“AND SERAPH SOBS AT VERMINGS FANGS”. GLI ANGELI COME MEDIATORI FRA L’ALDILÀ E L’UOMO

Abstract

Within Western culture, angels have represented the figure of the messenger par excellence between the afterlife and the world, starting from the very etymology of the word ἄγγελος 'he who brings the news'. In the exploration of 'ultimacy' (Tillich), that is, the individual and collective eschatological quest, the angel represents the intermediary between the two worlds, the one who reveals personal and historical destinies. In this sense, the angel can, in literary and artistic reworking, constitute an epiphany of the elsewhere (Emily Dickinson), a manifestation of the primordial and the repressed (Morante), or embody a non-linear conception of History and the traditional relationship between past and present (Benjamin). In the present article, a first part will therefore be devoted to an analysis of the figure of the angel as an intermediary between man and the otherworldly dimension of existence, with particular attention to the representations of 'exterminating angels', 'psychopompes' or heralds of death (The Conqueor Worm, Poe). Starting from the reworking of the angelic imaginary in the 20th century, the second part of the paper will focus on two narrative works, Anna Maria Ortese's La penna dell’angelo and Iris Murdoch's The Time of the Angels, in which the motif of the ‘psychopompes’ angels is combined with a reflection on Otherness.