criticizes himself for lack of feeling: unbewegt hatte er
Menschenleid beobachtet; nichts waren ihm die Menschen
(168-169).When he yields to Augustus and spares the Aennd, he
achieves a clemency beyond the powers of Aeneas, because it is
Christian.Broch, however, fiilly understandsthe aesthetic necessity of the death of Turnus. Virgil muses that if Aeneas had
spared Turnus, er wre keineswegs zu einem Beispiel nachstrebenswerterMilde, vielmehr zu dem eines langweiligen Unhelden geworden, den darzustellen kein Gedicht htte wagen
drfen (149).Art's concern is to maintain a balance: Milde und
Grausamkeit vereinigt im Gleichgewicht der Schnheitssprache (150).Broch's new aesthetics is a Christianone, where
the moral status of the work of art brings fulfillment to what
would otherwise be empty beauty.
24. 'Virgil ...'
'Yes, Augustus?'
'You hte me.'
'Octavian!'
'Cali me not Octavian since you hte me.'
... I hate you?'
'And how you hate me.' Caesar's voice was stirili with bitterness (387).

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MichleLowne

If Broch's critique lends th ancient author life,25Blanchot in

Vinstant de ma mortwould definitivelykill him - if he could prevent his return as a ghost. Blanchot turns his modernity contrary
to Broch's. Where Broch fills five hundred pages with VirgiTs
thoughts and words, Blanchot writes a rcit of under five. This
sparenessaccordswith a modernist occlusion of sources. His earlier criticaiwork on Broch in Le livre venir,however, shows he
understood th stakes in th destruction of lives and
manuscripts.Broch is a direct predecessorto L'instantde ma mort,
Virgil a latent one.
Unlike VirgiTs Turnus or Broch's Virgil, th character confronting death does not literallydie in Blanchot. The moment of
suspension that opens up never ends, but extends infinitely. This
moment is empty. For Broch, such temporal gaps are transitional
spaces of potentiality, characterizedby th phrase no longer and
not yet.
Nichtmehrund noch nicht-, der Csarwog, unangenehmberhrt,
klafftderleereRaum...
dieWorteab-, dazwischen
(368)26

Broch traces such gaps back to Virgil and has his Virgil cite Georgias 1.32-35,where the constellationsmake room for Augustus as a
future god (419-420).27The joining of the ruler with the heavens
is an act in prparation;the new order is imminent. For Blanchot, the gap is rather th very nature of death. Faced with the
firing squad of the Nazi army, his protagonist expriences death
without dying. The alination involved is not just the distance
that separates the speaking I from his memory of himself as
young - th piece opens with Je me souviens d'un jeune
homme (2) - but a lasting division within the self: we are never
sure of the speaker'sidentity with the young man.
Je sais- le sais-je- que celuiquevisaientdjles Allemands,n'attendant
plusque Tordrefinal,prouvaalorsun sentimentde lgretextraordinaire,une sorte de batitude(riend'heureuxcependant),- allgresse
souveraine?
Larencontrede la mortet de la mort?
25. Ziolkowski (above, n. 15), pp. 219-222 argues that Broch was not profoundly
interested in Virgil, but I hope my analysis shows otherwise.
26. 'No longer and not yet', - Caesar, much dismayed, was weighing thse
words - 'and between them yawns an empty space' (335).
27. See Ziolkowski (above, n. 15), pp. 214-215for Broch's adaptations of Voss's
translations.

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BUnchotand the Death ofVirgil

221

A sa place, je ne chercheraipas analyserce sentiment de lgret. Il

tait peut-tre tout coup invincible. Mort - immortel. Peut-tre l'extase. Plutt le sentiment de compassion pour l'humanit souffrante, le
bonheur de n'tre pas immortel ni ternel. Dsormais, il fut li la
mort, par une amiti subreptice.
(4)8
Hre the exprience of th gap is resolutely internai; it is a feeling of death permanently within. The difficulty of describing this
exprience gives pause. The speaker questions his knowledge,
offers alternatives, analyzes from a distance the unanalyzable.
The exprience is unknowable because it fuses death with life.
Demeurait cependant, au moment o la fusillade n'tait plus qu'en attente, le sentiment de lgret que je ne saurais traduire: libr de la
vie? l'infini qui s'ouvre? Ni bonheur, ni malheur. Ni l'absence de
crainte et peut-tre dj le pas au-del.Je sais, j'imagine que ce sentiment inanalysablechangea ce qui lui restait d'existence. Comme si la
mort hors de lui ne pouvait dsormais que se heurter la mort en lui.
"Jesuis vivant. Non, tu es mort".
(6, 8)29
This careftil reader of Broch reduces important thmes to a minimum. Sacrifice leaves its trace only in the slowness of the protagonist's walk: he advanced d'une manire presque sacerdotale
(2). The sovereign control of Broch's Augustus becomes a feeling, allgresse souveraine (4). The soldiers letting the young
man escape are Russian and disobey the commands of their German leaders. Any sovereign dcision dissiptes. Law and morality are a sham. The young man is saved by the accident of interruption and peut-tre Terreur de l'injustice (2). The killing of
28. I know - do I know it - that the one at whom the Germans were already aiming, awaiting but the final order, experienced then a feeling of extraordinary lightness, a sort of batitude (nothing happy, however) - sovereign dation? The encounter of death with death?
In his place, I will not try to analyze. He was perhaps suddenly invincible. Dead immortal. Perhaps ecstasy. Rather th feeling of compassion for suffering humanity, the happiness of not being immortal or eternai. Henceforth, he was bound to
death by a surreptitious friendship. (5).
29. There remained, however, at the moment when the shooting was no longer
but to come, th feeling of lightness that I would not know how to translate: freed
from life? the infinite opening up? Neither happiness, nor unhappiness. Nor the absence of fear and perhaps already the step beyond. I know, I imagine that this unanalyzable feeling changed what there remained for him of existence. As if the death
outside of him could only henceforth collide with the death in him. am alive. No,
you are dead.' (7, 9).

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MichleLovme

farm boys and burning of their farms contrasts with th sparing

of th manor house and th nobles such that th young man, who
feels the injustice, gives up his ecstasy for survivor guilt (6).
There is no Christianrdemption.
The most decisive diffrencefrom Broch and from Virgil is the
absence of any dcision. Aeneas' hsitation over killing Turnus
makes his action a dcision. Virgil revokes his dcision to burn
the Aeneid.Blanchot'syoung man is dismissedby accident:battle
breaks out nearby, the lieutenant needs to investigate, the soldiers aiming at him happen to be Russian.One waves him away
without th authorityto do so. Being targetedby the firing squad
was as much an accident as his dismissal. He was saved, his
manuscriptlost, both for reasons similarly contingent. The lieutenant took the manuscript on the mistaken assumption it perhaps contained war plans (6). Aesthetics and morality are equally
beside the point.
Blanchot's self-alienation results in other divisions. The lost
manuscript's importance merges only in a second section of
text. The two narratives,one about a person, the other a work of
art, is a Virgilianghost. A division between criticism and art differentiatesBlanchotfrom Broch, who units them. In the second
section, Blanchot's protagonist visits Malraux, who also lost
work in the war and whose comments establish the diffrence:
"Ce n'taient que des rflexions sur Tait, faciles reconstituer,
tandis qu'un manuscrit ne saurait l'tre." (io). The contrast
identifies the manuscriptas itself a work of art, not mere reflections on it. In the tradition, Virgil's scholiast has Augustus contemplate breakingthe law to save the labor of a work of art, condemned by its author on aesthetic grounds; Broch's Virgil hallucinates for hours on the aesthetic object's inability to answer to
morality's higher daims. Blanchot sweeps away such agonizing:
Qu'importe. (io). His own reflections on art, however, show
he had already given considrable thought to books within
books.
The projectedbooks Blanchot analyzes for Proust,Joubert, Artaud, Broch et al, in Le livre venirare deferredto the future or to
nowhere, a significant diffrence from L'instantde ma mort:his
manuscript existed, but was lost. When Blanchot identifies as
modem th desire to destroy an incomplete manuscript, a moment of indistinctionblends Virgilwith Broch.
Il se rappellela lgendeselon laquelle,au momentde mourir,le pote

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Blanchotand the Death ofVirgil

223

voulut dtruire l'Enide,ce pome rest inachev. Voil une pense

moderne.
(143)30

Blanchotputs several turns in the traditionshe outlines in Le livre

venir: unlike the authors who would destroy their works, he
wanted to recuperatehis manuscript.His desire to publish is perhaps only possible in the manuscript's absence: authors resist
publication and the forces that drive them against their will. He
crdits Mallarm with calling the Book the force beyond the
reader, society, the state, and culture that drives authors to publish. In th face of its power, les vivants sont bien faibles (Livre
281).The power of the Book drives the production of Blanchot's
rcitof his manuscript'sloss half a Centurylater. The story makes
partial good of the loss by inscribing it into a tradition where
death hangs over people and manuscripts alike. Minimalist rduction, ngation, and reversai are marks of the modem work's
fruitlessstruggleagainstintertextuality.
VirgiTsshadow extends into the twentieth Century,but Blanchot asks not only What is Virgil to us?, but What is Rome?.
In suggesting that Rome's unifying hritage weakened during the
Second World War (Livre153),he follows Ernst Robert Curtius,
an Alsatian who wrote his EuropischeLiteraturund hteinches
MitteUlter(Bern1948)at this time partiallyas a politicai gesture to
remind Europeans of this shared hritage.31Derrida brings up
Latinityand the institution of literatureas understood by Curtius
in his analysis of L'instantde ma mort (Demeure43). He deconstructs the distinction between literature, a Latin word, and
testimony. Blanchot'srcit,however, occupies not only a literary
zone of indistinction,but a politicai one. The institution of literature in ali its Latinitywas supposed to hold Europe together. Vir30. He remembers th legend according to which, at th moment of dying, th
poet wanted to destroy th Aeneid, this poem which remained incomplete. There is
a modern thought. He explores this notion in Mallarm (280 . ). Compare Ovid's
burning (a copy of) th Mtamorphosesat Tristia 1.7.16 and th legend of Rimbaud's
attempt to bum his papers, W. Mason, The Elaborations:Rimbaudat th Mercyofthe
Biographers,Harper's Magazine October 2002, p. 92.
31. R. Brague, Europe:la voie romaine,Paris 1993 , p. 23: Quant a 1 Europe au sens
troit, il y a un trait qu'elle est peut-tre seule possder, seule revendiquer, et qui
est en tout cas ce que personne ne lui dispute. C'est la romanit. Ou plus prcisment la latinit. La romanit a t revendique par Byzance ..., puis par Moscou ...
Elle l'a mme t par l'Empire ottoman, ... Mais de la latinit, personne d'autre que
l'Europe n'a voulu.

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MichleLowne

gii in particular offers a model of th resolution into cultural

unity of warring factions.32When Blanchot at th end of his life
gives an account of his exprience in th Second World War and
th rsultant internai division he has suffered ever since, Virgil
and th European tradition of his reception return as ghosts reminding us of what was falling apart.33The hritage meant to
unify Europe, let us remember, is of a ChristianizedRome, but
another figure haunts L'instantde ma mort, and this is th Jew.
Again, Broch dwells in th gap, and here aesthetics meets politics.
When Blanchot wrote his narrativeof near-deathat th end of
th War, he had been attackedfor anti-semitismin his nationalistic writings during th i93o's,34in which he critiqued French republicanism from th right.35Blanchot dfends himself against
th accusation of complicity by showing that he too suffered
from German oppression, and th contingency of his escape
matches that of many Jews who survived. He too experienced
Irvingdeath. The indistinctionbetween literature and testimony
matters for politicai as well as aesthetic reasons. We cannot tell
how much Blanchotis making up to exonerate himself. But if literature in the Christianized Latin tradition binds Europe together, can the beauty and literarity of Blanchot's story36win
him forgiveness?
Broch's biography shows that Der Tod des Vergilis not only
about the relation of aesthetics to politics, but served as their intersection in its author's life. His conversion to Catholicism accords with the novel's strong use of the tradition of a protoChristianVirgil, but Broch was born Jewish. He worked on an
early version of the project while imprisoned by the Nazis for

32. 1 discuss Curtius and Virgil (Literature,above, n. 7), pp. 33-35.

33. S. Ungar, Scandai and Aflereffect:Blaniot and France Since 1930, Minneapolis
1995pp 85-93 examines Blanchot's critique of Curtius, whose model he rejects as a
misunderstanding of France and French literature. Ungar and Blanchot ignore the
Latinity of Curtius' project.
34. J. Mehlman, Legacies of Anti-Semitism in France, Minneapolis 1983, pp. 6-22;
Blanchotat Combat:Of Literatureand Terror,treated with nuance by Ungar (above, n.
33), pp. 84, 96, 116,153,162-164.
35. Ungar (above, n. 33), p. 97.
36. D. Cahen, Qui a peur de la littrature?,Paris 2001, pp. 275-276 examines how
Blanchot, here as elsewhere, always returns to the topic of literature.

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Bfonchotand the Death of Virgil

225

three weeks at Bad Aussee in 1938.37He later describes in a letter

his work on the novel during his imprisonment.38
The book was written not as a book, but as a kind of private diary, that
is, it began as a book, was continued as a diary and then the final part
was written as a book again. While I was writing it as a diaryI believed I
would never publish anything again and that I would end my days in a
concentrationcamp; it was therefore a personal confrontationwith the
exprienceand realityof death.
Fiction or testimony? Blanchot equates Broch's character with
Broch himself: Virgile, c'est Broch (Livre 153). Both Blanchot
and Broch write poorly disguised autobiographies; the diffrence
is in their politics. Broch was a committed anti-fascist, and his
prsentation of Augustus supports thse commitments.39 The
politicai question in the Aeneid is whether Aeneas will show
demency to Turnus. He does not, and this failure has been read
as a critique of the Augustan ge.40 Broch's Virgil eventually
shows demency to his own work. Art will in the end overcome
its own limitations. Blanchot, however, shifts the question away
from demency - a dcision - to random circumstances. This shift
more than anything else marks Blanchot as modem and in it he
kills off Virgil. Is he dead? No more than Blanchot.
New YorkUniversity

37. P. M. Ltzeler, Hermann Broch: A Biography, trans. Janice Furness, London

1987,pp. 155-174.
38. Ltzeler (above, . 37), p. 157.
39. Virgil was used during this period to support both tascist and anti-lascist positions, Cox (above, n. 17), pp. 327-328.Steiner (above, n. 8), p. 10 sums up twentiethcentury assumptions about Virgil, whether pro- or anti-fascist: Above all, Virgil is
European, or so we take him to be. In the twenty-first Century, Virgil might turn
out to be American.
40. M. C. J. Putnam, The Poetryofthe Aeneid, Cambridge ma 1965, pp. 192-194;W.
R.Johnson, DarknessVisible:A Study ofVergil'sAeneid, Berkeley 1976, eh. 4.

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