Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa

Giuseppe Tomasi, 11th Prince of Lampedusa (December 23 1896 - July 23 1957), was a Sicilian writer. He is most famous for his only novel, "Il Gattopardo" (first published posthumously in 1958, translated as "The Leopard") which is set in Sicily during the Risorgimento. A taciturn and solitary man, he passed a great deal of his time reading and meditating, and used to say of himself, "I was a boy who liked solitude, who preferred the company of things to that of people."

Biography

Youth

Tomasi was born at Palermo to Giulio Maria Tomasi, Prince of Lampedusa, and Beatrice Mastrogiovanni Tasca di Cutò. He became an only child after the death (from diphtheria) of his sister. He was very close to his mother, a strong personality who influenced him a great deal, especially because his father was rather cold and detached. As a child he studied in their grand house in Palermo with a tutor (including the subjects of literature and English), with his mother (who taught him French) and with a grandmother who read him the novels of Emilio Salgari. In the little theater of the house in Santa Margherita Belice, where he spent long vacations, he first saw a performance of "Hamlet", performed by a company of travelling players.

In the army at Caporetto

Beginning in 1911, he attended the "liceo classico" in Roma and later in Palermo; he moved definitively to Rome in 1915 and enrolled in the faculty of Jurisprudence; however, that year he was drafted into the army, fought in the lost battle of Caporetto, and was taken prisoner by the Austro-Hungarian Army. He was held in a POW camp in Hungary, but succeeded in escaping and returning to Italy. After being mustered out of the army as a Lieutenant, he returned to Sicily, alternately resting there and travelling with his mother, and continuing his studies of foreign literature. It was during this time that he first drafted in his mind the ideas for his future novel "The Leopard". Originally his plan was to have the entire novel occur over the course of one day, similar to the famous modernist novel by James Joyce, "Ulysses".

A wife from Latvia

In Riga, Latvia, in 1932, he married Alexandra Wolff von Stomersee, nicknamed "Licy", a Baltic German noblewoman and student of psychoanalysis. They first lived with di Lampedusa's mother in Palermo, but soon the incompatibility between the two women drove Licy back to Latvia.

In 1934 his father died and he inherited his princely title. He was briefly called back to arms in 1940, but, as head of a hereditary agricultural plantation, was soon sent back home to take care of its affairs. He and his mother ultimately took refuge in Capo d'Orlando, where he was reunited with Licy; they survived the war, but their palace in Palermo did not.

After his mother died in 1946, di Lampedusa returned to live with his wife in Palermo. In 1953 he began to spend time with a group of young intellectuals, one of whom was Gioacchino Lanza Tomasi, a cousin, with whom he developed such a close relationship that, the following year, he legally adopted him.

"The Leopard"

Tomasi di Lampedusa was often the guest of his cousin, the poet Lucio Piccolo, with whom he travelled in 1954 to San Pellegrino Terme to attend a literary awards ceremony, where he met, among others, Eugenio Montale and Maria Bellonci. It is said that it was upon returning from this trip that he commenced writing "Il Gattopardo" ("The Leopard"), which was finished in 1956. During his life, the novel was rejected by the publishers to whom Tomasi presented it.

In 1957 Tomasi di Lampedusa was diagnosed with lung cancer; he died on July 23 in Rome. Following a requiem in the "Basilica del Sacro Cuore di Gesu" in Rome, he was buried in the Capuchin cemetery of Palermo . His novel was published the year after his death; Elena Croce had sent it to the writer Giorgio Bassani, who brought it to the attention of the Feltrinelli publishing house. "Il Gattopardo" was quickly recognized as a great work of contemporary Italian literature. In 1959 Tomasi di Lampedusa was posthumously awarded the prestigious Strega Prize for the novel.

Works

"Il Gattopardo" follows the family of its title character, Sicilian nobleman Don Fabrizio Corbera, Prince of Salina, through the events of the Risorgimento. Perhaps the most memorable line in the book is spoken by Don Fabrizio's nephew, Tancredi, urging unsuccessfully that Don Fabrizio abandon his allegiance to the disintigrating Kingdom of the Two Sicilies and to ally himself with Guiseppe Garibaldi and the House of Savoy: "Unless we ourselves take a hand now, they'll foist a republic on us. If we want things to stay as they are, things will have to change."

The title is rendered in English as "The Leopard", but the Italian word "gattopardo" refers to the American ocelot or to the African serval. "Il gattopardo" may be a reference to a wildcat that was hunted to extinction in Italy in the mid-1800s—just as Don Fabrizio was dryly contemplating the decline and indolence of the Sicilian aristocracy.

The novel was often criticised by literary critics for "combining realism with "decadent aesthetics". Fact|date=February 2007 However, it became so popular among common readers, that in 1963 "Il Gattopardo" was made into a film, directed by Luchino Visconti and starring Burt Lancaster; Alain Delon and Claudia Cardinale also appear in prominent roles.

Tomasi also wrote some lesser known works: "I racconti" ("Stories", first published 1961), "Le lezioni su Stendhal" ("Lessons on Stendhal", privately published in 1959, published in book form in 1977), and "Invito alle lettere francesi del Cinquecento" ("Introduction to sixteenth-century French literature", first published 1970). He also wrote "Joy and the Law", a common piece of literature studied in high schools today. He also wrote a small number of essays.

References

* [http://www.italica.rai.it/index.php?categoria=biografie&scheda=tomasidilampedusa]
* [http://movies.monstersandcritics.com/features/article_1215461.php "The Role of Leadership in the Novel THE LEOPARD" (1958, Lampedusa)] (After clicking on link, scroll down page)

Further reading

Gilmour, David. (2007) "The Last Leopard. A life of Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa." Eland Publishing Ltd. ISBN-13: 978-0955010514

External links