How rich is Lampedusa skewered the leopard

Lampedusa’s mid-century novel The Leopard became a bestseller and then a respected film. It’s now a gorgeous Netflix series. Those withering social flaws and hypocrisy still return home today.

“Of course, it was completely normal to die for someone or something. But the dying should at least be sure, if someone knows who or he is dead.” These are part of the opening line for Giuseppe Tomasi di Lanquedosa’s Leopard Leopard, published in 1958, just a year after the author died of cancer.

These words come from Prince Fabrizio, the main character of the novel, the head of the noble Sicily family. He recalls discovering the bodies of an unknown soldier in one of the lemon trees in his Paradiseciaca villa. This image summarises the existential spirit of the novel. Beneath beauty is corruption.

Lampedusa was never published in his lifetime. His only novel charts the Salina family’s wealth; Resolument: Social and political movements for the unity of Italy that led to the creation of a new kingdom in 1861 during the European revolution in 1861. Just as ideas about democracy, liberalism and socialism were brought throughout the continent, workers were furious at land-owned gentlemen, who were responsible for worsening working conditions and widespread poverty. This period ended in 1870 with the annexation of parts of the Italian Peninsula, unity of Italy, and the capture of Rome.

One of Fabrizio, such a landowner, in Leopard, he develops his strategy based on what he believes he will obtain in this turbulent time for the nobles. He coordinates his marriage to his dashing ne Tankredie Falconori and the nouveau rich Angelica Sedala. Contrary to the wishes of Fabrizio’s own daughter Consetta, he is in love with Tancredi.

Considered one of the most important works of Italian literature, the leopard was described by cultural historian Lucy Hughes Hallett as “the most beloved and acclaimed novel written in Italian.” Meanwhile, British author M Forster, in the preface to the Italian author’s unfinished memoir location (1971), stated, “Lampedusa meant that he would find it impossible to formally present him. The second adaptation of the novel and the new Netflix series, marking only the first serialized version, renews the relevance of the 21st century leopard, more than 60 years after the classic films of Luchino Visconti.

Despite its historic shrewdness and epic love story, Lampedusa’s novel initially failed to work with the Italian publisher. Two major publishers, Arnoldo Mondadori Editore and Einaudi, quickly rejected Lampedusa’s 1956 manuscript. Influential Modernists and Editors Elio Vittorini He argued that it was “traditional” compared to the experimental avant-garde movement of the time and wiped out Italian literature. David Laven, a historic consultant on Netflix’s adaptation, said, “Because the conservatives are very rude about the church and quite cynical about the aristocracy. “The left didn’t like that because he doesn’t portray a positive view of the ordinary working class.”

After the death of Lampedusa, his book fell into the hands of literary agent Elena Croce, and eventually landed on the desk of publisher Feltrinelli. The novel had voice detractors, including the person mentioned above. Vittorini And anti-fascist author Alberto Moravia doubted he believed it was a conservative novel ten years after fascist leader Benito Mussolini was overthrown in 1943. As Rachel Donadio wrote in the New York Times In 2008, the leopard was “first seen as quaint and reactionary: a baroque throwback at the height of cinema’s neorealism, a class consciousness of all art.”

But when it was released it became a runaway bestseller and an astounding cycling 52nd edition in under 6 months. Perhaps it resonated with a disillusioned generation Resolumenthowever, it rates French Marxist authors. Louis Aragon It is described as a critique of the upper class “relentless” and “left.” Lampedusa was awarded the prestigious Strega Award after his death, and his reputation as a literary great award soon surpasses his contemporaries.

What made the leopard difficult for so many people was its scathing tone, applied equally to all corners of Italian society. Landedusa himself was born into a nobleman in 1896 and lived in a palazzo, as in his novel, but that did not prevent him from smacking his own. His biographer David Gilmore wrote The Last Leopard (1988) That part of what Lampedusa blocked writing was something he believed to be redundant in his class until the latter part of his life.

In the first few pages of the novel, Lampedusa scorns Fabrizio’s wife and seven children, and describes a painstaking audience with Francis I (two Sicily kings) as meeting “the monarchy has traces of death in its face.” This far from cutting him above the others, and the disgusted Fabrizio is just as flawed. He will not abandon his own family. A story of the horrors of obsolescence and obsolescence within a crumbling dynasty, the leopard distorts the flaws and hypocrisy that exist in all Italian society.

“The great myth of Italian unity is that it was the bottom-up movement, where the Italians woke up all of a sudden in the morning and really wanted to overthrow the regime they lived in,” says Raven. “When you think of Sicily, civilians were used to the regime of change.” Sicily was ruled by the Spanish king before it was conquered by the Savoy in Italy and the Habsburg houses in Austria. French bourbon was carried over by the time Naples and Sicily were merged in 1816. They capsized in 1848 and returned to power sixteen months later.

In Lampedusa’s novel, the revolutionary expects radical change, while the protagonist argues that the middle class simply replaces the upper class, but the surface of things all remain the same. Despite these social changes, the current situation was seen as one of the novel’s most enduring lines, “If we want things to stay the same, we have to change things.”

“It’s not just what’s happening in Italy, it’s what’s happening throughout Europe in the 19th century,” Laven says. “Bismarck really doesn’t want Germany’s unity. He is trying to protect the interests of Prussian junkers. [nobility]and he’s ready to compromise. Many British aristocrats don’t like the way the world is moving, but they realize that they must be housed in a changing world to maintain their position. [The Leopard] It teaches you something about how the elite can try to maintain their strength. ”

According to Laven, leopards contain small historical inaccuracies, but Lampedusa really captured the essence of the time. Unlike the works of historical fiction giants such as Leo Tolstoy and Victor Hugo, the author rifts Fabrizio’s lofty world and navigates with his masterful wit. “[When you think of historical fiction]you tend to think of these great books slabs,” says Raven. [here] This incredible ability to capture the moment almost 100 years ago before he writes in such a style of economy. ”

Five years after its publication, the leopard’s status as a landmark in Italian literature was cemented by the acclaimed adaptation of the film directed by Visconti, a Marxist who was welcomed by a noble family like Lampedusa. It starred Bert Lancaster as his nephew, Fabrizio and Alan Deron as his nephew. According to Arabella Cifani, book editor of Giornale Dell’arte, Visconti’s gorgeous films had an equally cynical yet elegant view of Upper Echelon in Italian society. “Visconti understood that very deeply,” she told the BBC. “You would say that this book was a connatural worldview held by Visconti, a prince and whose ancestors ruled Milan for over 100 years.”

Famously, the film includes a gorgeous 25-minute ballroom scene. According to Rotten Tomato Critics Consensuswaltz competes [the] In this splendor, Fabrizio of Lancaster has a sense of death for him, thinking about what his own death would look like. Rather than Visconti’s first choice, the American star embarked on a wealth of research, adopting Lampdusa’s widow and son’s son. (1963), Critic David Weir argued Visconti’s film was less highly praised by viewers than the 8½ 8½ on Federico Fellini in the same year. However, the subsequent influence on the leading directors was undeniable, but it resonates with the grand works of Francis Ford Coppola and Martin Scorsese. “I live in this movie every day of my life.”

For the creators of the new Netflix series, the way the leopard spoke to the crumbling epoch was at the heart of its appeal. “When I first read it, we were experiencing the pain of Brexit and it seemed to me a bit like that Resolument In the opposite event, “Its writer and creator Richard Warrow speaks to the BBC, referring to a new division created in Europe in contrast to Unieiment: Crown or Bridgeton.

The events of Risorgimento and the novel took place over 150 years ago, but according to Laven, the impact is still deeply felt, especially as they are increasingly influenced. Political and economic divisions between the north and south. “It’s clear that it still means a lot to them,” he says. And what this period of revolutionary history changed is open to debate besides the creation of a centrally governed region of Italy. Cifani adds that the famous line of the novel “If you want things to stay as they are, things have to change.” It’s a Lampedusa novel, a timeless emotion.

Leopard will be released on Netflix on March 5th.