Changing Everything or Something: On The Leopard

CYCLE: Ancient Modern: A journey through European literature
SPEAKER: Francesco Erspamer
DATE: Tuesday, November 11, 6:00 PM
LOCATION: Palazzo Massimo alle Terme, Largo di Villa Peretti 2

"If we want things to stay as they are, things will have to change" is the famous paradox from "The Leopard", often reductively interpreted as a profession of political opportunism. While this may be true when spoken by the character who utters it, Tancredi, within the scope of the great narrative parabola recounted by Tomasi di Lampedusa, it has a far deeper significance. It alludes to the hegemony of an already mature capitalism (set at the time of national unification in the fiction, but in effect referring to the mid-twentieth century) that has reached the point of being an end in itself.Thus, it is not a reactionary novel, as Vittorini believed; on the contrary, it is a lucid anticipation of the social effects of a consumerism that has become an ideology and a way of life. From this perspective, what changes is the change itself: it loses its progressive value, its sense of improving what precedes it within the context of what remains, and is reduced to mere destruction or cancellation of everything so that everything can then be created without constraints or verification. Instead of a conscious revolution, it becomes a light-hearted cultural nihilism.

Francesco Erspamer is a professor of Italian and Romance Studies at Harvard University. After graduating from Sapienza University, he taught at Tor Vergata and New York University. His work focuses on Italian literature, particularly the Renaissance and the 20th century, as well as aesthetics and politics. Every summer, he brings thirty American students to Italy for two months to show them a different social model, hoping their appreciation will encourage some Italians to preserve it.

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