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March 18, 2007
the sense for the tragic
The individual must be consecrated to something higher than himself-that is the meaning of tragedy; he must be free of the terrible anxiety which death and time evoke in the individual: for at any moment, in the briefest atom of his life's course, he may encounter something holy that endlessly outweighs all his struggle and all his distress-this is what it means to have a sense for the tragic; all the ennoblement of mankind is enclosed in this supreme task; the definite rejection of this task would be the saddest picture imaginable to a friend of man. This is my view of things! There is only one hope and one guarantee for the future of humanity: it consists in his retention of the sense of the tragic.
Nietzsche - Richard Wagner in Bayreuth
Posted by amin at March 18, 2007 4:46 PM