The Leopard

A Great Novel Of Sicily

Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa's 1957 novel, "The Leopard" is set in Sicily in the early 1860s with concluding scenes in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The primary character is an aristocrat, Prince Don Fabrizio Corbera, Prince of Salina. At the opening of the book, Sicily is ruled by its own dynasty. The book tells of the reunification of all Italy under a single government through internal wars. Don Fabrizio, the heir of a long line, had acquired his position and great possessions and rank under the old regime. Di Lampedusa's novel explores his fate, fall, and decay through the political turmoil and under the new order.

The book is about both Don Fabrizio and Sicily. A man of aristocratic hauteur and an inveterate philanderer, the prince also is devoted to mathematics and astronomy, and has his code of honor together with a strong sense of pragmatism. Even before the regime change, he was losing a great deal of property as a result both of improvidence and of the rising middle class. Family plays a great role in this book, including Don Fabrizio's sexually-unresponsive wife with whom he has had seven children, the children themselves, the live-in priest that ministers to the family, Father Pirrone, and Fabrizio's apparently wastrel nephew, the young Tancredi. Tancredi has cast his lot with elements of the reunification movement. Much of the plot of this book involves Tancredi's marriage to the beautiful daughter of a rising, wealthy member of the middle class who, by Don Fabrizo's lights is almost inexpressively vulgar. Still Don Fabrizio promotes the marriage at the expense of his own daughter's possible marriage to Tancredi due to the political and financial consequences of the match. The two parties to the union also are driven more by the consequences advantageous to themselves from the marriage rather than from love and sex.

The novel offers an intimate portrayal of Sicily, including the lives of its few aristocratic families, the coastal areas, the mountains, and the poor interior. It shows the gradual change in Sicily resulting from the slow growth of the middle class. The legendary violence of Sicilian society is never far from attention and the poverty and squalor of much of the population also comes through the focus on the aristocratic and middle classes in most of the novel. The strong force of religion and of the Catholic Church also play a large role in the book.

The setting and subject matter of this book made it a difficult read as did di Lampedusa's writing style. The latter is heavily ornate with long, complex sentences. The book includes lengthy descriptive passages of palaces, cities, and sumptuous dinners, all of which are essential to the work but tend to slow it down. The book also includes many lengthy monologues and conversations among the characters. At first blush, the novel may seem long-winded in this regard. Di Lampedusa writes as an omniscient third-person narrator and the book has many extensive passages where he probes deeply into the characters' interior lives and thoughts.

While the book takes getting used to, it is an extraordinary work in its characterizations, portrayal of a society which most American readers will find unfamiliar, and thought. The book tells of change and loss. It probes questions of meaning and value under the seemingly shallow veneer of the dying aristocratic life. Di Lampedusa shows great sensitivity to subtleties of character and place with a certain irony for the old aristocracy mixed with reverence and seriousness. Readers will have different nuances on where the author stands on his characters and their history. I found the work movingly sympathetic to Don Fabrizio and to the spirit he finds in old Sicily.

In its eight chapters, "The Leopard" moves from scene to scene adding further difficulties in following the thread of the novel. There are scenes in the palace, in towns, in churches, with the army, and in poor rural communities. The climactic scene in chapter six is a lengthy description of a grand ball in the dying days of the aristocracy, one of many scenes where Don Fabrizio faces the decline of the old society and of himself and of the reality of death. Watching his nephew and his lovely fiance dance, Don Fabrizio reflects:

"The two young people moved away, other couples passed, less handsome, just as moving, each submerged in their transitory blindness. 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? It would be as vile as those fish vendors insulting the condemned in the Piazza del Mercato sixty years before. Even the female monkeys on the poufs, even those old baboons of friends were poor wretches, condemned and touching as the cattle lowing through the city streets at night on the way to the slaughterhouse; to the ears of each of them would one day come that tinkle he had heard three hours earlier behind San Domenico. Nothing could be decently hated except eternity."

I was immediately fascinated by this book even while realizing that much of the details had got away from me. I watched the 1963 film of this book directed by Luchino Visconti and starring Burt Lancaster. I found the film beautiful in its own right. It also helped me follow the novel I had just read. I went back and reread the novel after viewing the film and found I got far more out of the work than on my initial reading.

"The Leopard" is a difficult novel about a remote place and time but it has a sense of the universal and of meaning. I loved this book.

Robin Friedman