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Guardian Angel Fountain, Rilkeplatz (Vienna) Photo: Via Kali |
in the hierarchies of angels
would hear me?
And if one of them should suddenly
take me to his heart,
I would perish in the power of his being.
For beauty is but the beginning of terror.
We can barely endure it
and are awed
when it declines to destroy us.
From the First Duino Elegy
There is loneliness and longing of the solitary heart here. (“Solitary heart” is a phrase Rilke uses later in this verse.) The sufferer wants to call out and be heard, and who is there to hear him? No one. No human, apparently. And even while there might possibly be an angel to hear him, the subsequent near annihilation of that angel’s beauty (a glimpse of the divine?) still does not meet the need of the lonely solitary heart. This paradox is frightening, and beautiful, and complete even in the lack of fulfillment: the longing itself is beauty. (And what do Zen Buddhists do with longing?)
ReplyDeleteIt appears that my comments have been lost in cyberspace, so I will try again.
ReplyDeleteThe opening lines of this part of the Duino Elegies have always been among my favorites. I suspect that many of us have asked the same question: "Who in the heirarchies of angels would hear me?"
What does Rilke mean by saying that "beauty is but the beginning of terror." My guess is that he is talking about the fact that the experience of beauty is intuitive, visceral, rooted on the right side of the brain, that place where reason, logic, and analysis have no reign. Perhaps that is why our initial response to great beauty is often one of being overwhelmed. If there is any threat to our well being, however, it is not beauty; it is that dreaded place in which there is no beauty.
As to your question, Ruth — "what do Zen Buddhists do with longing?" — I think they avoid it. Longing is a form of craving, which, in turn, is the source of all suffering, at least according to the Buddhists. In addition, longing requires that we abandon the present moment and devote our minds to the possibilities of the future. That, of course, is antithetical to Zen
Having said this, I recognize that the most salient characteristic of human beings is that life would be better if only we had something more. To their credit, both Buddhism and Zen encourage us to reexamine this way of thinking.
So sorry about your comments, George!
ReplyDeleteI think your take on Rilke and terror and beauty makes a great deal of sense, and is helpful to my understanding, as your comments always are.
Thank you for your response to my question. That is the answer I expected, knowing a little about Zen Buddhism, from my own reading, from reading your blog, Robert's, Dan's, and others.
I'm afraid I'll never be a Buddhist, at least not a good one. While I do not want to covet or envy or long for more than I have, there is a certain kind of longing that I cherish, and perhaps would not ever want to have fulfilled: Longing for deeper understanding, for seeing beauty more clearly in all things, more awareness, closer connection with certain people. Sometimes the longing itself is deep, powerful, and in some way satisfying.
I'm interested in the idea of beauty being 'but the beginning of terror'. Rilke often links the two. I suppose we all can recognise the overwhelming nature, the awesome quality of great beauty. But terror? The Divine, the angels - the highest form of beauty - must inspire the greatest, the most awe-inspiring terror of all.
ReplyDeleteI've had myself on certain occasions frightening and overwhelming feelings in different landscapes. The sheer otherness, and alien quality of certain landscapes, can open a huge void within you, and you feel small, feeble, insignificant, isolated. But I think it's good to encounter such feelings, uncomfortable as they may be - to recognize them and incorporate them. (I'm probably off point here.)
This is where I go, I feel that inside of this line lies the truth, a truth that I live, that we all live, beauty is but the beginning of terror, for to recognize beauty is to know impending loss, the ever present duality of Rilke. What an incredibly sobering line. I felt slapped by it. It tears at us, beauty, when we witnes it, fully witness it and receive it, but as we witness it we can't help but know its impermanence, and inside of this knowing,
ReplyDeleteWe can barely endure it
and are awed
when it declines to destroy us.
It is this tension, this excruiciating tension, I believe, that is life, and creates art.
xo
erin
have a beautiful weekend ruth and lorenzo and all
There is perhaps no greater sense of desolation than to feel that God does not hear us in our loneliest times or hours of loss. Think of Christ's own words and then of ourselves, who are so much the lesser.
ReplyDeleteI think of a contemporary sense of the terror of beauty: the images that have come out of the BP oil spill in the Gulf. Just yesterday I posted an item about J Henry Fair's exhibition in New York City of his astonishingly beautiful images of the oil, chemical plant run-off, insides of holding tanks, fertilizer waste. The danger is to be lulled by the beauty - and it is that - in Fair's photographs. And there is, too, this sense of awe that we create such waste. The wonder is that it has not yet completely destroyed where and how we live, our ability to be alive at all.
Such a beautiful selection today. (Read ahead to March 29, too!)
ReplyDelete"We can barely endure it are awed when it declines to destroy us." What do we think? Does the pronoun "it" refer to beauty or to terror, to both? If both why not "them"? Anyone here able to read the German?
I'm tempted to jump in on the Buddhist question you raise, Ruth, but I feel it may be a tad off topic. Suffice it to say, Buddhists can, and do distinguish between wholesome and unwholesome forms of longing.
The kind of longing you cherish would actually make you a "good" Buddhist. These longings propel us along the path to enlightenment where, yes, should such longings ever be completely fulfilled, they would subside.
This duality-unity of beauty and terror has long fascinated me, even before I had ever heard of Rilke. This passage used to be quoted to me 30 years ago by a dear friend on mountain hikes. Whenever we would get to the peak, I would recall an Arab saying that an uncle of mine was fond of uttering: “Speak if your words will be more beautiful that the silence”. And my friend and fellow hiker Gene would respond with “beauty is nothing but the beginning of a terror we are still just able to endure”. I do not recall if Gene ever mentioned Rilke’s name. Some of the summits we reached had wooden boxes with notebooks and pens for summiteers to jot down their thoughts. Those two quotes were invariably ours.
ReplyDeleteI will now follow this comment with another 2 (or perhaps 3) to include a long passage from a letter Rilke wrote in which he touches on some of the ideas in this poemt. I am only doing this because I think it may be of interest, not in the spirit of “settling” anything or giving any kind of definitive weight to one interpretation over any other. With these Rilke poems and passages, as with most poetry, we must each come up with our own subjective take on the poem, what it says to and in each of us individually.
Part I
ReplyDelete"Affirmation of life-AND-death appears as one in the "Elegies". To grant one without the other is, so it is here learned and celebrated, a limitation which in the end shuts out all that is infinite. Death is the side of life averted from us, unshone upon by us: we must try to achieve the greatest consciousness of our existence which is at home in both unbounded realms, inexhaustibly nourished from both . . . The true figure of life extends through both spheres, the blood of the mightiest circulation flows through both: there is neither a here nor a beyond, but the great unity in which the beings that surpass us, the "angels", are at home.
[…]
We of the here and now are not for a moment hedged in the time-world, nor confined within it; we are incessantly flowing over and over to those who preceded us, to our origins and to those who seemingly come after us. In that greatest "open" world all are, one cannot say "simultaneous", for the very falling away of time determines that they all are. Transiency everywhere plunges into a deep being. And so all the configurations of the here and now are to be used not in a time-bound way only, but, as far as we are able, to be placed in those superior significances in which we have a share. But not in the Christian sense (from which I am more and more passionately moving away), but, in a purely earthly, deeply earthly, blissfully earthly consciousness, we must introduce what is here seen and touched into the wider, into the widest orbit. Not into a beyond whose shadow darkens the earth, but into a whole, into the 'whole. Nature, the things of our intercourse and use, are provisional and perishable; but they are, as long as we are here, our property and our friendship, co-knowers of our distress and gladness, as they have already been the familiars of our forbears. So it is important not only not to run down and degrade all that is here, but just because of its provisionalness, which it shares with us, these phenomena and things should be understood and transformed by us in a most fervent sense. Transformed? Yes, for it is our task to imprint this provisional, perishable earth so deeply, so patiently and passionately in ourselves that its reality shall arise in us again "invisibly". We are the bees of the invisible. Nous butinons eperdument le miel du visible, pour Vaccwnuler dans la grande ruche d’or de flnvisible. The Elegies show us at this work, at the work of these continual conversions of the beloved visible and tangible into the invisible vibrations and excitation of our own nature, which introduces new vibration-frequencies into the vibration-spheres of the universe.
[…]
The earth has no way out other than to become invisible: in us who with a part of our natures partake of the invisible, have (at least) stock in it, and can increase our holdings in the invisible during our sojourn here, in us alone can be consummated this intimate and lasting conversion of the visible into an invisible no longer dependent upon being visible and tangible, as our own destiny continually grows at the same time MORE PRESENT AND INVISIBLE in us. The elegies set up this norm of existence: they assure, they celebrate this consciousness."
Part II
ReplyDelete"When one makes the mistake of holding up to the Elegies or Sonnets Catholic conceptions of death, of the beyond and of eternity, one is getting entirely away from their point of departure and preparing for oneself a more and more basic misunderstanding. The "angel" of the elegies has nothing to do with the angel of the Christian heaven (rather with the angel figures of Islam) . . . The angel of the Elegies is that creature in whom the transformation of the visible into the invisible, which we are accomplishing, appears already consummated. For the angel of the Elegies all past towers and palaces are existent, because long invisible, and the still standing towers and bridges of our existence already invisible, although (for us) still persisting physically. The angel of the Elegies is that being who vouches for the recognition in the invisible of a higher order of reality. Hence "terrible" to us, because we, its lovers and transformers, do still cling to the visible. All the worlds of the universe are plunging into the invisible as into their next deepest reality; a few stars immediately intensify and pass away in the infinite consciousness of the angels , others are dependent upon beings who slowly and laboriously transform them, in whose terrors and ecstasies they attain their next invisible realization. We are, let it be emphasized once more, in the sense of the Elegies, we are these transformers of the earth; our entire existence, the flights and plunges of our love, everything qualifies us for this task (beside which there exists, essentially, no other).”
Thanks for this, Lorenzo. I think I'll read it again. And again. 'Bees of the Invisible' - such a wonderful phrase. I think Denise Levertov talked at length about it in one of her essays? But don't ask me which one.
ReplyDeleteAmazing, isn't it, that Rilke predicts the existence of black holes!
Very helpful, Lorenzo. I have been thinking much about taking in the world, transforming it within, and releasing it back to the world. But the missing piece [for me and my digestion so far of Rilke] was the transformation from the visible to the invisible (even though I already knew this phrase "bees of the invisible" thanks to you). Going over these things, turning them, letting the light glint off them at different times of day (like Monet and his haystacks), is wonderful for deeper understanding of this man's thought.
ReplyDeleteWant to also add that I LOVE the way Rilke talks about the Earth being a (the?) transforming agent into the invisible . . . into wholeness!
ReplyDeleteFor beauty is but the beginning of terror.
ReplyDeleteWe can barely endure it
and are awed
when it declines to destroy us.
This takes me back to the concept of the split mind. What we love we also fear.
Oh, he is walking the razor's edge here, between Beauty and Terror, between life and death. My vision of the angel who would take Rilke to his breast has always been of St. Michael, the Archangel. The one who carries the sword. Thus, despite Rilke's insistence to the contrary this is a very Catholic excerpt, and it is probably best to know/remember these are the opening lines of the elegy. He is beginning to shed his religion. The final line of this stanza is "Ein jeder Engel ist schrecklich", which both of the translations of this poem that I have (by Stephen Mitchell and A. Poulin, Jr.) render as: Every Angel is terrifying. Yet this translation has omitted it--why? It seems to me that this is a crucial line, a turning line. Because immediately afterward, the voice of the poem wants to know who we can turn to in our need? Obviously not angels, but also not humans and (this is Mitchell)"already the knowing animals are aware/that we are not really at home in/our interpreted world... (Poulin calls it "our translated world")--religion. We are not yet of the earth, have not achieved what Lorenzo quoted: "our task to imprint this provisional, perishable earth so deeply, so patiently and passionately in ourselves that its reality shall arise in us again "invisibly". That, perhaps, is the mission of the elegies, and this first one is Rilke's manifesto. The lonely heart seeks to be invisible--to be at one with the earth and all its creatures; here is where its journey begins.
ReplyDeletei'm sorry to be so didactic, so polemical...the omission puzzles me, is all....
Faced with true beauty, (the angels,, God) we are certainly made quite aware of our own sinful state - our blemishes and ugliness - all our vices are magnified. Maybe that is a huge part of the terror.
ReplyDeleteChristians must shed their earthly longings - become detached - in order to enter Heaven. Rilke talks of becoming invisible. I don't see too much of a difference ...
One of the things I love about doing this blog is the great variety of ways in which we all embrace Rilke's words. Although context, historical background and information on Rilke's life and philosophy is interesting and welcome, this is most certainly not a scholarly investigation into the man and his thought. It is a sharing of his words so each of us who cares to can see how those words vibrate in us, what tuning forks they set to humming in each of us.
ReplyDeleteI very much like the image ds offers us here of St Michael, holding the sword, as an appropriate one for the angel Rilke is speaking of, reinforcing the idea that he is walking the razor's edge between beauty and terror. And please don't apologize for being didactic!
This passage is crucial because, indeed, as ds notes, it is the very beginning of the very firts elegy. And that first elegy is much longer than what is quoted here. The authors had to cut it off somewhere, but I agree that I would have preferred that they do so one line later, so as to include "every angel is terrifying", a key concept here ... however we may interpret it.
My personal feeling (more than opinion) for what the terror is here that is placed in contrast and in unison with beauty is that it is perfection. Beauty leads us to seek or to expect to find perfection, and perfection, were it to exist, would be terrifying. Fortunately or unfortunately, I do not believe that it exists, or, that it does not exist any more or any less than angels. But that is a whole 'nuther ball of wax' (from and for "the bees of the invisible").
Thank you, Lorenzo, for being so gracious.
ReplyDeleteThe greatest thing this blog does for me, personally, is to send me back into Rilke, who has always been very important to me (at one point critical)--and to "force" me to think about his poems on a far deeper level than I ever have. And I just now understood "the bees of the invisible"! (so slow...) More to chew on--silently.
thank you Lorenzo, for putting it into words or quoting the right ones here in a comment.
ReplyDeletethe bees, yes, and so anyone who understands how that can be true I would also think they could understand that seed, is also true.
I wish more people understood,