Wings of Desire Program - American Repertory Theater

Making AngelsThe origins ofWings of DesireThe genesis of the idea of havingangels [in Wings of Desire] isvery hard to account for in retrospect.It was suggested bymany sources at once. First andforemost, Rilke’s Duino Elegies.Paul Klee’s paintings too. WalterBenjamin’s Angel of History.There was a song by the Curethat mentioned ‘fallen angels,’and I heard another song on thecar radio that had the line ‘talk toan angel’ in it. One day, in theBruno Ganz (Damiel) looks over his city.middle of Berlin, I suddenlybecame aware of that gleaming figure, ‘the Angel of Peace,’ metamorphosed from being a warlike victoryangel into a pacifist. […] There have always been childhood images of angels as invisible,omnipresent observers; there was, so to speak, the old hunger for transcendence, and also a longingfor the absolute opposite: the longing for a comedy! THE DEADLY EARNEST OF A COMEDY!–– Wim Wenders, from the first treatment for Wings of DesireWho, if I cried out, would hear me among the angelicorders? And even if one of them pressed mesuddenly to his heart: I’d be consumedin his stronger existence. For beauty is nothingbut the beginning of terror, which we can just barely endure,and we stand in awe of it as it coolly disdainsto destroy us. Every angel is terrifying.And so I check myself and swallow the luring callof dark sobs. Alas, whom can we turn toin our need? Not angels, not humans,and the sly animals see at oncehow little at home we arein the interpreted world. That leaves ussome tree on a hillside, on which our eyes fastenday after day; leaves us yesterday’s streetand the coddled loyalty of an old habitthat liked it here, stayed on, and never left.–– Rainer Maria Rilke, Duino Elegies, trans. Edward Snow