The Leopard

by Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa

  Father Pirrone found himself caught up in complicated and dangerous quarrels with his own family; we are pleased to report that he was able to sort out these intricacies with the wisdom and kindness to be expected in so venerable a priest; and that, indeed, from his observation of these human miseries he was able to deduce certain interesting conclusions of general application.

  The palace of Donnafugata continued to impose its baroque, voluptuous scrollwork, its gushing fountains, in the very heart of black Sicilian poverty; under the modernising administration of Don Calogero Sedàra, deputy and mayor, the commune was enriched with schools – foundation stones, at any rate, were laid – and sewers – public proclamations were made to this end.

  As for Chevalley di Monterzuolo, after a year at Girgenti and two at Trapani he had been promoted and obtained a transfer to Grosseto. Before leaving Sicily he had gone to call on the Prince and to thank him for his wisdom.

  In this climate of fleeting serenity the Salina household had blossomed into poetry. Marvel not: a century ago literary production, even though in decline, indeed precisely because in decline, was not sundered, as it is today, from the mass of ordinary mortals and reserved for the handful of initiates in cryptic language and allusive mysteries; many people of only summary culture concentrated their emotions in carefully measured stanzas, without any ambition towards publication, though not without a secret hankering for immortality, as is to be inferred from the almost always jealous preservation of the texts. Nor should we omit to mention that in the majority of cases such poems were quite surprisingly obscene, even scatological to the point of asphyxiation; but a certain proportion of these hidden works reveals, amid piteous inexperience, a powerful, delicious emotion seldom suspected by those acquainted with the author’s biography or portraits. Reading some of these third-rate poems sometimes leaves the impression of encountering some lofty soul pent up in a prison cell, its walls cemented over with the poet’s ineptitude and small acquaintance with the great practitioners. Or, to put it differently, one has the sense of a fire lit amid damp faggots: it gives off much smoke and all too little fire, without thereby ceasing to be the most noble element that it is. One gets the same feeling as one reads the sonnets of Michelangelo or the tragedies of Alfieri, or, if we wish to avert the academic thunders, as one reads the verse written in Italian by Milton and Goethe.

  As a consequence of one of those jokes created by the Allied air raids, which obliterate objects of value while bringing to light the contents of forgotten cubby-holes, a file in coarse blue paper was found lying amid the ruins and covered with the sad, powdery debris of buildings in ruin, and on its cover it bore the ironic (be it hoped) title “The Salina Canzoniere”. It contained a thin little sheaf printed in Palermo (by E. Pedone Lauriel, printers, 1863) and its title page read: “Ode in Exaltation of the Illustrious House of the Princes of Salina-Corbèra and in Celebration of the Fiftieth Birthday of His Excellency Don Fabrizio Corbèra, Prince of Salina etc., etc., Composed and Dedicated by the Very Reverend Father Saverio Pirrone S. J.” There followed several pages of varying format and on all manner of paper all covered in the elegant handwriting of Don Fabrizio; some thirty sonnets (twenty-seven, to be exact); then a few pages, also in the Prince’s hand, annotated at the bottom “work of dear Tancredi”.

  Here the ode by Father Pirrone is printed in full, not, be it said, for its value as poetry but because it suitably illustrates the social ambiance in which the Jesuit flaunted the modest but affecting blooms of his own eloquence.

  It is a pity, however, not to be able to publish the full tally of Don Fabrizio’s sonnets; the difficulties encountered by the claws of the Leopard in unravelling the complex prosody and metrical tangles of his day turn out to be often insurmountable. The majority of these sonnets, which must have seemed as clear as day to their author, would be wholly incomprehensible to the modern reader, so replete are they with deformities of syntax, with padding, and with either excessive or insufficient syllables. Since it would be considered disrespectful to expose a person who merits respect for so many reasons to the derision of a public that appreciates obscurity in poetry only when it is studied and not, as in the present case, owing to a lamentable difficulty of expression, it has been deemed preferable to exercise a severe censorship and to present only those few poems that are less disfigured by flaws; they will reveal an unexpected side of Don Fabrizio’s character, which it is hoped will endear him all the more to those who have laboriously plodded through the barren wastes of these pages.

  Tancredi’s verses are so few in number that it has not been necessary to choose among them; besides, their content is lighter, and they well illustrate the outwardly seductive complexion of this “hero of our redemption”.

  We must also crave the reader’s indulgence if it has been necessary to burden the text with a handful of notes indispensable to clarifying the many family and personal allusions in these little works.

  ODE IN EXALTATION OF THE ILLUSTRIOUS HOUSE OF THE PRINCES OF SALINA-CORBÈRA AND IN CELEBRATION OF THE FIFTIETH BIRTHDAY OF HIS EXCELLENCY DON FABRIZIO CORBÈRA,

  PRINCE OF SALINA, DUKE OF QUERCETA,

  MARQUIS OF DONNAFUGATA, ETC., ETC.,

  COMPOSED AND DEDICATED BY THE VERY REVEREND FATHER SAVERIO PIRRONE, S. J.

  Every beginning’s deficient

  On earth because – here is the nub –

  To make Adam some clay was sufficient,

  While the butterfly springs from a grub.

  There was Peter, a fisher by trade;

  Or think of our Blessed Messiah,

  By whom all our ransom was paid –

  He was born amid cows in a byre.

  And sacred, all-conquering Rome –

  By a peasant its boundary was traced

  (As reported in many a tome)

  When behind his crude ploughshare he paced.

  In humble Manresa, in Spain,

  In a cave that was dingy and dark

  See, a light not enkindled in vain –

  And what glory took fire from its spark!1

  Emperors, princes their peoples now leading

  As rough common brigands began,

  Coarse soldiers, devoid of all breeding,

  Untrustworthy chiefs to a man.

  But look what emerged from such sources:

  See how Time boosts their honour on high,

  As their title to fame it endorses –

  It endures as a star in the sky.

  The man who in Paris now reigns

  And the ultimate power’s contrived –

  The ancestral blood in his veins

  From some Corsican herdsman’s derived.2

  Now you, scion of the house of Salina,

  O beloved and eminent name,

  You show forth in your godlike demeanour

  Glory crowned with celestial flame.

  Once your history was known far and wide,

  And your clan had well mastered the arts,

  Then your mettle was tested and tried

  Ruling subjects and conquering hearts.

  Now, Rome’s Palatine Hill was the scene

  Where imperial Titus was drawn

  To love Berenice the Queen

  Who conceived the stock whence you are born.3

  From sacred Judaea you draw

  The love for your one God and Saviour.

  From Rome the divine comes the store

  Of your true, stern and honest behaviour.

  Your house from the very beginning

  Was by glorious amours engendered;

  For as long as this Earth keeps on spinning

  Your splendour in verse will be rendered.

  Now Cornelius solemnly stated

  In three short, elliptical words

  A base lie, one to be reprobated,

  But that strikes nonetheless woeful chords.4

  And Racine, that great poet of passion

  Whom King Louis of France did enlist –

  The
bard who in noteworthy fashion

  The heretical Jansen dismissed –

  Accorded his magical lyre

  To the tunes of those love-tales of yore,

  Singing songs for the world to admire

  And praise for their freedom from gore.5

  But see where the ungodly are nesting

  In crannies away from the light –

  Those reprobate men are suggesting:

  “The parish priest’s nowhere in sight!”

  Be their falsehoods forever exposed,

  May their lies be cast back in their faces

  And their necks in the stocks be enclosed!

  For, behold, what I’m preaching embraces

  The truth, plain, for all men to see,

  And establish it on a firm basis:

  To redeem in the highest degree

  The glorious birth of this House!

  DON FABRIZIO’S SONNETS

  Compact and smooth beneath the August glare

  The water in the cistern would appear

  To be a marble block, green and discreet,

  Last barrier to the fierce sirocco’s heat.

  But stay! A tiny fissure, and this chink

  Permits the secret treasure out to slink –

  A solitary trickle, an unsought for shimmer

  Flows out amid the pebbles in a sparkling glimmer.

  Slowly the level drops and keeps revealing

  All that is filthy slime, all one despises,

  That on the bottom lies: worms, muddy clay,

  The drowning sun’s last spasm, our unappealing

  Impotence that up to the surface rises:

  Safety we sought, but found only decay.

  When Cupid finds his way within an old man’s heart

  The Love-god gropes amid the sorry mess of thwarted

  Hopes; through buried dreams with bitter tears assorted

  He needs must force his steps; the access for his dart

  Is meanwhile blocked by mummies6 of affection wasted.7

  Then down he sits; his blindfold off, his eyes acquire

  Only an impish glint that will no more conspire

  To mock the old lascivious urge in past times tasted.

  In youth a tyrant, in age, headsman with axe and block;

  No longer herald of life but one of death’s begetters,

  He rouses horror, anguish, shame, strife without pause.

  I suffer, weep and curse, he only thinks to mock;

  He tortures me with rack and rope, binds me in fetters,

  Ruthlessly will he hound me to the nether shores.

  * * *

  1 The Poet exalts the humble origins of his Society of Jesus. It was in the cave at Manresa in Spain that Ignatius Loyola conceived the organisation of his order.

  2 The Poet here reflects the clergy’s aversion for Napoleon III, who had permitted the annexation of a great part of the Papal States to the Kingdom of Italy, and alludes to the presumption that the Emperor is of illegitimate birth.

  3 In this and the following stanzas reference is made to the tradition whereby the House of Salina derived from the love affair of the Emperor Titus and Queen Berenice.

  4 “Cornelius” here is Tacitus who, in “three brief words” (invitus invitam dimisit) summed up the drama of this romance. The poet admires them but finds them “a base lie” inasmuch as they contradict his own account whereby the lovers actually married.

  5 The reference here is to Jean Racine whom the poet, as a good Jesuit, applauds in particular for his (assumed) rejection of Jansenism. Racine’s tragedy Bérénice is praised as the mildest of those written by the French poet, and the only one free of bloodshed.

  6 Above “mummies” the author writes “spectres” but indicates no preference.

  7 Above “wasted” the author writes “expired” but indicates no preference.

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  Epub ISBN: 9781407091006

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  Published by Vintage 2007

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  Copyright © Giangiacomo Feltrinelli Editore 1958

  English translation copyright © Harvill and Pantheon Books

  Inc. 1961, 1961, 1962

  Foreword and afterword copyright © Gioacchino Lanza Tomasi 2006

  Appendix: Fragments A and B copyright © Giangiacomo

  Feltrinelli Editore 2002. All rights reserved.

  English translation of foreword and appendix copyright ©

  Guido Waldman 2007

  First published with the title Il Gattopardo in 1958 by

  Giangiacomo Feltrinelli Editore, Milan

  First published in Great Britain in 1960 by Collins Harvill

  This revised edition first published in 2006 by Giangiacomo

  Feltrinelli Editore, Milan

  This revised edition first published in Great Britain in 2007 by Vintage

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  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

  ISBN 9780099512158