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
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