Dual Nature Of Nietzsche's Life

Mr. Foster,

I think deep down I know, and always have known, you 're right.

Maybe it really is just a remnant of that Apollonian dream-state, but there 's one feeling I have that doesn 't seem confinable to either of Nietzsche 's spirits. It 's called sehnsucht, a German word that translates roughly to intense, inconsolable nostalgia for something ambiguous -not consciously definable, something, perhaps, not existing in life.

I think I wrote a little about it in my first personal statement.

I 've always felt it, every second of every day I can ever remember -that soft missing, at least distantly in the back of my mind. When it surfaces into consciousness, the feeling is more intense, more real, and all the while more painfully sweet than any Dionysian impulse has ever felt. Yet it doesn 't share the spirit 's trademark indulgence in primordial

And the Apollonian nature of its distance, for lack of a better word, from real life, is sharply contrasted by uncharacteristically emotional, illogical, subjective and irresistible qualities that would be categorized as Dionysian.

Accompanying this innate feeling has always been a sense of mission, like I 've been given this life because I 'm supposed to do something really important, and that the sehnsucht will only be satiated once I 've completed my purpose.

My logical quests for answers have only brought me to the explanation that these lifelong "truths", or at least beliefs, are mere products, even side effects, of natural selection. A random jumble of meaningless physical matter that was by chance successful in