Friedrich_Nietzsche - Untimely_Meditations_(Cambridge_Texts_in_the_History_of_Philosophy__1997)

Untimely Meditationsmanifestation. But then one would also have to be al l owed to say thatthe mightiest musical natures, in despair at having to speak to thesemi- or non-musical, violently fo rced entry to the other arts so asfinally to communicate themselves with hundredfold clarity andcompel the people to understand them. But, however one may picturethe evolution of the potential dramatist, in his perfect maturityhe is a figure without any kind of constraint or lacunae: the actuallyfree artist who can do nothing other than think in all the arts at once,the mediator between and reconciler of spheres apparently dividedfrom one another, the restorer of a unity and totality to the artisticfaculty which can in no way be divined or arrived at by reasoning,but only demonstrated through a practical deed. He before whomthis deed is suddenly performed, however, will be overpowered by itas by the uncanniest, most magnetic magic: all at once he standsbefore a power which makes all resistance senseless, which indeedseems to rob all one's previous life of sense and comprehensibility:in an ecstasy, we swim in an enigmatic, fiery element, we no longerknow ourself, no longer recognize thi most familiar things; we nolonger possess any standard of measurement, everything fixed andrigid begins to grow fluid, everything shines in novel colours, speaksto us in new signs and symbols: - now, involved in this mixture of joyand fear, one would have to be Plato to be able to resolve as he didand to say to the dramatist: 'if a man who, by virtue of his wisdomcould become all possible things and imitate all things, should enterour community, let us revere him as something miraculous andholy, anoint his head with oil and set a wreath upon it, but then try topersuade him to go away to another community'. It may be that oneliving in the Platonic community can and must persuade himself tosuch a thing: all we others, who live in no such community but incommunities constituted quite differently, desire and demand thatthe sorcerer should come to us, even though we may fear him - inorder that our community and the false reason and power whoseembodiment it is should for once be denied. A condition of mankind,of its communities, moralities, societies, institutions as awhole, which could do without the imitative artist is perhaps not acomplete impossibility, but this 'perhaps' is one of the boldest thereis and amounts to the same thing as a 'very improbably'; only heshould be permitted to speak of it who could anticipate and realizein his mind the supreme moment of all time yet to come and then,like Faust, had to grow blind - had to and had a right to, for we haveno right even to this blindness, whereas Plato for example, after having224