by Primo Levi
When all these mechanisms—whether or not they are dependent on the brain—work properly, we can preserve the status quo. This happens fairly easily on the scale of days and months, but less successfully on the scale of years and decades, such that we grow old and die. This quality, of self-preservation against the brute power of degradation and death, is typical of living matter and its more or less crude imitations, and it is called homeostasis. It enables us to resist the thousands of changes, internal and external, that threaten to break our balance with the environment.
Of course, it hasn’t been demonstrated nor is it demonstrable that becoming other, relinquishing our identity, is always a bad thing. Whether it is or not depends on the initial quality of that identity, and on how it is subjectively perceived. There are individuals who spend their entire lives obsessed and saddened by the desire to change their skin, because (maybe wrongly) they are not satisfied with the skin they live in, and who can’t change because of an excessive homeostasis. This, however, is a rare occurrence. In general, in the long run, homeostasis fails: “life” makes sure that we become someone else—fearful, idle, stingy, corrupted, or hypochondriac. By gnawing away at our defenses, it destroys them. In most cases, “life” changes us for the worse, and so homeostasis, although essentially conservative, is a good thing. Naturally, progress, reforms, innovations, inventions are also good things, but their pursuit is not for everyone, while self-preservation is a minimum requirement for all living beings.
Not only living beings. It is important to note that the devices intended to keep constant one or more variables of a process originated with the industrial age, and, more precisely, with the engine. As early as 1787 James Watt had added a centrifugal governor to ensure a constant speed for his first steam engines. It was a small vertical shaft connected to the engine by a pair of conical gears. Two opposing, rigid pendulums were suspended from it; joined to them was a system of tie-rods that controlled the steam valve. The faster the rotation speed, the higher the pendulums rose, owing to centrifugal force, and the more constricted the valve became. Thus an equilibrium was reached—that is, a steady speed regardless of the load. In this manner, long before the concept of homeostasis was theorized, Watt had achieved what two centuries later was to be called a “feedback loop”: it is a “loop” because it has to do with powering the system. A classic example of feedback is the simple one of water heaters. The heater includes a thermometer that not only measures the water temperature but compares it with a temperature set by the user; it interrupts the current supply if the first temperature is higher than the second. In this way we obtain an “all or nothing” adjustment that is rather rudimentary; inertia within the system is such that the temperature, rather than remaining uniform, varies within four or five degrees. This is acceptable for bathwater (which, moreover, may be mixed at will with cold water), but it is not acceptable in many other circumstances requiring deviations of less than one degree, or even one hundredth of a degree—for instance, when we have to measure with precision a chemical or physical property that depends heavily on temperature.
In these cases, we rely on refinements very similar to what happens in living organisms and to what empirical experience has suggested to man from time immemorial. An adjustment can be modulated—that is, the correction can be proportional to the observed variation. The thermostat of the water heater can be compared to a helmsman who can hold the rudder only in its two extreme positions, hard left or hard right. A good helmsman would not act this way; rather, consciously or not, he would adjust the rudder in accordance with the deviation from the course shown by the steering compass. The first helmsman will follow a winding line; the second, a line that is almost straight.
We can rely on even subtler expedients. The adjustment can be achieved not through the attainment of the prescribed target value but through the speed at which that target value is pursued. In the case of the thermostat, the trigger is the speed at which temperature increases or decreases. Principiis obsta, the instrument intervenes at the beginning; it has been taught to look ahead and take action “like a good father.” If the temperature rises rapidly, the thermostat “foresees” that the maximum target value will soon be exceeded and interrupts the energy supply before this happens.
There are other cases where the target value (highest or lowest admissible) of the parameter to be regulated depends on its duration. For instance, a sick person can withstand a fever of 105 degrees Fahrenheit for some minutes, 104 degrees for a few hours, and 103 degrees for a few days. Similar situations (where “what cannot be achieved by heat is achieved by time”) are frequent in chemistry and also in cooking, which is a more complicated and less transparent sort of chemistry. For this reason there are controls that take into account the time that passes and what happened earlier. In fact, the most advanced instruments can be programmed to work in the “all or nothing” mode, in the modular mode, to react to the speed of change, to its progression over time, or in various combinations of these four modes. It is even more surprising, perhaps, that the workmen who are in charge of controls often learn how to program their instruments in the most suitable way for the required activity, even though they have no understanding of how such instruments function. In the same way, we learn to ride a bicycle even if we do not know the theory of the gyroscope.
It has been the dream of politicians of all eras to devise tools for homeostasis that would enable them to maintain the health, or at least the survival, of the regime they believe in. However, human societies are so complex, the parameters in play so many, that this dream will never come true. Fifty years ago it used to be said that too much freedom leads to tyranny, and that a tyranny too harsh leads back to freedom. If this assertion were applicable in general, one could recognize in it a fluctuation around a point of equilibrium—that is, a rudimentary regulatory mechanism, however cruel, costly in human lives, and unbearably slow. Unfortunately, what happens in today’s world persuades us to conclude that the assertion is false. Today’s tyrannies tend to hold on indefinitely, like a sort of sclerosis, and surrender only if upset by military intervention or overcome by another tyranny. Too much freedom, that is, license, does not breed tyranny but becomes gangrenous. Our current malaise originates in this: we no longer perceive restraining forces, homeostasis, and feedback loops. The world seems to be moving forward toward an unspecified catastrophe and we can only hope that its progress is slow.
Notiziario della Banca Popolare di Sondrio, no. 33, December 1983
1. Giacomo Leopardi, “A se stesso” (“To Himself”), translated by Jonathan Galassi.
Note on Kafka’s The Trial1
Reading The Trial, a book filled with misery and poetry, leaves us changed—sadder and more aware. So this is it, this is the destiny of mankind: we can be persecuted and punished for an unknown crime that we did not commit, that “the court” will never disclose to us. Yet we can be ashamed of that crime until death and perhaps even beyond. Now, translating is more than reading, and I emerged from this translation as if from an illness. Translating is to examine under a microscope the fabric of the book, to penetrate it, to become entangled and involved with it. You take on this distorted world, where all logical expectations are in vain. You travel with Josef K. through dark mazes, on twisting paths that never lead where you expect.
From the first sentence, you are plunged into the nightmare of the unknowable, on every page confronted with haunting passages. K. is followed and persecuted by alien presences, by tiresome busybodies who spy on him from near and far, and in front of whom he feels stripped naked. There is a constant impression of physical constraint: ceilings are low, the rooms crammed with a jumble of furniture, the air is always gloomy, sultry, stale, dark. Paradoxically but significantly, the sky is clear only in the merciless final scene of the execution. K. is afflicted by unnecessary and irritating physical contacts; by avalanches of vague words, which are supposed to clarify his fate but confuse him instead; by pointless gestures; by
desperately bleak backgrounds. His dignity as a man is compromised from the very beginning, and then relentlessly demolished day after day. Only women can, or could, provide salvation: they are motherly, loving, but inaccessible. Only Leni allows K. near her, but he despises her, he wants to be rejected; he does not seek safety. K. is afraid of punishment and at the same time wants it.
I do not believe that Kafka is very similar to me. Often, during this work of translation, I felt a collision, a conflict, an immodest temptation to untangle in my own way the knots in the text: in short, to correct, to tamper with the choice of words, to superimpose my writing style on Kafka’s. I tried to resist this temptation. Since I know that there is no “right way” to translate, I relied more on instinct than on reason. I followed a line of interpretative correctness, as honest as possible, although maybe not always consistent from page to page, as not all the pages posed the same problems. I had Alberto Spaini’s 1933 translation in front of me, and I seemed to recognize in it the reasonable propensity to smooth what was rough, to render comprehensible what was incomprehensible. The more recent (1973) translation by Giorgio Zampa follows the opposite approach: it is philologically rigorous, extremely respectful, even with the punctuation; it is parallel, interlinear. It is a translation, and presents itself as such, openly; it does not disguise itself as an original text. It does not help the reader, it does not ease the way for him, it courageously preserves the syntactical density of the German.
I believe I followed a middle course between these two. For instance, while recognizing the obsessional impact (maybe deliberate) of the speech by the defending counsel Huld, which goes on relentlessly for ten pages without a new paragraph, I had mercy on the Italian reader and introduced a few breaks. To retain the agility of the language, I did away with a few restrictive adverbs (almost, much, a little, about, maybe, etc.) that are more apt in German than in Italian. On the other hand, I made no attempt to weed out the proliferation of expressions of the “to seem” family: likely, probable, to see indistinctly, to perceive, as if, apparently, similar, and so on. They seemed to me typical, rather, absolutely indispensable, in this tale of tirelessly unraveling events where nothing is as it appears. For the rest, I made a determined effort to balance faithfulness to the text with the flow of expression. Whenever the text—notoriously tormented and controversial—contained contradictions and repetitions, I left it unchanged.
Note on the translation of The Trial, by Franz Kafka (Turin: Einaudi, 1983)
1. Levi translated The Trial from German for his publisher, Einaudi.
A Park Dedicated to Emanuele Artom
Tomorrow morning at nine thirty, in a simple ceremony at the intersection of Via Artom and Via Candiolo, in Turin, Emanuele Artom will be commemorated forty years after his death. The ex-partisans of the Mirafiori section of ANPI (National Association of Partisans of Italy), the Jewish community of Turin, and the Christian congregation of San Andrea will honor him. A small park, funded by students and partisans, will be dedicated in his name; Giorgina Arian Levi and Giuseppe Reburdo will speak.
Emanuele was born in 1915, into a family in which education was considered the supreme good in life. His father and mother were esteemed teachers, he and his younger brother, Ennio, were precociously mature students and then scholars. Four people bound by a quiet, intense affection, but respectful of one another’s intellectual independence: a family that in normal times might seem destined for a tranquil future.
But the times were not normal. The racial laws went into effect in 1938, and the Artoms, anti-Fascist by culture and by nature, reacted with dignity and courage. Shortly afterward, in 1940, Ennio died in an absurd mountain-climbing accident, and a shadow began to spread over the family. Emanuele responded to grief with a renewed spiritual tension. He translated Polybius, he applied himself to study and to teaching, but he didn’t withdraw: he felt the hour of decision was near, what he had learned from the classics and from the Bible must not lie inert, must lead him to understand, to choose.
On September 8, 1943, the Nazis invaded northern Italy, and Emanuele didn’t hesitate: though he had no military experience, and was a stranger to violence, he joined the partisans, in the mountains. He endured discomforts and dangers with cheerful pride, he became quick and daring; in January 1944, he was the political representative for the Action Party in Val Pellice. He was captured in a roundup, tortured atrociously for days, and humiliated, but he found in his frail body the strength to be silent: he didn’t name names. He died on April 7, racked by torture; his parents, twice bereaved, were denied the consolation of knowing where his remains lie.
Fichte’s maxim fits him as it does few others: the educated man requires not only knowledge but also virtue, which is the highest degree of morality.
La Stampa, April 11, 1984
The Path of a Jewish Writer
By now, readers and critics—both in Italy and abroad—consider me a “Jewish writer.” I accepted this definition gladly, but not immediately and not without resistance; in fact, I didn’t accept it in its entirety until quite late in life, and late in my journey as a writer. I adjusted to the condition of Jew only as a consequence of the racial laws issued in Italy in 1938, when I was nineteen, and of my deportation to Ausch-
witz, in 1944. I adapted to the condition of writer even later, when I was over forty-five and had already published two books, and when the profession of writer (which nonetheless I have never considered a true profession) had begun to overshadow my “official” profession of chemist. In both cases, it was more a matter of destiny than of deliberate and informed choice. No matter, I will review here my works as a “Jewish writer,” dwelling in particular on my books of autobiography or memoir, or on those otherwise relevant to the subject of this conference. I will follow the actual sequence of events rather than the sequence reflected in my writings; in other words, I will follow a biographical rather than a bibliographical order.
Like most Jews of ancient Italian descent, my parents and grandparents belonged to the middle class and were fully integrated into the country in terms of language, habits, and moral values. In my family, religion mattered little; I think that this can be explained by the fact that equal rights, obtained by non-Catholic Italians only around the middle of the last century, were a consequence of the largely secular nature of the Italian Risorgimento. Participation in the struggles of the Risorgimento included, if not an obligation, at least strong encouragement toward secularism. Nevertheless, in my family—as among most Italian Jews—awareness of our Jewishness had not died out. It manifested itself in the preservation of certain family rituals (especially the celebrations for Rosh Hashanah, Passover, and Purim), in the importance attached to study and education, and in a modest but interesting linguistic differentiation. As with the famously hybrid structure of Yiddish, in the Jewish families of the various Italian provinces odd variations of the dialects had developed, with Hebrew insertions that were more or less adapted to conform to local phonetics. Since early childhood, I had been fascinated, and also moved, by this touching survival of the language of the Bible in family jargon and in our dialect. This inspired, many years after my literary debut, the first chapter of The Periodic Table.
At first glance, the book is a summary of my life as a chemist. Indeed, at the end of my professional career, I felt the need to explain what I owed to my job—almost manual, often tiring and dirty, at times even dangerous. It seemed right that, so to speak, the man of letters should give thanks to the chemist who had opened a pathway for him. On closer scrutiny, however, critics recognized in the book a range wider than pure autobiography. It holds the history of a generation. Many of its pages reflect the traumatic experience of the segregation of Jews in Fascist and National Socialist Europe, the blind rush to war and slaughter, and also the renewed pride that fatally accompanies every separation and act of discrimination. The book is divided into twenty-one “moments,” each taking its subject and title from one of the chemical elements.
For the purpose of this conference, the chapters titled “Argon,” “Zinc,” and “Gold” are especially relevant, as they relate to circumstances and events that preceded my deportation, and reflect my condition as a Jew, assimilated and integrated—but not Fascist—in Mussolini’s Italy. Argon is a gas that does not react with other gasses. It is present in a tiny quantity in the air we breathe. In the chapter with that title I proposed a humorous analogy between this “rare” and “noble” gas and our ancestors in the small rural Jewish communities of Piedmont, isolated in small groups, at times single families, aloof, still mindful of long-ago persecutions, never much loved or much hated, at times the object of contempt or mistrust. No trace remains of these odd and remote characters, except for some funny anecdotes, some “sayings” that were handed down, almost a parody of the famous rabbinical “sayings” collected in the Talmud. In these pages, with ironic and gentle affection, I tried, for instance, to bring to life again the story of a legendary uncle from Chieri, near Turin, who had fallen in love with the Christian maid of the house. As his parents opposed the marriage, the uncle went to bed and stayed there for twenty-two years, until his parents died and he could marry the girl. In relating these amusing and unusual family tales, I also tried to record that hybrid language I mentioned earlier, basically a minor, Mediterranean Yiddish, more local and less renowned, in which I nevertheless recognized my domestic roots: