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The Dogby Otto Weininger

translated from the German by Kevin Solway & Martin Dudaniec(based on a translation by S.A.M. Burns)

Copyright Kevin Solway & Martin Dudaniec, 1999

with the artwork of Peter Chevalier(Paintings displayed in Raab Galerie Berlin, accompanied by Weininger's text)

The eye of the dogirresistibly evokes theimpression that the dog haslost something: it speaks ofhim (as does the dog'swhole bearing) of a certainmysterious relationship tothe past. What it has lost isthe I, self worth, freedom.

The dog has aremarkably deepconnection to death.Months before the dogbecame problematic for me,I was sitting at about fiveo'clock one afternoon in aroom of the hotel where Iwas staying, and reflectingon various things. SuddenlyI heard a dog bark in a mostpeculiar and piercing waythat was new to me, and inthe same moment I had theirresistible feeling thatsomeone was dying at thatvery instant.

Months later, on themost terrible night of my life, though not ill, I was literally wrestling with death - becausethere is for greater men no spiritual death without physical death, since for them life anddeath are the possibilities which confront each other most powerfully and intensively. Just asI was thinking of succumbing, a dog barked three times in just the same way as that time inMunich. This dog barked the whole night, but those three times were different. I noticed thatat this moment I was biting fast at the bedsheet, like a dying man.

Similar experiences must have been had by other people. In the last strophe of Heine'smost significant and most beautiful poem "The Pilgrimage to Kevlaar", as the Mother of God,

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who releases from life, approaches the sick boy, he writes:

"The dogs were baying so loudly"

I do not know if this stroke of Heine is original or drawn from folk legend. If I am notmistaken, the dog plays a similar role somewhere in Maeterlinck, too.

For a short time before the night in question I several times had the same vision whichGoethe must have had in order to complete "Faust". Sometimes, when I saw a black dog, agleam of fire seemed to to accompany him.

However the dog's barking is decisive: the absolute negating expressive action. Itproves that the dog is a symbol of the criminal. Goethe felt this very distinctly, though itperhaps did not become perfectly clear for him. He has the Devil choose the body of a dog.While Faust reads aloud from the Gospel, the dog barks ever more fiercely: hatred forChrist, for the Good and the True.

I am, incidentally, not at all influenced by Goethe. The intensity of those impressions,emotions and thoughts was so great that I was reminded of "Faust", sought out thosepassages, and now for the first time, perhaps as the very first of all, fully understand them.

I now lead further:

The dog behaves asthough he feels his ownworthlessness; he letspeople beat him, to whomhe immediately pressesnear again, as the badperson always does to thegood. This importunity ofthe dog, the leaping up onpeople, is the functionalismof the slave. As a matter offact, people who seek quickadvantage for themselves,yet protect themselvesagainst attack, peoplewhom one cannot shake off,have dog's faces and dog'seyes. This is a greatconfirmation of my thoughtsystem which I mentionhere for the first time. Thereare few people who do nothave one or more animalfaces; and those animalswhich they look like, alsoresemble them in behavior.

Fear of dogs is a problem; why is there no fear of the horse or the dove? It is fear ofthe criminal. The gleam of fire which follows the black dog (possibly the most vicious) is thefire, the destruction, the punishment, the fate of those who are evil.

The dog's tail-wagging signifies that he recognizes all other things as more worthythan himself.

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The loyalty of dogs which is so praised, and which allows many to consider the dog amoral animal, can rightfully be taken only as a symbol of baseness: the slave mentality (thereis no merit in coming back after a beating).

It is interesting whom the dog barks at; it is generally good people whom he barks at,not base, dog-like characters. I have observed of myself that the less psychic similarity I hadwith dogs the more they barked at me. The only curious thing is that it is precisely thecriminal that the watchdog is called upon to guard against.

Rabies is a very interesting phenomenon, perhaps related to epilepsy, in whichhumans likewise foam at the mouth. Both are promoted by heat.

If the dog does not wag his tail, but holds it stiff and straight, then there is danger thathe will bite: that is the criminal act. Everything else, the barking also, is only the sign of anevil nature.

Dogs among characters in literature are "old Ekdal" in Ibsen's The Wild Duck, and thegreatest, Minutte in Knut Hamsun's novel "Mysteries". Many of the so-called "Old Masters"depict the dog type among human criminals.

That there are yet other criminals is demonstrated by the snake, the pig.

The sniffing of the dog is also very significant. Here indeed lies the incapacity forapperception. Just like the dog's, the criminal's attention is drawn completely passively toindividual things, without him knowing why he draws near them or comes home to them: hesimply has no freedom left.

That he has altogether foregone choice also finds expression in the randomness of thedog's breeding with any bitch whatsoever. This indiscriminate mixing is above all eminentlyplebeian, and the dog is the plebeian criminal, the slave.

I repeat again: it is blindness to consider the dog an ethical symbol; even R. Wagnerwas supposed to have loved a dog (on this point Goethe seems to have looked more deeply).Darwin explains the dog's tail-wagging as "the diverting of excitement" ("expression ofemotion"). It is of course the expression of the most rank baseness, the most servile devotion,which is resigned to every kick and only begs for more of everything.

Otto Weininger 1880 to 1903.Excerpt from "ber die letzten Dinge"

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