Giuseppe Tomasi di LampedusaReviews
Author of The Leopard
Reviews
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The Leopard by Giuseppe Di Lampedusa
To pick out a section of particular note, chapter six is simply stunning. In it, the Prince of Salina contemplates mortality and change whilst alternately observing and engaging with a sumptuous ball. Perhaps my favourite sentence from the book is found within this chapter: 'Nothing could be decently hated except eternity.' I absolutely love that line. It takes a writer of rare genius to conjure a setting as superficial as a ball and from it bring out such profound commentary on human mortality. I should also note, though, that the novel isn't constantly solemn; perhaps I concentrate on this aspect due to my state of mind whilst reading it. There is also much wit and sly humour to be found, as well as a very endearing dog called Benedico.
This is the way the young Prince of Salina justifies to his father his will to collaborate with the Savoia monarchy, the Italian unifiers who are seen by Sicilian landlord nobles as usurpers of their power. This phrase has become famous as a synthesis of the reaction of Sicilian landlord nobility culture to the Unification of Italy under the Northern Italy's Savoia family.
Stimulated by a discussion with another reader, I decided to post this brief comment on this very important novel, published posthumous in 1958.
Italy unification and the "Southern Issues" are a complicated matter, and this novel gives an enlighting insight on the way the powers-that-be in XIX Century Sicily managed to stay at their place while compromising with the newcomers. Please be reminded that these landlords were the ones who encouraged and used mafia bands to counteract farmers' revolts, so empowering them and legitimating them. The new State was responsible too, abandoning the South to landlords and mafia as long as its economy was exploitable by Italian economy, as well as by its former rulers. But this is another story, and it will have to be told another time.
This is only one aspect of this multi-faceted, magnificent piece of narrative. I write twenty years after my last reading, which means that I am probably missing many of the aspects I should discuss. Let's say this review is a teaser for comments.
I only would like to add a little prayer. Please spare me comments on sexism and mysoginy. It's a historical novel about Sicilian noble people in the XIX Century. No country for feminism out there at that time (the condition of the woman in Southern Italy is still a matter of vivacious debate, guess what it was like 150 years ago). So, if you don't like Prince of Salina's attitude about women, I'll confess you something: I don't, either. Do you think the author did? Well. I would not say so. But there is something called historic frame, and this is what this novel is all about. He had never seen his wife's navel, he went to brothels, he was sexist. Welcome to the real world.
If you want a powerful woman's character in Sicilian history, and based on a real person, read [b:La rivoluzione della luna|17564412|La rivoluzione della luna|Andrea Camilleri|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1362748582s/17564412.jpg|24498148]. Hilarious and reliable. Not as huge a masterpiece as Il Gattopardo, but very enjoyable, by the Sicilian author of Commissar Salvo Montalbano stories.
Focusing on Fabrizio Corbera, the Prince of Salina, his family, and their entourage, The Leopard is a story of epic proportions spanning fifty years told through eight vignettes of their aristocratic life. Beginning during 1860 in the middle of the Risorgimento (the unification of Italy spanning 1848–71), the societal turbulence engulfing Sicily is revealed piecemeal in the shifting conversations that span the book.
Unignorably political, the story is one of the differing approaches of the aristocracy to their changing place in society and the ultimate futility of resistance to the tide of history. And as the book progresses, the Corbera family is faced with their decline as aristocrats as well as the emergence of the bourgeoisie and how to treat their eventual usurpers. It is a world described richly by di Lampedusa, a world he evidently knew well not only in its physical minutiae and social customs but also the underlying feeling of decay that accompanies them; his palace having been destroyed in1943 during the Allied invasion of Sicily, Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa was the last to use the princely title. Throughout the novel’s balls, dinners and hunting parties permeates a sense of their imminent end, a sense perfectly realised by a master prosist.
Not as immediately obvious but by no means less significant is the book’s parallel discussion of death. Mirroring the decline of the Sicilian aristocracy is the decline of the titular prince himself, a decline which catalyses an introspective reflection on his own morality and on the inevitability of his own mortality. Revealed in the novel’s quieter moments and in the quiet pauses of its great events, Don Fabrizio Corbera and his meditations are a masterfully executed example of a slow awakening and a challenge to the reader to (re-)consider their own lives and actions.
As already mentioned, The Leopard is a slow waltz of a novel, spanning decades and generations. Part of di Lampedusa’s genius is his dividing of the novel into eight chapters all recounting short periods of time, at most a day, in the life of the Corbera family; by doing so, he gives a sense of epic scope in the span of around 300 pages. The book deftly reveals its development through the changing of attitudes and actions over a lifetime, eschewing forced melodrama for gradual metamorphosis and ellipsis. By doing so, the work becomes one of the great novels about history that, more than simply recounting a significant event or evoking a singular time period, measures the very heartbeat of history, cyclical and interminable; the only other works that compare to it in this regard are Luo Guanzhong’s Romance of the Three Kingdoms, Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children, and Kazuo Ishiguro’s The Buried Giant.
The Leopard is a book ponderous and majestic, but also of a lightness which marks it as a work of immense skill. Di Lampedusa, a true yet self-aware aristocrat, infuses his writing and his protagonist with a sense of cynical humour which derides the vain excesses of its characters and their apparent blindness to their own demise. Unavoidably linked to the aristocracy’s decline, the sardonic insights peppered throughout the novel prevent it from veering into self-indulgent melodrama, a sure trap for many a lesser writer. But the humour is also appropriately sparse, allowing for the perceived nobility of the nobility to manifest and preventing an unwelcome anachronistic ridicule from dominating the novel. Perfectly balanced, di Lampedusa allows the novel’s true tragedy to shine through while neither trivialising nor overdramatising it.
Martin Scorsese said of the book’s filmic adaptation “Time itself is the protagonist of The Leopard: the cosmic scale of time, of centuries and epochs, on which the prince muses; Sicilian time, in which days and nights stretch to infinity; and aristocratic time, in which nothing is ever rushed and everything happens just as it should happen, as it has always happened.” He is right; the story of The Leopard is that of history, its cycle of triumphs and defeats, and the eventual passing of all earthly powers. But it is also a highly personal story of a man confronting the end of his own existence, a reckoning with all he has done with the knowledge that soon he will be unable to repair any of it, a surrendering to time’s forces which unites the two thematic threads of the work — a true masterpiece.
P.S. Visconti’s film is a faithful and worthy adaptation of the book, one fully worth investigating. Its 70mm images are sumptuously frame-worthy (recalling Bondarchuk’s great War and Peace), and the story’s characters well-realised. The only aspect of the book that is lost in translation is the humour, which resided mostly in the prince’s internal monologue and thus found little room in the film. But that is a minor complaint; both versions are well worth one’s time.
"Many problems that had seemed insoluble to the Prince were resolved in a trice by Don Calogero […] he moved through the jungle of life with the confidence of an elephant which advances in a straight line, rooting up trees and trampling down lairs, without even noticing scratches of thorns and moans from the crushed."
So many of the descriptions of the Prince, his courtesy, his lust, his confidence and complexity; the elaborate food served and those who devour it at his palace; the personalities of the characters, the servile but intelligent priest, the stalwart hunting companion, the whining wife, the proud, pious daughters, all seem to represent some aspect of Sicily or depict facets of the Sicilian character (which I’m so well positioned to comment on after a 3-week trip to Sicily last month! Not.) As the Prince says of his country when offered a position in the government,
"For more than twenty-five centuries we’ve been bearing the weight of a superb and heterogeneous civilization, all from outside, none made by ourselves, none that of we could call our own. […] I don’t say that in complaint; it’s our fault.
This violence of landscape, this cruelty of climate, this continual tension in everything, and these monuments, even, of the past, magnificent yet incomprehensible because not built by us and yet standing around like lovely mute ghosts; all those rulers who landed by main force from every direction, who were at once obeyed, soon detested, and always misunderstood, their only expressions works of art we couldn’t understand and taxes which we understood only too well and which they spent elsewhere: all these things have formed our character, which is thus conditioned by events outside our control as well as by a terrifying insularity of mind."
As the book moves forward to the ball and the Prince observes those around him, he acknowledges the excess of his class, the inbreeding observed in the silly women at the party exclaiming “Maria.” He is calm and resolute. It is a well-drawn portrait of a complex man at a crucial time in Sicilian history.
This is the way the young Prince of Salina justifies to his father his will to collaborate with the Savoia monarchy, the Italian unifiers who are seen by Sicilian landlord nobles as usurpers of their power. This phrase has become famous as a synthesis of the reaction of Sicilian landlord nobility culture to the Unification of Italy under the Northern Italy's Savoia family.
Stimulated by a discussion with another reader, I decided to post this brief comment on this very important novel, published posthumous in 1958.
Italy unification and the "Southern Issues" are a complicated matter, and this novel gives an enlighting insight on the way the powers-that-be in XIX Century Sicily managed to stay at their place while compromising with the newcomers. Please be reminded that these landlords were the ones who encouraged and used mafia bands to counteract farmers' revolts, so empowering them and legitimating them. The new State was responsible too, abandoning the South to landlords and mafia as long as its economy was exploitable by Italian economy, as well as by its former rulers. But this is another story, and it will have to be told another time.
This is only one aspect of this multi-faceted, magnificent piece of narrative. I write twenty years after my last reading, which means that I am probably missing many of the aspects I should discuss. Let's say this review is a teaser for comments.
I only would like to add a little prayer. Please spare me comments on sexism and mysoginy. It's a historical novel about Sicilian noble people in the XIX Century. No country for feminism out there at that time (the condition of the woman in Southern Italy is still a matter of vivacious debate, guess what it was like 150 years ago). So, if you don't like Prince of Salina's attitude about women, I'll confess you something: I don't, either. Do you think the author did? Well. I would not say so. But there is something called historic frame, and this is what this novel is all about. He had never seen his wife's navel, he went to brothels, he was sexist. Welcome to the real world.
If you want a powerful woman's character in Sicilian history, and based on a real person, read [b:La rivoluzione della luna|17564412|La rivoluzione della luna|Andrea Camilleri|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1362748582s/17564412.jpg|24498148]. Hilarious and reliable. Not as huge a masterpiece as Il Gattopardo, but very enjoyable, by the Sicilian author of Commissar Salvo Montalbano stories.
Written by the last of a long line of Sicilian nobility in the 1950s, the book tells of the decline of Sicilian nobility in the 1860s at the time of the unification of Italy. Gently written, but with plenty of barbs hidden in plain sight, the book makes a lost time and place accessible to modern readers.
i sat up and gasped at this passage from chapter 6
(November 1862)
The ballroom was all golden: smooth on the cornices, uneven on the door frames, in a pale almost silvery design against a darker background on the door panels and on the shutters annulling the windows, thus conferring on the room the look of some superb jewel case shut off from an unworthy world...a faded gold, pale as the hair of Nordic children, determinedly hiding its value under a muted use of precious material intended to let beauty be seen and cost forgotten. Here and there on the panels were knots of rococo flowers in a color so faint as to seem just an ephemeral pink reflected from the chandeliers.
That solar hue, that variegation of gleam and shade, made Don Fabrizio's heart ache as he stood black and stiff in a doorway...
The notes of the waltz in the warm air seemed to him but a stylization of the incessant winds harping their own sorrows on the parched surfaces, today, yesterday, tomorrow, forever and forever. The crowd of dancers...began to seem unreal, made up of that material from which are woven lapsed memories, more elusive than the stuff of disturbing dreams. From the ceiling the gods, reclining on gilded couches, gazed down smiling and inexorable as a summer sky. They thought themselves eternal; but a bomb manufactured in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, was to prove the contrary in 1943.
It is slow in developing, providing a depth of detail that establishes the foundation for the storyline. It eventually ramps up to include a series of dramatic set pieces. The writing is richly descriptive and atmospheric, providing a glimpse of a bygone era. It is historical fiction based on real events and people. It is the story of tumultuous change from both a personal and societal perspective. This book is considered a classic. I would not call it riveting, but I am glad I took the time to read it.
In The Leopard, we experience that period through the eyes of Don Fabrizio Corbera, Prince of Salina and a Sicilian nobleman whose way of life is threatened by the social and political changes that are taking place. Known as The Leopard for his family’s ancient crest, the novel focuses on how the Prince navigates his shifting circumstances, including the loss of influence and prestige that accompany the proletariat revolution behind the unification movement. We witness the Prince’s efforts to make the best of a bad situation as he agrees to the marriage of his beloved nephew Tancredi to the beautiful daughter of a manipulative local politician in lieu of a union with his own daughter, who lacks the resources to ensure a husband’s successful future. After a striking depiction of a formal ball that serves as the new bride’s introduction to high society, the novel jumps several years forward in time to describe the Prince’s death as well as how the remaining family members fare in the new regime.
For the most part, this novel was a pleasure to read and it told a story that transported me to a extraordinary time in history. While it contains enough factual references to actual people and events from the era to qualify as historical fiction, what the book really represents is a compelling character study of man whose world is changing in ways that are beyond his control. As such, the Prince also serves as a poignant metaphor for what is happening throughout the country, as old ways are swept aside and replaced with new ones. Giuseppe di Lampedusa, himself a minor Sicilian prince, writes of his homeland with passion, sensitivity, and a wonderful eye for detail. On the other hand, the narrative can be slow at times, particularly in some ponderous passages involving the Prince’s internal thoughts and musings. Nevertheless, The Leopard is rightly considered to be a classic and it remains required reading for anyone seeking to better understand this remarkable part of the world.
The meaning rings true through the ages—create the illusion of change in government to placate the people in order to ensure the stability of the status quo. People are satisfied by the illusion and go about their business. In fact, the revolution works in favor of the Prince, as he is ultimately unfazed by it, even though a sort of republic replaces a kind of monarchy.
Much of the novel focuses on the personality of the Prince of Salina Don Fabrizio. The Prince’s symbol is the Leopard, hence the title. He is both smart and strong, and sees through the theater of revolution, with the help of his nephew Tancredi. The Prince is disgusted by other cowardly members of the aristocracy for fleeing Sicily.
The novel beautifully captures the noble, the picturesque, and the sordid sides of Sicilian culture and society. As it’s a time of transition, the contrast of old and new plays a major role. The old, cultivated Prince and his Peers live among “faded gold, pale as the hair of Nordic children, determinedly hiding its value under a muted use of precious material intended to let beauty be seen and cost forgotten. Here and there on the panels were knots of rococo flowers in a color so faint as to seem just an ephemeral pink reflected from the chandeliers.” This atmosphere of “solar hue, that variegation of gleam and shade, made Don Fabrizio’s heart ache…” (224).
Conversely, a philistine industrial millionaire in the same room “was standing beside him [the Prince]; his quick eyes were moving over the room, insensible to its charm, intent on its monetary value” (225). The aged beauty of past’s aesthetic subtlety is held in contrast against “the flashy gilding which decorators slap on nowadays” (224).
The contrast is seen in people as well. Gauche ill-mannered youth appeared unbearably giggly, “a populous colony of these creatures had appeared … he felt like a keeper in a zoo set to looking after a hundred female monkeys … loosing a stream of shrieks and grins” (222). By contrast, the few still well-bred young women in the same house remained exquisite—they “glided by like swans over a frog-filled pool” (222).
The nauseating foolishness of cheap revolutions and cheapening culture are countered and alleviated by death. As the death knell tolls for a recently deceased townsman, the Prince observes “Lucky person … while there’s death, there’s hope” (72).
Don Fabrizio makes a lot of observations throughout the novel. Ideas such as “better to bore oneself than to bore others” (233) speak to the culture, where even in light entertainment, one gives rather than receives. Other quotes contrast subtle intelligence versus blustery know-it-alls of the nouveau riche: “a meal in common need not necessarily be all munching and grease stains”; “a conversation may well bear no resemblance to a dog fight; “to give precedence to a woman is a sign of strength and not of weakness”; and “sometimes more can be obtained by saying ‘I haven’t explained myself well’ instead of saying ‘I can’t understand a word’” (137).
After the post-revolution government was settled, they sent an emissary to invite the Prince to join the new Senate. After the emissary’s many attempts at persuasion, the Prince still declined. Senators, like all public officials, must be “good at masking their personal interests with vague public ideals … and clever enough to create illusions when needed” (181). The Prince leaves the government emissary with a parting comment, the famous quote from the novel, “We were the leopards, the lions, those who take our place will be jackals, hyenas” (185). He closes with, “and we’ll all go on thinking ourselves the salt of the earth” (185).
Ultimately, Don Fabrizio Corbera, Prince of Salina, changes his feeling towards the young, from disgust, to compassion. “Don Fabrizio felt his heart thaw; his disgust gave way to compassion for all these ephemeral beings out to enjoy the tiny ray of light granted them between two shades, before the cradle, after the last spasms. How could one inveigh against those sure to die?” (226).
The reader experiences the joys, disappointments, victories, and the nausea that bear upon the heart of the Prince—who constantly searches inside himself, questioning the meaning of everything happening around him.
The novel is based on true events in the history of Italy of the 1860s, and the characters are based on real individuals of that time. Don Fabrizio Corbera, Prince of Salina, is the great grandfather of the author Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa. That fact gives the novel more interest, combining a great novelistic narrative with fascinating history.
The final chapters nicely followup with “how everyone turned out”—a sort of epilogue with the Prince’s eventual death twenty-six years later in 1888, and how his daughters are getting along as late as 1910, therefore spilling over into the lifetime and memory of the author.
The novel is considered a great work of literary art. But just as important, as a reader in 2017, I recommend it as a very entertaining read, with profound observations that speak clearly to today, and with a wealth of universal insights about travelling through life.
