PRIMO LEVI

 

rimo Levi
has emerged as one of the most incisive and candid intellects among those writers
who experienced the Holocaust and survived to tell about it. It would be difficult to find
anyone who displays the soul of the persecuted Jew with more eloquence than does Levi. Italian
by birth, a chemist by profession, and a Jew by ancestry, he was born in Turin, one of Italy's
most industrialized cities, on July 31, l9l9, the son of a successful electrical engineer. He
grew up during the years before the Second World War in the relative comfort of the middle
class, at a time when one's religious background had not yet become a factor of segregation and
then persecution. After graduating from the Lyceum Massimo D'Azeglio, a secondary school noted
for its academic excellence and, during those years, for its several anti-Fascist teachers,
Levi went on to enroll in the Science Department at the University of Turin, in l937, to major
in Chemistry. Because he had enrolled one year prior to the promulgation of the Fascist "racial
laws," which, along with other restrictions, prohibited Jews in Italy from attending public
schools, he was allowed to complete his studies. He graduated summa cum laude in l941. However,
his diploma carried the phrase "di razza ebraica" ("of the Jewish race"), a distinction which
was the first personally experienced discriminating mark of the many that were to follow
regarding his Jewish origins, as fascist dogma encroached on the social, moral, and political
atmosphere in Italy. Nevertheless, as the passing of time and the accumulation of his personal
experiences would reveal, this discrimination, in its ultimate form, was the catalyst for Levi
to emerge as one of the most powerful and limpid voices confronting the indignity, humiliation,
shame, and lasting guilt of the Holocaust. He also distinguished himself through writings on
other topics.
 
Up until the time of his graduation, Levi had little reason to reflect upon his Jewishness.
Like most other Jews living in Italy at the time, he considered himself an integral part of
that society. He enjoyed the rights and freedoms exercised by the general population and, like
many other Jews, participated fully in the social and political life of the country. In fact,
as Vittorio Segre states in his book Storia di un ebreo fortunato (1985) (The Story of a
Fortunate Jew), Italy was served, following its unification in 1860, by a Jewish Minister of
War, two Jewish Prime Ministers and one Jewish Secretary General of the Ministry of Foreign
Affairs (40). Many Jews held other cabinet positions, as well, during the early years of
Italy's love-hate fascination with the Fascist regime. Such representation was remarkable not
so much because it occurred in a Fascist dominated environment, but rather because the entire
Jewish population in Italy during the middle l930s barely exceeded 45,000; that is, roughly one
tenth of one percent of the entire Italian population.
 
In late l943, following the fall of the Fascist government, the Germans created the puppet
government, known as the Republic of Salò, near Lake Garda in Northern Italy, and placed Benito
Mussolini, rescued from prison by the same German forces, at its head. The country found itself
divided by a civil war, with the Fascists and the German Army in control of much of central and
all of northern Italy. It was at this time that the deportation of Jews began.
 
As the result of the German occupation and collaboration in Italy, close to 6400 Italian Jews
were deported, mainly to the camps of Auschwitz, Birkenau and Mauthausen and Ravensbruck. Of those who were
taken away, only a few hundred survivors can be accounted for. Of the 650 prisoners who were
taken to Auschwitz with Levi, only fifteen men and eight women returned home. Levi's
imprisonment in Auschwitz, in February l944, which resulted from betrayal of his partisan
activities in the Aosta region, north of Turin, made him a witness to one of humanity's darkest
moments. Not able to foresee the tragic consequences of his own decision, upon capture, Levi
chose to admit that he was a Jew, rather than to own up to his partisan involvement. This
confession, he maintained, was made in part because he was tired and worn down emotionally, in
part because he was led to believe this would carry a less harsh punishment, and to a great
extent because of an unexpected, sudden surge in pride about his origins.
 
As prisoner number 174517, Levi's life was proscribed by the most irrational actions of others.
But, as fate would have it, his training as a chemist, which enabled him, later on, to be
assigned less demanding work in a laboratory at Auschwitz, together with his being ill with
scarlet fever in the infirmary when the Russians liberated Auschwitz in January of l945,
allowed him to be out of the death camp's mainstream at a most opportune time. Levi was left
behind by the retreating Germans who, convinced that those who were ill in the camp would have
perished before anyone could reach them, took with them only the prisoners healthy enough to
walk, their intention being to kill them along the way in order to insure their silence. This
was one of the Nazis' last attempts to hide any evidence of the monumental calamity they had
inflicted on a whole segment of humanity.
 
Before Auschwitz, Levi admits to Ferdinando Camon in Autoritratto di Primo Levi (1987)
(Conversations with Primo Levi, 1989), his participation in his Judaic heritage had been so
minimal in nature that, he states half-jokingly, he might even have converted to another
religion (68). By his own account, he was shocked into confronting his "Jewishness" by the wild
course of events which allowed the Holocaust to occur. Yet, he is also candid in admitting that
the experience did have the positive effect of awakening in him his sense of identity, and an
attachment to his long-neglected "cultural patrimony," of which he would be proud for the rest
of his life.
 
While the theme of Jewishness is predominant in all Levi's works, it would be inaccurate to
label him a Jewish writer in the narrow, ethnic sense of the word, even though that is the
first description that comes to mind at the mention of his name. Actually, Levi's broad
interest in and his effective literary treatments of many, varied subjects, led Italo Calvino,
in an article in the daily La Repubblica, to define Levi as a writer with an "encyclopedic
vein."
 
Educated no differently than other Italians with similar financial means and professional
aspirations, and having been schooled in all the traditional literary texts which are the
foundation of an education in the humanities and the sciences, it makes more sense to call Levi
an Italian writer, and perhaps, in the final analysis, it would please him most to be known
simply as a writer, without any additional qualification. It is the fusion of Levi's scientific
mind with that essence of his literary creativity which is the key to understanding Levi's
importance as a writer and communicator. The acknowledgment of the importance of communication,
not only of one human being with another, but also between creative art and scientific
disciplines is seminal to Levi's work. Equally important is his compunction, born out of inner
experience and survival of his incarceration, to become the voice that will successfully create
the undermining counteraction to the Nazis' intention to annihilate the entire Jewish race.
 
Anyone who survived this horrendous experience, including his own, Levi believes, was actually
the result of many diverse and unwittingly "lucky" --to use Levi's own term-- circumstances. At
Auschwitz, Levi quickly learned that to communicate was to survive, and as a man of science,
whose inclination it is to observe with patience and to understand, he was able to absorb, and
then to communicate the Holocaust as a didactic, as well as a personally experienced event.
This is evident in his approach to writing about it. In his first full-length work, Se questo è
un uomo (1947, 1958) (Survival in Auschwitz, 1987), form and structure, by his own words, are
secondary to the importance of recording the event in a straightforward manner, so it will
never be forgotten; in his first attempts at exploring the survival phenomenon, Levi writes
essentially from a factual point of view to recount the arrival, how one found food, or was
given work, or was chosen or not chosen to live or die. The horror of the camps is heightened
by Levi's numbing recitation of the everyday experience. In La tregua (1963) (The Reawakening,
1987), which is the successor to Survival in Auschwitz, he recounts his emergence from the
nightmare of Auschwitz and the completion of his circuitous, sometimes picaresque, odyssey of
return to his homeland.
 
As Levi's need to tell is reassured by knowing he has recorded the factual aspects of his
ordeal, he goes past the literal documentation of this event to draw from his creative vein. He
does this in the stories that appear in Lilìt e altri racconti (1981) (Moments of Reprieve,
1986), in which he fulfills his promised "immortalization" of the "human figures ... friends
... even adversaries...." (Moments of Reprieve, 10) he encountered at Auschwitz and immediately thereafter by
committing their acts and personalities to the written page. In I sommersi e i salvati (1986)
(The Drowned and the Saved,1989), his last work before his death, Levi, still contending with
his sense of responsibility, undertakes the risky, yet, in his case, painfully incisive,
psychological and philosophical journey into the entire Holocaust experience. With full
awareness that he may never justify, to his own comfort or expectations, his continuing
existence in the face of such a mass extermination of his fellow Jews, he devoted much effort
and time to analyzing the Holocaust phenomenon, and to attempting to achieve a philosophical
rationale that could perhaps be of help in averting a possible recurrence of that tragic event.
Both in his prose and in his thought processes from which the words then emerge, Levi, without
ever losing his sense of humility, strives not only to immortalize, but to consecrate the
millions who died and their memory. With the passing of time, Levi found himself at an
incontrovertible disadvantage to do so, because in having survived, he knew he could never
fathom the final reality of those who did not. Nor, as he explores at length in this book, does
Levi ever come to terms with whatever compromises he, or any other, wittingly or unwittingly,
made in order to survive. He was equally troubled with those, himself included, who failed to
take action while there was time to do so on the outside, to oppose the severity of the crime.
He will always perceive survival-related compromise, in himself and in others, as a failure.
 
To these four books he created directly from his Holocaust experience, Levi adds Se non ora
quando? (1982) (If Not Now, When?, 1985), perhaps his only "true" --in a conventional sense--
novel. In this parable-like piece of fiction Levi pays tribute to the Jews of Eastern Europe
with his creation of a group of heroic figures. They, who have lost all that is dearest to
them, undertake a difficult and harrowing journey westward through several countries, finally
reaching Israel by way of Italy. But, as we realize after a reading of his complete works, the
Holocaust theme is really never far from the center of his thoughts and productivity, no matter
what encyclopedic vein he chose to explore.
 
While the circumstances of his incarceration at and liberation from Auschwitz served as the
initial motivating factor that impelled Levi to write, his literary gift was fueled out of the
now clearly recognized and significantly understood, lingering "guilt of survival," and also
out of a logical sense of responsibility to provide witness on behalf of those who had
perished, and no longer could speak themselves. He devoted the remainder of his life to
fulfilling his self-appointed obligation in which, Levi admits to Gail Soffen, "To tell the
story, to bear witness, was an end for which to save oneself. Not to live and to tell, but to
live in order to tell..."("Beyond Survival" Prooftexts, 12-13). But Levi does not stop here. He
has written competently and absorbingly about other subjects, such as the importance of work
well done in the lively and amusing The Monkey's Wrench (1978), and fantasy tales, many of
which bordering on science fiction, such as the ones included in Storie naturali (1966) and
Vizio di forma (1971) (many of these stories collected in The Sixth Day and Other Tales, 1990).
However, his memories of his agonizing experience were always the ink in his creative pen.
Because of them, his perceptions, creativity, productivity and self-awareness had been
sharpened and clarified, and his ability to communicate heightened to new levels of eloquence.
 
Levi's classically concise, sober, lean style, is reflective of a mind that insists on being
guided by reason and civility. His emphasis on clarity, his dispassionate approach, his
accurate observations, honed by his scientific training, eschew emotions, while leaving
emotional responses to his readers. He does so because he is wise, not because he is lacking
profound passion, pain, and frustration. He dignifies himself and the reader by allowing the
facts to speak for themselves, and each person may therefore experience and interpret them
within one's own emotional framework. As a witness and spokesperson, he will neither be swayed
nor subverted by hatred, nor by the need for revenge. Neither will he attempt to elicit this
from his audience. His magnanimity and his moral integrity urge us all to reassess our own
beliefs and values.
 
Levi's ongoing, compelling need to address the effect and consequences of the Holocaust was a
major factor in his decision to take early retirement as a chemist and to devote himself
full-time to writing. However, leaving the chemical laboratory did not mean abandoning his
scientific legacy. Exploring, exposing and elaborating the connection between art and science
remained a constant challenge to his intellect. Coming from the world of industry, not from the
ranks of the literary or academic establishment, he was able to write with a greater degree of
stylistic freedom, and with less reverence, so to speak, for established literary norms. To
communicate in a constructive manner requires unification of the cultural aspects of science
and letters. The moral deterioration that had yielded the Holocaust made clear to Levi, as he
believes it must have been unquestionably clear to such artistic and scientific worthies as
"Empedocles, Dante, Leonardo, Galileo, Descartes,Goethe, and Einstein" (Other People's Trades, 10), that for men
and women to live in a civilized and compassionate society, science and conscience have to
co-exist, in balance, the one nurturing the other. He pursues this point in the preface to the
l985 edition of L'altrui mestiere (Other People's Trades, 1989), a book of essays purposely
drawn from sources related to science and the humanities, through which he demonstrates the
compatibility and interplay of these two cultures, any departure from which, to him, appears
absurd and inappropriate.
 
As well, from Levi's great admiration for the early Sixteenth century French
writer-philosopher, François Rabelais, who depicted a world of earthly pleasures to explore the
transcendence of human life above human misery, and whom Levi calls "mon maître" (Other People's
Trades 133), comes Levi's basis for an expression, or reaffirmation that the state of misery can and must
also contain the potential for a better world. Hence, if the scientific element can be combined
with the human one, cohesion and harmony can emerge, and a new voice can be created.
 
Levi found his own "new voice" in his book Il sistema periodico (1975) (The Periodic
Table,1984), which many consider to be his greatest work. He achieves his desired synthesis of
science and art by placing his insight into man's conscience within a scientific frame. He
masterfully illustrates the relationship of the scientific metaphor to actual human behavior,
thus demonstrating, to himself and to the world, that he can fulfill his vision as an
amalgamator. He, who is both the scientist and the writer, brings together element and word.
 
Levi has been referred to as the Dante of our time, and none has focused on this aspect in more
depth and sensitivity than Risa Sodi in her work A Dante of Our Time (1990). Aside from the
major difference that while Dante lived his experience in poetical terms while Levi lived his
in very real terms, both were subjected to the vicissitudes of a hell they did not seek and
both, to the benefit of humanity, lived to tell. The writer Alfred Kazin considers Levi, along
with Italo Calvino, "one of the two greatest postwar writers Italy has produced." His books
have been translated into several languages, and all his major works are available in English
translation. In the United States, he is certainly among the most widely read contemporary
Italian writers. In addition to his novels and short stories, which are the primary focus of
this book, Levi has also written two collections of poems, some of which are incorporated into
the novels, a large number of essays and articles, two short plays, and he has also tried his
hand at translation, Kafka's The Trial being his best known contribution.
 
In Levi's later years, a maturity is perceived, not only of talent and intellect, but of
worldly acceptance. One also discerns that the ongoing labor on behalf of his self-appointed
responsibility to bear witness had led him into dark corners and alley ways which provided him
no answers to his questioning spirit. Most distressing to him were those voices which, despite
the overwhelming evidence, continue to raise doubts, if not deny outright, the occurrence of
such atrocities. Yet, through the eloquence of his words Levi has cemented the immortality of
the essential Holocaust experience. Furthermore, in his ability to assimilate his beloved
scientific world with the ever-elusive, creative, literary challenge, he also succeeded in
reinvigorating our thoughts about the trials of man's existence, and of our human dignity. His
spirit, on behalf of all who suffer, was triumphant in the face of harsh adversity.
On April 11, l987, Primo Levi died at the age of sixty-eight, in the same house where he was born
and had lived throughout. Many believe it was suicide.
 
( "Introduction" from Nicholas Patruno's Understanding Primo Levi. )

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