Humanist Philosophy: Rilke and Wenders

The Humanist Philosophy of Rilke's Duino Elegies
and Wender's Wings of Desire

A central theme in humanist scholarship is the struggle to find man's place in the cosmos. Between his history and his future, man gathers knowledge despite doubt, finds joy in the midst of sorrow, and must eventually come to grips with his mortality in order to find some sort of meaningful existence. Poet Ranier Maria Rilke and filmmaker Wim Wenders both explore man and his special position in their respective works, Duino Elegies and Wings of Desire. Both artists define the human position in comparison and contrast with some common archetypal themes: they show us man's struggle for meaningful existence in the Circus, his achievement of this engagement in the relationship of the Lovers, and they finally establish the position of humankind in the world as they explore the archetypes of the Child and the Poet and their contrast with that of the Angel.

In Duino Elegies, Rilke represents the struggle for meaningful existence in his contemplation of Picasso's Les Saltimbanques: the Acrobat's Dasein,or existence, far from the glamour they present to their audience, is a life of itinerary and hard work. But despite the pain of their performance, their life "that is always galloping on ahead(52)," the Acrobats persevere in smiling exhibition.

Wenders also shows us the Acrobats' perseverance in the character of Marion. Her life is not all glitter and happiness: she broods over the ending of the circus and worries over what the future might bring. But despite her fears and her pain, despite even that the closing-night audience will be sparse and disinterested, she chooses to perform.

The secret, then, of Subrisio Saltat, the Smile of the Acrobat, is performance in the midst of indifference, it is man's ability to continue to struggle for meaning in a life that "gallops" ahead of its own absurdity. This perseverance is a "fragment" of humanity "shored against" the "ruins" of suffering. Rilke's Acrobats of his Fifth Elegy teach us how to eschew our tears and smile, and Marion in Wings of Desire reminds us that we "would've fallen long ago" had we ceased in our human effort.

We must be mindful, however, that even if performance keeps us from "falling," it leaves us empty, unfulfilled. At the end of his Fifth Elegy, Rilke proposes "suppose there's a place we don't know of" where our smiles will be truthful, where our lives will be fulfilled (Rilke 56). Rilke's Lovers find this earthly paradise in their relationship with one another; they can "sense underneath the touch some kind of pure duration (32)." But despite the fact that "somehow eternity seems almost possible" in the Lovers' embrace (32), they ultimately "block each other's view (72)" of transcendence—the love-object gets in the way of the ideal of Love itself.

Wenders explores a solution to the limitation of the Lovers in Wings of Desire. While in Duino Elegies, only the unrequited lover in her yearning can embody perfect, transcendent love (21ff), Wender's Lovers transcend the arbitrariness of love and the limitations of the love-object by conscious decision. "I don't know if destiny exists," Marion says, "but decision does exist." Happiness may be "a matter of chance," but Marion's conscious choice ensures that her love is not the product of coincidence, but of existential engagement. Thus she and Damiel can "personify something," and what they personify is the human ability to choose. Unlike the Acrobats, they do not perform for show, and they need not present a veneer of falsehood to any audience. But because they decide to act honestly with their entire conscious being, to "open up" completely to one another, they define their character by their choice of action and their engagement informs the ideal of Love in a transcendent way.

If these archetypes teach us something about the mode of human existence, the artists find clues to the purpose of human existence in the types of Child and Poet. Both of these types are contrasted with that of the Angel in ways that teach us more about the many facets of human life.

In Duino Elegies, Rilke's portrait of the Child centers around the development of the Child and his self-awareness in the context of a Jungian interpretation of the unconscious mind. In the Third Elegy, the Child sprouts "like a green shoot among huge fallen trees (39-40)," gaining self-awareness among the "seething multitudes" of characters in the universal drama of unconscious history; the Child grows up, unconsciously connected to "the floods of his origin (39)."

Wenders draws an interesting parallel to the child's unconscious history in his portrayal of the Poet. In Wings of Desire, the Poet is the storyteller that humanity "needs more than anything in the world;" this storyteller offers mankind a connexion to his own ancestry. The historical context offered by the Poet is not unlike the unconscious history that shapes the development of the Child. Without the unconscious connexion to the "drama of the tribe" of humanity, the Child's development would be hindered, and, as Homer says, "if mankind loses its storyteller, it loses its childhood"—man's development as a race would be incomplete.

But if his identification with the past makes man's development possible, his future is limited by his mortality. Rilke is aware of this undeniable fact; the search for acceptance of the transience of life is an important part of Rilke's poetic exploration. In his Forth Elegy, we see the mystery of the unity of life and death that is human existence: Even the child is undeniably mortal, and "to contain death—the whole of death—even beforelife has begun...is indescribable (48)."

Wenders is not ignorant to the omnipresence of death—his Angels encounter the dying throughout his film—but he, like Rilke, also seeks an acceptance of death. What, they ask, makes human existence possible, even desirable, in the shadow of looming death? Wenders explores the question through his dramatisation of the Angel Damiel's entry into the world of human life. At the center of Damiel's wish to become human is his desire for sensation: he finally will "enter the history of the world if only to hold one apple" in his hand. After his transformation, he runs, he drinks coffee, he explores his world, he plays and kicks dirt with childlike curiosity and exhilaration. But, just as Rilke's Child held within his being both the mysteries of life and the inevitability of death, in order to experience this child-like vigour of existence, Damiel must "enter the history" of the human cycle of living and dying—a cycle unknown to his Angelic being.

What is it that makes humanity worth the price of mortality? Rilke suggests that the secret of human triumph lies in man's dual nature. His Angels wish for humanity because humans can manipulate with the world in a way that they never can. Spiritual existence, in the realm of the Ideal, is the theatre of the possible,but humanity is the life of the actual. Man finds his place by not only surrendering to perseverance, but he transcends his limitations by accepting his unique position.

Rilke places man as a mediator between the material and the spiritual. The earth, he says, needs man if it is to achieve any sort of spiritual existence. The "perishing" things of earth "trust to us— the most perishable of all—for their preservation. They want us to change them completely inside our invisible hearts" into their spiritual ideals (83). The human transforms the things of earth so that they can exist "with an intensity the things themselves never dreamed they'd express (80); the Angel that participates so fully in spiritual existence yet is unable to transform he world in this way (82). Man, however, accomplishes this miraculous communion of body and spirit as a function of his mere existence.

Finally, man finds his transcendence in the accomplishment of this his "mission:" because of his ability to transform, Rilke's Poet can "draw up from wellsprings of sadness rejoicing and progress (26)," just as Wender's Poet seeks to outlast his mortality and his "brittle voice" by preserving his ideas in his art. "Look," says Rilke, "I'm living.

Finally, man is not limited by his history or his mortality; he thrives in the present, transforming the material of the world into ideas with a spiritual existence like a "handful of earth" can be transformed into "the yellow and blue gentian (Rilke 79)."

Becoming human, Damiel knows "what no Angel knows"—part of what he knows is that "to be here means so much" and that the earth finds transcendence in the heart of man (Rilke 77ff). Man finally does not wish to be an Angel, but to be spiritually alive as a human. This life is not a mere perseverance in the face of pain; the transcendent man who accepts his place between history and mortality, between the spiritual and the material, is able to find joy in the midst of sorrow, and is at last able to be amazed by the world, like Damiel, as no Angel can. "Simply to know," as Marion says, of this amazement is enough to know that if man decides with his whole being to undertake his mission, life is meaningful, and "to be here" is enough.

Works Cited

Rilke, Ranier Maria. Duino Elegies. New York: W.W. Norton & Co. 1992.

Wings of Desire (Der Himmel Über Berlin), Directed by Wim Wenders, 1987.

3 September, 1997

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