"The motiv (symbol) of angels in the poetry of R. M. Rilke". This is the title of my paperwork. I beg for suggestions for sources. And poems where angels are mentioned. Duino elegies...
Best regards, T
Rilke and angels
Hi,
there are at least 3 poems titled "Der Engel" (in Larenopfer, Neue Gedichte, and another one dedicated to M. Broglie) and countless other poems about angels in almost every poem collection Rilke ever published. Just have a look at the table of contents under "Engel" or "Der Engel". If you have a special question about Rilke's angels you can of course ask again, but it's impossible to give you all the quotations at the Forum.
Best regards
there are at least 3 poems titled "Der Engel" (in Larenopfer, Neue Gedichte, and another one dedicated to M. Broglie) and countless other poems about angels in almost every poem collection Rilke ever published. Just have a look at the table of contents under "Engel" or "Der Engel". If you have a special question about Rilke's angels you can of course ask again, but it's impossible to give you all the quotations at the Forum.
Best regards
Hi "T,"
As Marie said, there are many. Here are a few of my favorites:
From Duino Elegy 1
“Who, if I cried out, would hear me among the angels’
hierarchies? And even if one of them suddenly
pressed me against his heart, I would perish
in the embrace of his stronger existence.”
Also from Duino Elegy 1
. . . Angels (they say) are often unable to distinguish
between moving among the living or the dead.
The eternal torrent whirls all ages along with it,
through both realms forever, and their voices
are lost in its thunderous roar.
From Duino Elegy 2 which begins with the lines: “Every angel is terrifying...”
O upturned glance: new warm receding wave on the sea of the heart . . .
alas, but that is what we are. Does the infinite space we dissolve into, taste of us then?
Do the angels really reabsorb only the radiance that streamed out from themselves,
or sometimes, as if by an oversight, is there a trace of our essence in it as well?
Are we mixed in with their features even as slightly as that vague look in the faces of pregnant women? They do not notice it (how could they notice) in their swirling return to themselves.
Music (from the French poems)
Take me by the hand;
it’s so easy for you, Angel,
for you are the road
even while being immobile.
You see, I’m scared no one
here will look for me again;
I couldn’t make use of
whatever was given,
so they abandoned me.
At first the solitude
charmed me like a prelude,
but so much music wounded me.
The Angel’s View (from the French poems)
The Angel’s view: Perhaps the tips of trees
are roots that drink the skies;
and in the earth the beech’s deepest
roots look like silent summits.
For them is not the earth transparent
against a sky full as a corpse?
This ardent earth where, near the springs,
the dead’s oblivion laments.
The Birth of Mary (from The Life of the Virgin Mary)
Oh what it must have cost the angels not to
instantly break into song, the way we break into tears,
when they already knew: tonight the mother
is born of the child, the One, who will soon appear.
They silenced themselves, in mid-flight, and pointed to
where the solitary farm of Joachim lay, and felt in
themselves and in space the pure condensation,
but none of them were allowed to go down there.
The two were already beside themselves with work.
A neighbor woman, feigning shrewdness, didn’t know how.
And thoughtfully the old man hushed the mooing of a
dark cow: . . . it was never like this before.
The Guardian Angel (from The Book of Images)
You are the bird whose wings came
when I wakened in the night and called.
Only with my arms I called, because your name
is like a chasm, a thousand nights deep.
You are the shadows in which I quietly slept,
and your seed devised in me each dream, –
you are the image, but I am the frame
that makes you stand in glittering relief.
What shall I call you? Look, my lips are lame.
You are the beginning that gushes forth,
I am the slow and fearful Amen
that timidly concludes your beauty.
You have often snatched me out of dark rest
when sleep seemed like a grave to me
and like getting lost and fleeing, –
then you raised me out of heart darknesses
and tried to hoist me onto all towers
like scarlet flags and bunting.
You: who talk of miracles as of common knowledge
and of men and women as of melodies
and of roses: of events
that in your eyes blazingly take place, –
you blessed one, when will you are last name Him
from whose seventh and last day
shards of glory can still be found
on the beating of your wings...
Do I need to ask?
Annunciation to Mary (from the Life of the Virgin Mary)
Not that an angel entering her room
(remember) was the cause that startled her.
She gave no further thought to an angel’s
appearance as others notice beams of
sunlight, or that of the moon at night, play
hide and seek upon the walls and ceiling
of their chambers. And that these journeys were
quite troublesome for angels never crossed her mind.
(Oh, if we only knew how pure she was!
Did not a doe, that resting, once espied
her in the woods so lose herself in looking
that in her, without pairing, the unicorn
begot itself, the animal of light, the creature pure).
Not that the angel’s entrance was the cause
but his youthful face bending so closely
above hers, that, when looking up, her eyes
met his, so powerfully, as though the world
outside were suddenly all emptied, and
what many millions saw, pursued and carried
were crowded into them: angel and maid;
seeing, and that which is seen: eye and eye’s delight,
and nowhere else save in this chamber: see,
this is startling! And they were startled, both.
The angel then began his joyful song.
Angel of the Meridian (from New Poems)
Amidst the storm that round the great cathedral
rages like an atheist who thinks and thinks,
we suddenly are drawn with tender feelings
toward your smiling countenance among the saints.
Beguiling angel, sympathetic statue,
with mouth as fashioned from a hundred mouths:
are you aware how from your full sundial
our hours keep gliding past into oblivion
as do our days like a procession, measured
equally by your dial’s impartial balancing,
as if each hour and day had reached full ripeness.
What do you know, stone angel, of our being?
And does your blessed face increase in radiance
as you uphold the sundial out into the night?
The Angels (from The Book of Images)
They all have tired mouths,
and bright seamless souls.
And a longing (as for sin)
sometimes haunts their dream.
They are almost all alike;
in God’s gardens they keep still,
like many, many intervals
in his might and melody.
Only when they spread their wings
are they wakers of a wind:
as if God with his broad sculptor-
hands leafed through the pages
in the dark book of the beginning.
To the Angel (from Uncollected Poems)
O strong and silent angel, placed high
above the night, how strong your beacon shines
and penetrates our earthly darkness, through
which in vain we try to find our way.
Ours is: unable to discover
the exit leading out of our lives’
inner confusion, which your light outlines
like the sun’s last rays the mountains peaks.
Your delights are far above our world
and we can never comprehend your deeds:
like the purest night of spring’s equinox
you stand, separating day from day.
Who would ever venture to confess
to you the mixtures that our lives afflict?
You enjoy the glories of all greatness,
while our lives of little things consist.
When we weep, we seem only to be moved,
and when we look, we are at best awake;
our smiles reveal little of seduction,
and if they did, would anyone follow us?
Angel, is it I who cries and cries?
Yet how could this lamentation be mine?
Oh, I shout and beat my wooden clappers
and have the feeling no one ever hears.
There is also the poem, “The Angel” from New Poems which doesn’t actually have the word “angel” in the poem.
The Angel (from New Poems)
With the slightest of nods he dismisses
all bonds and duties, whatever’s constricting;
for his own heart’s tuned, through its steady pulses,
to the great circles of eternal coming.
The deep skies lie before him, full of shapes,
and each can call to him: come to me, know me.
Don’t ask his empty hands to carry
the things that weigh you down. Just this:
that they come to you at night, to test you,
and go through the house like someone rage has filled,
and grab you as if they were going to create you
and break you right out of your mold.
P.S. Let me know if you need the titles or excerpts from these poems in German rather than English.
Best regards,
Linda
As Marie said, there are many. Here are a few of my favorites:
From Duino Elegy 1
“Who, if I cried out, would hear me among the angels’
hierarchies? And even if one of them suddenly
pressed me against his heart, I would perish
in the embrace of his stronger existence.”
Also from Duino Elegy 1
. . . Angels (they say) are often unable to distinguish
between moving among the living or the dead.
The eternal torrent whirls all ages along with it,
through both realms forever, and their voices
are lost in its thunderous roar.
From Duino Elegy 2 which begins with the lines: “Every angel is terrifying...”
O upturned glance: new warm receding wave on the sea of the heart . . .
alas, but that is what we are. Does the infinite space we dissolve into, taste of us then?
Do the angels really reabsorb only the radiance that streamed out from themselves,
or sometimes, as if by an oversight, is there a trace of our essence in it as well?
Are we mixed in with their features even as slightly as that vague look in the faces of pregnant women? They do not notice it (how could they notice) in their swirling return to themselves.
Music (from the French poems)
Take me by the hand;
it’s so easy for you, Angel,
for you are the road
even while being immobile.
You see, I’m scared no one
here will look for me again;
I couldn’t make use of
whatever was given,
so they abandoned me.
At first the solitude
charmed me like a prelude,
but so much music wounded me.
The Angel’s View (from the French poems)
The Angel’s view: Perhaps the tips of trees
are roots that drink the skies;
and in the earth the beech’s deepest
roots look like silent summits.
For them is not the earth transparent
against a sky full as a corpse?
This ardent earth where, near the springs,
the dead’s oblivion laments.
The Birth of Mary (from The Life of the Virgin Mary)
Oh what it must have cost the angels not to
instantly break into song, the way we break into tears,
when they already knew: tonight the mother
is born of the child, the One, who will soon appear.
They silenced themselves, in mid-flight, and pointed to
where the solitary farm of Joachim lay, and felt in
themselves and in space the pure condensation,
but none of them were allowed to go down there.
The two were already beside themselves with work.
A neighbor woman, feigning shrewdness, didn’t know how.
And thoughtfully the old man hushed the mooing of a
dark cow: . . . it was never like this before.
The Guardian Angel (from The Book of Images)
You are the bird whose wings came
when I wakened in the night and called.
Only with my arms I called, because your name
is like a chasm, a thousand nights deep.
You are the shadows in which I quietly slept,
and your seed devised in me each dream, –
you are the image, but I am the frame
that makes you stand in glittering relief.
What shall I call you? Look, my lips are lame.
You are the beginning that gushes forth,
I am the slow and fearful Amen
that timidly concludes your beauty.
You have often snatched me out of dark rest
when sleep seemed like a grave to me
and like getting lost and fleeing, –
then you raised me out of heart darknesses
and tried to hoist me onto all towers
like scarlet flags and bunting.
You: who talk of miracles as of common knowledge
and of men and women as of melodies
and of roses: of events
that in your eyes blazingly take place, –
you blessed one, when will you are last name Him
from whose seventh and last day
shards of glory can still be found
on the beating of your wings...
Do I need to ask?
Annunciation to Mary (from the Life of the Virgin Mary)
Not that an angel entering her room
(remember) was the cause that startled her.
She gave no further thought to an angel’s
appearance as others notice beams of
sunlight, or that of the moon at night, play
hide and seek upon the walls and ceiling
of their chambers. And that these journeys were
quite troublesome for angels never crossed her mind.
(Oh, if we only knew how pure she was!
Did not a doe, that resting, once espied
her in the woods so lose herself in looking
that in her, without pairing, the unicorn
begot itself, the animal of light, the creature pure).
Not that the angel’s entrance was the cause
but his youthful face bending so closely
above hers, that, when looking up, her eyes
met his, so powerfully, as though the world
outside were suddenly all emptied, and
what many millions saw, pursued and carried
were crowded into them: angel and maid;
seeing, and that which is seen: eye and eye’s delight,
and nowhere else save in this chamber: see,
this is startling! And they were startled, both.
The angel then began his joyful song.
Angel of the Meridian (from New Poems)
Amidst the storm that round the great cathedral
rages like an atheist who thinks and thinks,
we suddenly are drawn with tender feelings
toward your smiling countenance among the saints.
Beguiling angel, sympathetic statue,
with mouth as fashioned from a hundred mouths:
are you aware how from your full sundial
our hours keep gliding past into oblivion
as do our days like a procession, measured
equally by your dial’s impartial balancing,
as if each hour and day had reached full ripeness.
What do you know, stone angel, of our being?
And does your blessed face increase in radiance
as you uphold the sundial out into the night?
The Angels (from The Book of Images)
They all have tired mouths,
and bright seamless souls.
And a longing (as for sin)
sometimes haunts their dream.
They are almost all alike;
in God’s gardens they keep still,
like many, many intervals
in his might and melody.
Only when they spread their wings
are they wakers of a wind:
as if God with his broad sculptor-
hands leafed through the pages
in the dark book of the beginning.
To the Angel (from Uncollected Poems)
O strong and silent angel, placed high
above the night, how strong your beacon shines
and penetrates our earthly darkness, through
which in vain we try to find our way.
Ours is: unable to discover
the exit leading out of our lives’
inner confusion, which your light outlines
like the sun’s last rays the mountains peaks.
Your delights are far above our world
and we can never comprehend your deeds:
like the purest night of spring’s equinox
you stand, separating day from day.
Who would ever venture to confess
to you the mixtures that our lives afflict?
You enjoy the glories of all greatness,
while our lives of little things consist.
When we weep, we seem only to be moved,
and when we look, we are at best awake;
our smiles reveal little of seduction,
and if they did, would anyone follow us?
Angel, is it I who cries and cries?
Yet how could this lamentation be mine?
Oh, I shout and beat my wooden clappers
and have the feeling no one ever hears.
There is also the poem, “The Angel” from New Poems which doesn’t actually have the word “angel” in the poem.
The Angel (from New Poems)
With the slightest of nods he dismisses
all bonds and duties, whatever’s constricting;
for his own heart’s tuned, through its steady pulses,
to the great circles of eternal coming.
The deep skies lie before him, full of shapes,
and each can call to him: come to me, know me.
Don’t ask his empty hands to carry
the things that weigh you down. Just this:
that they come to you at night, to test you,
and go through the house like someone rage has filled,
and grab you as if they were going to create you
and break you right out of your mold.
P.S. Let me know if you need the titles or excerpts from these poems in German rather than English.
Best regards,
Linda