From these eight poems, Nietzsche used six, in marginally modified form, for the Lieder des Prinzen Vogelfrei, the appendix for the second edition of Die fröhliche Wissenschaft in 1887.
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They steam from the same voluminous amount of poetic attempts he took upon himself from February to April 1882, from which Nietzsche later composed his Vorspiel in deutschen Reimen to Die fröhliche Wissenschaft in 1882.
It was derived from a Provençal expression (gai saber) for the technical skill required for poetry-writing that had already been used by Ralph Waldo Emerson and E. S. Dallas and, in inverted form, by Thomas Carlyle in "the dismal science".
The term was also employed in his poetic attempts to criticize socialism and the building of a "free society" (see Book 5 of The Gay Science, §356).
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Nietzsche cites his affinities to Epicurus in a number of his works, including The Gay Science, Beyond Good and Evil, and his private letters to Peter Gast.
10 The Joyous Wisdom ("La gaya scienza") of The Complete Works of Friedrich Nietzsche edited by Oscar Levy.