Places of My Infancy

by Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa, Archibald Colquhoun (Translator)

Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa's brief but brilliant writing career lasted a mere two years before he succumbed to lung cancer. In that time he produced one novel--(The Leopard)--three stories, and the beginning of a memoir, Places of my Infancy, a tour of Lampedusa's family estates in Sicily at the turn of 20th century. "For me childhood was a lost paradise," writes Lampedusa. "I was king of the home." Lampedusa gives lush, intimate descriptions of the estates in town and country: the home with its one hundred rooms, its garden with fountains full of eels, its church, its theater where wandering "country" theater groups would perform, the maids and the groundskeepers, and Lampedusa's own family members. Each detail from his mother's silver comb to his father's camera (owned in 1900!) unlocks a memory of some event from the era.

Genres: Memoir, Italian Literature, Nonfiction, Italy, History, Literature

80 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2012

About the author

Tomasi was born in Palermo to Giulio Maria Tomasi, Prince of Lampedusa and Duke of Palma di Montechiaro, and Beatrice Mastrogiovanni Tasca Filangieri di Cutò. He became an only child after the death (from diphtheria) of his sister. He was very close to his mother, a strong personality who influenced him a great deal, especially because his father was rather cold and detached. As a child he studied in their grand house in Palermo with a tutor (including the subjects of literature and English), with his mother (who taught him French), and with a grandmother who read him the novels of Emilio Salgari. In the little theater of the house in Santa Margherita di Belice, where he spent long vacations, he first saw a performance of Shakespeare's Hamlet, performed by a company of travelling players. His cousin was Fulco di Verdura.

Reviews

[Tosh · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this book in 2012, and recently re-read it, due that "Places of my Infancy: A Memory" very much influenced me on my memoir "Tosh: Growing Up in Wallace Berman's World." Both of our books are childhood memoirs, and what impressed me about Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa's little book is that it is more about location, architecture, and things than people. In my book, characters are essential, but what got me to keep on the page, to write, is actually the location of Beverly Glen and Topanga Canyon. Lampedusa is an Italian or Sicilian aristocrat, and I often felt like I was a pauper prince. Both of us grew up in extraordinary surroundings; him with the super wealthy, and yours truly in the bohemian world of the Beats and Hippies.

When I purchased this book in New York City, six years ago, I was working on my memoir. "Places of my Infancy" gave me the importance that character of the author and also the reflection of one's home, and how that affects the writer. A significant book. Down below is the original review I wrote for the Good Reads website:

Looking for a small book in size to read on the subway trips from Manhattan to Bushwick, I picked up the elegant Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa's miniature memoir of his childhood "Places of My Infancy." The most remarkable aspect of this book is that it's not about people. It is about his home, or one should say estate in Italy during the turn of the Century.

Reading this I reminded of "Against Nature" by Huysmann, but this is the real deal. At least through the eyes of an adult looking back at his life as a child. Detailed architectural accounts of various rooms, including the dining room which has life-sized portraits of the owners (the first ones) eating their meals. One would think why they would want a painting of themselves eating in a room where you actually take your meal? But that's the charm of the super rich - if one could even use the word super in this category, it's more super-duper.

In his house, he had a theater that can hold 300 people, and his family would allow traveling theater people to do shows for the local citizens. Some rich, but a lot were peasants. Eventually, the theater became a movie theater. Lampedusa has a way to comment on changes that he remembers through his childhood.

In the book, di Lampedusa admits that he is more attached to things than humans, and this is very much the tale of things - most cases the architecture of his home as a child, including detailed descriptions of rooms, furniture, etc. But the truth (as he knows as well) that 'things' can tell a narrative better than a human at times. Remarkable book.

[Charles Dee Mitchell · Rating 4 out of 5]

Giuseppe Tomasi (1896 – 1957) was the last prince of Lampedusa. Since I am a product of mid-twentieth century, middle-class America, you might as well tell me that this man came from the planet Neptune. I have no context in which to comprehend his heritage or his life. He saw the end of the family line. After the First World War, their fortunes began to crumble. In the next war, Allied bombers destroyed their palace in Palermo, and a ruinous lawsuit over his father’s inheritance had left Tomasi and the forty-four other claimants relatively poor. Tomasi retired to his library, and during the last three years of his life became an author. He finished his novel, The Leopard, and showed it to two publishers. Both rejected it and he put it away. When he died he considered himself a failure.

The posthumous publication of The Leopard made him famous. For years it was his only literary heritage, but recently some short fiction, his letters, and his critical essays have come into print. Places of My Infancy is not the beginning of an unfnishedl memoir nor a polished essay. It is seven brief chapters of childhood memories, written down as they came to him in the process of writing. It is a slight work of reminiscence that he wrote only for himself. In the final sentence he writes, “May these lines that no one will read be a homage to its unblemished memory.”

He is referring to the Villa Margherita where the family often gathered for the summer. In The Leopard it becomes a structure of one hundred rooms. Although not that grand in reality, it was a magnificent home built in 1680 and carefully restored in 1810. Tomasi describes it as “a kind of Vatican,” In Places of My Infancy, the villa is a playground that he romps through on his tricycle. As a young adult he recognized it as an antique falling into disrepair and awkwardly showing traces of modernization. One of his impoverished uncles sold it in 1944. Tomasi had been dead for over a decade when an earthquake destroyed it in 1968.

The Villa Margherita is an apt metaphor for Tomasi’s life as a member of twentieth-century European aristocracy. Since he is writing for himself he doesn’t develop the metaphor, but the reader may pull it from this fragmentary work. Despite its promising title, Places of My Infancy is not a very good introduction to Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa. For readers of The Leopard it is an enjoyable foray into his life and ever growing literary reputation.

[Alan (the Lone Librarian) Teder · Rating 2 out of 5]

Can You Fully Trust a Translation That Translates Livonia as a Leghorn Chicken?
Review of the New Directions Pearl (2012) paperback English language translation edition of the Italian language original “Ricordi d’Infanzia” contained in I racconti (Stories) (1988 and later editions)

It is points off for this, and for the lack of footnotes in the translation generally. Tomasi di Lampedusa’s (1896-1957) single reference to his Baltic-German wife Alexandra von Wolff-Stomersee's (1894-1982) homeland of Livonia (Tsarist-era Estonia & Latvia) is misread and mistranslated in this English translation of his Childhood Memories. I'll also quickly state that, for me, Lampedusa's short works are a 5/5 as in Jutustused (Stories) (2017) the Estonian translation. It is thanks to the latter that I would even notice this error.

No, “mirth” niente; in Sicilia non ve ne era, non ve ne è ancora mai quando si lavora; le stornelleggianti vendemmiatrici toscane, le trebbiature livoniane punteggiate da banchetti, da canti e da accoppiamenti, sono cose sconosciute; ogni lavoro è “’na camurrìa”, una blasfematoria contravvenzione all’eterno riposo concesso dagli Dei ai nostril “lotus-eaters”. – from the original Ricordi d'Infanzia in I Racconti (Stories) (1988 and later editions).

No, no “mirth” at all; in Sicily there was none, there never is even now during work: the Tuscan girls singing their stornelli at vintage, the threshing punctuated by feasting, song and lovemaking round Leghorn, these are things unknown; all work is “’na camurrìa”, a blasphemous contravention of the eternal repose granted by the gods to our “lotus-eaters.” - As translated in Places of My Infancy (2012) where the reference to Livonian (”livoniane”) is misread as “Livorno” (Italian for the Leghorn Chicken.

Ok, yes, it is a petty issue to use as a demerit. But the whole point of the passage is to point out the contrasting work morale of Sicilians to farm workers in other places such as Tuscany and Livonia.

The other major demerit in this English translation is the paucity of footnotes, only 12 in this edition compared to, say, 45 in the Estonian translation linked above. This means all sorts of historical references to people, places and events are not explained, many nuances of other languages or dialects are not clarified etc.

Lampedusa's childhood memories of his family's life in early 20th century Sicily retain their charm and beauty in this edition regardless, but it could have been made so much better.

[Dustin Baxter · Rating 2 out of 5]

Maybe it's a result of living in the 21st century and looking back on bloated aristocratic events such as these in distaste, but this book is lacking otherwise. When I began reading the shorty, I was expecting a dissection of memory and loss, "memories of early childhood consist of a series of visual impressions, many very clear but lacking any sense of chronology". Unfortunately, I never found this topic discussed beyond the first chapter, in which the author oddly sets up the rest of the story as a meditation on memory, but in the end just shows off his house. Instead of embracing the loss of memory and fuzziness of the past, he uses it as an excuse proclaimed in a disclaimer that is the first chapter.

He is from an aristocratic family and he is here to tell us about his childhood spent, "meandering through a lost Earthly Paradise," that is, an estate. And what an estate it is, full of luxury, servants, and the faint smell of rancid bloat that I'm sure accompanies aristocratic estates. I don't know about other readers, but I couldn't get this "stench" out of my nose for the entire book and overall it had a dulling effect on my senses. The nice garden was followed by a nice dining room. Oh have I told you about my nice staircase with the kind butler in the salon at the top? This is the "lost Earthly Paradise," written by the esteemed Mr. Material Boy, eating a lunch of gold, praise be.

Maybe it's a result of living in the 21st century and looking back on bloated aristocratic events such as these in distaste, but this book is lacking otherwise. Maybe it's a result of living in the 21st century and looking back on bloated aristocratic events such as these in distaste, but this book is lacking and at least it is thin. Maybe it's a result of living in the 21st century and looking back on bloated aristocratic events such as these in distaste, but this book just turned me off, baby.

[Amanda · Rating 3 out of 5]

A prince writing fondly about his childhood memories. It's an odd mixture of a sweet, nostalgic tone that you might find in any childhood memoir, but the details are of extravagant palaces that are often decadent and ridiculous. de Lampedusa's spoiled life was shattered by WWI, clearly the defining incident in his life, and it seems to have given him both a longing for the pre-war sheltered lifestyle and also some appreciation for how trivial it was.

[Miao · Rating 3 out of 5]

2 and a half stars

my hopes for meditations on memory/the dreamlike fervor of youth i got via a quick flip thru were unfulfilled. i suspect the big allure of this text is infatuation w classical eurocentric ideals of high culture and aristocracy which Giuseppe's childhood of literal nobility lacks none. theres memories but its basically 100 pages describing how fine, well decorated, and richly immense his family's properties are, and the atmosphere of tenderness/nostalgia is probably related to this backdrop of excess historically being associated with romance and refinement rather than any emotional punch delivered by Giuseppe himself.

i liked when he gushed about his love for his family home tho, and i wish he pursued more the end bit about a couple rando objects which his attention 2 hinted of a special childhood preoccupation. hes a good writer and prob able 2 invoke sentiment when its intentional, Places of Infancy just isn't about poetry but documentation. he does vouch that the world would benefit if everyone constantly recorded everything and all diaries could be viewed, which is interesting and makes the description of yet another drawing room of brocade a bit more bearable... some people just live in sim mansions i would have made in 6th grade i guess.

[Spiros · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a lovely little gem of an autobiographical fragment, interrupted by di Lampedusa's untimely death from cancer. The advance reader's copy it was my misfortune to read (perplexingly advertised as "translated from the Japanese"), replete with spelling errors, typos, and missing words, still managed to engage my interest. My single favorite moment is this somewhat suggestive passage: "In autumn our walks had as a goal the vinyard of Toto Ferrara, where we would sit on stones and eat the sweetest mottled grapes (vine grapes, for in 1905 table grapes were scarcely ever cultivated in our region), after which we entered a room in semidarkness; at the end of it a lusty young man was jerking like a madman inside a barrel, his feet squashing the grapes whose greenish juice could be seen flowing down a wooden channel, while the air was filled with a heavy scent of must." Anyone looking for the source of the Salina Estate at Donafugata will find it in this book.

[Ben · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a book I encountered on a recent visit to City Lights bookstore in San Francisco and perhaps it was a mistake to have read it before having read Lampedusa's magnum opus, Il Gattopardo, which has been sitting on my to-read shelf for the past five years. Such is the case it seems with many of those books, that I had every intention of reading them once, but something else jumped the queue in front of them.

The last prince of Lampedusa, Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa lived a secluded life of luxury during his early years, homes with more rooms than there were people, and every sort of material comfort imaginable. Whereas such a life may have been very boring for many young children, especially those of today's generation who come up in an age of rapidly changing technologies, for Lampedusa such a life was desirable, being "a boy who loved solitude, who liked the company of things more than people."

As in Proust, so many items he encounters release a flood of involuntary memory, and bring him back vividly to his boyhood in Sicily, at Santa Margherita. But he is an unreliable narrator from the start, admitting that his memories, like those of any of us may be faulty, that we may dream something or mix certain events in the soup that is memory; and though he promises not to lie to his reader, he makes no promises not to lie by omission.

With the Second World War, as was the case for many, Lampedusa's world rapidly changed, his boyhood home (where he had slept until only months before) was destroyed when in 1943 the Allied Forces invaded Sicily. Disillusioned, depressed, he set his mind to write, to remember and to preserve that which he had lost. While his estate was much grander and he had further to fall, were his trials really any greater than those of the working class or the peasants? How many have suffered loss, worse than his, and had not the ability to set their stories on paper, their tales buried in the dust of war and its aftermath?

[Karen Quigley · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a slim book, beautifully written, which recapitulates in a more personal way the history and life written about in The Leopard. It is really only a fragment of someone who lived most happily at the beginning of his life and now fondly recalls it in great detail. It was the form of the life he loved - most of the narration deals with the architecture and the customs of his time, not the individuals or their stories. He is achingly aware that it all represents a way of life that was fading even then and is now totally gone.

It makes you think about memory, how it works, and what it means to remember. His memory is apparently so clear, it challenges you to sit down with a blank piece of paper and try to recapture your own past. What remains? Why this part and not that? How does it feel? He mentions several times that he expects no one to read his lines, so this is a very personal exercise, but meaningful in its example.

[Martha Bradford · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a completely charming memoir. It takes place in a time and in a world completely lost to us. It covers a brief period around the turn of the last century, when old Europe was beginning to fade. The authors memories of his childhood are as close as we’ll get not to snapshots of those days. He provides vivid descriptions of the palace he grew up in, and the palace there he summered. And he introduces us to the few people who were important to him, as a young, curious and introverted child.

Coincidentally I’m also now reading a book by Richard Basset, “The last days in old Europe” , which was written closer to the end of the decline that began in this book. Im finding it to be a good companion book.

[Mike · Rating 2 out of 5]

An unfinished memoir that is neither revelatory nor interesting, unless you have a deep desire to learn about Tomasi’s early life or the general description of the fading Italian aristocracy in the early twentieth century. But even then, this is mostly a sketch of buildings, rooms, places, and people without any sense of connection for modern readers.

[Eric · Rating 4 out of 5]

I love Lampedusa.