Recent online reading

I haven't had much time for browsing this week, so only a couple of articles…

The upcoming translation of Franz Kafka's The Metamorphosis by Susan Bernofsky has been well publicized. Here is an excerpt.
And Creative Review has an article on the book's covers.


I missed this when originally published, but I completely agree with the title of William Giraldi's essay: Why does almost everything written about Primo Levi revolve around his suicide?. He presumes Levi's death was undoubtedly a suicide, though, which I don't believe is a given. Even so, the title question stands, as does a look at why Levi's novels aren't as strong as his memoirs or his memoir-related books.


Miguel at the St. Orberose blog had a list of his to-be-read pile. Giambattista Vico's "The New Science" caught my eye since I have been wanting to read it. In my usual overblown fashion, I'll plan a month of posts about Vico and his work, probably August. I'll post more on this later as I get started on the project, but wanted to alert anyone interested in the book as to my plans.


When I remember them, I have the weirdest dreams. One of last night's dreams had a literary angle. I was asked to attend a brainstorming session on a possible play about a 20th poet/playwright's slide into depression and dementia. Weirdness set in during the session as ideas about using a band of drag queens devolved into stranger takes on the writer's life. My suggestion was roundly sniffed at: perform a take-off on The Firesign Theatre's Don't Crush that Dwarf, Hand Me the Pliers. Have the writer sitting on a couch, flipping the dial on the radio and listening to program after cheesy program based on his works. Hearing the debasement of his life's work causes him to slowly sink into madness and despair. Liven up the programs by having J R-like commercials: "It's green!"
I'm almost afraid to know where all of this came from.

Primo (2005 film)

In the comments of my post on If This Is a Man Miguel of St. Orberose blog stole my intended opening for Anthony Sher’s performance in Primo:

Primo Levi's book is a monumental exposition of the concentration camp system, and also of the mentalities that developed inside these horrible places; extraordinary what the prisoners had to become to survive. And the objectivity, the precision, the calmness, the tone he employs is so sober and lucid, you feel the man is whispering at you...

OK, Miguel put more in there and said it better than I could, but it’s the conversational tone of the novel that Sher reproduces perfectly in this stage adaptation of the novel. The film captures a performance of the one-man play. Sher takes a generous helping of direct quotes from the novel and adds tone-perfect bridges to connect different parts of the story, accurate summations to keep the performance within 1 ½ hours, and original lines which fit perfectly with the novel. Any staging of a play or movie about the concentration camps raises delicate questions about how to approach the performance.

I found it ironic that Sher relies almost completely on words, the text (as adapted) highlights Levi's stance that words were inadequate to describe what he experienced. As I noted in the post on the novel, Levi’s claim of ineffability is undermined not just by the novel’s existence but the continued interest in it. Sher stands in front of the audience as a middle-aged Levi (although the book was written within a few years of his return home from the camps), similar in look to several of the author’s most circulated later pictures. The staging is minimal but Sher makes effectual use of the few props (a chair, the wall, the doorway) during the telling of the story. His use of tone and pace adds to the result, as does the haunting cello score by Jonathan Goldstein and the imaginative lighting.

I think what I appreciated the most about Sher’s performance was the matter-of-factness of his delivery, especially during some of the most horrifying lines, since that mirrors Levi’s poise and prose. For Levi’s story there is no need for embellishment, and anyone looking for more insight into the author or his life won’t find it here–Sher remains true to the text even when abridging or adding lines. Many of the themes and motifs I noted in my post didn’t fully make it to the play but that doesn’t make the production any less powerful…maybe less literary? (But then do literary references work better in books, especially when they can be developed further?) Regardless, I highly recommend this production whether as an introduction to the novel or a reminder of its power.


Sher released a book, Primo Time, on the writing and production of the play. While I haven’t read it, excerpts from it can be found at the Guardian. “The Fear” that he mentions in the excerpts is the case of stage fright he had developed…nothing like starring in a one-man play to confront that fear. Here are three of the quoted entries:

9 November 2002: Finished. It's far too long, but I could sense Primo's presence guiding me. I am wrung out; I have cried so many tears.

18 July 2004: Rehearsals start today. The Levi estate adore my script and Nick H promised me the Cottesloe, yet I feel flat. Is The Fear returning?

30 September 2004: The first night. Everyone thinks I'm marvellous. If only Primo would write back to me ...

If This Is a Man by Primo Levi

If This is a Man by Primo Levi
Translated by Stuart Woolf
Introduction by Paul Bailey
Abacus (ISBN 978-0-349-10013-5)

Primo Levi was 24 years old in the fall of 1943 when he was arrested with other members of the Italian resistance movement. Instead of being shot as a traitor, he confessed to being Jewish and was shipped to Auschwitz. If This Is a Man tells about Levi’s time in the Lager (camp). As Sam Magavern details in Primo Levi’s Universe, this book would not be the final word on Levi’s experience but would provide the starting point of an evolving moral philosophy. Levi describes in the Afterword how he felt about his experience upon his return: “[T]hose memories burned so intensely inside me that I felt compelled to write as soon as I returned to Italy, and within a few months I wrote If This Is a Man. (381)

Levi states that the central purpose of the book was to provide “documentation for a quiet study of certain aspects of the human mind.” (15) Since Levi wants the reader to participate in what occurred, he takes some poetic license despite assuring us no facts were invented—which may be correct in a narrow sense but misleading since not everything described happened to Levi.

The opening poem to the book can be read here. It is based on the Jewish prayer representing God’s call to Israel, asking the reader to engrave these words on their heart while we consider if “this,” the victims of the Nazis and the state to which they are reduced in the camps, are men and women. The American title is Survival in Auschwitz, a terrible choice (not to mention some editions omit the opening poem). The methods Levi and other prisoners employed to stay alive is important, but it’s only part of the story since that partially overlaps with what it entailed to remain human.

The German Lager system intended the destruction of people, not just in the physical sense but targeting their souls, too. Levi saw firsthand that many men became subhuman...animals...when treated that way. Their humanity was stolen in many ways, even in something as simple as denying them a name. As Levi describes it, taking away everything a person is used to having and enjoying turns them into a “hollow man.” Steinlauf chides Levi for not taking better care of himself in the camp, telling him that because the Lager “was a great machine to reduce us to beasts, we must not become beasts; that even in this place one can survive, and therefore one must want to survive, to tell the story, to bear witness; and that to survive we must force ourselves to save at least the skeleton, the scaffolding, the form of civilization.” (47) The one power prisoners retain resides in their refusal to consent to their treatment and its intended purpose. Dying as a man, in this regard, is a difficult task. The Lager shows a “resolution...to annihilate us first as men in order to kill us more slowly afterwards.” (57)

There are several types of men Levi despises, but two examples are provide a basis for his judgment. Levi has been given an opportunity to work in a chemical laboratory in the Lager but he must pass an exam first. A German scientist, Doktor Pannwitz, administers the exam but he gives Levi a derisive look before they begin the test:

Because that look was not one between two men; and if I had known how completely to explain the nature of that look, which came as if across the glass window of an aquarium between two beings who live in different worlds, I would also have explained the essence of the great insanity of the third Germany. One felt in that moment, in an immediate manner, what we all though and said of the Germans. The brain which governed those blue eyes and those manicured hands said: “This something in front of me belongs to a species which it is obviously opportune to suppress.” (111-12)

Levi’s scathing judgment isn’t limited to the Nazis but covers other prisoners assisting the system. As Levi returns from the exam to the camp with Alex (the Kapo of his work detail),

[O]ne has to cross a space cluttered up with piles of cross-beams and metal frames. The steel cable of a crane cuts across the road, and Alex catches hold of it to climb over: Donnerwetter, he looks at his hand black with thick grease. In the meanwhile I have joined him. Without hatred and without sneering, Alex wipes his hand on my shoulder, both the palm and the back of the hand, to clean it; he would be amazed, the poor brute Alex, if someone told him that today, on the basis of this action, I judge him and Pannwitz and the innumerable others like him, big and small, in Auschwitz and everywhere. (113-14)

Behind this judgment is not an attempt to understand the actions of those that treat him as less than human but an examination of what their actions created or destroyed. It’s often said that Levi’s scientific background in chemistry shows through in his writing, whether in its dispassionate recording and/or his look at cause and effect, but his analysis searches for something beyond apparent actions.

Levi makes it clear that humanity comes from what a man does and the actions he takes. He admits that he descended to animal-like status in the hell of the Lager but he was able, eventually, to return to the land of the living. His language at times shows he could become like his captors, describing other prisoners as things instead of men. Word choices capture the difference, too. The Nazis describe the prisoners’ dining as fressen (eating like an animal) instead of the normal term essen, eating like a human.

So what keeps the moral compass pointing toward “man” instead of “animal”? I’ve mentioned Levi's focus on discipline, taking care of the self and others. But there’s also a factor of motive, helping others without expecting something in return. A civilian worker, Lorenzo, provided Levi (and other prisoners) with food, not making a big to-do about it and not expecting anything in return. Levi credits Lorenzo with keeping him alive as well as reminding him that there was a world where he and other could be men: “Thanks to Lorenzo, I managed not to forget that I myself was a man.” (128) A second example of a man, though, brings shame to Levi. He and his friend Alberto developed a system where they received extra food. In addition to the satisfaction of extra food, the increased measure of respect from other prisoners makes them feel good. Levi realizes their feelings are misplaced while watching the hanging of a man blamed for blowing up a crematorium at Birkenau. The condemned man calls out, “Comrades, I am the last one!”, a reference not just to possibly being the last man hanged before the impending Russian liberation of the camp but providing the last example of a strong man. Levi and Alberto can’t look at each other that evening after the hanging, embarrassed by their actions in comparison to "the last man." Levi’s shame grows and causes him to recognize what the Lager has done to him and others:

“To destroy a man is difficult, almost as difficult as to create one: it has not been easy, nor quick, but you Germans have succeeded. Here we are, docile under your gaze; from our side you have nothing more to fear; no acts of violence, no words of defiance, not even a look of judgment.” (156)

Levi’s descent into the hell of the Lager proves to a continuation of previous literary examples. Levi guides us, our Virgil into a Dantean vision of hell. Unlike Dante’s construction, though, the Lager’s Hell is not based on justice but is constructed as an insane, violent system with no other meaning than to destroy men. Levi dismisses judgment on many actions by the prisoners—there are no criminals with the absence of morality. Before the prisoners get to the camp Levi declares the trip in the railcar as hell. The privation in the railcars is compounded by the torture of constantly expecting something to happen. There will be many more moments in the book emphasizing the similarity to Tantalus.

Despite declaring language as inadequate to describe what he saw and experienced, Levi tries to do just that. The existence of the book obviously undermines his claim of ineffability. Even so, words in their ordinary meanings will not suffice. Hunger and cold, for example, don’t do justice to what the prisoners experienced:

“Just as our hunger is not that feeling of missing a meal, so our way being cold has need of a new word. We say ‘hunger’, we say ‘tiredness’, ‘fear’, ‘pain’, we say ‘winter’ and they are different things. They are free words, created and used by free men who lived in comfort and suffering in their homes. If the Lagers had lasted longer a new, harsh language would have been born.” (129)

Levi establishes the uselessness of asking questions early in the novel when an official replies “There is no why here” in answer to a request. Levi insists on asking questions to the reader, though, even though there isn't always an answer. The tone for questions had been set early, of course, with the opening poem. The attempt to understand events torments Levi, leading to a survival mentality that avoids looking to the future or the past. To Levi religion has no place in the Lager, either. It’s practiced at times, such as Kuhn’s thankful prayer to God for not being included in the day’s extermination, but Kuhn’s prayer disgusts Levi since that means someone was chosen in his place. Levi wants no part of a religion that encourages behavior like this.

The chapter titled “The Canto of Ulysses” reinforces the idea of the Lager as Hell, but this is a dark analogy since it calls forth Dante’s version with Ulysses instead of Odysseus in the Homeric version. Homer’s Odysseus descended into Hell but he knew he would return. Dante’s Ulysses, on the other hand, drowned after deciding not to return home after leaving Circe’s isle, desiring to experience all human things (including vices). Ulysses made it as far as seeing Purgatory before his ship went down, landing him in a deep level of Hell along with other fraudulent counselors. Levi attempts to quote Dante’s canto to teach Italian to a fellow prisoner. He is able to remember many passages but has to provide summaries for the sections he can’t remember. Levi feels a rush while teaching the canto when he feels he understands Dante's message. Unfortunately the chapter ends with a double anticlimax.

The first anticlimax comes after Levi feels an urgency and necessity to get his pupil to understand a part of the poem, just as he experiences “something gigantic that I myself have only just seen, in a flash of intuition, perhaps the reason for our fate, for our being here today...” (121; ellipsis in original) But Levi never explains what he ‘saw.’ Is it also something that can’t be adequately put into words, only alluded to in poetry? The second anticlimax comes after this transcendent moment. Levi and his pupil are in line for soup, a jarring return to reality after such lofty poetry. The let-down carries on to the end of the chapter, where Levi quotes “And over our heads the hollow seas closed up” while the prisoners chatter about cabbages and turnips.

There’s another Hell Levi experiences—he has a recurring dream of returning home and telling his family about his experiences in the Lager, only to be ignored or, at best, listened to with indifference. Levi feels undiluted pain during this recurring dream. For his experience to have any sort of meaning, Levi’s believes he must survives the Lager in order to tell his story but there must be sentient listeners, too.

Part of Levi’s Hell is the one thing man retains, even during the worst moments—hope. It’s unavoidable since it is part of the human condition, but it also reminds a reader why hope was in the jar of evils that Pandora opened and why it became trapped by the lid. Hope doesn't exist as either a good or an evil, but depends on the context in which it is used and whether it is merited. Hope in the Lager was one more tantalizing thing, compounding what the prisoners had to endure. Complementary to hope were chance happenings keeping the prisoners from complete despair. The day may be completely miserable but one little thing would happen that would make everything seem tolerable. While this says more about psychology than the Lager, Levi takes this thought in a dark direction. There’s always an option in the Lager—suicide. A prisoner could always touch the electric fence or fall underneath the wheels of a train. As perverse as it sounds the available option of suicide provides a balm, a choice that a prisoner could take if things became unbearable.

The “Canto of Ulysses” chapter also points to the central metaphor of the book: the drowned versus the saved. For Dante the ‘drowned’ were damned souls, while in Levi’s novel the ‘drowned’ are those that have lost what it means to be a man. They may still be alive on the outside but their core is hollow. The destruction of civilization is one important element in this concept since in the Lager “the struggle to survive is without respite, because everyone is desperately and ferociously alone.” (94)

The inadequacy of words comes into play again since what 'death' doesn't fully explain what prisoners experienced before and at their expiration. It’s common to read reviews of the book pointing to the indestructibility of the human spirit but Levi provides many examples of the destruction of men long before their death. He doesn’t pull any punches in looking at victims, either. Levi doesn’t equate captors and victims but he does point to several of the men around him agreeing to their ‘drowning.’

The last chapter covers the time between German evacuation of the camp and arrival of the Russians. Parts of this chapter add to the uneasiness in reading the book. Levi and a few men in the sick ward turn away other patients because they would have been a drain on the limited resources (and would have died anyway). In later works and interviews Levi notes that they were able to save several men by these actions, but if they had tried to save everyone nobody would have survived. As chances of survival improve, Levi and his friends do help others.

I have more notes about the novel since Levi includes many more themes, motifs, and techniques (nature as insensible as the Nazis, the unmemorable nature of most of the drowned, Dantean judgments on the drowned and the saved, Levi’s use of anticlimaxes, and even his use of humor) but I’ve gone on too long as it is and I want to post on Levi’s The Truce soon (where we see Homer's Odysseus instead). If This Is a Man is an amazing story, told with remarkable restraint while raising many troubling issues. Highest recommendation.


“Today I think that if for no other reason than that an Auschwitz existed, no one in our age should speak of Providence.” (163-64)

Primo Levi's Universe: A Writer's Journey by Sam Magavern

Primo Levi’s Universe: A Writer’s Journey by Sam Magavern
Foreword by Jonathan Rosen, Afterword by Risa Sodi
Palgrave Macmillan: New York City, 2009
ISBN 978-0-230-60647-0

[W]hen we read all of Levi’s writings together, we find that he has woven a great and terrifying testament, one of the most vital bodies of work in modern literature. We find that his various writings combine to make a bildungsroman rivaling Proust’s. A bildungsroman, or “education novel,” follows the moral and psychological growth of its main character. In a minor bildungsroman, we watch a character adapt to an adult reality that we, the readers, already know. In a major bildungsroman, like Proust’s or Levi’s, we watch as the character finds and creates not only a self, but also a cosmos–a new interpretation of the world.

Levi’s main character is Primo Levi: a mostly factual version of himself created in a long series of memoirs, stories, essays, poems, and interviews. In Levi’s core work, he focuses on his youth: the classic age for the bildungsroman, the age of adventures. Levi’s youth included both adventure and tragedy; it did not end until his late twenties, when he returned from the war, married, and began working as an industrial chemist. But, as important as his youth was to him, Levi continued to grow and change–to re-work himself and his cosmos–until his death.

Levi’s central concern was what makes–and unmakes–a man. (pages 1-2)

Sam Magavern goes through many of Levi’s works to support his claim that they provide the key to his life and the cosmos he created in his books. Magavern also intertwines Levi’s biography with his works to provide comparison and contrast between his his writings and his experiences. With this approach, “Primo Levi’s Universe allows us to appreciate how Primo Levi became Primo Levi.” (page 206, in Risa Sodi’s Afterword) While the book isn’t long, it is packed with plenty of information that will assist someone wanting to explore Levi’s books. Magavern investigates the cosmos and ethos reflected in Levi’s work, looking at how he recorded how we live and how we should live.

The central event in Levi’s life was his experience in Auschwitz, a subject he revisited many times in his stories. Magavern’s longest chapter focuses on the time at Auschwitz because of its importance in Levi’s life. The challenges from the Lager went beyond the test of survival. In Levi’s first book, If This Is a Man (the American title is the butchered Survival in Auschwitz), Levi presents his time in the camp as a descent into hell. In contrast to Dante’s circles of hell based on religious justice, Levi provides a senseless depiction of what a man can do to another man. The dehumanizing aspect of the camp, for the Nazis and the victims, troubles Levi the most. Evil does exist, and some of the worst characters in the book are prisoners. Recounting his experience tests the limits of language–words are inadequate when describing the unmaking of men. Later versions of the novel would soften his outlook as he added sympathetic characters and more literary passages, making the book less bleak. Magavern takes care to point out things Levi left out of the story or events he altered, providing as much information about Levi as what the author included. Because it’s a novel it is not meant to be a precise recounting. Instead, Levi attempts to provide deeper truths from the experience. Levi often noted that he may have not been accurate in his depictions beyond the literary licenses he took since memory is fallible, but there are other aspects of stories he changed that can be troubling. I’ll stop here regarding this book since I will have a separate post (or posts) on it.

While If This Is a Man looks at man’s capacity for evil, The Truce looks at man’s capacity for life. The Truce (the American release once again butchers the title, changing it to The Reawakening) records Levi’s 10-month trip home from the Lager. Dante’s Ulysses in If This Is a Man is now Homer’s Odysseus in The Truce. Like If This Is a Man, The Truce universalizes what Levi experiences, especially focusing on a survivor’s shame as representative of the shame of mankind. I will post on this book, too, so I’ll have more on it later.

Magavern also looks at Levi’s life after his return to Turin and compares his writings on family life, literary life, depression, retirement, and feelings about writing that appear in his works. Levi’s major influences appear in his books and poems in many different ways. Family members and friends (and enemies) are represented by characters in his works many times over. The influence from and references to favorite authors, such as Dante and Rabelais, appear often, too. While his dual experiences and dichotomous roles are often noted, it bears repeating that the tensions or contrasts in Levi’s life helped synthesize his works into something greater than the sum of their parts.

I don’t know that I’m completely sold on Magavern’s premise that Levi’s writings constituting a major bildungsroman, but his approach of discovering the man through his works provides a rich assessment on both his life and writings. Levi continually claims that language isn’t adequate to present what happened yet he finds a way to do just that, helping others understand what man is capable of doing, whether good or bad. In the meantime, Levi doesn’t task us to transcend our humanity and become something greater. Instead, he exhorts us to remain worthy of the name ‘man’ and prevent us from devolving into beasts.

All in all, this books is an excellent introduction to the man and his work as well as providing a very good companion when exploring his writings. Very highly recommended.

My swerve

I had tentative plans for November to post on American women authors but I was sidetracked, willingly, into reading more books by and about Primo Levi. I plan to post on If This Is a Man and The Truce and three movies (Primo Levi's Journey, The Truce, and Primo Mysteries) during the month. I'll start with Sam Magavern's book Primo Levi's Universe, an excellent introduction to the man and his writings. I'll stop at this point before I gush too much about it.

The plan isn't to overwhelm the reader with concentration camp literature, but I want to dig up my notes on Imre Kertész's novel Fiasco, too.

There will probably be a Hungarian and Polish novel or two that will work their way into the month's posts, and more personally, a work on 19th-century Alabama writers. File it under writers from other countries if you'd like. This one will be personal, though, since it was written by the father of some great friends of mine. I plan to get to all of these and more during the month.

ICA talks: Primo Levi and Michael Kustov, in conversation

Another post from the Institute of Contemporary Arts recordings. This one is from April 18, 1986 with Primo Levi, timed to coincide with the release of the English translation of If Not Now, When? in Great Britain. I didn’t take too many notes since his answers didn’t really lend themselves to a ‘highlights’ format. I do recommend listening to the recording just because of the range and depth of topics he covers.

In his ‘answers’ section Levi touches on many subjects. He wonders “Am I entitled” to tell stories about what happened in Auschwitz. The obvious question is if he isn't, what qualifies someone to do so? Part of the reason he wrote If Not Now, When? came from the constant questions about why the Jews didn’t fight back during the atrocities preceding and during World War II. Levi views these questions as completely out of touch to what was going on at the time. Even so, he felt some unease writing fiction about real events.

Levi also related some of his experiences on his journey home from Auschwitz and spends some time on a question about Eastern European Jews compared to Western European Jews. He talks about writers to which he feels close, such as Italo Calvino (who he calls a “twin”). Some literary works about concentration camps “fail” for him, whether personally or as literature. Many of the “fails” feel artificial (even though they may attempt in good faith)…a few are mentioned by name. Levi also mentions, as does one of the audience questioners, the humor in his work, which he feels to be an essential component if you’re going to write “from above,” as an omnipotent narrator.

Highly recommended.

The Periodic Table discussion

The Periodic Table consists of 21 short pieces, each titled with an element from the periodic table. The pieces include personal and family stories of Primo Levi as well as fictional tales while the relationship to the title element ranges from peripheral to central. More than anything else, the book gives insight to Levi’s composition as we follow him through his training to become a chemist, dealing with the Jewish laws in fascist Italy, surviving Auschwitz at the end of World War II, and picking up the pieces of his life after such a experience.

Levi explains what drove him to study chemistry:

We began studying physics together, and Sandro was surprised when I tried to explain to him some of the ideas that at the time I was confusedly cultivating. That the nobility of Man, acquired in a hundred centuries of trial and error, lay in making himself the conqueror of matter, and that I had enrolled in chemistry because I wanted to remain faithful to this nobility. That conquering matter is to understand it, and understanding matter is necessary to understanding the universe and ourselves: and that therefore Mendleev’s Periodic Table, which just during those weeks we were laboriously learning to unravel, was poetry, loftier and more solemn than all the poetry we had swallowed down in liceo; and come to think of it, it even rhymed! That if one looked for the bridge, the missing link, between the world of words and the world of things, one did not have to look far: it was there, in our Autenrieth, in our smoke-filled labs, and in our future trade.

One of the delights of the book is the brief character sketches Levi gives of his friends and acquaintances, presenting a full person in only a few words. There was the Sandro, mentioned above, who wanted to understand himself (in contrast to Levi’s desire to understand matter) and constantly challenged himself, unwilling to be conquered by man or nature. There are only a few brief mentions of Levi’s wife, but in presenting a woman willing to help her husband collect chicken droppings he manages to convey a lot about her. In the chapter titled “Vanadium”, we are even given a character sketch from a distance of one of the industrial mangers connected with Auschwitz that he encountered through his work (and never met, other than through correspondence). Levi’s interaction with people throughout his life discloses a complex and generous man—while the book is far from autobiographical, the reader gets a revealing look at the author.

Many chemistry-related themes run throughout the book, with Levi showing both chemical and personal examples:

• distances between theory and practice,
• the complexity of matter, people and reality,
• purity vs. impurity,
• passive vs. active,
• the ability of minute things to ignite much greater action or cause unwanted reactions,
• divergent possibilities that hinge on minor differences,
• order vs. chaos, and
• the importance of inertia in people and institutions.

The final chapter tells “the story of an atom of carbon.” It would be interesting to know if Levi ever read The Maias by Eça de Queirós since the character Ega proposes authoring Memoirs of an Atom, for which he is hailed as a promising writer (even though he never even attempts to write it). Just as Levi imagines the history of a carbon atom finding its way into his brain, The Periodic Table gives the reader unique insight into the mind of Levi. He envies one character’s “boundless freedom of invention” to build “the past that suits him best,” yet Levi’s experiences show that simple humaneness can yield disproportionate (and unwarranted) optimism in constructing his rich life.

A few online resources for Primo Levi can be found here.

Update (5 Jan 2018): Carole Angier provides not just a nice overview of the book, but also includes the chapter “Cerium” with detailed commentary on that chapter at Aeon.

Online resources for Primo Levi

Photo source

While I had The Periodic Table on my list to re-read soon, I was surprised when a co-worker recommended it. It was such a coincidence, I thought now was a good time to approach it again after more than 20 years. Originally published in 1975, my first encounter with it was when it was translated into English in 1984.

Fortunately there is a lot available online regarding Levi and his writing, so below is a short list of a few sites I found informative:

Levi’s Wikipedia entry

A detailed entry on Levi at “The Modern Word’s” Scriptorium, with biography, bibliography, and brief reviews of his works

Composer Ari Frankel’s article at The Internet Channel has a partial transcript of a documentary covering a group visit to Auschwitz. Levi’s portion is detailed, and the site includes many pictures of Levi, his books, and photos that Frankel took.

An article by David Mendel on Levi’s thoughts on translation

One of Levi’s stories, published after his death: The Molecule's Defiance

Parts of an interview with Levi (excerpts from Ferdinando Camon, Conversations with Primo Levi)

A webpage dedicated to Primo Levi the Chemist

Primo Levi, from The Truce

[And] a dream full of horror has still not ceased to visit me, at sometimes frequent, sometimes longer, intervals. It is a dream within a dream, varied in detail, one in substance. I am sitting at a table with my family, or with friends, or at work, or in the green countryside; in short, in a peaceful relaxed environment, apparently without tension or affliction; yet I feel a deep and subtle anguish, the definite sensation of an impending threat. And in fact, as the dream proceeds, slowly and brutally, each time in a different way, everything collapses, and disintegrates around me, the scenery, the walls, the people, while the anguish becomes more intense and more precise. Now everything has changed into chaos; I am alone in the centre of a grey and turbid nothing, and now, I know what this thing means, and I also know that I have always known it; I am in the Lager once more, and nothing is true outside the Lager. All the rest was a brief pause, a deception of the senses, a dream; my family, nature in flower, my home. Now this inner dream, this dream of peace, is over, and in the outer dream, which continues, gelid, a well-known voice resounds: a single word, not imperious, but brief and subdued. It is the dawn command, of Auschwitz, a foreign word, feared and expected: get up, "Wstawàch."

Update (3 Dec 2011): A short post by Siddhartha Mukherjee on My hero: Primo Levi.