Moravian Shadows

Abstract

For the rapture of the Dionysian state with its annihilation of the ordinary bounds and limits of existence contains, while it lasts, a lethargic element in which all personal experiences of the past become immersed. This chasm of oblivion separates the worlds of everyday reality and of Dionysian reality. But as soon as this everyday reality re-enters consciousness, it is experienced as such, with nausea: an ascetic, will-negating mood is the fruit of these states (Nietzsche, 1967, pp 59-60). [E]very theory is a working hypothesis fostered by our interest in the facts themselves: theory is essential for sorting out the pertinent facts and ordering them in a system — it is for that and no more. The very need for some particular set of facts, the very prerequisite of having some particular conceptual sign - these are conditions dictated by contemporary life with its specific problems. History is, in effect, a science of complex analogies, a science of double vision: the facts of the past have meanings for us that differentiate them and place them, invariably and inevitably, in a system under the sign of contemporary problems. Thus one set of problems supplants another. History in this sense is a special method of studying the present with the aid of the facts of the past (Ejxenbaum, in Matejka and Pomorska, 2002, p 56).