The Joyful Wisdom (La Gaya Scienza)
- Language:
- English
- Status:
- Complete work
- Authorship:
- Written by the author
- Condition of the text:
- Clean text
- Extent:
- ~94,700 words · 450 passages
Cite this work
- APANietzsche. (n.d.). The Joyful Wisdom (La Gaya Scienza). SigPhi. https://sigphiai.com/en/works/nietzsche/the-joyful-wisdom-la-gaya-scienza
- MLANietzsche. "The Joyful Wisdom (La Gaya Scienza)." SigPhi, https://sigphiai.com/en/works/nietzsche/the-joyful-wisdom-la-gaya-scienza.
- ChicagoNietzsche. The Joyful Wisdom (La Gaya Scienza). SigPhi. https://sigphiai.com/en/works/nietzsche/the-joyful-wisdom-la-gaya-scienza.
What it is about
The Gay Science (1882): the book where 'God is dead' appears, and the eternal recurrence too.
Context and history
Aphorism 125, the madman entering the marketplace with a lantern in broad daylight asking where God is, is Nietzsche's most quoted and most misread page: it is no celebration, it is horror. And 341 poses the eternal recurrence as a question — would you want to live this same life again, infinitely? — which is his acid test. English translation from the complete edition edited by Oscar Levy (1909-1913), the one in the public domain. It is over a century old and it shows. The original is GERMAN, and citation should follow the original: the catalogue holds two of them, Also sprach Zarathustra and Der Wille zur Macht; for the rest, only the translation is here.
Editorial context, not a citable source: unlike the passages of the work itself, these statements cannot be checked against the corpus.
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, contradiction 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 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 impotence: 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 consequences are comforts,—this radical isolation, as d