Chronology

The following chronology identifies the works cited in Songs of Zarathustra:

• 1844 — Nietzsche is born on October 15th in Röcken, Germany
• 1872 — The Birth of Tragedy
• 1876 — Untimely Meditations
• 1878 — Volume I of Human, All Too Human
• 1879 — Volume II, Part I of Human, All Too Human
• 1880 — Volume II, Part II of Human, All Too Human
• 1881 — Daybreak
• 1882 — Books I-IV of The Joyful Learning*
• 1883 — Parts I & II of Thus Spoke Zarathustra
• 1884 — Part III of Thus Spoke Zarathustra
• 1885 — Part IV of Thus Spoke Zarathustra
• 1886 — Beyond Good and Evil
• 1887 — Book V of The Joyful Learning, with an Appendix of Songs; On the Genealogy of Morals
• 1888 — The Case of Wagner; Twilight of the Idols; The Anti-Christ; Ecce Homo
• 1889 — In early January, Nietzsche undergoes a mental collapse into insanity (likely caused by multi-infarct dementia or CADASIL, not syphilis as often believed); he never recovers
• 1900 — Nietzsche dies on August 25th

* Although following Walter Kaufmann the title of Nietzsche's fifth book is often translated as The Gay Science, the original phrase "gai saber" or "gaya scienza" that Nietzsche translated into German as "fröhliche Wissenschaft" comes from the Provençal troubadours of the 12th and 13th centuries (well before the emergence of modern science, let alone "gay" as descriptive of homosexuality) and refers to the "joyful learning" involved in the troubadours' arts of poetry and song.

Peter Saint-Andre > Writings > Nietzsche