Primo Levi's sense of history

Journal of Modern Italian Studies

Volumn 3, Issue 3, 1998, Pages 273-292

  Woolf, Stuart ^a,b  

^a CA' FOSCARI UNIVERSITY OF VENICE   (Italy)

^b UNIVERSITY OF ESSEX   (United Kingdom)

Author keywords

Auschwitz; History; Memory; Primo Levi; Revisionism

Indexed keywords

EID: 61349169017     PISSN: 1354571X     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1080/13545719808454981     Document Type: Review

References (104)

1. See, for example, Mirna Cicioni, Primo Levi. Bridges of Knowledge (Oxford and Washington, DC: Berg, 1995);
2. Susan R. Tarrow (ed,) Reason and Light- Essays on Primo Levi (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1990);
3. P. Frassica (ed. ) Primo Levi as Witness (Fiesole: Casalini Libri, 1990);
4. S. Levi Della Torre (ed. ) Scritti in memoria di Primo Levi, special issue of La Rassegna Mensile di Israel, 56 (Rome: Unione delle comunità israelitiche italiane, 1990);
5. A. Cavaglión (ed. ) Primo Levi- Il presente del passato (Milan: Franco Angeli, 1991);
6. M. Dini and S. Jesurum, Primo Levi- Le opere e i giorni (Milan: Rizzoli, 1992).
7. S. Woolf, 'Primo Levi e il mondo anglosassone', in Cavaglión, Primo Levi, pp. 197-202.
8. Se questo è un uomo (Turin: Einaudi, 1958);
9. If This is a Man (London: Orion Press, 1960);
10. La Tregua (Turin: Einaudi, 1963);
11. The Truce (London: Bodley Head, 1965).
12. 'This house, if you look at that wing of the library, consists solely of books on Nazism and the persecution of the Jews and so on', Conversazioni e interviste 1963-1987, ed. Marco Belpoliti (Turin: Einaudi, 1997)
13. (henceforth Conversazioni), p. 257 (September 1986).
14. English translation, If Not Now, When? (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1985). Levi was amused and slightly rueful about the criticism of Orthodox New York Jews of the inaccuracy of his use of Yiddish and (at least as he recounted the story to me) of details of East European kosher cuisine.
15. Se non ora, quando?, 2nd edn (Turin: Einaudi, 1982), pp. 89-90.
16. Conversazioni, p. 278 (1976).
17. M. Douglas, Natural Symbols (London: Barrie & Jenkins, 1970)
18. published by Einaudi under the title I simboli naturali (1979);
19. C. Lévi-Strauss, Le Regard éloigné (Paris: Plon, 1983)
20. published as Lo sguardo da lontano (1984);
21. and La Voie des masques (Geneva: Albert Skira, 1975)
22. in Italian La via delle maschere (1985).
23. Lévi-Strauss light-heartedly welcomed Levi in the ranks of the anthropologists, on the basis of his depiction of the nomadic type in La chiave a stella, (Conversazioni, p. 79).
24. I would like to thank Francesca Cappelletti for drawing my attention to these shared interests.
25. E. g. , the chapter 'Esame di chimica' in Se questo è un uomo; Se non ora, quando?, pp. 73-4, 231, 232 (Germans), 75, 104 (Russians);
26. or Isommersi e i salvati (Turin: Einaudi, 1986), pp. 117, 146, 150-1, 157, ch. 8 passim.
27. Se non ora, quando?, p. 187.
28. Conversazioni, pp. 230-1 (1987), 269-71 (January 1976), 284 (December 1983).
29. 'Il rito e il riso' ('The rite and the smile'), L'altrui mestiere (Turin: Einaudi, 1985), p. 184.
30. For Levi's comments on Ashkenazi culture in the United States, Conversazioni, pp. 305, 308, 310 (September 1984).
31. 'Argon', in Il sistema periodico (Turin: Einaudi, 1975) (The Periodic Table)
32. now in P. Levi, Opere, vol. 1 (Turin: Einaudi, 1993), p. 435.
33. If This Is a Man, p. 7.
34. Conversazioni, p. 278 (April 1979), 306-10 (September 1984).
35. 'Ferro' ('Iron') in Il sistema periodico, p. 40
36. 'Piombo', pp. 84-99.
37. J. Copins and J. Jamin, Aux origines de V anthropologie française. Les mémoires de la Société des Observateurs de l'Homme en l'an VIII (Paris: Le Sycomore, 1978).
38. Primo Levi per l'ANED, l'ANED per Primo Levi (Milan: Franco Angeli, 1997), p. 19 (1955);
39. Cf. Z. Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1989).
40. 'Gli stregoni', Lilìt (1986), in Opere, vol. 3 (Turin: Einaudi, 1996), pp. 527-37.
41. I sommersi, pp. 10, 12.
42. A. Bravo and D. Jalla, 'Primo Levi, un uomo normale di buona memoria', Passato e Presente 18 (1988): 100.
43. For aggressive Zionism, Conversazioni, pp. 295ff. (1982), 304 (1984).
44. 'Le nostre notti', Se questo è un uomo, in Opere, vol. 1, pp. 57-8;
45. and Cicioni, Primo Levi, pp. 22, 139-40.
46. The widespread existence of such a sentiment among concentration camp survivors is discussed in A. Bravo and D. Jalla, La vita offesa. Storia e memoria dei Lager nazisti nei racconti di duecento sopravvissuti (Milan: Franco Angeli, 1986), with an introduction by Primo Levi.
47. Bravo and Jalla, La vita offesa, p. 7.
48. Se non ora, quando?, pp. 218-19;
49. L'altrui mestiere, pp. 33-4.
50. G. Poli and G. Calcagno, Echi di una voce perduta: incontri, interviste e conversazioni con Primo Levi (Milan: Mursia, 1992), p. 37
51. See Bauman, Modernity and Holocaust.
52. P. V. Mengaldo, 'Ciò che dobbiamo a Primo Levi', in G. Folena (ed. ) Tre narratori: Calvino, Primo Levi, Parise (Padua: Liviana, 1989), p. 93.
53. Already earlier, in the short story 'Gli stregoni', Lilìt (1981, in Opere, vol. 3, p. 537), he had imagined the regression of civilization.
54. In order to combat the stereotyped image of heroism, posed by schoolchildren (and others), Levi returned repeatedly to the question of why resistance was impossible among the Jewish inmates of the camps, and yet, amazingly, had still occurred: e. g. Primo Levi per l'ANED, pp. 23-7 (1966);
55. 'Appendix' to If This Is a Man, question 3 (1976).
56. 'Il re dei giudei', Lilìt (Opere, vol 3, p. 443).
57. 'The fundamental, the decisive act of [Nazi and Fascist] power was that of depriving people of critical capacities' (Conversazioni (September 1986), p. 250).
58. Se questo è un uomo, p. 12;
59. 'Appendice' to Se questo è un uomo (Opere, vol. 1, p. 185).
60. Primo Levi per l'ANED, p. 18.
61. N. Gallerano, 'La memoria pubblica del fascismo e dell'antifascismo', in Politiche della memoria (Rome: Manifestolibri, 1993)
62. cited in A. Rossi-Doria, 'La riflessione sull'uso pubblico della storia', Passato e Presente 39 (1996): 123.
63. G. Grass, From the Diary of a Snail (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1976), pp. 123-4.
64. N. Gallerano (ed. ) L'uso pubblico della storia (Milan: Franco Angeli, 1995).
65. The phenomenon is common to western nation states: for example, one can point to the somewhat desperate appeal of the then president of the Historical Association in Britain about the importance of a knowledge of national history: K. Robbins, 'National identity and history: past, present and future', History 75 (1990): 369-87;
66. or to the deconstruction of the French Revolution during its bicentennial celebrations: S. L. Kaplan, Farewell to Revolution: the Historians' Feud (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1995); or to the failure to mobilize public enthusiasm for the celebrations of the fiftieth anniversary of the Italian republic.
67. N. Gallerano, 'Critica e crisi del paradigma antifascista', Problemi del socialismo 7 (1986): 116.
68. R. J. B. Bosworth, Explaining Auschwitz and Hiroshima: History Writing and the Second World War 1945-1990 (London and New York: Routledge, 1993);
69. J. K. Ollick and D. Levy, 'Collective memory and cultural constraint: Holocaust myth and rationality in German politics', American Sociological Review 62 (1997): 921-36.
70. R. De Felice, Intervista sul fascismo, ed. M. A. Ledeen (Bari-Rome: Laterza, 1975);
71. N. Gallerano, 'Storia e uso pubblico della storia', in Gallerano, L'uso pubblico della storia, p. 18 n1;
72. Gallerano, 'Critica e crisi del paradigma antifascista', p. 120;
73. G. Crainz and N. Gallerano, 'I documentari televisi sulla Resistenza', in Cinema storia resistenza 1944-1985 (Milan: Franco Angeli, 1987), pp. 148-51;
74. N. Tranfaglia, 'Fascismo e mass media: dall'intervista di De Felice agli sceneggiati televisi', Passato e Presente 3 (1983).
75. C. Pavone, in his Una guerra civile: saggio storico sulla moralità nella Resistenza (Turin: Bollati Boringhieri, 1991), deliberately shifted the debate over the Resistance onto the terrain of the revisionists (starting with the very title, acknowledging that the period of the Nazi occupation was also a civil war) in order to refute their arguments. Since the publication of the book, Pavone has consistently demonstrated the potential of public debate through television.
76. Woolf, 'Primo Levi e il mondo anglosassone'
77. and A. Stille, 'Primo Levi negli Stati Uniti', in Cavaglión, Primo Levi.
78. 'Ma noi c'eravamo', Corriere della Sera, 3 January 1979
79. and 'Un Lager alle porte d'Italia', La Stampa, 19 January 1979.
80. P. Vidal-Naquet, Les Juifs, la mémoire et le présent (Paris: Maspero, 1981), published in Italian by Editori Riuniti in 1985
81. and including 'Tesi sul revisionismo', already published in the Rivista di Storia Contemporanea 1 (1983);
82. Vidal-Naquet's Les Assassins de la mémoire (Paris: La Découverte) was published in 1987.
83. 'Buco nero di Auschwitz', La Stampa, 22 January 1987
84. (in English: 'The dispute among German historians', in P. Levi, The Mirror Maker, New York: Schocken, 1989), written in response to the articles by the leading journalist Paolo Mieli and the historian Ernesto Galli della Loggia.
85. E. Collotti, 'Primo Levi e il revisionism storiografico', in Cavaglión, Primo Levi, p. 112;
86. G. Quazza, 'Primo Levi letto da uno storico', in Cavaglión, Primo Levi, pp. 29-47.
87. F. Bédarida, 'La mémoire contre l'histoire', Esprit 193 (1993);
88. P. Nora, 'Entre mémoire et histoire', in P. Nora (ed. ) Les Lieux de la mémoire, vol. 1: La République (Paris: Gallimard, 1984), p. xxiii.
89. F. W. Deakin's The Embattled Mountain (London: OUP, 1971) offers a particularly interesting example of the professional historian's opposition of memory to history, starting with the author's memory of the lived experience (fighting with Tito's resistance movement against the Nazis), followed by his very different historical reconstruction of the events.
90. A. Rossi-Doria, 'Il difficile uso della memoria ebraica: la Shoah', in Gallerano, L'uso pubblico della storia, pp. 118-34;
91. Y. H. Yerushalmi, Zakhor - Jewish History and Jewish Memory (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1982).
92. S. Friedlander (ed. ) Probing the Limits of Representation. Nazism and the 'Final Solution' (Cambridge, Mass. : Harvard University Press, 1992);
93. A. J. Mayer, 'Memory and history: on the poverty of remembering and forgetting the Judeoicide', Radical History Review 56 (1993);
94. O. Bartov, 'Intellectuals on Auschwitz. Memory, history and truth', History and Memory 5(1) (1993);
95. C. S. Maier, 'A surfeit of memory? Reflections on history, melancholy and denial', History and Memory 5(2) (1993).
96. N. Gallerano, 'Memoria e storia: Un dibattito', Passato e Presente 12 (1994): 111.
97. For his opposition to nuclear weapons: Opere, vol. 3, pp. 916-19 (1981), 975-7 (1984);
98. Cambodia, Vietnam, Israel: Conversazioni, pp. 39, 143, 242, 246, 295ff.
99. M. Bloch, 'Mémoire autobiographique et mémoire historique', Usages de la Tradition 2 (1995).
100. T. Todorov, "La mémoire devant l'histoire', Terrain 25 (1995): 101-12;
101. T. Todorov, Fâce à l'extrême (Paris: Seuil, 1991).
102. E. Renan, Qu'est-ce qu'une nation? (1882).
103. For an example of how a Nazi massacre, in a particular social context, has not metabolized after fifty years: F. Cappelletto, 'Memories of nazi-fascist massacres in two central Italian villages', Sociologia Ruralis 38(1) (1998): 69-85.
104. Rossi-Doria, 'Il difficile uso della memoria ebraica', pp. 131-4.