The Joyful Wisdom ("La Gaya Scienza"). Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche
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future, we are not likely to be found again in the tracks of those Egyptian youths who at night make the temples unsafe, embrace statues, and would fain unveil, uncover, and put in clear light, everything which for good reasons is kept concealed.[2] No, we have got disgusted with this bad taste, this will to truth, to "truth at all costs," this youthful madness in the love of truth: we are now too experienced, too serious, too joyful, too singed, too profound for that. … We no longer believe that truth remains truth when the veil is withdrawn from it: we have lived long enough to believe this. At present we regard it as a matter of propriety not to be anxious either to see everything naked, or to be present at everything, or to understand and "know" everything. "Is it true that the good God is everywhere present?" asked a little girl of her mother: "I think that is indecent":—a hint to philosophers! One should have more reverence for the shamefacedness with which nature has concealed herself behind enigmas and motley uncertainties. Perhaps truth is a woman who has reasons for not showing her reasons? Perhaps her name is Baubo, to speak in Greek? … Oh, those Greeks! They knew how to live: for that purpose it is necessary to keep bravely to the surface, the fold and the skin; to worship appearance, to believe in forms, tones, and words, in the whole Olympus of appearance! Those Greeks were superficial—from profundity! And are we not coming back precisely to this point, we dare-devils of the spirit, who have scaled the highest and most dangerous peak of contemporary thought, and have looked around us from it, have looked down from it? Are we not precisely in this respect—Greeks? Worshippers of forms, of tones, and of words? And precisely on that account—artists?
Ruta, near Genoa
Autumn, 1886.
JEST, RUSE AND REVENGE.
A PRELUDE IN RHYME.
1.
Invitation.
Venture, comrades, I implore you,
On the fare I set before you,
You will like it more to-morrow,
Better still the following day:
If yet more you're then requiring,
Old success I'll find inspiring,
And fresh courage thence will borrow
Novel dainties to display.
2.
My Good Luck.
Weary of Seeking had I grown,
So taught myself the way to Find:
Back by the storm I once was blown,
But follow now, where drives the wind.
3.
Undismayed.
Where you're standing, dig, dig out:
Down below's the Well:
Let them that walk in darkness shout:
"Down below—there's Hell!"
4.
Dialogue.
A. Was I ill? and is it ended?
Pray, by what physician tended?
I recall no pain endured!
B. Now I know your trouble's ended:
He that can forget, is cured.
5.
To the Virtuous.
Let our virtues be easy and nimble-footed in motion,
Like unto Homer's verse ought they to come and to go.
6.
Worldly Wisdom.
Stay not on level plain,
Climb not the mount too high,
But half-way up remain—
The world you'll best descry!
7.
Vademecum—Vadetecum.
Attracted by my style and talk
You'd follow, in my footsteps walk?
Follow yourself unswervingly,
So—careful!—shall you follow me.
8.
The Third Sloughing.
My skin bursts, breaks for fresh rebirth,
And new desires come thronging:
Much I've devoured, yet for more earth
The serpent in me's longing.
'Twixt stone and grass I crawl once more,
Hungry, by crooked ways,
To eat the food I ate before,
Earth-fare all serpents praise!
9.
My Roses.
My luck's good—I'd make yours fairer,
(Good luck ever needs a sharer),
Will you stop and pluck my roses?
Oft mid rocks and thorns you'll linger,
Hide and stoop, suck bleeding finger—
Will you stop and pluck my roses?
For my good luck's a trifle vicious,
Fond of teasing, tricks malicious—
Will you stop and pluck my roses?
10.
The