books:

	The Leopard: A Novel Giuseppe Di Lampedusa Pantheon, 2007 - 336 pages average customer review:based on 61 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Using the decadency of a wealthy family, Lampedusa created a beautiful metaphor for his country. The sentence that perfectly describes the spirit of this novel is "Things must change if they are to remain the same". But throughout our reading, one realizes that things changed, and didn't remain the same.

One of the highlights of the writer's style is the description. From the beginning the narrative is filled with beautiful descriptions of places, people and food. When a garden is described with abundance of details it feels like where are there with The Prince and his dog Bendicò. But, my favorite segment is the one after the first dinner, when a pudding is served. It feels like we can taste that dessert. And not for a second these profound descriptions are boring or take a detour from the narrative.

The characters are also fully developed and presented. From The Prince himself to his dog Bendicò --a lovely character, by the way-- were come across real people that live, and not act. And this is more than we can ask to a novel. People like Trancredi and Angelica come alive when the writer unfolds a story that lasts 50 years.

For its political and novelistic achievement, Lampedusa's "The Leopard" is regarded as one of the best books of the 20 Century. And it totally deserves its praise. A novel that won't be easily forgotten by who read it. A classic for the eternity.

There is also beautiful film version of this novel, made by Lucchino Visconti in 1963. Both are highly recommended as means of entertainment and culture.

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He Wrote About What He Knew

di Lampedusa, Giuseppe, The Leopard. 1957. New York: Pantheon Books, 1988.

"Write about what you know" has never been a better-applied axiom than here. The author's descriptions of 1860s Sicily following Garibaldi's coup against the Bourbon regime, is a masterpiece of intricate detail and plotting. Added to this delightful "new world" he presents to the reader, are the characters: the proud prince of the title, now gradually reduced to suffer falling fortunes because of the regime change, the clever and humane Jesuit priest, Father Pirrone, who has become a household companion to Don Fabrizio, the swashbuckling Tancredi, the prince's haughty "Republican" nephew, and his betrothed, Angelica, the new mayor's beautiful daughter. Lampedusa's deep insight into the manners and psychology of the era make the novel a splendid and eye-opening read. The desolation and poverty of dusty, rocky Sicily overrun by invaders five times, is portrayed realistically, as are the emotional tensions within and between the characters.

Even in Archibald Carquhoun's stiff translation, the work comes alive. The constricted world of jealous citizens, royal or poverty-stricken, takes on a very modern appearance. Illiterate they may be, but even the poorest peasants demonstrate a slickness of thinking and behavior that would make Machiavelli proud. As for the sensitive Leopard, aware of his downward spiral into a lonely life in a ruined castle, we can only empathize.

And there is soft humor: "Even the Magdalen between the two windows looked penitent and not just a handsome blonde in some dubious daydream, as she usually was."

"The two telescopes and three lenses were lying there quietly, dazed by the sun, with black pads over their eyepieces, like well-trained animals who knew their meal was given to them only at night."

"Grim Palermo itself lay crouching quietly around its contents like a flock of sheep around their shepherds."

"Love. Of course, love. Flames for a year, ashes for thirty."

"Peaches with a faint flush of rosy pink on their cheeks, like those of Chinese girls."
"'D'you remember, Papa, how...he took those peaches we'd so been looking forward to?' Then she suddenly looked dour, as if she were the chairwoman of an association for owners of damaged orchards."

"They plunged at once into the skirmish of insignificant words which precede great verbal battles."

"The horseshoes sounded muffled amid the dark houses, asleep or pretending to sleep."

That the author himself was a prince, writing about his great-grandfather, lends authenticity to the novel, but the fact that he died a few months after finishing it is uncanny, because the death of Don Fabrizio at 73 is described with such candor and brilliance and lack of emotionality ("the exit sign is nearby"), that the reader is amazed. Did Lampedusa foretell his own end? Do the waters of life really seem to trickle, then rush, then pour out of our body in a torrent? And what are we to make of his observation that none of us would want to enter heaven wearing the faces we die with?
A true masterpiece.

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A novel for all time

The plot in "The Leopard" spans some 50 years, from 1869 to 1910. The novel opens when the Bourbon sates of Naples and Sicily, called the kingdom of the Tow Sicilies, is about to end and the Italian peninsula is to become one state again for the first time since the fall of the Roman Empire. The first chapter is set in May 1860 precisely when Garibaldi arrives in Sicily from Genoa. The "Garibaldini" land in Marsala and within two weeks occupy the capital, Palermo. Gathering more volunteers, Garibaldi crosses to the mainland and defeats the Bourbon troops on the Volturno. Subsequently Garibaldi hands over southern Italy to King Victor Emmanuel and every state in the peninsula agrees to join the new united kingdom via plebiscites. Finally the revolutionary actions of the Risorgimento - the movement for unification - are ended by the Italian government troops and Rome is declared as capital of Italy in 1870.
It is against this historical background that the reader follows the life of Fabrizio Corbera, Prince of Salina, a Sicilian aristocrat who watches impassively the ruin of his own class and his own inheritance. He is no less abated by the decline of his own prestige than the numerous prancing bewhiskered stone leopards adorning his palaces. One follows his worries about daughters, dowries, political careers and religious intrigues. He submits to endless little subterfuges, he the leopard who used to sweep away effortlessly difficulties with the wave of his paw. Don Fabrizio is surrounded by a multitude of hilariously grotesque characters with whom the author casts an amused but bitter glance at the Sicilian mentality. "The Sicilians never want to improve for the simple reason that they think themselves perfect; their vanity is stronger than their misery; every invasion by outsiders, whether so by origin, if Sicilian, by independence of spirit, upsets their illusion of achieved perfection, risks disturbing their satisfied waiting for nothing; having been trampled on by a dozen different peoples, they consider they have an imperial past which gives them a right to a grand funeral."
Giuseppe di Lampedusa painstakingly meditated for twenty-five years over his novel. He was sixty before he finally wrote it and he completed it a few months before his death in 1957. He was then told by an Italian editor that his novel is unpublishable!

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Belissimo

Giuseppe di Lampedusa was himself a descendent of Sicilian royalty. Perhaps this is why his novel, the Leopard, comes across as genuine and authentic. This is the story of a Sicilian prince and his family during and after the unification of Italy in 1860. Di Lampedusa manages to weave together a multi-layered story of politics, history, and love with an ironic tone that lends credibility to his words. The leopard himself is an unlovable person but a lovable character. He is a calculating, pragmatic man who decides to embrace the new political landscape of a united Italian kingdom lest it succeed without his support.

Di Lampedusa's descriptions of Italy are delicious, and Archibald Colquhoun's translation from the Italian is flawless. In Sicily, the blazing sun reins more than any king, writes Di Lampedusa. Anyone who has stepped foot on the island knows how true this is. Through the courtship and marriage of a moneyless prince to a nouveau riche young woman from the countryside, the author hints at a new level of influence for the Sicilian Mafia in the mid-19th century. Various conversations throughout the novel depict Sicilians' mistrust of outsiders and offer various reasons - some more dubious than others - as to why Sicily will always remain Sicily, distinct and separate from the rest of Italy.

The Leopard is a fantastic novel. I recommend it to anyone who has been to Sicily, has an interest in the island, or simply enjoys top-notch literature.

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Sicilian doom

Love. Of course, love. Flames for a year, ashes for thirty.
And what is time?, but worms building lovenests
in old furniture? And how is it possible to be angry
with anyone, we you know full well that also they
will soon be very dead.

And so it continues! This book is a spectacular read
of Sicilian gloom and doom. Poor Concetta never gets her
Tancredi, who marries beautiful, but bourgois, Angelica.
While Don Fabrizio sort of sees it as signs of the times
that his own daughter Concetta must a lost puppy in this
world.
Surely, Sicily 1860 - but somehow just as much humanity to
all times and in all places.

-Simon

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reviews: 1, 2, 3, 4, page 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13

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