The Leopard

“The Leopard is at its heart, a novel about the pursuit of happiness. The result is delusion and loneliness for the Prince of Salina.  This is the novel’s enduring irony.”
Discuss.

The Leopard by Tomasi di Lampedusa is, at its core, the story of one man’s pursuit of happiness. The underlying, yet ever present, irony of the novel is that it is this very pursuit which results in the Prince’s state of perpetual disconsolation. His life of decadence only leads to a mood of discontent. Similarly, his longing for compassion leaves him feeling unfulfilled. Furthermore, his desire for a life without troubles, a life of lethargy, in fact creates further difficulties.

Description of the decadence of Don Fabrizio’s life is a recurring theme in Lampedusa’s writing and helps to shed light on why the Prince appears to always be so melancholic. It is, perhaps, not entirely clear how a life of immense luxury leads to unhappiness until the statement by C.S. Lewis that decadence results in “an ever increasing craving for an ever diminishing pleasure” is considered. From this, it is clear that that the consequence of living a life of incredible opulence is that things that once brought pleasure no longer do, but are now instead considered necessities. The consequence of this is seen in how Don Fabrizio is so easily irritated or angered by things of such little significance that they “wouldn’t matter at all to” common folk. One such example of this is how, “because of a badly ironed collar,” the Prince “didn’t sleep for a whole night from rage.” A similar instance occurred when, after he discovered a fleck of coffee on the “white expanse of his waistcoat,” “irritation clouded his brow.” Furthermore, it was in the presence of the novel’s greatest example of decadence – the Ball – that the Prince’s mood “changed to black gloom.” In the supper room, Fabrizio describes, with a sense of disdain, “the monotonous opulence” that hangs over buffet. The consequence of the decadence of the Fabrizio’s privileged life is played out in the situation where a supper, which “the cooks must have sweated away in the vast kitchens from the night before” to create, produces great discontent and irritation.

Furthermore, the theme of decadence is also represented in the novel through decay. As described by the French poet, Yvan Goll, “Decline is also a form of voluptuousness, just like growth … There is as much decadence in decay as in creation.” The Paul Neyron roses the Prince imported from France and planted in the garden became “degenerated; first stimulated then enfeebled by the strong if languid pull of Sicilian earth … distilling a dense almost indecent scent.” The failed roses are representative of the Prince’s many other unsuccessful attempts to find happiness; beginning with promise but declining into ruination and decay. From this it is abundantly clear that the luxury that once brought Don Fabrizio happiness morphed into decadence and soon only brings nothing but disappointment and melancholy.