Le trasformazioni del verme setaiuolo: creazione poetica e parodia divina nei sonetti di Giacomo Lubrano

Abstract

This paper is a follow-up to my presentation at the International Symposium »Die Biologie der Kreativitat« (Stuttgart 4.–6. 12. 2008). Therein, I focus on reconstructing the significance of the silkworm in poetic symbolism throughout its history, from its first appearance in the Middle Ages to its triumphant central role in Giacomo Lubrano's sonnet cycle Scintille poetiche at the end of the 17th Century. For obvious historical reasons, the image of the silkworm has only entered the West's artistic and mythological consciousness in fairly recent times, having been unable to find a place within the canon of allegorical imagery in previous centuries due to its relative obscurity. Only with the spread of silk production to Europe in the 14th Century did the creature and the associated imagery become sufficiently ingrained in people's minds for it to be able to symbolise concepts such as existence being a constant process of transformation. Moreover, the silkworm's path to recognition, as it were, was most unusual: while at first being merely a subject of technical or economic considerations, it was later taken up by poetry and finally, between the 17th and 18th Centuries, by the biological sciences. By the same token, the mythology surrounding the silkworm exaggerated its role almost to the point of fallacy. When Giacomo Lubrano portrayed the verme setaiuolo as an allegory for the relation between life and death, he chose to place its image in the centre of his poetic discourse as a symbol of continuous metamorphosis and insofar as a poietic substance.