How Death Reveals Our Shared Humanity in Literature

There's something very appealing about the idea of being non-judgmental. It means taking the time and trouble to really understand someone without feeling required to flatter or condemn. We simply come face to face with the reality of being that person. And more intimately, we long that another person could both know us deeply and accept us as who we are. Ilgato pardo the leopard was published in 1958 shortly after its author's death. It was the only major thing that Joseeppi Tomasi demped ever wrote. While he lived, he only heard of its rejection by the various publishing houses to which he'd sent the manuscript. Though after his death, it quickly became a huge and very

surprising success. Essentially, the book is a detailed character study of one person, a middle-aged astronomer and mathematician called Fbritzio Corba, who is also, like the author, a Sicilian aristocrat. The novel is mainly set in the 1860s, but its helpful message to us has nothing to do with Italian history. The outer surface of Fabitzio is polished, elegant, and charming. He's easygoing, immensely polite, handsome, and generous. But as we see him in greater detail as readers of the novel, he emerges as far from appealing. He's irritable, selfish, demanding, a little vain, withdrawn, and proud. And he's recklessly running through the family money. But Dampadoo's novel takes us

deeper. He's a human being facing the impossibly perplexing questions of existence. He knows he's wasted his life. He's overwhelmingly conscious that moment by moment he's approaching death. He loves his children, but none of them as adults love him. He's devoted to his wife, but is desperate for the erotic warmth she can't offer. Even his scientific brilliance. He's played an important role in mapping the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter is revealed as a kind of narcotic. He plunges into precise observation and complex calculation to escape from the pains of daily existence. But it also signals his longing for, as Lampaduza writes, the unreachable, the untouchable, the unknown. At times, the

hero is immensely self-aware. At other points, he unwittingly deceives himself. The touching, helpful beauty of this novel is that eventually the hero, Fabritzio, is revealed as magnificently ordinary. He is seen and described with an immensely kindly loving detachment. In a central episode at a party, he is at first depressed and disgusted by everyone around him. They are ugly, benile, greedy, stupid, shrill. And then, as Lampadusa writes, his heart split open. He was them. He was made of the same material. Nothing that is destined to die could deserve hatred. No one would ever know he felt like this.

They'd never guess that he could be so tender and so moved. In turn, no one will ever know us fully. But here in the pages of this great book, we can imagine being known through and through and treated with the honor we deserve for all our stupid mistakes and petty failings. This is a novel about one person, but it's really meant to be a book about everyone. If we could see the whole story of anyone, our hearts would break open with love and compassion.