Reading the 20th Century discussion

Elizabeth has requested a spoiler thread for our June 2019 moderator's choice book....

The Leopard by Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa

Here it is

Don't read this thread if you don't yet want to read about detailed plot points

Spoil away....

I have almost finished The Leopard now (on the last chapter), so if anyone would like to post about later plot developments, I will chime in tonight when I get back from work.

I think it's a great book, but it does feel more translated than I thought at first.

I suppose this might be slightly spoilerish - I find it interesting how in the later descriptions of Angelica and Tancredi courting, the narrator keeps jumping forwards and telling readers that their marriage will not be happy, and that in retrospect this will be the time when they were closest.

I'm not sure whether that is a spoiler or not, since the author does it, but it emphasises the fact that this is more of an arranged marriage (on both sides) than a love match.

It's a spoiler because until you've read a fair amount, the reader cannot expect to know who or even if Tancredi will marry. Of course we have to take the author's word that they are unhappy, since he does nothing to show it is so.

On Tancredi and Angelica's marriage, there is a mention in the final chapter, in brackets, that Angelica had a brief affair with Tassoni 30 years earlier.

I thought it was also stated in a roundabout way that Tancredi was having affairs with a lot of other women on their year-long honeymoon journey, but I've just checked, and this is actually in one of the "fragments" at the end, that was left out of the novel.

I have just finished the book and the extra material in the Vintage edition - I think it's a great novel with some parts which will stay in my memory.

I was surprised by the twists in the final chapter, and I feel a lot is left in doubt - did Tancredi really make up that salacious story? And was he really in love with Concetta, as she starts to think, so that he partly took up with Angelica because Concetta was so scornful to him? Working against that is the depiction we have seen earlier of his passionate attraction to Angelica, and the fact that he tries to get his friend to marry Concetta.

I think the whole portrayal of the relics incident is brilliantly done - the introduction to the Vintage edition says this is all based on fact. And then the way that the most individual relic, the stuffed dog, is thrown out too - such a poignant ending.

Interesting point about it being an arranged marriage, Val - I think there is a lot of lust, but on Tancredi's part it seems to be very much bound up with the money.

Judy wrote: "Interesting point about it being an arranged marriage, Val - I think there is a lot of lust, but on Tancredi's part it seems to be very much bound up with the money."

Oh yes. Tancredi would not marry just anyone, she had to be someone with money. Just as Angelica wanted a title, or as close to one as money could buy.

Today's D-Day commemorations remind me, I was interested to see that the last chapter of The Leopard, set in 1910, mentions a reunion for the 50th anniversary of Garibaldi's 'Expedition of the Thousand', with veterans travelling to Sicily from all over Italy.

It makes me wonder how far back this type of commemoration ceremony goes?

The earliest one I can think of at the moment is Quatorze Juillet ('Bastille Day'), but there are probably earlier ones.

Independence Day (USA) has been celebrated for longer (Wikipedia), as it was designated as a National Day even before official independence.

I marked not a few places in this. Toward the beginning of Part 3, Don Fabrizio has worries.

In former years there had been far fewer bothers, and anyway his stay at Donnafugata had always been a period of rest; his worries used to drop their rifles, disperse into crags of the valleys and settle down there quietly, so intent on munching bread and cheese that their warlike uniforms were forgotten and they could be mistaken for inoffensive peasants. This year, though, they had all stayed on parade in a body, like mutinous troops shouting and brandishing weapons, arousing, in his home, the dismay of a Colonel who has given the order "Fall out" only to find his battalion standing there in closer and more threatening order than ever.

I was struck by his use of analogy without actually using the word "like". I don't think this was done by the translator. Further, of course, the analogy is military and warlike, just like the times.

Thanks for mentioning Bastille Day and Independence Day, Val.

I also wonder when the first events were that veterans travelled back for in any numbers.

There were various gatherings on the major anniversaries of the Battle of Gettysburg where the two sides met where they previously battled. There is some film of the 50th and 75th anniversaries. I think it was included in the PBS show of Ken Burns' The Civil War.

We have Civil War re-enactments here and two societies who organise them, but they are C20th.

Elizabeth (Alaska) wrote: "I marked not a few places in this. Toward the beginning of Part 3, Don Fabrizio has worries.
In former years there had been far fewer bothers, and anyway his stay at Donnafugata had always been a p..."

I'm marking things too. I loved the bit a few pages into section 2 about Don Fabrizio's unpleasant early morning musings and how he realizes "that deep inside him they left a sediment of grief which, accumulating day by day, would in the end be the real cause of his death." I'm relishing the quality of the writing/translation more than I thought I would.

A few comments on finishing:

1. My memory is that Tancredi was in love with Angelica, more than she was with him. I presume Tancredi had affairs, as Don Fabrizio did, because that it what a strong powerful man in Sicilian culture did. There was also room in Tancredi's passionate heart for a bit of love for Concetta too.
2. I entered the last 2 chapters with trepidation as I don't normally like time jumps, let alone one of 26 years and then 22 years. Yet, I thought Don Fabrizio's death scene one of the best death bed depictions I've ever read.
3. With the last chapter, I had the additional trepidation that I didn't think I knew the 3 sisters well enough to end the story with them. Yet, again, I greatly enjoyed the chapel/relics/dead dog passages. I had no problem with the emphasis on Conchetta and her relations to her sisters, the Church and Angelica. It was an appropriate ending to the story of the decline of the nobility.
4. At story's end, I had the same wistful feeling I recently experienced reading about the end of the Trotta family and the Austrian/Hungary empire in Joseph Roth's The Radetzky March. The Leopard book and ending were effective.
5. The quality of the last 2 chapters, along with Don Fabrizio's conversation with Chevalley, compensated for the fact that the descriptive prose had my mind often drifting during the first two thirds of the novel, and raised my ultimate rating from 3 to 4 stars.

Brian wrote: "5. The quality of the last 2 chapters, along with Don Fabrizio's conversation with Chevalley, compensated for the fact that the descriptive prose had my mind often drifting during the first two thirds of the novel, and raised my ultimate rating from 3 to 4 stars. "

You mentioned this conversation a couple of times. I failed to notice a Chevalley or any such conversation. I was disappointed in the last 2 chapters, thinking they added nothing and were due in large part to my downgrading the novel to just 3 measly stars. I liked the prose, which I thought redeemed it.

It's interesting how readers can have such different responses to the same work.

Like Brian, I also thought the last two chapters were excellent and upgraded the novel for me - I liked the way the very last chapter rewrote, or at least questioned, the past.

I've just checked back, as I didn't remember the name either, and Chevalley is the government representative who wants Don Fabrizio to accept a seat in the senate - a powerful passage, I agree. Fabrizio's level of disillusionment comes out when he won't consider the role.

Mary wrote: "I loved the bit a few pages into section 2 about Don Fabrizio's unpleasant early morning musings and how he realizes "that deep inside him they left a sediment of grief which, accumulating day by day, would in the end be the real cause of his death."

That was a brilliant line, I agree. The translator for this, Archibald Colquhoun, is such a fine writer himself.

Yes, it is interesting, Elizabeth. Your reaction to the last 2 chapters is what I expected my reaction would be. Somehow we balanced things out, though, since the end raised my probable 3 star rating to 4 stars and your probable 4 star rating down to 3 stars.

It was the total lack of story that down graded it for me. I could find nothing to justify the demise of the family. If I had not taken the time to read the introduction and the wikipedia entry about the time period, I would have been completely lost. The author obviously thought anyone reading it would understand what happened in Sicily at the time so it wasn't necessary to write that into the pages.

There is a new fictional biography out. Lampedusa by Steven Price.

In sun-drenched Sicily, among the decadent Italian aristocracy of the late 1950s, Giuseppe Tomasi, the last prince of Lampedusa, struggles to complete the novel that will be his lasting legacy, The Leopard. With a firm devotion to the historical record, Lampedusa leaps effortlessly into the mind of the writer and inhabits the complicated heart of a man facing down the end of his life, struggling to make something of lasting worth, while there is still time.

Achingly beautiful and elegantly conceived, Steven Price's new novel is an intensely moving story of one man's awakening to the possibilities of life, intimately woven against the transformative power of a great work of art.