Angels ain't so high

[MASCARO at humnet.ucla.edu]

Thanks, Paul, for clarifying.  Maybe now hg will stop being so mean to me.  What 
rank do you think the Angel over Lubeck held?  He seemed a pretty nice, though 
somewhat of a foreboding angel.  What do you think?  Throne?  Principality? Plain 
old ordinary , though large, angel?  Can't recall page numbers but this is from GR, 
right?

john m



>On Tue, 19 Mar 1996 MASCARO at humnet.ucla.edu wrote:
>
>> Truth to tell, I felt a little uneasy about the connotations of--archangels--but 
>wanted 
>> to  play  w/--Los Angeles.  I put in the closing thought precisely not to draw 
>> invidious high/low distinctions.  Sorry if I seemed to do so anyway.
>
>I feel personally responsible for bringing Archangels into the discussion. 
>Just couldn't resist paraphrasing H. Adams' great opening line "The
>Archangel loved heights" as a catchy (I thought) name for a thread.
>Needed to tie together angels (as in City of the) and towers (as in Watts).
>Saint Michel seemed a likely candidate. That's what you (I) get for being 
>pretentious. Oh well, a bit of flame throwing once in a while isn't a bad
>digression from IJ.
>
>Even Archangels aren't so high, though they may have exalted job titles
>here on earth. Further up the scale of celestial beings are principalities,
>powers, virtues, dominions, and thrones. Also cherubim and seraphim fit in 
>there somewhere. Lower down are just-plain-angels, who mostly do the grunt 
>work of guarding poor preterite souls. It is these preterite angels from
>whom Neustra Senora la Reina de Los Angeles, for me the truest of the 
>Lady Vs (way I was raised foax), recieves the greatest allegience as their
>queen.
>
>Pynchon's (have to bring him in somewhere) Rilke made the Angel a pseudonym 
>for God. But the poet also (as I remember it) being a modern, 20th Century 
>materialist assigned to corporeal man the task of transforming the 
>visible realm into the spiritual (angelic). Or something like that.
>
>Anyway, angels ain't so high is what you got to keep in mind.
>
>				P.
>
>