But without the night, without despair,
and without the irremediable terror that strikes me
would I have known the inaccessible happiness of the summit?

…Responding, out of breath,
to the moral interrogation that I proposed to myself in anguish,
I would be forever separated. By letting the interrogation
open within me like a wound,
I extended myself toward suffering and, groaning,
I measured the incredible power of death.

I don’t have the habit of accounting for it,
if I reflect, I speak,
but death interrupted me!

I will not always have to follow
the controlling search for truth.
Every question will ultimately remain unanswered.
And I will conceal from myself in that way
that silence, following me, like lightning, will have fallen.

Others who respond to the task won’t complete it either,
and in the end death will cut off their words…

At the moment, my breath fails, but the air I have reached
is the free air of the summit.

–excerpt On Nietzsche, Notes, p. 258 by Georges Battaille, trans. by Stuart Kendall

---

What song is strong enough to accompany us on today’s journey?

Kiss You All Over, by Exile strikes me as particularly appropriate.  Notice the somber beat, the dark guitar chords that introduce the lyric.  There’s no expectation of “and they lived happily every after….”  Communication is the ultimate desideratum, and it comes through touch.  “Truth” is not a matter of saying in so many words.

Yet, a final word comes with the sad refrain:

Till the night closes in
Till the night closes in
Till the night closes in