Life—that means
for us to transform constantly into light and flame
all that we are, and also all that we meet with;
we cannot possibly do otherwise.
for us to transform constantly into light and flame
all that we are, and also all that we meet with;
we cannot possibly do otherwise.
Nietzsche - v10 - The Joyful Wisdom
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Title: The complete works of Friedrich Nietzsche. The first complete
and authorized English translation, edited by Dr. Oscar Levy.
Author: Nietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm, 1844-1900.
Publisher: [Edinburgh and London : T. N. Foulis, 1909-1913. ]
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THE COMPLETE WORKS
OF
FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE
The First Complete and Authorised English Translation
EDITED BV
Dr OSCAR LEVY
VOLUME TEN
THE JOYFUL WISDOM
("LA GAVA SCIENZA")
## p. (#12) #################################################
Of the First Edition of
One Thousand Five Hundred
Copies this is
## p. (#13) #################################################
FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE
THE
JOYFUL WISDOM
(“LA GAYA SCIENZA”)
TRANSLATED BY
THOMAS COMMON
WITH POETRY RENDERED BY
PAUL V. COHN
AND
MAUDE D. PETRE
I stay to mine own house confined,
Nor graft my wits on alien stock :
And mock at every master mind
That never at itself could mock.
T. N. FOULIS
13 & 15 FREDERICK STREET
EDINBURGH: S LONDON
1910
## p. (#14) #################################################
V lb
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
Printed at The Darien Press, Edinburgh.
## p. (#15) #################################################
Goth
TE-29-24
, 013
CONTENTS
vii
EDITORIAL NOTE · · · · ·
PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION - .
JEST, RUSE AND REVENGE: A PRELUDE IN
RHYME · · ·
BOOK FIRST.
BOOK SECOND
BOOK THIRD .
Book FOURTH: SANCTUS JANUARIUS
Book FIFTH: WE FEARLESS ONES
•
APPENDIX : SONGS OF PRINCE FREE-AS-A-BIRD :
273
355
## p. (#16) #################################################
## p. (#17) #################################################
EDITORIAL NOTE
"The Joyful Wisdom," written in 1882, just before
"Zarathustra," is rightly judged to be one of
Nietzsche's best books. Here the essentially grave
and masculine face of the poet-philosopher is seen
to light up and suddenly break into a delightful
smile. The warmth and kindness that beam from
his features will astonish those hasty psychologists
who have never divined that behind the destroyer
is the creator, and behind the blasphemer the lover
of life. In the retrospective valuation of his work
which appears in "Ecce Homo" the author him-
self observes with truth that the fourth book,
"Sanctus Januarius," deserves especial attention:
"The whole book is a gift from the Saint, and
the introductory verses express my gratitude for
the most wonderful month of January that I have
ever spent. " Book fifth "We Fearless Ones,"
the Appendix "Songs of Prince Free-as-a-Bird,"
and the Preface, were added to the second edition
in 1887.
The translation of Nietzsche's poetry has proved
## p. (#18) #################################################
Vlll EDITORIAL NOTE
to be a more embarrassing problem than that of
his prose. Not only has there been a difficulty in
finding adequate translators—a difficulty overcome,
it is hoped, by the choice of Miss Petre and Mr
Cohn,—but it cannot be denied that even in the
original the poems are of unequal merit. By the
side of such masterpieces as " To the Mistral " are
several verses of comparatively little value. The
Editor, however, did not feel justified in making a
selection, as it was intended that the edition should
be complete. The heading, "Jest, Ruse and
Revenge," of the " Prelude in Rhyme" is borrowed
from Goethe.
-
## p. 1 (#19) ###############################################
PREFACE TO THE SECOND
EDITION.
i.
PERHAPS more than one preface would be necessary
for this book; and after all it might still be doubtful
whether any one could be brought nearer to the
experiences in it by means of prefaces, without
having himself experienced something similar. It
seems to be written in the language of the thawing-
wind: there is wantonness, restlessness, contra-
diction and April-weather in it; so that one is
as constantly reminded of the proximity of winter as
of the victory over it: the victory which is coming,
which must come, which has perhaps already
come. . . . Gratitude continually flows forth, as
if the most unexpected thing had happened, the
gratitude of a convalescent—for convalescence was
this most unexpected thing. "Joyful Wisdom ":
that implies the Saturnalia of a spirit which has
patiently withstood a long, frightful pressure—
patiently, strenuously, impassionately, without
submitting, but without hope—and which is now
suddenly o'erpowered with hope, the hope of
health, the intoxication of convalescence. What
wonder that much that is unreasonable and
foolish thereby comes to light: much wanton
tenderness expended even on problems which
## p. 2 (#20) ###############################################
2 THE JOYFUL WISDOM
have a prickly hide, and are not therefore fit to be
fondled and allured. The whole book is really
nothing but a revel after long privation and im-
potence: the frolicking of returning energy, of
newly awakened belief in a to-morrow and after-
to-morrow; of sudden sentience and prescience of
a future, of near adventures, of seas open once
more, and aims once more permitted and believed
in. And what was now all behind me! This
track of desert, exhaustion, unbelief, and frigidity
in the midst of youth, this advent of grey
hairs at the wrong time, this tyranny of pain,
surpassed, however, by the tyranny of pride which
repudiated the consequences of pain—and conse-
quences are comforts,—this radical isolation, as
defence against the contempt of mankind become
morbidly clairvoyant, this restriction upon principle
to all that is bitter, sharp, and painful in knowledge,
as prescribed by the disgust which had gradually
resulted from imprudent spiritual diet and pamper-
ing—it is called Romanticism,—oh, who could
realise all those feelings of mine! He, however,
who could do so would certainly forgive me
everything, and more than a little folly, boisterous-
ness and "Joyful Wisdom"—for example, the
handful of songs which are given along with
the book on this occasion,—songs in which a poet
makes merry over all poets in a way not easily
pardoned. —Alas, it is not only on the poets
and their fine "lyrical sentiments" that this
reconvalescent must vent his malignity: who knows
what kind of victim he seeks, what kind of monster
of material for parody will allure him ere long?
## p. 3 (#21) ###############################################
PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION 3
Incipit tragcedia, it is said at the conclusion of this
seriously frivolous book; let people be on their
guard! Something or other extraordinarily bad
and wicked announces itself: incipitparodia, there
is no doubt. . . .
—But let us leave Herr Nietzsche; what does it
matter to people that Herr Nietzsche has got well
again? . . . A psychologist knows few questions
so attractive as those concerning the relations of
health to philosophy, and in the case when he
himself falls sick, he carries with him all his
scientific curiosity into his sickness. For, granting
that one is a person, one has necessarily also the
philosophy of one's personality, there is, however, an
important distinction here. With the one it is his
defects which philosophise, with the other it is his
riches and powers. The former requires his philo-
sophy, whether it be as support, sedative, or
medicine, as salvation, elevation, or self-alienation;
with the latter it is merely a fine luxury, at best
the voluptuousness of a triumphant gratitude, which
must inscribe itself ultimately in cosmic capitals
on the heaven of ideas. In the other more usual
case, however, when states of distress occupy them-
selves with philosophy (as is the case with all sickly
thinkers—and perhaps the sickly thinkers pre-
ponderate in the history of philosophy), what will
happen to the thought itself which is brought
under the pressure of sickness? This is the im-
portant question for psychologists: and here
experiment is possible. We philosophers do just
## p. 4 (#22) ###############################################
4 THE JOYFUL WISDOM
like a traveller who resolves to awake at a given
hour, and then quietly yields himself to sleep: we
surrender ourselves temporarily, body and soul, to
the sickness, supposing we become ill—we shut, as
it were, our eyes on ourselves. And as the traveller
knows that something does not sleep, that something
counts the hours and will awake him, we also know
that the critical moment will find us awake—that
then something will spring forward and surprise
the spirit in the very act, I mean in weakness, or
reversion, or submission, or obduracy, or obscurity,
or whatever the morbid conditions are called, which
in times of good health have the pride of the spirit
opposed to them (for it is as in the old rhyme:
"The spirit proud, peacock and horse are the three
proudest things of earthly source"). After such
self-questioning and self-testing, one learns to look
with a sharper eye at all that has hitherto been
philosophised; one divines better than before the
arbitrary by-ways, side-streets, resting-places, and
sunny places of thought, to which suffering thinkers,
precisely as sufferers, are led and misled: one
knows now in what direction the sickly body and
its requirements unconsciously press, push, and
allure the spirit—towards the sun, stillness, gentle-
ness, patience, medicine, refreshment in any sense
whatever. Every philosophy which puts peace
higher than war, every ethic with a negative grasp
of the idea of happiness, every metaphysic and
physic that knows a finale, an ultimate condition
of any kind whatever, every predominating, aesthetic
or religious longing for an aside, a beyond, an out-
side, an above—all these permit one to ask whether
## p. 5 (#23) ###############################################
PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION 5
sickness has not been the motive which inspired the
philosopher. The unconscious disguising of physio-
logical requirements under the cloak of the objective,
the ideal, the purely spiritual, is carried on to an
alarming extent,—and I have often enough asked
myself, whether, on the whole, philosophy hitherto
has not generally been merely an interpreta-
tion of the body, and a misunderstanding of the
body. Behind the loftiest estimates of value by
which the history of thought has hitherto been
governed, misunderstandings of the bodily constitu-
tion, either of individuals, classes, or entire races
are concealed. One may always primarily consider
these audacious freaks of metaphysic, and especially
its answers to the question of the worth of existence,
as symptoms of certain bodily constitutions; and if,
on the whole, when scientifically determined, not a
particle of significance attaches to such affirma-
tions and denials of the world, they nevertheless
furnish the historian and psychologist with hints
so much the more valuable (as we have said) as
symptoms of the bodily constitution, its good or bad
condition, its fullness, powerfulness, and sovereignty
in history; or else of its obstructions, exhaustions,
and impoverishments, its premonition of the end,
its will to the end. I still expect that a philo-
sophical physician, in the exceptional sense of the
word—one who applies himself to the problem of
the collective health of peoples, periods, races, and
mankind generally—will some day have the courage
to follow out my suspicion to its ultimate con-
clusions, and to venture on the judgment that in
all philosophising it has not hitherto been a question
## p. 6 (#24) ###############################################
6 THE JOYFUL WISDOM
of " truth" at all, but of something else,—namely,
of health, futurity, growth, power, life. . . .
3-
It will be surmised that I should not like to take
leave ungratefully of that period of severe sickness,
the advantage of which is not even yet exhausted
in me: for I am sufficiently conscious of what I
have in advance of the spiritually robust generally,
in my changeful state of health. A philosopher
who has made the tour of many states of
health, and always makes it anew, has also gone
through just as many philosophies: he really
cannot do otherwise than transform his condition
on every occasion into the most ingenious posture
and position,—this art of transfiguration is just
philosophy. We philosophers are not at liberty
to separate soul and body, as the people separate
them; and we are still less at liberty to separate
soul and spirit. We are not thinking frogs, we
are not objectifying and registering apparatuses
with cold entrails,—our thoughts must be continu-
ally born to us out of our pain, and we must,
motherlike, share with them all that we have in
us of blood, heart, ardour, joy, passion, pang,
conscience, fate and fatality. Life—that means
for us to transform constantly into light and flame
all that we are, and also all that we meet with;
we cannot possibly do otherwise. And as regards
sickness, should we not be almost tempted to ask
whether we could in general dispense with it? It
is great pain only which is the ultimate emancipa-
tor of the spirit; for it is the teacher of the strong
## p. 7 (#25) ###############################################
PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION 7
suspicion which makes an X out of every U*, a true,
correct X, i. e. , the ante-penultimate letter. . . . It is
great pain only, the long slow pain which takes
time, by which we are burned as it were with
green wood, that compels us philosophers to de-
scend into our ultimate depths, and divest ourselves
of all trust, all good-nature, veiling, gentleness, and
averageness, wherein we have perhaps formerly
installed our humanity. I doubt whether such
pain "improves" us; but I know that it deepens
us. Be it that we learn to confront it with our
pride, our scorn, our strength of will, doing like the
Indian who, however sorely tortured, revenges him-
self on his tormentor with his bitter tongue; be it
that we withdraw from the pain into the oriental
nothingness—it is called Nirvana,—into mute,
benumbed, deaf self-surrender, self-forgetfulness,
and self-effacement: one emerges from such long,
dangerous exercises in self-mastery as another being,
with several additional notes of interrogation, and
above all, with the will to question more than ever,
more profoundly, more strictly, more sternly, more
wickedly, more quietly than has ever been ques-
tioned hitherto. Confidence in life is gone: life
itself has become a problem. —Let it not be imagined
that one has necessarily become a hypochondriac
thereby! Even love of life is still possible—only
one loves differently. It is the love of a woman
of whom one is doubtful. . . . The charm, how-
ever, of all that is problematic, the delight in the
* This means literally to put the numeral X instead of the
numeral V (formerly U); hence it means to double a number
unfairly, to exaggerate, humbug, cheat. —Tr.
## p. 8 (#26) ###############################################
8 THE JOYFUL WISDOM
X, is too great in those more spiritual and more
spiritualised men, not to spread itself again and
again like a clear glow over all the trouble of the
problematic, over all the danger of uncertainty,
and even over the jealousy of the lover. We know
a new happiness. . . .
4-
Finally, (that the most essential may not remain
unsaid), one comes back out of such abysses, out
of such severe sickness, and out of the sickness of
strong suspicion—new-born, with the skin cast;
more sensitive, more wicked, with a finer taste for
joy, with a more delicate tongue for all good
things, with a merrier disposition, with a second
and more dangerous innocence in joy; more
childish at the same time, and a hundred times
more refined than ever before. Oh, how re-
pugnant to us now is pleasure, coarse, dull, drab
pleasure, as the pleasure-seekers, our "cultured"
classes, our rich and ruling classes, usually under-
stand it! How malignantly we now listen to the
great holiday-hubbub with which "cultured people"
and city-men at present allow themselves to be
forced to "spiritual enjoyment" by art, books, and
music, with the help of spirituous liquors! How
the theatrical cry of passion now pains our ear, how
strange to our taste has all the romantic riot and
sensuous bustle which the cultured populace love
become (together with their aspirations after the
exalted, the elevated, and the intricate)! No, if
we convalescents need an art at all, it is another
art—a mocking, light, volatile, divinely serene,
## p. 9 (#27) ###############################################
PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION 9
divinely ingenious art, which blazes up like a clear
flame, into a cloudless heaven! Above all, an art
for artists, only for artists! We at last know
better what is first of all necessary for it—namely,
cheerfulness, every kind of cheerfulness, my friends!
also as artists :—I should like to prove it. We now
know something too well, we men of knowledge:
oh, how well we are now learning to forget and not
know, as artists! And as to our future, we are not
likely to be found again in the tracks of those
Egyptian youths who at night make the temples
unsafe, embrace statues, and would fain unveil,
uncover, and put in clear light, everything which
for good reasons is kept concealed. * No, we have
got disgusted with this bad taste, this will to truth,
to "truth at all costs," this youthful madness in
the love of truth: we are now too experienced, too
serious, too joyful, too singed, too profound for
that. . . . We no longer believe that truth remains
truth when the veil is withdrawn from it: we have
lived long enough to believe this. At present we
regard it as a matter of propriety not to be anxious
either to see everything naked, or to be present at
everything,or to understand and "know" everything.
"Is it true that the good God is everywhere
present? " asked a little girl of her mother: "l
think that is indecent" :—a hint to philosophers!
One should have more reverence for the shame-
facedness with which nature has concealed herself
behind enigmas and motley uncertainties. Per-
haps truth is a woman who has reasons for not
* An allusion to Schiller's poem: "The Veiled Image of
Sais. "—Tr.
## p. 10 (#28) ##############################################
8 THE JOYFUL WISDOM
X, is too great in those more spiritual and more
spiritualised men, not to spread itself again and
again like a clear glow over all the trouble of the
problematic, over all the danger of uncertainty,
and even over the jealousy of the lover. We know
a new happiness. . . .
4-
Finally, (that the most essential may not remain
unsaid), one comes back out of such abysses, out
of such severe sickness, and out of the sickness of
strong suspicion—new-born, with the skin cast;
more sensitive, more wicked, with a finer taste for
joy, with a more delicate tongue for all good
things, with a merrier disposition, with a second
and more dangerous innocence in joy; more
childish at the same time, and a hundred times
more refined than ever before. Oh, how re-
pugnant to us now is pleasure, coarse, dull, drab
pleasure, as the pleasure-seekers, our "cultured"
classes, our rich and ruling classes, usually under-
stand it! How malignantly we now listen to the
great holiday-hubbub with which "cultured people"
and city-men at present allow themselves to be
forced to "spiritual enjoyment" by art, books, and
music, with the help of spirituous liquors! How
the theatrical cry of passion now pains our ear, how
strange to our taste has all the romantic riot and
sensuous bustle which the cultured populace love
become (together with their aspirations after the
exalted, the elevated, and the intricate)! No, if
we convalescents need an art at all, it is another
art—a mocking, light, volatile, divinely serene,
## p. 11 (#29) ##############################################
PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION 9
divinely ingenious art, which blazes up like a clear
flame, into a cloudless heaven! Above all, an art
for artists, only for artists! We at last know
better what is first of all necessary for it—namely,
cheerfulness, every kind of cheerfulness, my friends!
also as artists :—I should like to prove it. We now
know something too well, we men of knowledge:
oh, how well we are now learning to forget and not
know, as artists! And as to our future, we are not
likely to be found again in the tracks of those
Egyptian youths who at night make the temples
unsafe, embrace statues, and would fain unveil,
uncover, and put in clear light, everything which
for good reasons is kept concealed. * No, we have
got disgusted with this bad taste, this will to truth,
to "truth at all costs," this youthful madness in
the love of truth: we are now too experienced, too
serious, too joyful, too singed, too profound for
that. . . . We no longer believe that truth remains
truth when the veil is withdrawn from it: we have
lived long enough to believe this. At present we
regard it as a matter of propriety not to be anxious
either to see everything naked, or to be present at
everything,or to understand and "know" everything.
"Is it true that the good God is everywhere
present? " asked a little girl of her mother: "1
think th. -it is indecent" :—a hint to philosophers!
One should have more reverence for the shame-
facedness with which nature has concealed herself
behind enigmas and motley uncertainties. Per-
haps truth is a woman who has reasons for not
* An allusion to Schiller's poem: "The Veiled Image of
Sais. "—Tr.
## p. 11 (#30) ##############################################
IO THE JOYFUL WISDOM
showing her reasons?
Life—that means
for us to transform constantly into light and flame
all that we are, and also all that we meet with;
we cannot possibly do otherwise. And as regards
sickness, should we not be almost tempted to ask
whether we could in general dispense with it? It
is great pain only which is the ultimate emancipa-
tor of the spirit; for it is the teacher of the strong
## p. 7 (#25) ###############################################
PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION 7
suspicion which makes an X out of every U*, a true,
correct X, i. e. , the ante-penultimate letter. . . . It is
great pain only, the long slow pain which takes
time, by which we are burned as it were with
green wood, that compels us philosophers to de-
scend into our ultimate depths, and divest ourselves
of all trust, all good-nature, veiling, gentleness, and
averageness, wherein we have perhaps formerly
installed our humanity. I doubt whether such
pain "improves" us; but I know that it deepens
us. Be it that we learn to confront it with our
pride, our scorn, our strength of will, doing like the
Indian who, however sorely tortured, revenges him-
self on his tormentor with his bitter tongue; be it
that we withdraw from the pain into the oriental
nothingness—it is called Nirvana,—into mute,
benumbed, deaf self-surrender, self-forgetfulness,
and self-effacement: one emerges from such long,
dangerous exercises in self-mastery as another being,
with several additional notes of interrogation, and
above all, with the will to question more than ever,
more profoundly, more strictly, more sternly, more
wickedly, more quietly than has ever been ques-
tioned hitherto. Confidence in life is gone: life
itself has become a problem. —Let it not be imagined
that one has necessarily become a hypochondriac
thereby! Even love of life is still possible—only
one loves differently. It is the love of a woman
of whom one is doubtful. . . . The charm, how-
ever, of all that is problematic, the delight in the
* This means literally to put the numeral X instead of the
numeral V (formerly U); hence it means to double a number
unfairly, to exaggerate, humbug, cheat. —Tr.
## p. 8 (#26) ###############################################
8 THE JOYFUL WISDOM
X, is too great in those more spiritual and more
spiritualised men, not to spread itself again and
again like a clear glow over all the trouble of the
problematic, over all the danger of uncertainty,
and even over the jealousy of the lover. We know
a new happiness. . . .
4-
Finally, (that the most essential may not remain
unsaid), one comes back out of such abysses, out
of such severe sickness, and out of the sickness of
strong suspicion—new-born, with the skin cast;
more sensitive, more wicked, with a finer taste for
joy, with a more delicate tongue for all good
things, with a merrier disposition, with a second
and more dangerous innocence in joy; more
childish at the same time, and a hundred times
more refined than ever before. Oh, how re-
pugnant to us now is pleasure, coarse, dull, drab
pleasure, as the pleasure-seekers, our "cultured"
classes, our rich and ruling classes, usually under-
stand it! How malignantly we now listen to the
great holiday-hubbub with which "cultured people"
and city-men at present allow themselves to be
forced to "spiritual enjoyment" by art, books, and
music, with the help of spirituous liquors! How
the theatrical cry of passion now pains our ear, how
strange to our taste has all the romantic riot and
sensuous bustle which the cultured populace love
become (together with their aspirations after the
exalted, the elevated, and the intricate)! No, if
we convalescents need an art at all, it is another
art—a mocking, light, volatile, divinely serene,
## p. 9 (#27) ###############################################
PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION 9
divinely ingenious art, which blazes up like a clear
flame, into a cloudless heaven! Above all, an art
for artists, only for artists! We at last know
better what is first of all necessary for it—namely,
cheerfulness, every kind of cheerfulness, my friends!
also as artists :—I should like to prove it. We now
know something too well, we men of knowledge:
oh, how well we are now learning to forget and not
know, as artists! And as to our future, we are not
likely to be found again in the tracks of those
Egyptian youths who at night make the temples
unsafe, embrace statues, and would fain unveil,
uncover, and put in clear light, everything which
for good reasons is kept concealed. * No, we have
got disgusted with this bad taste, this will to truth,
to "truth at all costs," this youthful madness in
the love of truth: we are now too experienced, too
serious, too joyful, too singed, too profound for
that. . . . We no longer believe that truth remains
truth when the veil is withdrawn from it: we have
lived long enough to believe this. At present we
regard it as a matter of propriety not to be anxious
either to see everything naked, or to be present at
everything,or to understand and "know" everything.
"Is it true that the good God is everywhere
present? " asked a little girl of her mother: "l
think that is indecent" :—a hint to philosophers!
One should have more reverence for the shame-
facedness with which nature has concealed herself
behind enigmas and motley uncertainties. Per-
haps truth is a woman who has reasons for not
* An allusion to Schiller's poem: "The Veiled Image of
Sais. "—Tr.
## p. 10 (#28) ##############################################
8 THE JOYFUL WISDOM
X, is too great in those more spiritual and more
spiritualised men, not to spread itself again and
again like a clear glow over all the trouble of the
problematic, over all the danger of uncertainty,
and even over the jealousy of the lover. We know
a new happiness. . . .
4-
Finally, (that the most essential may not remain
unsaid), one comes back out of such abysses, out
of such severe sickness, and out of the sickness of
strong suspicion—new-born, with the skin cast;
more sensitive, more wicked, with a finer taste for
joy, with a more delicate tongue for all good
things, with a merrier disposition, with a second
and more dangerous innocence in joy; more
childish at the same time, and a hundred times
more refined than ever before. Oh, how re-
pugnant to us now is pleasure, coarse, dull, drab
pleasure, as the pleasure-seekers, our "cultured"
classes, our rich and ruling classes, usually under-
stand it! How malignantly we now listen to the
great holiday-hubbub with which "cultured people"
and city-men at present allow themselves to be
forced to "spiritual enjoyment" by art, books, and
music, with the help of spirituous liquors! How
the theatrical cry of passion now pains our ear, how
strange to our taste has all the romantic riot and
sensuous bustle which the cultured populace love
become (together with their aspirations after the
exalted, the elevated, and the intricate)! No, if
we convalescents need an art at all, it is another
art—a mocking, light, volatile, divinely serene,
## p. 11 (#29) ##############################################
PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION 9
divinely ingenious art, which blazes up like a clear
flame, into a cloudless heaven! Above all, an art
for artists, only for artists! We at last know
better what is first of all necessary for it—namely,
cheerfulness, every kind of cheerfulness, my friends!
also as artists :—I should like to prove it. We now
know something too well, we men of knowledge:
oh, how well we are now learning to forget and not
know, as artists! And as to our future, we are not
likely to be found again in the tracks of those
Egyptian youths who at night make the temples
unsafe, embrace statues, and would fain unveil,
uncover, and put in clear light, everything which
for good reasons is kept concealed. * No, we have
got disgusted with this bad taste, this will to truth,
to "truth at all costs," this youthful madness in
the love of truth: we are now too experienced, too
serious, too joyful, too singed, too profound for
that. . . . We no longer believe that truth remains
truth when the veil is withdrawn from it: we have
lived long enough to believe this. At present we
regard it as a matter of propriety not to be anxious
either to see everything naked, or to be present at
everything,or to understand and "know" everything.
"Is it true that the good God is everywhere
present? " asked a little girl of her mother: "1
think th. -it is indecent" :—a hint to philosophers!
One should have more reverence for the shame-
facedness with which nature has concealed herself
behind enigmas and motley uncertainties. Per-
haps truth is a woman who has reasons for not
* An allusion to Schiller's poem: "The Veiled Image of
Sais. "—Tr.
## p. 11 (#30) ##############################################
IO THE JOYFUL WISDOM
showing her reasons? Perhaps her name is Baubo,
to speak in Greek? . . . Oh, those Greeks! They
knew how to live: for that purpose it is necessary to
keep bravely to the surface, the fold and the skin;
to worship appearance, to believe in forms, tones,
and words, in the whole Olympus of appearance!
Those Greeks were superficial—from profundity!
And are we not coming back precisely to this
point, we dare-devils of the spirit, who have scaled
the highest and most dangerous peak of contem-
porary thought, and have looked around us from
it, have looked down from it? Are we not precisely
in this respect—Greeks? Worshippers of forms,
of tones, and of words? And precisely on that
account—artists?
Ruta, near Genoa
Autumn, 1886.
## p. 11 (#31) ##############################################
JEST, RUSE AND REVENGE.
A PRELUDE IN RHYME.
## p. 12 (#32) ##############################################
## p. 13 (#33) ##############################################
I.
Invitation.
Venture, comrades, I implore you,
On the fare I set before you,
You will like it more to-morrow,
Better still the following day:
If yet more you're then requiring,
Old success I'll find inspiring,
And fresh courage thence will borrow
Novel dainties to display.
2.
My Good Luck.
Weary of Seeking had I grown,
So taught myself the way to Find:
Back by the storm I once was blown,
But follow now, where drives the wind.
3-
Undismayed.
Where you're standing, dig, dig out:
Down below's the Well:
Let them that walk in darkness shout:
"Down below—there's Hell I"
## p. 14 (#34) ##############################################
THE JOYFUL WISDOM
4.
Dialogue.
A. Was I ill? and is it ended ?
Pray, by what physician tended ?
I recall no pain endured !
B. Now I know your trouble's ended :
He that can forget, is cured.
To the Virtuous.
Let our virtues be easy and nimble-footed in
motion,
Like unto Homer's verse ought they to come and
to go.
Worldly Wisdom.
Stay not on level plain,
Climb not the mount too high,
But half-way up remain-
The world you'll best descry!
Vademecum— Vadetecum.
Attracted by my style and talk
You'd follow, in my footsteps walk?
Follow yourself unswervingly,
So-careful ! shall you follow me.
## p. 15 (#35) ##############################################
JEST, RUSE AND REVENGE
15
8.
The Third Sloughing.
My skin bursts, breaks for fresh rebirth,
And new desires come thronging :
Much I've devoured, yet for more earth
The serpent in ine's longing.
'Twixt stone and grass I crawl once more,
Hungry, by crooked ways,
To eat the food I ate before,
Earth-fare all serpents praise !
9.
My Roses.
My luck's good—I'd make yours fairer,
(Good luck ever needs a sharer),
Will you stop and pluck my roses ?
Oft mid rocks and thorns you'll linger,
Hide and stoop, suck bleeding finger-
Will you stop and pluck my roses ?
For my good luck's a trifle vicious,
Fond of teasing, tricks malicious-
Will you stop and pluck my roses ?
10.
The Scorner.
Many drops I waste and spill,
So my scornful mood you curse :
Who to brim his cup doth fill,
Many drops must waste and spill-
Yet he thinks the wine no worse.
## p. 16 (#36) ##############################################
l6 THE JOYFUL WISDOM
II.
The Proverb Speaks.
Harsh and gentle, fine and mean,
Quite rare and common, dirty and clean,
The fools' and the sages' go-between:
All this I will be, this have been,
Dove and serpent and swine, I ween!
12.
To a Lover of Light.
That eye and sense be not fordone
E'en in the shade pursue the sun!
13-
For Dancers.
Smoothest ice,
A paradise
To him who is a dancer nice.
14.
The Brave Man.
A feud that knows not flaw nor break,
Rather then patched-up friendship, take.
15-
Rust.
Rust's needed: keenness will not satisfy!
"He is too young! " the rabble loves to cry.
16.
Excelsior.
"How shall I reach the top? " No time
For thus reflecting! Start to climb!
## p. 17 (#37) ##############################################
JEST, RUSE AND REVENGE 17
17-
The Man of Power Speaks.
Ask never! Cease that whining, pray!
Take without asking, take alway!
18.
Narrow Souls.
Narrow souls hate I like the devil,
Souls wherein grows nor good nor evil.
19-
Accidentally a Seducer* .
He shot an empty word
Into the empty blue;
But on the way it met
A woman whom it slew.
20.
For Consideration.
A twofold pain is easier far to bear
Than one: so now to suffer wilt thou dare?
21.
Against Pride.
Brother, to puff thyself up ne'er be quick:
For burst thou shalt be by a tiny prick!
22.
Man and Woman.
"The woman seize, who to thy heart appeals! "
Man's motto: woman seizes not, but steals.
* Translated by Miss M. D. Petre.
## p. 18 (#38) ##############################################
18 THE JOYFUL WISDOM
23-
Interpretation.
If I explain my wisdom, surely
Tis but entangled more securely,
I can't expound myself aright:
But he that's boldly up and doing,
His own unaided course pursuing,
Upon my image casts more light!
24.
A Cure for Pessimism.
Those old capricious fancies, friend!
You say your palate naught can please,
I hear you bluster, spit and wheeze,
My love, my patience soon will end!
Pluck up your courage, follow me—
Here's a fat toad I Now then, don't blink,
Swallow it whole, nor pause to think!
From your dyspepsia you'll be free!
25.
A Request.
Many men's minds I know full well,
Yet what mine own is, cannot tell.
I cannot see—my eye's too near—
And falsely to myself appear.
'Twould be to me a benefit
Far from myself if I could sit,
Less distant than my enemy,
## p. 19 (#39) ##############################################
JEST, RUSE AND REVENGE
19
And yet my nearest friend's too nigh-
'Twixt him and me, just in the middle !
What do I ask for? Guess my riddle !
26.
My Cruelty.
I must ascend an hundred stairs,
I must ascend: the herd declares
I'm cruel: “Are we made of stone? ”
I must ascend an hundred stairs :
All men the part of stair disown.
27.
Find more books at https://www. hathitrust. org.
Title: The complete works of Friedrich Nietzsche. The first complete
and authorized English translation, edited by Dr. Oscar Levy.
Author: Nietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm, 1844-1900.
Publisher: [Edinburgh and London : T. N. Foulis, 1909-1913. ]
Copyright:
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THE COMPLETE WORKS
OF
FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE
The First Complete and Authorised English Translation
EDITED BV
Dr OSCAR LEVY
VOLUME TEN
THE JOYFUL WISDOM
("LA GAVA SCIENZA")
## p. (#12) #################################################
Of the First Edition of
One Thousand Five Hundred
Copies this is
## p. (#13) #################################################
FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE
THE
JOYFUL WISDOM
(“LA GAYA SCIENZA”)
TRANSLATED BY
THOMAS COMMON
WITH POETRY RENDERED BY
PAUL V. COHN
AND
MAUDE D. PETRE
I stay to mine own house confined,
Nor graft my wits on alien stock :
And mock at every master mind
That never at itself could mock.
T. N. FOULIS
13 & 15 FREDERICK STREET
EDINBURGH: S LONDON
1910
## p. (#14) #################################################
V lb
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
Printed at The Darien Press, Edinburgh.
## p. (#15) #################################################
Goth
TE-29-24
, 013
CONTENTS
vii
EDITORIAL NOTE · · · · ·
PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION - .
JEST, RUSE AND REVENGE: A PRELUDE IN
RHYME · · ·
BOOK FIRST.
BOOK SECOND
BOOK THIRD .
Book FOURTH: SANCTUS JANUARIUS
Book FIFTH: WE FEARLESS ONES
•
APPENDIX : SONGS OF PRINCE FREE-AS-A-BIRD :
273
355
## p. (#16) #################################################
## p. (#17) #################################################
EDITORIAL NOTE
"The Joyful Wisdom," written in 1882, just before
"Zarathustra," is rightly judged to be one of
Nietzsche's best books. Here the essentially grave
and masculine face of the poet-philosopher is seen
to light up and suddenly break into a delightful
smile. The warmth and kindness that beam from
his features will astonish those hasty psychologists
who have never divined that behind the destroyer
is the creator, and behind the blasphemer the lover
of life. In the retrospective valuation of his work
which appears in "Ecce Homo" the author him-
self observes with truth that the fourth book,
"Sanctus Januarius," deserves especial attention:
"The whole book is a gift from the Saint, and
the introductory verses express my gratitude for
the most wonderful month of January that I have
ever spent. " Book fifth "We Fearless Ones,"
the Appendix "Songs of Prince Free-as-a-Bird,"
and the Preface, were added to the second edition
in 1887.
The translation of Nietzsche's poetry has proved
## p. (#18) #################################################
Vlll EDITORIAL NOTE
to be a more embarrassing problem than that of
his prose. Not only has there been a difficulty in
finding adequate translators—a difficulty overcome,
it is hoped, by the choice of Miss Petre and Mr
Cohn,—but it cannot be denied that even in the
original the poems are of unequal merit. By the
side of such masterpieces as " To the Mistral " are
several verses of comparatively little value. The
Editor, however, did not feel justified in making a
selection, as it was intended that the edition should
be complete. The heading, "Jest, Ruse and
Revenge," of the " Prelude in Rhyme" is borrowed
from Goethe.
-
## p. 1 (#19) ###############################################
PREFACE TO THE SECOND
EDITION.
i.
PERHAPS more than one preface would be necessary
for this book; and after all it might still be doubtful
whether any one could be brought nearer to the
experiences in it by means of prefaces, without
having himself experienced something similar. It
seems to be written in the language of the thawing-
wind: there is wantonness, restlessness, contra-
diction and April-weather in it; so that one is
as constantly reminded of the proximity of winter as
of the victory over it: the victory which is coming,
which must come, which has perhaps already
come. . . . Gratitude continually flows forth, as
if the most unexpected thing had happened, the
gratitude of a convalescent—for convalescence was
this most unexpected thing. "Joyful Wisdom ":
that implies the Saturnalia of a spirit which has
patiently withstood a long, frightful pressure—
patiently, strenuously, impassionately, without
submitting, but without hope—and which is now
suddenly o'erpowered with hope, the hope of
health, the intoxication of convalescence. What
wonder that much that is unreasonable and
foolish thereby comes to light: much wanton
tenderness expended even on problems which
## p. 2 (#20) ###############################################
2 THE JOYFUL WISDOM
have a prickly hide, and are not therefore fit to be
fondled and allured. The whole book is really
nothing but a revel after long privation and im-
potence: the frolicking of returning energy, of
newly awakened belief in a to-morrow and after-
to-morrow; of sudden sentience and prescience of
a future, of near adventures, of seas open once
more, and aims once more permitted and believed
in. And what was now all behind me! This
track of desert, exhaustion, unbelief, and frigidity
in the midst of youth, this advent of grey
hairs at the wrong time, this tyranny of pain,
surpassed, however, by the tyranny of pride which
repudiated the consequences of pain—and conse-
quences are comforts,—this radical isolation, as
defence against the contempt of mankind become
morbidly clairvoyant, this restriction upon principle
to all that is bitter, sharp, and painful in knowledge,
as prescribed by the disgust which had gradually
resulted from imprudent spiritual diet and pamper-
ing—it is called Romanticism,—oh, who could
realise all those feelings of mine! He, however,
who could do so would certainly forgive me
everything, and more than a little folly, boisterous-
ness and "Joyful Wisdom"—for example, the
handful of songs which are given along with
the book on this occasion,—songs in which a poet
makes merry over all poets in a way not easily
pardoned. —Alas, it is not only on the poets
and their fine "lyrical sentiments" that this
reconvalescent must vent his malignity: who knows
what kind of victim he seeks, what kind of monster
of material for parody will allure him ere long?
## p. 3 (#21) ###############################################
PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION 3
Incipit tragcedia, it is said at the conclusion of this
seriously frivolous book; let people be on their
guard! Something or other extraordinarily bad
and wicked announces itself: incipitparodia, there
is no doubt. . . .
—But let us leave Herr Nietzsche; what does it
matter to people that Herr Nietzsche has got well
again? . . . A psychologist knows few questions
so attractive as those concerning the relations of
health to philosophy, and in the case when he
himself falls sick, he carries with him all his
scientific curiosity into his sickness. For, granting
that one is a person, one has necessarily also the
philosophy of one's personality, there is, however, an
important distinction here. With the one it is his
defects which philosophise, with the other it is his
riches and powers. The former requires his philo-
sophy, whether it be as support, sedative, or
medicine, as salvation, elevation, or self-alienation;
with the latter it is merely a fine luxury, at best
the voluptuousness of a triumphant gratitude, which
must inscribe itself ultimately in cosmic capitals
on the heaven of ideas. In the other more usual
case, however, when states of distress occupy them-
selves with philosophy (as is the case with all sickly
thinkers—and perhaps the sickly thinkers pre-
ponderate in the history of philosophy), what will
happen to the thought itself which is brought
under the pressure of sickness? This is the im-
portant question for psychologists: and here
experiment is possible. We philosophers do just
## p. 4 (#22) ###############################################
4 THE JOYFUL WISDOM
like a traveller who resolves to awake at a given
hour, and then quietly yields himself to sleep: we
surrender ourselves temporarily, body and soul, to
the sickness, supposing we become ill—we shut, as
it were, our eyes on ourselves. And as the traveller
knows that something does not sleep, that something
counts the hours and will awake him, we also know
that the critical moment will find us awake—that
then something will spring forward and surprise
the spirit in the very act, I mean in weakness, or
reversion, or submission, or obduracy, or obscurity,
or whatever the morbid conditions are called, which
in times of good health have the pride of the spirit
opposed to them (for it is as in the old rhyme:
"The spirit proud, peacock and horse are the three
proudest things of earthly source"). After such
self-questioning and self-testing, one learns to look
with a sharper eye at all that has hitherto been
philosophised; one divines better than before the
arbitrary by-ways, side-streets, resting-places, and
sunny places of thought, to which suffering thinkers,
precisely as sufferers, are led and misled: one
knows now in what direction the sickly body and
its requirements unconsciously press, push, and
allure the spirit—towards the sun, stillness, gentle-
ness, patience, medicine, refreshment in any sense
whatever. Every philosophy which puts peace
higher than war, every ethic with a negative grasp
of the idea of happiness, every metaphysic and
physic that knows a finale, an ultimate condition
of any kind whatever, every predominating, aesthetic
or religious longing for an aside, a beyond, an out-
side, an above—all these permit one to ask whether
## p. 5 (#23) ###############################################
PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION 5
sickness has not been the motive which inspired the
philosopher. The unconscious disguising of physio-
logical requirements under the cloak of the objective,
the ideal, the purely spiritual, is carried on to an
alarming extent,—and I have often enough asked
myself, whether, on the whole, philosophy hitherto
has not generally been merely an interpreta-
tion of the body, and a misunderstanding of the
body. Behind the loftiest estimates of value by
which the history of thought has hitherto been
governed, misunderstandings of the bodily constitu-
tion, either of individuals, classes, or entire races
are concealed. One may always primarily consider
these audacious freaks of metaphysic, and especially
its answers to the question of the worth of existence,
as symptoms of certain bodily constitutions; and if,
on the whole, when scientifically determined, not a
particle of significance attaches to such affirma-
tions and denials of the world, they nevertheless
furnish the historian and psychologist with hints
so much the more valuable (as we have said) as
symptoms of the bodily constitution, its good or bad
condition, its fullness, powerfulness, and sovereignty
in history; or else of its obstructions, exhaustions,
and impoverishments, its premonition of the end,
its will to the end. I still expect that a philo-
sophical physician, in the exceptional sense of the
word—one who applies himself to the problem of
the collective health of peoples, periods, races, and
mankind generally—will some day have the courage
to follow out my suspicion to its ultimate con-
clusions, and to venture on the judgment that in
all philosophising it has not hitherto been a question
## p. 6 (#24) ###############################################
6 THE JOYFUL WISDOM
of " truth" at all, but of something else,—namely,
of health, futurity, growth, power, life. . . .
3-
It will be surmised that I should not like to take
leave ungratefully of that period of severe sickness,
the advantage of which is not even yet exhausted
in me: for I am sufficiently conscious of what I
have in advance of the spiritually robust generally,
in my changeful state of health. A philosopher
who has made the tour of many states of
health, and always makes it anew, has also gone
through just as many philosophies: he really
cannot do otherwise than transform his condition
on every occasion into the most ingenious posture
and position,—this art of transfiguration is just
philosophy. We philosophers are not at liberty
to separate soul and body, as the people separate
them; and we are still less at liberty to separate
soul and spirit. We are not thinking frogs, we
are not objectifying and registering apparatuses
with cold entrails,—our thoughts must be continu-
ally born to us out of our pain, and we must,
motherlike, share with them all that we have in
us of blood, heart, ardour, joy, passion, pang,
conscience, fate and fatality. Life—that means
for us to transform constantly into light and flame
all that we are, and also all that we meet with;
we cannot possibly do otherwise. And as regards
sickness, should we not be almost tempted to ask
whether we could in general dispense with it? It
is great pain only which is the ultimate emancipa-
tor of the spirit; for it is the teacher of the strong
## p. 7 (#25) ###############################################
PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION 7
suspicion which makes an X out of every U*, a true,
correct X, i. e. , the ante-penultimate letter. . . . It is
great pain only, the long slow pain which takes
time, by which we are burned as it were with
green wood, that compels us philosophers to de-
scend into our ultimate depths, and divest ourselves
of all trust, all good-nature, veiling, gentleness, and
averageness, wherein we have perhaps formerly
installed our humanity. I doubt whether such
pain "improves" us; but I know that it deepens
us. Be it that we learn to confront it with our
pride, our scorn, our strength of will, doing like the
Indian who, however sorely tortured, revenges him-
self on his tormentor with his bitter tongue; be it
that we withdraw from the pain into the oriental
nothingness—it is called Nirvana,—into mute,
benumbed, deaf self-surrender, self-forgetfulness,
and self-effacement: one emerges from such long,
dangerous exercises in self-mastery as another being,
with several additional notes of interrogation, and
above all, with the will to question more than ever,
more profoundly, more strictly, more sternly, more
wickedly, more quietly than has ever been ques-
tioned hitherto. Confidence in life is gone: life
itself has become a problem. —Let it not be imagined
that one has necessarily become a hypochondriac
thereby! Even love of life is still possible—only
one loves differently. It is the love of a woman
of whom one is doubtful. . . . The charm, how-
ever, of all that is problematic, the delight in the
* This means literally to put the numeral X instead of the
numeral V (formerly U); hence it means to double a number
unfairly, to exaggerate, humbug, cheat. —Tr.
## p. 8 (#26) ###############################################
8 THE JOYFUL WISDOM
X, is too great in those more spiritual and more
spiritualised men, not to spread itself again and
again like a clear glow over all the trouble of the
problematic, over all the danger of uncertainty,
and even over the jealousy of the lover. We know
a new happiness. . . .
4-
Finally, (that the most essential may not remain
unsaid), one comes back out of such abysses, out
of such severe sickness, and out of the sickness of
strong suspicion—new-born, with the skin cast;
more sensitive, more wicked, with a finer taste for
joy, with a more delicate tongue for all good
things, with a merrier disposition, with a second
and more dangerous innocence in joy; more
childish at the same time, and a hundred times
more refined than ever before. Oh, how re-
pugnant to us now is pleasure, coarse, dull, drab
pleasure, as the pleasure-seekers, our "cultured"
classes, our rich and ruling classes, usually under-
stand it! How malignantly we now listen to the
great holiday-hubbub with which "cultured people"
and city-men at present allow themselves to be
forced to "spiritual enjoyment" by art, books, and
music, with the help of spirituous liquors! How
the theatrical cry of passion now pains our ear, how
strange to our taste has all the romantic riot and
sensuous bustle which the cultured populace love
become (together with their aspirations after the
exalted, the elevated, and the intricate)! No, if
we convalescents need an art at all, it is another
art—a mocking, light, volatile, divinely serene,
## p. 9 (#27) ###############################################
PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION 9
divinely ingenious art, which blazes up like a clear
flame, into a cloudless heaven! Above all, an art
for artists, only for artists! We at last know
better what is first of all necessary for it—namely,
cheerfulness, every kind of cheerfulness, my friends!
also as artists :—I should like to prove it. We now
know something too well, we men of knowledge:
oh, how well we are now learning to forget and not
know, as artists! And as to our future, we are not
likely to be found again in the tracks of those
Egyptian youths who at night make the temples
unsafe, embrace statues, and would fain unveil,
uncover, and put in clear light, everything which
for good reasons is kept concealed. * No, we have
got disgusted with this bad taste, this will to truth,
to "truth at all costs," this youthful madness in
the love of truth: we are now too experienced, too
serious, too joyful, too singed, too profound for
that. . . . We no longer believe that truth remains
truth when the veil is withdrawn from it: we have
lived long enough to believe this. At present we
regard it as a matter of propriety not to be anxious
either to see everything naked, or to be present at
everything,or to understand and "know" everything.
"Is it true that the good God is everywhere
present? " asked a little girl of her mother: "l
think that is indecent" :—a hint to philosophers!
One should have more reverence for the shame-
facedness with which nature has concealed herself
behind enigmas and motley uncertainties. Per-
haps truth is a woman who has reasons for not
* An allusion to Schiller's poem: "The Veiled Image of
Sais. "—Tr.
## p. 10 (#28) ##############################################
8 THE JOYFUL WISDOM
X, is too great in those more spiritual and more
spiritualised men, not to spread itself again and
again like a clear glow over all the trouble of the
problematic, over all the danger of uncertainty,
and even over the jealousy of the lover. We know
a new happiness. . . .
4-
Finally, (that the most essential may not remain
unsaid), one comes back out of such abysses, out
of such severe sickness, and out of the sickness of
strong suspicion—new-born, with the skin cast;
more sensitive, more wicked, with a finer taste for
joy, with a more delicate tongue for all good
things, with a merrier disposition, with a second
and more dangerous innocence in joy; more
childish at the same time, and a hundred times
more refined than ever before. Oh, how re-
pugnant to us now is pleasure, coarse, dull, drab
pleasure, as the pleasure-seekers, our "cultured"
classes, our rich and ruling classes, usually under-
stand it! How malignantly we now listen to the
great holiday-hubbub with which "cultured people"
and city-men at present allow themselves to be
forced to "spiritual enjoyment" by art, books, and
music, with the help of spirituous liquors! How
the theatrical cry of passion now pains our ear, how
strange to our taste has all the romantic riot and
sensuous bustle which the cultured populace love
become (together with their aspirations after the
exalted, the elevated, and the intricate)! No, if
we convalescents need an art at all, it is another
art—a mocking, light, volatile, divinely serene,
## p. 11 (#29) ##############################################
PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION 9
divinely ingenious art, which blazes up like a clear
flame, into a cloudless heaven! Above all, an art
for artists, only for artists! We at last know
better what is first of all necessary for it—namely,
cheerfulness, every kind of cheerfulness, my friends!
also as artists :—I should like to prove it. We now
know something too well, we men of knowledge:
oh, how well we are now learning to forget and not
know, as artists! And as to our future, we are not
likely to be found again in the tracks of those
Egyptian youths who at night make the temples
unsafe, embrace statues, and would fain unveil,
uncover, and put in clear light, everything which
for good reasons is kept concealed. * No, we have
got disgusted with this bad taste, this will to truth,
to "truth at all costs," this youthful madness in
the love of truth: we are now too experienced, too
serious, too joyful, too singed, too profound for
that. . . . We no longer believe that truth remains
truth when the veil is withdrawn from it: we have
lived long enough to believe this. At present we
regard it as a matter of propriety not to be anxious
either to see everything naked, or to be present at
everything,or to understand and "know" everything.
"Is it true that the good God is everywhere
present? " asked a little girl of her mother: "1
think th. -it is indecent" :—a hint to philosophers!
One should have more reverence for the shame-
facedness with which nature has concealed herself
behind enigmas and motley uncertainties. Per-
haps truth is a woman who has reasons for not
* An allusion to Schiller's poem: "The Veiled Image of
Sais. "—Tr.
## p. 11 (#30) ##############################################
IO THE JOYFUL WISDOM
showing her reasons?
Life—that means
for us to transform constantly into light and flame
all that we are, and also all that we meet with;
we cannot possibly do otherwise. And as regards
sickness, should we not be almost tempted to ask
whether we could in general dispense with it? It
is great pain only which is the ultimate emancipa-
tor of the spirit; for it is the teacher of the strong
## p. 7 (#25) ###############################################
PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION 7
suspicion which makes an X out of every U*, a true,
correct X, i. e. , the ante-penultimate letter. . . . It is
great pain only, the long slow pain which takes
time, by which we are burned as it were with
green wood, that compels us philosophers to de-
scend into our ultimate depths, and divest ourselves
of all trust, all good-nature, veiling, gentleness, and
averageness, wherein we have perhaps formerly
installed our humanity. I doubt whether such
pain "improves" us; but I know that it deepens
us. Be it that we learn to confront it with our
pride, our scorn, our strength of will, doing like the
Indian who, however sorely tortured, revenges him-
self on his tormentor with his bitter tongue; be it
that we withdraw from the pain into the oriental
nothingness—it is called Nirvana,—into mute,
benumbed, deaf self-surrender, self-forgetfulness,
and self-effacement: one emerges from such long,
dangerous exercises in self-mastery as another being,
with several additional notes of interrogation, and
above all, with the will to question more than ever,
more profoundly, more strictly, more sternly, more
wickedly, more quietly than has ever been ques-
tioned hitherto. Confidence in life is gone: life
itself has become a problem. —Let it not be imagined
that one has necessarily become a hypochondriac
thereby! Even love of life is still possible—only
one loves differently. It is the love of a woman
of whom one is doubtful. . . . The charm, how-
ever, of all that is problematic, the delight in the
* This means literally to put the numeral X instead of the
numeral V (formerly U); hence it means to double a number
unfairly, to exaggerate, humbug, cheat. —Tr.
## p. 8 (#26) ###############################################
8 THE JOYFUL WISDOM
X, is too great in those more spiritual and more
spiritualised men, not to spread itself again and
again like a clear glow over all the trouble of the
problematic, over all the danger of uncertainty,
and even over the jealousy of the lover. We know
a new happiness. . . .
4-
Finally, (that the most essential may not remain
unsaid), one comes back out of such abysses, out
of such severe sickness, and out of the sickness of
strong suspicion—new-born, with the skin cast;
more sensitive, more wicked, with a finer taste for
joy, with a more delicate tongue for all good
things, with a merrier disposition, with a second
and more dangerous innocence in joy; more
childish at the same time, and a hundred times
more refined than ever before. Oh, how re-
pugnant to us now is pleasure, coarse, dull, drab
pleasure, as the pleasure-seekers, our "cultured"
classes, our rich and ruling classes, usually under-
stand it! How malignantly we now listen to the
great holiday-hubbub with which "cultured people"
and city-men at present allow themselves to be
forced to "spiritual enjoyment" by art, books, and
music, with the help of spirituous liquors! How
the theatrical cry of passion now pains our ear, how
strange to our taste has all the romantic riot and
sensuous bustle which the cultured populace love
become (together with their aspirations after the
exalted, the elevated, and the intricate)! No, if
we convalescents need an art at all, it is another
art—a mocking, light, volatile, divinely serene,
## p. 9 (#27) ###############################################
PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION 9
divinely ingenious art, which blazes up like a clear
flame, into a cloudless heaven! Above all, an art
for artists, only for artists! We at last know
better what is first of all necessary for it—namely,
cheerfulness, every kind of cheerfulness, my friends!
also as artists :—I should like to prove it. We now
know something too well, we men of knowledge:
oh, how well we are now learning to forget and not
know, as artists! And as to our future, we are not
likely to be found again in the tracks of those
Egyptian youths who at night make the temples
unsafe, embrace statues, and would fain unveil,
uncover, and put in clear light, everything which
for good reasons is kept concealed. * No, we have
got disgusted with this bad taste, this will to truth,
to "truth at all costs," this youthful madness in
the love of truth: we are now too experienced, too
serious, too joyful, too singed, too profound for
that. . . . We no longer believe that truth remains
truth when the veil is withdrawn from it: we have
lived long enough to believe this. At present we
regard it as a matter of propriety not to be anxious
either to see everything naked, or to be present at
everything,or to understand and "know" everything.
"Is it true that the good God is everywhere
present? " asked a little girl of her mother: "l
think that is indecent" :—a hint to philosophers!
One should have more reverence for the shame-
facedness with which nature has concealed herself
behind enigmas and motley uncertainties. Per-
haps truth is a woman who has reasons for not
* An allusion to Schiller's poem: "The Veiled Image of
Sais. "—Tr.
## p. 10 (#28) ##############################################
8 THE JOYFUL WISDOM
X, is too great in those more spiritual and more
spiritualised men, not to spread itself again and
again like a clear glow over all the trouble of the
problematic, over all the danger of uncertainty,
and even over the jealousy of the lover. We know
a new happiness. . . .
4-
Finally, (that the most essential may not remain
unsaid), one comes back out of such abysses, out
of such severe sickness, and out of the sickness of
strong suspicion—new-born, with the skin cast;
more sensitive, more wicked, with a finer taste for
joy, with a more delicate tongue for all good
things, with a merrier disposition, with a second
and more dangerous innocence in joy; more
childish at the same time, and a hundred times
more refined than ever before. Oh, how re-
pugnant to us now is pleasure, coarse, dull, drab
pleasure, as the pleasure-seekers, our "cultured"
classes, our rich and ruling classes, usually under-
stand it! How malignantly we now listen to the
great holiday-hubbub with which "cultured people"
and city-men at present allow themselves to be
forced to "spiritual enjoyment" by art, books, and
music, with the help of spirituous liquors! How
the theatrical cry of passion now pains our ear, how
strange to our taste has all the romantic riot and
sensuous bustle which the cultured populace love
become (together with their aspirations after the
exalted, the elevated, and the intricate)! No, if
we convalescents need an art at all, it is another
art—a mocking, light, volatile, divinely serene,
## p. 11 (#29) ##############################################
PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION 9
divinely ingenious art, which blazes up like a clear
flame, into a cloudless heaven! Above all, an art
for artists, only for artists! We at last know
better what is first of all necessary for it—namely,
cheerfulness, every kind of cheerfulness, my friends!
also as artists :—I should like to prove it. We now
know something too well, we men of knowledge:
oh, how well we are now learning to forget and not
know, as artists! And as to our future, we are not
likely to be found again in the tracks of those
Egyptian youths who at night make the temples
unsafe, embrace statues, and would fain unveil,
uncover, and put in clear light, everything which
for good reasons is kept concealed. * No, we have
got disgusted with this bad taste, this will to truth,
to "truth at all costs," this youthful madness in
the love of truth: we are now too experienced, too
serious, too joyful, too singed, too profound for
that. . . . We no longer believe that truth remains
truth when the veil is withdrawn from it: we have
lived long enough to believe this. At present we
regard it as a matter of propriety not to be anxious
either to see everything naked, or to be present at
everything,or to understand and "know" everything.
"Is it true that the good God is everywhere
present? " asked a little girl of her mother: "1
think th. -it is indecent" :—a hint to philosophers!
One should have more reverence for the shame-
facedness with which nature has concealed herself
behind enigmas and motley uncertainties. Per-
haps truth is a woman who has reasons for not
* An allusion to Schiller's poem: "The Veiled Image of
Sais. "—Tr.
## p. 11 (#30) ##############################################
IO THE JOYFUL WISDOM
showing her reasons? Perhaps her name is Baubo,
to speak in Greek? . . . Oh, those Greeks! They
knew how to live: for that purpose it is necessary to
keep bravely to the surface, the fold and the skin;
to worship appearance, to believe in forms, tones,
and words, in the whole Olympus of appearance!
Those Greeks were superficial—from profundity!
And are we not coming back precisely to this
point, we dare-devils of the spirit, who have scaled
the highest and most dangerous peak of contem-
porary thought, and have looked around us from
it, have looked down from it? Are we not precisely
in this respect—Greeks? Worshippers of forms,
of tones, and of words? And precisely on that
account—artists?
Ruta, near Genoa
Autumn, 1886.
## p. 11 (#31) ##############################################
JEST, RUSE AND REVENGE.
A PRELUDE IN RHYME.
## p. 12 (#32) ##############################################
## p. 13 (#33) ##############################################
I.
Invitation.
Venture, comrades, I implore you,
On the fare I set before you,
You will like it more to-morrow,
Better still the following day:
If yet more you're then requiring,
Old success I'll find inspiring,
And fresh courage thence will borrow
Novel dainties to display.
2.
My Good Luck.
Weary of Seeking had I grown,
So taught myself the way to Find:
Back by the storm I once was blown,
But follow now, where drives the wind.
3-
Undismayed.
Where you're standing, dig, dig out:
Down below's the Well:
Let them that walk in darkness shout:
"Down below—there's Hell I"
## p. 14 (#34) ##############################################
THE JOYFUL WISDOM
4.
Dialogue.
A. Was I ill? and is it ended ?
Pray, by what physician tended ?
I recall no pain endured !
B. Now I know your trouble's ended :
He that can forget, is cured.
To the Virtuous.
Let our virtues be easy and nimble-footed in
motion,
Like unto Homer's verse ought they to come and
to go.
Worldly Wisdom.
Stay not on level plain,
Climb not the mount too high,
But half-way up remain-
The world you'll best descry!
Vademecum— Vadetecum.
Attracted by my style and talk
You'd follow, in my footsteps walk?
Follow yourself unswervingly,
So-careful ! shall you follow me.
## p. 15 (#35) ##############################################
JEST, RUSE AND REVENGE
15
8.
The Third Sloughing.
My skin bursts, breaks for fresh rebirth,
And new desires come thronging :
Much I've devoured, yet for more earth
The serpent in ine's longing.
'Twixt stone and grass I crawl once more,
Hungry, by crooked ways,
To eat the food I ate before,
Earth-fare all serpents praise !
9.
My Roses.
My luck's good—I'd make yours fairer,
(Good luck ever needs a sharer),
Will you stop and pluck my roses ?
Oft mid rocks and thorns you'll linger,
Hide and stoop, suck bleeding finger-
Will you stop and pluck my roses ?
For my good luck's a trifle vicious,
Fond of teasing, tricks malicious-
Will you stop and pluck my roses ?
10.
The Scorner.
Many drops I waste and spill,
So my scornful mood you curse :
Who to brim his cup doth fill,
Many drops must waste and spill-
Yet he thinks the wine no worse.
## p. 16 (#36) ##############################################
l6 THE JOYFUL WISDOM
II.
The Proverb Speaks.
Harsh and gentle, fine and mean,
Quite rare and common, dirty and clean,
The fools' and the sages' go-between:
All this I will be, this have been,
Dove and serpent and swine, I ween!
12.
To a Lover of Light.
That eye and sense be not fordone
E'en in the shade pursue the sun!
13-
For Dancers.
Smoothest ice,
A paradise
To him who is a dancer nice.
14.
The Brave Man.
A feud that knows not flaw nor break,
Rather then patched-up friendship, take.
15-
Rust.
Rust's needed: keenness will not satisfy!
"He is too young! " the rabble loves to cry.
16.
Excelsior.
"How shall I reach the top? " No time
For thus reflecting! Start to climb!
## p. 17 (#37) ##############################################
JEST, RUSE AND REVENGE 17
17-
The Man of Power Speaks.
Ask never! Cease that whining, pray!
Take without asking, take alway!
18.
Narrow Souls.
Narrow souls hate I like the devil,
Souls wherein grows nor good nor evil.
19-
Accidentally a Seducer* .
He shot an empty word
Into the empty blue;
But on the way it met
A woman whom it slew.
20.
For Consideration.
A twofold pain is easier far to bear
Than one: so now to suffer wilt thou dare?
21.
Against Pride.
Brother, to puff thyself up ne'er be quick:
For burst thou shalt be by a tiny prick!
22.
Man and Woman.
"The woman seize, who to thy heart appeals! "
Man's motto: woman seizes not, but steals.
* Translated by Miss M. D. Petre.
## p. 18 (#38) ##############################################
18 THE JOYFUL WISDOM
23-
Interpretation.
If I explain my wisdom, surely
Tis but entangled more securely,
I can't expound myself aright:
But he that's boldly up and doing,
His own unaided course pursuing,
Upon my image casts more light!
24.
A Cure for Pessimism.
Those old capricious fancies, friend!
You say your palate naught can please,
I hear you bluster, spit and wheeze,
My love, my patience soon will end!
Pluck up your courage, follow me—
Here's a fat toad I Now then, don't blink,
Swallow it whole, nor pause to think!
From your dyspepsia you'll be free!
25.
A Request.
Many men's minds I know full well,
Yet what mine own is, cannot tell.
I cannot see—my eye's too near—
And falsely to myself appear.
'Twould be to me a benefit
Far from myself if I could sit,
Less distant than my enemy,
## p. 19 (#39) ##############################################
JEST, RUSE AND REVENGE
19
And yet my nearest friend's too nigh-
'Twixt him and me, just in the middle !
What do I ask for? Guess my riddle !
26.
My Cruelty.
I must ascend an hundred stairs,
I must ascend: the herd declares
I'm cruel: “Are we made of stone? ”
I must ascend an hundred stairs :
All men the part of stair disown.
27.
