Primo Levi

How did Primo Levi come to terms with what the historian Enzo Traverso has called ‘the end of the Jewish modernity’? How did he react to the fading out of that tradition which, between the Enlightenment and the Second World War, saw the European Jews playing a central role in the critical consciousness of the Western world? What was his relationship with Zionism? Did he ever acknowledge the Nakba? To address these questions, my article analyses the different positions that Levi took on the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, the awkward coincidence of the publishing of Se non ora, quando? and the 1982 Lebanon War, and what his tormented and passionate relationships with Israel reveals about the Italophone Jewish experience.
Much has been written on Levi’s Jewish identity, but his complex attitude toward the question of Palestine/Israel is relatively underexplored. Starting from Levi’s writings and interviews on the subject, my essay will therefore investigate the impact that this thorny question had on the Italian Jewry. I will structure my essay as follows: first, I will give a brief account of how the changing historical circumstances, like the foundation of Israel, the Eichmann trial, and the Six-Day War, have shifted the geopolitical position of the Jewish intelligentsia (both inside and outside Italy); second, I will analyse Levi’s struggle to find a position within this shifting scenario; finally, I will study how Levi’s public interventions fed back into Italian Jewish community.

The book examines the formation of a philosophical and religious idea of testimony in antiquity by focusing on some selected texts from Plato, the Bible and Augustine. Then it studies the emergence of the literary notion of testimony by analyzing crucial works by Dante and Petrarch. The modern and contemporary part of the book concentrates on the philosophical notion of testimony developed by Emmanuel Levinas and on the “testimonies” of important writers of the XXth century such as Renato Serra, Luigi Pirandello, Antonio Gramsci, Italo Calvino, Primo Levi and Paul Celan.

Il presente elaborato intende rendere conto del dibattito sviluppatosi in Italia intorno ai Sommersi e i salvati, l'ultimo libro di Primo Levi pubblicato da Einaudi nel 1986. L'obiettivo vuole essere quello di approfondire alcuni temi trattati da Levi nel libro, per come questi sono stati recepiti e interpretati dalla critica.
Oltre alle informazioni principali relative alla struttura dei Ses, si discutono i suoi obiettivi e ci si sofferma su alcuni temi: la  testimonianza, la vergogna, la responsabilità; ci si concentra poi su casi di attualità, situati nel 1986, anno di pubblicazione dei Ses; si ricostruiscono le possibili relazioni fra la discussione sulla zona grigia proposta da Levi e quella sulla banalità del male introdotta da Hannah Arendt; e con l'ultimo capitolo si entra nel merito della delicata questione di un possibile rapporto fra Ses e il suicidio di Primo Levi.

Resumen El artículo se ocupa de las características formales, temáticas y pragmáticas de la literatura concentra-cionaria, utilizando como referencia obras testimoniales de dos supervivientes de los campos nazis (Jorge Semprún y Primo Levi). asimismo, analiza el valor memorístico y cognitivo de estos textos, nacidos con vocación de no dejar caer en el olvido los excesos cometidos en los campos ni el recuer-do de sus víctimas. Palabras clave: literatura de campos de concentración, memoria, Primo Levi, Jorge Semprún. Jorge Semprún and Primo Levi: writing and memory about concentration camps AbstRAct the paper studies the formal, thematic and pragmatic characteristics of concentration camp literature, using as a referente testimonial books of two survivors of the Nazi camps (Jorge Semprún and Primo Levi). Besides, it also analyzes the memorial and cognitive value of these texts, created to remember the excesses committed in the fields and the memory of its victims.

Auschwitz, 21 o 22 luglio 1944. Un laboratorio. Due uomini parlano di chimica in tedesco, si chiedono entrambi se quello che hanno davanti è un uomo. Così Primo Levi racconta, nel suo libro più famoso, il suo esame con il Doktor Pannwitz. E per dire l'orrore, affinché gli altri possano comprendere, nell'intreccio di testimonianza e racconto evoca due figure mitiche, due antichi demoni: la Sfinge di Edipo e il Minosse di Dante. Ma non ci sono demoni: "gli assassini di milioni di innocenti sono gente come noi, hanno il nostro viso, ci rassomigliano. Non hanno sangue diverso dal nostro, ma hanno infilato, consapevolmente o no, una strada rischiosa, la strada dell'ossequio e del consenso, che è senza ritorno". Questo lavoro sonda il rapporto di Levi con i classici e ne scopre il talento di scrittore e ri-scrittore, maestro nell'appropriarsi di archetipi e modelli altrui, adoperandoli come dispositivo narrativo e intertestuale non soltanto nella testimonianza ma anche nella sua intera opera.

La questione antropologica è sicuramente uno dei temi più dibattuti all'interno degli studi filosofici attorno all'opera di Primo Levi. L'obbiettivo del presente contributo è quello di offrire una lettura darwiniana del modo in cui lo scrittore torinese ha definito il complesso rapporto tra umano e non-umano. A mio parere, analizzare il pensiero antropologico di Levi a partire dalle tesi psicologico-evoluzioniste esposte da Darwin in The Descent of Man permette infatti di risolvere le contraddizioni e le aporie in cui sembrano cadere alcune interpretazioni post-umaniste e umaniste. L'ipotesi di un Primo Levi 'lettore di The Descent of Man' verrà qui indagata sia dal punto di vista filologico sia da quello argomentativo e concettuale.

Prendendo spunto da un passo del Sistema periodico in cui Levi definisce Dio un “maestro di polimerizzazioni” che non ama le sostanze “troppo incorruttibili”, questo saggio discute il tema della responsabilità ambientale e della trascendenza in relazione all’ecologia. In particolare, ci si sofferma sul pensiero di H. Jonas e sul legame che connette l’idea di responsabilità ambientale in Das Prinzip Verantwortung (1979) al pensiero dell’impotenza di Dio in Der Gottesbegriff nach Auschwitz (1987). Il saggio si conclude considerando le implicazioni di questi concetti per le en- vironmental humanities, in connessione con i discorsi sulla giustizia ambientale (la slow violence di R. Nixon) e le nuove ontologie degli iper-oggetti (la object-oriented-ontology di Morton). Idea fondamentale è che la letteratura, specie quando ci parla della materialità e del nostro rapporto con il non umano, è una voce importante nell’orizzonte immanente/trascendente del nostro essere ambientale.

Moving from a passage of Primo Levi’s The Periodic Table in which God is defined as a “master of polymerization” who does not like “incorruptible things”, this essay examines the topics of environmental responsibility and transcendence in relation to ecology. Particular attention is devoted to H. Jonas’s thought and to the bond between his ethics in Das Prinzip Verantwortung (1979) and his idea of God’s impotence in Der Gottesbegriff nach Auschwitz (1987).
In conclusion, the essay considers the implications of these concepts and their literary illustra- tion within the environmental humanities, especially in relation to environmental justice (e.g. Nixon’s slow violence) and object-oriented-ontology (Morton’s hyperobjects).
Keywords: Environmental humanities, ethics, ecology, transcendence, Hans Jonas, Primo Levi.

This article traces the evolution of the affect of pudore (a sense of modesty, restraint, and privacy) in the literary production of Primo Levi, with references to the works of other Italian Holocaust survivor-writers. Beyond the conventional typology of Holocaust survivors' shame and guilt, the article introduces the category of pudore as both an affect that pertains to concealing the body (through gestures and clothing) and a narrative technique that re-enacts such emotion by means of avoidance language (through reticence, euphemism , understatement, and irony). Because of its paradoxical nature as both an embodied affect and an affect that may conceal other emotions, pudore allows for a reassessment of the production and reception of testimonial literature in postwar Italy. Through an analysis of the tension between testimony and exposure, this article will show the relevance of the affective dimension of pudore in the works of Italian Holocaust survivor-writers.

Being suddenly thrown (geworfen): into life or a concentration camp. For days, weeks, perhaps years, the thought of the extreme, the recurring spectre of death dispelled—suddenly, there is neither a way nor time, no more spells to defer the last visit. How are we to face the Gorgon; what is possible, or even meaningful, to say or do for those who witness the heinous face with us, those whose fate is sealed unto-death; what can we hope? Todorov’s work is an act, a work of hope, transforming the opposition of survival and ethics to the positive positing of an ethic originating in survival, which manifests itself as care. What is the nexus of this care to the amoral Sorge of Being and Time? If Being‐unto-death calls Dasein to its ownmost and uttermost experience, is this experience founded upon the severance of all ties to other Daseins?

A fortuna crítica spinozana registra que a partir da proposição 27 da Parte III da Ética surge algo completamente original no exame da vida afetiva: a imitação dos afetos. A novidade spinozana em comparação com os seus contemporâneos é descrever a produção dos afetos não mais a partir de um objeto externo, mas da conduta de “alguma coisa”, ou “alguém”, a respeito de um objeto – considerando que essa produção se enraíza no fato de imaginarmos que esse “alguém” ou essa “alguma coisa” é semelhante a nós. A proposição encadeia uma longa sequência dedutiva que atravessa o restante da Parte iii, sustenta as proposições cruciais da Parte iv sobre a política e o direito e alcança o Tratado Político. Nosso intento é avaliar os sentidos dessa proposição no pensamento político spinozano, a partir de uma revisão dessa problemática na fortuna crítica – levando em consideração algumas passagens das obras de Primo Levi (1919-1987). Em particular, o capítulo “Prova de química” de "É isto um homem?".

In Ulysses at Auschwitz (2005 Auschwitz Foundation award), François Rastier reinterprets Primo Levi’s entire corpus in light of the latter’s work as a translator and a poet, an aspect of Levi’s work that is too often neglected. Critics have taken all too seriously Levi’s assertion that his poetry was the irrational part of his work. François Rastier counters that critical omission by showing just how important poetry was for Levi, who produced the most poetry when he was laying the foundations for If This Is a Man (published in 1947) and as well immediately prior to his last work, The Drowned and the Saved (1986). By reminding us of the poetic tradition they grew out of as well as opposed, Levi’s poems offer a poetics that can capture the experience of survivors and their crisis, and testify for the witnesses, whose voices are echoed by those voices that poetry makes audible.This interview arose out of the desire to pursue the avenues opened by François Rastier’s double reflection on Primo Levi’s poetry and translation.


Pour citer ce document
FRANÇOIS RASTIER et GAËTAN PÉGNY (2018) «Witnessing and Translating: Ulysses at Auschwitz. Gaëtan Pégny interviews François Rastier», [En ligne], Volume XXIV - n° 3 (2018),
URL : http://www.revue-texto.net/index.php?id=4114.

The paper first examines some of the elements that are characterizing the reconfiguration of the book in the digital environment, discussing some of the relationships concerning the printed and the electronic book. Starting from these general premises are described the different steps that led to the creation of an e-book, published by Einaudi, based on a unique act by Primo Levi, La bella addormentata nel frigo, published in first edition by Einaudi in Storie naturali in 1966. In particular the paper discusses some aspects connected to the delicate integration between textual and paratextual elements, which have oriented the choices to the identification of a layout, conceptual and graphic, able to provide a unitary and holistic representation of the book, interpreted contextually as the foucaultian “node of a network” and as a cultural object lying along the axis of longue durée.

Talk held at the Agamben Workshop 2020, Erfurt.

The paper agrees with three claims Giorgio Agamben puts forwards in his book Remnants of Auschwitz: 1. There was no appropriate consideration of Auschwitz in philosophy. 2. Such a reflection would have significant impact on philosophy itself, especially in the field of ethics. 3. Language and its loss has to be a key topic in a consideration of Auschwitz. The paper will elaborate on all three claims and relate them to Agamben’s eschatological concept of “remnant” that is featured already in the title and is further developed in regard to his writings on Paul.
Agamben claims that reflecting on Auschwitz makes it necessary to give up certain ethical notions such as the idea of responsibility or the idea that communication itself already bears a universal normativity. Although he builds upon Saussure and Heidegger his claims regarding an “Ethica more Auschwitz demonstrate” are in accord with claims of Theodor W. Adorno, especially in regard of the muted suffering in the Nazi death camps.

In writings about the Holocaust, both Primo Levi and Hannah Arendt appeal to a concept of shame that extends the reach of the concept in a dramatic way. In its more familiar uses, we experience shame because of a failing of our own (I refer to this as “self-incurred shame”) or because of the failing of another with whom we share membership of a significant group (“other-incurred shame”).  Levi ascribes shame to those soldiers who came across Auschwitz in early 1945; and Arendt writes of an “elemental shame,” the “shame at being human.” Neither case fits the familiar models.This article provides an analysis of both “self-incurred” and “other-incurred shame” in order to reach an understanding of the importance of Levi and Arendt’s extension of the concept and of the challenges it poses.  It also explores the relationship between shame and responsibility and defends a notion of collective guilt. At various points, it engages with the work of Gabriele Taylor, Bernard Williams, Max Scheler,  and David Velleman.

Richard Kraut defines absolute goodness as follows: for something to be absolutely good is for its goodness to be unrelated to the needs or interests of any individual. He argues that nothing can be good in this sense. Against Kraut, I argue that the concept of absolute goodness plays an important role in moral thought. I do so by considering a variety of contexts in which an explanation of the value of an act depends on seeing its goodness as outrunning its usefulness in satisfying anyone's needs or interests.

“Frammenti di vita”: spesso si usa questa frase ad indicare piccoli spezzoni del quotidiano narrati senza troppo approfondimento o senza particolari vincoli letterari... ma nei frammenti dell'opera di Levi, emerge l'assurdità del lager, quel lager che così duramente segnerà la sua vita e che, forse, lo portò al suicidio quasi vergognandosi di essere uno dei "sopravvissuti"...

Primo Levi’s “If This Is a Man” and Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich” are two “literary acts” that have contributed significantly to the historical knowledge of the 20th century: the first in the West of the Nazi concentration camps, the second in the East of the Soviet gulags.
Why are they so famous? Do they have something that unites them?
This paper aims to analyze the power of literature as a place of knowledge and self-consciousness. If the works of Levi and Solzhenitsyn have a very high value as a witnesses, the power of this testimony is given by the “literary gesture” from which they spring, a gesture that produces a synthetic knowledge in which universals exist only in the particular.

Ingmar Bergman’s Persona (1966) is, undoubtedly, one of the most influencing films in the history of cinema. Its plot, montage, and direction, apart from being unprecedented, are unusually open to interpretation. Numerous theoretical approaches have been made to decipher or highlight the content of the film, yet not in the theoretical framework of Phenomenology and Ethics.  In my dissertation, I have examined the gradual collapse of the face as we see it in the familiar merging shot of Elisabet’s and Alma’s faces, highlighting elements that have remained mostly unrecognized by the prevalent literature: the child which appears in the film and is present to both  Elizabet’s and Alma’s stories and the iconic picture of World War II  of Warsaw Ghetto Uprising “Forcibly pulled out of bunkers”. The Deleuzian film theory of the affection-image, Jean-Paul Sartre’s phenomenology of the look as manifested in Being and Nothingness, and Paul Ricoeur’s concept of narrative identity was the theoretical framework in which I investigated the collapse of the Face. As a way of reconstructing the Face, I demonstrated, on the one hand, the first-person narrative in the example of Primo Levi’s If This is a Man, and on the other hand, the experience of Otherness through Emmanuel Levinas’ metaphysics.

This chapter examines the role of the witness as a narrator, writer, and historian through a comparison of the writings and testimony of Primo Levi and those of Georges Perec. Despite the significant differences between the two, which cannot be ignored, both Levi and Perec focus on the role and the ability of the witness to provide authentic testimony. Based upon this comparison between Levi’s testimony and that of Perec, I argue that the very fact that we are in an era of testimony in which the witness is also his own historian means that there are no innocent “uncontaminated” witnesses. Moreover, I attempt to show that Levi and Perec, each in his own way, propose an authentic model for bearing witness.

Le Verfügbar aux Enfers ne laisse pas de surprendre, à la fois par son contexte de rédaction que par son contenu. Si les citations musicales sont évidentes dans cette œuvre, la présence d’un intertexte littéraire est également perceptible et mérite d’être approfondie. Or, afin de bien mesurer le caractère particulier du Verfügbar aux Enfers, une analyse comparative s’avère nécessaire. Cet article se propose de se pencher sur l’intertextualité dans les textes concentrationnaires rédigés pendant deux périodes distinctes, l’époque de l’incarcération et celle de l’après-guerre. Cette contribution s’attache d’abord à une différence fondamentale entre ces deux périodes, celle de l’identité du lecteur. Il s’agira ensuite de s’interroger sur la manière dont cette caractéristique influence les procédés intertextuels utilisés dans les textes, opérant ainsi des transformations importantes d’une période de rédaction à l’autre.

Si bien lo que compartiré hoy con ustedes se inscribe en el eje del viaje, prefiero hacer de éste sólo un punto de partida para hacerle lugar a temas que me preocupan muy especialmente. Entiendo que todos conocemos y/o hemos utilizado el esquema del " viaje del héroe " ideado por Joseph Campbell, el mismo resulta ser un elemento ordenador y disparador que permite que surjan interrogantes y se profundicen las características del género con mayor efectividad. Una herramienta útil, sin lugar a dudas, pero, para no caer en la trivialización o estandarización de los elementos singulares, nos tiene que servir para adentrarnos en otros aspectos particulares que ofrecen las obras literarias en su complejidad y proponer estos recorridos a los estudiantes. Me centraré en uno de los desvíos clásicos del viaje heroico, la catábasis 2 o visitación del mundo de los muertos. Como tal, este particular periplo por las dimensiones de lo sobrenatural también cuenta con guías avezados en tránsitos desconocidos para cualquier mortal. Con características que habría que considerar en cada caso, los avernos están presentes en Homero, Luciano de Samosata, Virgilio, Dante, en relatos medievales como el Viaje de San Brendán o sagas celtas, normandas y escandinavas o, incluso, en la torsión distópica de Matrix.

O artigo busca problematizar o caráter ético do testemunho literário do escritor italiano Primo Levi sobre sua experiência nos campos de morte de Auschwitz. Sua narrativa sugere às ciências sociais chaves analíticas importantes para compreender melhor não só o universo concentracionário enquanto local de desubjetivação humana, mas também o papel da máquina nazista na constituição de figuras arquetípicas e de contornos mal definidos no interior dos campos. O objetivo deste texto é examinar o fenômeno da zona grigia, a figura paradigmática do Muselmann e o caso de Hurbinek. Esses casos alertam para o risco do julgamento precipitado dessas figuras – que parecem compor um espaço nebuloso de indeterminação moral – com medidas do presente, sem que se avalie, antes de tudo, as circunstâncias empíricas às quais foram submetidas. Primo Levi argumenta, nesse sentido, que é preciso sempre ter em vista os pontos cegos que definem as fronteiras das zonas cinzentas de eventos traumáticos, a partir dos quais condutas sociais tendem a se confundir em razão das estratégias de perpetradores em imputar culpa e responsabilidade às vítimas.

This book reassesses Primo Levi’s Holocaust texts in light of the posthumanist theories of Adorno, Levinas, Lyotard, and Foucault which together critique humanist notions of subjectivity, ethics, culture, and science. I argue that Levi positions himself as an exemplary subject of Western modernity who experiences and interprets Auschwitz through the lens of Enlightenment humanism. Even as Levi speaks for the victims, his texts suggest that Holocaust writing framed by humanist assumptions risks complicity with the murderous master narratives of Nazism that it seeks to overturn. My book explores the consequences of this potential complicity for the future of the humanist subject.
Reviewed in The Journal of the Association for the Study of Modern Italy. See https://doi.org/10.1080/13532944.2012.756706

This paper compares Primo Levi’s and Robert Antelme’s narratives of dehumanisation by focusing on their physical descriptions of the camp’s prisoners. Both Levi and Antelme understood the Nazi project as an attempt to annihilate the humanity of their victims. They thus conceived their testimonies as a response to this abuse and addressed the thorny question of what it means to be human. Notwithstanding these similarities, Antelme’s unwavering affirmation of the unbreakable unity of humanity seems diametrically opposed to the ‘If’ of I"f This is a Man". Is this really so? What concept of the human underlies Levi’s and Antelme’s testimonies? How do they rethink the uncertain and fragile limits of the human in the light of their experiences? To address these questions, I will analyse how Levi and Antelme account for the bodily transformations and struggles of the prisoners. Drawing on the work of critics such as Charlotte Ross (Primo Levi’s Narratives of Embodiment) and Martin Crowley (Robert Antelme: L’humanité irréductible; L’homme sans), my paper aims to show that Levi’s and Antelme’s deconstruct some of the tenets of humanism. Their ‘residual’ humanism inscribes both vulnerability and uncertainty in the heart of humanity, thereby highlighting the porous borders between the human and the inhuman, the human and the animal, rationality and madness.

La filosofia, anche quella più incline a farsi coinvolgere nell’impresa di estinguere la sete dell’assoluto, contiene in sé, nella propria vocazione alla ricerca di una comune verità mediante il dialogo, un antidoto indispensabile al rischio (auto)distruttivo che può annidarsi in ogni tentativo umano, tanto umano di cogliere la totalità, l’infinito, Dio.
Anche le grandi tradizioni religiose, quelle che da secoli sono impegnate a tracciare sentieri, trovare  parole, celebrare  liturgie per saziare la fame di assoluto che agita il cuore e la mente degli uomini, non possono fare a meno di intessere un intenso dialogo con questa tradizione di ricerca, soprattutto nei momenti cruciali, quando diventa urgente addomesticare i dèmoni (fanatismo, intolleranza, totalitarismo) che una frequentazione inadeguata del sacro può evocare. 
La consapevolezza che anche la filosofia non possa dichiararsi storicamente innocente non cancella ma spinge a ritrovare sempre di nuovo la vocazione più profonda di quest’originale forma di esercizio spirituale: una ricerca appassionata del bene e della verità, capace di resistere alla suggestione del possesso compiuto e di mantenersi in quella apertura alla possibilità dell’errore che è presidio di autentica libertà per sé e per gli altri.
Nel cammino per apprendere quest’arte di maneggiare gli assoluti, diventa allora importante scegliere con cura i propri maestri, frequentare l’orto che  hanno seminato, imparare ad usare gli arnesi che  hanno adoperato, per diventare capaci di costruirne di nuovi, quelli che si rendessero necessari per coltivare il campo della propria personale esperienza di vita.