Friendship With A Dog by Carlo Michelstaedter

The following is a translation of the short story "Amicizia Verso Un Cane" by Carlo Michelstaedter:

The black dog came to the houses of men from a place of hunger and thirst. He feared these people, yes, but he was in no spirit to run away; because he was starving for food. And the wise man saw the black dog, as trembling and hungry and reduced to the extreme as he was, and took pity on him. He welcomed the dog into his house and gave him something to eat and drink, and he loved this animal, recognized him as a living being and rejoiced in the dog's enjoyment and in his restoration; he did not notice that he loved his own life. But the landlords came, as did the parents of the wise man, and they became very angry with him, it seemed to them that he had acted as a boy rather than a man, and they chased away with strong force and great fanfare the poor, frightened dog. The wise man was indignant at seeing this, seeing them being so selfish, but said nothing; because he realized  his own attachment to life, and that he blindly placed his love on nothing, and that he himself was nothing. And he was indignant towards himself and towards his own disdain, and the intensity of life and his own demand for good made him tremble, just as attachment to life had made the dog tremble. And he feared the Night, mother of the Eumenides and punishing the blind and seers, and wished for death. But again and in pain and activity, and in love of Good and in death he recognized the attachment to life. Peace, on the other hand, has nothing to do with these things.

Cucù cantaba la rana
cucù debajo del rio.

[Spanish for:
Peekaboo sang the frog
Peekaboo at the bottom of the river.]

Because everything is nothing.

This characteristically brutal and pessimistic story reflects Michelstaedter's concepts of rettorica (societal Rhetoric to which people are enslaved by, such as the wise man) and philopsychia (Greek for "Love of Life", which also enslaves man, in a manner similar to the slave in Hegel's master-slave dialectic). Be sure to cherish your own dog, because you never know when you no longer will be able to!