Garden variety spin

Splendor in the grass!

On my lawn I noticed a little wispy tent-like structure which closer examination revealed that it tapers into a funnel resembling a tornado. Peering deep inside, I saw a bug of some sort, so I ran inside for my camera. By the time I got outside, a spider had emerged, and stayed there long enough for me to get a half-decent photograph:


LawnSpider.jpg


It turned out to be a funnel weaver spider -- Agelenopsis pennsylvanica. The one in my yard is about the size of a quarter.

The spider was so feminine and graceful in appearance that it reminded me of Salvador Dali's painting of the half human spider Arachne:


Purgatory12.jpg


The above is one in a series of illustrations of Dante's Divine Comedy, which Dali was originally commissioned to do for the 700th anniversary of the poet's birthday, in 1950.

The spider is Arachne, and here's Dante's text (from Purgatory 12):

O fond Arachne! thee I also saw
Half spider now in anguish crawling up
Th’ unfinish’d web thou weaved’st to thy bane!

Dante populated the infernal regions with actual as well as mythological classical figures, and he's thought to have been sympathetic to Arachne, whose perfection got her in trouble with the gods. (Hence, she's in Purgatory and not in Hell.)

Arachne was a embroiderer whose cleverness at weaving finally led to a spinning contest with the goddess Minerva, and Arachne's affront to the gods, which led Minerva to turn her into a spider:

Arachne wove a picture designed to show the failings and errors of the gods. One scene showed Leda giving the swan a massage, the swan was really Jupiter in disguise. Another scene depicted Danae, in the brazen tower where her father had imprisoned her, but where the god effected his entrance in the form of a golden shower.

Minerva could not stand the insult that Arachne had weaved, so she took her shuffle and tore the weaving to peices. Then she touched Arachne's forehead to make her feel her guilt. Arachne could not stand the guilt any more so she hung herself. Minerva took pity for her and turned her into a spider to let her live.

(More here.)

We've been calling spiders "arachnids" ever since.

And then there's that fear thing. According to Wikipedia, female American arachnophobes outnumber their male counterparts by two to one. I'm wondering.... If the fear is an ancient one (after all, there's the Tarantella) it might represent a classical vestige funneling down over the centuries and taking the form of a modern phobia.

This is the second time I've written about spiders, so I must be some sort of closet arachnophile.

(Spin it any way you like.)

posted by Eric on 09.21.06 at 07:02 PM





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