On Chthonic Vitalism 2: In the Etruscan Tombs with Giorgio Agamben

 

Etruscan tombs (Tarquinia)

 

The aim of those who practice philosophy in the Etruscan manner is to learn how to die.

 

 

I. 

 

For D. H. Lawrence, the Etruscans conceived of everything in terms of life - even death [a].

 

But the Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben sees things the other way round; for him, the Etruscans conceived everything in terms of death - even life - and their civilisation was (whilst vital) fundamentally chthonic in character. 

 

This is evidenced by the fact that although the Etruscans chose to build their homes on sites which were ostensibly above ground, they chose to dwell in a more profound sense in the vertical depths: "Hence the Etruscan taste for caves and for recesses dug into the rock, and their preference for tall ravines, gorges, and the steep walls of peperino [...]" [b]

 

Those who visit the tombs, writes Agamben, "immediately perceive that the Etruscans inhabited Chthonia, and not Gaia" [109] and that they had their true being in the underworld - were epichthonioi as the Little Greek would say - and not on the surface of the Earth facing skywards. Agamben writes:

 

"The uniquely subterranean character of these Etruscan spaces can also be expressed, when comparing them to other areas of Italy, by saying that what we are seeing is not landscape as such. The affable, familiar landscape that we can serenely embrace with our gaze and which overruns the horizon belongs to Gaia. In chthonic verticality, however, the landscape vanishes; every horizon disappears and makes way for the nefarious, unseen face of nature." [110] 

 

 

II.

It's not that Lawrence is wrong exactly to stress, as he does, the vitalism of the Etruscans, it's just that he fails to emphasise the chthonic nature of this vitalism. Agamben is spot on to write of this fascinating people with iron in their soul: 

 

"They did not love death more than life, but life was for them inseparable from the depths of Chthonia; they could inhabit the valleys of Gaia and cultivate her countryside only if they did not forget their true, vertical dwelling." [110-111]

 

This is why the tombs hollowed out in the naked rock do more than merely house the dead and allow us to imagine how the Etruscans conceived of the afterlife; they also allow us to more profoundly understand "the movements, the gestures, and the desires of the living people who built them." [111] 

 

The reason that the Etruscans "built and protected the dwellings of their dead with such assiduous care" [110], was because of their "unshakable chthonic dedication (rather than, as one might assume, their chthonic dedication arising from their care for the dead)" [110].

 

They understood - in a way that most modern people do not - that life only exceeds mere existence and flowers into the fourth dimension when it "safeguards the memory of Chthonia" [111]. 

 

In other words, because we are mortal, then confronting our own finitude and learning how to live in the knowledge and the shadow of death is the most vital aspect of being human. As Heidegger says: Dasein is essentially a being-towards-death [Sein-zum-Tode] [c]. 

The Etruscans demonstrated "that there is an intense community and an uninterrupted continuity between the present and the past, and between the living and the dead" [111]. We forget or dismiss our relationship with the underworld, with the realm of matter, with death, at our peril (a point that the New York based German artist Heide Hatry makes repeatedly in her work). 

 

For ultimately, not only must Gaia and Chthonia be understood as inseparable, but the world of the living (the biosphere) "cannot exist without exchange and interaction with the chthonic thanatosphere" [111].

 

 

Notes

 

[a] See the first post in this series on chthonic vitalism - 'In the Tombs With D. H. Lawrence' - click here.

 

[b] Giorgio Agamben, 'Gaia and Chthonia', in Where Are We Now? trans. Valeria Dani, (ERIS, 2021), p. 110. Future page references will be given directly in the post.

 

[c] See Martin Heidegger, Being and Time, Division II, chapter 1.

 

On Chthonic Vitalism 1: In the Etruscan Tombs With D. H. Lawrence

 

Man lives naked and glowing on the surface of the Earth.

Then comes death and he departs into the Underworld.

 

 

I. 

 

D. H. Lawrence was instinctively attracted to the ancient Etruscans for several reasons, not least of all because nobody knows much about them, so he was free to speculate imaginatively and project his own ideas of phallic consciousness upon them. 

 

Indeed, it might be argued that his Sketches of Etruscan Places [a] tell us more about Lawrence and his (anti-Roman, anti-Fascist) political philosophy than about the Etruscans themselves. 

 

But that's okay: for one still discovers much of interest from this trip round the subterranean tombs with Mr Lawrence as our tour guide and, besides, who simply wants object lessons about vanished races?

 

 

II. 

 

And it is, dear reader, into the tombs we must descend. For the Etruscans built their cities of wood and these have "vanished as completely as flowers" [13]. Only the tombs, lying like bulbs underground, remain ...

 

However, fear not, for as subterranean cities of the dead go, the Etruscan one is really quite gay. As Lawrence reminds us, the idea of a gloomy underworld only begins with moral idealism; for nature-loving pagans the afterlife was pretty much more of the same: 

 

"It was neither an ecstasy of bliss, a heaven, nor a purgatory of torment. It was just a natural continuance of the fulness life." [19] 

 

Perhaps that explains why the Etruscan tombs feel so welcoming; the dead left a joyous feeling behind them, which, says Lawrence, is "warm to the heart, and kindly to the bowels" [16]. So there is no need to feel anxious or oppressed, dear reader, as we descend into the Etruscan underworld: 

 

"There is a simplicity, combined with a most peculiar, free-breasted naturalness and spontaneity in the shapes and movements of the underworld walls and spaces, that at once reassures the spirit." [19] 

 

II. 

 

The key thing, however, that we learn from Lawrence's musings on the Etruscans, is that they subscribed to what we might term a chthonic vitalism and extracted their own being out of the dark fissures of the earth that are now sealed to us moderns:

 

"It is as if the current of some strong different life swept through them, different from our shallow current today: as if they drew their vitality from different depths, that we are denied." [56] 

 

Lawrence insists that the Etruscans conceived everything - even death - in terms of life. But, I think it might also be argued that, in a sense, they viewed life (to paraphrase Nietzsche) as simply a rare and unusual way of being dead [b].

 

For it's certainly true, as Lawrence concedes, that the tombs reveal the vivid feeling of delight which the Etruscans experienced when contemplating that mysterious journey out of life and "into the dark of death" [58]; a journey Nietzsche describes as a festive return to the actual [c]. 

 

The Etruscans weren't particularly concerned with the human soul, but with the material forces and powers which produced the human soul "out of chaos, like a flower, only to disappear again into chaos, or the underworld" [122].    

   

And it's this which makes the Etruscans - to me as a thanatologist - of real interest; theirs, as the Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben says, was a chthonic civilisation par excellence ... [d]

 

Notes

 

[a] Originally published in 1932 as Etruscan Places, I'm relying here on the 1992 Cambridge edition ed. Simonetta de Filippis, entitled Sketches of Etruscan Places and Other Italian Essays. Page numbers given in the post refer to this edition.  

[b] See Nietzsche, The Gay Science, Book III, 109. 

 

[c] See Nietzsche, KSA 9:11 [70].

 

[d] See Agamben's text entitled 'Gaia and Chthonia' in Where Are We Now? trans. Valeria Dani, (ERIS, 2021), pp. 105-113. I discuss this work in the second post on the theme of chthonic vitalism: click here.