Childhood Memories and Other Stories , livre ebook

CHILDHOOD MEMORIES AND OTHER STORIES

ALMA CLASSICS an imprint of
ALMA BOOKS LTD London House 243–253 Lower Mortlake Road Richmond Surrey TW9 2LL United Kingdom www.almaclassics.com
First published as I racconti in November 1961 by Giangiacomo Feltrinelli Editore, Milan, Italy This translation first published by Alma Classics in 2013 © Giangiacomo Feltrinelli Editore, 1961 Translation © Stephen Parkin, 2013 Foreword © Ian Thomson, 2013 Notes © Alma Classics, 2013 Biographical Note © Gioacchino Lanza Tomasi

Printed and bound by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon, CR0 4YY
ISBN: 978-1-84749-305-7 eBook ISBN: 978-1-84749-339-2
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Contents
List of Illustrations
Foreword by Ian Thomson
Note on the Texts

Childhood Memories
Joy and the Law
The Siren
The Blind Kittens

Notes
Biographical Note
List of Illustrations


1. Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa in the drawing room of Villa Piccolo in 1955
2. Lampedusa’s most illustrious Tomasi ancestor, Ferdinando II Maria (1697–1775)
3. Niccolò I Filangeri, 7th Prince of Cutò (1760–1839)
4. Alessandro IV Filangeri, Lampedusa’s maternal great-grandfather (1802–54)
5. Teresa Merli Clerici, Lampedusa’s maternal great-grandmother (1816–97)
6. Giulio Fabrizio Tomasi, Lampedusa’s paternal great-grandfather, on which the character of Don Fabrizio in The Leopard is based (1815–85)
7. Giuseppe Tomasi, Lampedusa’s paternal grandfather (1838–1908)
8. Stefania Papè e Vanni, Lampedusa’s paternal grandmother (1840–1913)
9. Lucio Mastrogiovanni Tasca, Lampedusa’s maternal grandfather (1842–1918)
10. Giovanna Filangeri di Cutò, Lampedusa’s maternal grandmother (1850–91)
11. Lampedusa’s mother, Beatrice Mastrogiovanni Tasca di Cutò (1870–1946, left) and the "godlike beauty" Franca Florio (1873–1950, right)
12. Beatrice Cutò and Franca Florio on a boat off the coast of Favignana in the summer of 1902
13. Giuseppe Tomasi at the age of five wearing a uniform
14. Giuseppe Tomasi in the gardens of the Palazzo Filangeri Cutò in Santa Margherita Belice
15. Another picture of Giuseppe Tomasi in the gardens of the Palazzo Filangeri Cutò. In the background, his parents Giulio and Beatrice
16. The Palazzo Filangeri di Cutò in Santa Margherita Belice and the "Chiesa Madre" in a photograph from the 1950s, before they were destroyed by an earthquake
17. The "grand staircase" in the second courtyard leading to the main entrance gate of the Palazzo Filangeri di Cutò
18. A detail from the "grand banquet" painting in the dining room of the Palazzo Filangeri di Cutò
19. Don Onofrio Rotolo, the caretaker of the Palazzo Filangeri di Cutò
20. The "curious oval copper bathtub" in which Lampedusa "was made to have a bath" when he was a child
21. The leopard in an eighteenth-century coat of arms
22. The coat of arms of the Filangeri di Cutò family
23. The Venaria hunting lodge, built in the eighteenth century by Alessandro II Filangeri and destroyed by the 1968 Belice earthquake
24. A group of campieri of the Filangeri estate at the Venaria hunting lodge
25. Title page of Norvins’s Histoire de Napoléon , first published in 1827
26. Alessandra Wolff Stomersee ("Licy"), Lampedusa’s wife (1894–1982)
27. Pietro Tomasi della Torretta, Lampedusa’s uncle (1873–1962)
28. Alice Wolff, née Barbi, wife of Pietro Tomasi and mother of Licy (1858–1948)
29. The cover of the notebook in which Lampedusa wrote his ‘Childhood Memories’
30. A manuscript page from ‘Childhood Memories’
1. Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa in the drawing room of Villa Piccolo in 1955


2. Lampedusa’s most illustrious Tomasi ancestor, Ferdinando II Maria (1697–1775)


3. Niccolò I Filangeri, 7th Prince of Cutò (1760–1839)


4. Alessandro IV Filangeri, Lampedusa’s maternal great-grandfather (1802–54)


5. Teresa Merli Clerici, Lampedusa’s maternal great-grandmother (1816–97)


6. Giulio Fabrizio Tomasi, Lampedusa’s paternal great-grandfather, on which the character of Don Fabrizio in The Leopard is based (1815–85)


7. Giuseppe Tomasi, Lampedusa’s paternal grandfather (1838–1908)


8. Stefania Papè e Vanni, Lampedusa’s paternal grandmother (1840–1913)


9. Lucio Mastrogiovanni Tasca, Lampedusa’s maternal grandfather (1842–1918)


10. Giovanna Filangeri di Cutò, Lampedusa’s maternal grandmother (1850–91)


11. Lampedusa’s mother, Beatrice Mastrogiovanni Tasca di Cutò (1870–1946, left) and the "godlike beauty" Franca Florio (1873–1950, right)


12. Beatrice Cutò and Franca Florio on a boat off the coast of Favignana in the summer of 1902


13. Giuseppe Tomasi at the age of five wearing a uniform


14. Giuseppe Tomasi in the gardens of the Palazzo Filangeri Cutò in Santa Margherita Belice


15. Another picture of Giuseppe Tomasi in the gardens of the Palazzo Filangeri Cutò. In the background, his parents Giulio and Beatrice


16. The Palazzo Filangeri di Cutò in Santa Margherita Belice and the "Chiesa Madre" in a photograph from the 1950s, before they were destroyed by an earthquake


17. The "grand staircase" in the second courtyard leading to the main entrance gate of the Palazzo Filangeri di Cutò


18. A detail from the "grand banquet" painting in the dining room of the Palazzo Filangeri di Cutò


19. Don Onofrio Rotolo, the caretaker of the Palazzo Filangeri di Cutò


20. The "curious oval copper bathtub" in which Lampedusa "was made to have a bath" when he was a child


21. The leopard in an eighteenth-century coat of arms


22. The coat of arms of the Filangeri di Cutò family


23. The Venaria hunting lodge, built in the eighteenth century by Alessandro II Filangeri and destroyed by the 1968 Belice earthquake


24. A group of campieri of the Filangeri estate at the Venaria hunting lodge


25. Title page of Norvins’s Histoire de Napoléon , first published in 1827


26. Alessandra Wolff Stomersee ("Licy"), Lampedusa’s wife (1894–1982)


27. Pietro Tomasi della Torretta, Lampedusa’s uncle (1873–1962)


28. Alice Wolff, née Barbi, wife of Pietro Tomasi and mother of Licy (1858–1948)


29. The cover of the notebook in which Lampedusa wrote his ‘Childhood Memories’


30. A manuscript page from ‘Childhood Memories’
Foreword
Published posthumously in 1958, The Leopard is a classic of Italian literature embroidered with reflections on dynastic power and Sicily’s age-old burden of injustice and death. The novel chronicles the demise of the Sicilian aristocracy on the eve of the unification of Italy in 1860, and the emergence of a bourgeois class that would evolve into the Mafia.
Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa, a lifelong smoker, died of lung cancer a year before his novel appeared in Italy in 1958. So he was spared knowledge of the controversy it would provoke. The paradox expressed at the heart of The Leopard – that "everything must change, so that nothing has to change" – was interpreted by left-leaning critics as a cynical defence of Sicilian conservatism and Sicilian fatalism. The novel was reckoned crushingly old-fashioned – a "success for the Right", Alberto Moravia complained – as well as ideologically unsound.
Italian publishers rejected the manuscript until it found a home with Feltrinelli Editore in Milan (ironically a gauchiste company). Lampedusa was in some ways a deep-dyed conservative and not at first averse to Italian Fascism. "Even if a revolution breaks out," he wrote from Paris in 1925, "no one will touch a hair on my head or steal one penny from
me because by my side I have... Mussolini!" The youthful Lampedusa saw in the cult of ducismo a robust alternative to parliamentary liberalism; indeed, the Duce’s attempts to uproot the Mafia were applauded by many Sicilians.
Later, however, Lampedusa became wholly indifferent to Fascism. Political enthusiasm of any sort was tiresome to him; he scorned liberals and monarchists alike. Born a prince, he lived as a prince, and put something of his own personality into The Leopard ’s fictional Don Fabrizio Corbera, Prince of Salina. Lost in a heat-ridden backwater of western Sicily, Don Fabrizio is the Leopard of the title, a sceptically inclined man drawn to astronomy and the lucid pleasures of abstract thought. Life in the Salina palace moves round him at a seignorial snail’s pace; the extinction of his name and lineage is imminent.
The Leopard is, among other things, a meditation on mortality. "While there’s death there’s hope," says Don Fabrizio axiomatically. His personal tax collector Don Calogero Sedara, a money-grubbing arriviste with an eye on the Salina estates, is the personification of the new and dangerous middle class which sprung up in Sicily following the collapse of the Bourbon regime. The old privilege based on rank and lineage was about to give way to a new privilege based on capital and entrepreneurial cunning. The unstated theme of The Leopard is not just the death of an aristocracy or a redundant way of life, but more broadly of Sicily – and of Europe.
By the time Lampedusa died in Sicily at the age of sixty, the Mafia had pervaded entire patrician quarters of the capital of Palermo where he was born. Quick money was to be made out of the city’s reconstruct