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.
isn’t it time that we lovingly freed ourselves from the beloved and quiveringly endured; as the arrow endures the bowstring’s tension…
so that gathered in the snap of release it can be more than itself.
For there is no place where we can remain.
– Rainer Maria Rilke “First Duino Elegy” (trans. Stephen Mitchell)
