Venice

 

                                        Edward Munch, Portrait of Friedrich Nietzsche, c.1906 

The terminal collapse of Friedrich Nietzsche in Turin remains one of the most haunting vignettes in the annals of intellectual history, a moment where the boundary between transcendent genius and neurological dissolution becomes indistinguishably blurred. When Franz Overbeck arrived to retrieve his friend, he encountered a man who had transcended the ordinary constraints of sanity to become the "clown of the new eternities." Overbeck’s private correspondence with Peter Gast reveals a scene of harrowing dissonance. Nietzsche, once the sovereign architect of the Übermensch, was found oscillating between weeping embraces and manic improvisations at the piano. He spoke in muffled, clairvoyant fragments, proclaiming himself the successor to a deceased deity. These were not merely the ramblings of a broken mind; they were the final, convulsive echoes of a philosophy that had finally consumed its creator.

The subsequent journey to Basel serves as a somber coda to Nietzsche’s lucid life. To facilitate the transit, Overbeck relied on a deceptive pretext, inviting the philosopher to a fictitious festival in his honor. The journey was marked by a quiet terror, shared in a third-class railway carriage alongside a dentist, a peasant woman, and Walter Malraux. As the train plunged into the St. Gotthard tunnel, submerged in absolute obsidian for over half an hour, the atmosphere reached a peak of Gothic intensity. Amidst the rhythmic pecking of a hen in a basket, Nietzsche began to chant his final poetic composition: Venice. In that claustrophobic darkness, the verse attained a sublimity that eclipsed his previous aesthetic endeavors.

There is a profound irony in Nietzsche finding his final "festival" within the suffocating confines of a mountain tunnel. The man who exhorted us to live dangerously and to look into the abyss was now being swallowed by it, yet he remained capable of evoking beauty from the wreckage. Overbeck’s contemplation of a mercy killing suggests the sheer depth of this tragedy. However, the survival of that final poem acts as a testament to the endurance of the creative spirit even as the intellect falters. We are left to wonder if the "sublime" quality Walter Malraux witnessed was a byproduct of Nietzsche’s liberation from the rigid structures of logic.

Venice

An der Brücke stand

jüngst ich in brauner Nacht.

Fernher kam Gesang;

goldener Tropfen quoll's

über die zitternde Fläche weg.

Gondeln, Lichter, Musik -

trunken schwamm's in die Dämmrung hinaus ...

 

Meine Seele, ein Saitenspiel,

sang sich, unsichtbar berührt,

heimlich ein Gondellied dazu,

zitternd vor bunter Seligkeit.

- Hörte [ihr jemand] zu?

 

My version:

Upon the bridge I stood, lost in the copper night. 
A song arrived from far, where liquid gold took flight,
To spill its heavy drops across the trembling sea. 
The gondolas and lights, in drunken revelry, 
Were drifting toward the dusk upon a rhythmic tide.  
My soul, a secret lyre where phantom fingers glide, 
Breathed out a barcarolle, a song of silent bliss, 
To meet the water's pulse and meet the shadow's kiss. 

With kaleidoscopic fire, it shivered in the air. 
Did any spirit hear my music dwelling there?

 

The Baying of Hounds

 

                                                                Francisco de Goya, The Dog,  c. 1819–1823

Maupassant once remarked that he felt kinship with dogs who howl – that their howling amounts to a lament addressed to nobody, traveling nowhere, bearing no message fit for translation. The sound issues forth and dissipates, pure expenditure of breath and ache. I have always understood what he meant. Some expressions exist without audience or destination. They persist because the body requires them.

I learned this early, listening to dogs.

My first tutor was Maple, a Cairn Terrier with a coat the color of dry leaves and beach sand, a creature assembled from stubbornness and affection in equal measure. She belonged to my childhood with the firmness of an axiom. Maple possessed the alertness of a sentry and the dignity of a small monarch. Her ears pivoted at the slightest provocation. Her body angled itself toward the world as though expecting instruction from it.

She had a howl that emerged rarely, ceremonially, usually in response to sirens or the moon rising with particular emphasis. It was not loud, yet it carried a piercing steadiness, a narrow beam of sound that seemed to pass through walls and weather alike. When she howled, she did not look at us. Her gaze lifted elsewhere, toward something without coordinates. The sound neither asked nor accused. It existed because it had to.

As a child, I found this both beautiful and unsettling. I would sit on the floor beside her, hand resting on the coarse warmth of her flank, feeling the vibration pass through bone and muscle. The howl felt older than language, older than explanation. Maple did not seek consolation. She did not expect response. The sound seemed to complete a circuit entirely within her own being.

Years later, another dog entered my life by inheritance rather than choice. Mia arrived with my grandfather’s belongings, a Shi Tzu whose body bore the unmistakable evidence of indulgence. She was round in places dogs are rarely round, carried forward by short legs that performed their task with stoic resignation. My grandfather had loved her with the generous negligence of old age. Walks were infrequent. Treats were abundant. On occasion, fast food wrappers appeared, and with them the improbable knowledge that a dog had once eaten a cheeseburger meant for a human hand.

We tried, briefly and earnestly, to correct this legacy. Smaller portions. Encouragement. Gentle persuasion. Mia regarded these efforts with placid incomprehension. Her habits were sedimented. Her body had accepted its shape as fate. She moved through rooms like a small upholstered object with opinions.

Unlike Maple, Mia rarely howled. She communicated through sighs, through the strategic placement of her bulk, through a look that suggested ancient disappointment. When she did vocalize, it emerged as a low, wavering sound, less proclamation than leakage. Yet in those moments, I recognized the same principle at work. The sound did not seek remedy. It announced presence. It occupied air.

Living with dogs teaches a particular metaphysics. They experience emotion without narration. Grief does not require justification. Desire does not require architecture. When they suffer, the body speaks directly. When they rejoice, it does so with a simplicity that resists irony. The howl, the sigh, the whine – these are not messages encoded for interpretation. They are releases, valves opening under pressure.

Watching Maple age, then leave, I learned that the body retains its habits even as its strength recedes. Her final months were quieter, her movements economical, yet when the sirens passed and the night arranged itself just so, the howl returned. Thinner, perhaps, but resolute. As though something within her insisted on completing its gesture one last time.

Mia, too, aged into a softness that bordered on abstraction. She slept often, breathing audibly, dreaming with small movements of her paws. When she rose, it was with deliberation. Her presence filled rooms without effort. She accepted care with mild surprise, as though kindness were a phenomenon that continued to puzzle her.

I think often of Maupassant’s image: the lament that goes nowhere. It seems bleak at first, stripped of hope. Yet living alongside these animals reshaped it for me. A sound addressed to nobody is not wasted. It does not require reply to justify itself. It completes something within the one who gives it voice.

There are days when human speech feels overburdened – weighted with expectation, misdirection, the need to persuade or perform. In those moments, I think of Maple lifting her head, of Mia sighing herself into sleep. Their expressions carried no thesis. They altered nothing. Yet they mattered because they were faithful to sensation.

Perhaps that is enough. To give voice to what passes through us without demanding it arrive anywhere. To allow the body its lament, its music, its brief occupation of air. Dogs understand this without instruction. They howl, and the sound dissolves, having done exactly what it was meant to do.