First published in Italy in 1961, this classic work by one of the great mid-century European ethnographers has been translated into English at last. It is a great shame that it was not translated earlier, because in this study of tarantism, a cultural complex of behaviors and beliefs linked to the alleged bite of a tarantula and the rituals to cure it, De Martino foreshadows many theoretical developments of late twentieth century ethnography and folkloristics. This translation is clear and free from distortions while still remaining faithful to the richly evocative style of the original. Translator Dorothy Zinn provides fine annotations that elucidate De Martino’s meanings and clever word-plays, while distinguished Mediterranean anthropologist Vincent Crapanzano has written a foreword that situates the author and his works in their proper cultural and historical contexts.
Tarantism, a phenomenon unique to Apulia, in the heel of Italy’s boot, revolved around the belief that the bite of the tarantula (and occasionally other stinging creatures, such as scorpions, and snakes) must be exorcised through a form of musical therapy that forces victims to dance until the spider is dead. Afflicting mostly women, the first bite typically occurred during the harvest season, at a time of crisis in the victim’s life: puberty, adolescence, marriage, the loss of a love. The biting creature was understood as both a possessing spirit and one with which the victim could dialogue; dialoguing with the spider was in fact part of the therapy. Each taranta (spider) had its own unique personality, preference for certain rhythms and music, and associated colors to which the victim would be magnetically drawn. The musical cure was first of all an exploration designed to get the spider to reveal her preferences, her identity. When a family suspected tarantism in one of its members, musicians would be called to the house to play, and when the right tune was found, the victim would begin to dance, often for hours and even days on end, until the spider’s bite was exorcised. St. Paul of Galatina was the patron saint of the tarantati (those afflicted by tarantism); on the feast day of Saints Peter and Paul (June 29), the afflicted would gather at his church and execute the rites again, hoping for a miracle or “grace” from the saint. This often continued for the whole of a victim’s life. Tarantism probably originated in the Middle Ages and continued to be practiced until the 1960s, when it slowly declined. It is now being reclaimed by New Age aficionados, who interpret it as a kind of shamanism or doorway to personal ecstasy [1].
In June of 1959, De Martino and a team of social scientists, including a medical doctor, a psychiatrist, a psychologist, and an ethnomusicologist, visited the Salento in Apulia, the homeland of tarantism, to document this unique custom. He discusses his methodology in depth, and provides a reflexive discussion of the limits of objectivity and of ethnographic fieldwork as a journey of personal discovery that is truly remarkable for a work of its time.
De Martino rejects the idea that tarantism developed strictly as a cure for envenomation, based on the purely symbolic nature of many of the bites, their tendency to recur in families, the preponderance of women tarantate (as opposed to the higher incidence of male agricultural workers actually bitten by venomous creatures), and the yearly recurrence of the symptoms, along with the ritual cure. This cyclical “re-bite” (Italian rimorso) is the source of the book’s title, and refers both to the re-bite of the mythical spider and the remorse felt by the victims of this affliction, which he sees as stemming from psycho-social conditions rooted in the extreme poverty of the Italian south. Instead, De Martino uses this case study as a way to elaborate two of his important theoretical contributions: the idea of a “crisis of presence” (Italian crisi della presenza), the loss of subjectivity experienced by individuals trapped by social and cultural circumstances in situations where they lose the ability to affect the world around them, to activate their will; and his characteristic historicism, which roots folkloric praxis not only in contemporary social, cultural, and political factors, but also in the greater historical context that contributed to the formation of unique folkloric forms. In addressing the former, De Martino clearly draws on psychoanalytic theory, but in a way that demonstrates his mastery of its subtleties, rather than slavishly applying interpretations to symbols in the manner of some folklorists. Illustrating how the symbolism of the spider bite is entwined with local economic, religious, and social structures, he argues that the dance therapy helped individuals reintegrate themselves into the dynamics of their society by channeling their individual neurotic struggles into a commonly accepted framework that provided both a metaphor for understanding psychic distress and a ritual for curing it. While we might criticize his functional psychological interpretation, there is much to be said for a thorough understanding of how ethnomedical concepts are interwoven with indigenous symbolic, social, and economic systems.
De Martino traces the roots of this phenomenon back to the ritual cures connected with year cycle-rites in ancient Greece—the orgiastic cults that included music and dance, and especially drew feminine participation into their sphere. He goes on to show the many layers of influence on this custom, from Pythagorean conceptions of the body and its relation to colors, symbols, and movement, to the layering of Christian symbolism over existing pagan theoretical concepts, to medieval choreutic crises such as St. Vitus’ Dance, to Enlightenment interpretations of the phenomenon. Each successive interpretation left its imprint on tarantism, so the phenomenon cannot be said to exist in isolation from hegemonic cultural influences. This is in fact one of the book’s great strengths. De Martino also links tarantism to similar circum-Mediterranean possession cults, such as Sardinian argism, North African zar, and Nigerian bori, illustrating how this tradition exists within a web of related ideas about possessing spirits and their relation to humans. Rejecting the strict survivalism of earlier writers, he advocates ethnology as a historical science, both contributing to an understanding of the processes through which Christianity imposed itself upon local religion, achieving a syncretic melding; and as an archeology of custom, to help piece together an image of southern Italy from ancient times to the present.
Like the tarantism it documents, this book is a product of its time and culture; today’s readers are reading it nearly fifty years after its initial publication. But like all classics, it has stood the test of time. It remains the definitive study of tarantism, providing readers with a fascinating glimpse into a now-extinct worldview; and it presages many of the critical developments that shook the field of ethnography thirty years after its publication. Required reading for Mediterranean ethnologists, it will also be absorbing reading for folklorists, scholars of religious studies, and historians.
[1] See Luisa Del Giudice, “The Folk Music Revival and the Culture of Tarantismo in the Salento,” in Performing Ecstasies: Music, Dance and Ritual in the Mediterranean, edited by Luisa Del Giudice and Nancy van Deusen, 217–72. Ottawa, Canada: Institute of Medieval Music, 2005.
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[Review length: 1185 words • Review posted on August 22, 2006]