Life is an anarchy of light and dark: nothing is ever completely fulfilled in life, nothing ever quite ends; new, confusing voices always mingle with the chorus of those that have been heard before. Everything flows, everything merges into another thing, and the mixture is uncontrolled and impure; everything is destroyed, everything is smashed, nothing ever flowers into real life . . . Real life is always unreal, always impossible, in the midst of empirical life. But suddenly there is a gleam, a lightning that illumines the banal paths of empirical life; something disturbing and seductive, dangerous and surprising. The accident, the great moment, the miracle ; an enreachment and a confusion. It cannot last, no one would be able to bear it, no one could live at such heights ��� at the height of their own life and their own ultimate possibilities. One has to fall back into numbness. One has to deny life in order to live.

Lukacs, 'Metaphysics of Tragedy'