 The Gay Science is one of Nietzsche's most beautiful and important books. He describes it as the most personal of all his books. When inquired on why he chose his title to his book, he wrote in a letter. As for the title, Gay Science, I thought only of the Gaia Cienza of the Troubadours, hence also the little verses. The Provenzal Troubadours were performers of lyric poetry specializing in the art of composing love poetry, or Gaia Saber. Nietzsche writes in Beyond Good and Evil, Love is passion, which is our European specialty, must absolutely be of noble origin. As is well known, its invention is due to the Provenzal Knight Poets, those magnificent and inventive human beings of Gaia Saber, to whom Europe owes so many things and almost owes itself. Science implies seriousness, discipline and rigor. While Nietzsche accepts this, he proposes to go further, adding singing, dancing and laughter. The laughter and gaity are found, thinking does not amount to anything. Gay Science has the overtones of a lighthearted defiant of convention. It suggests Nietzsche's immoralism and his revaluation of all values. In Nietzsche's own words, one must strive to be an artistic Socrates, a philosopher with both an intellectual conscience and with a feeling for art. Nietzsche recommends the artistic style of life that he considers his own life to be an example of. As well as a philosopher, he counts himself among the poets and artists. The book contains Nietzsche's first proclamation of the death of God as well as the eternal recurrence. It also contains some of his most sustained discussions on knowledge and truth, the intellectual conscience and the miseries that accompany religion and morality, warning us against the preachers of morality. The book is written in Nietzsche's aphoristic style consisting of short paragraphs, covering a variety of themes. This style was unparalleled in the history of philosophy. Some hypothesize that it was born out of his terrible vision and headaches, which forced him to quickly write down a few ideas at a time, or as he would put it, to philosophize with a hammer. The book starts with Nietzsche's preface followed by a prelude in Rhymes. It is composed of 383 aphorisms divided into five books and ends with an appendix of songs. The book contains the largest collection of Nietzsche's poetry that he himself ever published. Nietzsche's first edition ended in Book 4 and was published in 1882. The last section, titled Intipid Tragodia, consists literally of the beginning of his next book, thus spoke Sarathustra. The second edition, which includes Book 5, was not published until 1887, after Beyond Good and Evil. What may at first seem to be a haphazard sequence of aphorisms turns out to be a carefully crafted composition. The structure should be seen as part of a long train of thought instead of isolated aphorisms. In the preface, Nietzsche speaks of the gratitude of a convalescent. This whole book is nothing but a bit of merrymaking after long privation and powerlessness, the rejoicing of strength that is returning, of a reawakened faith in a tomorrow. The history of philosophy is filled with a great deal of sick thinkers, which are misled on account of their suffering. However, Nietzsche tells us that from such abysses, from such severe sickness, one returns new born. One should not philosophize with one's deprivations, but with one's riches and strengths. He proclaims a return to the lifestyle of the Greeks, the Dionysian lifestyle. The prelude in rhymes include pithy remarks such as, I do not love my neighbor near, but wish he were high up and far. How else could he become my star? He should be praised for climbing, yet the other man comes always from a height and lives where praise can never get beyond your sight. There is a steady crescendo throughout the book. Book one is inferior to what follows, book two gradually picks up strength, book three is far better still. However, book four, titled Sanctus Januaryus, is most impressive. Nietzsche wrote to his friend, Peter Gast, the gay sciences come. I immediately send you the first copy. Read, for example, the conclusions of books two and three. Above all, is Sanctus Januaryus at all comprehensible? After everything I've experienced since I am among men, my doubt about that is tremendous. The title of book four, Sanctus Januaryus, has a double meaning. It means Holy January. He published the book on January 1882. As well as the miracle of Saint Januaryus, whose blood is kept in a vial in a church and by virtue of a miracle, becomes liquid again on a certain feast day. After a period of convalescence, Nietzsche feels that his own blood has become liquid again. I want to learn more and more to see as beautiful what is necessary in things, then I shall be one of those who make things beautiful. Amor Farty, let that be my love henceforth. I do not want to wage war against what is ugly. I do not want to accuse. I do not even want to accuse those who accuse. Looking away shall be my only negation, and all in all, and on the whole, someday. I wish to be only a yes-sayer. Book five, titled We Feel His Wands, is late Nietzsche and belongs with the major works of his maturity. The addition of book five makes it clear that Nietzsche did not consider this book dated by his other masterpieces. It mirrors Nietzsche's thoughts in such a way that it is a work of art in itself. The most well-known aphorism is the parable of the mad man, where Nietzsche proclaims the death of God. Have you not heard of that mad man who lit a lantern in the bright morning hours, ran to the marketplace and cried incessantly, I see God, I see God. As many of those who did not believe in God was standing around just, he provoked March laughter. As he got lost, asked one, did he lose his way like a child, asked another. The mad man jumped into the midst and peers them with his eyes. Withers God, he cried, I will tell you, we have killed him. You and I, all of us are his murderers. Do we smell nothing as jet of the divine decomposition? God's two decompose, God is dead, God remains dead, and we have killed him. Or shall we comfort ourselves, the murderers of all murderers? What was holiest and mightiest of all that the world has yet owned, has bled to death under our knives? Who will wipe this blood off us? What water is there for us to clean ourselves? What festivals of atonement? What sacred game shall we have to invent? It's not the greatness of this deed too great for us. Must we ourselves not become God, simply to appear worthy of it? The death of God is one of Nietzsche's most popular and misinterpreted statements. It is not a celebratory statement, but a tragic historical event in response to the decline of Christianity, with the Enlightenment bringing about scientific rationality. It represents a crisis in the existing moral values, opening the possibility for nihilism. Nietzsche suggests that this question was not yet asked widely, but that before long a sentence that whatever we do is hardly of any consequence will spread like a disease. This terrifying sentence of weightlessness is nihilism. What I relate is the history of the next two centuries. I describe what is coming, what can no longer come differently. The advent of nihilism. For some time now, our whole European culture has been moving as toward a catastrophe. One of Nietzsche's response to nihilism is his doctrine of the eternal recurrence, described under the title The Greatest Weight. Though he hints at it in the gay science, it gains a crucial importance in his next book, Doespo Zarathustra. The eternal recurrence supposes that you would have to experience the same life with the same events and same experiences, repeated for eternity. Nietzsche raises the hypothetical question of how you would react if a demon spelt it out to you. What if some day or night a demon were to steal after you into your lowliest loneliness and say to you, this life as you now live it and have lived it, you'll have to live once more and innumerable times more, and there'll be nothing new in it but every pain and every joy and every thought and sigh and everything unnotably small or great in your life will have to return to you all in the same succession and sequence, even the spider and this moonlight between the trees and even this moment and I myself. The eternal hourglass of existence is turned upside down again and again and you with it speck of dust. Would you not throw yourself a gnash your teeth and curse the demon who spoke thus? Or have you once experienced a tremendous moment when you would have answered him, you are a god and never have I heard anything more divine? Nietzsche suggests that most people would consider this a curse and that it would require the most impassioned love of life to crave nothing more fervently than this ultimately eternal confirmation and seal. The overman introduced in Dustbug Sarathustra as God's successor is the meaning of the earth and is the type that would be able to gladly accept the eternal recurrence.