Sichwundern, amazement, Verwundern, marvelling, maravilhar

We shall not begin with wonder but with the wondrous (Erstaunen), ‘θαυμαστόν. The wondrous (Erstaunliche) is for us in the first place something that stands out and therefore is remarkable; for the most part it also has the character of the exceptional, unexpected, surprising, and therefore exciting. A better name for this would be the curious or the marvelous, something that arouses the desire for amazement, engages it, and sustains it, specifically in such a way that it makes the search for ever new things of this kind more ardent. The marvelling and the amazement always adhere to something conspicuously unusual; this is extracted from the usual and set over against it. Thus the known, the understandable, and the explicable here form a background not further attended to, from which the marvelous emerges and is drawn away. Amazement is a certain inability to explain and ignorance of the reason. This inability to explain, however, is not by any means equivalent to a determination and a declaration that the explanation and the reason are not available. On the contrary, the not being able to explain is first and essentially a kind of being caught up in the inexplicable, being struck by it; and upon closer inspection the amazement does precisely not want to have the marvelous explained but instead wants to be teased and fascinated by the inexplicable as what is other, surprising, and uncommon in opposition to what is commonly known, boring, and empty. Nevertheless, amazement is always a determinate and singular event, a particular occurrence, a unique circumstance, and is always set off against a dominating determinate background of what is precisely familiar and ordinary.

Amazement and marveling have various degrees and levels and discover what they seek in the most diverse domains of beings. The more arbitrary, changeable, and even unessential, though indeed striking, the marvelous happens to be, the more does it satisfy amazement, which is always vigilant for opportunities and desires them so as to be stimulated in its very own passion. Being struck by what is uncommon comes to pass here in such a way that what is customary is set aside and the uncommon itself becomes something familiar that bewitches and encharms. The uncommon thus obtains its own permanent character, form, and fashion. To do so it even requires an insidious habituality. We might think in passing of all the extraordinary tilings the cinema must offer continually; what is new every day and never happened before becomes something habitual and always the same. (GA45:157; GA45RS:137)

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