For the angel of the Elegies, all the towers and palaces of the past are existent because they have long been invisible, and the still-standing towers and bridges of our reality are already invisible, although still (for us) physically lasting….All the worlds in the universe are plunging into the invisible as into their next-deeper reality; a few stars intensify immediately and pass away into the infinite consciousness of the angels-, others are entrusted to beings who slowly and laboriously transform them, in whose terrors and delights they attain their next invisible realization. We, let it be emphasized once more, we, in the sense of the Elegies, are these transformers of the earth; our entire existence, the flights and plunges of our love, everything, qualifies us for this task (beside which there is, essentially, no other.)
Rilke to Witold Hulewicz, November 1925