Friedrich_Nietzsche - Untimely_Meditations_(Cambridge_Texts_in_the_History_of_Philosophy__1997)

Richard Wagner in Bayreuthporaries could neither raise it up nor account for it. Whether itpraised or rejected him, he did not belong to this generation: - thatwas the judgment of his instinct; and that there will ever be a generation,that belongs to him cannot be proved to, him who does notalready believe it. But even this unbeliever can, however, pose thequestion as to what a generation would have to be like if Wagner wasto recognize in it his 'folk', as the epitome of all those who feel a needin common and want to be redeemed from it through an art in common.Schiller, to be sure, was more believing and more hopeful: hedid not ask what an age would be like if the instinct of the artist whoprophesies it should prove sound, he rather demanded of theartists:Erhebet euch mit kiihnem FliigelHoch iiber euren Zeitenlauf!Fern dammre schon in eurem SpiegelDas kommende Jahrhundert auf!- Raise yourselves on daring wing high above your own age! Let thecoming century distantly dawn already in your mirror!11May sane reason preserve us from the belief that mankind will at anyfuture time attain to 'a final ideal order of things, and-that happinesswill then shine down upon it with unwavering ray like the sun of thetropics: with such a beliefWagner has nothing to do, he is no utopian.If he cannot cease to believe in the future this means no more thanthat he perceives in the men of today qualities which do not belongto the unalterable character and bone-structure of human naturebut are changeable, indeed transitory, and that it is precisely becauseof these qualities that art has to be homeless among them and hehimself has to be the herald of another age. No golden age, no cloudlesssky is allotted to this coming generation to which his instinctdirects him and whose vague lineaments can, so far as it is possible toinfer the nature of the need from the nature of the gratification, bediscerned in the secret writing of his art. Neither will suprahumangoodness and justice span the fields of this fu ture like an immovablerainbow. Perhaps this generation as a whole will even seem more evilthan the present generation - for, in wicked as in good things, it willbe more candid; it is possible, indeed, that if its soul should speak outin free full tones it would shake and terrify our soul as would thevoice of some hitherto concealed evil spirit of nature. Or how do251