Hermann Broch's trilogy, *The Sleepwalkers* (1932), is immense, beginning with the old man von Pasenow, an excellent brief sketch of the character both physically and morally. It ends with a long and abstrusely abstract epilogue, the tenth part in height of a series of similar treatises on the "decay of values," which unfortunately weakens the impact and scarcely clarifies the meaning of the third part of the trilogy. *The Death of Virgil* (1945) represents a clear advance, or extension, in the direction of the philosophical parts of his earlier work, though with the difference that the reflections of the dying Virgil, while equally abstract, are largely uncontested; they derive less from logic than from what regrettably passes for "poetry," sometimes reminding us of *Thus Spoke Zarathustra*, but diluted, diffused, and bloated—lacking Nietzsche’s sharpness and questionable yet undeniable excitement.
Formally, *The Death of Virgil* has been more or less accurately described by a series of admirers. Hannah Arendt calls it an (hm Waidson estimates it at 18 hours: to me, both seem very conservative estimates) "uninterrupted flow of lyrical speculations that carries us through the last 24 hours of the dying poet." And George Steiner has said that the book "represents the only real technical advance in fiction since *Ulysses*." But few critics, as far as I know, have tried to assess the success, as opposed to the intention, of the novel, or its utility rather than the manner of its technique. Two questions arise from the descriptions I have just quoted. Could it be that what is needed for a flow of lyrical speculations to be true religion online shop is, from time to time, interrupted by the unlyrical and the known? And can a technical "advance" really be an advance if its best effect is to produce unreadability? But then again, the argument in *The Death of Virgil* is so abstract, enforceable yet evasive, so high-flown and yet so narrow in scope, that one is hardly inclined to feel it merits the close study required for critical appreciation. It is safer to exclaim: "A great European novel!" and leave it at that, which, fairly enough, will serve to warn the vast majority of potential readers.
In form, *The Death of Virgil* consists of nearly continuous inner monologue, in sentences so long that their beginnings are forgotten before their ends are reached. The monologue is interrupted by a conversation between Virgil and Augustus, with a length and seriousness that might not sustainably interrupt a sick man, and a scene with Virgil’s friends, which, modest as it is, seems to me much closer to the sublime than anything else in the work. The speculative depth of the title can be indicated by a few quotations. "What we seek is submerged, and we should not try to perceive how it mocks us through its very unfathomability." Or "Only he who is capable of perceiving death is also capable of perceiving life." Broch's prose poetry is quite similar to Rilke's poetry, deprived of most...
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