Worms, cockroaches, larvae, ants, rodents and other vermin. These living beings, apparently subject to the fierce laws of a purely instinct-based biology, have fascinated many authors. To access this “otherness” — all the more so frightful and radical precisely because of its proximity with our intimacy — we must dig the earth and dig the language. To make room for an underground people in the transcendental sphere of language is by itself an ethical act : many writers have seen models for an art based on the intensity of life in the dwellings and prodigal energy of underground creatures.