That—has
always been " The
Singer's Curse.
Singer's Curse.
Nietzsche - v10 - The Joyful Wisdom
), an interpretation
which acknowledges numbering, calculating, weigh-
ing, seeing and handling, and nothing more—such
an idea is a piece of grossness and naivety, pro-
vided it is not lunacy and idiocy. Would the
reverse not be quite probable, that the most super-
ficial and external characters of existence—its most
apparent quality, its outside, its embodiment—
should let themselves be apprehended first? per-
haps alone allow themselves to be apprehended?
A "scientific" interpretation of the world as you
understand it might consequently still be one of
the stupidest, that is to say, the most destitute
of significance, of all possible world-interpreta-
tions :—I say this in confidence to my friends the
Mechanicians, who to-day like to hobnob with
philosophers, and absolutely believe that mechanics
is the teaching of the first and last laws upon which,
as upon a ground-floor, all existence must be
## p. 340 (#442) ############################################
340 THE JOYFUL WISDOM, V
built. But an essentially mechanical world would
be an essentially meaningless world! Supposing we
valued the worth of a music with reference to how
much it could be counted, calculated, or formulated
—how absurd such a " scientific " estimate of music
would be! What would one have apprehended,
understood, or discerned in it! Nothing, absolutely
nothing of what is really " music" in it! . . .
374-
Our new "Infinite"—How far the perspective
character of existence extends, or whether it have
any other character at all, whether an existence
without explanation, without "sense" does not
just become "nonsense," whether, on the other
hand, all existence is not essentially an explaining
existence—these questions, as is right and proper,
cannot be determined even by the most diligent
and severely conscientious analysis and self-
examination of the intellect, because in this
analysis the human intellect cannot avoid seeing
itself in its perspective forms, and only in them.
We cannot see round our corner: it is hopeless
curiosity to want to know what other modes of
intellect and perspective there might be: for
example, whether any kind of being could perceive
time backwards, or alternately forwards and back-
wards (by which another direction of life and another
conception of cause and effect would be given).
But I think that we are to-day at least far from
the ludicrous immodesty of decreeing from our
nook that there can only be legitimate perspectives
from that nook. The world, on the contrary, has
## p. 341 (#443) ############################################
WE FEARLESS ONES 341
once more become "infinite" to us: in so far we
cannot dismiss the possibility that it contains
infinite interpretations. Once more the great horror
seizes us—but who would desire forthwith to deify
once more this monster of an unknown world in
the old fashion? And perhaps worship the unknown
thing as the "unknown person" in future? Ah!
there are too many ungodly possibilities of inter-
pretation comprised in this unknown, too much
devilment, stupidity and folly of interpretation,—
also our own human, all too human interpretation
itself, which we know. . . .
375-
Why we Seem to be Epicureans. —We are cautious,
we modern men, with regard to final convictions,
our distrust lies in wait for the enchantments and
tricks of conscience involved in every strong
belief, in every absolute Yea and Nay: how is this
explained? Perhaps one may see in it a good
deal of the caution of the "burnt child," of the
disillusioned idealist; but one may also see in it
another and better element, the joyful curiosity
of a former lingerer in the corner, who has
been brought to despair by his nook, and now
luxuriates and revels in its antithesis, in the un-
bounded, in the "open air in itself. " Thus there
is developed an almost Epicurean inclination for
knowledge, which does not readily lose sight of
the questionable character of things; likewise
also a repugnance to pompous moral phrases and
attitudes, a taste that repudiates all coarse, square
contrasts, and is proudly conscious of its habitual
## p. 342 (#444) ############################################
342 THE JOYFUL WISDOM, V
reserve. For this too constitutes our pride, this
easy tightening of the reins in our headlong im-
pulse after certainty, this self-control of the rider in
his most furious riding: for now, as of old we have
mad, fiery steeds under us, and if we delay, it is
certainly least of all the danger which causes us
to delay. . . .
376.
Our Slow Periods. —It is thus that artists feel,
and all men of "works," the maternal species of
men: they always believe at every chapter of their
life—a work always makes a chapter—that they
have already reached the goal itself; they would
always patiently accept death with the feeling:
"we are ripe for it. " This is not the expression
of exhaustion,—but rather that of a certain
autumnal sunniness and mildness, which the work
itself, the maturing of the work, always leaves
behind in its originator. Then the tempo of life
slows down—turns thick and flows with honey—into
long pauses, into the belief in the long pause. . . .
377-
We Homeless Ones. —Among the Europeans of
to-day there are not lacking those who may call
themselves homeless ones in a way which is at once
a distinction and an honour; it is by them that my
secret wisdom and gaya scienza is expressly to be
laid to heart. For their lot is hard, their hope un-
certain; it is a clever feat to devise consolation for
them. But what good does it do! We children of
the future, how could we be at home in the present?
## p. 343 (#445) ############################################
WE FEARLESS ONES 343
We are unfavourable to all ideals which could
make us feel at home in this frail, broken-down,
transition period; and as regards the "realities"
thereof, we do not believe in their endurance. The
ice which still carries us has become very thin : the
thawing wind blows; we ourselves, the homeless
ones, are an influence that breaks the ice, and the
other all too thin "realities. " . . . We "preserve"
nothing, nor would we return to any past age; we
are not at all "liberal," we do not labour for " pro-
gress," we do not need first to stop our ears to
the song of the market-place and the sirens of
the future—their song of "equal rights," "free
society," "no longer either lords or slaves," does
not allure us! We do not by any means think it
desirable that the kingdom of righteousness and
peace should he established pn ea/th (because
under any i circumstances II . » . . . id be the
kingdom of the profoundest mediocrity and
Chinaism); we rejoice in all men, who, like our-
selves, love danger, war and adventure, who do
not make compromises, nor let themselves
be captured, conciliated and stunted; we count
ourselves among the conquerors; we ponder over
the need of a new order of things, even of a new
slavery—for every strengthening and elevation of the
type "man" also involves a new form of slavery.
Is it not obvious that with all this we must feel ill
at ease in an age which claims the honour of being
the most humane, gentle and just that the sun has
ever seen? What a pity that at the mere mention
of these fine words, the thoughts at the back
of our minds are all the more unpleasant, that we
## p. 344 (#446) ############################################
344 THE JOYFUL WISDOM, V
see therein only the expression—or the masquerade
—of profound weakening, exhaustion, age, and de-
clining power! What can it matter to us with what
kind of tinsel an invalid decks out his weakness?
He may parade it as his virtue; there is no doubt
whatever that weakness makes people gentle, alas,
so gentle, so just, so inoffensive, so "humane"! —
The " religion of pity," to which people would like
to persuade us—yes, we know sufficiently well the
hysterical little men and women who need this
religion at present as a cloak and adornment!
We are no humanitarians; we should not dare to
speak of our " love of mankind "; for that, a person
of our stamp is not enough of an actor! Or not
sufficiently Saint-Simonist, not sufficiently French.
A person must have been affected with a Gallic
excess-of erotic susceptibility . and amorous im-
patience everf to approach mankind honourably
with his lewdness. . . . Mankind! Was there
ever a more hideous old woman among all old
women (unless perhaps it were "the, Truth ": a
question for philosophers)? No, we Mo not love
Mankind! On the other hand, however, we are not
nearly " German " enough (in the sense irt^which the
word " German" is current at present) to advocate
nationalism and race-hatred, or take delight^Mi the
national heart-itch and blood-poisoning, on account
of which the nations of Europe are at presen^
bounded off and secluded from one another as i
by quarantines. We are too unprejudiced for that,
too perverse, too fastidious; also too well-informed,
and too much "travelled. " We prefer much rather
to live on mountains, apart and "out of season," in
## p. 345 (#447) ############################################
WE FEARLESS ONES 345
past or coming centuries, in order merely to spare
ourselves the silent rage to which we know we
should be condemned as witnesses of a system of
politics which makes the German nation barren
by making it vain, and which is a petty
system besides:—will it not be necessary for
this system to plant itself between two mortal
hatreds, lest its own creation should immedi-
ately collapse? Will it not be obliged to desire
the perpetuation of the petty-state system of
Europe? . . . We homeless ones are too diverse
and mixed in race and descent as "modern
men," and are consequently little tempted to
participate in the falsified racial self-admiration
and lewdness which at present display themselves
in Germany, as signs of German sentiment, and
which strike one as doubly false and unbecoming
in the people with the " historical sense. " We are,
in a word—and it shall be our word of honour! —
good Europeans, the heirs of Europe, the rich, over-
wealthy heirs, also the too deeply pledged heirs
of millenniums of European thought. As such,
we have also outgrown Christianity, and are
disinclined to it — and just because we have
grown out of it, because our forefathers were
Christians uncompromising in their Christian in-
tegrity, who willingly sacrificed possessions and
positions, blood and country, for the sake of their
belief. We—do the same. For what, then? For
our unbelief? For all sorts of unbelief? Nay, you
know better than that, my friends! The hidden
Yea in you is stronger than all the Nays and
Perhapses, of which you and your age are sick;
## p. 346 (#448) ############################################
346 THE JOYFUL WISDOM, V
and when you are obliged to put out to sea, you
emigrants, it is—once more a faith which urges
you thereto! . . .
378.
"And once more Grow Clear"—We, the generous
and rich in spirit, who stand at the sides of the
streets like open fountains and would hinder no
one from drinking from us: we do not know,
alas! how to defend ourselves when we should
like to do so; we have no means of preventing
ourselves being made turbid and dark,—we have
no means of preventing the age in which we live
casting its "up-to-date rubbish" into us, nor of
hindering filthy birds throwing their excrement,
the boys their trash, and fatigued resting travellers
their misery, great and small, into us. But we
do as we have always done: we take whatever
is cast into us down into our depths — for we
are deep, we do not forget—and once more grow
clear. . . .
379-
The Foofs Interruption. —It is not a misanthrope
who has written this book: the hatred of men costs
too dear to-day. To hate as they formerly hated
man, in the fashion of Timon, completely, without
qualification, with all the heart, from the pure love
of hatred — for that purpose one would have to
renounce contempt: — and how much refined
pleasure, how much patience, how much bene-
volence even, do we owe to contempt! Moreover
we are thereby the "elect of God ": refined con-
tempt is our taste and privilege, our art, our virtue
## p. 347 (#449) ############################################
WE FEARLESS ONES 347
perhaps, we, the most modern amongst the
moderns! . . . Hatred, on the contrary, makes
equal, it puts men face to face, in hatred there is
honour; finally, in hatred there is fear, quite a
large amount of fear. We fearless ones, however,
we, the most intellectual men of the period,
know our advantage well enough to live without
fear as the most intellectual persons of this age.
People will not easily behead us, shut us up,
or banish us; they will not even ban or burn
our books. The age loves intellect, it loves us,
and needs us, even when we have to give it to
understand that we are artists in despising; that
all intercourse with men is something of a horror
to us; that with all our gentleness, patience,
humanity and courteousness, we cannot persuade
our nose to abandon its prejudice against the
proximity of man ; that we love nature the more,
the less humanly things are done by her, and
that we love art when it is the flight of the artist
from man, or the raillery of the artist at man, or the
raillery of the artist at himself. . . .
380.
"The Wanderer" Speaks. —In order for once to
get a glimpse of our European morality from a
distance, in order to compare it with other earlier
or future moralities, one must do as the traveller
who wants to know the height of the towers of
a city: for that purpose he leaves the city.
"Thoughts concerning moral prejudices," if they
are not to be prejudices concerning prejudices,
presuppose a position outside of morality, some
## p. 348 (#450) ############################################
348 THE JOYFUL WISDOM, V
sort of world beyond good and evil, to which
one must ascend, climb, or fly—and in the given
case at any rate, a position beyond our good and
evil, an emancipation from all "Europe," under-
stood as a sum of inviolable valuations which have
become part and parcel of our flesh and blood.
That one wants in fact to get outside, or aloft,
is perhaps a sort of madness, a peculiarly un-
reasonable "thou must"—for even we thinkers
have our idiosyncrasies of "unfree will "—: the
question is whether one can really get there. That
may depend on manifold conditions: in the main
it is a question of how light or how heavy we
are, the problem of our "specific gravity. " One
must be very light in order to impel one's will to
knowledge to such a distance, and as it were beyond
one's age, in order to create eyes for oneself for the
survey of millenniums, and a pure heaven in these
eyes besides! One must have freed oneself from
many things by which we Europeans of to-day are
oppressed, hindered, held down, and made heavy.
The man of such a "Beyond," who wants to get
even in sight of the highest standards of worth of
his age, must first of all "surmount" this age in him-
self—it is the test of his power—and consequently
not only his age, but also his past aversion and
opposition to his age, his suffering caused by his
age, his unseasonableness, his Romanticism. . . .
381.
The Question of Intelligibility. —One not only
wants to be understood when one writes, but also
—quite as certainly—not to be understood. It is
## p. 349 (#451) ############################################
WE FEARLESS ONES 349
by no means an objection to a book when someone
finds it unintelligible: perhaps this might just have
been the intention of its author,—perhaps he did
not want to be understood by "anyone. " A
distinguished intellect and taste, when it wants to
communicate its thoughts, always selects its hearers;
by selecting them, it at the same time closes its
barriers against "the others. " It is there that all
the more refined laws of style have their origin:
they at the same time keep off, they create distance,
they prevent "access" (intelligibility, as we have
said,)—while they open the ears of those who
are acoustically related to them. And to say it
between ourselves and with reference to my own
case,—I do not desire that either my ignorance, or
the vivacity of my temperament, should prevent me
being understood by you, my friends: I certainly
do not desire that my vivacity should have that
effect, however much it may impel me to arrive
quickly at an object, in order to arrive at it at all.
For I think it is best to do with profound problems
as with a cold bath—quickly in, quickly out. That
one does not thereby get into the depths, that one
does not get deep enough down—is a superstition
of the hydrophobic, the enemies of cold water; they
speak without experience. Oh! the great cold
makes one quick! —And let me ask by the way:
Is it a fact that a thing has been misunderstood
and unrecognised when it has only been touched
upon in passing, glanced at, flashed at? Must
one absolutely sit upon it in the first place?
Must one have brooded on it as on an egg? Diu
noctuque incubando, as Newton said of himself? At
## p. 350 (#452) ############################################
35O THE JOYFUL WISDOM, V
least there are truths of a peculiar shyness and
ticklishness which one can only get hold of suddenly,
and in no other way,—which one must either take
by surprise, or leave alone. . . . Finally, my brevity
has still another value: on those questions which
pre-occupy me, I must say a great deal briefly, in
order that it may be heard yet more briefly. For
as immoralist, one has to take care lest one ruins
innocence, I mean the asses and old maids of both
sexes, who get nothing from life but their in-
nocence; moreover my writings are meant to fill
them with enthusiasm, to elevate them, to encourage
them in virtue. I should be at a loss to know of
anything more amusing than to see enthusiastic
old asses and maids moved by the sweet feelings
of virtue: and "that have I seen "—spake Zara-
thustra. So much with respect to brevity; the
matter stands worse as regards my ignorance, of
which I make no secret to myself. There are hours
in which I am ashamed of it; to be sure there are
likewise hours in which I am ashamed of this
shame. Perhaps we philosophers, all of us, are
badly placed at present with regard to knowledge:
science is growing, the most learned of us are on
the point of discovering that we know too little.
But it would be worse still if it were otherwise,—
if we knew too much; our duty is and remains,
first of all, not to get into confusion about
ourselves. We are different from the learned;
although it cannot be denied that amongst other
things we are also learned. We have different
needs, a different growth, a different digestion: we
need more, we need also less. There is no formula
## p. 351 (#453) ############################################
WE FEARLESS ONES 351
as to how much an intellect needs for its nourish-
ment; if, however, its taste be in the direction of
independence, rapid coming and going, travelling,
and perhaps adventure for which only the swiftest
are qualified, it prefers rather to live free on poor
fare, than to be unfree and plethoric. Not fat, but
the greatest suppleness and power is what a good
dancer wishes from his nourishment,—and I know
not what the spirit of a philosopher would like
better than to be a good dancer. For the dance
is his ideal, and also his art, in the end likewise his
sole piety, his "divine service. " . . .
382.
Great Healthiness. — We, the new, the name-
less, the hard-to-understand, we firstlings of a yet
untried future—we require for a new end also a
new means, namely, a new healthiness, stronger,
sharper, tougher, bolder and merrier than any
healthiness hitherto. He whose soul longs to ex-
perience the whole range of hitherto recognised
values and desirabilities, and to circumnavigate all
the coasts of this ideal " Mediterranean Sea," who,
from the adventures of his most personal experience,
wants to know how it feels to be a conqueror, and
discoverer of the ideal—as likewise how it is with
the artist, the saint, the legislator, the sage, the
scholar, the devotee, the prophet, and the godly
Nonconformist of the old style:—requires one
thing above all for that purpose,great healthiness—
such healthiness as one not only possesses, but
also constantly acquires and must acquire, because
one continually sacrifices it again, and must sacri-
## p. 352 (#454) ############################################
352 THE JOYFUL WISDOM, V
fice it! —And now, after having been long on the
way in this fashion, we Argonauts of the ideal, who
are more courageous perhaps than prudent, and often
enough shipwrecked and brought to grief, neverthe-
less, as said above, healthier than people would
like to admit, dangerously healthy, always healthy
again,—it would seem, as if in recompense for it
all, that we have a still undiscovered country before
us, the boundaries of which no one has yet seen,
a beyond to all countries and corners of the
ideal known hitherto, a world so over-rich in the
beautiful, the strange, the questionable, the frightful,
and the divine, that our curiosity as well as our
thirst for possession thereof, have got out of hand—
alas! that nothing will now any longer satisfy us!
How could we still be content with the man of
the present day after such peeps, and with such a
craving in our conscience and consciousness?
What a pity; but it is unavoidable that we should
look on the worthiest aims and hopes of the man
of the present day with ill-concealed amusement,
and perhaps should no longer look at them.
Another ideal runs on before us, a strange, tempting
ideal, full of danger, to whicli we should not like
to persuade any one, because we do not so readily
acknowledge any one's right thereto: the ideal
of a spirit who plays naively (that is to say
involuntarily and from overflowing abundance and
power) with everything that has hitherto been
called holy, good, inviolable, divine; to whom the
loftiest conception which the people have reason-
ably made their measure of value, would already
imply danger, ruin, abasement, or at least relaxation,
## p. 353 (#455) ############################################
WE FEARLESS ONES 353
blindness, or temporary self-forgetfulness; the ideal
of a humanly superhuman welfare and benevolence,
which may often enough appear inhuman, for
example, when put by the side of all past serious-
ness on earth, and in comparison with all past
solemnities in bearing, word, tone, look, morality
and pursuit, as their truest involuntary parody,—
but with which, nevertheless, perhaps the great
seriousness only commences, the proper interroga-
tion mark is set up, the fate of the soul changes,
the hour-hand moves, and tragedy begins. . . .
383.
Epilogue. —But while I slowly, slowly finish the
painting of this sombre interrogation-mark, and am
still inclined to remind my readers of the virtues of
right reading—oh, what forgotten and unknown
virtues—it comes to pass that the wickedest,
merriest, gnome-like laughter resounds around me:
the spirits of my book themselves pounce upon me,
pull me by the ears, and call me to order. "We
cannot endure it any longer," they shout to me,
"away, away with this raven-black music. Is it
not clear morning round about us? And green, soft
ground and turf, the domain of the dance? Was
there ever a better hour in which to be joyful?
Who will sing us a song, a morning song, so sunny,
so light and so fledged that it will not scare the
tantrums,—but will rather invite them to take part
in the singing and dancing. And better a simple
rustic bagpipe than such weird sounds, such toad-
croakings, grave-voices and marmot-pipings, with
which you have hitherto regaled us in your wilder-
23
## p. 354 (#456) ############################################
354 THE JOYFUL WISDOM, V
ness, Mr Anchorite and Musician of the Future!
No! Not such tones! But let us strike up some-
thing more agreeable and more joyful! "—You
would like to have it so, my impatient friends?
Well! Who would not willingly accord with your
wishes? My bagpipe is waiting, and my voice
also—it may sound a little hoarse; take it as it is I
don't forget we are in the mountains! But what
you will hear is at least new; and if you do not
understand it, if you misunderstand the singer,
what does it matter!
That—has always been " The
Singer's Curse. " * So much the more distinctly can
you hear his music and melody, so much the better
also can you—dance to his piping. Would you like
to do that? . . .
* Title of the well-known poem of Uhland. —Tr.
## p. 355 (#457) ############################################
APPENDIX
SONGS OF PRINCE FREE-AS-A-
BIRD
355
## p. 356 (#458) ############################################
## p. 357 (#459) ############################################
TO GOETHE. *
"The Undecaying"
Is but thy label,
God the betraying
Is poets' fable.
Our aims all are thwarted
N By the World-wheel's blind roll:
"Doom," says the downhearted,
"Sport," says the fool.
The World-sport, all-ruling,
Mingles false with true:
The Eternally Fooling
Makes us play, too!
* This poem is a parody of the "Chorus Mysticus" which
concludes the second part of Goethe's "Faust. " Bayard
Taylor's translation of the passage in "Faust" runs as
follows :—
"All things transitory
But as symbols are sent,
Earth's insufficiency
Here grows to Event:
The Indescribable
Here it is done:
The Woman-Soul leadeth us
Upward and on! "
357
## p. 358 (#460) ############################################
358 THE JOYFUL WISDOM
THE POET'S CALL.
As 'neath a shady tree I sat
After long toil to take my pleasure,
I heard a tapping " pit-a-pat"
Beat prettily in rhythmic measure.
Tho' first I scowled, my face set hard,
The sound at length my sense entrapping
Forced me to speak like any bard,
And keep true time unto the tapping.
As I made verses, never stopping,
Each syllable the bird went after,
Keeping in time with dainty hopping!
I burst into unmeasured laughter!
What, you a poet? You a poet?
Can your brains truly so addled be?
"Yes, yes, good sir, you are a poet,"
Chirped out the pecker, mocking me.
What doth me to these woods entice?
The chance to give some thief a trouncing?
A saw, an image? Ha, in a trice
My rhyme is on it, swiftly pouncing!
All things that creep or crawl the poet
Weaves in his word-loom cunningly.
"Yes, yes, good sir, you are a poet,"
Chirped out the pecker, mocking me.
Like to an arrow, methinks, a verse is,
See how it quivers, pricks and smarts
When shot full straight (no tender mercies! )
Into the reptile's nobler parts!
## p. 359 (#461) ############################################
APPENDIX 359
Wretches, you die at the hand of the poet,
Or stagger like men that have drunk too free.
"Yes, yes, good sir, you are a poet,"
Chirped out the pecker, mocking me.
So they go hurrying, stanzas malign,
Drunken words—what a clattering, banging! —
Till the whole company, line on line,
All on the rhythmic chain are hanging.
Has he really a cruel heart, your poet?
Are there fiends who rejoice, the slaughter
to see?
"Yes, yes, good sir, you are a poet,"
Chirped out the pecker, mocking me.
So you jest at me, bird, with your scornful
graces?
So sore indeed is the plight of my head?
And my heart, you say, in yet sorrier case is?
Beware! for my wrath is a thing to dread!
Yet e'en in the hour of his wrath the poet
Rhymes you and sings with the selfsame glee.
"Yes, yes, good sir, you are a poet,"
Chirped out the pecker, mocking me.
IN THE SOUTH. *
I swing on a bough, and rest
My tired limbs in a nest,
In the rocking home of a bird,
Wherein I perch as his guest,
In the South!
* Translated by Miss M. D. Petre. Inserted by per-
mission of the editor of the Nation, in which it appeared
on April 17, 1909.
## p. 360 (#462) ############################################
360 THE JOYFUL WISDOM
I gaze on the ocean asleep,
On the purple sail of a boat;
On the harbour and tower steep,
On the rocks that stand out of the deep,
In the South!
For I could no longer stay,
To crawl in slow German way;
So I called to the birds, bade the wind
Lift me up and bear me away
To the South!
No reasons for me, if you please;
Their end is too dull and too plain;
But a pair of wings and a breeze,
With courage and health and ease,
And games that chase disease
From the South!
Wise thoughts can move without sound,
But I've songs that I can't sing alone;
So birdies, pray gather around,
And listen to what I have found
In the South!
"You are merry lovers and false and gay,
"In frolics and sport you pass the day;
"Whilst in the North, I shudder to say,
"I worshipped a woman, hideous and gray,
"Her name was Truth, so I heard them say,
"But I left her there and I flew away
"To the South! "
## p. 361 (#463) ############################################
APPENDIX
361
BEPPA THE PIOUS.
While beauty in my face is,
Be piety my care,
For God, you know, loves lasses,
And, more than all, the fair.
And if yon hapless monkling
Is fain with me to live,
Like many another monkling,
God surely will forgive.
No grey old priestly devil,
But, young, with cheeks aflame-
Who e'en when sick with revel,
Can jealous be and blame.
To greybeards I'm a stranger,
And he, too, hates the old :
Of God, the world-arranger,
The wisdom here behold!
The Church has ken of living,
And tests by heart and face.
To me she'll be forgiving !
Who will not show me grace?
I lisp with pretty halting,
I curtsey, bid "good day,"
And with the fresh defaulting
I wash the old away!
Praise be this man-God's guerdon,
Who loves all maidens fair,
And his own heart can pardon
The sin he planted there.
## p. 362 (#464) ############################################
362 THE JOYFUL WISDOM
While beauty in my face is,
With piety I'll stand,
When age has killed my graces,
Let Satan claim my hand!
THE BOAT OF MYSTERY.
Yester-eve, when all things slept—
Scarce a breeze to stir the lane—
1 a restless vigil kept,
Nor from pillows sleep could gain,
Nor from poppies nor—most sure
Of opiates—a conscience pure.
Thoughts of rest I 'gan forswear,
Rose and walked along the strand,
Found, in warm and moonlit air,
Man and boat upon the sand,
Drowsy both, and drowsily
Did the boat put out to sea.
Passed an hour or two perchance,
Or a year? then thought and sense
Vanished in the engulfing trance
Of a vast Indifference.
Fathomless, abysses dread
Opened—then the vision fled.
Morning came: becalmed, the boat
Rested on the purple flood:
"What had happened? " every throat
Shrieked the question: "was there-
Blood? "
Naught had happened! On the swell
We had slumbered, oh, so well!
## p. 363 (#465) ############################################
APPENDIX
363
AN AVOWAL OF LOVE
(during which, however, the poet fell into a pit).
Oh marvel! there he flies
Cleaving the sky with wings unmoved—what force
Impels him, bids him rise,
What curb restrains him? Where's his goal, his
course?
Like stars and time eterne
He liveth now in heights that life forswore,
Nor envy's self doth spurn:
A lofty fight were't, e'en to see him soar !
Oh albatross, great bird,
Speeding me upward ever through the blue !
I thought of her, was stirred
To tears unending-yea, I love her true !
SONG OF A THEOCRITEAN GOATHERD.
Here I lie, my bowels sore,
Hosts of bugs advancing,
Yonder lights and romp and roar!
What's that sound? They're dancing !
At this instant, so she prated,
Stealthily she'd meet me:
Like a faithful dog I've waited,
Not a sign to greet me!
She promised, made the cross-sign, too,
Could her vows be hollow ?
Or runs she after all that woo,
Like the goats I follow ?
## p. 364 (#466) ############################################
360
THE JOYFUL WISDOM
I gaze on the ocean asleep,
On the purple sail of a boat;
On the harbour and tower steep,
On the rocks that stand out of the
In the South!
For I could no longer stay,
To crawl in slow German way;
So I called to the birds, bade the
Lift me up and bear me away
To the South !
No reasons for me, if you plea
Their end is too dull and too
But a pair of wings and a bre
With courage and health an
And games that chase disea
From the South !
Found in 1
Drawsy both
Did the best?
Wise thoughts can move v
But I've songs that I can'
So birdies, pray gather at
And listen to what I hav
In the Souti
dità mast India
“You are merry lover
“In frolics and sport
“Whilst in the Nort!
"I worshipped a wo
“Her name was Tri
“But I left her the
“To the
collow
## p. 365 (#467) ############################################
APPENDIX
365
BEPPA THE PIOUS
JE
into a p
-what force
While beauty in my face is
Be piety my care,
For God, you know, loves lases
And, more than all, the fair.
And if yon hapless monkling
Is fain with me to live,
Like many another monkling
God surely will forgive
his goal, his
vore,
ar!
No grey old priestly deri
But, young, with cheeks tas-
Who e'en when sick with the
Can jealous be and blase
To greybeards I'm a straz
blue!
e!
And he too, hates the
Of God, the world-arrega
The wisdom here belli
ATHERD.
The Church bas kan feste
And tests by bwana za
To me she'll be hossz
ancing!
Who wil net iniz
I lisp with pre
I curtsey, s
And with team
I wash ke x
Praise bazena
. 1? '
## p. 365 (#468) ############################################
364 THE JOYFUL WISDOM
Whence your silken gown, my maid?
Ah, you'd fain be haughty,
Yet perchance you've proved a jade
With some satyr naughty!
Waiting long, the lovelorn wight
Is filled with rage and poison:
Even so on sultry night
Toadstools grow in foison.
Pinching sore, in devil's mood,
Love doth plague my crupper:
Truly I can eat no food:
Farewell, onion-supper!
Seaward sinks the moon away,
The stars are wan, and flare not:
Dawn approaches, gloomy, grey,
Let Death come! I care not!
"SOULS THAT LACK DETERMINATION. "
Souls that lack determination
Rouse my wrath to white-hot flame!
All their glory's but vexation,
All their praise but self-contempt and shame!
Since I baffle their advances,
Will not clutch their leading-string,
They would wither me with glances
Bitter-sweet, with hopeless envy sting.
Let them with fell curses shiver,
Curl their lip the livelong day!
Seek me as they will, forever
Helplessly their eyes shall go astray!
## p. 365 (#469) ############################################
APPENDIX 365
THE FOOL'S DILEMMA.
Ah, what I wrote on board and wall
With foolish heart, in foolish scrawl,
I meant but for their decoration!
Yet say you, " Fools' abomination!
Both board and wall require purgation,
And let no trace our eyes appal! "
Well, I will help you, as I can,
For sponge and broom are my vocation,
As critic and as waterman.
But when the finished work I scan,
I'm glad to see each learned owl
With "wisdom " board and wall defoul.
RIMUS REMEDIUM
(or a Consolation to Sick Poets).
From thy moist lips,
O Time, thou witch, beslavering me,
Hour upon hour too slowly drips
In vain—I cry, in frenzy's fit,
"A curse upon that yawning pit,
A curse upon Eternity! "
The world's of brass,
A fiery bullock, deaf to wail:
Pain's dagger pierces my cuirass,
Winged, and writes upon my bone:
"Bowels and heart the world hath none,
Why scourge her sins with anger's flail? '
## p. 366 (#470) ############################################
366
THE JOYFUL WISDOM
Pour poppies now,
Pour venom, Fever, on my brain !
Too long you test my hand and brow :
What ask you? “What-reward is paid ? "
A malediction on you, jade,
And your disdain !
No, I retract,
'Tis cold, I hear the rain importune-
Fever, I'll soften, show my tact:
Here's gold—a coin-see it gleam !
Shall I with blessings on you beam,
Call you “good fortune”?
The door opes wide,
And raindrops on my bed are scattered,
The light's blown out—woes multiplied !
He that hath not an hundred rhymes,
I'll wager, in these dolorous times
We'd see him shattered !
MY BLISS.
Once more, St Mark, thy pigeons meet my gaze,
The Square lies still, in slumbering morning mood:
In soft, cool air I fashion idle lays,
Speeding them skyward like a pigeon's brood :
To tie find then recall my mie a pigeon's brood.
To tie fresh rhymes upon their willing pinions.
My bliss! My bliss !
Calm heavenly roof of azure silkiness,
Guarding with shimmering haze yon house divine!
Thee, house, I love, fear-envy, I'll confess,
## p. 367 (#471) ############################################
APPENDIX 367
And gladly would suck out that soul of thine!
"Should I give back the prize? "
Ask not, great pasture-ground for human eyes!
My bliss! My bliss!
Stern belfry, rising as with lion's leap
Sheer from the soil in easy victory,
That fill'st the Square with peal resounding, deep,
Wert thou in French that Square's " accent aigu "?
Were I for ages set
In earth like thee, I know what silk-meshed net. . . .
My bliss! My bliss!
Hence, music! First let darker shadows come,
And grow, and merge into brown, mellow night!
Tis early for your pealing, ere the dome
Sparkle in roseate glory, gold-bedight.
While yet 'tis day, there's time
For strolling, lonely muttering, forging rhyme—
My bliss! My bliss!
COLUMBUS REDIVIVUS.
Thither I'll travel, that's my notion,
I'll trust myself, my grip,
Where opens wide and blue the ocean
I'll ply my Genoa ship.
New things on new the world unfolds me,
Time, space with noonday die:
Alone thy monstrous eye beholds me,
Awful Infinity!
## p. 368 (#472) ############################################
368 THE JOYFUL WISDOM
SILS-MARIA.
Here sat I waiting, waiting, but for naught!
Beyond all good and evil—now by light wrought
To joy, now by dark shadows—all was leisure,
All lake, all noon, all time sans aim, sans measure.
Then one, dear friend, was swiftly changed to twain,
And Zarathustra left my teeming brain. . . .
A DANCING SONG TO THE MISTRAL
WIND. *
Wildly rushing, clouds outleaping,
Care-destroying, Heaven sweeping,
Mistral wind, thou art my friend!
Surely 'twas one womb did bear us,
Surely 'twas one fate did pair us,
Fellows for a common end.
From the crags I gaily greet you,
Running fast I come to meet you,
Dancing while you pipe and sing.
How you bound across the ocean,
Unimpeded, free in motion,
Swifter than with boat or wing!
* Translated by Miss M. D. Petre. Inserted by permis-
sion of the editor of the Nation, in which it appeared
on May 15, 1909.
## p. 369 (#473) ############################################
APPENDIX 369
Through my dreams your whistle sounded,
Down the rocky stairs I bounded
To the golden ocean wall;
Saw you hasten, swift and glorious,
Like a river, strong, victorious,
Tumbling in a waterfall.
Saw you rushing over Heaven,
With your steeds so wildly driven,
Saw the car in which you flew;
Saw the lash that wheeled and quivered,
While the hand that held it shivered,
Urging on the steeds anew.
Saw you from your chariot swinging,
So that swifter downward springing
Like an arrow you might go
Straight into the deep abysses,
As a sunbeam falls and kisses
Roses in the morning glow.
Dance, oh! dance on all the edges,
Wave-crests, cliffs and mountain ledges,
Ever finding dances new!
Let our knowledge be our gladness,
Let our art be sport and madness,
All that's joyful shall be true!
Let us snatch from every bower,
As we pass, the fairest flower,
With some leaves to make a crown;
Then, like minstrels gaily dancing,
Saint and witch together prancing,
Let us foot it up and down.
24
## p. 370 (#474) ############################################
370 THE JOYFUL WISDOM
Those who come must move as quickly
As the wind—we'll have no sickly,
Crippled, withered, in our crew;
Off with hypocrites and preachers,
Proper folk and prosy teachers,
Sweep them from our heaven blue.
which acknowledges numbering, calculating, weigh-
ing, seeing and handling, and nothing more—such
an idea is a piece of grossness and naivety, pro-
vided it is not lunacy and idiocy. Would the
reverse not be quite probable, that the most super-
ficial and external characters of existence—its most
apparent quality, its outside, its embodiment—
should let themselves be apprehended first? per-
haps alone allow themselves to be apprehended?
A "scientific" interpretation of the world as you
understand it might consequently still be one of
the stupidest, that is to say, the most destitute
of significance, of all possible world-interpreta-
tions :—I say this in confidence to my friends the
Mechanicians, who to-day like to hobnob with
philosophers, and absolutely believe that mechanics
is the teaching of the first and last laws upon which,
as upon a ground-floor, all existence must be
## p. 340 (#442) ############################################
340 THE JOYFUL WISDOM, V
built. But an essentially mechanical world would
be an essentially meaningless world! Supposing we
valued the worth of a music with reference to how
much it could be counted, calculated, or formulated
—how absurd such a " scientific " estimate of music
would be! What would one have apprehended,
understood, or discerned in it! Nothing, absolutely
nothing of what is really " music" in it! . . .
374-
Our new "Infinite"—How far the perspective
character of existence extends, or whether it have
any other character at all, whether an existence
without explanation, without "sense" does not
just become "nonsense," whether, on the other
hand, all existence is not essentially an explaining
existence—these questions, as is right and proper,
cannot be determined even by the most diligent
and severely conscientious analysis and self-
examination of the intellect, because in this
analysis the human intellect cannot avoid seeing
itself in its perspective forms, and only in them.
We cannot see round our corner: it is hopeless
curiosity to want to know what other modes of
intellect and perspective there might be: for
example, whether any kind of being could perceive
time backwards, or alternately forwards and back-
wards (by which another direction of life and another
conception of cause and effect would be given).
But I think that we are to-day at least far from
the ludicrous immodesty of decreeing from our
nook that there can only be legitimate perspectives
from that nook. The world, on the contrary, has
## p. 341 (#443) ############################################
WE FEARLESS ONES 341
once more become "infinite" to us: in so far we
cannot dismiss the possibility that it contains
infinite interpretations. Once more the great horror
seizes us—but who would desire forthwith to deify
once more this monster of an unknown world in
the old fashion? And perhaps worship the unknown
thing as the "unknown person" in future? Ah!
there are too many ungodly possibilities of inter-
pretation comprised in this unknown, too much
devilment, stupidity and folly of interpretation,—
also our own human, all too human interpretation
itself, which we know. . . .
375-
Why we Seem to be Epicureans. —We are cautious,
we modern men, with regard to final convictions,
our distrust lies in wait for the enchantments and
tricks of conscience involved in every strong
belief, in every absolute Yea and Nay: how is this
explained? Perhaps one may see in it a good
deal of the caution of the "burnt child," of the
disillusioned idealist; but one may also see in it
another and better element, the joyful curiosity
of a former lingerer in the corner, who has
been brought to despair by his nook, and now
luxuriates and revels in its antithesis, in the un-
bounded, in the "open air in itself. " Thus there
is developed an almost Epicurean inclination for
knowledge, which does not readily lose sight of
the questionable character of things; likewise
also a repugnance to pompous moral phrases and
attitudes, a taste that repudiates all coarse, square
contrasts, and is proudly conscious of its habitual
## p. 342 (#444) ############################################
342 THE JOYFUL WISDOM, V
reserve. For this too constitutes our pride, this
easy tightening of the reins in our headlong im-
pulse after certainty, this self-control of the rider in
his most furious riding: for now, as of old we have
mad, fiery steeds under us, and if we delay, it is
certainly least of all the danger which causes us
to delay. . . .
376.
Our Slow Periods. —It is thus that artists feel,
and all men of "works," the maternal species of
men: they always believe at every chapter of their
life—a work always makes a chapter—that they
have already reached the goal itself; they would
always patiently accept death with the feeling:
"we are ripe for it. " This is not the expression
of exhaustion,—but rather that of a certain
autumnal sunniness and mildness, which the work
itself, the maturing of the work, always leaves
behind in its originator. Then the tempo of life
slows down—turns thick and flows with honey—into
long pauses, into the belief in the long pause. . . .
377-
We Homeless Ones. —Among the Europeans of
to-day there are not lacking those who may call
themselves homeless ones in a way which is at once
a distinction and an honour; it is by them that my
secret wisdom and gaya scienza is expressly to be
laid to heart. For their lot is hard, their hope un-
certain; it is a clever feat to devise consolation for
them. But what good does it do! We children of
the future, how could we be at home in the present?
## p. 343 (#445) ############################################
WE FEARLESS ONES 343
We are unfavourable to all ideals which could
make us feel at home in this frail, broken-down,
transition period; and as regards the "realities"
thereof, we do not believe in their endurance. The
ice which still carries us has become very thin : the
thawing wind blows; we ourselves, the homeless
ones, are an influence that breaks the ice, and the
other all too thin "realities. " . . . We "preserve"
nothing, nor would we return to any past age; we
are not at all "liberal," we do not labour for " pro-
gress," we do not need first to stop our ears to
the song of the market-place and the sirens of
the future—their song of "equal rights," "free
society," "no longer either lords or slaves," does
not allure us! We do not by any means think it
desirable that the kingdom of righteousness and
peace should he established pn ea/th (because
under any i circumstances II . » . . . id be the
kingdom of the profoundest mediocrity and
Chinaism); we rejoice in all men, who, like our-
selves, love danger, war and adventure, who do
not make compromises, nor let themselves
be captured, conciliated and stunted; we count
ourselves among the conquerors; we ponder over
the need of a new order of things, even of a new
slavery—for every strengthening and elevation of the
type "man" also involves a new form of slavery.
Is it not obvious that with all this we must feel ill
at ease in an age which claims the honour of being
the most humane, gentle and just that the sun has
ever seen? What a pity that at the mere mention
of these fine words, the thoughts at the back
of our minds are all the more unpleasant, that we
## p. 344 (#446) ############################################
344 THE JOYFUL WISDOM, V
see therein only the expression—or the masquerade
—of profound weakening, exhaustion, age, and de-
clining power! What can it matter to us with what
kind of tinsel an invalid decks out his weakness?
He may parade it as his virtue; there is no doubt
whatever that weakness makes people gentle, alas,
so gentle, so just, so inoffensive, so "humane"! —
The " religion of pity," to which people would like
to persuade us—yes, we know sufficiently well the
hysterical little men and women who need this
religion at present as a cloak and adornment!
We are no humanitarians; we should not dare to
speak of our " love of mankind "; for that, a person
of our stamp is not enough of an actor! Or not
sufficiently Saint-Simonist, not sufficiently French.
A person must have been affected with a Gallic
excess-of erotic susceptibility . and amorous im-
patience everf to approach mankind honourably
with his lewdness. . . . Mankind! Was there
ever a more hideous old woman among all old
women (unless perhaps it were "the, Truth ": a
question for philosophers)? No, we Mo not love
Mankind! On the other hand, however, we are not
nearly " German " enough (in the sense irt^which the
word " German" is current at present) to advocate
nationalism and race-hatred, or take delight^Mi the
national heart-itch and blood-poisoning, on account
of which the nations of Europe are at presen^
bounded off and secluded from one another as i
by quarantines. We are too unprejudiced for that,
too perverse, too fastidious; also too well-informed,
and too much "travelled. " We prefer much rather
to live on mountains, apart and "out of season," in
## p. 345 (#447) ############################################
WE FEARLESS ONES 345
past or coming centuries, in order merely to spare
ourselves the silent rage to which we know we
should be condemned as witnesses of a system of
politics which makes the German nation barren
by making it vain, and which is a petty
system besides:—will it not be necessary for
this system to plant itself between two mortal
hatreds, lest its own creation should immedi-
ately collapse? Will it not be obliged to desire
the perpetuation of the petty-state system of
Europe? . . . We homeless ones are too diverse
and mixed in race and descent as "modern
men," and are consequently little tempted to
participate in the falsified racial self-admiration
and lewdness which at present display themselves
in Germany, as signs of German sentiment, and
which strike one as doubly false and unbecoming
in the people with the " historical sense. " We are,
in a word—and it shall be our word of honour! —
good Europeans, the heirs of Europe, the rich, over-
wealthy heirs, also the too deeply pledged heirs
of millenniums of European thought. As such,
we have also outgrown Christianity, and are
disinclined to it — and just because we have
grown out of it, because our forefathers were
Christians uncompromising in their Christian in-
tegrity, who willingly sacrificed possessions and
positions, blood and country, for the sake of their
belief. We—do the same. For what, then? For
our unbelief? For all sorts of unbelief? Nay, you
know better than that, my friends! The hidden
Yea in you is stronger than all the Nays and
Perhapses, of which you and your age are sick;
## p. 346 (#448) ############################################
346 THE JOYFUL WISDOM, V
and when you are obliged to put out to sea, you
emigrants, it is—once more a faith which urges
you thereto! . . .
378.
"And once more Grow Clear"—We, the generous
and rich in spirit, who stand at the sides of the
streets like open fountains and would hinder no
one from drinking from us: we do not know,
alas! how to defend ourselves when we should
like to do so; we have no means of preventing
ourselves being made turbid and dark,—we have
no means of preventing the age in which we live
casting its "up-to-date rubbish" into us, nor of
hindering filthy birds throwing their excrement,
the boys their trash, and fatigued resting travellers
their misery, great and small, into us. But we
do as we have always done: we take whatever
is cast into us down into our depths — for we
are deep, we do not forget—and once more grow
clear. . . .
379-
The Foofs Interruption. —It is not a misanthrope
who has written this book: the hatred of men costs
too dear to-day. To hate as they formerly hated
man, in the fashion of Timon, completely, without
qualification, with all the heart, from the pure love
of hatred — for that purpose one would have to
renounce contempt: — and how much refined
pleasure, how much patience, how much bene-
volence even, do we owe to contempt! Moreover
we are thereby the "elect of God ": refined con-
tempt is our taste and privilege, our art, our virtue
## p. 347 (#449) ############################################
WE FEARLESS ONES 347
perhaps, we, the most modern amongst the
moderns! . . . Hatred, on the contrary, makes
equal, it puts men face to face, in hatred there is
honour; finally, in hatred there is fear, quite a
large amount of fear. We fearless ones, however,
we, the most intellectual men of the period,
know our advantage well enough to live without
fear as the most intellectual persons of this age.
People will not easily behead us, shut us up,
or banish us; they will not even ban or burn
our books. The age loves intellect, it loves us,
and needs us, even when we have to give it to
understand that we are artists in despising; that
all intercourse with men is something of a horror
to us; that with all our gentleness, patience,
humanity and courteousness, we cannot persuade
our nose to abandon its prejudice against the
proximity of man ; that we love nature the more,
the less humanly things are done by her, and
that we love art when it is the flight of the artist
from man, or the raillery of the artist at man, or the
raillery of the artist at himself. . . .
380.
"The Wanderer" Speaks. —In order for once to
get a glimpse of our European morality from a
distance, in order to compare it with other earlier
or future moralities, one must do as the traveller
who wants to know the height of the towers of
a city: for that purpose he leaves the city.
"Thoughts concerning moral prejudices," if they
are not to be prejudices concerning prejudices,
presuppose a position outside of morality, some
## p. 348 (#450) ############################################
348 THE JOYFUL WISDOM, V
sort of world beyond good and evil, to which
one must ascend, climb, or fly—and in the given
case at any rate, a position beyond our good and
evil, an emancipation from all "Europe," under-
stood as a sum of inviolable valuations which have
become part and parcel of our flesh and blood.
That one wants in fact to get outside, or aloft,
is perhaps a sort of madness, a peculiarly un-
reasonable "thou must"—for even we thinkers
have our idiosyncrasies of "unfree will "—: the
question is whether one can really get there. That
may depend on manifold conditions: in the main
it is a question of how light or how heavy we
are, the problem of our "specific gravity. " One
must be very light in order to impel one's will to
knowledge to such a distance, and as it were beyond
one's age, in order to create eyes for oneself for the
survey of millenniums, and a pure heaven in these
eyes besides! One must have freed oneself from
many things by which we Europeans of to-day are
oppressed, hindered, held down, and made heavy.
The man of such a "Beyond," who wants to get
even in sight of the highest standards of worth of
his age, must first of all "surmount" this age in him-
self—it is the test of his power—and consequently
not only his age, but also his past aversion and
opposition to his age, his suffering caused by his
age, his unseasonableness, his Romanticism. . . .
381.
The Question of Intelligibility. —One not only
wants to be understood when one writes, but also
—quite as certainly—not to be understood. It is
## p. 349 (#451) ############################################
WE FEARLESS ONES 349
by no means an objection to a book when someone
finds it unintelligible: perhaps this might just have
been the intention of its author,—perhaps he did
not want to be understood by "anyone. " A
distinguished intellect and taste, when it wants to
communicate its thoughts, always selects its hearers;
by selecting them, it at the same time closes its
barriers against "the others. " It is there that all
the more refined laws of style have their origin:
they at the same time keep off, they create distance,
they prevent "access" (intelligibility, as we have
said,)—while they open the ears of those who
are acoustically related to them. And to say it
between ourselves and with reference to my own
case,—I do not desire that either my ignorance, or
the vivacity of my temperament, should prevent me
being understood by you, my friends: I certainly
do not desire that my vivacity should have that
effect, however much it may impel me to arrive
quickly at an object, in order to arrive at it at all.
For I think it is best to do with profound problems
as with a cold bath—quickly in, quickly out. That
one does not thereby get into the depths, that one
does not get deep enough down—is a superstition
of the hydrophobic, the enemies of cold water; they
speak without experience. Oh! the great cold
makes one quick! —And let me ask by the way:
Is it a fact that a thing has been misunderstood
and unrecognised when it has only been touched
upon in passing, glanced at, flashed at? Must
one absolutely sit upon it in the first place?
Must one have brooded on it as on an egg? Diu
noctuque incubando, as Newton said of himself? At
## p. 350 (#452) ############################################
35O THE JOYFUL WISDOM, V
least there are truths of a peculiar shyness and
ticklishness which one can only get hold of suddenly,
and in no other way,—which one must either take
by surprise, or leave alone. . . . Finally, my brevity
has still another value: on those questions which
pre-occupy me, I must say a great deal briefly, in
order that it may be heard yet more briefly. For
as immoralist, one has to take care lest one ruins
innocence, I mean the asses and old maids of both
sexes, who get nothing from life but their in-
nocence; moreover my writings are meant to fill
them with enthusiasm, to elevate them, to encourage
them in virtue. I should be at a loss to know of
anything more amusing than to see enthusiastic
old asses and maids moved by the sweet feelings
of virtue: and "that have I seen "—spake Zara-
thustra. So much with respect to brevity; the
matter stands worse as regards my ignorance, of
which I make no secret to myself. There are hours
in which I am ashamed of it; to be sure there are
likewise hours in which I am ashamed of this
shame. Perhaps we philosophers, all of us, are
badly placed at present with regard to knowledge:
science is growing, the most learned of us are on
the point of discovering that we know too little.
But it would be worse still if it were otherwise,—
if we knew too much; our duty is and remains,
first of all, not to get into confusion about
ourselves. We are different from the learned;
although it cannot be denied that amongst other
things we are also learned. We have different
needs, a different growth, a different digestion: we
need more, we need also less. There is no formula
## p. 351 (#453) ############################################
WE FEARLESS ONES 351
as to how much an intellect needs for its nourish-
ment; if, however, its taste be in the direction of
independence, rapid coming and going, travelling,
and perhaps adventure for which only the swiftest
are qualified, it prefers rather to live free on poor
fare, than to be unfree and plethoric. Not fat, but
the greatest suppleness and power is what a good
dancer wishes from his nourishment,—and I know
not what the spirit of a philosopher would like
better than to be a good dancer. For the dance
is his ideal, and also his art, in the end likewise his
sole piety, his "divine service. " . . .
382.
Great Healthiness. — We, the new, the name-
less, the hard-to-understand, we firstlings of a yet
untried future—we require for a new end also a
new means, namely, a new healthiness, stronger,
sharper, tougher, bolder and merrier than any
healthiness hitherto. He whose soul longs to ex-
perience the whole range of hitherto recognised
values and desirabilities, and to circumnavigate all
the coasts of this ideal " Mediterranean Sea," who,
from the adventures of his most personal experience,
wants to know how it feels to be a conqueror, and
discoverer of the ideal—as likewise how it is with
the artist, the saint, the legislator, the sage, the
scholar, the devotee, the prophet, and the godly
Nonconformist of the old style:—requires one
thing above all for that purpose,great healthiness—
such healthiness as one not only possesses, but
also constantly acquires and must acquire, because
one continually sacrifices it again, and must sacri-
## p. 352 (#454) ############################################
352 THE JOYFUL WISDOM, V
fice it! —And now, after having been long on the
way in this fashion, we Argonauts of the ideal, who
are more courageous perhaps than prudent, and often
enough shipwrecked and brought to grief, neverthe-
less, as said above, healthier than people would
like to admit, dangerously healthy, always healthy
again,—it would seem, as if in recompense for it
all, that we have a still undiscovered country before
us, the boundaries of which no one has yet seen,
a beyond to all countries and corners of the
ideal known hitherto, a world so over-rich in the
beautiful, the strange, the questionable, the frightful,
and the divine, that our curiosity as well as our
thirst for possession thereof, have got out of hand—
alas! that nothing will now any longer satisfy us!
How could we still be content with the man of
the present day after such peeps, and with such a
craving in our conscience and consciousness?
What a pity; but it is unavoidable that we should
look on the worthiest aims and hopes of the man
of the present day with ill-concealed amusement,
and perhaps should no longer look at them.
Another ideal runs on before us, a strange, tempting
ideal, full of danger, to whicli we should not like
to persuade any one, because we do not so readily
acknowledge any one's right thereto: the ideal
of a spirit who plays naively (that is to say
involuntarily and from overflowing abundance and
power) with everything that has hitherto been
called holy, good, inviolable, divine; to whom the
loftiest conception which the people have reason-
ably made their measure of value, would already
imply danger, ruin, abasement, or at least relaxation,
## p. 353 (#455) ############################################
WE FEARLESS ONES 353
blindness, or temporary self-forgetfulness; the ideal
of a humanly superhuman welfare and benevolence,
which may often enough appear inhuman, for
example, when put by the side of all past serious-
ness on earth, and in comparison with all past
solemnities in bearing, word, tone, look, morality
and pursuit, as their truest involuntary parody,—
but with which, nevertheless, perhaps the great
seriousness only commences, the proper interroga-
tion mark is set up, the fate of the soul changes,
the hour-hand moves, and tragedy begins. . . .
383.
Epilogue. —But while I slowly, slowly finish the
painting of this sombre interrogation-mark, and am
still inclined to remind my readers of the virtues of
right reading—oh, what forgotten and unknown
virtues—it comes to pass that the wickedest,
merriest, gnome-like laughter resounds around me:
the spirits of my book themselves pounce upon me,
pull me by the ears, and call me to order. "We
cannot endure it any longer," they shout to me,
"away, away with this raven-black music. Is it
not clear morning round about us? And green, soft
ground and turf, the domain of the dance? Was
there ever a better hour in which to be joyful?
Who will sing us a song, a morning song, so sunny,
so light and so fledged that it will not scare the
tantrums,—but will rather invite them to take part
in the singing and dancing. And better a simple
rustic bagpipe than such weird sounds, such toad-
croakings, grave-voices and marmot-pipings, with
which you have hitherto regaled us in your wilder-
23
## p. 354 (#456) ############################################
354 THE JOYFUL WISDOM, V
ness, Mr Anchorite and Musician of the Future!
No! Not such tones! But let us strike up some-
thing more agreeable and more joyful! "—You
would like to have it so, my impatient friends?
Well! Who would not willingly accord with your
wishes? My bagpipe is waiting, and my voice
also—it may sound a little hoarse; take it as it is I
don't forget we are in the mountains! But what
you will hear is at least new; and if you do not
understand it, if you misunderstand the singer,
what does it matter!
That—has always been " The
Singer's Curse. " * So much the more distinctly can
you hear his music and melody, so much the better
also can you—dance to his piping. Would you like
to do that? . . .
* Title of the well-known poem of Uhland. —Tr.
## p. 355 (#457) ############################################
APPENDIX
SONGS OF PRINCE FREE-AS-A-
BIRD
355
## p. 356 (#458) ############################################
## p. 357 (#459) ############################################
TO GOETHE. *
"The Undecaying"
Is but thy label,
God the betraying
Is poets' fable.
Our aims all are thwarted
N By the World-wheel's blind roll:
"Doom," says the downhearted,
"Sport," says the fool.
The World-sport, all-ruling,
Mingles false with true:
The Eternally Fooling
Makes us play, too!
* This poem is a parody of the "Chorus Mysticus" which
concludes the second part of Goethe's "Faust. " Bayard
Taylor's translation of the passage in "Faust" runs as
follows :—
"All things transitory
But as symbols are sent,
Earth's insufficiency
Here grows to Event:
The Indescribable
Here it is done:
The Woman-Soul leadeth us
Upward and on! "
357
## p. 358 (#460) ############################################
358 THE JOYFUL WISDOM
THE POET'S CALL.
As 'neath a shady tree I sat
After long toil to take my pleasure,
I heard a tapping " pit-a-pat"
Beat prettily in rhythmic measure.
Tho' first I scowled, my face set hard,
The sound at length my sense entrapping
Forced me to speak like any bard,
And keep true time unto the tapping.
As I made verses, never stopping,
Each syllable the bird went after,
Keeping in time with dainty hopping!
I burst into unmeasured laughter!
What, you a poet? You a poet?
Can your brains truly so addled be?
"Yes, yes, good sir, you are a poet,"
Chirped out the pecker, mocking me.
What doth me to these woods entice?
The chance to give some thief a trouncing?
A saw, an image? Ha, in a trice
My rhyme is on it, swiftly pouncing!
All things that creep or crawl the poet
Weaves in his word-loom cunningly.
"Yes, yes, good sir, you are a poet,"
Chirped out the pecker, mocking me.
Like to an arrow, methinks, a verse is,
See how it quivers, pricks and smarts
When shot full straight (no tender mercies! )
Into the reptile's nobler parts!
## p. 359 (#461) ############################################
APPENDIX 359
Wretches, you die at the hand of the poet,
Or stagger like men that have drunk too free.
"Yes, yes, good sir, you are a poet,"
Chirped out the pecker, mocking me.
So they go hurrying, stanzas malign,
Drunken words—what a clattering, banging! —
Till the whole company, line on line,
All on the rhythmic chain are hanging.
Has he really a cruel heart, your poet?
Are there fiends who rejoice, the slaughter
to see?
"Yes, yes, good sir, you are a poet,"
Chirped out the pecker, mocking me.
So you jest at me, bird, with your scornful
graces?
So sore indeed is the plight of my head?
And my heart, you say, in yet sorrier case is?
Beware! for my wrath is a thing to dread!
Yet e'en in the hour of his wrath the poet
Rhymes you and sings with the selfsame glee.
"Yes, yes, good sir, you are a poet,"
Chirped out the pecker, mocking me.
IN THE SOUTH. *
I swing on a bough, and rest
My tired limbs in a nest,
In the rocking home of a bird,
Wherein I perch as his guest,
In the South!
* Translated by Miss M. D. Petre. Inserted by per-
mission of the editor of the Nation, in which it appeared
on April 17, 1909.
## p. 360 (#462) ############################################
360 THE JOYFUL WISDOM
I gaze on the ocean asleep,
On the purple sail of a boat;
On the harbour and tower steep,
On the rocks that stand out of the deep,
In the South!
For I could no longer stay,
To crawl in slow German way;
So I called to the birds, bade the wind
Lift me up and bear me away
To the South!
No reasons for me, if you please;
Their end is too dull and too plain;
But a pair of wings and a breeze,
With courage and health and ease,
And games that chase disease
From the South!
Wise thoughts can move without sound,
But I've songs that I can't sing alone;
So birdies, pray gather around,
And listen to what I have found
In the South!
"You are merry lovers and false and gay,
"In frolics and sport you pass the day;
"Whilst in the North, I shudder to say,
"I worshipped a woman, hideous and gray,
"Her name was Truth, so I heard them say,
"But I left her there and I flew away
"To the South! "
## p. 361 (#463) ############################################
APPENDIX
361
BEPPA THE PIOUS.
While beauty in my face is,
Be piety my care,
For God, you know, loves lasses,
And, more than all, the fair.
And if yon hapless monkling
Is fain with me to live,
Like many another monkling,
God surely will forgive.
No grey old priestly devil,
But, young, with cheeks aflame-
Who e'en when sick with revel,
Can jealous be and blame.
To greybeards I'm a stranger,
And he, too, hates the old :
Of God, the world-arranger,
The wisdom here behold!
The Church has ken of living,
And tests by heart and face.
To me she'll be forgiving !
Who will not show me grace?
I lisp with pretty halting,
I curtsey, bid "good day,"
And with the fresh defaulting
I wash the old away!
Praise be this man-God's guerdon,
Who loves all maidens fair,
And his own heart can pardon
The sin he planted there.
## p. 362 (#464) ############################################
362 THE JOYFUL WISDOM
While beauty in my face is,
With piety I'll stand,
When age has killed my graces,
Let Satan claim my hand!
THE BOAT OF MYSTERY.
Yester-eve, when all things slept—
Scarce a breeze to stir the lane—
1 a restless vigil kept,
Nor from pillows sleep could gain,
Nor from poppies nor—most sure
Of opiates—a conscience pure.
Thoughts of rest I 'gan forswear,
Rose and walked along the strand,
Found, in warm and moonlit air,
Man and boat upon the sand,
Drowsy both, and drowsily
Did the boat put out to sea.
Passed an hour or two perchance,
Or a year? then thought and sense
Vanished in the engulfing trance
Of a vast Indifference.
Fathomless, abysses dread
Opened—then the vision fled.
Morning came: becalmed, the boat
Rested on the purple flood:
"What had happened? " every throat
Shrieked the question: "was there-
Blood? "
Naught had happened! On the swell
We had slumbered, oh, so well!
## p. 363 (#465) ############################################
APPENDIX
363
AN AVOWAL OF LOVE
(during which, however, the poet fell into a pit).
Oh marvel! there he flies
Cleaving the sky with wings unmoved—what force
Impels him, bids him rise,
What curb restrains him? Where's his goal, his
course?
Like stars and time eterne
He liveth now in heights that life forswore,
Nor envy's self doth spurn:
A lofty fight were't, e'en to see him soar !
Oh albatross, great bird,
Speeding me upward ever through the blue !
I thought of her, was stirred
To tears unending-yea, I love her true !
SONG OF A THEOCRITEAN GOATHERD.
Here I lie, my bowels sore,
Hosts of bugs advancing,
Yonder lights and romp and roar!
What's that sound? They're dancing !
At this instant, so she prated,
Stealthily she'd meet me:
Like a faithful dog I've waited,
Not a sign to greet me!
She promised, made the cross-sign, too,
Could her vows be hollow ?
Or runs she after all that woo,
Like the goats I follow ?
## p. 364 (#466) ############################################
360
THE JOYFUL WISDOM
I gaze on the ocean asleep,
On the purple sail of a boat;
On the harbour and tower steep,
On the rocks that stand out of the
In the South!
For I could no longer stay,
To crawl in slow German way;
So I called to the birds, bade the
Lift me up and bear me away
To the South !
No reasons for me, if you plea
Their end is too dull and too
But a pair of wings and a bre
With courage and health an
And games that chase disea
From the South !
Found in 1
Drawsy both
Did the best?
Wise thoughts can move v
But I've songs that I can'
So birdies, pray gather at
And listen to what I hav
In the Souti
dità mast India
“You are merry lover
“In frolics and sport
“Whilst in the Nort!
"I worshipped a wo
“Her name was Tri
“But I left her the
“To the
collow
## p. 365 (#467) ############################################
APPENDIX
365
BEPPA THE PIOUS
JE
into a p
-what force
While beauty in my face is
Be piety my care,
For God, you know, loves lases
And, more than all, the fair.
And if yon hapless monkling
Is fain with me to live,
Like many another monkling
God surely will forgive
his goal, his
vore,
ar!
No grey old priestly deri
But, young, with cheeks tas-
Who e'en when sick with the
Can jealous be and blase
To greybeards I'm a straz
blue!
e!
And he too, hates the
Of God, the world-arrega
The wisdom here belli
ATHERD.
The Church bas kan feste
And tests by bwana za
To me she'll be hossz
ancing!
Who wil net iniz
I lisp with pre
I curtsey, s
And with team
I wash ke x
Praise bazena
. 1? '
## p. 365 (#468) ############################################
364 THE JOYFUL WISDOM
Whence your silken gown, my maid?
Ah, you'd fain be haughty,
Yet perchance you've proved a jade
With some satyr naughty!
Waiting long, the lovelorn wight
Is filled with rage and poison:
Even so on sultry night
Toadstools grow in foison.
Pinching sore, in devil's mood,
Love doth plague my crupper:
Truly I can eat no food:
Farewell, onion-supper!
Seaward sinks the moon away,
The stars are wan, and flare not:
Dawn approaches, gloomy, grey,
Let Death come! I care not!
"SOULS THAT LACK DETERMINATION. "
Souls that lack determination
Rouse my wrath to white-hot flame!
All their glory's but vexation,
All their praise but self-contempt and shame!
Since I baffle their advances,
Will not clutch their leading-string,
They would wither me with glances
Bitter-sweet, with hopeless envy sting.
Let them with fell curses shiver,
Curl their lip the livelong day!
Seek me as they will, forever
Helplessly their eyes shall go astray!
## p. 365 (#469) ############################################
APPENDIX 365
THE FOOL'S DILEMMA.
Ah, what I wrote on board and wall
With foolish heart, in foolish scrawl,
I meant but for their decoration!
Yet say you, " Fools' abomination!
Both board and wall require purgation,
And let no trace our eyes appal! "
Well, I will help you, as I can,
For sponge and broom are my vocation,
As critic and as waterman.
But when the finished work I scan,
I'm glad to see each learned owl
With "wisdom " board and wall defoul.
RIMUS REMEDIUM
(or a Consolation to Sick Poets).
From thy moist lips,
O Time, thou witch, beslavering me,
Hour upon hour too slowly drips
In vain—I cry, in frenzy's fit,
"A curse upon that yawning pit,
A curse upon Eternity! "
The world's of brass,
A fiery bullock, deaf to wail:
Pain's dagger pierces my cuirass,
Winged, and writes upon my bone:
"Bowels and heart the world hath none,
Why scourge her sins with anger's flail? '
## p. 366 (#470) ############################################
366
THE JOYFUL WISDOM
Pour poppies now,
Pour venom, Fever, on my brain !
Too long you test my hand and brow :
What ask you? “What-reward is paid ? "
A malediction on you, jade,
And your disdain !
No, I retract,
'Tis cold, I hear the rain importune-
Fever, I'll soften, show my tact:
Here's gold—a coin-see it gleam !
Shall I with blessings on you beam,
Call you “good fortune”?
The door opes wide,
And raindrops on my bed are scattered,
The light's blown out—woes multiplied !
He that hath not an hundred rhymes,
I'll wager, in these dolorous times
We'd see him shattered !
MY BLISS.
Once more, St Mark, thy pigeons meet my gaze,
The Square lies still, in slumbering morning mood:
In soft, cool air I fashion idle lays,
Speeding them skyward like a pigeon's brood :
To tie find then recall my mie a pigeon's brood.
To tie fresh rhymes upon their willing pinions.
My bliss! My bliss !
Calm heavenly roof of azure silkiness,
Guarding with shimmering haze yon house divine!
Thee, house, I love, fear-envy, I'll confess,
## p. 367 (#471) ############################################
APPENDIX 367
And gladly would suck out that soul of thine!
"Should I give back the prize? "
Ask not, great pasture-ground for human eyes!
My bliss! My bliss!
Stern belfry, rising as with lion's leap
Sheer from the soil in easy victory,
That fill'st the Square with peal resounding, deep,
Wert thou in French that Square's " accent aigu "?
Were I for ages set
In earth like thee, I know what silk-meshed net. . . .
My bliss! My bliss!
Hence, music! First let darker shadows come,
And grow, and merge into brown, mellow night!
Tis early for your pealing, ere the dome
Sparkle in roseate glory, gold-bedight.
While yet 'tis day, there's time
For strolling, lonely muttering, forging rhyme—
My bliss! My bliss!
COLUMBUS REDIVIVUS.
Thither I'll travel, that's my notion,
I'll trust myself, my grip,
Where opens wide and blue the ocean
I'll ply my Genoa ship.
New things on new the world unfolds me,
Time, space with noonday die:
Alone thy monstrous eye beholds me,
Awful Infinity!
## p. 368 (#472) ############################################
368 THE JOYFUL WISDOM
SILS-MARIA.
Here sat I waiting, waiting, but for naught!
Beyond all good and evil—now by light wrought
To joy, now by dark shadows—all was leisure,
All lake, all noon, all time sans aim, sans measure.
Then one, dear friend, was swiftly changed to twain,
And Zarathustra left my teeming brain. . . .
A DANCING SONG TO THE MISTRAL
WIND. *
Wildly rushing, clouds outleaping,
Care-destroying, Heaven sweeping,
Mistral wind, thou art my friend!
Surely 'twas one womb did bear us,
Surely 'twas one fate did pair us,
Fellows for a common end.
From the crags I gaily greet you,
Running fast I come to meet you,
Dancing while you pipe and sing.
How you bound across the ocean,
Unimpeded, free in motion,
Swifter than with boat or wing!
* Translated by Miss M. D. Petre. Inserted by permis-
sion of the editor of the Nation, in which it appeared
on May 15, 1909.
## p. 369 (#473) ############################################
APPENDIX 369
Through my dreams your whistle sounded,
Down the rocky stairs I bounded
To the golden ocean wall;
Saw you hasten, swift and glorious,
Like a river, strong, victorious,
Tumbling in a waterfall.
Saw you rushing over Heaven,
With your steeds so wildly driven,
Saw the car in which you flew;
Saw the lash that wheeled and quivered,
While the hand that held it shivered,
Urging on the steeds anew.
Saw you from your chariot swinging,
So that swifter downward springing
Like an arrow you might go
Straight into the deep abysses,
As a sunbeam falls and kisses
Roses in the morning glow.
Dance, oh! dance on all the edges,
Wave-crests, cliffs and mountain ledges,
Ever finding dances new!
Let our knowledge be our gladness,
Let our art be sport and madness,
All that's joyful shall be true!
Let us snatch from every bower,
As we pass, the fairest flower,
With some leaves to make a crown;
Then, like minstrels gaily dancing,
Saint and witch together prancing,
Let us foot it up and down.
24
## p. 370 (#474) ############################################
370 THE JOYFUL WISDOM
Those who come must move as quickly
As the wind—we'll have no sickly,
Crippled, withered, in our crew;
Off with hypocrites and preachers,
Proper folk and prosy teachers,
Sweep them from our heaven blue.
