It’s been a good morning on two fronts (base and elevated) – firstly the bathroom scales displayed 74.6kg, so a month late, I’ve hit my 2015 goal of getting under 75kg. And I had a bit of time free before coming into work, so I finished off an Italian novel; ‘The Leopard’ by Guiseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa. There’s something special about finishing a novel and still getting into the office by 7am.
I’d never heard of ‘The Leopard’ until about 18 months ago when I read ‘How to be well read’ by John Sutherland, which consists of lots of different pen portraits of the great works of literature (I think he covers about 500). Sutherland was profuse in his praise for ‘The Leopard’, which was interesting as I’d never heard of the book or indeed heard it being referenced. Hearing about an amazing (and yes, short) novel attracted my curiosity. It is an incredible book, telling the story of a noble Sicilian family around the time of the creation of Italy (1860s, Garibaldi et al). It’s witty and very moving.
I haven’t delved much into Italian culture – but from the little I’ve seen (‘The Leopard’, and films like ‘Dolce Vita’ and ‘The Great Beauty’), there seems to be a common set of themes – of past greatness, nostalgia, worship of high culture, the Catholic church, aesthetic/erotic pleasures, and decline. Admittedly my sample size is not large for these generalizations. In other literary cultures, I’d most compare the spirit to the one you find in ‘Brideshead Revisited’ or ‘One hundred years of solitude’.
I’ve spent very little time in Italy: a few brief hops over the border from Switzerland, and a week hitch-hiking from Ancona to Florence in 1999. The beauty of even the most simple dwellings makes it a country I definitely want to spend more time visiting in the future.
I leave you with three quotes from ‘The Leopard’ (I’ve only just figured out Kindle highlights):
« The two young people looked at the picture with complete lack of interest. For both of them death was purely an intellectual concept, a facet of knowledge as it were and no more, not an experience which pierced the marrow of their bones. Death, oh, yes, it existed of course, but was something that happened to others. The thought occurred to Don Fabrizio that it was inner ignorance of this supreme consolation which makes the young feel sorrows much more sharply than the old; the latter are nearer the safety exit. »
« free as he was from the shackles imposed on many other men by honesty, decency and plain good manners, he moved through the forest of life with the confidence of an elephant which advances in a straight line, rooting up trees and trampling down lairs, without even noticing scratches of thorns and moans from the crushed. »
« They were the most moving sight there, two young people in love dancing together, blind to each other’s defects, deaf to the warnings of fate, deluding themselves that the whole course of their lives would be as smooth as the ballroom floor, unknowing actors set to play the parts of Juliet and Romeo by a director who had concealed the fact that tomb and poison were already in the script. Neither was good, each self-interested, turgid with secret aims; yet there was something sweet and touching about them both; those murky but ingenuous ambitions of theirs were obliterated by the words of jesting tenderness he was murmuring in her ear, by the scent of her hair, by the mutual clasp of those bodies destined to die. »