The Complete Works of Primo Levi

2420 Pages·2015·9.54 MB·English

by  Primo Levi

The Complete Works of
Primo Levi

CONTENTS
VOLUME I
Introduction
Toni Morrison
Editor’s Introduction
Ann Goldstein
Editor’s Acknowledgments
Chronology
Ernesto Ferrero
1. IF THIS IS A MAN
Translated by Stuart Woolf
Appendix
Translator’s Afterword
2. THE TRUCE
Translated by Ann Goldstein
3. NATURAL HISTORIES
Translated by Jenny McPhee
4. FLAW OF FORM
Translated by Jenny McPhee
VOLUME II
5. THE PERIODIC TABLE
Translated by Ann Goldstein
6. THE WRENCH
Translated by Nathaniel Rich
Translator’s Afterword
7. UNCOLLECTED STORIES AND ESSAYS: 1949–1980
Translated by Alessandra Bastagli and Francesco Bastagli
8. LILITH AND OTHER STORIES
Translated by Ann Goldstein
9. IF NOT NOW, WHEN?
Translated by Antony Shugaar
Author’s Note
Translator’s Afterword
VOLUME III
10. COLLECTED POEMS
Translated by Jonathan Galassi
11. OTHER PEOPLE’S TRADES
Translated by Antony Shugaar
Translator’s Afterword
12. STORIES AND ESSAYS
Translated by Anne Milano Appel
Translator’s Afterword
13. THE DROWNED AND THE SAVED
Translated by Michael F. Moore
Works Cited
Translator’s Afterword
14. UNCOLLECTED STORIES AND ESSAYS: 1981–1987
Translated by Alessandra Bastagli and Francesco Bastagli
Primo Levi in America
Robert Weil
The Publication of Primo Levi’s Works in the World
Monica Quirico
Notes on the Texts
Domenico Scarpa
Select Bibliography
Domenico Scarpa
Copyrights and Permissions

INTRODUCTION
T
he Complete Works of Primo Levi is far more than a welcome opportunity to
reevaluate and reexamine historical and contemporary plagues of systematic
necrology; it becomes a brilliant deconstruction of malign forces. The triumph of
human identity and worth over the pathology of human destruction glows
virtually everywhere in Levi’s writing. For a number of reasons his works are
singular amid the wealth of Holocaust literature.
First, for me, is his language—infused as it is with references to and intimate
knowledge of ancient and modern sources of philosophy, poetry, and the
figurative uses of scientific knowledge. Virgil, Homer, Eliot, Dante, Rilke play
useful roles in his efforts to understand the life he lived in the concentration
camp, as does his deep knowledge of science. Everything Levi knows he puts to
use. Ungraspable as the necrotic impulse is, the necessity to “tell,” to describe
the “monotonous horror of the mud,” is vital as he speaks for and of the throngs
who died in vain. Language is the gold he mines to counter the hopelessness of
meaningful communication between prisoners and guards. A pointed example of
that hopelessness is the exchange, recounted in If This Is a Man, between
himself and a guard when he breaks off an icicle to soothe his thirst. The guard
snatches it from his hand. When Levi asks “Why?” the guard answers, “There is
no why here.” While the oppressors rely on sarcasm laced with cruelty, the
prisoners employ looks, glances, facial expressions for clarity and meaning.
Although photographs of troughs of corpses stun viewers with the scale of
ruthlessness, it is language that seals and reclaims the singularity of human
existence. Yet the response to visual images collapses before language—its
stretch and depth can be more revelatory than the personal experience itself.
Everywhere in the language of this collection is the deliberate and sustained
glorification of the human. Long after his eleven months in what he calls the
Lager (Auschwitz III), as a survivor, Primo Levi understands evil as not only
banal but unworthy of our insight—even of our intelligence, for it reveals
nothing interesting or compelling about itself. It has merely size to solicit our
attention and an alien stench to repel or impress us. For this articulate survivor,
individual identity is supreme; efforts to drown identity inevitably become futile.
He refuses to place cruel and witless slaughter on a pedestal of fascination or to
locate in it any serious meaning. His primary focus is ethics.