The Leopard

“It was against them really that the bonfires were lit on the hills, stoked by men who were themselves very like those living in the monasteries below, as fanatical, as self-absorbed, as avid for power or rather for the idleness which was, for them, the purpose of power.”

The rebels in the hills light visible bonfires, making no attempt to hide themselves from the people they seek to overthrow. They are, in effect, not really seeking revolution. They are seeking replacement, and the bonfires are warning lights, designed to usher out the old nobility and replace them with alternatives in the same social structure.

“If we want things to stay as they are, things will have to change.”

Tancredi’s belief that things will need to change to keep things the same is a turning point in the novel. Fabrizio is struck by this paradox, which he turns over again and again in his thoughts. Tancredi’s theory becomes the guiding light of Fabrizio’s attitude toward revolution and unification. He repeats variations on this phrase like a comforting mantra.

“All that these people, these petty little local ‘liberals,’ wanted was to find ways of making more money themselves.”

Tancredi’s allegiance to the revolution foreshadows the sincerity of his marriage. The seemingly romantic union with Angelica belies a hollowness and self-serving cynicism that undermines Tancredi’s revolutionary sincerity. Fabrizio, like Tancredi, believes that the revolution is ultimately self-serving, but this is true of both sides. The revolution is betrayed before it has even begun.

“Now that the wounded had recovered and the surviving ‘rats’ were enrolled in the new police, this hubbub, inevitable though he realized it to be, began to seem pointless and petty.”

The revolution has come and gone. The old social institutions—such as law enforcement—which were previously the cause of ire and that were designed to safeguard the status quo have undergone a surface-level transformation. The name and the uniform may be different, but the same people populate the institutions. Little has really changed beyond the aesthetic.

“The bells were clanging away ceaselessly, and on the walls of the houses the slogans ‘Viva Garibaldi,’ ‘Viva King Vittorio,’ ‘Death to the Bourbon King,’ scrawled by an inexpert brush two months before, were fading away as if they wanted to merge back into the walls.”

The slogans that promised to change the world a few months ago have begun to fade in the burning intensity of the Sicilian sun. The fading of these slogans symbolizes the fading of the egalitarian and nationalistic promises they represent. The promise of change, so loudly proclaimed by the revolution, has also begun to fade as people settle into familiar routines.

“Now, with his sensibility to presages and symbols, he saw revolution in that white tie and two black tails moving at this moment up the stairs of his own home.”

Garibaldi and his revolution promised to upend the social order of Sicily, but Fabrizio was unconvinced by the revolution’s capacity for change. In the arrival of Don Calogero, however, Fabrizio detects a more potent and more dangerous form of revolution. The rising middle class is a quiet revolution that seeks to displace the nobility while dressed in their own attire.

“She had of course embraced and kissed Angelica, told her not to use the formal third person and insisted on the familiar ‘tu’ of their infancy, but under her pale blue bodice her heart was being torn to shreds.”

Concetta is heartbroken by Tancredi’s newfound affection for Angelica, but in true noble fashion, she masks this heartbreak in layers of etiquette. Ironically, she insists on the less formal pronoun in conversations with Angelica, feigning friendliness because it is expected of someone of her social class. In this fashion, she uses etiquette and politeness to shield her vulnerability.

“Tancredi went on to long considerations of the expediency, nay the necessity, of unions between families such as the Falconeris and the Sedàras (once he even dared write ‘The House of Sedàra’) being encouraged in order to bring new blood into old families, and also to level out classes, aims of the current political movement in Italy.”

Tancredi was a member of the revolution, though he assured his uncle that he was only advocating for change so that everything might stay the same. Similarly, he advocates for marrying below his social class because he wants to marry Angelica. He will benefit financially from her marriage, so his opinion is self-serving. Tancredi’s supposedly radical politics always contain an element of self-interest.

“You know that everyone in Donnafugata voted ‘yes.’”

Don Ciccio has known Prince Fabrizio for a long time. Even so, he is unwilling to voice his fears that the local authorities might be corrupt. The notion of the changed votes threatens to undermine the dream of democracy on which the unified Italy is constructed. Don Ciccio is understandably cautious about questioning the vote—and thus questioning unified Italy itself—when talking to his powerful old friend. He does not want to disparage his new country.

“The nobleman rose to his feet, took a step toward the surprised Don Calogero, raised him from his armchair, clasped him to his breast; the Mayor’s short legs were suspended in the air.”

Prince Fabrizio is a powerful man in a social and a physical sense. He has been forced to come to terms with Don Calogero on a marriage contract, thus undermining his social superiority over the Mayor. When they embrace, he subconsciously lifts the other man up in a display of physical dominance as a way to reassert the authority that he believes that he has lost.

“All we had to say was ‘Urgent orders on His Majesty’s service,’ and horses appeared like magic; and we’d show them our orders, which were actually the bills of the Naples hotel wrapped up and sealed!”

Tancredi and Cavriaghi fought alongside one another in the revolution. Then, they wore the red banana and proclaimed egalitarian slogans. After the revolution, however, they were quick to settle into the familiar patterns of privilege. They take advantage of their status as officers and gentlemen to manipulate the world around them, suggesting that their supposed egalitarianism was, in reality, hypocritical self-interest.

“Particularly a series of abandoned and uninhabited apartments which had not been used for many years and formed a mysterious and intricate labyrinth of their own.”

The vast and unknown complex of hidden villas is a physical metaphor for the complexity of the Salina family history. They are so wealthy that they can allow entire wings of their home to fall into dusty disrepair. The family itself has begun to decline just as the vast luxury of the old estate is crumbling into oblivion.

“In Sicily it doesn’t matter whether things are done well or done badly; the sin which we Sicilians never forgive is simply that of ‘doing’ at all. We are old, Chevalley, very old.”

As Prince Fabrizio tries to explain the Sicilian character to Chevalley, he finds himself entering the realm of the abstract, where any attempt at progress is an unforgiveable sin. This is an ancient culture, he suggests, defined by resistance to external control. Even the attempt to explain Sicilians to the latest outsider validates his theory.

“Father Pirrone had become a kind of local glory.”

Father Pirrone comes from a modest background, but he has achieved glory for his hometown by offering religious guidance to the nobility. This refracted privilege illustrates the way in which the Church is one of the few institutions that offers social mobility in Sicily. Even then, however, the glory is only ever refracted and achieved through service to the nobility.

“It was obvious at once that Vicenzino was ‘a man of honor,’ one of those violent cretins capable of any havoc.”

Elsewhere in the novel, Fabrizio suggests that Sicilian culture is obsessed with death. In his attempts to settle the family feud, Father Pirrone bolsters this theory. He refers to his brother-in-law ironically as a man of honor, suggesting that Vicenzino’s notions of honor serve as a catalyst for senseless violence.

“It was all quite obvious; no love or passion played any part: just a dirty trick to revenge another dirty trick.”

As part of an ongoing family feud, a man has seduced a woman. She has become pregnant, prompting the threat of violence. The situation reduces women in this society to pawns, turning them into tools by which men inflict violence on one another. Women have no agency over their sexuality, which exists only as a measuring tool for male honor.

“His hand, which had not made a single gesture in defense of his daughter’s honor, began clutching the right pocket of his trousers to show that in defense of his almond trees he was ready to spill the very last drop of other people’s blood.”

Notably, the people involved in the feud determine their honor on the basis of their willingness to spill other people’s blood. Honor is not linked to sacrifice or service, but to the ability to dominate others. Blood and the spilling of blood are central to the idea of honor in a culture that is obsessed with death and decay.

“All had gone smoothly, of course, but even so it had been one of those little thorns that Tancredi’s engagement had inserted into the Leopard’s delicate paws.”

Don Calogero’s failure to understand the unspoken rules of Sicilian high society annoys Prince Fabrizio. He chooses to express this annoyance through the metaphor of the leopard, comparing Don Calogero to a thorn in his paw. The choice of metaphor emphasizes his nobility while reducing Don Calogero to an irritating object.

“Quite suddenly Don Fabrizio felt a loathing for him; it was to the rise of this man and a hundred others like him, to their obscure intrigues and their tenacious greed and avarice, which was due the sense of death which was now, obviously, hanging darkly over these palaces.”

Don Calogero can only understand wealth in terms of numbers. Every fixture of the palace is itemized and evaluated in terms of how much it cost. This infuriates Prince Fabrizio because it reduces the trappings of nobility to mere figures. Fabrizio believes that there is something more abstract that gives value to his class and culture, something ephemeral that Don Calogero will never be able to comprehend. With the rise of people like Calogero, this way of seeing and valuing the world begins to fade into irrelevance.

“Turin doesn’t want to cease being a capital, Milan finds our administration inferior to the Austrians’, Florence is afraid the works of art there will be carried off, Naples is moaning about the industries she’s lost, and here, here in Sicily, some huge irrational disaster is in the making.”

The revolutionary fervor has faded, and the practical realities of unification are increasingly complex. Various cities and various interests are competing with one another. Each disagreement is a counterpoint to the principles of unification, suggesting that the real work of uniting the country has only just begun.

“Don Fabrizio looked at himself in the wardrobe mirror; he recognized his own suit more than himself.”

In old age, Prince Fabrizio recognizes his suit more than his elderly self because the suit represents his wealth and status. His princely graces have not diminished, as his finely tailored suit shows, but the physical form itself is withered and aged. The symbol of status is gradually being reduced to an empty suit as the last generation of true nobility approaches death.

“In the room there was the sound of a faint hiss; it was his own death rattle, but he did not know it.”

Fabrizio, who has lived such a richly sensual life, is gradually alienated from each of his senses. He cannot recognize his own death rattle, with his hearing betraying him as his sight has already done.

“But in the Church, in their relations with it, the Salinas had maintained their pre-eminence.”

Earlier in the novel, Father Pirrone warned that the revolution would loot the Church. The nobles should protect the Church, he claimed. Now, however, the nobility has faded and the Church remains strong. The inverse has occurred, with the Church now the last remaining source of prestige for the Salinas and other families. The nobility, rather than the Church, has been looted. Now, the Church offers aid to nobles in dire need of status as they once fed the hungry.