 As mankind comes in contact with this terrifying beauty represented by these angels , Rilke is concerned with the experience of existential angst in trying to come to terms with the coexistence of the spiritual and earthly . He portrays human beings as alone in a universe where God is abstract and possibly non @-@ existent , " where memory and patterns of intuition raise the sensitive consciousness to a realization of solitude . " Rilke depicts the alternative , a spiritually fulfilling possibility beyond human limitations in the form of angels . Beginning with the first line of the collection , Rilke 's despairing speaker calls upon the angels to notice human suffering and to intervene . There is a deeply felt despair and unresolvable tension in that no matter man 's striving , the limitation of human and earthly existence renders humanity unable to reach out to the angels . The narrative voice Rilke employs in the Duino Elegies strives " to achieve in human consciousness the angel 's presumed plenitude of being " ( i.e. being , or existence , in German : Dasein ) . 
