MASSIMO CACCIARI
TRANSLATED BY
MIGUEL E. VATTER
Cacciari, Massimo,
[Angelo necessario. English]
The necessary angel I Massimo Cacciari ; translated by Miguel E.
Vatter.
p. cm. - (SUNY series, intersections)
Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN 0-7914-2189-9 (alk. paper). - ISBN 0-7914-2190-2 (pbk. :
alk. paper)
1. Angels-Comparative studies. 2. Angel-History of doctrines.
3. Angels in art. 4. Angels in literature. I. Title. II. Series:
Intersections (Albany, N.Y.)
BIA77.C3313 1994
291.2'15-dc20 93-50119
CIP
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
CO NTE NTS
4. Zodiacs/55
5. Apokatastasis/67
Notes/95
PREFACE
TO THE ENGLISH EDITION
IX
x Translator's Note
ter of the text, trusti ng that if its spirit would survive the transla
tion, it would do so through, and not against, its letter. In this
regard, Walter Benjamin's suggestion, that "if the sentence is the
wall before the language of the original, l i teralness is the
arcade," was taken to heart.
At the risk of burdening the text, but for the sake of that elu
sive quality of "readability'', the following additions were made.
English translations were added for most foreign terms and
phrases when they fi rst appear in the text; these are not intended to
replace the original but merely serve as pointers for the reader
unfamil iar with these languages . Notes were appended to explicate
word-play and hidden etymological references. Quotations were
rendered by standard English translations wherever possible,
othe rwise the translations were made from the ones found in the
I t a l i a n or ig in a l The English editions of texts referred to in the
.
XI
1
SINCE
THE
DAYS
OF
TOBIAS
become a "monaJ." Till' li gt1 rl' of t h e A n g e l i s the sign that "we are
surrounded by d iv i n e presence anJ from i t we Jerive the full ness of
our being."1 ' The deve l opm e n t anJ questi o n i ng of the fundamental
"krisis" between knowl eJge anJ theorein (contemplation) consti
tutes the most proper object of angelology: its annunciation does
not concern the becoming visible of the invisible, the translating
betraying of the invisible in and for the visually perceptible, but the
possibil ity for human beings to correspond to the i nvisible as such,
to that Invisible which the Angel safeguards precisely in the instant
in which it is communicated through its forms. The paradoxical
character of this relation haunts and dominates angelology-this
book follows its traces. 1�
The Angel transforms the gaze itself into a gaze of the no
where. To the mundus i maginal is figured by the Angel there must
correspond the gaze of an i magi natio (a vision) . The mysteries of
the Angel can be i ntuited sofa mente (only by the mind) . The pro
liferation of angelic hypostases in the G nostic and Christian
Gnostic traditions, j ust l i ke in the developments of Neoplatonism
and i n Islam, certainly is not designed to satisfy a barbaric horror
vacui, just as it does not satisfy the need to close up the abyss
between human and divine. An i nterpretation of angelology that
followed similar criteria would reduce it to demonology-an
essential distinction to which we will return at length later. The
Angel , with its manifold connotations (one thinks of Maimonides's
synthesis of the meanings of the term) /0 manifests both the incon
ceivable richness of the Invisible, the i nfi nite names of the No
where and incites the extraordi nary vis (power) of i magination
dwelling in man. Angel , says Maimonides, is the name of the i mag
i native faculty once it dialogues actu (actively) with the Cherub.
The space of angelic Names (Angels or messengers of the Logos,
according to Philo, " ideas" of the living God who cannot remain
circumscribed within the identity of being with itsel fF1 is, indeed,
structured according to the image of a ladder or Axis, which tra
verses the threshold between terrestrial world and spiritual reali
ties. But this i mage is not to be interpreted in a "physical" sense, as
if it were a questi on of fi ll ing, by degrees, some definite container.
Here the Invisible ab-solves i tse l f fro m its conceal ment.22 But Truth
cannot show itself naked to I he wor l J as Gabriel, the great mes
-
fi ed, bu t with thl' i11rn·.1:-,1· 111 lnw till' sel'k i ng of tile d iscovered One
should increase") (St. i\11��11st inl', Fnurralio in l'su/mum 104,3)."'
The study of Sc r i p t u rl' aml the ascent through i ts meani ngs
can conclude in the grace of the e k-stasis represented by the ana
gogic-angelic fl ight. The wings of the Ange l pertain to contempla
tion.2" But not even the wings of angelic inte l l i gence, the quickest
of al l , attain to the identification with the Point of their desire.
These wings testify to a spiritual freedom from "service" to the let
ter and the Law, rather than to the perfect enjoyment of the End.
This is also the meaning of the symbol in Dante: the "feathers" free
one from the "sirens": "but before the eyes of the full-fledged I i n
vain is n e t spread or arrow shot" (Purgatorio, XXXI, 43-63) .3 0 I f
man can avoid turning "le penne in giuso" ("the wings down
wards"), then, l ike the Angel , he will be able to move "freely" and,
by vi rtue of the strength of his attentiveness, be immediately pres
ent at the point to which he is spiritually directed; like the Angel ,
he will fi nally be able t o d o whatever pleases h i m : "Take henceforth
your pleasure for your guide" (Purgatorio, XXVI I, 13 1 ) . ll
What makes the cosmos into a uni-verse is not, therefore, a
process of identification, but the analogical-symbolic religio that
bi nds its elements, the musical harmony that i nforms its struc
ture, its being "like numerous chorists associated in one common
dance" (Plotinus, Enneads, IV, 4, 33 ) . The expression of the "solar
eye" has to be understood in this way: the solar eye can attain to the
contemplation of the Sun; it is not the Sun. Although distant, the
eye and the Sun see each other. The "physical" distance is elimi
nated, but not the spiritual difference internalized i n the move
ment of every entity. The attending* to the vision of the Invisible
that informs the whole universe prevents any hiatus, but also any
identity, between the spiritual and the corporeal. This attending
l i nks, level by level and note by note, through the angelic circles
and along the Tree of Sefiroth, the terrestrial world to the Face of
God-but this Face is only the highest Angel, the Teacher of
Abraham, the Angelus faciei (Angel of the Face) of the Book of
Jubilees ,:e the Metatron of the Hekhaloth , of the heavenly Palaces.33
The impossibility of attai ning the Name through the Names
or, as in Nicholas of Cusa, the possibil ity of attaining the Name only
inattingibil iter ( unattainahly) --is, for Corbi n, the dominant
theme of Islamic angelol ogy. 11 In this respect, this angelology
'/he Necess11 r11 1 \11qe/
of GoJ .. . l o l h t· j111l i•.11H·11h ol l';1rlh ;111d l w l l '") (/JI' ;l/11sirn. VI. 17;
trans. It ·1�1liafnro. l•';it l ins ol lhl' C h urd1. vo l . .'1. IW;ishington,
D.C.: 194 7]); Angels ;ire l hl' 11;i111l's of t ill'Sl' rllyl I 1111s; evny A n g e l is
number of the Un um J\bscomli t urn ( 11iddt·n (hit·) I h a t remai ns, in
the Plotinian sense , be yo nd eve ry Je l e rmi 1 1 a t i o 1 1 . a n J therefore
beyond the determi nation of the One i t se l f. In Da nte this musical
vision undergoes a decisive re-e l abora t i on: the harmony of the
spheres becomes a polyphonic d i scors co n corJ ia (discordant har
mony ) . "Paradise is one gigantic c oncert of instrumental and vocal
polyphony in which participate stars , angelic choirs and blessed
spi rits, and which is divided sti ll more sumptuously into partial
choirs, just like a Sacred Symphony of Gabrieli and of Sch utz can
be at times divided i nto choirs." 1!1 One could say that the analogi
cal -symbolic intuition of the un iverse, the angelological dimen
sion of being (as Corbin cal ls it) , and polyphonic music constitute
the names of a single Principle. At the summit of the scale of musi
cal values l i es not the numerus sonorus ( resounding number) of
the Spheres, in the perfect repetitiveness, in the eternal return of
its circles, but the sympathy of diverse elements intertwined in the
rhythm of a heavenly l iturgy. The Divine Comedy represents the
highest point, in the Western Christian tradition, of such a concept
of metaphysically oriented music.4 0 This is evident even where a
coincidence between angelic notes and the numerus sonorus of the
universe is seemingly establ ished. When the Angels intone the
Psal m of hope for Dante, who is petrified in front of the "pietade
acerba" ("stern pity") of Beatrice, they are i ndeed designated as
"those who ever sing I in harmony with the eternal spheres"
(Purgatorio, XXX, 92-93 ) , but the notes that they actually follow,
their sign, their own trace, appear as "dolci tempre" ("sweet notes")
(ibid., 94) . 11 Their sweetly modulated words are words of hope and
mercy, called upon to transform into "spirit and water" "the ice
that was bound tight around my heart" (ibid., 97-98). Angelic
music accomplishes the miracle of this spiritual transformation of
the numerus sonorus of the Sph e res, of the astral necessity "de Ii
etterni giri" ("of the eternal s p h e res" ) . One should note here that it
is a question of transforma tion , not of negation-for the "dolci
tempre" of angelic liturgy are i11 £Halo_que with the numerus
sonorus of those "etterni giri , " ;md p re c i s e l y from such dialogue is
born the polyphony of the co m posit ion. 1'
8
me n " (First Ele_q_tf, 8-10, my emphasis) .45 The choirs of Angels are
s t i l l bea u t i fu l , but we can admire them only because they calmly,
"gl' lasse n," Jo not deign to destroy us. Essentially they have
stopped re-qarding us:1" if they would do so again, if thei r attention
w< 1u I d stri ke us a ga i n , our Dasein would expire l ike mist before the
l i g h t of t he i r beauty.
A l i g h t that of necessity is terrible because it reflects the for
midable Lumen ( Light) of the Principle. "Illuminans tu mirabiliter
a montibus aeternis" ("Glorious are thou, more maj estic than the
everlasting mountains") ( Psal m 76:4 ) : with the letters of na 'or
(Lumen) one forms nora, which means terrible, terror: "tu terri
bilis es; et quis resistet tibi?" ("But thou, terrible art thou ! Who can
stand before thee?") (Psalm 76:7) . Perhaps nobody, before Ril ke,
has heard this word that i nextricably joins l ight and terror with
more profound anguish than Turner in his The Angel Standing in
the Sun of 1846 (clearly i nspi red by Revelation 1 9: 1 7) . With flam
ing sword, the C herub casts away from its vortex of lights the lar
vae of mortals; its eyes are turned toward some point up there that
seemingly escapes it and its mouth is open in a cry or gri mace of
pain. Even to the Angel its own l ight sounds terrible.
What role of mediation wi l l the Angel sti ll play? Can its Land
of-no-where sti ll be defined as the place of the encounter, of the
reflection unto us of "the divi ne law itself'? In the Duino Elegies
the glory of the Angel, the Herrl ichkeit of its order, is nothing but
the "begi nning of Terror": herrlich (glorious) and schrecklich (ter
rifying) here form one semantic fami ly.47 The Angels of Rilke are as
'di ft 1· I I 11· I t,1\", I Ji 'l't dlt.t'.> �)
beautiful as lilt· orw:, 111.il ,qlp1·.i1011 ll1l' roy;tl l>oors, hul l h ey turn
to the faithful rnilv lo p1t·vt·1il llll'ir e11lra11rl'. Their own tremen
dous pre s e n c e is a s1g11 ol d i sla n cl' of separalion. /\ metaphysical
,
fracture i n te rve nes i11 I ill' an gl'l olo gi c a l trauilion. l nsleau of being
the guardians of a lhresholu, here A n ge l s appear to be unsurpass
able demons of the Lim it. The tradition that hau always imagined
them as guides, i nterpreters, clarifiers1" undergoes in the Duino
Elegies a radical questioni ng. The image of the Angel is not
reduced to a fable nor does its function cease because-as in the
rabbinical orthodoxy-one fears the idolatrous aspects of the cult
or because-as in the great syntheses of Byzantine theology i n
Palamas and Cabasilus-it i s deemed unnecessary after the
Incarnation of the Verbum,4'' but because its figure has been con
centrated and absolutized in the terrible figure of the l imit which,
unsurpassable, affli cts every human Dasein.
From this l i mit (as if the Angel were always only to say this
one word, abstracted from all others: "only the Son has known the
Father") rises the i nvocation to the Angel . Though "knowing what
you are"-in other words, though recognizing the separation that
has come about, the already consummated Trennung-"I i nvoke
you" (Second Elegy, 1-3 ) . The place of the Angel has become this
very i nvocation or, better, the anguish that its unsatisfiabi lity occa
sions. "Are we not strange creatures to let ourselves go and to be
i nduced to place our earli est affections where they remain hope
l ess?" (Rilke, Puppen ) ."' It is with the Angel as it is with the doll
soul, the Puppenseele: when wi ll we ever be able to say that it is
truly present? Of you, soul of the doll , "one could never say exactly
where you really were" (ibid., p. 48, English trans. ) .
The "days o f Tobias", when "one o f the shining-most" (Second
Elegy, 3-4), Raphael , inhabitant of the C ivitas that has never
known any "pilgrimage" (St. Augustine, De civitate Dei, XI, 9 ) ,
closest t o the homo in statu viatoris ( man i n the condition of
earthly traveler) , as a youth we n t lo the youth to guide and heal
them-those days are gone foreve r.:" T h e question posed to Angels,
"Who are you?" is sti l l answe red by Hi l ke with tones recovered from
the Celestial Hierarchies ("dawn rl'd ridges of all creation"),5� only
to remind us immediately (wil Ii a s violent a leap as the one that
divides, i n Holderlin's ,'-,'chicksa/slied. t he "soft paths" of "happy
genii" from the fading a n d blli111� of "affl icled mortals") of the expi-
10 The Necessary, l11ye/
into our say;dik, 11110 llw l1111l' ol our s;1yahk l lti11gs. Bui, invoking
it, we show a11d l l'il. l'r.ll'drra vnhum (proclaim the wo rd )' '''-but
to the An g e l . 111 sayi11g lo l he Angel, the word does not flow to the
exterior, but interiorizes il self in the i mage , in the I mago, where
the time of s ucc ess io n does not penetrate .'''; "That word is spoken
with i n the mi nd. 'Pronounce it! ' : that is, become aware of what is
in you" (Meister Eckhart, Praedica verbum ) ."7 There is a word that
one speaks, the word that comes out of us and becomes rigid in
representation, becomes a property of what it designates, which is
deposited in the designatum (signified ) . But there is also a word
that remains inside whoever pronounces it, like the origi nary
i mages of creatures remain inside the Father, who is also Logos
(Meister Eckhart, Ave, gratia plena ) ."8 The Ril kean Er-innerung* of
this mystical "movement" is i ndubitable: saying to the Angel recol
lects precisely this pronunciation of the word-we must speak, we
must participate in the action of the Verbum and correspond to it,
but we return into ourselves through this very saying. To say in
such a way so as to invert the sense of the ex-pression and trans
form it into the recollection of what is inmost in it, "i nto which
time has never penetrated and into which no i mage has ever cast
its reflection" (Meister Eckhart, Praedica verbum ) ."" That is, to say
in such a way that the ex-pression is praise of the i nvisible, without
expecting anything from it, without provoking anything i n it. Such
saying re-edifies in the heart, invisibly, the thing. The angel ic Land
of no-where is not if not in us, innerl ich. The angelological dimen
sion of being withdraws into the heart of the creature. Meister
Eckhart already praises the humil ity in the nature of the Angel
but here its humility must reach deeper in order to entrust itself to
the human word, to the invisible that this word can safeguard.
Extreme metamorphosis of the Ange l , but not its simple disappear
ance.
The end of the order of th e mundus imaginalis does not mean
the end of all encounters with t he Angel-it means that every
encounter will now have to begin by pu t ti ng ourselves at risk. In
the word that i mplores there resounds the wai t for what saves, for a
kind of salvation that comes from lwvoml the misery of the crea
ture. In the invocation, instead. !Ill' s;1111e voice that invokes also
repels: "like an outstretched I arm is my cal l" (Seventh Elegy,
88-89) . The invocation wres//1·s wil lt l ite Angel. Invocation is that
12 The Necessary,. IJ1yel
fugitive, t h\' l':>ip11.d 11111 110111 "1·11tlH'r tll l'llllH"r." lw �;11d ;q1;1rt from
this invoratioit 1qlld�.11>11 Ill llll' t\11gL·I. Till' i111l1;1lllr hn111eneul
Ange l, Lill' ,'i'hoylili t\111:!'1 Ill t\ vi ce n m an d S11hr;1w;mli dol'.S not
guide the fugiti vl' lll'r;111Sl' the figure of lhl' f11��itive is 11 1 e laphysi
cally dist inguishe d fro111 l11l'. one of the pi l g ri11 1 ; ii is t h e other of
Tobias. B ut what the fu gi tiv e has to say is still always an attempt at
the unsayable, a testing of all that is saya h l e . Therdore the danger
of the Angel never leaves the fugitive. The Angd in itself no longer
manifests itself, but its i mage must irrupt into Lhe order of our try
ing-to-say as an ineluctable problem. Paradoxical, antinomical
angelology, where fragments or sparks of the accompl ished
human-divi ne hierarchies, of their "modest" harmonies by now
flash l i ke signs of mourni ng, as if, like the rest of things, they asked
us j ust to be remembered (ri-cor-dati). As if the Angel , now,
implores us who i nvoke it.
The Angel 's kenosis (emptying out) had already begun in Das
Buch der Bilder.61 Its name "is like an abyss, a thousand nights
deep," to whom I can only stretch out my arms, for "how can I cal l
you?" (Der Schutzengel) . Terrible and so very high-but already
"fallen" in as much as this name is unpronounceable. The Angel is
the beginning "which pours itself greatly I I am the slow and fearful
Amen"-but how can this Amen, this miserable "frame, " compare
with the Angels, these "intervals" in the melody of the Lord's gar
den (Die Engel) ? The same theme of distance and nostalgia also
appears in the splendid Verkiindigung, i n the words that the Angel
addresses to Mary; but the difference that separates the two figures
is now comprehended in another, i nfinitely more vast: the differ
ence that averts both from Cod, "wir sind ihm all weit" ("we are all
far from him") . The Angel is weary; the way was so long, the vertigo
of the fall so violent that it has forgotten what it had to announce,
what it had heard up there, by the Throne of gold and jewels. Now it
stands immense i n the little house, unable to praedicare verbum.
Mary is lonelier than ever, she hardly notices the presence of the
one who should have greeted her with these words: "the Lord is
with you." The Angel is the begi nning, the origin, the day; it has
seen and heard-but now it depends on the "slow and fearful
Amen." The Angel is ungraspable and unsayable l i ke the first
i nstant of the day or the fi rst drop of dew ("ich bin der Tau")-but
now its destiny lies with the "plant." That begi nning, that i nstant
14
now have to pass through its "door." The Angel with i m mense
wi ngs and great robes is but a wind. She meditates ("du Sinnende")
on the unsayable annunciation that this wind carries; her soul tries
to l isten and welcome it. In this way she is transformed into the
plant of the spiritus that flashed for one instant, barely remember
ing itself, confused by the space it had traversed, i n her miserable
home or i n her dream.
The figure of the Angel lasts only the time of this l istenin g , in
the meditation and invocation that the listening concentrates in
itself. And would not our struggle with the Angel , which is shown,
precisely, in the form of the invoking meditation, then be its "salva
tion"? The Angel that comes i n the night "to test you by struggling
with you" (/Jer Engel, in Neue Gedichte [ E ngl ish translation,
l�a i ne r M ar i a H i l ke, New Poems, trans. J . B. Leishman (New York:
I logarth Press, 1964)]) undoubtedly wants to seize you and
"wrench you fro m you r retai ning mould," as if it had created you;
ht 1 I 11 tL' A n g e l i lse lf arrives thirsty from the extreme distance of its
110 wh er e Its gaze seems dry,04 and only from our features can it
.
A NGEL
AN D
DEMO N
I :l
16
tence means, for the Angel , to reflect our questions and share our
extreme distance from that no-where of the full answer, to which
the Angel yet belongs. Our "flavor" makes the Angel forgetful.
Drinking the "clear wine" of our traits, it forgets the rope that held
it fixed to the Principle. The measure of its circles, the order and
taxis of its whirlwind become a labyrinth. The play of mirrors
between the divine and the terrestrial , which the Angel's logos
seemed to represent in harmonious correspondences, refracts i nto
sudden dissonances. Voids, accidents, and the unforseen irrupt
i nto it. Down here the music of the Angel , that of the struggle i n
which w e invoke i t , is composed o f such dissonances. Still an
Ange l, the nostalgia for the Point that transcends every name per
sists in its root; although it sti l l invites us on the journey to this
no-whe re, it can no longer tell us about its stages or anticipate any
of its moments. Its science (symbolized by the myriads of eyes in its
Cl'lcsl ial body�) has been clouded by reflecting on the mirror of our
ig110rance or d ue to our being always turned backward, forced to
look behind our backs, withdrawn in the gesture of a perennial
farewell (Hi_qhth Elegy, 70-75). The Angel, too, has forgotten to
look into the Open, "ins Freie." Although it was this look that
answered our question and, in the same instant, allowed for the
Angel 's return i nto itself, to the perfect order of the Caelum Caeli.
Forgetful, the Angel can only remain down here. The human invo
cation-rejection represents for the Angel an unsurpassable scan
dal. One and the same adventure engulfs the two figures-and at
the end, in spite of itself, the Angel falls in love with the struggle to
which it was invoked.
But the possibility of this catastrophe-that the Angel be
seduced i nstead of being the one who i nduces-runs like a contin
uous bass, dark and menacing, along the whole itinerary of
angelology. From its first appearance, man represents a crossroad
for the Angel: the originary order of the heavenly court is from the
start overwhelmed by it. The first Angel to be created (even before
Micheal , ut Deus), head of the twelve Angels defenders of the
Throne, cannot submit-being made of fi re-to the adoration of
the clot of clay and matter kneaded by the Lord.1 This decision, this
"cursed pride" lacerates forever the preceding harmony. It is the
irreversible division of the angelic choir that appears tragic and not
so much the destiny of that particular prince and of its following.
\I" '.1 ·I .1111 I I )1 ·1111111 17
In 8ereshit /1'11/i/111/i. \'Il l . '.1 (l•: 1 11�l i s l i lra 1 1s., .I. Nl'11:; 1 1 n. (,'<'11esis
Rabbah l/\lb1 1 L 1 : Sll111l.11:. l 'n·ss, l�IH:ll. p.7�1), 1 1 1 1' /\1 11�l' l s ; 1 rl' sti l l
discussing t h e 1 1 1; llln, 11 1 1 cnL 1i11 bl'IWL'l' l l l lH· 1111·1cv 1 ' 1 ; 1 1 i n vi t es to
the creation of 1 1 1 a 1 1 ; 1 1 1 d l l iL· l ru t h t h a t d i ss11a d 1 · s l ro 1 1 1 d o i n g so,
when the Lord decidl's ( a rchl'lype of the Sowrl' i 1:1 1 who d e c i des on
the state of emergency ! ) : "Whal good a r e yo u d o i 1 1 g I w i t h your con
tentions ] ? Man has al ready been made!" T h i s d l' 1 1 1 o n s t rates that no
Angel could have been real ly convi nced o f the good ness of such a
creation. Some are obedient to the bru t e fa c t of the divine decision,
others rebel against it. The rebellion takes t h e form of a revenge for
the tear in the heavenly network (and, al bottom, in the relation
ship between the Ange l and its ineffable Principle) provoked by the
creation of man. Just as this network was "seduced" from its per
fect circular orbit around the Throne, so now the fallen Angel will
try with every means to seduce humankind from all works of good
ness and peace: "I will seduce all men except Your faithful servants"
(Koran , XXXVIII, 82-83 [English trans. , N. J. Dawood (New York:
Penguin Books, I956) ] ) , "I will waylay Your servants as they walk
on Your straight path, and spring upon them from the front and
from the rear, from their right and from their left" (ibid., VII ,
1 6- 1 7 ) . The seductions performed by the Islamic Iblis,4 the talmu
dic Samael , Angel of death and chief of the Satanim, are the reflec
tion and supplicium ( torture) of the scandal that man represented
for the entire Heavenly court.
Even the image of the most faithful Angel bears evident traces
of its painful doubt with respect to the novitas (novelty) of man5
(authentic decision of creation!); even the messenger Angel is not
exempt from the doubt. In the presence of its Majesty, having
finally left at sunset the earth entrusted to its care, the Angel cries:
"We have come from those who have called on thy name, whom the
difficulties of the world have made miserable; for every hour they
devise many opportunities, not making one pure prayer, not even
with the whole heart, all the time they l ive; why therefore must we
be present with men who are sinners?" ("The Apocalypse of Pau l , "
m y emphasis) .6 The very presence o f man torments the Angel, both
the messenger and guardian Angel (including the Archangel that
with profound sympathy recounts to the King the unspeakable suf
fering of humans, the violence that they undergo and perform
"because of You, the Only One they worship i n every thing that
18 The Necessary Angel
appears. Lastly, the candlelight still may be cal led the "weak l ight
of t h e Angel. " Just as in Klee's figures, every angelic "substance"
dissolves-but the ironic dissolution does not coincide at all with
the negation of the Ange l . O n the contrary, the Angel is precisely
the message of this dissolution; it announces the dissolution of its
• ) r:
. \1 1 / '. I I ' I I It I 1 1 , ' 1 1 1 4 1 1 1 �.>
1 1 1 1 1 l l w.
l i; 1 v 1 1 1 i � I H · 1 · 1 1 ""' , · , l l 1 < • 1 1i 1. l 1 1 11 1 l v 1 11 1n · :
l i a v i 1 1 p, I H T 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 · 01 1 1 ·1 11 //i ca 1 1 i i l' Vn hl' L l l l lT l ku ?
( Nin/Ii 1':t1 ·.c1,11 . 1 11 I ii). ''
Its hymn, last i ng o n l y I m a n i 1 1 s l a 11 L , i s n o l d i s - c u rsiv e, it does not
place sound afte r sound an d word after word on the arrow-line of
i rreversible consumption . The New Angel is an infant: it does not
demand, or ask, or question. It is schuldlos (innocent) . At times it
seems "content" with its i mpotence in being a means, a cause, an
end. It is "simple" l i ke the sound of hand-be lls (Schellen-Engel,
drawing of 1 939). It is the youngest of the musician Angels:20 the
harmony of the spheres is not its burden; and yet its song is no less
clear, its mania no less intense. The New Angel lives in the ki nder
garten (Engel im Kindergarten, of 1 93 9 ) : here our i nvocation
reaches it; here it recognizes what we praise in it; here we wrestle
with it. As if the fragi lity of infancy final ly transfigures itself into
the strength to resist al l dis-coursing. This infancy of the Angel
produces lucida interval/a (cl ear intervals ) : holes, ruptures, tears
in the apparent continuum of Time-Kronos. In this sense, the
"bi rth of the Savior," archetype of infancy, al ready represented the
victory over Heimarmene (fate ) , over the stars and astrology
(Clement of Alexandria, Excerpta ex Theodoto, 74-78) .
The New Angel is the last figure (risked with the most diffi
cult-desperate irony) of the great angelological theme, of Neopla
tonic ancestry, opposing the angelic Nous to Moira (fate ) , mistress
of demons. 26 This contrast marks the whole adventure of the Angel :
its vicissitudes coincide with the repetition, in different forms, of
the attempt to disentangle itself from the affinity with the demon,
and remove the terrible danger posed by the appearance of a com
mon origin. And yet was not the fi gure of the daimon developi ng,
in the G reco-Roman world, toward the function of metaxy, of medi
ation and intercession?21 In P l u tarch ( i n De Genia Socratis and
elsewhere) the daimon can co m e l o the aid of man.28 Its discourse
without voice (De Genia Socrah'i , !188e; English trans. P. De Lacy,
On the Sign of Socrates, in J>/u/arch :\· Mo ra lia , vol. 7; [ Cambridge,
Mass:: Harvard Universi ty PrL"ss. 19!19 D i s only perceptible by
mi nds that are pure and frl't' fro 1 1 1 p;1 s s i ons: "we define these men
sacred and demonic" (59: � f) . Tl i c d l' 1 l 10 1 1 's des i re to save the souls of
28 '/'he Necessar.IJ 1ln_qc/
those who have "in the course of countless births bravely and res
olutely sustained a long series of struggles" (593f) certainly
belongs neither to the Homeric daimon nor to that of Hesiod. This
is a development of soteriological themes pertaining to Pytha
gorean and Platonic demonology.29 Even the simple mediating
function of the daimon cannot be attested to prior to these devel
opments.:m In Homer the term daimon seems to be distinguished
from that of theos, "in that it defines an indistinct divine agent
rather than a divinity i ndividuated in cult and myth";:n under theos
is thought the god's personality as defined by cult and mythology,
under daimon, instead, is thought its effect, its power: the numen
(will) of the god. In Hesiod the daimon is clearly distinguished
from the gods, lords of O lympus, and defines a species of beings
unknown to Homer: the souls of the first race of men who l ived
happi ly under Kronos, "of strong arms and legs, free from all evi ls,
t h ey passed their lives in feasts, and died as if tricked by sleep," and
n ow "are on earth" as guardians of the works of mortals ( Hesiod,
The Works and Days, 1 1 3; trans. Richmond Lattimore [Ann Arbor:
University of Michigan Press, 1 959 ] ) . But not even in Hesiod do the
dai mons assume a role of mediation or intercession: the souls of
those who died in the Golden Age guard and preserve the works of
humans as ministers of cosmic Dike Uustice ) . They act wisely (one
ought to recall the Platonic etymology i n the Cratylus that makes
explicit reference to this passage in Hesiod) respectful of the metra
(proportions) of Dike.
The daimon, for Plato, is "something between god and mor
tal" (Symposium , 202e; trans. Michael Joyce [Princeton, N.J . :
Pri nceton University Press, 1 985] )-and precisely Diotima's dis
course sketches out for it a possible mediating function. It has the
power to "interpret and convey messages to the gods from men and
to men from the gods, prayers and sacrifices from the one, and
commands and rewards from the other" (202e). The background
remains the mythical one of a space ful l of demons, the animated
Whole; but detached from it there is a definite category of bei ngs
characterized by a particular and irreplaceable mediating function
(this will also be the case in Plotinus, Enneads, III, 5 ) . The god
never communicates directly with man but only through the
demonic (from which derive divinations and sacrifices, as well as
spells and prophecies) . For men in this age, once the progeny of the
\ I I J '. I I . 1 1 1 1 I I " · 1 1 1 1 11 1
pie kenosis. If the Angels are no l onger solidly fixed to their heav
enly places, if the "Waltzes of Heaven" no longer hold them, the
reason is that they have been able to break every "religio" with
Necessity. Thei r clipped wings41 are the price paid for the freedom
of their i nstant from the power of the demon, their freedom from
the continuous dis-course of words and presences. Now we have to
look for them everywhere and nowhere; no " method" or magic
knows how to evoke and grasp them.42 They preserve what is
ungraspable by presence and discourse: this is the content of the
letter that "an angel brought down from heaven" ("The Good
Ange l " ) .
T h e letter i s del ivered t o t h e poet, t o whom G o d grants "la
souffrance I Comme un divi n remede" ("suffering I As the only
divine remedy") ( Baudelaire, Benediction . English trans., The
Blessing, in Flowers ofEvil) , and the nobil ity of sorrow "ou ne mor
d ro n t jamais la terre et les enfers" ("on which neither earth nor
I l e l l can lay its fangs" ) . An invisible Angel protects the poet in this
work of transfiguration and metamorphosis of pain into the fra
grance of ambrosia and nectar, into laetitia U oy), into the pure
light of which mortal eyes "ne sont que des miroirs obscurcis et
plai ntifs" ("are no more than dimmed and mortal mirrors"). Thus
the Angel in Mort des Amants revives, "fidele et joyeux" ("faithful
and joyful"), the tarnished mirrors and dead flames; it commands
the withered heart to love the Beautiful (Que diras-tu ce soir, pau
vre dme solitaire ["What shall you say tonight, poor soul so full of
care" ] ) ; it reawakens the tormented ideal, the phantasm of the
shining soul, equal to the i mmortal sun (L'aube spiritueffe) . The
metaphysical detachment of Reversibilite has to be understood as
the origin of this questioning, of this search; it has value not as a
quieted result, but as the first moment of an uncertain and difficult
phifia (friendship) in which the image of the Angel corresponds to
the poet's gaze into the invisible.43 The detachment is the mutual
refl ection between the Angel that is by now a-topos (without place)
and "la honte, Jes remords, Jes sanglots, Jes ennuis" ("the shame
and remorses, sobs and cares") that oppress the heart of man-it is
the mirror that divides and at the same time gives way. This is why
the Angel-and above all the New Angel-masters the art of glass
making. The mi rror returns to us without pity the image of our
transience (" look into a mirror for all your life and you will see
,\ 1 1 1 '.• · I . 1 1 1 1 I I "' 1 1 11 1 1 1
Death a l wor k . i s I H ' l ' '., 1 1 1 . 1 i >. l . 1ss I H' l' l 1 1 w " s; 1ys 1 l il' g L 1 ss l l la k n Angel
Heurteb i se to ( l r p l H · 1 1 s ) . " l i 1 1 t it i s a l w;1ys ; i l so ;1 s i g 1 1 . w h i c h con st i
tutes i tse l f fo r w h a t i s ( > I l i n ( 1 10 1 I h i s or I h a t c 1 1 t i t y, h u t t h e Other
in general, that is, w h a t l i es " be h i nd" the m i rro r ) . The t ransi ence of
the image reflected in the m i rro r is m e taphys i ca l ly separated and,
at the same time, inextricably conne cted to the permanence of this
Other. Death comes and goes through mi rrors, which are the
"craft" of the Angel . Death is what permanently gives itself in the
image, the unalterable presupposition of everything that the mir
ror reflects. And the New Angel reflects itself with us in this mirror,
the last of the heavenly mirrors, the only one it was abl e to bring
down from Heaven after it was hurled into our soul.
The New Angel resembles a new Narcissus.10 Like the Ancient
Flower, it comes with the mirror. While the great Angels of old
time speculated on the "eternal value," the New Angel loves the
infinite names of the risked, doubtful, incomplete and ephemeral
image reflected in the mirror of Heurtebise. "A kind of angel was
seated upon the rim of a wel l . He looked for his reflection and
found that he was a Man, and in tears . . . prey to an i nfinite sorrow"
( P. Valery, The Angel) .46 The figures of mi rrors, in the "solid and
dead water of crystal, " in fact seem "i ncredibly alien and distant."47
But, running into their phantasm, the Angel is forced to return to
the state of the hermetic Anthropos-or, rather, reflecting and
meditating on itself in the mirror of water, it becomes Anthropos.
But now it could no longer fall in Jove with th is image. The image
makes it despair: how did it happen that from being perfect knowl
edge, reflection of the Light, and Flower of the soul, the Angel
could fall down to this "station" that stands at the origin of al l
human misery? Unlike man , the Ange l cannot even hope for an
answer, because all questioning is contradictory with respect to its
nature. Its essence cou ld never give a reason for the pain it now has
to suffer. "Is there then som e t h i n g othe r than light?" Slowly, it is
forced to discover this by l oo k i ng us over, reflecting its image in us
or, better, reflecting i tse l f w i t h us in one source. The Angel recog
nizes that other thi ngs e x i s t apart from l i ght, no longer recogniz
ing its own image in th i s m i rro r. l i p t h e re, its mi rrors were not
traversed by Death . Faced w i t 11 a 1 1 i 1 1 1age of itself that it cannot say,
the Angel becomes i n fa n t . Ti l l' 1 1 1 1 s u r p;1ssa b l e di mension of man's
in-fancy48 attracts and co1 1 fo 1 1 1 1ds i i . l i ke the current does with
:rn The Ncccssa ry / l11yc/
Only the Angel , free from demonic destiny, poses the problem
of representation. Demonic destiny is "der Schuldzusammenhang
des Lebendigen" (W. Benjamin, Schicksal und Charakter) , 1 the
guilt context of the living. For the demon, the constitution of the
living is guilty: it refers back to an originary guilt that condemned
to the first incarnation and set in motion the rota generationis
( cycle of rebirths) . Life itself is the penalty. The daimon nails life to
the laws of destiny, which have nothing in common with those of
justice.� The dimension of the dai mon thus absorbs that of charac
ter: character "abdicates itself in favor of the guilty life.":i But, at
bottom, this also occurs in Plato: having chosen its own life, the
soul is constrained in it by the dai mon. Ethos becomes a demon for
man, which he cannot escape except through a new death and a
new birth.
Benjamin intends to break the chain that connects the con
cept of character to that of desti ny. Knowledge has always i nterwo
ven a tight net in which these two concepts become indis
tinguishable wefts-and because of which every character can be
judged in light of an immutab le Law, according to Right. Character
becomes a daimon subject to desti ny. In this context a problem of
representation cannot exist because the character is the daimon
and the daimon is the powe r of that de st i ny In the texture that ties
.
these terms, no questi ons or holes a re left open. And yet, for
Benjamin, tragedy has a l ready cu l through the texture.
"Heimlich," secretly, paga n 1 rn n h e re t r i es to summon his own
strength; at this time beg i n s h i s v i c t o ry aga i nst the demons. In the
40
last letter of the Philosophische Briefe, Schel ling had already said
that "Greek tragedy honored human freedom because it made the
hero struggle against the superior force of destiny." Guilt and pun
ishment are shaken together and confused by the tragic poet; each
Nomos has another opposing it, each Logos a counterpoint. The
discourses of tragedy appear to be dissoi, double, and extremely
dissoi are those of the god, servant-custodian of Anangke. But even
if this knowledge strips man of words, reduces him to silence, and
seemi ngly annihilates him, it is here that "for the first time the
head of genius lifted itself from the mist of guilt" and felt essen
tially free from demonic destiny. It is true that the hero must suc
cumb, but because he succumbs not without struggl ing, he
demonstrates by his own downfall , through the very loss of his
freedom, that in the downfall lies "precisely this freedom": he per
ishes "with an open affirmation (Erklarung) of free will" (F. W. J.
Sche l l i ng, Philosophie der Kunst) .1 The adventure of his auton
omous l ogos also begins from here. In comedy, character "unfolds
rad i a n t ly" and lets nothing exist by its side; comedy affi rms the
freedom and autonomy of character from the daimon. The comic
persona, far from being the "puppet of determinists, " opposes "the
bri l l iance of its single trait" to the closely woven texture of Destiny.
To the primacy of guilt it opposes "a vision of the natural innocence
of man ." The comic persona plays with the demonic character pre
cisely by defining with lucid consequential ity its own irreducible
individuality.
But such autonomy presupposes that of the logos that is the
form of expression proper to the comic persona. Its freedom, as
Benjamin perceives it without further developing the problem,
affi rms i tself by way of its affi nity to logic ("auf dem Wege ihrer
Affi nitat mit der Logik") . The tragic word knows nothing of this
affi nity; s i nce it shakes together and confuses guilt and atonement,
it cannot follow the criteria of logic. This word does not represent
but rather reverberates a sound whose origin is concealed, an
adelon , something i nscrutable." The tragic word cannot proclaim
an autonomy with regard to this adelon . Autonomous, instead, is
the logic of the comic character who ceases to be simply a "knot in
the net" (Benjamin) to become an individuum who unfolds himself
on the basis of the uniqueness of his fundamental trait or tempera
ment. The discourse of this individual becomes substance unto
i tse l f. c o 1 1 1 p l rn 1 1 · 1 1 l . 1 1 \' 1 1 1 1 1 1 d l 1 1 1 q '. ; 1 1 1 d rn tT1 · s 1 H 1 1 1 d i 1 1 g o n l y l o i l s
a l l rea l i ty
i n t e r n a l o r d l' r. T i i l · " r 1 1 1 1 1 1 r " ; i 1 1 1 1 s ; i i t l w ; i 1 1 1 1 i l t i l ; t l i o 1 1 o f
external to Lill' u 1 1 l o l d 1 1 q : o l d 1 ; i ra r l n : fro m I l l e pe rspec t i ve of the
concept of des t i ny a n d ol da i 1 1 1 o n , i l is the a c 1 1 1 e of h u b ri s a n d arro
gance.
Hence the problem of represe n tati o n , w h i c h began already
with the tragic form, bursts open. What is the relation between an
autonomous logic (no longer reverberation, resonance, medium)
and the thing? In what way can a logos that is metaphysically
detached from every presupposition represent a thing that is differ
ent and heterogeneous from it? How can the logoi stand for the
thing itself if no common origin is expressible; if the logos, in
breaking the net of demonic destiny, has defined itself absolutely or
autonomously? In tragedy, a logos that already doubts of all solid,
transcendent foundations is sti l l tormented by their idea, and to
attain it goes down to the ground, founders,* in this desperate
search. In comedy, precisely the judiciousness of this search is crit
icized: the character is not a demon, but every demonic dimension
is here completely subsumed under the individuality of character
so that the appearance, manifestation, and expression of this char
acter is everything. But this expression can only be that of the ono
mazein (to name) , of the onoma, of the mere name "that mortals
posited convinced that it is true" (Parmenides, 8, 39 DK; English
trans. , L. Taran, Parmenides [Princeton, N.J . : Princeton University
Press, 1 965 ] ) . The name reflects the doxai, the opinions of mortals,
the deceiving order, the apparent disposition of the world. The
name is the arbitrary instrument of humans "eidotes ouden," who
know nothing, "dikranoi," double-headed, whose amechanie
guides into the hearts the plakton noon, whose helplessness guides
their wandering thought ( Parmenides, 6 DK). If logos scours the
path "for which being and non-being is the same and not the
same," if it renounces the absol uteness of al etheia (unconceal
ment) , if it erects itself in a uto-nomy with respect to the unbeat
able force of Necessity, then it necessari l y resolves itself into the
onomazein. But one cannot make t h e onoma correspond to a cer
tain and stable being. Th e onoma is noth in g but the representation
of the oscil lation of t h e e n l i l y i n l h e d o xa of mortals. Properly
speaking, it represents o n l y l h e d e c e i v i n g order of this same doxa
in its perennial change of p l a c l' a n d co lor.
'/'/1< N< '< "< 'SSll r_11 / lnyc/
•
How can one represent that which is abso l utely opposed to the
untrembling heart of Al etheia? How can one know that which
never persists? And how is it possible for the arbitrari ly posited and
perennially changing name to contain one representation of any
thing? The truly real thing, on principle, escapes the realm of opin
ion to which the name belongs. No name "has a bit of stabil ity
because nothing prevents things that are now round to be cal led
straight, and thi ngs straight to be call ed round" (Plato, Seventh
letter, 343 a-b; trans. L.A. Post [ Princeton, N.J.: Princeton
University Press, 1985 ] ) . Name, definition, and image form the
obscure and unstable knowledge of the oscillating entity that has
nothing to do with the "fifth," superior l evel of knowledge corre
spondi ng to the truly real thing. And if anyone were to affirm that
the onomazein can comprehend the "fifth," then this person would
certainly be afflicted by the madness of mortals and not struck by
t h e mania that comes from the gods.
B u t not only does the abyss of the truly real thing escape the
name, not only does the essential no-thingness of Being evade that
knowl edge which is an ephemeral order of opinion constructed by
names, definitions, and images-even the on (being) that is looked
for in the onoma (so Plato explains the term in the Cratylus: "on ou
masma estin" [ "being is that of which there is a search " ] , 42 1 a-b)
wi l l never be effectively drawn out from the onoma. The search
that the name conducts is in principle i nterminable. If, indeed, the
image were a perfect imitation, if the name perfectly stood for the
thing, then one would not speak of a name or an image but rather
of a duplication of the on itsel f. "Do you not perceive that images
are very far from having qualities which are the exact counterparts
of the realities which they represent? . . . But then how ridiculous
wou l d be the effect of names on thi ngs, if they were exactly the
same with them! For they would be the doubles of them, and no
one wou l d be abl e to determine which were the names and which
were the realities" (Cratylus 432d; trans. Benjamin Jowett
! Princeton, N.J.: Pri nceton University Press, 1 9 85 ] ) . Whoever
knows the names therefore does not know the things, neither i n
the sense o f knowing the "thing itself' (439d), the truth o f the
thing (438e), nor in the sense of a perfect adherence to the appear
ance of the entity, a complete touching, point by point, of the on , i n
short, a complete re-presentation o f i t . How can names signify the
1 1 1 1 · l ' 1 1 1 l i l 1 1 1 1 1 1 l l \ q 1 11 · � " 1 1 l . i l 1 1 n 1
through the nam e ) ? I s i l wise for a man to "put h i mse l f or the edu
cation of his mind in the power of names" (440c) , if the knowl edge
that comes from them is ever-changing and thus w i l l always be un
knowing?
The break with the demonic character seals the fate of this
questioning: it becomes Socratic comedy. Comedy is the i nfinite
variation of this one question: if representation by means of the
name does not give the thing but the doxa about the thing, how
will it be possible to draw out knowledge of the thing by way of the
things themselves? How can one learn the truth of the thing in
itself, the truth that is always intuitable by a knower who also
always is? The liberation of character from the daimon coincides
with the liberation of the name from being the signified, that is,
from being the imitation-image of the thing that it signifies. The
name unfolds "in the brilliance of its single trait" (Benjamin) , i n
t h e solitude o f its "temperament." T h e character "freely" wanders
through names and their etyma, combining and varying them in a
game of intell igence and invention that chal lenges the original res
onance of the word: you are not persuaded by this meaning? you
think this explanation is coarse?-then see if this other one satis
fies you (399e) . \: an we real ly question ourselves seriously on the
reason of names? "The serious explanation is not to be had from
me, but there is no obj ecti on to you r hearing the facetious one; for
the gods too love a joke" (406c ) . It i s a ll ajoke, then, that Dionysus
is the one who gives wine, that /\phrodite means born of foam, that
Pallas-Athena is the earth s h aker. The onomazein does not "touch"
the truth; it is impossible to l earn the t h i ng itself through names.
The divine is not its names ( i l i s pract i ca l l y a mockery ante-l it
teram of Usener's Gottemmne11 ). B u l it is preci sely the "joke" of
the name, or of the care fo r 1 l i l' na me (which al ready cast its
shadow in tragic drama) l ha l 1 1 1 1 d ni n i 11es lhe dominion of the dai
mon over character. The "j o kl' " of I I l l' ( 'ra f.1;/us therefore appears to
be terribly serious. It is l I H· qi wsl i o 1 1 I h a t Socrates continually
repeats to himself "as if in a d n·a 1 1 1 " : l 1 ow can one represent and
l earn the "thing itse lf' L l i; l l w1· l i; 1 w 1 1 1 1d n rnnsideration not when
'f'll< ' Nl 'n ·ss11ry . \ rnwl
ephemeral this may come about. The encounter with the word
questioned according to the pri macy of the symbol is a fire of exe
gesis that no exegesis will ever extinguish. But what form can this
encounter with the name take in our time, in this time of endless
waiting and of necessary questioning?
The Angel is the exegete of a dimension of time to which a
weak messianic force sti l l belongs. The name that is said symbol i
cally between the Angel and u s is that o f this dimension o f time.
The problem would not exist if a simple abyss were to gape open
between symbol and all egory, or if between them one could estab
l ish a "progression" (or a "fal l": it amounts to the same), that irre
versibly leads from the fi rst to the second. The Angel , however,
all egorizes the symbolic as much as it symbol ical ly represents the
all egorical . Neither mediator nor pontiff, it names the original
sym bolic tension that reunites their i nfinite difference. Angel , but
J\nge l of history-history, but history conceived in the name of the
J\nge l . In this name, history conceived as a continuum, calendar of
the always-the-same, permanent passage-transition from present
to present, succession of nyn (now), ceases to have value. The time
of the representation of ideas frees itself from the time of "the
whore called 'Once upon a time'," the time of the "brothel of his
toricism," of the Universalgeschichte (universal history) that adds
event by event and Erkennen by Erkennen. Not that the Angel (as
we already saw) flees ek-statically from the continuum or tran
scends it, rather the Angel comprehends those events as a "single
catastrophe"; it would like to "awaken the dead and recompose
what has been shattered"; it maintains a secret understanding with
past generations. Breaking the chains of the demonic character is
at one with the crisis of time conceived as a relentless succession.
Only now is the reason visible for the struggl e between Angel and
demon, between the weak messianic force and the sovereign argu
ment of invincible Necessity (that if the possible is, it cannot but be
real ; that possibil ity is only the potential ofreality ) . In the name of
the Angel the idea becomes self-transparent that it is possible to
"blast open" this argument, to blast out of the homogeneous and
empty time of the continuum and so give l i fe to days that stand, to
Fest-tage (fixed days; holidays) capable of arresting the flow of time
and simultaneously recreating it. To entropy and irreversible con-
:; I
Z OD I ACS
I I
. L I
were l ike the sole of a calf's foot; and they sparkled like burnished
bronze. Under their wi ngs on their four sides they had human
hands . . . . As for the l i keness of the ir faces, each had the face of a
man in front; the four had the face of a lion on the right side, the
four had the face of an ox on the left side, and the four had the face
of an eagle at the back" (Ezekiel 1 :5-1 0 ) . Jewish mysticism has
always wanted to see in this tetrad the Angels of the Face, the four
Princes of the Presence." God can manifest-represent Himself to
man only in an angelical guise (the tri nity of Abraham, the Trace
that the people follow in the desert), and the order of this manifes
tation hinges upon t hese four Angels. The allegorical interpreta
tion of the tetrad, designed to purify it of every "animal" feature,
becomes canonized in Maimonides (Guide of the Perplexed, III,
1-7) . The overal l "form" of these beings is human3 ("they had the
li keness of a man"), and their hands were l ikewise those of a man
("it being known that a man's hands are indubitably formed as they
are in order to be engaged in the arts of craftmanship") (Pines
trans . , p. 4 1 7) . Only their external features, the external "faces,"
were of the lion, the bull, and the eagle, for, as Maimonides
explains, it is well known "that among men there are some who
have faces that resemble those of certain animals"; the proof lies in
the Merkabah mysticism in which the figure of the ox is changed
for that of the cherub. Therefore all references to animals must be
understood i n the context of the allegorical language used by the
prophets to strike the imagination (see ibid., II, 43) . What interests
Maimonides is the upward spread of the wings, the forward motion
that these beings can maintain while obeying the wind, ruah, that
directs them ("Ruah here does not mean wind, but purpose . . . . He
[the prophet] says accordingly that the hayoth runs in the direc
tion in which it is the divine purpose that the l iving creature run")
(ibid., III, 2 ; Pines trans. , p. 4 1 9) , never turning themselves around
when going. (This last trait is essential for the understanding of the
metaphysical difference between this form of angelic manifestation
and that of Benjamin's Angelus Novus) .4
Jung has pointed out the breadth of the tetrasomatic motif
(including its best known derivation, the assignment of one of the
features of the hayoth to each of the Evangelists) ; he has placed
Ezekiel in relation to the Egyptian i mage of the four sons of Horus,
to the symbolism of the Cross, and through Daniel and Enoch , to
t h e ( : n o s l i r ; 1 1 u l . d 1 1 1 1 · 1 1 1 1 1 . i i 1 k w l 1 1 p 1 1 1 1 · 1 i t s o l t l 1 l ' s; 1 1 1 1 l l y Tl' l ra k l ys . ! ·
B u t th e p h e 1 u 1 1 1 1 1 · 1 1 1 1 l 1 1 ) '. 1 1 . i i . 1 1 1 . d v �, i � 1 1 1 1 1 s l 1 u 1 I o h s n m· I l l e esse n t i a l
m etap h ys i c a l t l i rn l 1 1 1 � 1 c . d p 1 1 1 h l rn 1 r; 1 i sL·d hy l l 1 i s 1 1 1 o l i f: t he spi ritu
al ization of I lw "; 1 1 1 i 1 1 1 ; d " 1 1 1 1 1 l l ' 1 l i rn p h a n y o f l >'zekiel. i ts i m mediate
"metaphorizat i o n i 1 1 1 o I he J\ 11 ge l , occ u r u n d e r t h e demonic sign of
"
transi ent unti l it has pronounced this fu l l Yes. But the possibil ity of
the Yes implies that of negation; that is, the affi rmation of a l ove
that is not directed to its own Pri nciple.
Contrary to what happens with man, the Angel could never
sin by m istake or out of ignorance or distraction. At the moment of
its creation, it is luminously inclined to the Good and to love, both
to a love for its Author and for itself. Mirrori ng itself, the Angel
Narcissus inte l l ectualis can see only its own i mage as the name of
its Pri nciple. But at that crossroads, in that decisive i nstant, where
it is called upon, it is also free to choose and love itself i ndependent
of God. On one side stand the Angels that rise up to the vision of
thei r author totaliter; on the other side stand those that remain
blinded by thei r own l ight. The former turn toward Morning; the
latter, "in seipsis remanentes" ("remai ning in themselves"), swel l
with pride and are transformed i nto Night ( St. Thomas Aquinas,
Summa theologiae, Ia, q.63, a.6, ad 4 ) . The l ight of the creature
seduces t he m from that of the Agent. This occurs not because that
l i ght is somethi ng evi l (it is good, l i ke all created things), but
because they l ove it inordinately (in other words, they are not
"modest" in their affection) , they deny any dependency on its part
and affirm its autonomy. "Al lecti a pulchritudine suae naturae"
("Powerfully attracted by the beauty of their nature") ( St. Thomas
Aquinas, De malo, q . 1 6, a. 1 2 , ad 1 3 ) , these Angels aspi re to be l i ke
God, they presume to deify themselves with thei r own forces, they
refuse to participate in the design of grace. In De malo (q. 1 6 , a.3)
Thomas Aqui nas adds: "the first sin of the devil consists i n wanting
supernatural blessedness, which consists i n the ful l vision of God,
without having recourse to God." Therefore the Angel falls not
because it refuses the beatific vision, but because it refuses to
receive it ex misericordia (out of mercy).
The Angel's sin i naugurates that of man i n its most proper
essence. To "remai n in oneself' expresses the nature of sin as
absolute isolator (as Kierkegaard defined it) ,21 as desperatio
(despair) in regard to every relationship to the Other. Florenskii
defined sin as "inhospitabl e self-affi rmation" :22 to love one's own
creaturely light so absolutely as to be i ncapable of offering it, to be
incapable of receivi ng in it any Presupposition. Here comes to a
close the circle that began with the theme of the Angel 's seduction
by man: the beauty (closed i nside itself) of man seduced the
A n g e l h 1 1 I l l l l ' 1\ 1 1 1 1, 1 · 1 1 1 ' . l ' i l 1 1 1 . 1 1 1 1 '. 1 1 1; i l nl l l t; i 1 1 1 1 l t o s p i l ; 1 h k b e a u t y.
The A n ge l w; 1 s s n l w n l I i\' 1 h 1 iw 1 1 l l l ' ; 1 t 1 l y h do rl' b ei n g scJuceJ by
that of t h e d; i 1 1 1 � l 1 l n s o l 1 1 1 t·n. T h i s is I l i c dark s i J e of t h a t same
game of m i r ro rs 1 1 1 ; 1 1 gow rn s t h e re l a t i o n between a n g e l i cal and
terrestrial wor l J . By l l t eir s i n , A n g e l s reveal the terrible power of
free wil l , its possibi l i ty of JeciJing itself from the Creator Himself/1
from the Principle that conti nuously engenders. Sin appears dia
bolical because it ab-solves not from a determined point or
moment, from a chronologically defi nable beginni ng, but from the
perennial source of creation. Those Angels that chose this way,
were they already seduced by man or is it the decision of Ange ls
that men reflect i n the kind of sinning admixed with ignorance,
unconsciousness, and error, of which they alone are capable?
There is another crisis, though, that appears decisive and irre
versible, after which the destinies of Angel and man become entan
gled. The fal len Angel and man both can know that they love
themselves absolutely; the Angel will know it perfectly, man will
perceive it only i n a confused way. In its sin the Angel chooses the
archetype of the perfectly enl ightened decision; the decisions of
man, i nstead, remai n uncertain and compromisi ng, they avoid the
irreparable either-or that the Angel confronts with Satanic hubris.
Orthodox Catholic angelol ogy insists, nearly univocally, on the
i rreversibil ity of the angelic decision. The Angel could not reform
itself for it has seen everything with perfect clarity. "For man the
time of decisions lasts until death , for the Angel but one i nstant."24
Able to create only intel l i gent wi l ls, God also had to create the
Angel as a potential sinner. But the Angel is likewise created in one
stroke, perfectly compos sui (self-possessed) , i n unison with the
very instant of the fiat lux. J u st as its nature does not evolve or
become, so too its k nowl ed g e is spared the ti resome iti nerary of
human knowledge. Go d gra n t s t i m e to man, whose nature is i n
becoming, s o that he m a y r e - v i e w h i s c h o i ces, but constrains the
Angel to one, i rreversible e i t h e r - o r. Mi e r that instant the figure of
the Angel seems to be Jecidcd fo r e t e rn i t y : d e cided is the action
that the fallen Angel or d e m o n wi l l l t ; i vl' l o ca r ry out unti l the Last
Judgment; decided is the o rh i l o f l l t t· "b l is s fu l " Angels, of the heav
enly Choir. Decided is the in k rn ; i l " 1 1 oisl' " ; t k c i J e d is the heavenly
polyphony. Man is g ra n l l'd I H' rn 1 1 1 i 1 1 1 � ( l o I r a n s fo r m hi mself,
repent, change his minJ ) ; l l H· /\ 1 1 1 1.l' l 1 s 1 '. L 1 1 1 k d o n l y one i nstant i n
'/'hi' Necessar.11 : 1 1 1_1/l'I
A PO K ATASTASIS
The struggle against the demon would fi nal ly end with a great
setback. The freedom of the Angel is al ready decided-and this
irrevocable iam (al ready) prefigures perfectly the destiny of man.
The pagan cosmos seems to make its return not simply through
the power of its images, but for an essential reason: once the great
originary krisis is overcome, the angelological vision of being also
finds its order determined by an inviolable Law. But then what are
we to make of the New Angel "confused" with us to the point of for
getting the order received up there, of which it had been informed?
What are we to make of the narrow door, always open , that its fig
ure re-vealed? What to make of the eschaton safeguarded in the
idea of representation? What eschatol ogy, in general, can represen
tation stil l reflect, if the fi nal time is compl etely prefigured in the
origin, in the originary decision, if the di mension of the nondum
(not yet) is only chronol ogica l and not qual itative, that is, if it does
not withhold a novitas with respec l l o that which resonates in the
iam , if iam and nondum a re ho u n d by a sive (or) and not by the
venture, the opening, the s u s pc 1 1s i o n o f the et (and)?
Can this idea of an i n fl ex i b le rns 1 1 1 i c taxis, similitudo divinae
voluntatis (simi lar to the d i v i 1 H· wi l l ) , w h i c h angelology manifests,
"be quite so easily ado p l l'd hy ;1 C l 1 r i s l i a 1 1 l heodicy burdened not
only with the problem of s 1 1 fk r i 1 1 i : 1 1 1 )�t· 1 1 na l , but also with the spe
cific problem of etern a l I k l l ' , .1 ' T i ll' l 1 1 fn n o of Dante constitutes
the unsurpassable image of 1 1 w 1 11 1 · w r s i h i I i ly of the fal l . A supreme
Justice has judged it for evt'I. T l I I ' l . 1 w s o f I l i e abyss," of the "deep
"
the time, before the Lord comes, who will bring to l ight the things
now hidden in darkness and will disclose the purposes of the heart.
Then every man will receive his commendation from God") ( 1
Corinthians 4:5) .
Dante's Inferno is truly a test bench, not just of the fallen
Angel and its victims, but of the whole Christian angelological
dimension. If the originary decision is unappealable, if the j udg
ment pronounced after death can be made perfect only after "ta
prota" ("the fi rst things") have passed away (Revelation 2 1 : 1-4; 2
Peter 1 0 ) , if the Judgment does not "review" but essentially repeats
the sentence and the absolute division between the heavenly rose
and Hell (a veritable Hades, complete absence of light and vision ) ,
then Necessity is the last word in this theology, where the most
perfect torment is associated with the most perfect blessedness.
The eschatological dimension is, literal ly, its apocalypse, its final
and compl ete manifestation. We will then see what we can already
perfectly know; this "science" is made possible by the fact that the
eschaton is also a dimension of Necessity, nothing other than its
supreme moment. A "golden chain" l inks the Justice of revenge
and retaliation, so juridically and rationally formalized, to the Last
Judgment, even though the latter participates in the mystery of the
Parousia. His return can essentially change nothing; He comes to
complete and to perfect, not to redeem or to promise redemption.
He comes to judge anew, as if the fi rst time He had also come for
this purpose. A Christ who "surrenders forever to the Father's cos
mic will"5 condemns j udged men along with all Angels to the yoke
of Necessity. This is why it is so i mportant that the fallen Angel be
represented as a rigid demon, petrified in its dimension, just like,
at "the apex of the rose," the heavenly Angels are to perform their
circles l i ke signs of a happy zodiac, like stars, l i ke bees.
From the begi nning, other currents of the tradition have
reacted agai nst the literally catastrophic consequences of this
vision for the essence of Christian faith, a vision which is that of
Scholastic orthodoxy, from Augustine to Thomas Aqui nas. The
conflict at issue, for sure, unfolds within the general framework of
this tradition. Both in the Old and New Covenants the punishment
is explicitly defined as eternal, eternal is the fire of hell. But this
idea must appear intri nsically antinomical to the set of themes that
inform the apocalyptic transensus (transition) as soon as it is
71
into the abyss. " It is evi l to think "that the sin ners i n Hell are desti
tute of love for the Creator" (Isaac of Nineveh, M.lfstic Treatises,
XXVII; English translation, A. J. Wensinck, Mystic Treatises by
Isaac ofNineveh [Amsterdam, 1 923 ] , p. 136), but it is sti l l a sign of
a lack of compassion and love to think that those who were created
good out of grace (and Angels, according to certain traditions, were
created even before the fiat l ux, in the Sil ence that precedes the
Word) may never reintegrate their own origi n. This would mean
setti ng a radical l i mit to the power of Grace, subjecting it to the
Nomos and the judgment on works that the Nomos pronounces: a
juridical vision of Grace, founded on the respect of a sort of unal
terable Grundnorm (fundamental norm) . If death (or the originary
fal l ) poses a limit to the possibility of mercy and expiation, then
God is subject to death. This is why the completion of creation is
not its judgment but its redemption, understood as the truth
unveiledness of the proper nature of each entity: "the will of God is
to un iversal ize everything, to elevate everythi ng into a unity with
l i ght." In this work of universal ization and elevation God Himself
becomes, is life, has a destiny, subjects Himself to suffering, suffers
from the antithesis: "without the concept of a God who suffers in a
human way . . . the whole of history remains incomprehensible." 16
Fall and death and sacrifice and apocalypse-all of this is necessary
to fulfi l l the purpose of creation: that goodness be elevated from
Darkness into actuality, so as to l ive in God everlastingly. 17 The
fourth Gospel, which announces-promises the Apocalypse, coin
cides with the unveiling of the perfect Grace that is capable of ele
vating the dia-bolic pri nciple itself into unity with the Light.
Moreover, did not this principle affi rm itself as a j ealous and
intransigent love? And, as love, did it not have to suffer throughout
the whole expanse of time the most painful nostalgia for the loss of
its Object? In his Mathnawi, Rumi expounds grandiosely this idea:
Satan answered: . . . How can the first love come out of the heart?
Even if you were to travel from Rum to Khotan, how can the love
of your native land be wrenched out of your soul ? I was also
drunk of this wine once, I was also one of those lovers i n the
court of God ! . . . Who was it that went looking for my milk when
I was a child? Who used to rock my cradle? . . . And if the sea of
generosity has now rebuked me, how can those doors of grace
remain eternally closed? He has created the world as an act of
77
How can one think such a paradox? how can one try to say
such a "scandal": that the Accuser itself, the supreme Angel whose
voluntary fall was designed to condemn the creation of man, may
in the end participate in the sole Church? Every representation of
the eschaton ( i ndeed every representation, if representation as
such is endowed with eschatological force) must confront these
questions. Around them turns what is perhaps the only great
eschatological text of the twentieth century, L'Epouse de l'agneau
by Sergei Boulgakov. 1 8
The Judgment is already contained in the Parousia; every
human being judges himself or herself in the face-to-face with the
return of Christ. The Last Judgment is interiorized (ibid., pp.
346-348) . Man is not judged l i ke a servant i s judged by the master,
but l i ke a free son he fi nal ly comes to recognize the abysmal dis
tance from Truth that had marked his existence. Christ is not the
Judge, but each man judges himself in Him and suffers horribly
from not having recognized Him earl ier. This means that each
man, in this eschatological di mension, which is a supreme theo
logical drama, contains in h i m se l f inseparably hel l , darkness, and
l ove. Who will have no sins to confess face to face with Him? And,
in seeing Him, who will not l ove H i m and j udge himself for love?
Inside man himself reso nates a j u d g m e n t that condemns his mor
tal figure and saves his d i v i n e i d l'. a . Man will never be more divided
and lacerated: one of h i s pa r t s w i l l j o i n with Glory itself and the
other will suffer the p u n i s h n l l' n t s o f h e l l . The separation between
torment and blessedness m u s t hl' u n d e rstood only in this sense: it
is inward and relative to e a c h O l l l' ( i b i d . , p . 35 1 ) . Isaac of Nineveh
had al ready said it: "eve n l hosl' who ; i re scou rged in Hell are tor
mented with the sco u rg i ngs o l low . . . . The suffering which takes
hold of the heart thro u g h l l H· s i 1 1 1 1 i 1 1 g a ga i nst love is more acute
that any other tortu re" (/11.11s linil 'f)-( '({/ises , p. 1 36 ) . That eternal
life and damnation and dl'; t l I i 1 1 1 ; 1 v lw l· o n c e i ved simultaneously is
7K '/'Iii' Nl'cessary l 1 1_11el
1
reverts into nothing; that is, its activity in the world has manifested
itself only in the form of a simple negation of communication and
relation, in the form of the absolute isolator. But why should it
come to this realization now, in the "atom" of the apocalypse? Was
its knowledge as weak as that of man so that it stands i n need of this
instant, of the persuasive power of the Parousia? Does the dia-boli
cal principle in itself not always already ac,cuse itself? If this princi
ple is absolutely dia-bolical (and we cannot conceive of it
otherwise ) , then it is ab origine negation of itself, self-annihi lation.
If Satan were to entertain with itself a positive relation of preserva
tion, attention, defense, it would no longer be itself, it would enter
in communication with itself. Its self-affirmation is absolutely
inhospitable, and thus it is inhospitable with regard to itself. Satan
negates i tself in its own self-affirmation.
Only in this way, and not as a process that "evolves" starting
w i t h the Parousia, does it seem possible to imagine the "exhaus
t i o n " o f H e l l . At issue is a movement internal to Evi l that inex
orably cancels its very predicability. How could Satan oppose itself
t o this logic that overdetermines its activity? Either it is a com
pletely autonomous principle, originally just like God, and then
nothi ng, no manifestation or apocalypse will ever suffice to con
vince it and no metanoia is applicable to it (it would be l ike apply
ing it to God himself) ; or it must necessari ly negate itself in the
end, but the latter option is comprehensible on the basis of an invi
olable " logic"-in the quintessence of sin lies the movement that
shows its own nothingness. But if this is the case, then one must
necessarily conclude that Evi l and sin cannot subsist, they have no
real subsistence, because that movement, that "logic" on the basis
of which they negate themselves, has always already begun, it is
their own since the first fall. It makes no sense to affirm that with
the Parousia begins the annihilation of Hell, nor, strictly speaking,
can one say that Evi l is destined to nothing, for Evi l is constitu
tively nothing, nothing but the determination of being that is
negated as soon as it is considered, which is impossible to think as
something having any form of subsistence whatsoever. To attribute
freedom and wi l l to this determi nation is simply absurd. What sep
arates itself from the whole and "becomes conceited of its beauty",
what presumes to fix itself i n the separateness of its i n-itself, must
ofnecessity be negated. This movement, in all of its stages, belongs
Kl
that Truth which comprehends in itself its own Cross, of that Word
which right at its climax ceases to speak and turns into a cry.
Moreover, that the eschaton should have to be thought antinomi
cal ly, much more than a sign, perhaps this represents the sign of
the profoundly ir-religious form of this "religion . "24 The redemp
tion it promises cannot be attained through any method, any uni
vocal and clearly projectable path. Its truth cannot be defined
nomothetical ly; it cannot be reduced to the path of Day in contrast
to that of Night. Any attempt to rationalize it-that is, to render it
univocal-betrays it. It remains concealed in the pure possible of
the gratuitous communicati ng-participating of all di mensions of
being-a harmony that is, l i ke the Platonic Good, beyond every
determination of being. On the threshold of this possible, or rather
in its Opening, ever present yet never discursively graspable (idea
of creation and thus everywhere and nowhere, ou-topia of cre
a t i o n ) , are ventured the creatures, humans and Angels, in all the
m u l t i p l icity of the names with which they cal l forth and push away,
I is ten to a n d seduce each other.
BIRDS
OF THE SO U L
�. . ,
c ), >
Dante's angelology is dominated by this motif (and it could
not be otherwise given that precisely in Dante the idea of the Angel ,
o f all Angels, a s entities i nexorably placed i n the cosmic order finds
the harshest expression ) . Since the Angel 's knowledge is a di rect
intuition, si nce the identity of knowing and seeing (which "pre
vails" i n all of our culture) is perfect in it, anyone who attributes to
it the all too human faculty of memory is daydreaming (Paradiso,
XXIX, 79-82 ) ; the visio facial is makes the "art" of memory useless
for it. (Notorious is Dante's polemic here with St. Bonaventure's
conception, Breviloquium , I I , 6, 2 ) . Hence the Angels will not even
remember the decision that divided them i nto two reigns. The
absence of fear and trembl ing in Dante's Angel is explained by this
perfect forgetfulness. Only man remembers the i nstant of that
decision; only man knows the adventure and the sin of the Angel .
B u t how wi l l the Angel , o n its part, know anything o f man, if it has
no idea of the deepest suffering tormenting his existence: the
necessity of remembrance? Rilke's themes concerning the distance
of the Angel fi nd here their proper theological foundation. The
wave of our Eri nnerungsleben (life of remembrance) can, at times,
surprise the Angel, but it never participates therein. Dante gets to
admire the triumph and living light of the angelical Choir, but no
Angel calls him and speaks to him. If the originary decision of the
Angel is an irreversible has-been, then it is necessary for it to lose
its memory and for its own wait to be represented as the instanta
neous refl ection of the Light it praises. We are the sole guardians of
memory; it is Tobias who moves in search of the message that
Raphael has forgotten-it is Mary who dictates the words of the
Annunciation to Gabriel. It is not because we want to be "taken to
heart" that we invoke the Angel , but on the contrary we do so out of
nostalgia for that perfect forgetful ness of which the Angel is mas
ter, nostalgia for the complete Lethe, "satisfied" with itself, that
coincides with the same vision at whose source the Angel inces
santly nourishes its own l ight. In Dante, the happiness of the Angel
connotes oblivion.
But Beatrice, Madonna of Intelligence, does not only explain
why it is a dream to maintain that the Angel possesses memory. On
earth, "in your schools," one also errs i n affirming that the Angel
understands and wills (Paradiso, XXIX, 70-72 ) . The work of the
"swarm of bees" does not proceed discursively and intentionally.
The " a 1 1 i 1 1 1. i l " 1 1 1 1 · l . q i l 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 · 1 1 · 1 1 1 1 1 · :.1T 1 1 1 �. 1 1 1 I H' :.1 1 1 1 1 1 ' 1 1 1 1 1 1 1>, 1 1 1 o n·
than a s i 1 1 1 p lr 1 1 1 r l . q i l 1 1 1 1 . i l 1 1 1 l v s v 1 1 i l 1 1 1 l 1 r h1 1 1 u l s1·1· 1 1 1 s t o ru n
betwe e n l l il· I H' ! ' l ' '.'> �. r t v 1 1 l . 1 1 q �l ' l 1 c ; i l " w or k . " rr w t 1 · d l o 1 l s p rl'se n l and
its Lighl, a r i d t i ll' I r k o l t i l l' ; l l l i 1 1 1 ; i l , o f t l i1· nl'; i l i t rl' ;is a n i ma l ,
between t h e a i 1 1 l l' 1 1 l i o 1 1;d a n d ob l i v i o u s s i 1 1 1 p l i r i t y ol l h e /\ngel and
the innocence o f l h e a n i ma l . I n lhe l lomilies 01 1 Creation , q u o te d
previously, Narsai c a p tu r e d t h i s p ro f o u n d sympa l hy between the
mute creature that obeys the order of i ls A u t h o r a n d l h e Angel that
serves-participates in that order from the h e i gh ts of i ts incorrupt
ible being. Animal and Angel refl ect one another, and i n t hi s reflec
tion praise the power of the Creator to w h i c h are submitted, in one,
both the force of the Angel 's direct intueri (gaze) and the infi nite
misery of the animal (Homelie V, in Homilies sur la creation ,
1 4 1 - 1 58) . But also the Angel's praise is silent. Just as its under
standing and will ing should not be thought from our discursive
and intentional perspective, so too its hymn should not be con
fused with the time of our earthly music. The time of the Angel 's
hymn is also aevum (this is how Thomas Aquinas, in De substantiis
separatis, defines the di mension of time in which the Angels
dwe l l ) . The angelic exultations described by Dante are sparks, fires,
gleaming of stars, i nstantaneous fl ights-they lack speech, they
are not dis-cursive. Symbol, up there, of the most perfect prayer of
the heart.:i But a more adequate symbol would have been the
humilitas (humil ity) of the animal's gaze. It is the she-ass that sees
the Angel.
Dante theorizes the Angel as mute creature in De vulgari elo
quentia, I, 2-3: "for man alone among existing things was given
the capacity for speech, si nce he alone needed it. Neither angels
nor lower animals have any need for speech" (English translation,
R. S. Haller, On Eloquence in the Vernacular. [ Lincoln: University
of Nebraska Press, 1 9 73 1 , p. 4 ) .� To announce their own "glorious
thoughts" the Angels have "a most immediate and ineffable capac
ity of the intellect, " by means of w h i c h each makes itself com
pletely known to the others. J ust as in the inferior animal instinct
is one with its nature, so too i n t e l l i gence and reflection are in the
Angel: for the Angel , to know is lo re fl ec t in the i nstant the Light
around which it circles eternal ly. I t s i n t el l i gence is immediately
speculative, just as the behavior of t i l l' ; 1 1 1 i ma I . i t s habitus, reflects
without mediation its most p ro pn 1 1; 1 1 1 1 n' . The Angel's spi ritual
86
the direction of the gaze and the in-fancy constitutes that between
animal and Angel . But we remember the Ange l only through these
stages: from the ou-topic image of a happy, complete forgetfulness
to the "little creature" for which still "womb is all," to the "zigzags
through the air I like crack through cup" of a bird flyi ng "as though
it were afraid I of its own self' (Eighth Elegy, 63-64), all the way
down to the most miserable animal, forced to stay on the ground,
bearing the weight of Erinnerung. The Angel l ives through the
passing away of these forms, by now connected forever to the
uneasiness of our gaze, to the gesture of our farewel l .
T h e Angel o f the Verkiindigung already prefigured the traits of
this animal oppressed by the wave of our memory. It appeared,
indeed, forgetful, but thirsty: it addressed us in order to drink from
our features. This thirst dimmed i ts matutinal cognitio (knowl
edge ) . It had forgotten-but its forgetting was no longer perfect
beca use it remembered, in front of She who medidates, that it had
fo rgo l te n . And the forgotten dream (the annunciation of which
was lhe reason for embarking on that journey; better, on that fal l )
bu rned its lips like a great thi rst. Its cracked mirror already i mag
i nes that other crack which is the uncertain fl ight of the animal
and that wound which are our step and the "rhythm" of our saying.
Like the Angel, the animal also has a time that is not torn into
past and future (a midrashic tale narrates that Gabriel was sent to
grant eternal life to whomever would receive him for an instant. But
the Angel returned and said: "They all had one foot in the past and
the other in the future; I found no one who had the time") . But the
animal remembers the past, carries it within, in its own being-mute.
The animal 's "aevum" arranges the different dimensions of time of
which the Angel senses confusedly only the wave. But it is through
the in-fant memory of the animal that we can imagine the Angel; it
is through the pain, the melancholy of its face that we can imagine
the Angel's face, which "announces" its own forgetfulness. The ani
mal is our angel of the Angel . But will it still, in this its liminal figure,
keep its gaze fixed straight ahead? Certainly, the animal moves into
the Open, ins Freie-but will it also look to the Open? The animal is
secure in its being-mute-but will it also see that silence opening
before it, which it hears and drinks? The last stage of the animal , the
closest one to us, even closer than the bird, only half secure, bears
the sign of a face turned round. It remains in-fant, still fl ies into the
�1 1
tined to us, for our Ges c h i c l l l l' h ; i s I 1 1 rncd i t this way. A wi nd-ou
.
the sensible and the intell igible worlds; it can be perceived by the i magi
native faculty, itse lf the i ntermediary organ between sensible perception
and intel lectual intuition .-Translator's note I
14. " Gospel accord ing lo Ph i l i p . " Na.£1 l lammadi Codex II, 2-7, vol .
1 , trans. W. Isenberg ( Leiden: I� . .I. B r i l l . 1 989 ) .
in order to emphasize the root of the word: ducere, Lat. "to lead." E
ducare then connotes a process of " leading out. "-Translator's note ]
19. In particu lar, it develops the fi rst chapter of the second part of
my Icone della Legge (Icons ofthe Law) (Mi lan, 1985 ) .
20. M oses Mai mon ides, The Guide o f the Perplexed, I I , 6, trans.
S h lomo P i n e s (Ch i cago: Un iversity of Chicago, 1 9 63 ) .
23. The same theme is found in the "Gospel According to Ph i l ip" 53:
1 5-20, cited previously: "Light and darkness, life and death, right and left,
are brothers of one another. They are i nseparable . . . . Names given to the
worldly are very deceptive for they divert our thoughts from what is cor
rect to what is incorrect. . . . But truth brought names into existence in
the world for our sakes because i t is not possible to learn it without
names."
24. On the apocalyptic thematic see the two interesting col lections:
Apocalisse e ragione, "Hermeneutica," 3, 1 984; and Tempo e Apocalisse,
ed. S. Quinzio (Mi lazzo, 1 985) , which includes essays by Mancin i , Sartori ,
G ivone and others. For an opposing interpretation (the whole of h istory is
apocalypse, that is, revelation of Christ), see the essay by E . Corsini,
Apocalisse prima e dopa (Turin, 1 980); a work of great philosophical and
conceptual vigor, although lacking a direct and exp l i c i t confrontation
with contemporary orthodox eschatology (in particu lar that of Sergei
Boulgakov ) , in other words, with its authentic antithesis.
25. And St. Augu s t i n e : " . . . d i a m cum s i m i les e i eri mus, quando
eum videbimus sicuti est . . . nee tune natura i l l i eri mus aequales," De
Trinitate, XV, 1 6 , 26 ("even when 'we shall be l i ke to him', when 'we shall
see him j ust as he is' . . . not even then shall we be equal to that nature"
[ The Trinity, trans. Stephen MacKenna; Fathers of the Church 45
(Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 1 963) ] ) . The
fundamental text regardi n g this question of similitudo seems to be 1 John
3:2, "nunc fi l i i Dei sumus" ("we are God's children now"), what we shal l
be has yet to appear. When He w i l l appear, then we shal l be "si mi les ei"
( " l i ke H i m " ) . Not even the eschatological vision shall make us equal.
Meister Eckhart w i l l push to its extreme consequences the prob lem of t h e
difference between similitudo ( l i keness) and aequalitas (equal ity) ( s e c
Expositio Evangelii secundum Johannem [ "Commentary on John" I .
549 ) .
tion is a topos of ange lology. "The i n itial gesture that Angels trace agai nst
the luminous background of the day consists i n a separation and a loss of
sol i darity from the Earth, from the heaviness and horizontality of the
ground" (A. Boatto, lo sguardo dal di fuori [ Bologna, 1 98 1 ] , p. 1 06 ) . This
i dea is equally central i n Swedenborg: in the spiritual world each appears
to the other as soon as he wants, everything that happens does so through
i mmediate changes of state, escaping the temporal flux. These are the
pages of the "old metaphysician" that Ulrich transcribes "wi th a smile," at
the end of his laborious attempt to clarify his ideas on the subject of the
difference between the "defi n ite feel i ng," always "with arms outstretched
to grasp something," and the " i ndeterminate" Stimmung ( mood) , the
cal m without appetite, the " interior world" (R. Mus i l , Ulrich und die zwei
We/ten des Cefiihls, in Aus dem Nach!ass, Cesammelte Werke,
[ Hamburg, 1 9 78 ] , vol . 4, pp. 1 2 02-1203 ) .
36. The trilogy of mysti cal tales by Avicenna ( The Recital of Hayy
ibn Yaqzan; The Recital of the Bird; Recital of Salaman and Absal) has
been studied, commented on, and translated by H. Corbin, Avicenna and
N o l l's I0I
* [The author uses the Ital ian principio, which means both "begin
4 1 . These verses of Purgatory have furnished the title and the cen
tral idea to the important w o rk of 1 1 . Kayser, Bevor die Engel sangen. Eine
harmonikale Anthologie ( Base l , 1 953 ) .
phenomenon only with several distinctions and reservat ions, and in any
case not before the fourteenth or fifteenth century. Is it possible, for
example, to separate the theological syntheses from the great medieval
figurative representations? Can the angel ical presence in the two major
events of the life of C hrist, B i rth and Ascension, be interpreted only as a
ritual and passive participation? Did not the Church Fathers assert that
the advent of Christ reinforced the angelical m i nistry, al lowing it to over
come the great crisis that had torn it apart in the moment of the creation
of man? And the angel ical stupor before the Incarnation, stupor before
the elevation of human nature over the angel i cal worlds themselves, does
this not figure a dramatourgia (drama) that is far more complex and tor
mented than what appears in Corbin's critique? On these issues, see H. de
Lubac, Corpus mysticum ( Paris, 1 949 ) ; J . Danielou, Las Anges et leur
mission d'apres !es Peres de l 'Eglise.
52. "Al l creatures are g n· 1· 1 1 1 1 1 C 1 1d . " I n t l I I l l' f o l iage of the great Tree
of creation is the Ange l. M e i s I n 1 ·:1 h l 1. 1 tl . l id< 'ns Jesus Turbas in Meister
Eckhart. Sermons and Trcatis1 ·s . vol : � . p. : 1 :n .
54. See H . Corbin, 'fr1111 1/, · ' " ' " 1 '1 1 1 1 i< ' 1 1 11 1!1 1 i iu11 ( New York, 1 9 8 6 ) .
I Olt Noles
55. From 2 Timothy 4:2, and it signifies: "Proclaim the word, pro
nounce it, produce it, and beget the word" (Meister Eckhart, Praedica
verbum , trans. Schtirmann, p. 1 8 1 ) .
60. The presence o f angel ological themes i n the work o f the philoso
phus teutoni cus, on whose account, as Hegel w i l l say, "we should not
blush," is extremely vast. At least ten chapters of Aurora consurgens treat
this subj ect. And even though Jakob Boehme did not recognize com
pletely the validity of this, his first book ("I warn the reader who loves God
that this book of Dawn has not been completed, because the devil has
obstructed it, recognizing that thanks to it the day was about to dawn") ,
his angelological vision remains nearly unchanged in Mysterium
Magnum. For Aurora see the French translation by A. Koyre, i n La
philosophie de Jacob Boehme, ( Paris: Vrin, 1 9 7 1 ) .
* [ The author renders the Ital ian term ricordare ( to remember) as ri
cor-dare, which can be construed as "to give back by heart, from the
heart."-Translator's note I
62. But how to believe in the pertinence of such a term if one has
seen the Trinity of Andrej Rublev? Such powerfu l i mages-where man i
festation a n d mystery, apparition a n d i mpenetrable Aidos are combined
i n an indissoluble harmony-must also enter i nto the scope of angelol og
ical i nvestigation, i nto the thought of the Angel. Without these i mages
every theology remains a dead letter. Actual ly, not even at the culmina
tion of the Roman Baroque does the i mage of the Angel appear completely
triumphal. This reference is not as strange as it may seem if one thinks of
the i nfluence exerted on Bernini by the Areopagitic writings, publ ished
anew in 1 634 in a Latin translation and beari ng an etching by Rubens on
their title page (R. Wittkower, G. L. Bernini. The Sculptor of the Roman
Baroque [ London, 1 9 8 1 J ) . Bern i n i 's "angelology" is much more complex
than might appear at fi rst sight. The powerful Angel that draws the
Canopy of St. Peter " u pward " is not the same as the leitourgika pneumata
( m i nistering spirits) of l he Ca ppe l la d e l Sacramento and is even l ess simi
lar to the Angel s of Pass ion o f l h e Ponte Sant'Angelo. The one with the
crown of thorns is viri l e . l ir ro i c ; w h e reas the one with the scro l l orna
ment is delicate, lyri cal h u t hot h parti cipate in the Passion, and are not
absorbed by the i m m u l a h l t· b l i ss. hy the smile without shadow of the
heavenly choirs. The vort i rl's of t i l l' i r robes comprise dramatic evidence
of the sort of whirlwi nd t h ; i l I m wrl'nched them down here. To those
Angels that guard S I . l 'l' t n 's ( ' l i ; i i r or ad ore the Tabernacle or participate
in the Passion-Angels a l w;1vs rqm·sen ted in the ful l flower of years-the
adolescent figures susprn dl·d 1 1 1 ;1 l 1n 1 11aphroditic l i mbo form a counter
point. These appear lo u s i 1 1 ;i r l o s n n: l ation to humans: they bring them
messages ( l ike the A n g e l d o l ' s I o I l ; 1 ha k kuk, i n the Chigi chapel at Santa
Maria del Popolo) , thl'y s t 11 1" · I I 1 r 1 1 1 with the arrow of divine love (the
famous Saint The resa o l I i l l ' l o ro na ro chapel at Santa Maria de l la
'
65. That such a movement is much more complex than the "simple
disappearance of God" behind an ange lical figure that by now belongs to
our world (R. Guard i n i , Rainer M. Rilke [Munich, 1 9 6 1 ] ) is what shou ld
now appear as evident.
5. Different testi mony i n Job 38:7, where the Angel s greet the cre
ation with jubi lation.
Thorndike, A History o( fllt111i< ' " ' " /· ' 1 1 •· ·1 1 1 1 1 . · 1 1 / t 1 / .'>'cience, vol . 1 ( New
York, 1923 ) , remains i n d i sp1· 1 1 : . . d 1 k
1 08 No!l!s
2 2 . The " passage " and the patience of the Ange l are thematized in
Wal ter Benjamin's fragment, Agesilaus Santander, which Scholem has
presented and interpreted in "Walter Benjamin und sein Enge l , " in Zur
Aktualitiit Walter Benjamin ( Frankfurt am Main, 1 972 ) ; English trans. ,
"Walter Benjamin and H i s Angel," in On Walter Benjamin , ed. G. Smith
( Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1 99 1 ) .
23. The meshes o f the physico-mechanical world "are too wide, and
through these escapes the specific singularity, the determi nate individu
ality-the ' real"' (V. Vitiello, Ethos ed eras in /legel e Kant ! Naples,
1 984] , p. 45). Th is important work, which ends with the f{ilkean i mage of
the Angel , constitutes one o f t h e co n s t a n t t h eore t i ca l refe ren ces o f this
book.
specifies that the daimon attains this mediating role only to the extent
that Greek Anangke is not expressed in a unilateral fashion by its mecha
nistic-deterministic aspect, but rather as "an ima mundis" (world sou l ) .
The Ange l , then, woul d extricate itse lf from the re lation to the demon
only to fall prey to a "Hel len ized" rational istic teleology. Undoubtedly
these are the two, complementary and opposite, poles of traditional
angelology: uninterrupted osc i l lation between astral necessity and reas
suring philosophical hermeneutics. The astral motif, though, has experi
enced d isturbing and powe rful returns i n the "nocturnal face" of
Modernity. T. Fechner, "the great Fechner" as Freud cal led him, the
founder of contemporary psychophysics, writes on the subject of the
earth in Ober die Seelenfrage [ 1 86 1 ]: "it is an Ange l that moves th rough
the sky . . . and drags me in its bosom." On the importance of Fechner, and
the emblematic character of his figure, see J. H i l lman, The Dream and
the Underworld (New York: Harper and Row, 1 979) ; see also the preface
by C. Rabant in Anatomie comparee des Anges , ed. de L'eclat,
(Montpel l ier, France, 1 987). Anal ogous considerations could be made for
Louis-Auguste Blanqui's /, ·memile par !es astres [ 1872 ] , which so i nter
ested Walter Benjam i n .
i nteriorize its powe r: /.1 ·11.» !1 1 · 1 1 1 1 1 1 "''" " i i. I ' l l : . w i 1· l d i 11 g the thunderbolt) :
"Thunderbolt [ke r a 1 1 1 ws I ., , , . , . 1 · . . i i I 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 '. . . . ( I l t - i; 1 r l i i u s , 64 DK). See E . R.
Dodds, The Creeks m u / t/11 · !1 1 1 1 1 1 " " " ' t l k i l1 1 · i n · : l l n iversity of Cal ifornia
Press, 1973 ) ; with rl' g; 1 n l I 1 1 1 1 1 1 . . 1 . 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 . I 1 1 1 1 i 1, . " ' ' l ' I h e pertinent criticisms
of U. B ianchi, la reliyiu1 1, · 111 1 · • i 1
1 12 Noles
42. "Von Stemen sind wir eingerahmt I und fluchten aus der Welt I
Ich glaube wir sind Engel" ("We are framed by stars I And flee out of the
world I I believe w� are angels" ) , E l.se Laske-Schuler, An den Graalprin
zen , ibid.
45. On this figure of the m irror, see G. Agamben, Stanzas: Word and
Phantasm in Western Culture, trans. R. L. Martinez (Minneapolis:
University of Minnesota Press, 1 993) . More general ly, on the relations
between i magination and representation, G. Carchia, Estetica ed erotica
(Mi lan, 1 98 1 ) . I would also refe r to my "Narciso o della pittura," Spazio
umano 7 ( 1 983) .
N o l es I J :l
victor," one coul d say with Warbu rg (see ibid., p. 322 ) , is he who " remains
i n control of his powers, man enough to blast open the continuum of his
tory" (Walter Benjami n, "Theses on the Phi losophy of History," XVI , in
Jlluminations, p. 262 ) .
3. Ibid.
zugrundegehen (to perish) and zu Grunde gehen (to get to the bottom of
somethi ng, to seek a foundation) .-Translator's note ]
10. Here l ies one of the most profound affin ities between Benjamin
and Kafka: for Kafka, in fact, i mpatience constitutes the sin. On this
theme, I refer to the second chapter of the fi rst part of my book fcone
N c ) l l'S I I :>
de/la Legge (Mi lan: Ade lphi, 1984 ) ; a chapte r ded i cated to Kafka's "ques
tioni ng. "
13. For a general approach to these themes with i n the context o f the
Jewish mystical trad ition and its rad ical discussion in Benjamin (and, in
other respects, also in Kafka) the following are fundamental: G. Scholem,
Kabba/ah (New York: Quadrangle, 1 974 ) ; and G. Scholem, Zum
Verstiindnis der messianischen /dee im Judentum , in Judaica I
( Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1 977).
14. On the pro b l e m o f t i l l' " 1 1 0 1 1 r l i rrn 1ola t ric " conception of time, I
refer to my essays co l l e c t e d i 1 1 /c •// 0/1 1 } ( ' fl"nmos , ( K lagenfurt, 1 986) , and
to my article "Chronos l' i\ i rn 1 , " // < « ·1 1 /1 1 11 ru 1 7 ( 1 986 ) .
the maj esty of the fi rmament of l ight below the seat of its glory." Les
Textes de Qumran , French trans. by J. Carmagnac, E. Cothenet, and H .
Lignee ( Paris, 1 963 ) . On t h e extraordinary fami l iarity o f t h e inhabitants
of Qumran with the Angels, see the splendid edition of the manuscripts of
Qumran by L. Moraldi (Turi n, 1 986 ) .
12. On the i maginary of Hell in the ancient world and the traditions
examined here, see P. Xella, Archeologia dell 'infemo (Verona, 1 987) .
14. For this part of my wor k , a part from the classic Stemg!aube und
Stemdeutung. Die Geschichte und dus Wesen der Astrologie, by F. Bol l ,
C. Bezold, W . Gunde l, 4 l h e<l . . e<l . W . C u n <l e l ( 1 9:l l ) , see the extraordinary
book by Hugo Winckler, l >ie hah.t1!0111\che CeL�teskultur ( 1 907) . The
investigations of Winck l e r a l so had w i d l'spread infl uence beyond the spe
cialized m i l ieux. Some of i t s t h L' l l lL'S wL· n· rl' cove re<l by F. C. Rang, one of
the German writers most L' s l l·t· 1 1 1 n l hy I l offrnanstha l , Benjamin and
Rosenzweig, in h i s l lis/11ris1 h1 · l 's 111 hulu11ie des Kamevals ( 1 927) .
Cassi rer, in the second vo l 1 1 1 l l l ' ( " M v l I 1 i c ; d Though t " ) of The Philosophy of
Symbolic Forms ( 1�11g l i s l i l r; 1 1 1 � l . d 1 1 1 1 1 , I < . M ; 1 1 d w i 111 , t rans. ! New Haven,
Conn . : Yale Univers i t y l 'rl'ss . I %: \ I ) q 1 1 o t l ' s W i 1 1 c k l e r numerous times,
while criticizing i n h i 1 1 1 ; 1 c n l . 1 1 1 1 " p. 1 1 i l 1. i l 1 v l o 1 1 i s 1 1 1 . "
1 5 . C. Bezo l d , 11slm1 11 1 1 1 1 1< '. l /1 1 1 1 1 1 11 ·l" h ' 1 1 1 l/lu/ !lstmlleben bei den
Babyloniem ( I l e i <l c l hni ' . I ' I I 1 1
.
1 18 Notes
25. The relation between the protean i mage of man and the theolog
i cal tradition is central in 1 1 . de Luhac, L 'afba incompiuta def
Rinascimento. Pico def/a Mirando/a ( M i l a n . 1 977).
26. R. Guard i n i , i n his /)er F1 1yd i11 na11/es Cottlicher Komodie,
(Munich, 1 95 1 ) , ins ists on ! h r " rn 1 1 1 p l t· !t- l y C h rist ian" character of the
Ange ls i n Dante, without l'Vl' l l pncl' i v i 1 1 g I l l e a n l inomical character of
thei r figures, for wh i c h , on I I ll' mi l l r; 1 rv . WL' have I ried to account in this
book.
1. H . U. von Ba l l hasar, S! 1 1 t l/, '\ 1 1 1 l' /1, ·1 1/1 111irnl Styles: Lay Styles, in
The Glory o fthe Lord, vo l . : 1 . p . Kit
2. Ibid., p. 87.
7. See S . Boulgakov , I '/ '/ " ' " " , /, / , , , , , ,, ., ,11 l "The Bride of l l t l'
Lamb" ] (Lausanne, 1 9 84 ) , 1 '. 1 1 1 1 . I I , l 1 o 1 1 u l1 1 1 1 1 • ' . p p . :l0 0-309, 3 1 9 , : \ � :l l l .
120 Noles
But it cannot be only the Son who waits; one has to think that there is
hope i n the heart of the Father h i mself, in the perfectly free mission of the
Verbum. See C. Peguy, Le porche du Mystere de la deuxieme vertu ( Paris:
Gal l i mard, 1 92 9 ) .
14. A s Origen says in a famous text: "The Savior has come down to
earth out of pity for the human race. He has patiently experienced our
passions before suffering the cross and deigning to take our flesh . . . .
What is this passion, then, that he suffered for us? The passion of love
( caritatis) . But the Father Himself, God of the un iverse , ful l of goodness
and mercy and pity, does He not suffer in some way? Or do you ignore
that, when He takes care of human affairs, He experiences a human pas
sion? . . . The Father H i mself is not unmoved! If one prays to Him, He feels
compassion, He suffers a passion of love" (Origen, Homilies on Ezekiel,
VI , 6 ) . The most violent of oppositions separated these conceptions from
the radical Docetism of Christian Cnosis, which perhaps fi nds its most
i mpressive expression in t h e Apocalypse of Peter. And Tertu l l ian (Against
Praxeas, 29, 6 ) : "sed quomodo fi l i us passus est, si non compassus est et
pater?" ("But how cou l d t he Son s u ffer, if the Father did not also suffer
with him?") Clement of A l exa n d r i a gm·s so far as to cal l mother what i n
t h e Divine Father subm i t s t o dl'a l h . Th i s i s w h y I l e suffers with u s : "By a n
a c t of love t h e Father t u rnl'd i n t o ; 1 w o 1 1 1 ; u 1 " (Stromata, VI, 1 6 ) . How are
we not to be remin<led of I hl' Cod w l t o s 1 1 fk r s al t h e cry of the Son on the
C ross, of which Kierkl'gaa rd s 1 H· a k s . ; 1 1 1 t l of S i 1 1 1 one Wei l when she says:
"Everything that I s u ffe r . Cod s 1 1 l l ns " I Wl' c 1 1 1 ba r e l y evoke the complex
ity of the prob lem o f C o d " s s 1 i l l n 1 1 1 i � ; 1 1 1 d o f l l w re l a t ion between the
Father and the Son 0 1 1 I h( · Crus.' 1 1 1 I I 11· C 1 i s 1 s 1 l t rn l ogy of the twentieth
century. The mos t i rn por l ; 1 1 1 I 1 1 1 \'l' :. l 1 1 � . i l 1 1 1 1 1 � 1 1 1 I \ . B a r i h , of Moltman n , of
J iinge l , as we l l as t hosr of l \ ; 1 � p \ ' 1 . . i i I I 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 · :, 1 · q t wsl ions, overcoming
any confess ional "ha r r i 1 · 1 . . . ( h 1 1 1 w · . 1 1 1 i i ' 1 1 1 1 1 � • > I < : 1 1d , s1T 1 l w last volume of
the Theo-drama hy B; d l I 1 . 1 :" 1 1 .
Nnfes
5. See H. Imhof, t.'i/11 1 ". 1 . 1 1 1 1 /1' .1/ !1'1 /kes Gottesbild als
Spiegelung des Unbewuss/( '// t i k 1 d 1 111 1 I i ' 1 • 1 1 1 1 1 . p p . : : 7 1 ff.
I Vt Nu/i's