Redemption through Art 105art, notably Greek tragedy and Wagner's music drama, have the power to
conjure up a public that is appropriate and suited to them.
Contemporary audiences need quite a bit of refinement before they
are able to take art seriously. A serious approach to art—receptivity to
its charms and the achievement of a higher level of cheerfulness—
requires an altogether different kind of solemnity. One must be in a
tragic frame of mind to prove worthy of aesthetic cheerfulness. It is nec-
essary to shake off illusions and yet remain passionately in love with life,
even after its great futility has been revealed. Nietzsche demanded a
great deal from those he would deem suitable for tragedy. They must,
first of all, be receptive to horror and terror; next, they must unlearn
their "terrible anxiety" all over again once they recognize that "in the
blink of an eye, in the tiniest atom of their life, they may encounter
something holy" (1,453; WB § 4). The aesthetic moment is precisely this
sort of atom of happiness, which more than compensates for all strug-
gles and adversity. Nietzsche concluded this train of thought as follows:
"Even if all of mankind should need to perish—and who could doubt
this!—man has been charged with a goal, as the loftiest task for all time
to come, of growing together into oneness and commonality so that
mankind can confront its impending doom as a united entity and with a
sense of the tragic This loftiest of all tasks encompasses the sum total
of the ennoblement of mankind" (1,453).
This lofty task therefore entails producing or seizing on moments of
a person's or a work's greatest achievement. Nietzsche chose a singular
expression to describe this type of moment: "the peak of rapture of the
world" (7,200). He employed this expression only one time in his note-
books, to apply to the kind of moment when, in the height of danger,
the "mind of a drowning man," for example (7,199), experiences all of
eternity condensed into a single second; the supreme agony and ecstasy
of life flashes up one final time before it is submerged. The bright lights
and illuminations of genius are of this nature. Just as the individual com-
prehends his whole life in this moment and can pronounce it legitimate,
a whole history of man is illuminated and warranted by the light of these