‘DAYBREAK’ is an affirmative book, profound but bright and benevolent. The same applies once again and in the highest degree to the gaya scienza: in practically every sentence of this book profundity and exuberance go hand in hand. A poem which expresses gratitude for the most wonderful month of January I have ever experienced – the entire book is a gift – betrays out of what a depth ‘science’ has here become gay:
You who with your spear of fire
Melt the river of my soul,
So that, freed from ice, it rushes
Toward the ocean of its goal:
Brighter still and still more healthy,
Free in most desired constraint –
Thus your miracle it praises,
January, lovely saint!
As to what is here called ‘goal’ – who can be in any doubt as to what this means who sees glittering at the conclusion of the fourth book the diamond beauty of the opening words of Zarathustra? – Or who reads at the end of the third book the granite sentences with which a destiny for all ages formulates itself for the first time. – Songs of Prince Vogelfrei, composed for the most part in Sicily, call to mind quite explicitly the Provençal concept of ‘gaya scienza’, that union of minstrel, knight and free-spirit by which that marvellous early culture of the Provençals is distinguished from all ambiguous cultures; the last poem of all especially, ‘to the Mistral’, an exuberant dance-song in which, if I may say so! I dance right over morality, is a perfect Provençalism. –