Species, Life, Meaning

At least some of The Gay Science #1 seems to advocate a thesis often associated with 'Existentialism'--that Life is meaningless--on the basis of which, according to Nietzsche, the attempt by moralists to imbue it with meaning is comic.  However, those passages conflict with those in which he attributes a conatus to the species, which, at that stage of his career, is still the Will to Live.  So, if the latter is the case, then Life is  not meaningless, and the only thing comic about the moralists' efforts is that they mis-identify what is important about it, a conclusion that is not affected by the later replacement of the Will to Live with the Will to Power.  It is unclear whether or not any of Nietzsche's seriousness regarding either species-drive is ironic, but if so, it would be a posture that is inadequately grounded.