Cultural Survival and Decline Theme Analysis

The Leopard follows the decline of the Salinas, a Sicilian noble family, following Italian nationalist General Garibaldi’s revolution in 1861—also called the Risorgimento, or “resurgence.” This movement succeeded in incorporating the historical monarchy of Sicily into a unified Italian state, and it resulted in a decline of the historic nobility and its associated culture. Lampedusa considers this decline both directly, through the reflections of Dom Fabrizio, Prince of Salina, and indirectly, through aspects of Sicilian culture portrayed as superficial. This is especially true of Catholic practices, which (at least among the nobility) reflect social status more than sincere religious belief. Lampedusa suggests that Sicilian culture has primarily been a mode of resisting outside influences and preserving Sicilian identity. And because this culture is isolated, uninterested in the outside world, and therefore stagnant, it fails to improve itself and undercuts its own survival in the long run. Lampedusa argues that when a culture becomes narrowly focused on survival, it becomes insular and loses the ability to adapt to a changing world; the resulting stagnation ends up leading to decline from within instead of self-preservation.

In the effort to preserve itself against outsiders, Sicily has become insular and stagnant. When the Prince is asked to join the new Italian Senate, he explains to the government representative, Chevalley, that Sicilians are their own worst enemy when it comes to reacting to change: “[W]e Sicilians have become accustomed, by a […] hegemony of rulers who were not of our religion and who did not speak our language, to split hairs. If we had not done so we’d never have coped with Byzantine tax gatherers, with Berber Emirs, with Spanish Viceroys. Now […] we’re made like that.” In other words, because Sicilians have frequently been ruled by outsiders, they’ve have always had to accommodate other cultures. This, the Prince implies, has had a stagnating effect on their own culture. The Prince further suggests that the burden of colonization—the effort to simply survive under outsiders’ rule—has prevented Sicilians from developing their own culture. He laments, “For more than twenty-five centuries we’ve been bearing the weight of a superb and heterogeneous civilization, all from outside, none made by ourselves, none that we could call our own. […] I don’t say that in complaint; it’s our fault. But even so we’re worn out and exhausted.” Centuries of living under a succession of foreign conquerors has led to a kind of cultural decay and stagnancy—Sicilians are no longer progressing. The Prince concludes that “this continual tension in everything […] all those rulers who landed by main force from every direction […] their only expressions works of art we couldn’t understand and taxes which we understood only too well […] 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.” Sicilian survival has depended upon managing outsiders’ demands, conforming to those cultures, and enduring oppression. Sicilians have resultantly become weakened and withdrawn; they’re unable to build a culture that can sustain such pressures and are content to keep to themselves instead.

Because Sicilians have been so preoccupied with survival, even surviving cultural institutions like Catholicism become symbols of prestige—they’ve been drained of their underlying meaning. The novel begins and ends with expressions of outward religious devotion that are more about the Salina family’s social position than about faith. After the family finishes their daily recitation of the Rosary, the narrator suggests that religion recedes into the background of life by personifying the figures on the room’s ornate ceiling: “meanwhile the major gods and goddesses, the Princes among gods, thunderous Jove and frowning Mars and languid Venus, […] were amiably supporting the blue armorial shield of the Leopard. They knew that for the next twenty-three and a half hours they would be lords of the villa once again.” The narrator associates the ancient Roman gods with Prince Fabrizio (“the Princes among gods,” holding his ancestral shield). This association ties the Prince to the region’s ancient history, suggesting that he is an exemplar of its culture. But this also suggests that the Rosary recitation, even if it expresses genuine religious feeling, is an outward gesture that is overshadowed by the Prince’s greater allegiance to Sicily. In other words, the daily ritual, above and beyond its religious significance, helps confirm the Prince’s rootedness in Sicily’s history and reassure the Prince that his status in Sicily will survive. At the end of the novel, when religious authorities determine that the now-elderly Salina daughters’ famous collection of religious relics is largely fake, Concetta Salina’s biggest fear is the accompanying loss of social status: “the Church’s esteem meant much to her. The prestige of her name had slowly disappeared; the family fortune, divided and subdivided, was at best equivalent to that of any number of other lesser families […] But in the Church, in their relations with it, the Salinas had maintained their pre-eminence. […] Would that happen now?” Fifty years after the start of the novel, the Salinas are no longer well-off or respected because of their inherited status alone—but they maintain a reputation as devout Catholics because of their religious objects, which are now proven to be inauthentic. While this doesn’t mean that the family has entirely faked its religious devotion, it does suggest that religious practice has largely been used to reinforce the family’s status over the years, especially as their fortune has dried up. This outward display has proven to be unsustainable, suggesting that the family’s status won’t survive much longer, either. Though the Salinas (and Sicily at large) have used religion as a tool for cultural survival, it has actually undermined the survival of the culture that they hold dear.

Just before his death, the Prince reflects that his family will fail to carry on his noble legacy and that anything distinctive about the Salinas is about to die with him. The Prince’s death also symbolizes the passing away of anything distinctive about the old Sicilian ruling class and, by implication, of Sicilian culture more broadly. Now that Sicily has been absorbed into the unified kingdom of Italy, Lampedusa suggests, its tendency toward insularity and inaction is a self-fulfilling prophecy. Rather than protecting Sicilian culture as intended, this tendency has led the country to destroy itself from within.