Friedrich_Nietzsche - Untimely_Meditations_(Cambridge_Texts_in_the_History_of_Philosophy__1997)

Untimely Meditationslonging to descend from the heights into the depths, t h e living desirefor the earth, for the joy of communion - then, when he recalls all heis deprived of as a solitary creator, the longing at once to take all thatis weak, human and lost and, like a god come to earth, 'raise it toHeaven in fiery arms', so a s at last to find love and no longer onlyworship, and in love to relinquish himself utterlyl The hybrid sensationassumed here is, however, the actual miracle in the soul ofthe dithyrambic dramatist; and if his nature can be conceptualizedanywhere, it must be here. For the creative moments in hisart are produced by the tension occasioned by this hybrid, when theuncanny and exuberant sensation of surprise and amazement atthe world is coupled with the ardent longing to approach this sameworld as a lover. Whatever glances he may then cast upon earth andlife, they are always beams of sunlight which 'suck up moisture', congregatemist, spread thunderclouds. His glance falls at once clearsightedand lovingly seljless: and everything he now illuminates with thetwofold light of this glance is at once compelled by nature to dischargeall its forces with fearful rapidify in a revelation of its mostdeeply hidden secrets: and it does so out of shame. It is more than afigure of speech to say that with this glance he has surprised nature,that he has seen her naked: so that now she seeks to conceal hershame by fleeing into her antitheses. What has hitherto been invisibleand inward escapes into the sphere of the visible and becomesappearance; what was hitherto only visible flees into the dark oceanof the audible: thus; by seeking to hide herselj; nature reveals the character ofher antitheses. In an impetuously rhythmic yet hovering dance, inecstatic gestures, the primordial dramatist speaks of what is nowcoming to pass within him and within nature: the dithyramb of hisdance is as much dread understanding and exuberant insight as it isa loving approach and joyful self-renunciation. Intoxicated, theword follows in the train of this rhythm; coupled with the word theresounds the melody; and melody in turn showers its fire into therealm of images and concepts. A dream apparition, like and unlikethe image of nature and her wooer, floats by, it condenses into morehuman forms, it expands as the expression of a wholly heroicexuberant will, of an ecstatic going-under and cessation of will: -thus does tragedy come into being, thus there is bestowed upon lifeits most glorious form of wisdom, that of the tragic idea, thus there isat last arose the greatest sorcerer and benefactor of mortals, thedithyrambic dramatist. -226