“Changing everything in order to change nothing”

“Changing everything in order to change nothing” becomes a compact diagnosis of political continuity in Nicolò Zito’s account of Sicily. By applying the prince of Salina’s famous maxim to the succession after Luparello, Zito argues that a change in leadership can preserve the same underlying arrangement—and identifies Pietro Rizzo as the figure binding the apparent alternatives together.

Meaning and Political Setting

On the Free Channel, Zito describes Sicily, and Montelusa in particular, as a place where things do not move even when a storm is on the horizon. The maxim gives this observation its paradoxical form: visible change need not amount to a change in who holds influence or how power is exercised. Zito reinforces the point with the Sicilian expression zara zabara, presenting political stasis as familiar enough to have its own local shorthand.

Application to the Succession

Zito applies the maxim to the political handover from Luparello to Cardamone. Although Cardamone is the new party secretary, Zito calls him and Luparello two sides of the same coin; the alloy that makes the coin, he argues, is Pietro Rizzo. The image turns a change of officeholder into an argument about continuity: the figures may differ, but Rizzo connects them within the same political arrangement.

That reading sits beside the public account of the transition. Rizzo has agreed to work alongside Cardamone and presents his acceptance as fidelity to Luparello’s memory and watchword, “to serve.” Salvo Montalbano initially finds the arrangement surprising, since Rizzo had been the new secretary’s principal adversary’s most loyal right-hand man, but considers that Cardamone may need support before he has enough influence to stand alone. The maxim supplies Zito’s sharper interpretation of this compromise: cooperation and succession may change the outward form while leaving the network of influence intact.

Narrative Function

The expression enters the investigation through broadcast political commentary rather than a private reflection. Its force comes from how Zito connects a familiar literary maxim to the immediate contest over party leadership, making an abstract paradox a claim about specific political actors. Salvo Montalbano responds by calling Zito at the Free Channel, where the inspector and newsman share a bond of sympathy close to friendship. In this context, the maxim does more than summarize Zito’s accusation: it helps direct Montalbano toward the political meaning of the supposedly new arrangement.