In memoriam Gioacchino Lanza Tomasi (1934-2023)
Without a doubt, the remark made in his superb monograph, The Last Leopard by David Gilmour, is absolutely true: the relationship between Prince Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa and Gioacchino Lanza mirrors that of Prince Salina and the charming Prince Tancredi Falconeri. Drawing closer during the literary seminars held starting from 1953 in front of him and the future critic and literary historian Francesco Orlando, the author of The Leopard would decide to adopt Gioachino, enchanted by his intellectual qualities and noble manners. “One can see a mile away that he is a ‘gentleman,’” he would write to a friend.
We learned with sadness that this year, on May 10th, we lost a gentleman. He was not only a brilliant musicologist and Italian cultural figure, but also the most gifted ambassador of his adoptive father’s work. With remarkable modesty and tenacity, he always knew how to help us enter the fascinating Sicilian world that gave universal culture one of its most beautiful and haunting literary creations. May our good King and Lord, Jesus Christ, rest his soul in peace!
The blind navigators
When I read The Leopard for the first time, I knew from the first lines that I was holding a masterpiece in my hands. The only novel ever written by the 11th Prince of Lampedusa, Giuseppe Tomasi, appeared to me like a very rare diamond that makes any comparison impossible. The words of Giorgio Bassani, marked by a barely restrained enthusiasm, are evidence of the author’s persuasive power—that of an inborn writer and poet: “From the first page, I realized I had found myself before the work of a real writer. Reading further, I understood that this real writer was also a real poet.”
The experts of imaginary flights occasioned by diligent reading of fictions, inquisitions, or histories of infamy, whether Borgesian or not, easily discover that the novel by the Sicilian prince is the vehicle that carries you to the farthest stars. They are the constellations of a world in which the uniqueness of the characters is revealed through pathetic weaknesses and beautiful deeds and manners. Their twilight reveals to the reader that kind of clans for which Leon Battista Alberti wrote his treatise, On the Family (1441), and Baldassare Castiglione his booklet, The Book of the Courtier (1528). More than these, however, the Prince of Lampedusa’s The Leopard offers you the opportunity to participate, through the interplay of memory and imagination, in the life of an illustrious lineage.
Having myself been so moved—wounded, even—by the uniquely elegant language of this book, I erupted in fury when I first heard the novel condemned as “reactionary.” Unable to appreciate the beauty of a princely jewel, with a heart filled with proletarian envy, a comrade whose name is not worth mentioning believed he could annihilate a masterpiece on the grounds that it is not “committed literature.” The only fitting image for the two Italian publishing houses that rejected The Leopard, becoming guilty of a monstrous sin of omission, is that of ships sailing through the pitch-black night with their lights extinguished.
The late writer
A polyglot, a subtle historian of English literature, a perpetual reader, and a philocalic lover of beautiful words, Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa only began to write in the twilight of his taciturn life. The catalyst that ignited his literary gift was his participation, alongside his cousin, the poet Lucio Piccolo, in a writers’ meeting that took place in 1954 at San Pellegrino Terme. There, among peers, the prince decided to bring to fruition what he had envisioned years ago, in the summer of 1934, under the influence of his recent father’s death and readings from G. K. Chesterton and James Joyce.
Seeking to conceal his fear of failure under the guise of an improvised self-ironic detachment, he claimed his work was meant as a competition with his cousin Lucio: “Being mathematically certain that I was no more foolish [than Lucio], I sat down at my desk and wrote a novel.” Camouflaging his shyness with the same awkwardness, he told his wife, Baroness Alexandra von Wolff-Stomersee, that he wrote merely for amusement: “Je fais ça pour m’amuser.” To Pietro della Torretta, who questioned him about the motivation behind his new preoccupation, he responded rather angelically: “Enjoying myself.” And yet, it was more than that.
Similar to Socrates who, encouraged by a witty dream, composed a poem in the hours before his great departure, in the final years of his life, the prince composed a novel. Most likely involuntarily, Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa’s requiem proves that beauty always springs forth from true philosophy, which—as the divine Plato teaches us in Phaedo—is a wise preparation for death. We have Gioacchino Lanza as a witness, who, recalling his discussions with his adoptive father, asserts that “The Leopard was a preparation for a good death.” Thankfully, the hidden love of wisdom has inspired the Sicilian prince to leave us his meditations as an inheritance.
This is an abridged version of a tribute that will appear in full in our Winter 2023 print journal.
