“What has happened (geschehen) has always only half happened (halb geschehen), and the force that made it happen, which expressed itself in it inadequately, continues to operate within us and casts its glow also on partial, future attempts that still lie within us (…). What could never pass must be shattered; what never became itself must be dissolved, and that which never fully happened (das nie ganz Geschehene) must be fulfilled in new moments. Certainly, the past seems solidified, asleep, as it tends to cover itself with increasing darkness as it recedes further from us. But all of this can awaken: it has remained fluid and changeable, and continues to flow underground, with nothing immutable about it (…). Despite its apparent crystallization in the past, in its transience it still harbours something secret, an element of the future (ein Element des Zukünftigen), just as the crystallization of the future in the pacified present of hindsight or judgment carries above itself alternatives, unknown gods that await us. To pursue this pulsing element, to untie in regret this repressed future that could not realise itself in the thick matter of what has become (…)
