Our study of such abstract concepts as the nationalistic theory, ideology, or historiography of the American Confederate nation and the Italian Unification now takes a turn with Giuseppe di Lampedusa’s novel The Leopard and Margaret Mitchell’s Gone with the Wind. Both novels, though fiction, give us concrete, historically based, presentations of life in the secessionist south of the United States and the former Sicilian city-state of Italy. Both authors aim to show us the characteristics and character of their region’s plebiscite, which in actuality is more of an aristocratic everyman. Through these plebiscites and the occurrences of their lives we are given tangible examples of regional identity and the struggle of each region against its larger nation’s unified, developing identity. As a southerner I feel I can say, Mitchell’s depiction is for many not only the primary creator for a visual image of the antebellum South but her characters give specific examples of the thoughts and actions of the sectional identity at that time. Lampedusa’s novel in Italy could very well serve the same purpose. Though one novel makes for a very limited perspective, The Leopard was certainly an aid for me as an outsider to come to grasp and construct a tangible identity for what a Sicilian, royalist and liberal, might have been.
Though The Leopard gives a significant percentage of its body to detailed description and other superfluous narrations, Lampedusa does present us with tangible examples, and a few direct statements, of the attitudes of late nineteenth century Sicilian-Italians. A lackadaisical temperament typifies much of the Sicilian aristocracy and royalist faction as seen through the “leopard” Prince Don Fabrizio Salina, and an energetic, optimistic, ambitious character is possessed by the region’s and nation’s liberal revolutionaries, as seen in his nephew Tancredi or the mayor, Don Calogero. Don Fabrizio, as well as the other royalist, sentimentalist Sicilian aristocracy of the day are summarized at one point by the priest, Father Pirrone as he explains, “The nobles…live in a world of their own, or joys and troubles of their own; they have a very strong collective memory…they seem vitally connected with their fortunes, memories, and hopes” (226). Their lives are in the past, as their livelihood is built upon it. Don Fabrizio feels this attitude is justified, as well as any Sicilian insubordination to unification, as seen when he comments on the region’s character and past. He states, “This violence of landscape, this cruelty of climate, this continual tension in everything…all those rulers who landed by main force from every direction, who were at once obeyed, soon detested, and always misunderstood…all these things have formed our character, which is thus conditioned by events outside our control as well as by a terrifying insularity of mind” (208). He says this has constructed the Sicilians so that, “Their vanity is stronger than their misery; every invasion by outsiders…upsets their illusion of achieved perfection, risks disturbing their satisfied waiting for nothing…they consider they have an imperial past” (212). Conveniently for him, much of what he says is the Sicilian identity seems to be in agreement with his own.
Once Fabrizio foresees the coming storm of revolution he is hopeful and states, “All will be the same though all will be changed” (46). He thought the collective past would be enough to save Sicily from a revolutionarily different future. But, he himself disproves this notion and was an example as “He has said that the Salinas would always remain the Salinas. He had been wrong. The last Salina was himself. That fellow Garibaldi, that bearded Vulcan, had won after all” (286). Later, Fabrizio is given his chance to comment on the revolution to which he acquiesced, and here Di Lampedusa uses this instance to summarize the North and South conflict that is to come. Fabrizio states, “One of them asked me what those Italian volunteers were really coming to do in Sicily. ‘They are coming to teach us good manners…but they won’t succeed, because we think we are gods’” (212).
Comparing the two novels helps us to find similarities and better understand the character of revolutionaries as a whole, whether they be seceding American southerners or unifying Italians. Both possessing radical goals and ideologies, men such as these share similar characteristics that make it possible for their desire to become more than a daydream. Through the characters of Tancredi, Don Calogero, Garibaldi, Gerald O’ Hara, Charles Hamilton, Frank Kennedy, and more, we see the self-will necessary to produce and preserve such revolutionary ideas and causes as theirs. To scheme, connive, and fight as necessary, we see that one had to possess a good degree of energy, strength, optimism, and ambition. The languid, depressed, introspective character of Don Fabrizio never made for a revolutionary, and his lifestyle of financial ease and entitlement, as many American northerners also experienced, did not breed him any differently. The self-made men of Southern secession and Italian unification had the characteristics, drive, and realization of possible gains to propel them to “self-make” their revolutionary Confederate and Italian nations respectively.
Through the individuals provided by Mitchell and di Lampedusa we may more tangibly construct our understanding of who some of the ‘everymen’ of these nations and period were. But, though these novels can present a more graspable form through which to understand the men, sentiments and events of the time, they are but one interpretation of those men, sentiments and events, biased clearly from one side’s perspective, not to mention the bias or agenda of the author on his/her own. As a Sicilian prince himself, writing after the aftermath and destruction of World War II, it is understandable that di Lampedusa’s heritage and personal agenda come into play in this novel. There is personal and relevant attachment to his depiction of what it is to be Sicilian and there is logical sense for him to hold importance and struggle to preserve that identity. Once this is acknowledged, it does not make the novel discounted. Like in American history, whether through identifying the specific, shared characteristics of a region or their shared past, identifying and strengthening one’s sectional identity can serve to reestablish and strengthen one’s national identity, sentimentality, and strength as well.