.::DICEMBRE 2005::.

Introducing America to

ERNESTO DE MARTINI

and “The Land of Remorse ”

by LindAnn Lo Schiavo

Ernesto De Martino [1908-1965] plays the same role for cultural anthropology in Italy as Franz Boas does for America .  However, De Martino is little known outside of his birthplace, largely because only one of his books [Il Mondo Magico] had been translated into English – until now.  The British publisher Free Association Books [www.fabooks.com] just released Dorothy Louise Zinn’s translation of De Martino’s La Terra del Rimorso, a title that was originally published by Il Saggiatore 44 years ago, back when John F. Kennedy was in the White House and Bob Dylan was on the radio. 
During the 1940s-1960s in Southern Apulia – the land of the re-bite [rimorso] – tarantismo was studied, documented, and photographed up-close by a team of professionals led by Ernesto De Martino, the famous Italian ethnologist, whose writings bear the stamp of the typical Gramscian view of Italian peasant reality.

The first edition of 1961 was printed in Milan on a glossy paper stock, giving the black and white photos a poignant dignity and crispness. In contrast, the current London edition skimped, thus undercutting the impact that is expected when viewing such strange portraits. In fact, sometimes it’s impossible to even see emotion on the face of the tarantata Maria Nardo (or the townspeople) in these grainy reproductions on plain offset stock, which is rather unfortunate.

Despite that drawback, there certainly is value here. Zinn’s translation will introduce English speakers to the mysterious public rites and beliefs that mitigated a mythical spider’s bite. Years ago Southern Italians would draw strength from their entire community through healing rituals that are being studied and revived – such as tarantismo, once very widespread in Apulia and dating back to approximately 600 BC, experts say. These social strategies had offered therapeutic, musical, and communal relief to females in the mezzogiorno as well as in Greece and Islamic countries, healing rituals that endured for centuries, existing from pagan times, and re-elaborated in Apulia within the Catholic religion after the Christianization of Europe.

Il tarantismo pugliese: la cura rituale del morso della mitica "tarantata"...

In his 1959 notes on Apulian tarantism, De Martino described the unfamiliar process that he observed: "The crisis was marked by a state of deep melancholic depression or stupor, and the way the person fell to the ground was hysteroid in nature."

No Italian physician was summoned.  Instead, after participating by witnessing the crisis, the community would get the town drummers to play for the tarantata for 3 days. Eventually, she would no longer be able to resist the urge to dance, whereupon she would rise, whirl to the music, and, finally, sleep would come. The "tarantula" that bit her genitals or "possessed" the female victim was, of course, an imaginary creature, not a venomous one.

De Martino, guided by Gramscian observations on folklore, viewed these rituals as "a form of resistance to the cultural assimilation brought on by any official hegemonic organization," noted Mariella Pandolfi, University of Rome .  "According to De Martino, resistance in Southern Italy is not against centralized political power but against assimilation by the Catholic Church."

IDEA DICEMBRE 2005