The Joyful Wisdom

"La Gaya Scienza"

Friedrich Nietzsche

Translated by Thomas Common

With Poetry Rendered by Paul V. Cohn and Maude D. Petre

"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...