Angels and Annihilation

. . . for I was old enough to know that a man. . . can find comfort in words coming out of his own mouth. ( Till We Have Faces, p.86)

Several times as I read “Till We Have Faces,” the beginning of Rilke’s Duino Elegies came to mind. Here is the beginning of the poem:

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 are still just able to endure,
and we are so awed because it serenely disdains to annihilate us.
Every angel is terrifying.

Rainer Maria Rilke, from the first “Duino Elegies”

Looking back at my markings in “Till We Have Faces,” I could only quickly find two times specifically when I thought of this poem. Here they are:


Till We Have Faces

(p.112):

Sister, do you think young gods have to be taught to handle us? A hasty touch from hands like theirs and we’d fall to pieces.


(p. 307):
The God comes to Judge Orual.

If Psyche had not held me by the hand I should have sunk down. She had brought me now to the very edge of the pool. The air was growing brighter and brighter about us; as if something had set it on fire. Each breath I drew let into me new terror, joy, overpowering sweetness. I was pierced through and through with arrows of it. I was being unmade.


Not that I think Lewis was quoting from Rilke, I just found the parallels interesting. The destruction of the self when in contact with god/beauty/angels. And it is terrifying to stand on the abyss and realize that we are a rather insignificant moment in time.