242
PARTISAN REVIEW
changing the content of fulfillment that once detennined the will,
it becomes "morality."
It is no different with adventure. We are the adventurers of the
earth; our life is crossed everywhere by the tensions which mark ad–
venture. But only when these tensions have become so violent that
they gain mastery over the material of their self-realization, does the
"adventure" arise. For the adventure does not consist in a substance
won or lost, enjoyed or endured: to all this we have access in other
fonns of life as well. Rather, it is the radical way in which it becomes
perceptible as a life-tension, as the rubato of the life-process, inde–
pendent of its materials and their differences--these tensions increas–
ing until they tear life, beyond those materials, completely out of it–
self: this is what transfonns mere experience into adventure. Cer–
tainly, it is only one segment of existence among others. Yet it be–
long~
'to those fonns which, beyond the mere share they have in life
and beyond
all
the accidental nature of their individual contents,
have the mysterious power to make us feel for a moment the whole
sum of life as their fulfillment and vehicle.
Translated from the German
by
David K euler
(
