The most powerful musical motifs of world-music are those in which the representation of the breaking-through of time within time, the breaking out of time, is attempted, in which an ictus falls upon the tonic such that it reabsorbs the other parts of the melody (which as a whole represents time; separate points unified by the I) and in this manner sublimates the melody. The end of the Grail-motif in 'Parsifal,' the Siegfried-motif, are such melodies. There is, however, an act that, so to speak, reabsorbs the future in itself, experiences in advance all future falling back into immorality already as guilt, no less than all the immoral past, and by this means grows out over and beyond both: A timeless setting of the character, rebirth. It is the act by which genius comes to be.
Otto Weininger