A narrative poem of fantastical subject matter, defined by the author himself as "the crazy thing," given its highly experimental nature. Critical studies, starting with Croce, have highlighted the profoundly allegorical meaning of Boito's tale: "Francesco Spera has spoken of a 'redundant symbolism of evil,' but Benedetto Croce had already interpreted the tale in a symbolic key: the worm that haunts King Bear as a symbol of evil, 'not conscious, timid, and narrow human evil, but evil similar to a savage manifestation of nature, the evil of erupting volcanoes, earthquakes, a stormy ocean, wild beasts: the caprice of evil, of slaughter, of bloodbaths.' The gratuitousness of King Bear's atrocious behavior would therefore refer, metaphorically, to that law of absolute evil that marks, in its senselessness, the human condition" (Carnero, La poesia scapigliata , p. 225).