A review by karp76
Death of Virgil by Hermann Broch

3.0

"The world is full of deeds yet empty of perception." This is a work of conflicts. Conflicts within (narratively and inherent) and conflicts with of (the readers). The dying poet Virgil and his great work, the Aeneid (locked in its chest) are taken by the Emperor to the port of Brundisium. Virgil wants to burn it, destory it but is convinced otherwise. He lays in bed and his reflections pour out of him: a series of dreams and visions that are beautiful and illogical and abstract and rambling and fancible. They do not cease. They pour out of the dying poet's breath. Words upon words pour and pour, such beautiful words and phrases in sentences that stretch unbroken across hundreds of pages, never ceasing, never a pause, more and more, pouring, pouring and conjuring and debating and reflecting submerging us until we cannot breathe, until our eyes blinking wonder what has been said, what has been thought? Was it a dream or a mess? A style too bold, too much? Words upon words pouring out, even into the waters of the afterlife, pouring pouring and we wonder: is this abstraction unreadable or too divine or simply neither?