The Last Leopard: A Life of Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa [Hardcover]

David Gilmour (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 23, 1991

David Gilmour's biography of Giuseppe di Lampedusa unearths the life story of the creator of The Leopard, one of the great novels of the twentieth century. A book whose imagery, once tasted, haunts the reader forever, The Leopard describes the golden era of nineteenth-century Sicily: its sensual, fading, aristocratic glory and its corruption, brutality, and inequality lurking beneath the surface. Who wrote this masterpiece, this work of art? The answer is as unlikely as one might hope. A fascinating meditation on what it is that makes a writer.

--This text refers to the Paperback edition.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

At age 47 Giuseppe Tomasi, prince of Lampedusa (1896-1957), still slept in the bedrom where he had been born. The abnormally taciturn recluse, who mined the history of his Sicilian aristocratic family in its ruinous decline for his classic novel The Leopard , had a "vexatious, disappointing and often pathetic life." His arrogant, sharp-tongued father, fueled by a ridiculous sense of pride, spent much of his life quarreling with relatives over money. Lampedusa's domineering mother nearly wrecked her son's marriage to psychoanalyst Beatrice Mastrogiovanni, a largely epistolary relationship for years at a stretch. In this elegant, sprightly biography, Gilmour ( Lebanon: The Fractured Country ) draws an incisive portrait of a curious modernist outsider deeply skeptical of all human motives. Lampedusa's fictional counterpart, Don Fabrizio, The Leopard 's protagonist, likewise seems a contemporary figure swinging from hedonistic pursuits to the contemplation of eternity without a personal God. Photos.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

Lampedusa's great novel The Leopard ( LJ 6/1/60) was accepted and published to international acclaim only after its author's death. Lampedusa had led a largely uneventful existence as a minor member of the Italian aristocracy, and his life reads at times like one long preparation for his novel, which in many senses it was. Besides establishing the sometimes meager biographical record, Gilmour analyzes The Leopard in historical and aesthetic context and examines the surprising controversy its publication generated in Italian literary circles. This book, the only one in English on Lampedusa, is recommended for collections of modern continental literature.
-Grove Koger, Boise P.L., Id.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 223 pages
• Publisher: Pantheon (July 23, 1991)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0679401830
• ISBN-13: 978-0679401834
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.6 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,203,523 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

25 of 25 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Something of the Hero, September 9, 2005

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Buce (Palookaville) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Last Leopard: A Life of Giuseppe Tomasi Di Lampedusa (Paperback)

This biography of Giuseppe di Lampedusa is a fine book in its own right, but its greater merit is the way it illuminates both the novel and the movie that remain as the legacy of di Lampedusa's career. Aside, perhaps, for his friends and neighbors, we wouldn't remember him at all were it not as the author of "The Leopard," not published until after his death, but in time to emerge as perhaps the best-known Italian novel of the 20th Century.

Most people, whether or not they have ever heard of the novel, will recognize it (if at all) in the form of Burt Lancaster, swooping around the ballroom floor in Visconti's great movie. It's wonderful fun but it is doubly misleading. Lancaster persists in our mind as the picture of what we want an aristocrat to be: lean and strapping, dignified and austere. A careful reading of the novel will remind us that this was never quite what di Lampedusa had in mind: his own fictional account of his princely great-grandfather is far more nuanced and ironic.

Yet even in the novel, something of the hero remains. Turn now to the first page of the photo insert after page 114: here we see the prince himself, Giulio Tomasi, Prince of Lampedusa. And what an unsettling revalation emerges. He is sturdy (fat?) and he projects an air of dignity. Or tries to: but on anything more than a glance, we see that he is shy, tentative, and perhaps half bewildered at his own position. And the muttonchop sideburns: perhaps they made sense in his time, but for the contemporary observer, they can't be anything more than absurd.

Tactfully but inescapably, Gilmour in his text acknowledges the truth of the portrait. Prince Giulo "had some of the despotic qualities of his fictional counterpart," by Gilmour's account. "Yet on the whole," Gilmour continues "he appears a milder, weaker and more insignificant person..." The Prince was "not interested in politics," and his achievements in astronomy were "insubstantial."

The novelist's portrait, then, is not a likeness. Better to describe it as the vision of an astonished child. It is nonetheless gripping for that; yet one cannot help but wonder how much of the reality the reader of the novel (much less the moviegoer) really understands. In a remarkable essay essay (which Gilmour substantially reprints here), di Lampedusa himself rails against what he calls the "infection" of Italian opera. And not just in itself: rather, di Lampedusa argues, opera has inflicted great damage on Italian public life. "Saturated and swollen-hearted by ... noisy foolishness," says di Lampedusa (quoted by Gilmour), "the Italians sincerely believed that they knew everything."

No one would say that "The Leopard" is "noisy foolishness." But reading Gilmour, we have to conclude that di Lampedusa's portrait of his ancestral homeland romanticizes history in its own way. It is to Gilmour's great credit that he sets the record straight, not with sensationalism, but steadily and unblinkingly, as the homage history pays to art.

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great Insight!, February 5, 2009

By 

Alan G. Hartman "Alan G. H." (Boston, MA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Last Leopard: A Life of Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa (Paperback)

This book presents the reader a well rounded and very insightful look into Giuseppe Tomassi di Lampedusa. It was great!