PUBLISHED BY THE PRESS SYNDICATE OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE The Pitt Building, Trumpington Street, Cambridge, United Kingdom CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS The Edinburgh Building, Cambridge c B 2 2 R u, UK 40 West 20th Street, New York, NY 10011­4211, USA 10 Stamford Road, Oakleigh, Melbourne 3166, Australia Ruiz de Alarcon 13,28014 Madrid, Spain The Gay Science Dock House, The Waterfront, Cape Town 8001, South Africa http://www.cambridge.org With a Prelude in German Rhymes © Cambridge University Press 2001 and an Appendix of Songs This book is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press. EDITED BY First published 2001 BERNARD WILLIAMS Printed in the United Kingdom at the University Press, Cambridge All Souls College, Oxford Typeset in Ehrhardt 11/13 pt System 3b2 [CE] TRANSLATED BY A catalogue recordfor this book is available from the British Library JOSEFINE NAUCKHOFF Library of Congress cataloguing in publication data Wake Forest University Nietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm, 1844­1900. [Frohliche Wissenschaft. English] POEMS TRANSLATED BY The gay science: with a prelude in German rhymes and an appendix of songs / Friedrich Nietzsche; edited by Bernard Williams; translated by Josefine Nauckhoflf; poems translated by Adrian Del Caro. ADRIAN DEL CARO p. cm. ­ (Cambridge texts in the history of philosophy) University of Colorado at Boulder Includes bibliographical references (p. ) and index. ISBN 0 521 63159 9 (hardback)­ISBN o 521 63645 0 (paperback) I. Philosophy, i. Williams, Bernard Arthur Owen. 11. Nauckhoff, Josefine. in. Del Caro, Adrian, 1952­ . iv. Title, v. Series. 83313^72 E5 2001 193—dc2i 2001025408 ISBN 0 521 63159 9 hardback ISBN o 521 63645 0 paperback CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS Book Three The Gay Science infer from his words that he places science above art ­ strange as this have killed him — you and I! We are all his murderers. But how did we do may be for such a friend of the arts — in the end it is nothing but this? How were we able to drink up the sea? Who gave us the sponge to politeness when he does not speak of what he, too, places high above all wipe away the entire horizon? What were we doing when we unchained science: 'revealed truth' and the 'eternal salvation of the soul'. Com­ this earth from its sun? Where is it moving to now? Where are we pared to that, what are ornaments, pride, entertainment, and the moving to? Away from all suns? Are we not continually falling? And security of life to him! 'Science is something second­class; nothing backwards, sidewards, forwards, in all directions? Is there still an up and ultimate, unconditional; not an object of passion' — this judgement was a down? Aren't we straying as though through an infinite nothing? Isn't held back in Leo's soul: the truly Christian judgement about science! In empty space breathing at us? Hasn't it got colder? Isn't night and more antiquity the dignity and recognition of science were diminished by the night coming again and again? Don't lanterns have to be lit in the fact that even among her most zealous disciples the striving for virtue morning? Do we still hear nothing of the noise of the grave­diggers who took first place, and that one thought one had given knowledge one's are burying God? Do we still smell nothing of the divine decomposi­ highest praise when one celebrated it as the best means to virtue. It is tion? — Gods, too, decompose! God is dead! God remains dead! And we something new in history that knowledge wants to be more than a have killed him! How can we console ourselves, the murderers of all murderers! The holiest and the mightiest thing the world has ever means. possessed has bled to death under our knives: who will wipe this blood from us? With what water could we clean ourselves? What festivals of 124 atonement, what holy games will we have to invent for ourselves? Is the magnitude of this deed not too great for us? Do we not ourselves have to In the horizon of the infinite. — We have forsaken the land and gone to sea! We have destroyed the bridge behind us — more so, we have become gods merely to appear worthy of it? There was never a greater demolished the land behind us! Now, little ship, look out! Beside you is deed ­ and whoever is born after us will on account of this deed belong the ocean; it is true, it does not always roar, and at times it lies there like to a higher history than all history up to now!' Here the madman fell silk and gold and dreams of goodness. But there will be hours when you silent and looked again at his listeners; they too were silent and looked realize that it is infinite and that there is nothing more awesome than at him disconcertedly. Finally he threw his lantern on the ground so infinity Oh, the poor bird that has felt free and now strikes against the that it broke into pieces and went out. 'I come too early', he then said; walls of this cage! Woe, when homesickness for the land overcomes you, 'my time is not yet. This tremendous event is still on its way, wandering; it has not yet reached the ears of men. Lightning and thunder need as if there had been more freedom there ­ and there is no more 'land'! time; the light of the stars needs time; deeds need time, even after they are done, in order to be seen and heard. This deed is still more remote 125 to them than the remotest stars ­ and yet they have done it themselves P It is still recounted how on the same day the madman forced his way into The mcidtncin. — Haven't you heard of that madman who in the bright morning lit a lantern and ran around the marketplace crying incessantly, several churches and there started singing his requiem aetemam deo}^ 'I'm looking for God! I'm looking for God!' Since many of those who Led out and called to account, he is said always to have replied nothing did not believe in God were standing around together just then, he but, 'What then are these churches now if not the tombs and sepulchres caused great laughter. Has he been lost, then.' asked one. Did he lose his of God?' way like a child.? asked another. Or is he hiding.? Is he afraid of us? Has he gone to sea? Emigrated? — Thus they shouted and laughed, one 'Grant God eternal rest/ A transformation of that part of the service for the dead which reads interrupting the other. The madman jumped into their midst and ^Requiem aeternam dona eis [scilicet, mortuis], Domine* ('Lord, grant them [the dead] eternal pierced them with his eyes. 'Where is God?' he cried; 111 tell you! We rest') 120 119 Book Three The Gay Science and every people believed itself to have this one and ultimate norm. But 140 above and outside oneself, in a distant overworld, one got to see a Too Jewish. ­ If God wanted to become an object of love, he should first plurality of norms', one god was not the denial of or anathema to another of all have had to give up judging and justice; a judge, even a merciful god! Here for the first time one allowed oneself individuals; here one one, is no object of love. The founder of Christianity lacked delicacy of first honoured the rights of individuals. The invention of gods, heroes, feeling in this regard, being a Jew. and overmen (Ubermenschen) of all kinds, as well as deviant or inferior forms of humanoid life {Neben­ und Untermenschen), dwarfs, fairies, centaurs, satyrs, demons, and devils, was the invaluable preliminary 141 exercise for the justification of the egoism and sovereignty of the Too oriental. — What? A god who loves men provided that they believe individual; the freedom that one conceded to a god in his relation to in him and who casts evil gazes and threats at anyone who does not other gods one finally gave to oneself in relation to laws, customs, and believe in this love? What? A love hemmed in by conditions as the neighbours. Monotheism, in contrast, this rigid consequence of the feeling of an almighty god? A love that has not even mastered the feeling teachings of a normal human type ­ that is, the belief in a normal god of honour and roused vengefulness? How oriental this all is! 'If I love next to whom there are only false pseudo­gods ­ was perhaps the you, what does that concern you?''' is surely a sufficient critique of all greatest danger to humanity so far: it threatened us with that premature stagnation which, as far as we can tell, most other species have long of Christianity. reached; for all of them believe in one normal type and ideal for their species and have translated the morality of custom {Sittlichkeit der Sitte) 142 definitively into flesh and blood. In polytheism the free­spiritedness and many­spiritedness of humanity received preliminary form ­ the power Incense. ­ Buddha says: 'Don't flatter your benefactors!' Repeat this to create for ourselves our own new eyes and ever again new eyes that saying in a Christian church and it will instantly clear the air of are ever more our own ­ so that for humans alone among the animals everything Christian.