Today we know that the ‘goad’ is not the assault of a demon or a god, but a wretched past which returns and offers itself up to reparation though human choice. We also know that the symbol of the ‘byte’ in tarantism is an alienated moment of an inner remorse in search of itself, ‘a certain interior weight or oppression’ as Serao had put it, ‘the horizon of an anguish which is the ciphered symptom of unfulfilled choices and conflicts operating in the unconscious,’ as we say today. But precisely because we know these things – and the contemporary world has even given us too much of this relentless science – tarantism once against stimulates our interest and becomes the lively subject of a polemic which regards us very closely. Moreover, precisely because our consciousness has never been so stricken by the wretched individual and collective past as it is today, and precisely because our minds are tormented by the search for operative symbols suitable to our humanism and our sense of history – including dangerous temptations to return to demons and gods – we are not indifferent to tarantism, almost as if it imposes itself upon us as a measure of the imperiled powers of our modernity.