Primo Levi’s mezuzoth

By David Meghnagi*

A unique combination of psychological, stylistic and formal elements resulted from Primo Levi’s scientific education, with his plain language, his “marble” prose – far from “the language of the heart” – and the moral tension of his writings. He thereby gave body to one of the most significant works about the experience in concentration camps ever written.
During his lifetime, Levi was appreciated for his moderate optimism. He wanted to understand, rather than blame. An opposite reading prevailed after his death by suicide. The first reading of Levi’s message drew attention to its positive and vital aspects, to the measured optimism which transpired in articles and interviews. What was firmly denied in the first place, appeared in a different light after his death. The image of an “optimistic” writer was replaced by a more tragic view that was strengthened by the pages of his last work.
Actually, in order to understand that things were more complex, it should have been enough to read between the lines and in the interstices between one book and another, in poems and in the openings and endings of his works of testimony and invention. A comparison between his prose and poetry can help to deepen further on the subject: Levi’s poetic writings are preludes that comment, closures that rely on verses for what prose cannot contain, a poetry of silence that stops in front of the unspeakable. Modesty and reticence are a constitutive element of it. Levi’s poetic production was not a draft or – as has often been believed – a hint of prose. It was the heartbreaking counter-melody to his prose.
Levi does not absolve. But he does not launch anathemas or accusations. When his cry is about to get shrill, he hands it over to poetry. His or others’ poetic references, at the beginning and end of his prose works, retrospectively resemble mezuzoth placed on the doorposts of a large house.

*psychoanalyst

Translated by Antonella Losavio and revised by Silvia Bozzo, students at the Advanced School for Interpreters and Translators of Trieste University, interns at the newspaper office of the Union of the Italian Jewish Communities.