The Death of Virgil—La mort de Virgile, Der Tod des Vergil—was the major work of the Viennese writer Hermann Broch, begun in the winter of 1936–7 and completed in 1944. Moving through the last hours in the poet's life, the book finds scope to reflect on the purpose and meaning of art in an age of transition. Virgil's problems are those of Broch or any artist nearly two thousand years later: how to create a work that will speak the truth, that will be real, in itself, and not just a symbol of reality, that will avoid trivial beauty, that will acknowledge the political situation without being either propaganda or satire. According to Hodeir: ‘The book fascinated Barraqué; its lyrical and epic tone seemed to him to correspond to the tone of his own music’. Hodeir also recalled you saying: ‘Broch wrote The Death of Virgil for me.’ And you came to see it in everything you had written, from the Sonata onwards: ‘Before, I was waiting for The Death of Virgil without knowing it.’

Virgil is dying, dissolving, and in his dissolution looking back on his deeds and his achievements. They count for little. Only love has been a saving grace. But now in death he will achieve what he was unable to achieve in life—or rather, Broch will achieve it in the narration of his death.