It's not just me then

At this precise moment, something happened that was very important for me. I don't know how, but I was reminded of a sentence by Nietzsche that I have always read in a thousand different ways, it depends on the meaning I wish to give it each time. It is a sentence I apply to a whole range of circumstances: “One day my name will be associated with the memory of something tremendous - a crisis without equal on earth.”

One cannot go against one's imagination, and at that instant, on the terrace of the Brighton [Hotel], I imagined my name and surname in a few years' time evoking the brutal memory of a crisis in literature that humanity will have overcome - the imagination, when it's very powerful, is capable of these things - thanks to my heroic conduct, Quixote, spear in hand, against the enemies of the literary.

From the wonderful Montano's Malady by Enrique Vila-Matas, translated by Jonathan Dunne.