Two Stories and a Memory by Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa
"Two Stories and a Memory" by Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa is a collection that showcases the author's literary range and offers insights into his life and themes prevalent in his more famous novel, "The Leopard." First published in Italian in 1961 as "Racconti," the collection includes an autobiographical piece titled "Places of My Infancy," which explores Lampedusa's childhood and personal history, reflecting on significant events such as the assassination of King Umberto I and familial experiences at their estate. The second story, "The Professor and the Mermaid," presents a narrative about an aging professor and a journalist, delving into Sicilian identity and dreams, encapsulated in the professor's haunting relationship with a siren. Additionally, the collection features the first chapter of "The Blind Kittens," an unfinished novel that hints at Lampedusa's exploration of class dynamics in Sicilian society.
While these stories are not as widely recognized as "The Leopard," they reveal the author’s narrative skill and thematic preoccupations, suggesting that Lampedusa had the potential for a more extensive body of work had he lived longer. Collectively, "Two Stories and a Memory" enriches the understanding of Lampedusa’s literary contributions and the cultural context of his writings.
Two Stories and a Memory by Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa
Excerpted from an article in Magill’s Survey of World Literature, Revised Edition
First published:Racconti, 1961 (English translation, 1962)
Type of work: Memoir, short story, and chapter of an unfinished novel
The Work
Two Stories and a Memory is a nearly complete translation of the collection published in Italian in 1961 as Racconti. It includes the pages of “Places of My Infancy,” an autobiography that Lampedusa composed while writing The Leopard; “The Professor and the Mermaid,” a short story that develops some of the themes of The Leopard in sprightlier fashion; and the first chapter of The Blind Kittens, a novel that Lampedusa did not live to complete. It omits a slight and uncharacteristic story called “La gioia e la legge”(“Joy and the Law”) that did not appear in English until 1993.
According to Lampedusa’s widow, she suggested that her husband undertake “Places of My Infancy” as an act of therapy. Although he apparently intended to carry the narrative forward into his adult life, he never did so. As it stands, the autobiography consists of eight sections, each highlighting a particular aspect of his childhood world, including the shocked reactions of his mother and father to the assassination of King Umberto I in 1900, his enchantment with the Lampedusa palazzo in Palermo, and his family’s annual journeys to the Santa Margherita estate. Beyond its particular charms, the work reveals the factual basis for many of the events and locales described in The Leopard.
“The Professor and the Mermaid” is set in the mainland city of Turin but concerns an aging professor of Greek and a journalist who discover that they both are Sicilians. Immensely learned but gruff and seemingly uncultivated, the professor gradually reveals himself to be a dreamer who has never shaken off the formative event of his student days, an intensely physical affair with a siren named Lighea. Daughter of Calliope, the classical Greek muse of poetry, Lighea had promised the youth that he could avoid the sorrows of old age by following her into the sea. Later the journalist learns that the professor has fallen overboard from a ship and disappeared.
“The Blind Kittens” is the opening chapter of a novel that would apparently have dealt with the upstart Ibba clan, members of a new, aggressive middle class that would wrest control of society from the nobility. In this fragment, Lampedusa displays the same narrative assurance that he displayed in The Leopard, but his obvious antipathy to both the Ibbas and the aristocrats docilely observing their rise suggests that the novel would have lacked the grandeur that distinguished the earlier work.
Although not in itself a major work, Two Stories and a Memory makes it clear that had he not died at the age of sixty, Lampedusa might well have gone on to produce a large body of significant work.
Bibliography
Biasin, Gian-Paolo. “The Prince and the Siren.” Modern Language Notes 78 (1963): 31-50.
Bongiorni, Kevin. “Don Fabrizio’s Walk in the Garden: Why Do I Smell Something Dead?” American Journal of Italian Studies 23, no. 62 (Fall, 2000): 112.
Cupolo, Marco. “Tomasi de Lampedusa’s Il gattopardo and Postwar Italian Political Culture.” In Risorgimento in Modern Italian Culture: Revisiting the Nineteenth-Century Past in History, Narrative, and Cinema, edited by Norma Bouchard. Madison, N.J.: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2005.
Gilmour, David. The Last Leopard: A Life of Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa. New York: Pantheon, 1988.
McSweeney, Kerry. “Lampedusa and the Hour of Death.” Southern Humanities Review 12 (1978): 213-220.
Pacifici, Sergio. “Giuseppe Tomasi de Lampedusa: The View from Within.” In The Modern Italian Novel: From Pea to Moravia. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1979.
Ragusa, Olga. “Stendhal, Tomasi di Lampedusa, and the Novel.” Comparative Literature Studies 3 (1973): 195-228.