The Leopard

by Giuseppe Di Lampedusa, 1958

The Leopard strings together a series of wonderful scenes and images while reflecting ironically on the shift in power from the old Sicilian aristocracy to the new bourgeoisie after the Italian risorgimento. It has a mood of quiet contemplation, even sadness, as massive social and political changes gently overturn the lives of its central characters. Don Fabrizio is the last Prince Salina, though he knows his time has come. He is a man of the old world, with its families, traditions, biases and connections. The new world, he knows, is a world where tradition means little, but crass new ways of making money are the future. He sees the follies of his class, and retreats to the science of astronomy to get away from them. Yet he is part of that class, and not of the new world.

  Being a man of vision and appetite, Fabrizio supports his favourite nephew, the charismatic Tancredi, in marrying Angelica, the beautiful daughter of the ambitious peasant who is rising in the new world. Although Fabrizio despises her father, he dotes on Angelica both for her physical beauty and for the manners she has learned at a finishing school in Naples. She and Tancredi will lead the Salina family into the new world while the older folks fade away. Fabrizio is smart enough to turn down a position in the new Senate and recommend Angelica’s father in his place.

  And the old rulers fade away into senility, decrepitude and death. The scenes of Fabrizio’s sisters fighting and trying to protect their collection of holy relics from the new rules of the church are tragi-comic. But the death of Fabrizio is slow and sad, as he falls ill on a long train ride returning from Naples back to his home in Sicily. Unable to make it home, his family stops to rest in a hotel, where he hears the birds on the beach and feels the sea breezes before losing consciousness.

  Giuseppe di Lampedusa, who comes from the same class as Fabrizio and wrote the novel as a sort of homage to his grandfather, describes the loss of the old ways, but he doesn’t romanticize them. He notes Fabrizio’s disgust when he has to meet with his smelly tenants, and Fabrizio locks his long-time hunting companion with the dogs when Fabrizio gives him information that he doesn’t want out too early. He rationalizes his visits to his mistress and brings along his priest for cover. His sensuality comes through in his admiration for Angelica, as well as in the food at his table. The dessert castle that his family eats away at, and the macaroni he serves to guests at his family estate are wonderful images. They fit into the satirical depiction of the elegant Sicilian aristocracy, which reminded me of the ironic dialogues and superficial characters of a Jane Austin novel.

  Irony runs through the whole novel. While understanding that the change of class is inevitable, Fabrizio sees the unification plebiscite as a farce. Everyone votes in favour because the alternative is worse, but no one supports it, and the votes are fraudulently counted, bringing the Italian nation into a fraudulent existence. The novelist describes two long, difficult trips in the stifling heat of southern Italy, representing perhaps the difficult transitions that Italy faces as it changes from the old ruling class to the new.

  And in spite of the change in the ruling class, nothing really changes – the agricultural aristocracy is replaced by middle-class landowners who continue to exploit the working peasantry. And while I felt a little sadness at the passing of an intelligent and memorable figure, it’s clear that his time has passed, and who can really live in an agricultural feudalism besides the princes? But perhaps the greater regret is that it has passed to a crass and materialistic new layer. The nouveau riche will bring Italy into the industrial age, so it’s not quite right to say that nothing has changed. But inequality and exploitation remain, whether under the elegance of the aristocracy or the cruder arts of the new ruling class.

Call Me By Your Name

by André Aciman, 2007

What is André Aciman doing with Elio? Is he a naïve youth exploring different aspects of his feelings and personalities? Or is he a self-deluding narcicist who sees everything the the unreliable lenses of his shifting passions? I suppose he is both, which, for me, makes him a bit difficult to relate to. I want to shake him up and say, come on, you’re a smart kid, intellectual, talented, sensuous, feeling. Why are you wallowing in this overblown romanticism? Either jump the guy or move on, but don’t mope endlessly.

  And there’s the problem, I suppose. Elio is a romantic teenager, exploring his identity and trying to come to terms with his desires, both emotional and sexual. In his relationship with Marzia, he learns something about love and willingly sharing his psychic being with another person. In his relationship with Oliver, he goes farther, and wants to become Oliver when he says, Call me by your name. Communication is a repeated theme in the novel, with successful and unsuccessful communications that  range from the hinted and unspoken messages that Elio wants to read in a glance and that extend to to his desire for total intimacy and shared knowledge. But communication is the last thing that any of the characters find here when they are so often speaking at cross-purposes and avoiding what they want to say. And perhaps that’s the point.

  Aciman parallels Elio’s two relationships when he joins them in the gift of the book, Se l’amore, If love. But the relationship with Marzia is a brief and simple one that Elio quickly abandons. The relationship with Oliver is complex and layered, which Elio (and I) hoped would prove to be more lasting. (This is a little ironic, as the European sensibility is portrayed here as more sophisticated and complex, while the American Oliver is brash and straightforward.) Aciman also mocks the literature of love in the pretentions and artifice of the poetry reading in Rome, which Elio sees through but still enjoys.

  But of course, this is a summer love and even Elio knows that Oliver is leaving at the end of a few weeks. So he ends the summer heartbroken but wiser for having experienced a deep connection to Oliver. This is so familiar that it’s a cliché, even if it’s one that a reader can enjoy.

  But then, there’s the conversation with Elio’s father, in which his father hints that he gave up (repressed) his homosexuality and married, ending up in a distant relationship with his wife. He tells Elio not to make the same mistake, not that Elio seems likely to. Elio does, however, show some casual homophobia in his self-loathing after his first sexual experience with Oliver, when he compares it the next morning with his experience with Marzia. Since the story seems to be set in about the 1970s or ’80s, that’s probably common enough for some young men, particular given Elio’s ambivalence. This adds a sociological line to the story that seems out of tone with the exaggerated romanticism of the rest of the story.

  There’s another layer of complication here. The story is in the first person, in Elio’s voice, but apparently as a recollection of a distant past. A contemporary narrator occasionally makes an appearance reflecting on Elio’s story. And Elio himself re-connects briefly with the married Oliver later in life, and still finds a bond of unspoken communication. Is this story the naïve voice of Elio the younger or the mocking voice of Elio the mature exaggerating the naivety of his youth? In fact, there were several times, before the appearance of the narrator, where I wondered if this story was a satire of romantic self-absorbed youth. Perhaps this is how to take the story of the peach, so sensuous and yet so ridiculous.

  So is this an exploration of the formation of the identity of a young gay man in the 1980s, or is it a satirical reflection on the comical exaggerations of romantic love? I’ll be interested to read what other readers comment on the novel.

Tradition Today: Indigenous Art in Australia

Art Gallery of New South Wales, 2015

This review of the past century of indigenous art in Australia is completely fascinating. It may be limited by the fact that it is based on the collection of the Art Gallery of New South Wales, but that doesn’t diminish the depth and range of the arts portrayed. These include iconic and colourful dot paintings, naïve sketches and abstract landscapes, photojournalism and photo arts, woven crafts and carved funerary poles. Pieces are represented in full colour, often astonishingly vivid, with two pages and occasionally four devoted to each of over 100 artists. A sparse commentary briefly describes the artist’s history and touches on elements of his or her style and relation to traditional practices.

  The greatest limitation on these reproductions is that they are contained in a page size of 7.75 x 9 inches, while many of the artworks are two or more metres tall. I remember vividly going into the Gallery in Sydney and standing in front of a series of a dozen similar paintings that were at least two metres tall. When the notes to a reproduction say that a piece is 185 x 465 cm, I have to imagine the impact of a piece on that scale. And many of them are very large in scale. I asked at the Sydney gallery shop if there were reproductions of the lobby paintings, and was told that there were not. I bought this book as a consolation, and it is a great one.

  The book does not try to explain too much, but leaves it to the art pieces to tell their story. The pieces are worth slow contemplative exploration. It is an excellent parallel read to David Day’s Claiming a Continent. Day’s book gives the history of the sometimes brutal Australian efforts to end the Aboriginal presence in Australia. This book shows the strength, diversity and depth of the Aboriginal culture, as well as the impact of colonial practices on them. Many of the paintings and artefacts are representations of homelands and their importance to various Aboriginal peoples. Sometimes they are places remembered or places in traditional stories, but often they are real places represented in an abstracted style, like the formal maps that we recognize in Euro-American cultures.

  In spite of the limited text, the stories of the artists’ lives frequently refer to their being displaced from traditional territories, their alienation in an unwelcome environment, their economic struggles to survive with their families, substance use issues, etc. Many of the artists reconnected with their communities and their stories through artists’ collectives, learning to express their connections to land, tradition and community through new media. Several artists are respected keepers of traditional knowledge and ceremony, and used their art to preserve and share their culture. Some also use it in an activist way to advance land claims and traditional rights, and to point criticisms at Australia’s colonial past and present. Interestingly, the book notes that it was often the commercial media for which markets developed that shaped the public expression of these arts, so what we see most reflects what sells as much as the forms that the artists chose to use.

  I learned also that many of the designs that appear abstract have very distinct and clear meanings to the artists and their communities. The dots and striped patterns, for example, may be taken from ceremonial patterns or body painting styles that have been practiced for many generations, and they refer to specific things, such as the patterns of grasses or bushes that grow in the desert. Some represent dream scapes and celestial stories. These patterns sometimes hold secret meanings that belong to one family and cannot be revealed outside of the initiated. They are reinterpreted by contemporary artists, sometimes simply through the use of new media and sometimes through the development of new treatments that break away from tradition. I can only imagine the work of applying paint in little dabs across such the large scale of many of these canvases.

  I spent several months going through the few hundred pages in this book, and hope to spend more time with the images. They also led me to several websites where gorgeous reproductions can be found. Happily, it’s been one of the more rewarding books I’ve read recently.

Claiming a Continent: A New History of Australia

By David Day, 2001

How does a state acquire proprietorship over a territory, especially if there are people living there already? David Day makes the case that this has been the central political issue in Australia’s history, and it is a question that underlies many contemporary and historical national struggles, from the wars in Palestine and Bosnia to Aboriginal demands in Canada today.

  Day’s history reveals many facts of Australian history that I was unaware of, starting with the fact that Europeans searched for it for centuries before Cook confirmed its existence as a continent in the 1770s. It seems astonishing that with sailing expeditions from the 1400s, and occasional contact, that it should take so long, but explorers rarely ventured far into the vast and dangerous southern seas. Having made the discovery, they saw little profit in establishing a remote sea port. The main interest of Europeans was to keep their rivals from benefitting, disregarding the fact that the land was already occupied. Hence the decision to deport convicts to establish a colonial presence.

  But one small colony cannot establish a right of proprietorship over a continent. Day lays out the principles of ownership by discovery, conquest, occupancy or moral right, and says that Britain and Australia have gone through all of these in their claims to be lawful owners of the continent. Often these have come into conflict. The 200-year campaign to extend European occupancy, which still exists mainly in a few concentrated areas around the periphery, conflicts with Aboriginal ownership. Australian policies have denied Aboriginal moral rights by saying that Aboriginal people had no recognized property and were a degenerate, declining population anyway. Settlers reinforced this by driving them off their lands, often violently and sometimes through deliberate massacre as late as the middle of the twentieth century.

  By portraying European and especially British cultures as superior, Britain and Australia attempted to justify the moral claim to ownership. To strengthen this claim, Australia tightly restricted immigration, particularly from Asian and southern European countries until the end of the second world war. This was critical to prevent nearby Asians from establishing an occupancy claim to parts of the continent where they had long had trading contacts and small settlements. Australia’s restrictive immigration policy, however, conflicted with the need to populate and occupy vast territories, so much of its foreign policy was designed to encourage British, northern European and white American immigration.

  This overt racism broke down in the face of the need to expand population by the mid-twentieth century, when the shifting interests of both Britain and the USA turned away from the remote, expensive and unproductive colony that no longer fit geopolitical priorities. Needing to attract more foreign investment to support industrial development in a new economy, racial discrimination became harder to justify, and Australian policies shifted. A new economic boom after WWII was financed by growing Asian countries and their desirable markets, so Australia now identifies as an Asian country. In keeping with this more liberal approach is a growing acceptance of multiculturalism. Ironically, a new identification with Aboriginal history and peoples is now used to support a continued claim to proprietorship in the face of new interest by China, Japan and Indonesia. Conceding actual rights to land through a treaty with Aboriginal peoples has proven difficult, however, and a new White Australia movement is pushing the Conservative Party to anti-immigration and anti-Aboriginal policies.

  Day tells a history of Australia that is soundly researched and academically based, but interesting and readable. While the focus is on government policy and personalities, he fills it in with descriptions of the living conditions, women’s and workers’ movements, and with the story of Aboriginal resistance to colonialism. The book is well written and insightful, and leads to a more critical view of our own Canadian colonialism, where we have used similar themes in justifying the Franco-British presence and protecting it against territorial Americans.