The Leopard

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Stacco: quattro anni dopo Bassani accetta l’incarico di curare una collana per l’editore Feltrinelli dedicata alla letteratura italiana contemporanea (chiamata appunto “I Contemporanei”). Riceve il dattiloscritto di autore ignoto spedito da una sua amica, Elena Croce, figlia di Benedetto. Fa ricerche e scopre che l’autore è morto di rapidissima malattia l’anno prima: e soprattutto scopre che l’autore è proprio quel signore che ha conosciuto a San Pellegrino Terme nel 1954. The Snow Leopard is a 1978 book by Peter Matthiessen. It is an account of his two-month search for the snow leopard with naturalist George Schaller in the Dolpo region on the Tibetan Plateau in the Himalaya.

Gorya Amurov might be known as his family's peacekeeper, but the leopard inside him wants nothing more than to claw to the surface and unleash hell. A harsh life has shaped him into a vicious fighter with a calm exterior, but Gorya knows it's only a matter of time until he loses all control. Deep down, he truly believes he'd be better off dead, and that no woman will ever accept him as a mate.... Although The Leopard is a representation of 19th century Sicilian aristocracy, it is also a contemplative and ironic distancing from this same world. It is, above all, a novel that provides a profound meditation on transition and historical causality.As the novel opens in May 1860, Garibaldi's Redshirts have landed on the Sicilian coast and are pressing inland; they will soon overthrow the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies and incorporate it into the unified Italian Kingdom under Victor Emmanuel. The plot focuses upon the aristocratic Salina family, which is headed by Prince Fabrizio. Don Fabrizio is the patriarch of the family as well as the keeper of its strict code of conduct and Roman Catholic ritual. Prince Fabrizio finds marriage with his overly puritanical wife to be physically unsatisfying, and thus keeps a series of mistresses and courtesans as well as indulging in his hobby of amateur astronomy. He is drawn to his nephew Prince Tancredi Falconeri whom he sees as having noble qualities. This affection is somewhat diminished when he discovers that Tancredi has joined Garibaldi's Redshirts. On a trip to the Salina estate in the town of Donnafugata the Prince learns that the mayor, Don Calogero Sedara, has become wealthy through dodgy business transactions and political influence and that his wealth now rivals that of the Salinas. When Sedara introduces his extraordinarily beautiful daughter, Angelica, Tancredi is smitten with her, to the dismay of the Prince's daughter Concetta, who loves Tancredi. Although aware of his daughter's feelings, the Prince accepts the inevitable and helps arrange Tancredi's betrothal to Angelica. The two pass a blissfully innocent period of engagement.

With supple and ornate language, the book has an introspective storyline and alludes to the works of Shakespeare, Sterne, Tolstoy, Baudelaire, Keats, Proust and Stendhal. The narration is characterised by stylistic shifts that reflect both Prince Salina’s varying points of view and the unnamed but all-knowing narrator’s perceptions of history. In May 1860, the Salinas—a Sicilian noble family who lives in a palace outside Palermo, Sicily—have just finished their daily Rosary recitation. The ceiling of the ornate drawing room is painted with ancient Roman deities holding the family shield, which displays a leopard. The head of the family, Dom Fabrizio, Prince of Salina, is feeling discontent. He perceives that his family, and the entire Sicilian noble class, are sliding into decline—but he feels powerless to stop this. o plimbare matinală prin pădure, prin stratul gros de frunze uscate, o conversație cu pădurarul, vînătoarea,

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The wealth of many centuries had been transmitted into ornament, luxury, pleasure; no more; the abolition of feudal rights had swept away duties as well as privileges; wealth, like an old wine, had let the dregs of greed, even of care and prudence, fall to the bottom of the barrel, leaving only verve and color. And thus eventually it cancelled itself out; this wealth which had achieved its object was composed now only of essential oils – and, like essential oils, it soon evaporated. As I started reading this outstanding book, I felt I am more than an eyewitness - as reader - after a specific part of the Introductory words was stamped unto my thoughts – those being words as imprinted by the author of the novel himself in a letter sent to one of his very few, closely intimate friends, Enrico Merlo ≪ I would kindly ask you to read it carefully (*the manuscript of the novel itself) because every word has been weighed and many things have not been said clearly, but only by half. Needless to say that the "prince of Salina" is the prince of Lampedusa, Giulio Fabrizio, my great-grandfather, so everything is real, shaded in its authenticity: his stature, fondness of mathematics (*and astronomy), false violence, skepticism, wife, German mother, refusal to be a senator. The father Pirrone is also real, even the name. I think I made them both smarter than they really were. ≫ Victor Emmanuel II, Savoy King of Sardinia from 23 March 1849 to 17 March 1861, and King of Italy from 17 March 1861 to 9 January 1878. Resident at the Royal Palace of Turin.

The stars are Don Fabrizio’s passion, when not daydreaming about memoirs of his own passionate conquests he turns his eyes skyward. ”The stars looked turbid and their rays scarcely penetrated the pall of sultry air. The soul of the Prince yearned out towards them, towards the intangible, the unreachable, which gives joy without being able to ask for anything in return; like many other times, he tried to imagine himself in those icy reaches, a pure intellect armed with a note-book for calculations; difficult calculations, but ones which would always work out.” He is a dreamer, but due to his responsibilities is firmly rooted to the earth incapable of escaping his duties except for a few beautiful, peaceful, stolen moments when he finds himself alone to star gaze or take a bath or read a book. I felt that tug of recognition of a soul so close to my own. He is always on the verge of asking what if, but unwilling to break the bonds of his position to indulge himself in such potentially dangerous thinking.Possibly the actual coat of arms...I can't find a primary source here but who cares, it's a fightin' leopard! The manuscript was initially rejected in 1956 and 1957. Important Italian publishers such as Mondadori and Einaudi thought it ideologically deficient, reactionary for its representation of an immobile history, and structurally weak. It also failed to align with the mainstream Italian literature of the time. The next morning, Tancredi, the Prince’s beloved nephew, visits and talks about Garibaldi’s “Red Shirt” rebels, whom he plans to join. Tancredi explains that if the nobility wants things to remain the same, then some things must change. This moves the Prince, yet he’s also annoyed by his employees’ optimism about the revolution. He believes that “liberals” are greedy and self-interested; there will be no sweeping changes in Sicily. Meanwhile, the Prince’s friend and household priest, Father Pirrone, is primarily concerned with how the revolution will impact on the Catholic Church.

She was tall and well made, on an ample scale; her skin looked as if it had the flavour of fresh cream which it resembled, her childlike mouth that of strawberries. Under a mass of raven hair, curling in gentle waves, her green eyes gleamed motionless as those of statues, and like them a little cruel. She was moving slowly, making her wide white skirt rotate around her, and emanating from her whole person the invincible calm of a woman sure of her own beauty.” But it was the arrival of two young men in love which really awoke the instincts lying dormant in the house; and these now showed themselves everywhere, like ants woken by the sun, no longer poisonous, but livelier than ever. Even the architecture, the rococo décor itself, evoked thoughts of fleshly curves and taut erect breasts; and every opening door seemed like a curtain rustling in a bed-alcove I completed Leopard's Run and though it won't be out for several months I'm excited for its release. I loved and think Evangeline and Alonzo/Fyodor were an incredible couple, so I'm happy that we'll get to see them again! Nell’occasione di quell’incontro con la vedova, Bassani incamerò quattro racconti e vari saggi sulla narrativa francese dell’ottocento. Venne fuori che Tomasi di Lampedusa era uomo erudito e ottimo conoscitore della letteratura europea, che aveva letto perlopiù nelle lingue originali.

Rosary, macaroni, faded grandeur

Il Gattopardo is considered the greatest work of Italian literature in the 20th C) and of the Italian language (which translated marvelously into French).