Favourite writers - Primo Levi

 

   Primo Levi is one of my favourite writers, a hero, and a completely remarkable person even if he wasn't. If you look at his entry in Wikipedia, he is not described first as the author of  'One of the most compelling and lucid accounts of life in a Nazi extermination camp' but as 'Chemist'. That is so Primo Levi, and his life sounds like fiction. Let us start at the end, with his death in 1987, 42 years after he had been liberated from Auschwitz, having survived 11 months there.

He died when he fell, having almost certainly jumped, from the third floor of the elegant apartment building in Turin in which he had been born and lived his entire life apart from his time in the belly of the Nazi beast. His mother was still alive and he was caring for her in the same building where he had been born in 1919.

He was born into a middle class, completely assimilated Italian-Jewish family in the city of Turin and writes so lovingly about the nature of this society in his wonderful The Periodic Table. It is in his non-Auschwitz writing that you can see what a great and humane and wonderful writer he is. Each of the chapters in The Periodic Table is named after an element, some stories are very autobiographical, some are complete fiction; all are wonderful. I can highly recommend Argon, Iron and Cerium. 

But the works for which he is best known and best remembered are his direct accounts of what life was like in the extermination camps. He survived 11 months by using his wits and skills, but his memory is unflinching and accurate, as well as humane in the blackest of hells. He describes unflinchingly - and not without humour or wryness - the life and death in the camps. He describes people as they were, tells you what made them survive or sink, describes acts of great evil and of great good. But most of all he records, he records. He knows he is a witness and that his account matters, so like the good chemist he is, he takes notes and shows you his observations and conclusions. 

My favourite little aside is the word 'Die Dolmetscher'. This actually means 'interpreter' in German but it was also the nickname given to the wooden truncheon which was the allowed weapon of the 'Kapo' who was the prisoner put in charge of a particular barrack. Known often for their brutality, the Kapo's Dolmetscher would always solve any problems of understanding with a new prisoner from a new country who had arrived.  

The words 'humane' and 'lucid' are what I always think of when I read him. And there is a quote  which resonated strongly with me when I read him, as it does now.

 “The business of living is the best defense against death, and not only in the camps.”

It transpired later that Levi had also struggled with depression for most of his life, so his survival to the age of 67 is nothing short of heroic. I think he did not want to be a victim of a system that sought to remove your humanity from you, so his heroic living and display of the most clear-thinking humanity were the greatest retort that a totalitarian system could receive. They did not win. He would not let them. I am almost in tears in my admiration for this man, and I urge you to read him if you have not yet.

These are his three best books, in my opinion, but everything he wrote is worth reading.

If this is a Man

The Periodic Table

The Drowned and the Saved

And I would finish with the poem of Levi's from which the title of his most famous book comes. 

The Poem You who live secure in your warm houses, Who return at evening to find Hot food and friendly faces:   Consider whether this is a man, Who labors in the mud Who knows no peace Who fights for a crust of bread Who dies at a yes or a no. Consider whether this is a woman, Without hair or name With no more strength to remember Eyes empty and womb cold As a frog in winter.   Consider that this has been: I commend these words to you. Engrave them on your hearts When you are in your house, When you walk on your way, When you go to bed, when you rise. Repeat them to your children. Or may your house crumble, Disease render you powerless May your children turn their faces from you.