Friedrich_Nietzsche - Untimely_Meditations_(Cambridge_Texts_in_the_History_of_Philosophy__1997)

Richard Wagner in Bayreuthunderstand and which contemporary Germans themselves ppearto have lost - that golden, thoroughly fermented mixture of simplicity,the penetrating glance of love, reflective mind and roguishnesssuch as Wagner has dispensed as the most delicious of draughtsto all who have suffered profoundly from life and return to it as itwere with the smile of convalescents. And, as he himself lookedupon the world with more reconciled eyes, was seized less often withrage and disgust, renounced power more in sorrow and love thanwith a shudder, as he thus quietly pushed fo rward his greatest workand laid score beside score, something happened which made himstop and listen: fri ends were coming to tell him of a subterraneanmovement of many souls - it was far from being the 'folk' that washere in motion and announcing itself, but perhaps the germ and firstsource oflife of a truly human community to be perfected in the distantfuture; for the present no more than a guarantee that his greatwork could one day be placed in the hands and care of faithful mencharged with and worthy of guarding this most glorious oflegacies inthe years to come; in the love of friends the days of his life began toshine in warmer colours; his noblest care and concern, as it were toreach the goal of his work before evening and to find for it a shelter,was no longer his care and concern alone. And then there occurredan event which he could understand only symbolically and whichsignified for him a new comfort, a sign of good fortune. A great Germanwar made him look up, a war of those same Germans whom he knewto have degenerated and fallen so far from the German highmindednesswhich he had come to know from his observation of himselfand of the other great Germans of historyhe saw that, in a quitetremendous situation, these Germans had exhibited two genuinevirtues, simple bravery and presence of mind, and he began to thinkthat perhaps he was not the last German and that one day his workwould secure the protection of a more formidable power than that ofhis self-sacrificing but few friends, which would preserve it fo r thatfuture destined to it as the art-work of the future. Perhaps, when hesought to advance this belief to a hope of immediate realization, itwas not always possible to shield it from doubt: it is enough that itgave to him a tremendous incitement to remember a lofty dutyas yet unfulfilled.His work would not have been finished, not brought to a conclusion,if he had entrusted it to posterity only as a mute score; hehad publicly to demonstrate and give instruction in what could notbe guessed, in what he alone knew, of the new style needed for its233