The Leopard by Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa
“If we want everything to remain as it is, everything has to change.”[54] Few books can boast being intimately associated with a single quotation, much less one that neither appears in the first paragraph nor is repeated recurrently throughout the text. But the true meaning of Tancredi’s words, and the significance of these words in the context of the book, are usually misunderstood. People often speak of “changing everything so that nothing changes” to describe Machiavellian plots by cold-hearted (and extremely forward-looking) elites who advocate social and political change to distract a credulous population when their actual goal is to keep everything of substance intact.
In this review I seek to persuade you that behind the façade of a cynical aristocrat determined to do anything to maintain his family’s standing in society, The Leopard[55] is a much subtler, deeper and touching reflection on the meaning of life and death, the (dis)continuities implied by the passing of people and social orders, or what social change means and entails, than its most famous passage suggests. While the Prince of Salina will wholeheartedly follow his nephew’s advice and embrace the “revolution,” at the end of the day not everything ends up like it originally was. Yes, he may have a niece that bears his name, but not his princely and aristocratic memories: “Fabrizietto would have only banal ones like his schoolfellows, of snacks, of spiteful little jokes against teachers, horses bought with an eye more to price than to quality…” (p. 248-9). At the end of the day, the despised “Garibaldi, that bearded Vulcan” (p. 249) wins: the Prince may manage to preserve the relative standing of his family, but he will become the last of the Salinas.
However, in the long run –and this is the core political message of the book– it does not matter much: in the same way that a life is replaced by another and parents are succeeded by their children, all social orders are destined to be supplanted by others, with their own rules, hierarchies, and subtle marks of distinction and inequality, as well as their little refinements and true believers who think that this time is different and their society or class is destined to last forever. As a seasoned Leopard reflects when waving goodbye to Cavaliere Chevalley, the enthusiastic emissary of the new “modern” mode of administration,
We were the Leopards, the Lions; those who’ll take our place will be little jackals, hyenas; and the whole lot of us, Leopards, jackals, and sheep, we’ll all go on thinking ourselves the salt of the earth.” (p. 185)
Author, text and translations
The Leopard is a historical novel, though less one with famous characters than the story of how a member of the nobility reacts to, deals with, and understands, a changing world, while at the same time becoming increasingly aware of both his biological fragility and those features of the past that are irretrievably lost.
The book has a strong autobiographical component. Giuseppe Tomasi grew up in a noble Sicilian family and was the penultimate Prince of Lampedusa.[56] His family’s coat of arms depicted the leopard (gattopardo) that gave the novel its name. The book’s main character is loosely based on the author’s great-grandfather, who among other things was an amateur astronomer. Tancredi’s appearance and behavior are based on Gioacchino Lanza Tomasi, the author’s distant cousin and adopted son,[57] while as a political figure he is an amalgam of two opportunistic Italian politicians of the early XXth century. The Palazzo Ponteleone, the location of the ball in chapter six, was inspired by Lampedusa’s own residence in Palermo, destroyed “by a bomb manufactured in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania” in 1943, though it was restored a decade ago.[58] In a letter to his friend Enrico Merlo serendipitously discovered inside one of his wife’s books two decades after her death, Lampedusa clarified that the town of Donnafugata is Palma di Montechiaro, where his family owned land, but the Salina palace in Donnafugata is the Palazzo Filangeri-Cutò in Santa Margherita di Belice, where Lampedusa used to vacation as a child. Destroyed by an earthquake in 1968, it has since been restored.
The Prince’s musings as death approaches are autobiographical as well: even though he was extremely well-read and, as a nobleman (though an impoverished one), had a lot of free time, he wrote little until late in his life. He would not see his novel published, however: Mondadori and Einaudi rejected the manuscript, and Lampesuda died of lung cancer in 1957, aged sixty. In his will, he commended his wife and adopted son to find an editor for The Leopard, but not at any cost: “needless to say, this does not mean having it published at my heirs’ expense; I should consider this a gross humiliation.”
The novel was eventually published by Feltrinelli in 1958, quickly becoming a bestseller. But a decade later it turned out that this wasn’t the definitive version. Shortly before his death, Lampedusa had handed his nephew the definitive manuscript: “The Leopard (complete).” But the published version was based on a previous typescript that he had sent to the publishing house, later augmented with manual corrections plus an additional chapter from the handwritten manuscript. The differences were not major but they ran in the hundreds, and thus Feltrinelli issued a definitive Italian version in 1969.[59] However most translations, including the English one by Archibald Colquhoun, are based on the 1958 text. This, coupled with the fact that Colquhoun’s translation does not do justice to the original (and much less improve upon it), suggest it’s time for a new English version.
A second translation that does justice to the original (though it was also based on the first Italian version) was released in 1963, in the form of a film directed by Luchino Visconti. The Leopard is thus one of these rare instances in which a very good book inspires a very good movie: one of Martin Scorsese’s favorites, and certainly one of the best 50 films of all time. Born in a noble family himself, Visconti managed to strike a fine balance between following the script quite closely –though several passages from the book are adroitly merged into a single one, and the last two chapters were cut out– while at the same time respecting the distinctive characteristics of the languages of literature and cinema. For example, the famous ball scene comprises a tenth of the text but over a quarter of the movie. This is a sensible choice: one of the best scenes ever filmed, it manages to convey both the rococo style of the Sicilian nobility and the Prince’s solitude in a way that the novel better conveys through interior monologue.
The other reason behind the films’ success is its amazing cast: tall, elegant, regal, Burt Lancaster embodies the proud and irascible Prince of Salina in a way that few actors could surpass.[60] Alain Delon and Claudia Cardinale were superb choices for the roles of Tancredi and Angelica, respectively. Thus, you should not watch The Leopardin lieu of reading the book, but you should certainly watch the film nonetheless. Three iconic scenes –Angelica’s entry into the drawing room; the day of the plebiscite; and the ball– are among the finest translations ever of literature into film.
The Prince of Salina in his labyrinth (warning: some spoilers)
May, 1860. The Kingdom of the Two Sicilies –the polity comprising Southern Italy and the island of Sicily– is approaching its end. In his palace in Palermo, Don Fabrizio Corbèra, Prince of Salina and head of one of the foremost families in the island, ponders how to react. Though tied to the old order “by chains of decency if not of affection,” (p. 180) he is not and does not want to become involved in politics. But his nephew Tancredi Falconeri, with whom he has a special connection, has joined Garibaldi’s redshirts, who will soon defeat the royal army. As his famous words make clear, however, Tancredi is more driven by cunning and selfish class interest than by youthful revolutionary ardor.
A man in his forties, the Prince begins thinking about his children’s inheritance. Yes, he is rich and owns substantial properties, but the Salina estate will have to be divided among seven children. Furthermore, these are a subpar lot. Paolo, the eldest, is a fool with no interests outside his horses’ (in)digestion. Giovanni, the only one in which his father caught brief glimpses of his own character, had fled to London, where he works as a clerk. The only worthwhile man of the family is Tancredi: charming, funny, interesting, he captivates all and is beloved by all, from the servants to his “terrible uncle;” in his company “one may have moments of irritation, but never of boredom; and that means a great deal.” (p. 128) He is also smart and perceptive: whenever he utters the solemn words of the day, he does so with a hint of irony, fully aware of the theater he is playing in.
But despite his noble stock (the Falconeri “came to Sicily with Charles of Anjou… they were Peers of the Realm, Grandees of Spain, Knights of Santiago…” [pp. 125-6]), Tancredi is poor: his father’s gambling debts have bankrupted the family, turning him into “an undesirable match” whose charms are thus more appreciated “by married women than by marriageable girls.” (p. 219) This will be especially problematic under the new order, in which money will count far more than before. When Tancredi goes to say farewell to his uncle before departing with the redshirts and teases him by claiming that “I’ll be back with the tricolor [flag]” (p. 28), the Prince reminds him that “A Falconeri should be with us, for the King.” (p. 28) It is then that Tancredi utters his famous words:
For the King, yes, of course. But which King? … Unless we ourselves take a hand now, they’ll foist a republic on us. If we want everything to remain as it is, everything has to change.[61] (p. 28)
Note the qualification in Tancredi’s words: he is not proposing to initiate a revolution, much less from above. What he is really saying is that some sort of change is already under way, is inevitable, and that the nobility’s only options are either to join it from the inside in the hopes of stymying it, or to oppose it openly, and perhaps lose everything. These words leave the Prince musing about the true nature of the “revolution,” as he begins to call it. He quickly realizes that Tancredi is the right person to infiltrate the new order and steer it in a more conservative and less plebeian direction.
To do this, however, Tancredi will need money and a socially savvy spouse. He seems to have his eyes on Concetta, the brightest and most attractive of the Prince’s daughters, who is bewitched by him, like everybody else, and expects a marriage proposal sooner than later. But how can she help an ambitious husband rise through the ranks of the new regime? A seventh of the Salina estate will not be enough. Her personality will not help either: shy, retracted, introverted, his father cannot imagine her “as ambassadress in Vienna or Petersburg.” (p. 71)
The solution presents itself a couple of months later, in the yearly family visit to the backward rural town of Donnafugata, where the old feudal traditions and superstitions are still alive. By the time the trip starts, what has transpired in Palermo after Garibaldi’s landing has convinced the Prince that the “revolution” is indeed a farce. As to Donnafugata, the town’s mayor –the wily, astute and ambitious Don Calogero Sedàra– has taken advantage of the events to become the richest man in town, on par with the Prince. The uncouth Don Calogero could not care less about ideology and harbors no antipathies, either personal or political, against the Prince; his enthusiasm for the “revolution” is purely due to the fact that the new order makes it easier to buy estates on the cheap from broken noble families or confiscated Church property.
A crass and miserly self-made man, Don Calogero lacks chic. But even he is ashamed of his wife, the daughter of some lowly peasant called Pepe ‘Mmerda (literally, “Joe Cowshit”). She is reportedly beautiful but never seen in public, apparently because she is “a kind of animal: she can’t read or write, or tell the time by a clock… (p. 117)” Instead, for the first dinner at Donnafugata Don Calogero shows up with his daughter Angelica, who used to play with the Prince’s daughters as a girl but has spent the last few years in a boarding school in Florence.
Angelica’s entrance in the drawing room at Donnafugata became one of the film’s iconic scenes: the appearance of the young, beautiful and self-confident girl has the same effect that the entrance of a young, beautiful and seductive girl has had over men of all ages and customs and places: a state of complete infatuation. Like her father, Angelica is smart, ambitious, and determined to climb up the social ladder. Unlike him, she can be extremely charming. She may not match the Prince’s daughters in terms of accent, education and manners, but she has the seductiveness, charm and open-mindedness that Concetta and her sisters lack. In addition, her hand comes with a generous dowry, and she will inherit lots of money. Tancredi appreciates this immediately: his sensual infatuation does not prevent him from seeing the material benefits of a marriage, and he begins the courtship the very next day. The Prince understands him at once, with no need for words, and decides to help him –though not without noticing that Tancredi’s sudden neglect of Concetta is “slightly ignoble.”
Winners and losers (additional spoilers)
The remainder of the book deals with the consequences of these adjustments: Tancredi’s courtship of Angelica; his uncle asking Don Calogero for her hand; the family priest’s visit to his hometown; the ball in which Angelica is introduced to the Sicilian aristocracy; the Prince’s death in 1888; and, in 1910, the Cardinal’s visit to the Salina sisters –Concetta, Carolina and Caterina– to examine their impressive assemblage of (mostly fake) relics.
Rather than recounting these episodes, I want to discuss the philosophical and sociological implications they raise. The Leopard is ostensibly a novelized account of the transition from a traditional to a modern society –or at least as modern a society as can be established in Sicily. Of course, this is how the Prince and Tancredi see it: between the republic of “Don Peppino Mazzini” and the Savoyard monarchy, they side with the latter without hesitation. So do many other Sicilian grandees, who adopt the new terminology and symbols but deprive the “revolution” of its political –and above all its economic and social– substance. Wishing to see the famous frescoes on the ceilings, a victorious General visits the Prince’s palace in Palermo accompanied by Tancredi and one of his comrades-in-arms, a Milanese Count. The General behaves as a humble guest rather than as a haughty conqueror and, contravening Garibaldi’s orders, even refers to the Prince as “Excellency.” He later gives them the permits for the trip to Donnafugata. The revolutionary charade continues on the day of the referendum, when the Prince is spared the indignity of having to wait in line to cast his vote: all the peasants who had arrived before him “were motioned aside, and so without having to wait Don Fabrizio handed his “yes” into the patriotic hands of Don Calogero Sedàra.” (p. 108) Even the hated policemen end up mostly unscathed:
in the very first days of the occupation all this was given some sense of purpose by the acclamations greeting the few wounded passing through the main streets and by the shrieks of Bourbon police “rats” being tortured in the side alleys. Now that the wounded had recovered and the surviving “rats” were enrolled in the new police… (pp. 54-5)
And yet, the Prince cannot but feel that “I belong to an unfortunate generation, swung between the old world and the new, and I find myself ill at ease in both.” (p. 180) The thought of his nephew marrying the granddaughter of some Pepe ‘Mmerda distresses him, and he despises the coarseness and lack of sophistication of the new arrivistes, Don Calogero first of all. Who is, alongside Tancredi and Angelica, the real winner of the new state of affairs.
This merits a comment: like all self-made men, Don Calogero is ambitious, clever, relentless. He cares little about creating a more democratic or egalitarian society; he just wants a prominent place in the new order. But through cunning, adroitness and will, he has earned such a place for himself; nobody gave it to him for free.[62] The same applies to Angelica and Tancredi: if they climb and prosper in the new Italy, it is because they have what it takes to get there: they read the situation correctly, make the correct moves, and have some luck, but above all they have the moral and personal flexibility to adapt to the new conditions, and the brains and charm to do it rightly. For all its limitations, the new order is much more meritocratic and open to talents than the old one, where a poor nobleman with the skills and graces of Tancredi was not considered a desirable husband, though “mistakenly, as was seen afterward when too late.” (p. 219)
Tancredi wins big because his upbringing and personality give him the best of both worlds: the titles, self-confidence and social charms of the old nobility alongside the flexibility, opportunism and open-mindedness that will be required in the new Italy. The other side of the coin are those who do not want or cannot adapt to the new conditions. A case in point is Father Pirrone, the family chaplain who realizes too well that the new order will seek to confiscate the Church’s property –though he cloaks this worry under the pretense that these are “the patrimony of the poor… who will then feed all the destitute who are sustained and guided by the Church today?” (p. 38) Or Don Ciccio Tumeo, Donnafugata’s organist and the Prince’s hunting companion, who sincerely believes in the purity of the separation between nobles and commoners, votes “No” in the reunification referendum (contradicting the Prince’s explicit advice) and is appalled by the prospect of a Falconeri marrying Don Calogero’s daughter, but is also too meek to confront the Prince directly: “Let’s go home, Don Ciccio, there are some things you can’t understand.” (pp. 120-1)
Above all, the big losers are Concetta and her sisters. Heartbroken by Tancredi when she believed that a declaration of love was imminent, she rejects the entreaties of his friend, the fine Count Cavriaghi from Milan. This is understandable: as Angelica herself recognizes, marrying the insipid Cavriaghi after having loved Tancredi would be like drinking water after having a sip of the best Marsala wine. But instead of resigning to Cavriaghi or devoting herself to social life in the hopes of getting a better suitor, Concetta retreats into a bubble of sadness, hate and resentment: against Tancredi, against his father, against everybody but the family dog. The outcome is predictable: fifty years after Garibaldi’s landing, Concetta, Carolina and Caterina are three old spinsters living together in the old palace in Palermo, their rooms full of relics of the past, their personal and social life centered around the Church: out of piety in the case of the devout Carolina (“This Pope must be a Turk” [p. 277]); as a means of maintaining her social distinction for Concetta’s. And even that is at risk: a new Papal instruction will force the sisters to throw out the bulk of the fakes relics that they have collected over the years.
“We were the leopards, the lions…”
But there is more than social change and people adapting –or failing to adapt– to it. Lampedusa’s meta-message is that such changes are an inextricable element of the human condition, or at least of civilized society. After his conversation with Tancredi about changing everything so that everything remains the same, the Prince keeps pondering about the loyalty he owes to the sitting Bourbon king. In theory, Francis II was the legitimate ruler; but upon close inspection, was he? The current French Emperor, Napoleon III, was certainly illegitimate; so was, “let’s face it,” Charles III of Spain, who in 1735 had become the first Bourbon king of Sicily after the Battle of Bitonto, which was not “so unlike that of Bisacquino or Corleone or any of these battles in which the Piedmontese are now sweeping our troops before them.” (p. 36)
In the last instance, all social orders, including celestial ones, are based on violence: “not even Jupiter was the legitimate King of Olympus.”[63] (p. 36) The same will eventually happen to the new polity that Victor Emmanuel II and Garibaldi are about to establish. As the Prince reminds the family chaplain, while “[the] Holy Church has been granted an explicit promise of immortality,” the nobility, as a social class, hadn’t, and thus “any palliative which may give us another hundred years of life is like eternity to us.” (pp. 39-40)
This casts Tancredi’s famous words in a different light: yes, Tancredi is cynically infiltrating Garibaldi’s redshirts. And his uncle and many other Sicilian aristocrats –at least those that are not impressionable fools like the Prince’s brother-in-law Màlvica– are doing the same. But far from being plotters or conspirators, they are reacting to changes that had started elsewhere. Tancredi’s words are often interpreted as a deliberate plot on the part of rulers and elites to simulate change in order to distract the people, while keeping the substance intact. This may well be the final result of the whole affair, and indeed the book is full of ironic observations about the lack of consequences of the “revolution.” But at least on Lampedusa’s –and Tancredi’s and the Prince’s– views, this is not the result of human design and purpose, but rather an equilibrium outcome resulting from adaptive behavior by perceptive elites.
Furthermore, over a sufficiently long timeframe a pattern of constant change in which nothing of substance changes is the actual nature of things: an elite –be it the Athenians, the Romans, the Byzantines, the Berbers, the Spaniards, the French revolutionaries, the liberals, the fascists, or the soviets– comes to power, often through violence, establishes new symbols, and proclaims a new order: one that will of course be different, and better, than its predecessor. But a century or a couple later –sometimes a bit more, often substantially less– they will be defeated by the zealots and emissaries of another “new” order, who establish new symbols and proclaim a new society, one that will, this time, be better than its predecessors. Over the long haul, then, everything changes, but everything remains the same.
These considerations suggest an alternative interpretation of the Prince’s famous discourse about the Sicilian character. When the Cavaliere Aimone Chevalley di Monterzuolo, an emissary sent by the national government in Turin, offers the Prince a seat in the national Senate, the latter refuses. The enthusiastic Chevalley insists, noting that under the “new lively modern administration,” things will be different than in the past, and Sicily will cease to be dirt poor. But the Prince remains unconvinced:
we Sicilians have become accustomed [to] a long, a very long hegemony of rulers who were not of our religion and who did not speak our language… (p. 176)
Do you really think, Chevalley, that you are the first who has hoped to canalize Sicily into the flow of universal history? I wonder how many Moslem imams, how many of King Roger’s knights, how many Swabian scribes, how many Angevin Barons, how many jurists of the Most Catholic King have conceived the same fine folly; and how many Spanish Viceroys too, how many of Charles III’s reforming functionaries! (pp. 183-4)
Sleep, my dear Chevalley, sleep, that is what Sicilians want, and they will always hate anyone who tries to wake them, even in order to bring them the most wonderful of gifts… (pp. 177-8)
These words are often interpreted as the description of a specifically Sicilian character, and indeed the Prince invokes the island’s climate as the main source of its idiosyncratic combination of voluptuousness and stupor, which make the Sicilians “never want to improve for the simple reason that they think themselves perfect; their vanity is stronger than their misery…” (p. 183) From this perspective, the inability to change is uniquely Sicilian. But read in the light of the Prince’s considerations in other parts of the book, one may well conclude that “Sicily” and “Sicilians” actually stand for “the World” and “human beings;” at the very least, Sicily offers a microcosm of the human condition. Indeed, when he accompanies a departing Chevalley to take the post the following day, the Prince makes the best reflection of the book:
after that it will be different, but worse. We were the Leopards, the Lions; those who’ll take our place will be little jackals, hyenas; and the whole lot of us, Leopards, jackals, and sheep, we’ll all go on thinking ourselves the salt of the earth. (p. 185)
The underlying idea that disruptive moments that succeed one another end up establishing a form of continuity had already appeared in the first chapter, which begins with the last line of the Rosary and ends the following day with a recitation of the first one. Also evident is the analogy with a human life, in which the two big moments of disruption are also the ones anchoring the continuity of the whole enterprise. At the dying Prince realizes in his deathbed,
“You’ll be better at the hotel, Uncle; you’ll have every comfort there.” They were treating him like a newborn baby… (p. 245)
A waiter came in with a basin of warm water and a sponge, took off his coat and shirt, and washed his face and hands, as one washes a child, as one washes the dead. (pp. 246-7)
Still, “it will be better, but worse:” while the long-term view shows that nothing fundamental changes in human history, we do have a concrete preference for our own selves, our families, our class, our political institutions. The Prince’s peers saw him as somewhat of an eccentric:
his interest in mathematics was judged almost a sinful perversion, and had he not been actually Prince of Salina and known as an excellent horseman, indefatigable shot, and tireless skirt chaser, his parallaxes and telescopes might have exposed him to the risk of being outlawed. (p. 223)
He, in turn, harbored no illusions about “all these faded women, all these stupid men” who surrounded him; and yet
only they could really understand him, only with them could he be at his ease. ‘I may be more intelligent, I’m certainly more cultivated, but I come from the same stock as they, with them I must make common cause.’ (pp. 226-7)
Fragile beings as we are, when given the chance to help our family and class last for a hundred additional years, we take it without hesitation.
We also treasure all those fleeting moments in which we were happy, or at least enjoyed ourselves: brief instants of self-satisfaction (siring a male heir, making “a biting reply to a fool,” receiving an unexpected letter of congratulations); of material sensuality: “the exquisite sensation of one or two fine silk cravats, the smell of morocco leathers;” the conversations with people we value and get along with (which made Tancredi’s talent for not boring anyone so valuable); and of carnal voluptuousness: “two weeks before his marriage, six weeks after… a moment or two of frenzied passion… the gay, voluptuous air of a few women passed in the street, of one glimpsed even yesterday at the station of Catania.” (pp. 251-2) Too little overall? Perhaps: “I’m seventy-three years old, and all in all I may have lived, really lived, a total of two… three at the most.” (p. 253) But it doesn’t matter: the only thing we care about is that these moments and experiences “had existed.”
Elements of style
If I recall correctly, it was Ross Douthat who made me realize that Houellebecq’s magic lies less in the plots of his novels than in his capacity to observe, dissect and mock contemporary Western life. Similarly, to savor The Leopard fully you have to pay attention to the little observations, the comments, the small details; this is the kind of book that becomes better on re-read.
From the very beginning, the book is full of ironic commentary about people’s motivations, the inconsistent implementation of social norms, and everyday incongruities in general. The room where the Salina family recite the daily Rosary is not up to par with the pious daily ritual:
… even the Magdalen between the two windows looked a penitent and not just a handsome blonde lost in some dubious daydream, as she usually was.
Now, as the voices fell silent, everything dropped back into its usual order... The women rose slowly to their feet, their oscillating skirts as they withdrew baring bit by bit the naked figures from mythology painted all over the milky depths of the tiles. Only an Andromeda remained covered by the soutane of Father Pirrone, still deep in extra prayer, and it was some time before she could sight the silvery Perseus swooping down to her aid and her kiss. (pp. 5-6)
Inconsistencies are not limited to religion. When, on election day, the prostitutes of Donnafugata protest that women are denied the right to vote, even the liberals object:
the three or four whores of Donnafugata… appeared in the square with tricolor ribbons in their manes in protest against the exclusion of women from the vote; the poor creatures were jeered at even by the most advanced liberals and forced back to their lairs. (p. 109)
The Sedàra’s (and especially Don Calogero’s) slow adoption of (and adaptation to) new manners is also examined with a sense of gentle irony:
Gradually Don Calogero came to understand that a meal in common need not necessarily be all munching and grease stains; that a conversation may well bear no resemblance to a dog fight; that to give precedence to a woman is a sign of strength and not, as he had believed, of weakness; … and that the adoption of such tactics can result in a greatly increased yield from meals, arguments, women, and questions.
… he did try to shave a little better and complain a little less about the waste of laundry soap; but from that moment there began, for him and his family, that process of continual refining which in the course of three generations transforms innocent peasants into defenseless gentry. (pp. 137-8).
Adaptation took time, however; after two years,
It was still only half past ten, rather early to appear at a ball if one is Prince of Salina… But this time they had to be early if they wanted to be there for the entry of the Sedàras, who were the sort of people (“they don’t know yet, poor things”) to take literally the hours on the gleaming invitation card. (p. 214)
The other domain in which Lampedusa excels is in his capacity for analogy and symbolism. What about this as a commentary on the family’s decadence?
Over the great solid but sagging door, a stone Leopard pranced, in spite of legs broken off by flung stones… (p. 52)
Or:
From under lace-covered shades the oil lamps spread circles of yellow light; the vast equestrian portraits of past Salinas seemed but imposing symbols, vague as their memories. (p. 75)
There is also a great gastronomic analogy:
At the end of the meal appeared a rum jelly… rather threatening at first sight, shaped like a tower with bastions and battlements and smooth slippery walls impossible to scale, garrisoned by red and green cherries and pistachio nuts; but into its transparent and quivering flanks a spoon plunged with astounding ease. By the time the amber-colored fortress reached Francesco Paolo… it consisted only of shattered walls and hunks of wobbly rubble. Exhilarated by the aroma of rum and the delicate flavor of the multicolored garrison, the Prince enjoyed watching the rapid demolishing of the fortress beneath the assault of his family’s appetites. (pp. 42-3)
Analogies with the book’s core themes also abound. In his solemn first dinners at Donnafugata, the Prince did not put on an evening dress; this would have been impolite to his much poorer guests, who did not own such attire. So he experienced Don Calogero’s appearance in formal outfit as “the bourgeois revolution climbing his stairs in Don Calogero’s tailcoat” (pp. 93-4) Or consider this depiction of the sun:
The rains had come, the rains had gone, and the sun was back on its throne like an absolute monarch kept off it for a week by his subjects’ barricades, and now reigning once again, choleric but under constitutional restraint. (p. 91)
In chapter 3, the tall and imposing Prince goes hunting with little Don Ciccio Tumeo, the school organist, who is appalled to find out that Tancredi is going to marry Angelica. As “a snob, [that kind of] people for whom to obey, imitate, and above all avoid distressing those whom they considered of higher social rank than themselves was the supreme law of life,” (p. 114) Don Ciccio displays a much more sincere, uncompromising and naive attachment to the monarchy and the old social order than the Prince’s. Uncharacteristically, he cannot contain himself and loses his temper: “A nephew of yours ought not to marry the daughter of those who’re your enemies who have stabbed you in the back!” (p. 120) The Prince almost slaps him in response, but contains himself. They go back to the house, and
as they climbed down toward the road, it would have been difficult to tell which of the two was Don Quixote and which was Sancho Panza. (p. 121)
The last comparison comes from an aging Angelica. In 1910, well over seventy and a widow since 1907, she is put in charge of the celebrations for the fiftieth anniversary of Garibaldi’s March of the Thousand. She tells Concetta that she wanted to invite the mayor of every commune in Sicily, but
the Mayor of Salina is a clerical and has refused to take part in the parade; so I thought at once of your nephew, of Fabrizio; [he] couldn’t refuse; and so at the end of the month we’ll see him dressed to the nines parading down Via Libertà in front of a big placard with ‘Salina’ on it in letters a foot high… A Salina rendering homage to Garibaldi! A fusion of old and new Sicily! (pp. 268-9).