Nietzsche’s concept of “eternal recurrence” became the opening idea of Milan Kundera’s novel The Unbearable Lightness of Being, became the opening idea of Alan Lightman’s book Einstein’s Dreams, became the opening idea of the Time After Time exhibition. Time flows by in eternal circles and all keeps recurring forever, even the repetition repeats itself. We are convinced of the unique and individual quality of each moment, not knowing that we experienced it many times before and are going to live it again and again in the future. Each word will be uttered again in the same context and each sentence will acquire the same meaning. Eternal recurrence. We believe in the uniqueness of moments that disappear forever and will never come back. Forever we are caught in the illusion of the passage of time.
