PRIMO LEVI: 25 YEARS AFTER
Ian Thomson, Financial Times
Primo Levi’s radical chemistry-inspired memoir ‘The Periodic Table’ paved the way for popular science writing.
On April 11 1987, 25 years ago this month, the Italian writer and Auschwitz survivor Primo Levi fell to his death down the stairwell of the block of flats where he lived in Turin. The authorities pronounced a verdict of suicide. Levi’s chronicle of his captivity under Nazism, If This is a Man (published in Italy in 1947, and in the UK and US in 1959), remains one of the essential books of our age. However, Levi was not simply a witness to contemporary barbarism. By profession he was an industrial chemist.
In much of his journalism, fiction and poetry he explored the border zone between science and literature. The republication of Levi’s literary-scientific memoir, The Periodic Table, provides an opportunity to appraise a figure who bridged the divide between the two cultures and became one of the most important and best-loved writers of our time. Read
PRESIDENT GIORGIO NAPOLITANO PAYS TRIBUTE TO PRIMO LEVI
President Giorgio Napolitano pays tribute to Primo Levi at 25th Anniversary Conference. March 29th, Presidenza del Consiglio dei Ministri, Palazzo Chigi, Rome
“The roots of a united Europe lie within the reflections of men such as Primo Levi, on the tragedies of the 20th Century. In a world still filled with dangerous national, ideological and religious conflicts, a united Europe stands as a 21st Century institutional model of peaceful coexistence between nations that fought each other for centuries. May the words of Primo Levi never be forgotten.” Read
FROM THE PRESS
Carlo Strenger, Haaretz
This year’s Holocaust Remembrance Day also happens to coincide with the 25th anniversary of Primo Levi’s death, April 11, 1987. Levi was born in Turin in 1919. He led a calm and uneventful life, studying chemistry. He was incarcerated in Fossoli in January 1944 and transferred to Auschwitz in February the same year. He survived there in part because of his skills as a chemist, working in the IG Farben factory. He was liberated in January 27th 1945, and succeeded to return to Turin in October that the same year. Read
ARCHIVES
From the archive of Centro Primo Levi in Turin
Primo Levi is one of the most widely read Italian writers in the world. His works, translated into more than 30 languages, have spread widely, but they fared differently at different times and in different countries. The texts that you can have access to from this page will allow you to take a first look at how interest in Levi gradually developed under various circumstances in various places. Visit the Archive
IF THIS IS A MAN: NEW ANNOTATED EDITION
«I meant my comment to be taken as a piece of useful work. On the one hand, I have intended to digging into the rich literary mine where many of Levi’s words come from, the many expressions of If This is a Man. This is a mine where the metal, Dante, lies beside the jewel, Baudelaire. On the other hand, my comments explore the relationships between what Levi defined as “grammatical derivations” and a vision of the world that presents itself as “opposed to everything infinite.” (Alberto Cavaglion, Introduction to the new edition of If This Is a Man, 2012). Read
BOOKS
Ordinary Violence in Mussolini's Italy by Michael Ebner
A European Memory? Contested Histories and Politics of Remembrance, by Magorzata Pakier, Bo Stråth
Antisemitism Italian Style. A Lecture by Paul Arpaia
Second Meeting of Italian Jewish Studies in N.A.
Centro Primo Levi participates in Judaica Europeana
The Auschwitz Experiment by Massimo Bucciantini
Viterbi Program in Mediterranean Jewish Studies
