In this book, we find at work a subterranean existence, an existence that pierces, digs, and shakes the earth. We see it, -if we admit that we have eyes for such deep work,- as it moves slowly, cautiously, with a calm rigidity, without revealing much the discomfort it carries with it from every long deprivation of air and light.

One might almost believe that this infernal being is happy with his dark work. Does it not truly seem that a faith guides him, that a consolation rewards him? That he perhaps wants to possess a long darkness of his own, things purely his, inconceivable, hidden, enigmatic, because he knows what he will have in return: his own morning, his own redemption, the Dawn?

Surely, he will return: do not ask him what he is searching for down there in the depths, he will tell you himself, this Trophonius, this fellow with the infernal appearance, as soon as he has 'become human again.' We completely unlearn how to be silent when, for so long like him, we were solitary moles...

[Excerpt from the text on the back cover of the edition]