Nietzsche, The Gay Science

[Dave Monroe]

.... and from Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science, with a Prelude in
Rhymes and an Appendix of Songs (Trans. Walter Kauffmann.  New York:
Random House, 1974 [1887]; page numbers, rather than section numbers,
here).

For My Joyful Sophia (epigraph)

It seems to be written in the language of the wind that thaws ice and
snow: high spirits, unrest, contradiction, and april weather are present
in it, and one is instantly reminded no less of the proximity of winter
than of the triumph over the winter that is coming, and perhaps has
already come. (32)

"Gay Science"; that signifies the saturnalia of a spirit who has
patiently resisted a terrible, long pressure--patiently, severely,
coldly, without submitting, but also without hope--and who by now is all
at once attacked by hope, the hope for health, and the intoxication of
convalescence.  Is it any wonder that in the process much that is
unreasonable and foolish comes to light, much playful tenderness that is
lavished even on problems that have a prickly hide and are not made to
be carressed and enticed?  This whole book is nothing but merry-making
after long privation and powerlessness, the rejoicing of strength that
is returning, of a reawakened faith in a tomorrow and the day after
tomorrow, of a sudden sense and anticipation of a future ... (32)

... this tyrrany of pain even excelled by the tyrrany of pride that
refused the conclusions of pain--and conclusions are consolations--this
radical retreat into solitude as a self-defense against a contempt for
men tht had become pathologically clairvoyant--... called
romanticism--oh, who could reexeperince all of this?  But if anyone
could, he would surely pardon more than a little foolishness,
exuberance, and "gay science"--for example, the handful of songs taht
have now been added to this book--songs in which a poet makes fun of all
poets in a way that may be hard to forgive.  Alas it is not only the
poets and their beautiful "lyirical sentiments" on whom the resurrected
author has to vent his sarcasm: who knows what victim he is looking for,
waht monster of material for parody will soon attract him?  "Incipit
tragoedia" we read at the end of this awesomely aweless book.  Beware!
Something downright wicked and malicious is announced here: incipit
parodia, no doubt. (32-3)

"Where laughter and gaiety are found, thinking does not amount to
anything"; that is the prejudice of this serious beast against all "gay
science."  --Well then, let us prove this is a prejudice.  (257; and
cf.. Kaufmann notes here, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, "Not by wrath does one
kill but by laughter.  Come, let us kill the spirit of gravity!" ["On
Reading and Writing"], as well as the chapter, "On the Spirit of
Gravity," and "scattered references to 'the spirit of gravity, my devil,
my archenemy'" [sorry, disn't cart along, but I'm sure some of you ...])

[... and, from Walter Kauffmann's "Translator's Introduction" ...]

Meanwhile, the word "gay" has acquired a new meaning ....  But even in
the early 1960s that connotation was still quite unusual.  Standard
dictionaries did not list it at all.... 'gay boy.  A homosexual:
Australian: since ca. 1925' .... the decisive change was broght about
only in 1969 ...