DIGGING, MINING, UNDERMINING

No wonder that I love Nietzsche so much. It is not just by “pure reason” that I admire his supremely sharp mind. I feel our affinity in affects, emotions, feelings, passions; I feel our affinity in the irrational elements of our spirits. (See my later entry Homo Irrationalis.) The metaphors which he applies to himself are somehow applicable to my own life, and his 1886 Preface to Morgenröte yields just another of such remarkable examples. Comparing himself to an assiduous subterrestrial mole-like being, he seems to describe my own mode of existence during the past several years, as I have been working also assiduously and subterrestrially on my book. Like himself, I might be called happy despite my labors in the dark (in the sense that I do not expect this work, summing up my whole life as an independent thinker, to ever see the light of day in public view). Like Nietzsche, I have easily unlearned how to hold my tongue having so long been a mole...  Even the rather unexpected reference to Trophonios, the little-known, deeply flawed Greek genius builder, eventually swallowed by the earth, has a special ring for me. I am not so much concerned about Trophonios the thief, which subject is addressed again at the end of this entry, as by Trophonios the outcast, finding his ultimate eternal shelter in the depths of the earth. Curiously, I suspect that Trophonios may actually have wished that fate for himself… At least, he had received a vindication of the ages by becoming immortalized in the legendary Oracle of Trophonios!

So, here is that amazing passage from Nietzsche’s 1886 Preface to Morgenröte (1):

In this book we find a subterrestrial at work, digging, mining, undermining. You can see him always, given that you have eyes for such deep work, how he makes his way slowly, cautiously, gently, but surely, without showing signs of the weariness that usually accompanies long privation of light and air. He might even be called happy, despite his labors in the dark. Does it not seem as if some faith were leading him on, some solace repaying him for his toil? Or that he himself desires a long period of darkness, an unintelligible, hidden, enigmatic something, knowing, as he does, that, in time, he is going to have his own morning, his own redemption, his own rosy dawn ? Yea, verily he will return: ask him not what he seeks in the depths; for he himself will tell you, this apparent Trophonios and subterrestrial, whenever he once again becomes man. One easily unlearns how to hold one’s tongue when one has for so long been a mole, and all alone, like him.

(For my readers’ convenience, to spare them the task of looking up Trophonios in the reference books, here is the pertinent passage on Trophonios in Bulfinch’s The Age of Fable:

Trophonios and Agamedes were brothers who were distinguished architects and built the temple of Apollo at Delphi and a treasury for King Hyprieos. In the wall of the treasury they placed a stone in such a manner that it could be taken out and by this means from time to time purloined the treasure. This amazed Hyprieos whose locks and seals were untouched, yet his wealth was diminishing. At length, he set a trap for the thief, and Agamedes was caught in it. Trophonios unable to extricate him and fearing that, when found, he would be tortured and compelled to reveal his accomplice, cut off Agamedes’ head. Trophonios himself is said to have been shortly afterwards been swallowed by the earth. The oracle of Trophonios at Lebadea in Bœotia, was said to be a chasm in the earth, leading into the deep underground cave by a very narrow passage.)

It is, therefore, understandable how a legend could be born of an eternal Trophonios living and working in the bowels of the earth, how Nietzsche appropriated the otherwise little-remembered person of Trophonios, and turned him into a metaphor, disregarding all the facts about him which did not fit the exact parameters of his metaphor, and how he thus had given Trophonios a new life, not as an erstwhile Greek mythological personality, but as the centerpiece of this Nietzsche metaphor, immortalized several millennia after his time, like an obscure early martyr, unexpectedly gaining prominence, having been discovered and canonized by a Saints-seeking Church.