In 1926: living at the edge of time - Monoskop

IMMANENCE VS. TRANSCENDENCE 287
nence = Transcendence (Death)]-so much so that, according to Graf
Kessler, the angel in Cocteau's tragedie comes straight out of the playwright's
life: after a religious conversion earlier in the year, Cocteau
believes that he himself has become an angelic being (Kessler, 447).
There are angels almost everywhere. "You kill like an angel" (Montherlant,
Les Bestiaires, 230) is just about the highest compliment that an
experienced bullfighter can pay a young colleague. In "Reyerta," one of
the poems in Federico Garcia Lorca's Romancero gitano (Gypsy Romance)
black angels with long, dagger-shaped wings mourn the victims
of a fight:
A harsh playing-card light
cuts out, with acid green,
maddened horses
and silhouettes of riders.
Into the olive-tree cup
two old women are crying.
The bull of the fight
goes up the wall.
Black angels carry
handkerchiefs and snow water.
Angels with great wings
like jackknives from Albacete.
(Garda Lorca, 428-429)
One does not always need topics with such obviously religious connotations
in order to bring back the concepts and metaphors of Transcendence.
Whatever seems dangerous, exciting, or simply new can activate
a halo of quasi-religious words and attitudes. Bars and drinks become a
means of access either to hell or to heaven. The "adoration of elevators"
emerges as a standard phrase among those who criticize Europeans'
enthusiasm for the American way of life. Admiration for some recently
introduced wireless communication devices appears to trigger a revival
of interest in telepathy. Gramophones are increasingly associated with
the desire to speak with the dead. The film industry invents a new heaven
of stars. [see Bars, Elevators, Wireless Communication, Gramophones,
Movie Palaces, Stars] Even where such discourses no longer explicitly
refer to worlds beyond-or below-the sphere of everyday life, as is the