Friedrich_Nietzsche - Untimely_Meditations_(Cambridge_Texts_in_the_History_of_Philosophy__1997)

Untimely MeditationsIf we venture thus to gaze into the future, we are als aware of theuncanny social insecurity which characterizes our own times andcannot conceal from ourselves the peril facing an art which seems tohave no roots at all ifit does not have them in the distant future, andwhich reveals to us its blossoming branches rather than the foundationout of which it grows. How can we preserve this homeless anso that it shall survive into this future? How can we dam the flood of, the apparently ineluctable revolution in such a way that this happyanticipation and guarantee of a better fu ture, a freer humanity, is notalso swept away with all that which is dedicated to and wonhy ofdestruction?Whoever fe els this anxiety participates in Wagner's anxiety; withhim, he will feel himself driven to seek out those existing powerswhich have the will to be the guardian spirits of mankind's noblestproperty through these coming times of earthquake and upheaval . Itis only in this sense that Wagner in his writings inquires of thecultivated whether they are willing to take his legacy, the preciousring of his art, into their treasure-house; and even the sublime trustwhich Wagner has reposed in the German spirit even in respect of itspolitical goals seems to me to have its origin in his crediting thenation of the Reformation with that strength, kindness and braveryneeded to 'divert the sea of revolution into the quietly flowingstream of humanity': and I could almost think that this and nothingelse is what he intended to express through the symbolism of hisKaisennarsch. *In general, however, the creative artist's urge to help is too great,. the horizon of his philanthropy too spacious, for his purview to belimited to the area bounded by any one nation. His conceptions are,like those of every great and good German, supra-Gennan, and his anspeaks, not to nations, but to individual men.But to men of the future.This is the faith which characterizes him, his torment and his distinction.No artist at any time in the past has received so remarkablea dowry from his genius, no one but he has had to imbibe with thatdraught of nectar enthusiasm has dispensed for him so sharp a dropof bitterness. It is not, as one might suppose, the misunderstood,mistreated and as it were fu gitive anist who adopted this faith as ameans of defence: success or failure in the eyes of his con tem->liThe Emperor March, composed by Wagner in 1871 to celebrate the founding ofthe Reich.250