Rilke's Duino Elegies Address Angel Archetypes
Overcoming Writer's Block in First Elegy, lines 1 to 8
Dec 29, 2008 Megge Hill Fitz-Randolph
The story, often told and retold among poets, is that Rainer Maria Rilke was staying for a time at the Duino castle owned by one of his friends and patrons in Italy. He had been staying there, as often he did, under the largess of his benefactors and trying to get back to his writing. Having suffered an unusually long bout of writer's block and feeling discouraged, these lines came to him as he was on one of his daily walks. He raced home, wrote them down and thus began his great Duino Elegies. It begins thus:
Opening Lines
Who, if I cried out, would hear me among the angels
hierarchies?
What are these angels? To whom does he address this strange bequest? Rilke presses upon the reader a question which at first sounds like folly, but as the poem proceeds, begins to carry a scent of danger.
and even if one of them pressed me
suddenly against his heart: I would be consumed
in that overwhelming existence.
Seeing the Angels
Rilke senses the existence of these presences but, as if seeing something from the corner of his eye, or as if using a reflecting devise to view a solar eclipse, he recognizes an inherent risk in looking at these presences straight on.
Reading this poem through the prism of Jung’s concept of archetype, it could be claimed that the risk comes from experiencing an angelic presence in its pure, effulgent state without any filtering archetype. Herein lies an intensity not easily borne by mere mortals.
Archetype of Beauty
For beauty is nothing
but the beginning of terror, which we still are just able to endure,
In this, Rilke concurs with Jung, that the archetype itself must be approached with great care. Here resides the archetype of beauty; beauty in its purest state. To approach her without the sheltering container of religion or art is to walk unaccompanied into that realm where mortals hardly belong.
Art may approach this realm, as prayer does, for these are the rafts which carry the living over the perilous waters to the non-living as in Greek mythology. But one dare not proceed alone for here rides the start of all terror, says Rilke.
Angels Disdain Humans
and we are so awed because it serenely disdains
to annihilate us.
To bear witness to the full effulgence of beauty, which is indeed the full effulgence of angel presence, is an experience hardly to be borne. And yet, says Rilke, the angel cares less about "us" than "we" about him.
Our "Interpreted World"
And despite that awe and, yes, terror, it is the angel's overall indifference to "our interpreted world" that prompts Rilke's final blast:
Every angel is terrifying.
First Elegy: Lines 1 through 7
Who, if I cried out, would hear me among the angels’
hierarchies? and even if one of them pressed me
suddenly against his heart: I would be consumed
in that overwhelming existence. For beauty is nothing
but the beginning of terror, which we still are just able to endure,
and we are so awed because it serenely disdains
to annihilate us. Every angel is terrifying.
For more on the connection between angels and archetypes, please refer to my article Angels and Archetypes: Same or Different.
Source: The Selected Poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke, Edited and Translated by Stephen Mitchell (1989). New York: Vintage International.
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