The Truce by Primo Levi (1963, translated by Anna Goldstein)

The Complete Works of Primo Levi is an act that transfigures publishing into conscience at its most sublime.” — Cynthia Ozick

I salute Liveright Publishing, a division of Norton and Company, for having the moral vision to publish (forthcoming September 2015) The Complete Works of Primo Levi.  At 3008 pages, it is of major service to the Anglophone literary universe.  Containing fourteen novels, numerous essays and short stories as well as excellent introductory articles and many brand new and never translated works. I think many will one day consider this three volume set as among their most treasured literary possessions.  People will  pass down this collection to their descendants.  

The best known work in the collection is his memoir of his year in Auschwitz, If This Is a Man.  Recently  I read a beautiful beyond my ability to praise novel by Iréne Némirovsky, Suite Francaise.  I felt great sadness and shame at the human condition when I learned she died in Auschwitz in 1942.  I see the Holocaust, in part, as a war on a culture and a people as dedicated to the reading life as ever existed.  

Primo Levi was sent to Auschwitz on Febuary 21, 1944, arrested for his membership in an Italian anti-fascist organization.  He was there until the Russians liberated the camp on January 18, 1945.  If This is a Man is his memoir of that time.   The Truce is about his experiences when Auschwitz was liberated and his journey back to his home in Turin, Italy.  

Few will,read the Truce before reading If This is a Man.  It is an amazing account of Levi's experiences when Auschwitz was liberated.  There was a great sense of chaos and people did not know they were really no longer under the control of the Nazis for several days.  Of course many ex-camp inmates are terribly sick but everyone wants to get home, even though in many cases their home areas have been totally ravavaged in the war. 

We go along on the trip back home, mostly in packed railroad cars under Russian supervision.  

Of course the trip is very hard but the will to survive and the elation of being free drives Levii on.  There are all sorts of people on the trains, a babel of languages and cultures.  The search for food is paramount. 

Levi calls this work a novel but it reads as a memoir.  This work and If This is a Man are lasting tributes to the human spirit.  I hope no one ever has to write books like these again.  

I was kindly given a copy of this collection by the publisher. 

Mel u

If This is a Man by Primo Levi (1947, translated by Stuart Woolf, also published as Survival in Auschwitz)

"The Complete Works of Primo Levi is an act that transfigures publishing into conscience at its most sublime.” — Cynthia Ozick

I salute Liveright Publishing, a division of Norton and Company, for having the moral vision to publish (forthcoming September 2015) The Complete Works of Primo Levi.  At 3008 pages, it is of major service to the Anglophone literary universe.  Containing fourteen novels, numerous essays and short stories as well as excellent introductory articles and many brand new and never translated works I think many will one day consider this three volume set as among their most treasured literary possessions.  People will  pass down this collection to their descendants.  

The best known work in the collection is his memoir of his year in Auschwitz, If This Is aMan.  Just last week I read a beautiful beyond my ability to praise novel by Iréne Némirovsky, Suite Francaise.  I felt great sadness and shame at the human condition when I learned she died in Auschwitz in 1942.  I see the Holocaust, in part, as a war on a culture and a people as dedicated to the reading life as ever existed.  

Primo Levi was sent to Auschwitz on Febuary 21, 1944, arrested for his membership in an Italian anti-fascist organization.  He was there until the Russians liberated the camp on January 18, 1945.  If This is a Man is his memoir of that time.  The average life expectancy on entering Auschwitz was three months.  There were people who survived more than three years.  (Iréne Némirovsky was classified as a worthless to the Germans person and was sent to the gas chambers after only two days.)

The Germans made the common criminals in the camp the leaders, the "Kapos".  In the camp people did not simply see themselves as Jews but as Italian, French, Polish, Russia.  The camp also housed English prisoners of war.  An experienced inmate could tell from another's number where they were from and how long they had been there.  Levi brilliantly shows us how life was organized in the camp.  Much of it is not easy to read.  We learn how some were able to survive for years in the camp and why some were recognized as having no chance by experienced residents.  One of the things survivors learned to profit from was the stupidity of the Germans working in the camp.  If you had a professional skill such as a doctor, engineer, carpenter, classical musician, chemist (as was Levj), if you spoke German or were an attractive homosexual, per Levi, your chances of survival went way up.  A lot of it was just how strong your will to live was.  Getting food and clothes, especially good shoes, were of all importance.  It was wonderful to see how many inmates kept their basic human decency in this enviorment.  Levi wonderful brings to life a number of inmates.  The most dreaded occasion was "selection day".  The camp authorities were periodically ordered to send to the gas chambers a fixed number of their captives based on projected incoming volume of new arrivals.  On one day Levi describes, seven percent were selected.

We are there when the camp is liberated by the Russians.  A myth of holocaust thought is that these were occasions for great rejoicing. This is based on staged newsreel productions.  In truth most captives were in too poor health to even fully understand what had happened.  In the case of Auschwitz, most Germans simply left.  The inmates knew at some point the end was near for the Germans and their was a fear, as had happened elsewhere, that the Germans would slaughter them all.  

I was very kindly given a review copy of this collection.  I will next read his Truce, an account of his trip back to Italy after leaving the camp.  Maybe I will never read all 3008 pages but now I can.

Mel u

Two Short Stories by Primo Levi. -"The Tranquil Star" and "Bear Meat"

One of the greatest things about the reading life is there will always be great new writers to discover.  A few months ago you might have never heard of a writer and now you cannot imagine not having read their work. This is also one of the saddest aspects in that you probably will never become aware of many writers you would have loved, writers that would have changed your perspective, helped you fight off the darkness, delighted you with their brilliance and the beauty in their prose.  

Levi, I first was motivated to read him by a suggestion of Linda Lappin and thd appearance of two of his short stories in the archives of The New Yorker provided me with the opportunity to do so, is not just a great writer, he was a great person.

"A Tranquil Star" (published in translation for the first time Feb 12, 2009 in The New Yorker- I do not know the original date and place of publication.  If you do, please leave a comment) begins with narrator reflecting on the inadequacy of language to describe the immensity of stars.  The narrator very interestingly and I think rightly tells us that language of size makes sense when you say an elephant is large or a flea small but not when we apply these terms to entities observable by science like stars and atoms.  I think based in just the reading of two stories by Levi that one of his themes is that modern man needs to renew his spirit by opening  up to the natural world as free if the blinders of received culture as we can.  At about midpoint the narrative line splits and we learn are with an astronomer at an observatory in the Peruvian Andes, where the air is clearest.  He speaks of stars going nova, exploding, and taking with them planetary systems and civilizations unknown to humans.  

You can read, for a couple of months, this story here.

http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2007/02/12/a-tranquil-star

"Bear Meat" (Published in translation in The New Yorker - Jan. 8, 2007, I also need original publication data on this story, please) is about the experinces of three young mountain climbers who spent a night in a shed atop an arduously claimed peak.  In the darkness the narrator begins to see other people in the shed.  He thinks only a certain kind of person can make the climb.  The power of the story begins in conversations with two of the others in the shack.  Like "Tranquil Star" the story is partially about the renewing cleansing power of primal unfiltered by human artifacts encounters with nature.  This story is just wonderful, a true joy to read.

You can for a while read this story here

http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2007/01/08/bear-meat

I greatly enjoyed both these stories.  I sense a great depth of thought in them.

There is an excellant reflection of the life and work of Levi here

http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2002/06/17/a-hard-case

I hope very much to read his autobiographical Survival in  Austweitz.

Please share your experience with Primo Levi with us.