On the Nature of Things | Forum

Come again
Sweet love doth now invite
Thy graces that refraine
To do me due delight,
To see, to hear, to touch, to kiss, to die,
With thee againe in sweetest sympathy.


Come again
That I may cease to mourn
Through thy unkind disdain;
For now left and forlorne
I sit, I sigh, I weep, I faint, I die
In deadly paine and endless miserie.


All the day
The sun that lends me shine
By frownes do cause me pine
And feeds me with delay;
Her smiles, my springs that make my joy to grow,
Her frownes the Winters of my woe.


All the night
My sleepes are full of dreames
My eyes are full of streames,
My heart takes no delight
To see the fruits and joyes that some do find
And marke the stormes are me assign'd.


Out alas
My faith is ever true,
Yet will she never rue
Nor yield me any grace;
Her eyes of fire, her heart of flint is made,
Whom tears nor truth may once invade.


Gentle Love
Draw forth thy wounding dart,
Thou canst not pierce her heart;
For I, that do approve
In sighs and teares more hot than are thy shafts
Did tempt while she for triumph laughs.

Take the shovel and rekindle the fire,
Go to your loved one
And spend two hours in sport.
If your mother shows anger at your sporting
Tell her your face is red from the fire.
Say what you like to her, a woman does as she pleases!
The sun shines when the weather is fine,
Your breasts are radiant gentle lady,
Your bosom conceals two silver daggers.
He who touches them, my beauty, becomes a saint.
And I touch them, I who am the lover.
No doubt we shall go to Paradise.
Say what you like to her, a woman does as she pleases!

One's first experience of a real tarantella always comes as a shock. For there is a world of difference between the sound of the Neapolitan picture-postcard tourist version - a hackneyed song in triple time with mandolins - and the very impressive dance, formerly found throughout Apulia, whose history goes back to ancient times.

Much has been written about the tarantella and tarantism since the fourteenth century, mostly from a medical point of view: attempts to understand and describe the disorders caused by the tarantula's bite as the venom spreads through the body fluids, or humours. Surprising though it may seem to our 'modern' minds, the problem was remedied in early times by dancing.

The dance intended to cure tarantism was undoubtedly of a sacred nature. Accompanied by an age-old ritual, its aim was clearly to purify both body and mind. The tarantula's victim was obliged to follow a sequence of movements, failing which he would die or be condemned to a miserable existence of infirmity little better than death itself.

The various early accounts of the tarantella present two different viewpoints. On the one hand a purely medical approach: the tarantula's poison causes a disease, for which the tarantella is the only remedy. On the other hand, the more subjective idea that the spider's bite causes melancholy in the victim that can be overcome in the exhilaration of dancing and music.

We may smile at the supposed credulity of people - the victims of tarantism and the authors who wrote about it - who attributed such strange powers to a creature that, as we shall see, was largely a figment of the imagination. But what about modern techno parties and their accompanying social rites, which are not so very different in context from the collective events relating to tarantism, such as those that took place at Venosa during the summer of 1596? Or the scare, a few years ago, reviving old arachnophobic fantasies, that mygales were to be found in yucca plants?


-- Jean-Paul Combet, Spiderdance in La Tarantella: Antidotum Tarantulae (Alpha Productions 2002)

Apollonius wrote:La Carpinese - trad. Italian tarantella ; Marco Beasley, tenor ; L'Arpeggiata
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Take the shovel and rekindle the fire,
Go to your loved one
And spend two hours in sport.
If your mother shows anger at your sporting
Tell her your face is red from the fire.
Say what you like to her, a woman does as she pleases!
The sun shines when the weather is fine,
Your breasts are radiant gentle lady,
Your bosom conceals two silver daggers.
He who touches them, my beauty, becomes a saint.
And I touch them, I who am the lover.
No doubt we shall go to Paradise.
Say what you like to her, a woman does as she pleases!