Key Arguments

• The refrain identifies joy’s specific want as ‘Eternity,’ repeated and intensified as ‘deepest, deep Eternity.’
• Contrast with woe’s imperative ‘Now go!’ shows that pain aims at cessation, while joy affirms continuation without limit.
• By situating the utterance at midnight and after rising from ‘deepest dream,’ the poem marks this as a fundamental, not fleeting, affective truth that survives the darkest hour.

Source Quotes

‘Deep is its woe— ‘Joy— deeper still than misery: ‘Woe says: Now go! ‘Yet all joy wants Eternity— ‘— wants deepest, deep Eternity!’ 16.

‘I sleep, I sleep— ‘From deepest dream I rise for air:— ‘The world is deep, ‘Deeper than day had been aware. ‘Deep is its woe— ‘Joy— deeper still than misery: ‘Woe says: Now go! ‘Yet all joy wants Eternity— ‘— wants deepest, deep Eternity!’

Key Concepts

• Yet all joy wants Eternity—
• — wants deepest, deep Eternity!’
• Woe says: Now go!

Context

Within the Midnight Song’s climactic lines, joy’s nature is defined teleologically. This dovetails with the larger work’s ethical-existential test: can one will the eternal return?

Perspectives

Nietzsche

Agrees and sharpens: the worth of an affect is measured by whether one can will its eternal return; joy that cannot affirm recurrence is incomplete. He reads this as a selective principle separating strong, life-affirming affects from reactive ones.

Zarathustra

Takes this as his inner measure: he must cultivate the kind of joy that could bless the Great Noon and the ring of recurrence, turning convalescence into triumphant affirmation.