Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa

 

There are novels which are so well constructed that their content, in the end, becomes secondary. That's certainly the case with The Leopard, Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa's triumphant novel of Italian unification. Published in 1957, but taking as its focus events from the second half of the nineteenth century, The Leopard is a celebration of language and style. Lampedusa has a way of describing places, especially, with a complex layering: those places, of course, become characters in their own right. The Leopard, as I understand it, is considered one of the premier novels of modern Sicily: its history, personality, and geography are bound as one, an immovable entity confronting the realities of war and politics. At the heart of the novel is the Salina family: they who start at a princely perch and who end, fifty years later, three widowed women, caretakers of memories and dusted relics. The Leopard is not a perfect book; indeed, it felt too short; but its fabric, its language, and its characters are finely woven. This is a novel about the creation of heritage, memories, and lineage, and about how history stops for no one, not even the wealthy. I knew nothing, really, of Sicilian history during this period, but Lampedusa's language, alone, was worth the read.