First edition, first impression (published simultanesouly with the English translation), signed by the author on the front free endpaper. Presentation copy from Broch's English translator Jean Starr Untermeyer, inscribed above Broch's signature: "For Louis - so that he may judge for himself whether this task was well done. Jean. Aug. 1st. 1945". The recipient is most likely the translator's former husband, the poet Louis Untermeyer; the couple were divorced in 1926 but some years later reconciled and remarried before divorcing again around 1933 - which may account for the detached tone of Untermeyer's presentation inscription. "The novel, the best known of the author's works, imaginatively re-creates the last 18 hours of the Roman poet Virgil's life as he is taken to Brundisium (now Brindisi) with a fever. Broch, an Austrian Jewish refugee from Hitler's Europe, concerned himself here and in his other works with the place of literature in a culture in crisis. Written in rich poetic language and rhythmic sentences, the novel has four "symphonic" movements. In the first, the poet who glorified Rome confronts its vile street life. Having decided that his writing, which excludes the ugly, is false and meaningless, Virgil in the novel's second part decides to burn the manuscript of the Aeneid. In the third part, the emperor Augustus persuades Virgil to turn over the manuscript for safekeeping in exchange for the freeing of the emperor's slaves. The fourth movement completes the first three as the moribund poet manages to reconcile the opposites of life and death, beauty and ugliness. In what is considered to be one of the most remarkable passages in modern literature, Virgil has a dying vision of himself on a rapturous sea voyage" (Encyclopaedia Britannica online).
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