First World War.com - Prose & Poetry - Hermann Broch

On May 30 1951, Hermann Broch, Austrian novelist (The Sleepwalkers and The Death of Virgil), died at the age of 64. An excerpt from the article:

"Broch was arrested by the Nazis on the day of the German annexation of Austria and detained briefly in 1938. Inspired by the visions of impending death in the prison in Altaussee, he wrote a few elegies, which became the core of Der Tod des Vergil. With the help of James Joyce and other writers, Broch was allowed to emigrate from Nazi Austria. He moved to London, then to Scotland, and finally to the United States, where he settled first in Princeton, New Jersey.

Because Broch did not have academic degrees, he was unable to obtain regular faculty appointments at Princeton or Yale. He received a series of stipends from various fellowships, including Guggenheim, Rockefeller, Bollingen, Oberlander, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. From 1940 Broch was involved in refugee work, and much of money he gave to other European refugees of the war.

The Death of Virgil, one of the great monuments of exile literature, was completed in the United States. The four parts of the book are ruled by the four elements - water, fire, earth, and air. The first section consist of the poet's return to Italy through filthy and noisy streets of the port - he is carried from his boat to the palace in Brundisium.

The second is predominantly a fevered dream in the palace of the emperor Augustus. The third consists of Virgil's decision that the Aeneid must be destroyed because society is doomed and poetry is useless, and his struggle with the emperor who wants the work preserved. In the last chapter Virgil finally accepts death in a fantastic cavalcade that reverses the creation of the universe.

Within the framework of eighteen hours, the dying poet is engaged in long philosophical conversations with his physician, with the emperor, and with his friends. The conversations with Caesar deal partly with the nature of totalitarianism and the relationship of religion and the state.

In this work Broch attempted to represent the transition from life to death through a musical and poetic technique. Long, almost unstructured sentences, convey the complexity and emotional and aesthetic content of a single thought."