The Joyful Wisdom 1

The Joyful Wisdom 1

The Joyful Wisdom

Author: Friedrich Nietzsche

CONTENTS

PAGE

 

EDITORIAL NOTE vii

 

PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION 1

 

JEST, RUSE AND REVENGE: A PRELUDE IN RHYME 11

 

BOOK FIRST 29

 

BOOK SECOND 93

 

BOOK THIRD 149

 

BOOK FOURTH: SANCTUS JANUARIUS 211

 

BOOK FIFTH: WE FEARLESS ONES 273

 

APPENDIX: SONGS OF PRINCE FREE-AS-A-BIRD 355

 

 

 

 

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 himself 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 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.

 

 

 

 

PREFACE TO THE SECOND

EDITION.

 

 

1.

 

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 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 pampering—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, boisterousness 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? _Incipit tragœdia_, 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: _incipit parodia_, there is no doubt...

 

 

2.

 

——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 philosophy, 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 themselves with philosophy (as is the

case with all sickly thinkers—and perhaps the sickly thinkers

preponderate in the history of philosophy), what will happen to the

thought itself which is brought under the _pressure_ of sickness? This

is the important question for psychologists: and here experiment is

possible. We philosophers do just 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, gentleness, 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, æsthetic

or religious longing for an aside, a beyond, an outside, an above—all

these permit one to ask whether sickness has not been the motive which

inspired the philosopher. The unconscious disguising of physiological

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 interpretation 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 constitution, 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 affirmations

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