II sistema periodico

(The Periodic Table)

In a 1963 interview published in the daily Paese Sera (12 July) Levi disclosed to the journalist Adolfo Chiesa that he had been thinking for some time about writing a book on chemistry and chemists. The rationale for such an undertaking was Levi's feeling that few people are aware of what chemists actually do, even though the "art" of the chemist derives from cues and stimuli that are important and deserving of exploration. Levi's own exploration, over the ten-year period during which this work was in the making, led to the publication of perhaps his best and most significant work explaining what he considered the importance of the unity between literature and science. Il sistema periodico, published in Italy by Einaudi in 1975, appeared in its English version in 1984 with the title The Periodic Table. It follows by over ten years his earlier two works dealing with the Holocaust and its aftermath, Survival in Auschwitz and The Reawakening. During this period Levi also wrote two collections of short stories, both with an emphasis on science fiction: Storie naturali(1966), under the pseudonym Damiano Malabaila, and Vizio di forma (1971). The literary experimentation in these two works contributed significantly in strengthening Levi's artistic hand and broadening his imaginative capabilities.

Though it is called a novel, The Periodic Table is not one in the conventional sense. Levi describes it in the chapter "Cerium" as "my stories about chemistry" and in the last chapter, "Carbon," as neither "a chemical treatise ......nor an autobiography" but "in some fashion a history." Levi's succint disavowal of an autobiographical format raises the fundamental question of how one is to interpret this work, which, apart from being a chemical treatise certainly has the earmarks of autobiography. The author's use of the first voice; his references, which are largely based on his personal experiences; and the backdrop of the rise and fall of Fascism, World War 11, and its aftemath--all lead the reader to interpret it as autobiography. Levi provides a clue later in the chapter "Carbon" when he writes that this work is "a micro-histo history of a trade and its defeats, victories, and miseries, such as anyone wants to tell when he feels close to concluding the arc of his career" (224). Readers will be best served, then, if they recognize that Levi's intent is to present a universally applicable drama concealed within his descriptions of his own experiences.

To assert his belief that science and literature are fortified by an interdependence, Levi uses the chemist's periodic table to create a metaphoric interplay throughout the narrative. Each of the book's twenty-one chapters is named for a chemical element in the periodic table, and each element has a specific implication within the context of the chapter. The questions to examine are how each element reflects the characteristics and characters in its chapter and how it relates metaphorically to them. In some instances the connection is quite evident and in others less so. Each chapter recounts a story or a moment drawn from the author's experiences over nearly half a century. The book as a whole is Levi's evaluation of and reaction to his education and preparation for life in the light of his life's events, some of which are profoundly trying. In a chronological sequence, the author establishes his identity through that of his ancestors and then focuses on the challenges, conflicts, victories, and defeats he has sustained both personally and professionally. The book covers the period from his high school and college student days to the time he finished writing it, near the point of his retirement from the paint factory where he directed the chemical laboratory. The time had arrived for him to devote himself fully to his writing and to synthesize the scientific and artistic aspects of his character.

The Periodic Table is unquestionably Levi's most successful attempt at placing science in a creative context. It is a fitting tribute to the profession that he always loved and that, besides providing him with the means for a comfortable living, may have saved his life. His experience as a chemist was decidedly useful in the Lager. In the last months of his incarceration, it enabled him to work indoors in relative comfort. Moreover, his training in chemistry played a critical role in the emergence of his clear and concise writing style; in his ability to observe and examine; and, as he explains in Dialogo, in giving him access to a "vast assortment of metaphors" (59; my translation), from which he drew much of his material.