Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa (1896-1957)
Daniela Shalom Vagata
Novelist.
Active 1926-1957 in Italy
Much of what can be highlighted in a first encounter with Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa, the internationally
renowned writer of Il Gattopardo [The Leopard], is the impact of the aristocratic world on his oeuvre. Direct
experiences, vital memories and countless anecdotes are filtered through the writer’s imagination and distilled
into his writing. Even so, Francesco Orlando -- who at the age of twenty benefited from Tomasi di Lampedusa’s
lessons on French and English literature, attended the reading of Il Gattopardo during its writing process and
typed out part of the book under the writer’s dictation -- warns that a strict correspondence between the author’s
life and work should not be presumed.
Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa was born into an aristocratic family in Palermo in 1896. He was a descendent of
the Tasca di Cutò family on his mother’s side. His mother, the charming and educated Beatrice Mastrogiovanni
Tasca di Cutò, received an international education from her own mother, one which was open to external
influences and was vastly distinct from the zealously religious one typical of Sicily at the time. Accordingly, an
interest in foreign languages and literature was transmitted to the author of Il Gattopardo very early on. On his
father’s side, Giuseppe is linked to saints, mystics and virtuous aristocrats such as Cardinal Giuseppe Tomasi, ‘Il
Duca-Santo’, Carlo Tomasi and Beata Corbera, as well as the writer’s great-grandfather Fabrizio, an astronomy
aficionado who provided a source of inspiration for the character of Don Fabrizio. As was the case with many
aristocratic Sicilian families, Tomasi di Lampedusa’s family assets experienced a rapid decline at the end of the
nineteenth century. His father, the Duke of Palma, was a fashionable man in spite of his patrimonial misfortune,
however, and regularly attended Circolo Bellini, a gentlemen’s club in Palermo mentioned in several of Tomasi
di Lampedusa’s works.
At the turn of the century, Palermo was one of the leading cities of the Belle Epoque, exotic and cosmopolitan:
the famed poet Gabriele D’Annunzio nicknamed it ‘Palermo Felicissima’. Aristocrats, monarchs and emperors
from northern Europe and the Balkans visited Palermo as guests of the notable industrialist Ignazio Florio and
his beautiful wife Franca. Giovanni Boldini’s portrait of Franca Florio, Ritratto di donna Franca Florio
(1901-1924) [Portrait of Mrs. Franca Florio]; Raleigh Trevelyan’s Princes Under the Volcano (1973), a
fragmentized history of the upper reaches of the English society living in Sicily; and Fulco Santostefano della
Cerda’s memoirs, The Happy Summer Days. A Sicilian Childhood (1976) recorded the splendors of the time.
Fulco Santostefano, Duke della Verdura and Marquis della Cerda, an acclaimed jewelry designer for Coco
Chanel, played a role in familiarizing Sicilians (among them Tomasi di Lampedusa) with French intellectuals
and writers such as Valéry, Cocteau, Gide, Jacob and Radiguet. This period was later described by the writer as
happy and carefree in his memoir Ricordi d’infanzia [Childhood Memories].
In the preface of Letteratura francese [French Literature], written by the writer’s adopted son Gioacchino Lanza
Tomasi, Tomasi di Lampedusa is described as having led a secluded and solitary life. “With the exception of the
time he lived at the Italian embassy in London and some trips to Paris during his childhood, Tomasi di
Lampedusa led a secluded life similar to the one of all Southern aristocrats which was cut off from emerging
society at the fall of the protection provided by the reign of the Bourbons” (Tomasi di Lampedusa, Opere, p.
1338). This brief summary, however, does not touch upon his travels to Germany, his stays in Rome and in the
north of Italy during his time at the university, his military service and participation in World War I, or his brief
career in the Red Cross. It also does not mention his meeting with the aristocratic psychoanalyst Alexandra von
Wolff-Stomersee, from Latvia, in 1925 and their subsequent marriage in 1932, the destruction of Palazzo
Lampedusa in Palermo due to an American bomb in 1943 (see Tomasi di Lampedusa, p. 346), and his relocation
to a palace in Via Butera, Palermo, from 1949, where he lived alongside his wife. Tomasi di Lampedusa and his
wife had lived separately, meeting only a few times a year, until the end of World War II, when she moved to
Palermo permanently.
Tomasi di Lampedusa did not have any real contact with the literary world until 1954, when he accompanied his
cousin, the poet Lucio Piccolo, to a literary awards ceremony in San Pellegrino Terme. At the ceremony, Tomasi
di Lampedusa had the opportunity to meet several key literary figures of the time, including the writer Eugenio
Montale and the critic Emilio Cecchi. It is said that Tomasi di Lampedusa embarked on the composition of Il
Gattopardo and of other written texts as a creative exploit.
Tomasi di Lampedusa’s education, taste, reading, travels and love are recorded in his letters addressed to his
cousins Lucio and Casimiro Piccolo, and to Alexandra Wolff. Part of the letters addressed to Alexandra, whom
the writer affectionately called Licy, are published in Lettere a Licy. Un matrimonio epistolare. Giuseppe Tomasi
di Lampedusa e Alexandra Tomasi Wolff (1986) [Letters to Licy. An Epistolary Marriage. Giuseppe Tomasi di
Lampedusa and Alexandra Wolff] and in Licy e il Gattopardo. Lettere d’amore di Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa
(1995) [Licy and the Leopard. Love Letters by Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa], while their entire
correspondence, comprising more than four hundred letters, was donated to ASPI (Archivio storico della
psicologia italiana) [Historical Archive of Italian Psychology] by Gioacchino Lanza Tomasi. Beyond providing
information on Tomasi di Lampedusa’s life, the letters to Alexandra Wolff show the author’s reluctance to
express passion: Caterina Cardona, curator of Lettere a Licy, points out what may be described as a ‘screened
approach’ to intense emotions. Additionally, the letters document Alexandra Wolff’s own psychoanalytic
activities and both Giuseppe’s and Alexandra’s difficulties in living together after their marriage.
The letters to his cousins, conversely, were mainly written while Tomasi di Lampedusa was living in London
from 1925 to 1930 and are now collected in a volume entitled Viaggio in Europa (2006). In Viaggio in Europa,
intertextual aspects of Tomasi di Lampedusa’s work as well as an abundance of literary allusions can be clearly
observed. These letters demonstrate the author’s extraordinary knowledge of Italian, French and English
literature, as well as his preference for allusive and subtle style. Moreover, Viaggio in Europa reveals Il
Gattopardo’s stylistic, inventive and figurative roots. Tomasi di Lampedusa used to sign his letters as “il mostro”
(the monster), recalling both his tremendous thirst for reading and his enormous size. “Il mostro” is a fictitious
identity that allows the writer to talk about himself from a distance. Additionally, these letters display Tomasi di
Lampedusa’s passion for cinema and his fascination with metropolises and their crowds, both considered the
epitome of modernity.
Tomasi di Lampedusa produced three articles in his youth. These were published in Le opere e i giorni [Works
and Days], a monthly magazine from Genova, and are titled Paul Morand (May 1926), W. B. Yeats e il
risorgimento irlandese [W. B. Yeats and the Irish Renaissance] (November 1926) and Una storia della fama di
Cesare [A story of Cesar’s Fame] (March-April 1927). These articles appear to be “summaries” and
“encyclopedia-like entries” (Tomasi di Lampedusa, Opere, p. 457), and they are vastly different from the
subjective critical readings that Tomasi di Lampedusa would later give on English and French literature.
Aside from the articles in Le opere e i giorni and the collection of letters, there is no other evidence of Tomasi di
Lampedusa’s literary activity until 1953. At the end of 1953, on Alexandra Wolff’s suggestion, Tomasi di
Lampedusa started to give informal lessons in English grammar, followed by lessons in British literature and
later French literature, to Francesco Orlando. These lessons, held in Tomasi di Lampedusa’s palace, were
conceived for Francesco Orlando and occasionally attended by a small public (among them Gioacchino Lanza,
who was also allowed to read Tomasi di Lampedusa’s notes in private, Gioacchino’s fiancé Mirella Radice,
Francesco Agnello and Antonio Pasqualino). Before his classes, Tomasi di Lampedusa would write pages of
notes, which, however, lack a definitive revision. These were read by Francesco Orlando during his classes.
According to Gioacchino Lanza Tomasi, his lessons “represent the broadest and the most meaningful document
of Lampedusa’s life and world” (Tomasi di Lampedusa, Opere, p. 549).
The lessons in English literature appear to be divided into five sections and are in chronological order. Tomasi di
Lampedusa undertook hundreds of direct readings (his library counted almost 4000 volumes) and used reference
books such as The Concise Cambridge History of English Literature (1949) and Fifty Years of English Literature
1900-1950 (1953), parts of which were translated, summarized and edited. Furthermore, suggestions regarding
book editions emerged in his lessons. Letteratura inglese shows a special documentary interest in historical
background, literary epochs, the arts and the history of fashion and society as well as Tomasi di Lampedusa’s
inclination towards finding connections between different writers. Letteratura inglese cover a wide range of
authors, both major and minor, from Geoffry Chaucer and William Shakespeare to James Joyce and Virginia
Woolf, though Tomasi di Lampedusa did complain about the lack of contemporary fiction. Tomasi di
Lampedusa’s lessons in English literature pay special attention to the authors’ lives and demonstrate his ability to
convert writers’ anecdotes into a fictional story based on the stylistic traits of hyperbole and amplification.
Letteratura inglese provides readers with a valuable insight into Tomasi di Lampedusa’s writing methods. It
illustrates the writer’s concern with narratological questions related to spatial and temporal compression; analysis
of rhythm and sound meanings; preference for falsification, verisimilitude, anecdotes and digressions; use of
jargon; continuous references to his audience and contemporary events; stylistic fluidity; and an abundance of
irony. Many of these stylistic features recur in Il Gattopardo.
If Letteratura inglese demonstrates Tomasi di Lampedusa’s profound knowledge of literature, society and culture,
the “connective tissue” that unites all writers, Letteratura francese reviews only major French authors, sixteenthcentury
literature and Stendhal. His analysis of Stendhal’s work in particular provides a vital clue to the
composition of Il Gattopardo, especially in evoking atmosphere, portraying characters through their actions and
perceptions, and inviting readers to co-experience characters’ points of view. Tomasi di Lampedusa’s
considerations of Stendhal’s work appeared under the title “Lezioni su Stendhal” [Lessons on Stendhal] in the
magazine Paragone, in April 1959, published by Sellerio in 1977. A detailed look at “Lezioni su Stendhal” is
pivotal in gaining an understanding of Il Gattopardo.
Firstly, according to Tomasi di Lampedusa, Stendhal’s conciseness is to be ascribed to the practice of eliminating
a prior abundance of ideas and memories, namely a mental process that transforms memories of the past into
new impressions ready to be written. After all, it is no coincidence that Tomasi di Lampedusa mentioned Vie de
Henry Brulard at the beginning of Ricordi d’infanzia in a paragraph concerning the immediacy and sincerity of
his feelings, his sensual memories and his attempt to be essential (see Tomasi di Lampedusa, Opere, p. 337). At
this point, one should take into account Tomasi di Lampedusa’s stylistic division of writers into “scrittori magri”
[“lean writers”] and “scrittori grassi” [“plump writers”]: “lean writers” being identified by implicitness and
conciseness and “plump writers” by verbal abundance and explicitness. While Stendhal belongs to the group of
“lean” writers, Tomasi di Lampedusa is peculiar in the sense that, although his sophisticated use of tropes would
render him a “plump writer”, he is implicit nonetheless.
Secondly, Tomasi di Lampedusa draws attention to Stendhal’s ability to evoke rather than describe atmosphere,
places and temporality. This practice is comparable to that of the theatre, in which sensations, gestures,
physiognomy and silence play an important role, while setting could be likened to a mise en scene, which silently
reinforces the characters’ actions and the plot. A prior evocation of place helps readers to fully visualize the set
where the action will take place. Tomasi di Lampedusa’s considerations on Stendhal’s style show his affinity to
filmic language and reflect Tomasi di Lampedusa’s interest in cinema.
Furthermore, Tomasi di Lampedusa tracks references to the present day as well as the use of anecdotes and
fables in Stendhal’s novels. He also draws attention to the distinction between narrating time and narrated time,
pauses and accelerations in narration, and to variable internal focalizations. Significantly, in Chartreuse, the
observational center is identified as being with the character leading the narrative flow. As a result, the narrator,
characters and reader experience the same point of view, while narrative facts are told from an internal
perspective. In 1956, lessons in French literature gradually gave way to Orlando’s reading and typing of Il
Gattopardo.
The writing of Il Gattopardo dates back to the final months of 1954. Its composition can be divided into three
stages: a first draft of the manuscript written in 1955-1956; a subsequent typescript divided into six parts and
typed by Francesco Orlando under the author’s dictation from the beginning of 1956 (including parts one to four,
seven and eight); and a final but unfinished handwritten copy in eight parts, created by Tomasi di Lampedusa in
1957 and entitled Il Gattopardo (completo). As specified in the volume of Opere, the word “part” in lieu of the
word “chapter” suggests a separate story, each being told from a different perspective (Tomasi di Lampedusa,
Opere, p. 6). Each part is, in fact, autonomous. Initially, Lampedusa intended to write a story about the Prince
Don Fabrizio, based on the life of his great-grandfather, astronomer Prince Giulio di Lampedusa, and occurring
within a timeframe of 24 hours on the day of Garibaldi’s landing at Marsala, similar to the 24 hours of James
Joyce’s Ulysses. The writer later split the novel into three fundamental phases: 1860-1862 (first six parts), 1983
(death of Don Fabrizio, part seven), and 1910 (Concetta’s memories, part eight).
The story of the composition of Il Gattopardo is tightly bound to the story of its publication and rejection from
the leading publishers Einaudi and Mondadori due to writer Elio Vittorini’s editorial misjudgment. Il Gattopardo
was published in 1958 by Feltrinelli, as one of their “Contemporanei” titles, and was edited by writer Giorgio
Bassani. Bassani had received a draft copy from Elena Croce, daughter of the philosopher Benedetto Croce,
based on the typed draft in six parts written in 1956. Bassani integrated this draft with another part (“The Ball
Episode”, part six), a combination of the copy typed out by Alexandra Wolff under the writer’s dictation during
the last month of his life and the manuscript of 1957, with an additional one (“Holidays of Chaplain Pirrone”,
part five), based on the handwritten text from 1957, which Bassani discovered in 1958 when he went to Palermo
to find the novel’s sources. Bassani proofread the typewritten draft of the manuscript, changing a large quantity
of variants and correcting punctuation, and he copied the index summary of each part. In 1968, critic Carlo
Muscetta raised doubts about the authenticity of Il Gattopardo under Bassani’s editing and a new edition of the
novel based on the manuscript of 1957 was published by Feltrinelli. An overview of these variations is discussed
in Gioacchino Lanza Tomasi’s foreword of the novel included in Opere, which reviews the novel according to the
manuscript from 1957. Il Gattopardo became an Italian bestseller immediately after its publication, winning the
Strega Prize in 1959. Il Gattopardo as well as Tomasi di Lampedusa’s biography inspired different films. In
1963, Luchino Visconti created his remarkable cinematic version of Il Gattopardo, while in 2000 Il manoscritto
del principe, a film by Roberto Andò on Tomasi di Lampedusa’s relationship with his two young pupils, was
released.
Il Gattopardo depicts the disappearance of the aristocracy and suggests a sense of disillusionment and skepticism
regarding the unification of Italy. More specifically, it tells the story of the decline and eventual fall of the
aristocratic house of Salina and its last real scion, Don Fabrizio, prince of Salina. Don Fabrizio’s story intersects
with the ambitions of his favorite nephew, Tancredi, who, in need of money, marries the beautiful and sensual
Angelica, daughter of the social climber Don Calogero Sedara.
Il Gattopardo can be analyzed in cinematographic terms. On a first reading, the vanishing aristocratic society
seems to be narrated from the perspective of Don Fabrizio, Prince of Salina. A deeper analysis of the story,
however, reveals that the narrative does not strictly coincide with Don Fabrizio’s perspective, but rather appears
to employ multiple focal points. This may be compared to a photographic lens: at times the lens takes close-ups
of the fictional world of Il Gattopardo and presents Don Fabrizio’s view and ideology, while in other moments it
becomes distant, resulting in a feeling of the readers’ estrangement and even alienation from the narrative. The
lens draws readers closer at a narrative level through the means of interior monologues, direct dialogue and free
indirect speech, while at a stylistic and linguistic level, a zoom is created through the recourse to adjectives
corresponding to the character’s perspective, the use of hypocorism, augmentatives, enumerations and linguistic
mimesis. The presence of flashbacks and leitmotifs, as well as the practice of correlative objects and of personal
symbolism, also contribute to this effect and play a role in creating an internalized depiction of places in addition
to forging a symbolic net that gradually reveals the novel’s ideology. Conversely, distance is created through the
means of irony, extra-diegetic voice often put in parenthesis, the narrator’s references to his present time and to
the practice of writing, his habit of addressing readers directly, and the misappropriation of words to the point in
which they lose their original meanings in a kind of “semantic stretch”. As a result of these two opposing
movements, the novel suggests that an objective representation of the fictional world is impossible.
This interplay between magnification and distance also reveals the coexistence of two contrasting temporal
concepts. In Il Gattopardo, the linear and diegetic time of history, including the depiction of the aristocracy’s
collapse, with the disappearance of its traditions and rituals, coexists with the circular time of the novel’s
narrative. The novel ends up questioning the truth of what happened fifty years beforehand. Similarly, circular
time can be seen in Don Fabrizio’s desire for temporal immutability and the halting of social change. This desire,
however, results in inertia and inactivity, and, eventually, an intimate yearning for death. Romano Luperini (see
p. 145) refers to Don Fabrizio’s unresponsiveness to social transformation through the quote “e persistenza è solo
l’estinzione” [“And persistence is only extinction”] from a verse of Eugenio Montale’s “Piccolo Testamento”
[“Little Testament”], in Bufera e altro [The Storm and Other Poems] (1956). Don Fabrizio’s unwillingness to
accept the course of history mirrors that of Tomasi di Lampedusa himself. Il Gattopardo, together with La sirena
[The Professor and the Siren] and Ricordi d’infanzia, should ultimately be considered the writer’s creative
anticipation of death. Despite the fact that Tomasi di Lampedusa did not know he was ill until the end of his
novel’s composition, Il Gattopardo is rich with references to death and decay. The mysterious flow of time that
inevitably leads to the end of life is converted into an act of writing.
As previously mentioned, in addition to Il Gattopardo, Tomasi di Lampedusa wrote a series of texts which come
under the title I racconti [Short Stories] from 1955. First published in 1961 by Feltrinelli, a critical edition only
appeared in 1988. I racconti includes Ricordi d’infanzia (1955), childhood recollections centered on the houses in
which he lived while growing up; two shorts stories, La gioia e la legge [Joy and the Law] (1956), the story of a
poor clerk dealing with his patronage and social status, and La sirena (1956-1957), also known as Lighea,
according to the title given by the author’s widow, which recounts the encounter between the young professor La
Ciura and a mermaid; and the first chapter of a second novel he intended to title I gattini ciechi [The Blind
Kittens] (1957), based on the rise of the Ibba family from share-cropper status to landowners.
There are strong intertextual connections between I racconti and Il Gattopardo, as Salvatore Silvano Nigro has
pointed out in his Il principe fulvo [The Reddish Brown Prince]. These are particularly noticeable in La sirena and
I gattini ciechi. The extensive use of rhetorical figures, attention to characters’ physical expression and the
practice of a hyperbolic strategy in La gioia e la legge and I gattini ciechi are all devices employed within Il
Gattopardo. Equally important is the use of multiple focal points through which readers experience alternate
perspectives on the theme of primacy based on latifundium. I gattini ciechi is set at the beginning of the twentieth
century, eighteen years after Don Fabrizio’s death. Some characters, moreover, correspond to those in Il
Gattopardo.
The novella La sirena displays thematic affinities with Il Gattopardo rather than stylistic ones. For instance, Don
Fabrizio’s death, represented as a sensual meeting with a young woman alluded to as the planet Venus, resembles
Professor La Ciura’s erotic encounter with the siren. The siren is represented either as a meridian demon or a
nymph. Given that traditionally meridian demons “possess” humans, causing acedia (a mixture of melancholy
and sloth), the siren creates an intense longing for death in La Ciura’s heart. This desire ultimately results in his
joining the immutable order of nature and going beyond human temporality. Additionally, La sirena and Il
Gattopardo both share the theme of aristocratic privilege as well as the oppositions of mortality and immortality,
time flow and eternity, form and formlessness, chaos and order. These oppositions are relevant in understanding
Lampedusa’s symbolic representation of Sicily as a land of gods: a symbol of human aspiration to the eternal.
Ricordi d’infanzia was written after Lampedusa’s journey to southern Sicily in 1955, with particular reference to
the towns Santa Margherita di Belice and Palma di Montechiaro, which once served as a feudal base for Tomasi
di Lampedusa’s family. The journey provided Tomasi di Lampedusa with creative input for the composition of Il
Gattopardo, in particular for the ball episode in Palazzo Ponteleone. The prose of d’infanzia is fragmentary. It
recounts bodily (especially acoustic and visual) impressions of the writer’s childhood, such as the vastness of the
palace in which he used to live, the dazzling Sicilian light and his parents’ reactions to the death of King
Umberto I. Much attention is given to sensations in d’infanzia, reinforcing the idea that Stendhal’s method of
creative writing served as a model for Tomasi di Lampedusa.
Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa died of lung cancer at the age of sixty in July 1957. He never knew of the
enormous success that Il Gattopardo would achieve after its publication.
Note: The author wishes to thank Gabriella Page for her valuable assistance with the English language.
English language editions of Tomasi di Lampedusa’s works
Childhood Memories and Other Stories, translated by Stephen Parkin, foreword by Ian Thomson, edited by
Gioacchino Lanza Tomasi and Alessandro Gallenzi. Richmond, Surrey, UK: Alma Classics, 2013.
The Leopard, translated by Archibald Colquhoun; foreword and appendix by Gioacchino Lanza Tomasi,
translated by Guido Waldman. New York: Pantheon, 2007.
Letters form London and Europe (1925-30), edited and with an introduction by Gioacchino Lanza Tomasi,
translated by J.G. Nichols, foreword by Francesco da Mosto. Richmond, Surrey, UK: Alma Books, 2010.
Works Cited
Luperini, Romano. “Il ‘gran signore’ e il dominio della temporalita. Saggio su Tomasi di Lampedusa”. Allegoria
IX (1997): 135-45.
Nigro, Salvatore Silvano. Il principe fulvo. Palermo: Sellerio, 2012.
Tomasi di Lampedusa, Giuseppe. Opere. Introduction by Gioacchino Lanza Tomasi. I racconti, Letteratura
inglese, Letteratura francese. Ed. Nicoletta Polo. Milan: Mondadori, I Meridiani, 1996 (second edition).
---. Lettere a Licy. Un matrimonio epistolare. Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa e Alessandra Tomasi Wolff. Ed.
Caterina Cardona. Palermo: Sellerio, 1987.
---. Licy e il Gattopardo. Lettere d’amore di Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa. Ed. Sabinio Caronia. Rome: Edizioni
Associate, 1995.
---. Viaggio in Europa. Epistolario 1925-1930. Eds. Salvatore Silvano Nigro and Gioacchino Lanza Tomasi.
Milan: Mondadori, 2006.
Citation: Vagata, Daniela Shalom. "Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa". The Literary Encyclopedia. First
published 12 November 2019 [https://www.litencyc.com, accessed 20 November 2020.]
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