Angels general


Rainer Maria Rilke, the Second Elegie, translated by A. S. Kline

Every Angel is terror. And yet,
ah, knowing you, I invoke you, almost deadly
birds of the soul. Where are the days of Tobias,
when one of the most radiant of you stood at the simple threshold,
disguised somewhat for the journey and already no longer
awesome (Like a youth, to the youth looking out curiously).
Let the Archangel now, the dangerous one, from behind the stars,
take a single step down and toward us: our own heart,
beating on high would beat us down. What are you?

Early successes, Creation's favourite ones,
mountain-chains, ridges reddened by dawns
of all origin - pollen of flowering godhead,
junctions of light, corridors, stairs, thrones,
spaces of being, shields of bliss, tempests
of storm-filled, delighted feeling and, suddenly, solitary
mirrors: gathering their own out-streamed beauty
back into their faces again.

For we, when we feel, evaporate: oh, we
breathe ourselves out and away: from ember to ember,
yielding us fainter fragrance. Then someone may say to us:
'Yes, you are in my blood, the room, the Spring-time
is filling with you'..... What use is that: they cannot hold us,
we vanish inside and around them. And those who are beautiful,
oh, who holds them back? Appearance, endlessly, stands up,
in their face, and goes by. Like dew from the morning grass,
what is ours rises from us, like the heat
from a dish that is warmed. O smile: where? O upward gaze:
new, warm, vanishing wave of the heart - :
oh, we are that. Does the cosmic space,
we dissolve into, taste of us then? Do the Angels
really only take back what is theirs, what has streamed out of
them, or is there sometimes, as if by an oversight, something
of our being, as well? Are we as mingled with their
features, as there is vagueness in the faces
of pregnant women? They do not see it in the swirling
return to themselves. (How should they see it?)

Lovers, if they knew how, might utter
strange things in night air. Since it seems
everything hides us. Look, trees exist; houses,
we live in, still stand. Only we
pass everything by, like an exchange of air.
And all is at one, in keeping us secret, half out of
shame perhaps, half out of inexpressible hope.

Lovers, each satisfied in the other, I ask
you about us. You grasp yourselves. Have you a sign?
Look, it happens to me, that at times my hands
become aware of each other, or that my worn face
hides itself in them. That gives me a slight
sensation. But who would dare to exist only for that?
You, though, who grow in the other's delight
until, overwhelmed, they beg:
'No more' -: you, who under your hands
grow richer like vintage years of the vine:
who sometimes vanish, because the other
has so gained the ascendancy: I ask you of us. I know
you touch so blissfully because the caress withholds,
because the place you cover so tenderly
does not disappear: because beneath it you feel
pure duration. So that you promise eternity
almost, from the embrace. And yet, when you've endured
the first terrible glances, and the yearning at windows,
and the first walk together, just once, through the garden:
Lovers, are you the same? When you raise yourselves
one to another's mouth, and hang there - sip against sip:
O, how strangely the drinker then escapes from their action.
Weren't you amazed by the caution of human gesture
on Attic steles? Weren't love and departure
laid so lightly on shoulders, they seemed to be made
of other matter than ours? Think of the hands
how they rest without weight, though there is power in the torso.
Those self-controlled ones know, through that: so much is ours, this is us, to touch our own selves so: the gods
may bear down more heavily on us. But that is the gods' affair.

If only we too could discover a pure, contained
human place, a strip of fruitful land of our own,
between river and stone! For our own heart exceeds us,
even as theirs did. And we can no longer
gaze after it into images, that soothe it, or into
godlike bodies, where it restrains itself more completely.

Psalm 103, 20

Bless the Lord, ye his angels, that excel in strength, that do his commandments, hearkening unto the voice of his word.





247 photos
Erotes on boats playing in a pond;dolphins and         
other fish.Mosaics from the Villa del Casale,Piazza    
Armerina,Sicily,Italy, 3rd-4th CE.
#01020253

Erotes on boats playing in a pond;dolphins and other fish.Mosaics from...

Erotes on boats playing in a pond;dolphins and         
other fish.Detail of 01-02-02/53.Mosaics from the      
Villa del Casale,Piazza Armerina,Sicily,Italy, 3rd-4th
#01020254

Erotes on boats playing in a pond;dolphins and other fish.Detail of 01-...

Erotes on boats playing in a pond;dolphins and         
other fish.Detail of 01-02-02/53.Mosaics from the      
Villa del Casale,Piazza Armerina,Sicily,Italy, 3rd-4th
#01020255

Erotes on boats playing in a pond;dolphins and other fish.Detail of 01-...

Erotes on boats playing in a pond;dolphins and         
other fish.Detail of 01-02-02/53.Mosaics from the      
Villa del Casale,Piazza Armerina,Sicily,Italy, 3rd-4th
#01020256

Erotes on boats playing in a pond;dolphins and other fish.Detail of 01-...

Erotes on boats playing in a pond;dolphins and         
other fish.Detail of 01-02-02/53.Mosaics from the      
Villa del Casale,Piazza Armerina,Sicily,Italy, 3rd-4th
#01020257

Erotes on boats playing in a pond;dolphins and other fish.Detail of 01-...

Erotes on boats playing in a pond;dolphins and         
other fish.Detail of 01-02-02/53.Mosaics from the      
Villa del Casale,Piazza Armerina,Sicily,Italy, 3rd-4th
#01020258

Erotes on boats playing in a pond;dolphins and other fish.Detail of 01-...

Erotes on boats playing in a pond;dolphins and         
other fish.Detail of 01-02-02/53.Mosaics from the      
Villa del Casale,Piazza Armerina,Sicily,Italy, 3rd-4th
#01020259

Erotes on boats playing in a pond;dolphins and other fish.Detail of 01-...

Coptic textile (linen and wool) showing a nilometer.
Nereids and putti are depicted on both sides of the nilometer - monuments destined to measure the water level of the river Nile.
Antinopolis, Egypt; 7th-8th century CE.
E 28990
#03010249

Coptic textile (linen and wool) showing a nilometer. Nereids and putti are depi...

Scene of a hunt
Herculanum, house of the Cerfs
Around 60-80 CE
Wallpainting; 0,40 x 0,26m
P16
#03050432

Scene of a hunt Herculanum, house of the Cerfs Around 60-80 CE Wallpainting;...

Scene of a chariotrace
Herculanum, house of the Cerfs
Around 60-80 CE
Wallpainting; 0,40 x 0,26m
P16
#03050433

Scene of a chariotrace Herculanum, house of the Cerfs Around 60-80 CE Wallpai...

Shah Jahan, the Moghul emperor of India, riding a white elephant, 18th century. The elephant's coverings and tusks are richly decorated. Angels above carry a sword, a crown and a flaming bowl. Courtiers and soldiers on horseback in the foreground. From the Padshahnamen of Tarikh-i-Shah Jahahn"                  ID: Add 20734, fol.359
#03060322

Shah Jahan, the Moghul emperor of India, riding a white elephant, 18th century....

Psalter map, around 1250. Jerusalem in the center, surrounded by a zone of winds. The Psalter map is so called because it acompanied a 13th century copy of the Book of Psalms. One of the earliest maps with Jerusalem in the centre,reflecting the medieval world view. It is the earliest surviving map to depict Biblical events, for instance Moses crossing the Red Sea (the large red expanse, top right), and the earliest to display the "monstrous" races in Africa
(the strange figures, some without heads, depicted on the right-hand edge).
ID: Add.28681
#03060352

Psalter map, around 1250. Jerusalem in the center, surrounded by a zone of winds...