by Primo Levi
March 13, 1977
1. Juan Rodolfo Wilcock (1919–1978), an Argentine writer and poet, was an associate of Jorge Luis Borges.
Our Dreams
The Galateo of Monsignor Della Casa recommends not “reciting” one’s dreams. Della Casa had not read Freud, and therefore was not concerned about the greatest risk the dreamer can incur, that of unconsciously divulging his most jealously guarded secrets. But he was a man of good sense and good taste, and had observed what everyone sooner or later observes, namely, that while our dreams can be laden with meaning, or at least with emotion, for us, they are always utter, boring nonsense for the person we tell them to. And so those who “recite” them are no less annoying to their listeners than those who boast of their aristocratic status, for example, or even those who blow their nose loudly.
One cannot help agreeing with Della Casa: other people’s dreams are muddled and boring. If you reread Freud’s Interpretation of Dreams, you cannot avoid the comparison between the dreams he has chosen as examples—which, while tangled and illogical, are at the same time scintillating and meaningful—and the dull stupidity of the dreams we have experienced directly: our own or those of others.
It may be that, like everything around us, the world of dreams has also changed in the course of a century; just as Charcot’s Grande hystérie vanished, just as the fainting spells that punctuated nineteenth-century novels disappeared, perhaps dreams, too, have changed style. Or perhaps Freud, like all anthologists, selected (consciously or not) dreams that were particularly significant, or peculiarly suited to confirm his theories. However, from what has been published recently on this subject, one might come up with a different interpretation.
From the great hodgepodge of studies of so-called parapsychological phenomena, a single effect seems to emerge as open to methodical experimentation, since, from what is stated, it is vaguely reproducible under controlled circumstances: the direct transmission (without sensory mediation) of images from an experimenter who is awake to a subject who is asleep, and who receives the images in the form of dreams.
These studies are reported by Cavanna in Aspetti scientifici della parapsicologia (Scientific Aspects of Parapsychology; Turin: Boringhieri, 1973). There is no doubt that, for the moment, they must be accepted with a broad margin of skepticism. Still, as we know, there are many astonishing things between heaven and earth. And, in any case, nothing prevents us from being amused at the thought that, in spite of Freudian orthodoxy, our dreams are not always ours. That their violence, obscenity, and savagery are traces not of monsters buried in our own depths but belong to other people’s monsters; that their stupidity is the echo of the background noise caused by the stupidity around us; and that, perhaps through patient training, we can actually reach the point of harnessing the phenomenon, giving “blissful dreams” to the persons dear to us and, conversely, inflicting hideous nightmares on our enemies—all at no cost and no risk.
But is it really necessary to appeal to telepathy? We are besieged by violence and depravity, and their grip is getting tighter and tighter. Those without good defenses are already infected by them, and not only in their dreams.
April 24, 1977
Struggle for Life
In an unforgettable passage in The Conquest of Happiness (1930), Bertrand Russell reminds us that the human animal, like other animals, is biologically adapted to a certain amount of struggle for life; that, as a result, those who are rich or powerful enough to satisfy all their desires effortlessly are deprived of a fundamental ingredient of happiness; and that therefore man cannot be happy unless he lacks at least some of the things he desires.
To this paradox one might add the fact that those who have had occasion to verify these statements in their own lives, though not among the happy, are nevertheless to be counted among the fortunate, because if the desires whose satisfaction must be renounced become too numerous, or if they are vital needs, then one can no longer speak of happiness. The unhappiness that comes from an excess of satisfaction, and from the absence of struggle for life, is altogether of a rather rare type, and in fact Russell himself defines it as “Byronic unhappiness,” distinguishing it from other more common, more concrete types, which are its opposite.
Similarly, one might observe that, while it is unpleasant to be judged, and humiliating and debilitating to be continually on trial, it is unnatural and risky to expect that you can avoid all judgment. It is certainly difficult to establish, case by case, which judges are acceptable and which should be “rejected,” but rejecting all judges is not only presumptuous but pointless. Pointless, because every turning point in life, every human encounter, involves a judgment issued or received, and consequently it’s best to become accustomed to receiving and issuing judgments in our youth, when it’s easier to form habits.
If we lack this training—and I don’t see why it shouldn’t coincide with the school years, and our inoculation by the judgments received in school (whether in the form of grades or in some other way; it’s immaterial)—the first negative judgment that we receive in life may be felt as a deep wound, or strike with the virulence of a disease. Now, this negative judgment is inevitable, since in life we are faced with facts, and facts are persistent, pitiless judges.
Though we must be cautious in accepting an external judge, it’s still necessary to accept at least one. We cannot do without this one, given the fact that none of us are able to judge ourselves (those who do so, consciously or not, reproduce the external judgments that seem emotionally most correct, whether positive or negative); and given the fact that living without having one’s actions judged means giving up precious reactions, and consequently exposing oneself and others to grave risks. It would be like piloting a boat without a compass, or expecting to maintain a constant temperature without consulting a thermometer.
For this reason, while it is right to protest against scholastic ranking based (in fact if not in name) on wealth or social status, and against a scholastic system founded exclusively on ranking, it seems to me wrong to demand a school that does not accustom us to being judged. It would perhaps be an altruistic and charitable institution, but only in the short term: I don’t believe that it would produce citizens who are truly free and responsible.
July 3, 1977
From Spears to Shields
Recently a strange little book was published in Italy. It is entitled Badenheim 1939, and it was written in 1975 by Aharon Appelfeld, an Israeli writer. It describes a time in an imaginary health resort where the guests, Jews, eat fancy pastries, play tennis, engage in gossip and backbiting, and embark on brief affairs, while an undefined “Sanitation Department” keeps a file on them, fences in the town with barbed wire, and ends up deporting them all to Poland.
The book is chilling, and can be read on several levels. Two of these stand out: as an evocation of the repression and “see no evil” with which the past generation faced the threat of Hitler; and as an allusion to our own obtuseness, to our refusal to acknowledge the current nuclear threat.
We today, like the foolish Jews of Badenheim yesterday, eat pastries and organize music festivals while the Sanitation Department is at work, yet today’s situation is different. The threat concerns not just one minority but, rather, the human race. It no longer emanates from a single, perverse center of power but is inherent in the precarious equilibrium in which we are accustomed to living.
Apocalypses and scourges when they seem far off can be discussed easily, perhaps even jokingly, as in the film Dr. Strangelove: it was entertaining, but today we would watch it with some uneasiness. When, on the other hand, such events are closer, we behave like the Jews in Badenheim. The fact that the threat is talked about today, that conferences, round tables, and demonstrations are held everywhere, is a moderately positive sign; it means that, rightly or wrongly, we feel that the lots have not yet been cast, that there is still a little time, and that discussion is useful.
Discussions are useful, of course, in international
assemblies; but it is also useful to have discussions in living rooms, around a table at the neighborhood bar, among friends and among strangers. It’s a chance to reject the infantile rhetoric of cheering and booing, and tackle a concrete problem.
In the first place, I think that we must make an effort to be impartial, to say so and to show that we are, even if it’s not easy. When we demonstrate in the streets and shout that we want to impose nuclear disarmament on governments, we must be clear. We want to address all governments and we fear all nuclear warheads. There are not good ones and bad ones; they’re all bad.
It’s not easy to be impartial because, with respect to “imposing” and “addressing,” there is no symmetry between the two halves of the world. To organize a march in Rome or New York, all it takes is agreement among people who see things the same way; to organize one in Moscow requires agreement from Moscow. The day we learn that a spontaneous pacifist march has taken place in Moscow will be a great day for all humanity. That day does not appear to be close at hand, but convincing the Russians that our marches are spontaneous and that our pacifism is impartial could help bring it closer. The East-West border effectively absorbs sounds, but if our voice is loud enough it may be that an echo will be heard there, too, and spur those citizens (who are not all automatons, or all deaf) to demand of their government what we demand of ours.
I believe that a certain dose of optimism is needed: without it nothing can be achieved and life is not worth living. “There’s nothing further to be done” is an intrinsically suspect statement that has no practical utility; it’s useful only as an exorcism for those who utter it—that is, hardly useful at all. By this I do not mean to say that a nuclear holocaust is impossible: the 40,000 bombs ready for deployment do, unfortunately, exist, almost all warehoused in the United States and the Soviet Union. They are a sword hanging over us, but there is still something that can be done, the sentence has not yet been handed down.
As long as the fate of the world is decided by old men who are astute and cynical, yet cautious, as Brezhnev and Reagan have so far shown themselves to be, the bombs will probably remain in the storehouses. To the humiliation of Marxist and Tolstoyan historiography, it appears that in history today the masses count for little. It makes a difference whether this man or that sits in the White House or in the Kremlin: these powerful figures decide on their own, and our destinies are woven in a total of less than 3000 grams of cerebral matter.
Still, before deciding, they listen to advice, sniff the air, and weigh internal and external desires and threats. They are not impermeable to pressures from below. Beyond any moral judgment, we would be satisfied if they possessed two qualities: the ability to make decisions rationally, and full control over their subordinates, especially the military; as long as they do, they will not push the button, or allow it to be pushed, because they know that a holocaust will sweep away their power and their lives as well. And they will hold irresponsible allies and emotional individuals at bay, within their own borders and in other countries as well. In this regard, it is incomprehensible, criminal, and suicidal to allow governments (even our own!) to supply potentially deadly materials and technologies to unstable nations.
Finally, I believe that we have to be realistic. To demand everything immediately is ingenuous, and maximalist slogans are stillborn from the start. It’s fine to urge that spears be converted into scythes, as, in fact, Isaiah did; but it should be remembered that the makers of “spears” are powerful and experienced. It would be nice to force them all to change their profession, but it couldn’t be done in a short time. Continuing the metaphor, I propose that the conversion be gradual: spears into shields, then shields into scythes when prudence permits.
In other words, wouldn’t it be possible for the dizzying sums allocated to military budgets to be primarily (and gradually) invested in defensive weapons? In radar networks rather than in nuclear warheads, in anti-tank missiles rather than in tanks, and so on? It would be an unequivocal sign, indicating to the other side that our guard has not been lowered, but our intentions are not aggressive.
America and Russia are in a costly stalemate: for reasons of long-standing distrust, and also barbaric prestige, neither of the two wants to take the first step on the path to disarmament. This would be an acceptable first step, even to those still susceptible to the allure of weapons. If it were implemented, the safety of the world would take a small but unquestionable step forward.
This is nothing more than the proposal of an incompetent. Call it ingenuous, presumptuous, or downright ridiculous, but it is a proposal; it is not an interjection or a refrain or a disconsolate sigh. Those who deem it absurd must counter it with another proposal; this should be the rule of the game, and it’s a game whose stakes are high.
It appears that global talks are to begin soon in Geneva. We insignificant men find ourselves forced to delegate to the two great men a responsibility weightier than any previous one. We would like them to hear the hum of our voices, and remember that nuclear disarmament is the number one problem of the planet. If it is resolved, all the other problems of the planet will not automatically be resolved; but if it is not resolved, no other problem will ever be resolved.
November 4, 1981
Translating Kafka
The comments that followed my translation of Kafka’s The Trial led me to have a number of second thoughts, regarding both the approach I took in rendering the text and the reasons that drove me to state plainly that “I don’t think I have much affinity with Kafka.” If that’s the case, why would I have chosen or agreed to translate him? Let’s see.
Translating a book is not like marrying or entering into a business partnership. We can be attracted even to those who are very different from us, just because they are different. If this were not so, writers, readers, and translators would be stratified into castes as rigid as those in India. There would be no transverse ties or cross-fertilizations: people would read only those authors who are related to them, the world would be (or would appear to be) less varied, and no new ideas would emerge.
Now, I love and admire Kafka because he writes in a way that is totally closed off to me. In my writing, for better or for worse, knowingly or not, I have always tended toward a transition from obscurity to clarity, rather like a filter pump, sucking in turbid water and turning it out purified, even sterile (I think Pirandello said this, I don’t recall where). Kafka takes the opposite approach: he endlessly unravels hallucinations that he draws from incredibly deep layers, and never filters them. The reader feels them teeming with germs and spores; they are full of burning significance, but he is never helped to tear the curtain or go around it to see what it conceals. Kafka never touches down, he never consents to give you the end of Ariadne’s thread.
But this love of mine is ambivalent, bordering on fear and rejection. It’s similar to the feeling you have for a person dear to you who is suffering and asks for help that you cannot give him. I don’t really believe in the laughter that Brod1 speaks of: maybe Kafka laughed while telling stories to his friends, sitting around a table in the beer hall, since people are not always consistent, but he certainly didn’t laugh when he was writing. His pain is genuine and constant, it assails you and never lets go: you feel like his characters, sentenced by a vile, inscrutable tribunal, whose tentacles invade the city and the world, lurking in squalid garrets but also in the dark solemnity of the cathedral; or transformed into an awkward, ungainly insect, reviled by everyone, desperately alone, dull-witted, incapable of communicating or of thinking, capable only of suffering.
Kafka understands the world (his own, and ours today even better) with an astounding clairvoyance, which assaults you like a light that’s too bright. Often we are tempted to interpose a shield, to take refuge; at other times we give in to the temptation to stare at it, and then are left dazzled. As when we look at the sun’s disc, and then continue to see it for a long time, superimposed on the objects around us, so, too, reading The Trial, we sud
denly realize that we are surrounded, besieged by senseless, unjust, and often deadly trials.
The trial of the diligent, petty bank clerk Josef K. ends in fact with a death sentence, never pronounced, never written, and the execution takes place in the most sordid, unadorned surroundings, without fanfare or outrage, at the hands of two puppet executioners who, with bureaucratic meticulousness, fulfill their duty mechanically, hardly uttering a word, exchanging foolish courtesies. It’s a page that takes your breath away. I, a survivor of Auschwitz, would never have written it, or never like that: because of an incapable and deficient imagination, of course, but also because of a shame in the face of death that Kafka didn’t know or, if he did, denied; or perhaps for lack of courage.
The famous, much analyzed phrase that seals the book like a tombstone (“. . . it was as if the shame of it should outlive him”)2 does not seem at all enigmatic to me. What should Josef K. be ashamed of, that man who had decided to fight to the death, and who at every turn in the book proclaims that he is innocent? He is ashamed of many contradictory things, because he is not consistent, and his nature (like that of most of us) consists in being inconsistent: not the same over the course of time, unstable, erratic, divided even at the same moment, split into two or more personalities that cannot exist together.