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The Leopard

3.98 of 5 stars 3.98 · rating details · 5,432 ratings · 477 reviews

Set in the 1860s, The Leopard tells the spellbinding story of a decadent, dying Sicilian aristocracy threatened by the approaching forces of democracy and revolution. The dramatic sweep and richness of observation, the seamless intertwining of public and private worlds, and the grasp of human frailty imbue The Leopard with its particular melancholy beauty and power, and pl...more

Paperback, 320 pages

Published November 6th 2007 by Pantheon (first published 1958)

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The Leopard by Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa

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Nov 13, 2012 Jeffrey Keeten rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

”Among his friends Don Fabrizio was considered an “eccentric”; his interest in mathematics was taken almost as sinful perversion, and had he not been actually Prince of Salina and known as an excellent horseman, indefatigable shot and tireless womaniser, his parallaxes and telescopes might have exposed him to the risk of outlawry. Even so the did not say much to him, for his cold blue eyes, glimpsed under the heavy lids, put would-be talkers off, and he often found himself isolated, not, as he t...more

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Jan 29, 2012 Miriam rated it 3 of 5 stars

The Leopard.
One of the four "big cats," it is a fierce predator: fast, voracious, strong enough to crush a skull with its jaws and to drag an animal almost as heavy as itself into a tree. Fearsome.
(view spoiler)
Like most felines, the leopard expends energy in massive bursts and must sleep for the most of the day to recoup its strength for the hunt. Do these long stretches of dormancy make the leopard lazy? Would it, free from the demands of hunger, wile away day after day in sl...more

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Jan 07, 2012 Eric rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: decadence, ficciones, historiophantasmagoria

What complaints I have about The Leopard are minutely stylistic; and because "to present any writer in translation is to present him bereft of his style," as Clarence Brown, one of Mandelstam’s English avatars, reminds us, I won’t dwell on the elaborate clunkiness and awkward extensions of Lampedusa’s metaphors, especially those applied to the inner emotional states of his characters. In Italian this figurative language may be impossibly smooth. What I love in this novel is its morbid and pessim...more What complaints I have about The Leopard are minutely stylistic; and because "to present any writer in translation is to present him bereft of his style," as Clarence Brown, one of Mandelstam’s English avatars, reminds us, I won’t dwell on the elaborate clunkiness and awkward extensions of Lampedusa’s metaphors, especially those applied to the inner emotional states of his characters. In Italian this figurative language may be impossibly smooth. What I love in this novel is its morbid and pessimistic sensuality, its Gotho-Baudelairean heritage. The Prince’s garden, where his dog revels in “dead lizards and manure,” exhales a miasma of “cloying, fleshy, and slightly putrid” scents; the cuttings of roses, brought by the Prince from Paris, in Sicily’s climate and soil yield what look like “flesh-colored cabbages”; moist, heavy, pudendal — "The Prince put one under his nose and seemed to be sniffing the thigh of a dancer from the Opera.” Sicily having become a civic battleground between the Bourbon dynasty and nationalist rebels, some time passes before anyone is able to distinguish the odor of a decomposing soldier from the garden’s riot of other sweet stinks. The high point for me is when the Prince’s nephew, Tancredi, and his fiancé Angelica roam the fairy tale labyrinthine reaches of the dilapidated palace at Donnafugata. Having eluded their chaperones, and watched only by “a shepherdess glancing down consenting from some obliterated fresco,” the two one day enter a hidden door into an enigmatic suite of rooms — well, enigmatic to their innocence — all floored with white marble sloping away toward gutters. There are mirrors across the walls (some smashed) and “wide, too wide” sofas (“showing nails with traces of silk that had been torn away”), and on the fireplaces “delicate little marble intaglios, naked figures in paroxysms...mutilated by some furious hammer.” The libertine's elegant dungeon, though defaced and sealed by horrified descendants, still yields up a bundle of small whips to the lovers’ snooping—and they discover still other whips, in the wing consecrated to the memory of a pious ancestor who flagellated his sinful flesh. I laughed so loud. A lineage of lashes — sign of “the human ‘always’” the Prince thinks of when an official boasts of the efficiency and modernity the new regime will bring to Sicily. The Salinas, when libertine, beat others; when pious, they beat themselves — the ancestral palace a “universe of extinct vices, forgotten virtues, and above all, perennial desire.” But I don’t mean to give the impression that The Leopard is a Surrealist shriek or a Decadent’s delirium. The really febrile elements are held at an distance, in the stately realist integrity of a historical novel that also concerns itself with democracy and nationalism, clerical disestablishment and the rise of the middle classes. Lampedusa’s external biography — an apparently idle Sicilian aristocrat, fantastically erudite, mariolatrous and homebound à la Borges, who read and waited and read some more, finally undertaking his only novel at age fifty-seven — perfectly answers the curious, compounded, involuted feel of The Leopard, its air of something dreamt in its particulars long before ordered as a narrative.

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Jan 15, 2012 Elizabeth rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: 2012, in-italy, reviewed, victorians-and-wannabes

Have you read The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy? A book by a pious Swiss Calvinist about one of the lushest, most extraordinary periods and places for art, ever. It's one of those great juxtapositions between the mores of the writer and the subject creating something new and fascinating. The author's time, cultural, beliefs, always shape a book (fiction or non-fiction) but I'm not always overwhelmed by the feeling of the writer's time. Sometimes you can't avoid it, like when the Moder...more Have you read The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy? A book by a pious Swiss Calvinist about one of the lushest, most extraordinary periods and places for art, ever. It's one of those great juxtapositions between the mores of the writer and the subject creating something new and fascinating. The author's time, cultural, beliefs, always shape a book (fiction or non-fiction) but I'm not always overwhelmed by the feeling of the writer's time. Sometimes you can't avoid it, like when the Modernists wrote of the world before WWI. They knew what loss was coming and, whether deliberate or not, you can't help but feel it as you read their books. I couldn't get the feeling of Jacob Burckhardt, who wrote Civilization in 1860 when The Leopard is set, out of my mind while I was reading the later. It's probably because of all the descriptions of art, furniture, culture, that is gone, yet loved, and now viewed with very different eyes by the writer of a different time. I think it's also because of the sense of loss for the beauty, the appreciation for what was created, and also some not-so-hidden judgement on the corruption, the weakness of the society, the absurdity of it, as well.

I also thought of The Mikado. I saw the 1986 version on PBS, starring Eric Idle (yes, that Eric Idle). What's always stayed with me was the entrance of the Pooh-Bah:

Mikado Pooh-Bah

This is the Leopard of di Lampedusa's Sicily, writ large, on the British stage. The larger than life character that moves all before him. The image isn't particularly new. I was instantly annoyed by The Tudors (and rightly, as it turned out) despite my general love for Jonathan Rhys Meyers because, well, he's tiny. Henry VIII was a huge figure, in my mind, and seeing the slight man project majesty on an epic scale just wasn't enough for me. Sure, he's sexier for the modern audience, but he should be a satellite, a planet; he is not the sun.

I found this book a strange left-of-center mixture of examination between the sun and the satellites, the author being one of the satellites but also an explorer, coming in and out, (maybe a comet?). The center of the solar system was the Leopard, in his time and place (just touching that he is only at the center of the solar system, one among many at the beginning of the book), and then roving through this solar system, looking at its beauty and decay; it's planets, their moons, the lost among the asteroids, the other gaseous giant struggling against the gravitational pull at the center, distorting the orbits of the smaller, more distant planets, drawing some of them into his own orbit.

I get the feeling that there is always something both attractive and repellant about examining great periods or great men, particularly from the vantage point of explorer and scientist or art critic and historian, and it is just as fascinating to see the critic/historian/scientist's own bitterness, regret, awe, and respect come through as well. One can play up the corruption, the decay, the secrets behind doors, or hidden in corners of the garden. Or one can expose wonders, focus on the glittering stars and sparkling lights. I loved the combination in this book. I loved that the Leopard, like the Pooh-bah, was both an object of regard and derision. I loved how little those around him looked in his orbit.

I loved that and the feeling in the gardens and the palaces. Every landscape we were shown and ballroom we entered was lush, vivid, carefully sculpted, and, somehow, the sound and smell of each one came with it. What was the name of the story of the daughter trapped in the garden for others' safety? That came to mind and Keats' The Eve Of St. Agnes and the descriptions of Faerie, before and after the lost traveler has discovered that he can see beyond the glamour.

But, I didn't like the last chapter (Relics). There was a cruelty about it that twisted in me. It was like being left with the taste of the bitter herb instead of the remembered glory of a wine tasted earlier. I didn't need a sweet dessert -- like the confections so vividly described at the ball - but I wanted the ending to be about the Leopard, not a condemnation of his descendants. I understood it but as I read it I remembered the moments in the book that irritated me, the style choices that bothered me, the discontent of being lectured about politics in the mouth of the priest. Maybe di Lampedusa did that deliberately? I don't imagine so. I understand discontent. I could feel it throughout, rubbing at the author and the characters and me. I just don't know why that was allowed to turn to anger just at the very end with a harshness that belied the kindness shown to all the characters, with all their failings, earlier on. It left me confused and unhappy.(less)

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Mar 29, 2010 J rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: favorites

I. Nunc, et in hora mortis nostrae. Now, and in the hour of our death. Amen.

Thus begins Lampedusa’s masterpiece, his paean to death. Sensuous, insightful, subtle, The Leopard is a work of absolute beauty.

In 1860 Don Fabrizio, Prince of Salina, is watching the lifeblood seep from his world: the power and the prestige, the unquestioned honors are all fading away, being bled out by revolution. He simply watches it go. He is resigned to it as he is resigned to his own nature. Sated ease tinged with...more

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Jan 10, 2012 Whitaker rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: e-book, modern-canon, italy, 2012-read, recommended-unreservedly

It is no coincidence that The Leopard is bookended by two corpses: a decomposing one at the beginning, and an embalmed one at the end. The middle is filled with the story of a third corpse whose slow decomposition and putrefaction make up the meat of the novel. Rigour mortis first sets in, as traditions rigidify the body. It gets devoured internally, its body bloating, consumed by its own bacteria—the peasants that require the pacification and gifts demanded by noblesse oblige, the expensive pom...more

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Jan 22, 2011 Ademption rated it 5 of 5 stars Recommends it for: sinister adults

Shelves: italian-literature, novels, favorites

The quintessence of melancholy, The Leopard, lets the reader try on the skin of the titular character: the last king in a declining aristocracy. It reminded me of Under the Volcano. I was pushed to empathize with the last leonine lord of Sicily as intimately as I did with the alcoholic diplomat in Under the Volcano, despite never having aspirations towards being crowned or pickled. Both novels deal with cornered people doing their best while their world turns to dust. The Leopard is beautiful, a...more

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Jan 03, 2012 Kelly rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: 19th-century, examined-lives, fiction, the-continent, worlds-lost-dead-and-dying

Hovering between 3 & 4 stars for this one. Will explain, review to come later.

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Sep 19, 2007 Spiros rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: new, chasingmytail, italy, cinerelated, staffpicks

"If we want things to stay as they are, things will have to change" is the keynote paradox propounded by Tancredi Falconeri to his uncle, Prince Fabrizio Salina, as the young impoverished noble goes to join the Garibaldini, to fight for an independent Sicily and a unified Italy. Don Fabrizio is taken aback; he after all lives his life on a Copernican paradigm, with himself at the center of the universe. Tancredi is representative of a Darwinian world, with his ability to adapt to circumstances,...more

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Apr 15, 2008 Bryant rated it 5 of 5 stars

Someone from Sicily once told me that Giuseppe di Lampedusa’s "The Leopard" is the "Gone with the Wind" of southern Italy. For that very comparison, I had foolishly avoided it. Now I see that while it indeed may be a “Gone with the Wind,” it is also a “Fathers and Sons,” a “Palace Walk” (Mahfouz’ Cairo Trilogy), a “Grapes of Wrath,” and a “King Lear,” only with a more rational leading man. It is also, quite appropriately, its own glorious thing, the only novel of a once-prince who observes the d...more

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Feb 22, 2012 David rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: big-white-square

"There was a land of Cavaliers and Cotton Fields called the Old South... Here in this pretty world Gallantry took its last bow... Here was the last ever to be seen of Knights and their Ladies Fair, of Master and of Slave... Look for it only in books, for it is no more than a dream remembered. A Civilization gone with the wind..."

In fact "The Leopard" is not that scary. I don't think I'd enjoy an Italian "Gone with the Wind". I know nothing of Italian unification and I'd never remember all of the...more

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May 01, 2009 Julia Boechat Machado rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: books-i-own, italian-literature, constantly-re-reading, tingle-of-the-spine, 1950s, favorites

All my reviews are currently in Library Thing. I'm no longer updating my GR since it was bought by Amazon.

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Mar 06, 2012 K.D. Oliveros rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Recommended to K.D. by: 501 Must Read Books, 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die (2006-2010)

Shelves: 1001-core, 501, history, europe

You have a stable job. You own your house. You drive your own car. Your daughter is studying in an exclusive school. You can buy any book you take fancy on. You can dine at any restaurant anytime. You can buy any clothes you want. In short, you have a comfortable life.

What if all these are taken away from you? Let’s say your company closes shop? What if you are stricken with cancer and you have to spend millions for your operation? What if you run over a man who is crossing the street on one ra...more

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Jan 28, 2009 James rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: edminster-group, favorites, historical-fiction, lincoln-park-group, read-and-reread, italian-lit

The Leopard, 1958, (filmed in 1963), is sometimes compared to Margaret Mitchell's Gone with the Wind. It drew on the author's family history and described the reactions of a noble family to the social and political landscape following Sicily's appropriation by Garibaldi in 1860. Lampedusa published nothing during his lifetime except for three articles that appeared in an obscure Genoese periodical in the 1920s.
"The Prince was depressed: "All this shouldn't last; but it will, always; the human 'a...more

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Mar 15, 2008 Adam rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

An intimate but detached, almost portraiture, of history of Sicily through the eyes of one of its fading aristos (and written by one). Immersing you into the bourgeois unification of Italy without loading you with information of the era, and telling the story through character interaction and garnered details. Showing the break down of the established order through a range of events from nouveau rich wearing evening dress to casual dress party to a disemboweled corpse in a garden. Beautiful pros...more

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Dec 02, 2008 Denis rated it 5 of 5 stars

Could well be Italy's greatest novel. Slightly different than Visconti's masterful movie version (which is more romantic), but as brilliant, perfect, and enthralling. The novel centers on the fate of a Sicilian aristocratic family, as seen mostly through the eyes of Prince Salina, who is a witness to the slow decomposition of his own way of life -and who is wise enough to accept it, and to know that something else lays ahead. A literary feast, without equals, and that recreates a vanished world...more

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Nov 14, 2012 James rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: family, fiction, state-of-the-nation

A brilliant accessible book that brings a different time to life with a richness that left me deeply happy in the way only a really good book can. I was expecting this to be worthy but slightly dull lament of past times, but instead was delighted with a sly, loving warts and all story of an aging Sicilian aristocrat whose own decay is mirrored by that of his family and position in society changing as the unification of Italy unfolds. The book builds momentum throughout and every time I thought i...more

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Nov 15, 2012 Vuovo De paperis rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Capolavoro assoluto. "Vengono per insegnarci le buone creanze ma non lo potranno fare, perché noi siamo dei"...

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Nov 19, 2010 Andrea Tullio Canobbio rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Di questo libro ho discusso una volta (ott. 2006) sul blog di «Maltese Narrazioni», sollecitato da una certa Rose. La mia opinione, in realtà, è abbastanza positiva, ma… ci sono due “ma”:

1) il grande stile, abbastanza fastidioso (immagino che lo fosse anche nel ’58). È come una cappa dorata su tutto, dai mobili ai generi alimentari (vedi la descrizione del timballo).

2) il disfattismo; non mi piace, nella quarta parte, la liquidazione della proposta di Chevalley - il governo italiano non può cont

...more

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Mar 31, 2009 Peregrino rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: 2009

Extraordinaria novela de Lampedusa. Leí que fue publicada a título póstumo, lo que me sorprende, dada su calidad.

Que cambie todo para que nada cambie. El autor nos describe los últimos momentos de la Italia borbónica, su ajetreada transición a la monarquía de Victor Manuel II, con Garibaldi en la sombra de la narración. Lo hace a través del Gatopardo, el príncipe Salina, y de su familia. Los personajes se nos hacen entrañables desde el primer momento. El autor nos sumerge en la vida de una famil...more

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May 18, 2013 Charles rated it 5 of 5 stars

A lyrical elegy to distinctions that no longer matter, 'The Leopard' is a beautiful, if whimsical tale.

Written by the faded scion of a one-great nobility, its veiled biography of the author's great-grandfather is clearly self-serving, but still revealing. We follow Prince Salina through the idiosyncratic schedule of his petty rituals (on arriving at Donnafugata the entire party must attend the church before being allowed to rest, the Prince takes care not to serve soup as a first course, etc, et...more A lyrical elegy to distinctions that no longer matter, 'The Leopard' is a beautiful, if whimsical tale.

Written by the faded scion of a one-great nobility, its veiled biography of the author's great-grandfather is clearly self-serving, but still revealing. We follow Prince Salina through the idiosyncratic schedule of his petty rituals (on arriving at Donnafugata the entire party must attend the church before being allowed to rest, the Prince takes care not to serve soup as a first course, etc, etc) while the Prince wallows in the upheavals of the Risorgimento, trying to chart a course that will maintain his ancient dignity while acutely aware of its fragility. He is astute enough to realise the inevitability of the rise of the bourgeoisie, personified in the book by the ambitious, and graceless, miser Calogero Sedàra, but tortured by the knowledge that any accommodation with them is ultimately a capitulation: "the Prince, who had found Donnafugata unchanged, was found very much changed himself, for never before would he have issued so cordial an invitation; and from that moment, invisibly, began the decline of his prestige."

As is common in the mythology of the ruling class, the peasantry is depicted as steadfastly loyal to the old régime. They complain about the new taxes being imposed, but never a word is heard against the ancient depredations that continue to fund the idle luxury of the House of Salina. They are, of course, merely exchanging one exploiter for another, and for some time face being exploited by both. It is not surprising to discover that the Scilian plebiscite of 1860 was rigged by overzealous aparatchniks, and it's not surprising to find that those who voted No were outraged at the suppression of their voice. But Lampedua's attempt to depict the Expedition of the Thousand as little more than a casual adventure for high-spirited young men ("much as young men of good family are today tempted by high-powered motorcycles," as his adopted son writes in the foreword) displays a wilful blindness to the deficiencies of the Old Order.

The distance of events blunts the importance of these political distortions, though, and do not detract from the overall poetry of the work. As an elegy for the passing of a way of life it is very fine indeed, and the revelation of the final chapter sets a satisfying capstone on the edifice of loss. Well worth a read.(less)

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Apr 30, 2013 Gil D. rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

La Sicilia io l’ho sempre vista come la terra degli eccessi: ciò che è gentile o spietato, saporito o scialbo, dolce o amaro, profumato o fetido, innocente o sensuale e via aggettivando in Sicilia lo è moltiplicato per enne volte. Mi piace per questo, come pochi altri posti al mondo. E quindi tutte le virtù e tutti i vizi nazionali e non solo possono essere individuati e studiati nella storia e nel carattere dei siciliani come sotto una lente di ingrandimento. Aiuta più il Gattopardo a comprende...more

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Apr 20, 2013 Tony rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: fiction-mainstream

THE LEOPARD. (1958; Eng. Trans. 1960). Giusseppe di Lampedusa. *****.
I first read this novel about forty years ago, and, frankly, found it to be too difficult for me to appreciate. The difficulty, unfortunately, was really based on my ignorance of the background of the novel. When reading a historical novel, it is to the reader’s benefit to be somewhat aware of the period in which the novel is set. The specific time period here was that of the “Risorgimento” in Italy. This was roughly around 186...more

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Feb 15, 2013 Mike rated it 4 of 5 stars

This classic novel set in Sicily during and after Garibaldi's drive to unify Italy, and the story of an Aristocrat and his family, were on my list of classics to read this year, and I wasn't at all disappointed.

The languid introspection of this novel gives an idea of the slow pace of life at this time, and is infused with hilarious anecdotes and thoughts, mostly coming from the central character in this novel, The Leopard, or The Prince, Don Fabrizio the head of the aristocratic Selina family of...more

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Jan 28, 2013 Don rated it 5 of 5 stars

I came to “The Leopard” after repeatedly encountering high praise for it as a first order novel of melancholy and decay. It more than lived up to the hype. While a reader may feel disconcerted in the early going by the blizzard of names and unexplained connections, by halfway through it all falls into place and one can concentrate on the beauty and horror of a story of a great family in decline. This novel has much in common with great works such as J.G. Farrell’s “Troubles” and Louis Couperus’s...more I came to “The Leopard” after repeatedly encountering high praise for it as a first order novel of melancholy and decay. It more than lived up to the hype. While a reader may feel disconcerted in the early going by the blizzard of names and unexplained connections, by halfway through it all falls into place and one can concentrate on the beauty and horror of a story of a great family in decline. This novel has much in common with great works such as J.G. Farrell’s “Troubles” and Louis Couperus’s “The Hidden Force.” I tend to think of these as neo-gothic historical fictions. They all show to some degree the gothic elements of a decline of a family that was once of high stature living in a remote, crumbling, many-roomed dwelling, surrounded by a hostile atmosphere, women in distress, and weak or morally-ambiguous clergy, at some point in history where the old gives way to the new. In Northrop Frye’s cycle, these might be considered high-mimetic tragedies, but the absence of a hero makes me think these are profoundly ironic, in the sense of St. Augustine’s “Confessions”: “Vanity of vanities, all is vanity” but without the “save to love God” proviso. Regency fictions? No, the romance elements are secondary. Mere existentialism? No. Each of these novels ends with a glimpse of some new future the characters of an earlier age can’t really comprehend. This perhaps is the mystery element of the Gothic genre, the force with which cannot be reckoned. Although not a historical fiction, the third volume of Mervyn Peake’s Gormenghast trilogy perhaps best illustrates this, with Titus Groan leaving behind the crumbling castle and entering the modern city with skyscrapers which , too, he must reject and go off searching in another direction. Vanity of vanities. The statue of Ozymandias did not find itself situated “Round the decay, Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare, The lone and level sands stretch far away” overnight. Novels such as The Leopard remind us to savor the melancholy sweetness of the long years of false hopes of second chances and the salvation of the new before death finally takes it all away. All is vanity.(less)

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Jan 10, 2013 Phoebes rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Il libro l’avevo acquistato molto tempo fa, e non ricordo nemmeno se poi l’avevo iniziato o no, perché proprio non mi attirava, l’avevo preso perché mi ero fissata di voler leggere tutti i classici, e questo era un libro “famoso”, ma poi giunta ai fatti non m’era mai venuta voglia di leggerlo.
Ora che finalmente l’ho “affrontato”, ho scoperto che è proprio un bel libro!
Già dalle prime pagine sono rimasta affascinata dal modo di scrivere di Lampedusa, soprattutto dalle sue descrizioni. Queste ul...more

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Dec 31, 2012 Donald rated it 5 of 5 stars

A melancholy classic. A tale of love amidst the decline of a great family. It is the story of the noble Salinas, embodied by the leonine paterfamilias, Don Fabrizio, as they try to maintain their position in the new Italian nation. The overall atmosphere of the novel is brightened by the love story of Don Fabrizio's nephew, Tancredi, Prince of Falconeri, with the beautiful but bourgeois Angelica, whose father's wealth challenges the social position of Don Fabrizio. Tancredi believes he can make...more

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Dec 01, 2012 Featherbooks rated it 5 of 5 stars

I first read The Leopard written by the wealthy Sicilian prince, Giuseppe Tomasi, Principe di Lampedusa (1896-1957), forty odd years ago and with age, my reaction has changed a bit. While I still appreciate the beautiful quality of the writing, the pace and the characterizations, I now relate more to the Prince and his thoughts about aging and change and history. He is melancholic, weary, cruel, yet still proud and elegant and seems to understand his situation. His once solidly exalted position...more I first read The Leopard written by the wealthy Sicilian prince, Giuseppe Tomasi, Principe di Lampedusa (1896-1957), forty odd years ago and with age, my reaction has changed a bit. While I still appreciate the beautiful quality of the writing, the pace and the characterizations, I now relate more to the Prince and his thoughts about aging and change and history. He is melancholic, weary, cruel, yet still proud and elegant and seems to understand his situation. His once solidly exalted position as a nobleman is slipping away with Garabaldi's destruction of the Bourbon monarchy and he knows it. He is dying, as is his way of life, and he views his demise as consolation. He meets his nephew’s future father-in-law, the nouveau riche Don Calogero, with equanimity:

"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.
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Aug 05, 2012 Francesco Camagna rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: storico, romanzo

Palermo, maggio 1860. Il principe Fabrizio Corbera di Salina termina la recita del rosario e prende una boccata d'aria nel suo giardino. Ma l'odore di alcuni fiori marci gli ricorda il cadavere di un giovane soldato del Quinto Battaglione Cacciatori, ritrovato proprio lì, un mese fa, sotto l'albero di limone... "E' morto per il Re, caro Fabrizio, è chiaro" gli avrebbe risposto suo cognato. Il principe medita sull'imminente arrivo dei garibaldini, ai quali si è unito il suo nipote preferito, Tanc...more Palermo, maggio 1860. Il principe Fabrizio Corbera di Salina termina la recita del rosario e prende una boccata d'aria nel suo giardino. Ma l'odore di alcuni fiori marci gli ricorda il cadavere di un giovane soldato del Quinto Battaglione Cacciatori, ritrovato proprio lì, un mese fa, sotto l'albero di limone... "E' morto per il Re, caro Fabrizio, è chiaro" gli avrebbe risposto suo cognato. Il principe medita sull'imminente arrivo dei garibaldini, ai quali si è unito il suo nipote preferito, Tancredi Falconieri, sotto sua tutela perché orfano.
«Noi fummo i Gattopardi, i Leoni; quelli che ci sostituiranno saranno gli sciacalletti, le iene; e tutti quanti Gattopardi, sciacalli e pecore continueremo a crederci il sale della terra.» Perché Gattopardo? Perchè era l'animale che era rappresentato nello stemma di famiglia (per Gattopardo si intende il leopardo). L'autore, Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa, ci presenta così la storia del suo bisnonno, vissuto negli anni cruciali del Risorgimento. Riesce, con scrittura poetica e piena di ironia, a descriverci e a rappresentarci il mondo dell'aristocrazia che stava lentamente decadendo (interessante il dialogo tra il principe Fabrizio con Ciccio Tumeo, l'organista della cattedrale di Donnafugata, dove si scambiano forti frecciatine nei confronti del sindaco di Donnafugata, novello borghese). E' lui, il principe, ad essere l'ultimo autentico Gattopardo, che per evitare il peggio preferisce trasferirsi nella villa di campagna a Donnafugata, dove ironizza e vive il cambiamento politico del Risorgimento. L'altro protagonista attorno cui ruota il romanzo è certamente suo nipote Tancredi che si innamora della figlia del sindaco di Donnafugata, Angelica, e la sposa, decretando così la fine dell'aristocrazia "pura". Interessante sottolineare quando il principe va a votare se si vuole o meno l'annessione della Sicilia al regno italico: egli voterà sì, e poi ironicamente l'autore ci svela che il sindaco stesso ha truccato i voti e quindi si arriverà ugualmente all'annessione... Non si può poi dimenticare la descrizione del gran ballo a Palermo, presso i nobili di Ponteleone. Un ultima parte che voglio citare è quella in cui il principe di Salina discute con il piemontese Chevalley, dove c'è una straordinaria descrizione dello spirito della "sicilianità", dove il principe spiega che i cambiamenti avvenuti nell'isola più volte nel corso della storia, hanno adattato il popolo siciliano ad altri "invasori", senza tuttavia modificare dentro l'essenza e il carattere dei siciliani stessi. Così il presunto miglioramento apportato dal nuovo Regno d'Italia, appare al principe di Salina come un ennesimo mutamento senza contenuti, poiché ciò che non muta è l'orgoglio del siciliano stesso. Egli infatti vuole esprimere l'incoerente adattamento al nuovo, ma nel contempo l'incapacità vera di modificare se stessi, e quindi l'orgoglio innato dei siciliani. Un'isola, sottolinea il Gattopardo, che è sempre stata terra di conquiste, una sorta di "Antica America". Consiglio questo straordinario romanzo per vari motivi, soprattutto perché parla dell'Italia, visto che stiamo festeggiando l'Unità, e poi perché descrive con accuratezza il nostro essere italiani, che ci rende unici in tutto il mondo. Peccato che Tomasi abbia scritto solo questo romanzo, era un grande e prepatato letterato. (less)

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Jul 20, 2012 Plucino rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: literature-italian

Un piatto sontuoso, ricchissimo, che rimpiango di aver avvicinato in età ormai avanzata: giovani, leggetelo!

Nel periodo 1860-1910, vengono seguiti nelle vicende interiori ed esteriori l'irresistibilmente amabile Don Fabrizio Corbera principe di Salina (ispirato ad un antenato dell'Autore) e la sua famiglia.
Il linguaggio è, come in Proust, colto ma avvicinabile. In una frase, il libro è l'amara constatazione del "sempre uguale" o, nelle parole di uno dei protagonisti, del "cambiare tutto per no...more

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About Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa

Giuseppe Tomasi, 11th Prince of Lampedusa was a Sicilian writer. He is most famous for his only novel, Il Gattopardo which is set in Sicily during the Risorgimento. A taciturn and solitary man, he passed a great deal of his time reading and meditating, and used to say of himself, "I was a boy who liked solitude, who preferred the company of things to that of people."

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Letters from London and Europe (1925-30)

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