Tithonos e la cicala versatile

Abstract

The life parable of the cicada (Ancient Greek: ὁτέττιξ) struck the imagination of the ancients because of its complexity: after conception, which takes place on a tree, the eggs penetrate deep into the soil, preferably through the stem of a plant without ‘nodes’. In the soil they spend a long period of dormancy, to emerge wrapped in a nymphal envelope. From it the tettix shed like an old skin, entering the fullness of the life cycle, which it spends resting on a sun-exposed but humble tree, preferably the olive tree. It is a symbol of atoctonia, of metamorphosis, of palingenesis. Its only expression is the phone: as harmonious as the sound of the zither its song can mingle with the voice of the muses, the sirens, the poet; and yet it can also become a lacerating and implacable vibration, like the disruptive sound of the flute. It is this multifacetedness of the tettix that makes it an extremely versatile animal, capable of loading itself with symbolic values, even antagonistic to one another.