La figura della madre ragno. Dal textum gaddiano alla tela tarkovskiana

The power of maternal symbolism has always appeared subtended and ‘doubly’ linked to the textile construction realised by the spider, an emblem of duplicity and ambiguity: the web, in fact, can be both an enveloping and protective net, with its silky filaments, or a destructive and suffocating tapestry, which strangles with its knots the castrated son because he is deprived of his identity by the narrow dimension of the meshes. The article questions the symbolism of the maternal in Gadda’s novel and Tarkovsky’s cinema.