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| My own photograph |
The Leopard by
Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa is a novel set in Sicily between 1860
and 1910 which centres around Don Fabrizio, the Prince of Salina. Don Fabrizio
aka The Leopard in all his glory is the epitome of the magnificent old
aristocracy that is faced with being relegated to the annals of Italian history
as Italy attempts to unite and waves of change wash across the Kingdom.
If Don Fabrizio is
the personification of the soul of the old aristocracy and Sicily then his
nephew Tancredi is that of the new. An astute and ambitious young
man with an appetite for success and power, he is swept up in the activities of
the revolutionaries and passionately leads in the fight to join Sicily to the
rest of Italy. His charm, wit and audacious sense of humour give him a special
place in Don Fabrizio’s heart. Indeed it seems The Prince loves Tancredi more
than those he brought into the world with his own seed, perhaps because, unlike
his own more timid and almost senseless son, Tancredi like his uncle is a
natural born leader blessed with masculine beauty and virility. His fondness
for Tancredi leads him to overlook the fact that he breaks Don Fabrizio’s
daughters heart and indeed Don Fabrizio supports Tancredi’s pursuit of the
hypnotizing beauty, Angelica, daughter of a peasant mother and nouveau rich
father. Should the Prince have been reincarnated a generation later, he would
have been Tancredi. Despite Tancredi’s support of the political advance in
Italy, he is still in tune with his uncle’s world and respects the customs of
the aristocracy. He understands the two opposing worlds and though he respects
the old he understand that change is inevitable. One of the most famous lines
from this epic is one of Tancredi’s:
"If we want
things to stay as they are, everything must change"
As Don Fabrizio
watches the world he knows begin to erode away and essentially the beginnings
of the dissolution of his magnanimous family, he muses on his life and
traditions and essence of the aristocracy. There is something powerfully
attractive about this large and powerful man. He is insatiable in his desires
yet aloof in his love. He neglects the physical needs of his
neurotic wife and becomes unreasonably irate with her nervous disposition, yet
he gives no love to his mistresses either. His love for his children, like that
for his wife, is aloof. From time to time he is overcome by a
powerful melancholy and his thoughts drift towards mortality and death. There
is something incredibly human about this character; I could feel his emotion
and presence through the text. His heritage and title seem to weigh him down
and he is aware of this and of the fact that his people ‘the nobility’ are set
in their ways and tied to the past by their heritage. His observations extend
to the way the peasants interact with him and how with the changes around them
their attitude and interaction with the nobility also alters.
We watch as the war
and political unrest seem to happen somewhere in the distance and soon reaches
the doors of our Prince’s household. The changes shake the fine fibres that
hold the family and its traditions together. There are also
significant observations of how the political changes will affect the poorer
Sicilian’s, the financial implications of war and political change and of
course religion features strongly.
Towards the end we
find the Prince old and bed ridden, reminiscing his life and ready to embrace
death. Much has changed in the Kingdom of Italy and yet something remain the
same. This is reflected in the Prince’s family also. His daughter, Concetta,
who was once in Love with Tancredi still upholds the traditions of her father,
yet over time she has revisited poignant moments in her life and looks at them
in a more objective manner, realising how she herself lost the opportunity to
love. I realised towards the end that Concetta is much like her
father. She has a depth of feeling that is not plain for all to see. There is a
stubbornness and nobleness in her character, much like Don Fabrizio’s.
The descriptions of
Sicily bring the place to life and I truly felt I’d been transported and stood
as a silent observer to the Princes life.
What’s more
intriguing is the writers life. The work, posthumously published, is supposedly
a reflection of aspects of the authors life, he himself being of aristocratic
descent and the character of Don Fabrizio being based on his great great
grandfather. Was this a just an observation or was there a subjective element
to it? For instance was the regret and sorrow with which The Prince recalls the
glory of his people actually a reflections of Lampedusa’s regret for the loss
of times gone by?
The Leopard is one of
the finest works of literature I have ever read. This Italian masterpiece completely
seduced me. If a book could become a man, then this is the man for me.
Powerful, regal and infinitely beautiful. The beautiful prose was like music to
my ears and art to my eyes. There is something immortal about this tale and The
Prince. As a good friend of mine once said ‘My god! Il Gattopardo, The Leopard:
it's carved into my head, a masterpiece of World literature, since it depicts
the eternal clash between old and new, conservation and progress.’
This epic was translated to screen in 1963 and apparently was a beautiful translation of the novel. I am yet to see it but the trailer looks incredible! Here is a famous scene from the film: I don't understand a word of it but it looks beautiful indeed.
