Every angel is terrifying. And yet, alas, I invoke you, one of the soul's lethal raptors, well aware of your nature. As in the days of Tobias, when one of you, obscuring his radiance, stood at the simple threshold, appearing ordinary rather than appalling while the curious youth peered through the window. ('Rilke's Second Elegy' by Rainer Maria Rilke, loose translation by Michael R. Burch)
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Who, if I objected, would hear me among the angelic orders?
For if the least One pressed me intimately against its breast,
I would be lost in its infinite Immensity!
Because beauty, which we mortals can barely endure, is the beginning of terror;
we stand awed when it benignly declines to annihilate us.
Every Angel is terrifying!
('Rilke’s First Elegy' by Rainer Maria Rilke, loose translation by Michael R. Burch)
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