[361] LECTURE XXIX, Feb. 23, 1956 QN [Paul A. Lee, Jr.] : Valéry, when asked if he could give a definition of beauty^a, answered easily, ''It is that which makes us despair.'' Please comment on this in reference to your formulation regarding the revelation character of art. PT: Now I want to refer to another great poet, Rilke^b, who in the Duino Elegies says: every angel is terrible, and the beautiful is just the beginning of the horrible which we still can stand.--In both of these statements there is a feeling for the unity of the beautiful-creative and the horrible-destructive. To this I could simply refer to the fact of the ambiguity^c of life in which the

creative always implies the destructive, and the destructive is the first in the process which leads to the creative^d. But this is a general statement which refers to all life. With respect to art^e, I could refer to what I said about the anticipatory character of art, out of which the idealistic forms of art come which are usually covered by the term beauty. You remember that I tried

to avoid this term because of its many ugly connotations. In any case, beauty is an element of the artistic, and this element of the artistic produces--if we look at it and feel the difference of our being to it--the estrangement from what we ought to be and could be, to what we are, produces the feeling of despair. So I have answered, I think, this question as far as I can. Since I don't know the context in which Valéry says this, I cannot answer the question fully, but the phrase of Rilke, where I know the context, in his doctrine of angels, I can tell you for sure that he points to the hidden demonic^f backward of the angelic form...