(‘La gaya scienza’)
This house is my own and here I dwell,
I’ve never aped nothing from no one
and – laugh at each master, mark me well,
who at himself has not poked fun.
Over my front door.
The title is a translation into German (in our edition, into English) of the Provencal subtitle. Gaya scienza (‘joyful, cheerful, or gay science’) was a term used by the troubadours in the twelfth to fourteenth centuries to refer to the art of poetry. In Ecce Homo Nietzsche writes that he has used the term gaya scienza here to designate the specific unity of ‘singer, knight, and free spirit’ which was characteristic of early Provencal culture.