“Rise up to the stars or go to the dogs”

“Rise up to the stars or go to the dogs” is Moritz’s compressed description of what may happen to people who are too clever to become professors. Spoken through his daughter in a conversation about his former academic life, the phrase offers a choice between exaltation and ruin; Smilla then unsettles that neat opposition by describing her father as divided between the two.

The saying and its context

The exchange begins with Smilla recalling that her father was once a professor. Now that he is no longer one, Moritz has told her that most people who become professors are clever, but not too clever. The distinction makes professorial success seem less like the highest expression of intelligence than a position suited to people whose cleverness remains within manageable limits.

The listener presses the implication: what becomes of those who exceed that limit? Smilla answers by quoting Moritz’s formulation, “He says that they either rise up to the stars or they go to the dogs.” The saying is not presented as a general theory of academic careers; it is specifically attributed to her father and introduced as his explanation of the fate of the unusually clever.

A deliberately extreme division

The phrase sets two outcomes against each other. Rising to the stars suggests an ascent beyond ordinary measure, while going to the dogs names a fall into degradation. Its force comes from refusing a comfortable middle ground: exceptional intelligence appears either to carry someone upwards or to leave them in collapse. The language turns an abstract distinction about cleverness into a memorable opposition of height and descent.

That starkness also reflects the conversational setting. Smilla says she hates quoting Moritz, yet cannot avoid repeating him when he has put something most succinctly. The remark preserves both the precision of his wording and her reluctance to borrow his authority. The aphorism is his, but its appearance here is shaped by her decision to repeat it.

Moritz as the exception to his own rule

Asked which fate befell her father, Smilla pauses to think before answering. Rather than choosing either of the two outcomes, she says he is “more like he's split in half.” Her reply does not simply classify Moritz as a failure or a success. It replaces the saying’s clean either-or with an image of division within a single person.

The exchange therefore turns Moritz’s aphorism back on its speaker. He has supplied a binary for understanding the very clever; Smilla’s answer suggests that her father cannot be placed wholly on either side of it. The phrase remains vivid, but its explanatory certainty breaks down when applied to the person from whom it came. The stars and the dogs become less a settled verdict than the opposed possibilities between which Moritz appears divided.