Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1249331 in Books
• Published on: 1997-09
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 192 pages

From Library Journal
First published in 1962, this collection by Tomasi, Sicilian prince of Lampedusa best known for his novel The Leopard, includes "The Professor and the Siren," "Blind Kittens," and others.
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Kirkus Reviews
A gathering of fiction and nonfiction pieces by di Lampedusa (18961957), best known as the author of The Leopard, a magnificently dramatic tale closely drawn from the author's own aristocratic world in Sicily at the turn of the century. This volume is exciting for the insight it provides into the evolution of that masterpiece through the original text of a previously abridged memoir, ``Places of My Infancy.'' The collection also includes ``The Professor and the Siren,'' an enchantingly sensual, fablelike story, and two other short stories, ``Joy and the Law'' and ``The Blind Kittens'' (the latter is the remaining fragment of an unfinished novel). The memoir evokes the author's Sicilian childhood and home, which he loved with ``utter abandon'' until that life vanished with the Risorgimento. Di Lampedusa reminisces about the the palace-size 18th-century house (``a self-sufficient entity . . . a kind of Vatican as it were'') and about the garden, ``brim full of surprises.'' By contrast, ``Joy and the Law'' is a tale that chronicles morality and honor, set against the corruption that then dominated Sicily. The story also hints, in its style, at di Lampedusa's admiration for Dickensian narrative. The collection's centerpiece, however, is a sampling of his short essays (appearing in English for the first time) about his favorite literary icons, including Austen, Stendhal, and Shakespeare, written as notes to lectures he intended for a small group of students. These essays are intuitive and highly anecdotal, yet thoroughly informed. Literature was di Lampedusa's consolation, as his wife observed, for any moment ``when he saw something disagreeable.'' He might, indeed, as translator Gilmour comments, have ``sacrificed ten years of his life . . . for the privilege of meeting Sir John Falstaff.'' This gem of a volume offers delightful glimpses of a writer worthy of attention well beyond the university circles that have until now adulated him. -- Copyright ©1997, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Customer Reviews

In praise of the cream puff
I enjoyed the stories in this collection quite a bit, but what really surprised and delighted me were the essays on Stendhal and other writers. I'm not sure why they surprised me so much, but it may be because I was in graduate school in literature and the message I got there was that any school of literary criticism not prefaced by "post-" and not involving heavy reading of the most charmless sort was at best cream-puffery associated with old-fashioned belles-lettrists and suspect dilettantes.

So with what delight did I read ol' Giuseppe's light and witty and airy essays! I recall going so far as to put one of them in the bibliography of a paper I wrote. It felt like an incredibly subversive act; just by putting the name di Lampedusa in my bibliography I felt as if I were giving the finger to those professors of mine--all of them, probably--who had never read Lampedusa--or Stendhal, for that matter.

On the whole, I think it's in essays like di Lampedusa's--and not in criticism from college and university professors--that you're most likely to enjoy learning about books and writing. His joy in what he's talking about is palpable. It makes his work airy and delicious. Just like a good cream puff, in other words.

Good follow-up to The Leopard
A collection of Di Lampedusa's writings aside from his great novel. The memoirs of the author's youth in aristocratic Sicily are delightful to read; clearly the atmosphere of the Leopard was taken from Di Lampedusa's own life. The stories are also quite good. The literary criticism is somewhat out of place, in my opinion, alongside a collection of narrative. If you liked the Leopard, this is definitely worth reading.

The Siren...dream or reality?
I think that everybody has to read this book, especially the siren, this story collect all the dreams of a man, and let us to think that when we find the right woman, the right love, we can't forget it, we can't substitute it, we can't hide it to ourselves.The author with a very simple story express the meaning of the love, the pure love...read it, I can just tell you this...and you'll dream...you'll smile.