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emilyinparis 's review for:
The Leopard
by Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa
‘The Paul Neyron roses, whose cuttings he had himself bought in Paris, had degenerated; first stimulated then enfeebled by the strong of languid pull of Sicilian earth, burnt by apocalyptic Julys, they had changed into objects like flesh-coloured cabbages, obscene and distilling a dense almost indecent scent which no French horticulturalist would have dared hope for. The prince put one under his nose and seemed to be sniffing the thigh of a dancer from the opera’
‘Here and there the squat domes rose higher, in flaccid curves like breasts emptied of milk’
‘The sun, still far from its blazing zenith on that morning of the 13th of May, was showing itself the true ruler of Sicily; the crude brash sun, the drugging sun, which annulled every will, kept all things in servile immobility, cradled in violence and arbitrary dreams’
‘her fingers rumpled the sheet while her words furrowed the lunar atmosphere of the enclosed room like angry scarlet torches’
‘and he felt as if by those kisses he were taking possession of Sicily once more, of the lovely faithless land which now, after a vain revolt, had surrendered to him again, as always to his family, its carnal delights and golden crops’
‘Even the architecture, the recoco décor itself, evoked thoughts of fleshy curves and taut erect breasts; and every opening door seemed like a curtain rustling in a bed-alcove’
‘Don Fabrizio felt his heart thaw; his disgust gave way to compassion for all these ephemeral beings out to enjoy the tiny ray of light granted to them between two shades, before the cradle, after the last spasms. How could one inveigh against those sure to die?’
‘It was useless to try and avoid the thought, but the last of the Salina was really he himself, this gaunt giant now dying on a hotel balcony’
‘And—why not?—the public thrill of being given a medal at the Sorbonne, the exquisite sensation of one or two fine silk cravats, the smell of some macerated leathers, the gay voluptuous air of a few women passed in the street, of one glimpsed even yesterday at the station of Catania, in a brown travelling dress and suede gloves, mingling amid the crowds and seeming to search for his exhausted face’