Great Novels: The Romance of the Prince and the Leopard.
October 7th 2006 11:25
Not many princes write. Few of them write novels. Prince Giuseppe di Lampedusa wrote only one of significance which was never published in his lifetime but it reached the list of the greatest works of all time. This would not have impressed his mother who thought nothing of literature and had to die before Giuseppe could take up his pen. English is generally over-represented in the list of great published works. Di Lampadusa wrote in Italian or more accurately Genovese.
Di Lampadusa was more of a Duke than a Prince, the Duke of Palma and penniless at that. Dukes and Princes, what does it matter to us? Italian Princes abound, di Lampadusa was unique
Prince Don Fabrizio Salina, the subject of the work, complains that, except for isolated moments, he has been bored for most of the seventy five years of his life. A man of exquisite tastes is always deeply disturbed by what people are doing in the rest of the world especially if it upsets the natural order of things and Garibaldi, the Italian red shirted liberator, was certainly one of those people. The story begins as Garabali lands to liberate Sicily. Sicilians have been liberated many times. The habit still continues today, though this time the vanquished are Mafiosi.
The 1963 movie was Visconti’s finest and stared Burt Lancaster who fits in the role with surprising ease for an American cinema star. The Prince’s nephew, Tancredi, is now a war hero, always suspicious people, war heroes. There is always a suggestion that they have been up to no good, that their heroism is someone else’s suffering.
This marks the beginning of the decline of the Salina family whose emblem is the Leopard and the title of the book but there have not been Leopards in Sicily in any form for a very long time. At the end of the book when everyone is dead, including some remnant spinster offspring of the Prince, his old dog, whose remains consist of a large pelt, is thrown out and assumes briefly, in mid air the posture of a leopard.
Among other things, Salina has to tolerate the marriage of Tancredi to Angelica (played by Claudia Cardinale in the movie) the daughter of a man he despises, Don Calegero Sedara the mayor of Palermo. He cannot resist the decline of everything. They think they flatter him when they offer him a place in the Government of the newly united Italy, not understanding that it is an insult to expect him to participate in the dismantling of his universe.
As usual the novel was rejected and only published after the author died by Giangiacomo Feltrinelli. Feltrinelli discovered and published the novel Dr. Zhivago by Boris Pasternak. That the one person could carry out the extraordinary coup of publishing two of the greatest books of the 20th Century from totally different countries and written in different languages is only one aspect of an extraordinary life. In 1972 Feltrinelli was found at the bottom of an electricity pylon after having blown himself up with his own explosives in an attempt to further the bizarre Italian form of the Communist struggle.
Add the Leopard to your reading list.
Di Lampadusa was more of a Duke than a Prince, the Duke of Palma and penniless at that. Dukes and Princes, what does it matter to us? Italian Princes abound, di Lampadusa was unique
Prince Don Fabrizio Salina, the subject of the work, complains that, except for isolated moments, he has been bored for most of the seventy five years of his life. A man of exquisite tastes is always deeply disturbed by what people are doing in the rest of the world especially if it upsets the natural order of things and Garibaldi, the Italian red shirted liberator, was certainly one of those people. The story begins as Garabali lands to liberate Sicily. Sicilians have been liberated many times. The habit still continues today, though this time the vanquished are Mafiosi.
The Prince
The 1963 movie was Visconti’s finest and stared Burt Lancaster who fits in the role with surprising ease for an American cinema star. The Prince’s nephew, Tancredi, is now a war hero, always suspicious people, war heroes. There is always a suggestion that they have been up to no good, that their heroism is someone else’s suffering.
This marks the beginning of the decline of the Salina family whose emblem is the Leopard and the title of the book but there have not been Leopards in Sicily in any form for a very long time. At the end of the book when everyone is dead, including some remnant spinster offspring of the Prince, his old dog, whose remains consist of a large pelt, is thrown out and assumes briefly, in mid air the posture of a leopard.
Among other things, Salina has to tolerate the marriage of Tancredi to Angelica (played by Claudia Cardinale in the movie) the daughter of a man he despises, Don Calegero Sedara the mayor of Palermo. He cannot resist the decline of everything. They think they flatter him when they offer him a place in the Government of the newly united Italy, not understanding that it is an insult to expect him to participate in the dismantling of his universe.
As usual the novel was rejected and only published after the author died by Giangiacomo Feltrinelli. Feltrinelli discovered and published the novel Dr. Zhivago by Boris Pasternak. That the one person could carry out the extraordinary coup of publishing two of the greatest books of the 20th Century from totally different countries and written in different languages is only one aspect of an extraordinary life. In 1972 Feltrinelli was found at the bottom of an electricity pylon after having blown himself up with his own explosives in an attempt to further the bizarre Italian form of the Communist struggle.
Add the Leopard to your reading list.
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