by Primo Levi
In addition to the works of Alberto Cavaglion, Ernesto Ferrero, and Marco Belpoliti—among Belpoliti’s many contributions are a Levian dictionary, Primo Levi (Milan: Bruno Mondadori, 1998), and the narrative La prova (Turin: Einaudi, 2007), in which he retraces the route of The Truce—another fine monograph is Robert S. C. Gordon’s Primo Levi’s Ordinary Virtues: From Testimony to Ethics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001). Another work available in English is Tzvetan Todorov’s discussion of ethics in Levi, Facing the Extreme: Moral Life in the Concentration Camps (New York: Henry Holt, 1997; original French edition, 1991). A basic tool for every Anglophone reader of Levi is The Cambridge Companion to Primo Levi, edited by Robert Gordon (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), which includes essays by Anna Laura and Giulio Lepschy on language, by Charlotte Ross on Levi’s science fiction, by David Ward on Turin, by Mirna Cicioni on humor (Cicioni is also the author of Primo Levi: Bridges of Knowledge [Oxford: Berg, 1995]), and by Nancy Harrowitz on Jewish identity. Gordon is the author of the most wide-ranging and up-to-date volume on reception studies and the memory of the Shoah in Italy: The Holocaust in Italian Culture, 1944–2010 (Redwood City, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2012); on the same subject, see Risa Sodi, Narrative and Imperative: The First Fifty Years of Italian Holocaust Writing, 1944–1994 (New York: Peter Lang, 2007).
In the fall of 2009, Gordon gave the first annual Primo Levi Lecture, organized by the Centro Internazionale di Studi Primo Levi in Turin and published the following spring by Einaudi in a bilingual Italian-
English edition. The subject chosen by Gordon was “Sfacciata fortuna”: Luck and the Holocaust (Turin: Einaudi, 2010). This lecture was followed in subsequent years by Massimo Bucciantini, Auschwitz Experiment (2011); Stefano Bartezzaghi, A Phone Conversation with Primo Levi (2012); Mario Barenghi, Why Do We Believe Primo Levi? (2013); Anna Bravo, Narratives for History (2014); and Ann Goldstein and Domenico Scarpa, In Another Language (2015). Each volume contains an appendix of texts for students. Another book by Bartezzaghi, Scrittori giocatori (Turin: Einaudi, 2010), also has a brilliant essay on Levi.
On the connections between Levi and historiography, see the anthology Primo Levi testimone e scrittore di storia, edited by Paolo Momigliano Levi and Rosanna Gorris (Florence: Giuntina, 1999). Many essays with a historiographic approach, entirely or partly about Levi, can be read in the two volumes of Storia della Shoah in Italia: Vicende, memorie, rappresentazioni (volume 1, Le premesse, le persecuzioni, lo sterminio; volume 2, Memorie, rappresentazioni, eredità), edited by Marcello Flores, Simon Levis Sullam, Marie-Anne Matard-Bonucci, and Enzo Traverso (Turin: UTET, 2010). Probing the Limits of Representation: Nazism and the “Final Solution” (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1992), an anthology edited by Saul Friedlander and based on a symposium held at UCLA in the spring of 1990, contains essays relevant to Levi by Sidra DeKoven Ezrahi, John Felstiner, Carlo Ginzburg, and Hayden White. Shoshana Felman and Dori Laub’s Testimony: Crises of Witnessing in Literature, Psychoanalysis, and History (New York: Routledge, 1992) was published soon afterward.
On questions of historical method relative to testimonies, these two volumes are noteworthy: Georges Didi-Huberman, Images in Spite of All: Four Photographs from Auschwitz (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2012; original French edition, 2003), and Carlo Ginzburg, Threads and Traces: True False Fictive (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2012; original Italian edition, 2006). Giorgio Agamben’s Remnants of Ausch-
witz: The Witness and the Archive (New York: Zone Books, 1999; original Italian edition, 1998) has had an enduring international influence; Stefano Levi della Torre counters Agamben in “Il sopravvissuto, il musulmano e il testimone” (2000), an essay published as an appendix to a new Italian edition of The Drowned and the Saved (Turin: Einaudi, 2003).
The critical literature on themes related to bearing witness is extremely rich. Notable works in English include Lawrence L. Langer’s survey “The Literature of Auschwitz” (1991), in Admitting the Holocaust (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995), and the works of Dominick LaCapra: Representing the Holocaust: History, Theory, Trauma (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1994); History and Memory After Auschwitz (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1998); and History in Transit: Experience, Identity, Critical Theory (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2004). There are interesting contributions by Berel Lang and Robert Gordon in the anthology The Holocaust and the Text: Speaking the Unspeakable, edited by Andrew Leak and George Paizis (New York: St. Martin’s, 2000). The same year, Gillian Banner published the essay collection Holocaust Literature: Schulz, Levi, Spiegelman and the Memory of Offence (London: Valentine Mitchell, 2000).
Among the most recent monographs in English are Jonathan Druker, Primo Levi and Humanism After Auschwitz: Posthumanist Reflections (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009); Lina N. Insana, Arduous Tasks: Primo Levi, Translation and the Transmission of Holocaust Testimony (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2009); Ruth Franklin, A Thousand Darknesses: Lies and Truth in Holocaust Fiction (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011); and Carole J. Lambert, Ethics After Auschwitz? Primo Levi’s and Elie Wiesel’s Response (New York: Peter Lang, 2011).
Works in French include Alain Parrau, Écrire les camps (Paris: Belin, 1995); Enzo Traverso, L’histoire déchirée: Essai sur Auschwitz et les intellectuels (Paris: Cerf, 1997); Renaud Dulong, Le témoin oculaire: Les conditions sociales de l’attestation personnelle (Paris: Éditions de l’École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, 1998); and Jean-François Chianta-
retto, Le témoin interne (Paris: Aubier, 2005). In Italian: David Meghnagi, Ricomporre l’infranto: L’esperienza dei sopravvissuti alla Shoah (Venice: Marsilio, 2005); Elisabetta Ruffini, Un lapsus di Primo Levi: Il testimone e la ragazzina (Bergamo: Assessorato alla Cultura Comune di Bergamo, 2006); Pier Vincenzo Mengaldo, La vendetta è il racconto: Testimonianze e riflessioni sulla Shoah (Turin: Bollati Boringhieri, 2007); and Raffaella Di Castro, Testimoni del non-provato: Ricordare, pensare, immaginare la Shoah nella terza generazione (Rome: Carocci, 2008).
In German, a notable work on the subject of memory is Harald Weinrich, Lethe: Kunst und Kritik des Vergessens (Munich: Beck, 1997).
On Levi’s language and style, in addition to the works by Pier Vincenzo Mengaldo already cited and those by Giovanna Massariello Merzagora on the Jewish-Piedmontese dialect, there are stylistic analyses anthologized by Giovanni Tesio in Piemonte letterario dell’
Otto-Novecento: Da Giovanni Faldella a Primo Levi (Rome: Bulzoni, 1991); the quantitative analyses of Jane Nystedt, Le opere di Primo Levi viste al computer: Osservazioni stilolinguistiche (Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell International, 1993); a detailed analysis by Enrico Testa in Lo stile semplice: Discorso e romanzo (Turin: Einaudi, 1997); and an essay by Paolo Febbraro in Primo Levi e i totem della poesia (Lucca: Zona Franca, 2013). A recent monograph devoted to Levi as a newspaper columnist is Andrea Rondini’s Anche il cielo brucia: Primo Levi e il giornalismo (Macerata: Quodlibet, 2012). There are numerous studies of Levian intertextuality and the best tool, again, is the online bibliography on the Centro Internazionale di Studi Primo Levi website.
The following works should also be mentioned: Thomas Taterka, Dante Deutsch: Studien zur Lagerliteratur (Berlin: Erich Schmidt Verlag, 1999); Anne Henry, Shoah et témoignage: Levi face à Améry et Bettelheim (Paris: L’Harmattan, 2005); C. Fred Alford, After the Holocaust: The Book of Job, Primo Levi, and the Path to Affliction (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009); Lisa Regazzoni, Selezione e catalogo: La costruzione narrativa del passato in Omero, Dante e Primo Levi (Bologna: Clueb, 2010); Giuliana Cacciola, I generi della memoria e la memoria di genere: Primo Levi, Ruth Klüger e la Shoah (Rome-Acireale: Bonanno, 2013); and Hannah Arendt e Primo Levi: Narrazione e pensiero, edited by Natascia Mattucci and Andrea Rondini (Lecce: Pensa Multimedia, 2013).
For the international reputation and history of Primo Levi’s works, translations of them, and the relevant critical wo
rks, see the essay by Monica Quirico in this volume (page 2805). In addition, one of the best comprehensive essays in English is Tony Judt’s 1999 “The Elementary Truths of Primo Levi,” in Reappraisals: Reflections on the Forgotten Twentieth Century (New York: Penguin Press, 2008). Among the valuable introductions to editions of Levi’s books, two are in French: À une heure incertaine, preface by Jorge Semprún (Paris: Gallimard, 1997) and Œuvres, introduction by Catherine Coquio (Paris: Laffont, 2005); and one is in Spanish: Trilogía de Auschwitz: Si esto es un hombre; La tregua; Los hundidos y los salvados, foreword by Antonio Muñoz Molina (Barcelona: El Aleph, 2005).
The following is a list, in chronological order of publication, of other important collections of essays on Levi: “Scritti in memoria di Primo Levi,” La Rassegna Mensile di Israel 56, no. 2–3, May–December 1989; Primo Levi: Il presente del passato; giornate internazionali di studio, edited by Alberto Cavaglion (Milan: Angeli, 1991); Primo Levi, a collection of papers from a January 1993 conference, edited by Marie-Hélène Caspar (Nanterre: Université Paris X–Nanterre, 1993); Primo Levi: Memoria e invenzione, edited by Giovanna Ioli (San Salvatore Monferrato: Edizioni della Biennale Piemonte e Letteratura, 1995); Insegnare Auschwitz: Questioni etiche, storiografiche, educative della deportazione e dello sterminio, edited by Enzo Traverso (Turin: Bollati Boringhieri, 1995); Primo Levi: La dignità dell’uomo, edited by Rosa Brambilla and Giuseppe Cacciatore (Assisi: Cittadella, 1995); Shoah, mémoire et écriture: Primo Levi et le dialogue des savoirs, edited by Giuseppina Santagostino (Paris: L’Harmattan, 1997); Primo Levi, il mestiere di raccontare, il dovere di ricordare, edited by Ada Neiger (Fossombrone: Metauro, 1998); Al di qua del bene e del male: La visione del mondo di Primo Levi, edited by Enrico Mattioda (Milan: Angeli, 2001); Memory and Mastery: Primo Levi as Writer and Witness, edited by Roberta S. Kremer (Albany, N.Y.: SUNY Press, 2001); Primo Levi, le double lien: Science et littérature, edited by Walter Geerts and Jean Samuel (Paris: Ramsay, 2002); Primo Levi: The Austere Humanist, edited by Joseph Farrell (Bern: Peter Lang, 2004); The Legacy of Primo Levi, edited by Stanislao G. Pugliese (New York: Palgrave Macmillan 2005); Primo Levi: Scrittura e testimonianza, edited by David Meghnagi (Florence: LibriLiberi, 2006); Voci dal mondo per Primo Levi: In memoria, per la memoria, edited by Luigi Dei (Florence: Firenze University Press, 2007); Scrittori italiani di origine ebrea ieri e oggi: Un approccio generazionale, edited by Reinier Speelman, Monica Jansen, and Silvia Gaiga (Utrecht: Igitur, Utrecht Publishing and Archiving, 2007); Tra storia e immaginazione: Gli scrittori ebrei di lingua italiana si raccontano, edited by Hanna Serkowska (Kraków: Rabid, 2008); Mémoire oblige: Riflessioni sull’opera di Primo Levi, edited by Ada Neiger (Trento: Università degli Studi di Trento, 2009); “Special Issue: Primo Levi,” NEMLA Italian Studies 32 (2009–2010), edited by Francesco Ciabattoni and Simona Wright; Answering Auschwitz: Primo Levi’s Science and Humanism After the Fall, edited by Stanislao G. Pugliese (New York: Fordham University Press, 2011); and Approaches to Teaching the Works of Primo Levi, edited by Nicholas Patruno and Roberta Ricci (New York: Modern Language Association of America, 2014). A collection of essays from Universiteit Utrecht, published online in November 2014 (www
.italianisticaultraiectina.org), should also be noted: Primo Levi lettore—Lettori di Primo Levi: Nuovi studi su Primo Levi, edited by Raniero Speelman, Elisabetta Tonello, and Silvia Gaiga.
Other important monographs are Nicholas Patruno, Understanding Primo Levi (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1995); Françoise Carasso, Primo Levi: Le parti pris de la clarté (Paris: Belin, 1997); Anne Sizaire, Primo Levi: L’humanité après Auschwitz (Paris: Desclée de Brouwer, 1997); Jean-Philippe Bareil, Exil et voyage littéraire dans l’œuvre de Primo Levi (Paris: Messene, 1998); Wolfgang Beutin, Die Revolution tritt in die Literatur: Beiträge zur Literatur- und Ideengeschichte von Thomas Müntzer bis Primo Levi (Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 1999); Sylvia Tschörner, “Il binocolo aristotelico”: Naturwissenschaft, Philosophie und Intertextualität im Werk von Primo Levi (Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 1999); Daniela Amsallem, Primo Levi au miroir de son œuvre: Le témoin; l’écrivain; le chimiste (Lyon: Éditions du Cosmogone, 2001); Frederic D. Homer, Primo Levi and the Politics of Survival (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2001); Judith Woolf, The Memory of the Offence: Primo Levi’s “If This Is a Man” (Market Harborough, U.K.: Troubador, 2001); Hélène van Camp, Auschwitz oblige encore: Tentative pour penser le mal absolu à partir du bien toujours relatif (Paris: L’Harmattan, 2003); Massimo Giuliani, A Centaur in Auschwitz: Reflections on Primo Levi’s Thinking (Lanham, Md.: Lexington, 2003); Claire Quilliot, Primo Levi revisité (Paris: Odile Jacob, 2004); Giuseppina Santago-
stino, Primo Levi: Metamorfosi letterarie del corpo (Moncalieri: C.I.R.V.I., 2004); Lucie Benchouiha, Primo Levi: Rewriting the Holocaust (Leicester, U.K.: Troubador, 2006); Sam Magavern, Primo Levi’s Universe: A Writer’s Journey (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009); Enrico Palandri, Primo Levi (Florence: Le Monnier, 2011); and Rivkah Zim, The Consolations of Writing: Literary Strategies of Resistance from Boethius to Primo Levi (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2014).
This bibliography would not be complete without a brief mention of the gray zone, a theme that has had a resonance beyond the literary. Levi’s term has been adopted by philosophers, historians, and anthropologists, and has now entered the language of journalism and ordinary speech. In addition to the works already cited and the writings on the subject in many monographs and anthologies, there are two collections of essays devoted entirely to the subject: Gray Zones: Ambiguity and Compromise in the Holocaust and Its Aftermath, edited by Jonathan Petropoulos and John K. Roth (New York: Berghahn Books, 2005), and La zone grise entre accomodation et collaboration, edited by Philippe Mesnard and Yannis Thanassekos (Paris: Kimé, 2010). Furthermore, the “Auschwitz” section of the website of the Centro Internazionale di Studi Primo Levi has a subsection called “On the ‘Gray Zone,’” in progress. So far, there are essays, in Italian and in English translation, by Marco Belpoliti, Anna Bravo, Carlo Ginzburg, and Martina Mengoni.
DOMENICO SCARPA
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Volume I: copyright © 1958 (Se questo è un uomo), 1963 (La tregua), 1966 (Storie naturali), 1971 (Vizio di forma), e 1997 (Opere I), Giulio Einaudi Editore s.p.a., Torino.
Volume II: copyright © 1975 (Il sistema periodico), 1978 (La chiave a stella), 1981 (Lilith e altri racconti), 1982 (Se non ora, quando?), 1997 (Pagine sparse 1946–1980), 1997 (Opere I e II), Giulio Einaudi Editore s.p.a., Torino.
Volume III: copyright © 1985 (L’altrui mestiere), 1986 (I sommersi e i salvati), 1997 (Racconti e saggi e Pagine sparse 1981–1987), 1997 (Altre poesie), 1984 (Ad ora incerta, © Garzanti Editore s.p.a., Milano), e 1997 (Opere II), Giulio Einaudi Editore s.p.a., Torino.
The Truce, The Periodic Table, and Lilith and Other Stories2, 4: English translation copyright © 2015 by Ann Goldstein.
Natural Histories4 and Flaw of Form3, 4: English translation copyright © 2015 by Jenny McPhee.
The Wrench: English translation and Afterword copyright © 2015 by Nathaniel Rich.
Uncollected Stores and Essays: 1949–19801, 4 and Uncollected Stories and Essays: 1981–1987 4: English translation copyright © 2015 by Alessandra Bastagli and Francesco Bastagli.
If Not Now, When? and Other People’s Trades: English translation and Afterwords copyright © 2015 by Antony Shugaar.
Collected Poems: English translation copyright © 2015 by Jonathan Galassi.
Stories and Essays: English translation and Afterword copyright © 2015 by Anne Milano Appel.
The Drowned and the Saved: English translation and Afterword copyright © 2015 by Michael F. Moore.
1. English translation by Alessandra Bastagli of “Bear Meat” first appeared in The New Yorker. English translation copyright © 2007 by Ann Goldstein and Alessandra Bastagli.
2. English translation by Ann Goldstein of “A Tranquil Star” first appeared in The New Yorke
r. English translation copyright © 2007 by Ann Goldstein and Alessandra Bastagli.
3. English translation by Ann Goldstein of “Knall” first appeared in Harper’s. English translation copyright © 2007 by Ann Goldstein and Alessandra Bastagli.
4. English translations by Ann Goldstein of “In the Park,” “The Magic Paint” (published here as “Tantalum”), “Gladiators,” “The Fugitive,” “The Sorcerers,” “The Girl in the Book,” “The Molecule’s Defiance”; English translations by Alessandra Bastagli of “The Death of Marinese,” “One Night,” “Fra Diavolo on the Po,” “Bureau of Vital Statistics,” “Buffet Dinner,” “The TV Fans from Delta Cep.”; and English translation by Jenny McPhee of “Censorship in Bitinia” first appeared in A Tranquil Star: Unpublished Stories (W. W. Norton & Company, 2007). English translations copyright © 2007 by Ann Goldstein and Alessandra Bastagli; English translation of “Censorship in Bitinia” copyright © 2007 by Jenny McPhee.
The Monkey’s Wrench. Copyright © 1978 by Giulio Einaudi Editore. English language translation copyright © 1986 by Summit Books, a division of Simon & Schuster, Inc. The Reawakening. Copyright © 1965 by The Bodley Head. If Not Now, When? Copyright © 1982 by Giulio Einaudi Editore. Translation copyright © 1985 by Simon & Schuster, Inc. Moments of Reprieve. Copyright © 1981, 1985 by Giulio Einaudi Editore. Translation copyright © 1979, 1981, 1982, 1983, 1986 by Summit Books, a division of Simon & Schuster, Inc. Other People’s Trades. Copyright © 1985 by Giulio Einaudi Editore. Translation copyright © 1989 by Summit Books, a division of Simon & Schuster, Inc. The Sixth Day and Other Tales. Copyright © 1966, 1977 by Giulio Einaudi Editore s.p.a., Torino. English language translation copyright © 1990 by Simon & Schuster, Inc. The Drowned and the Saved. Copyright © 1986 by Giulio Einaudi Editore. Translation copyright © 1988 by Simon & Schuster, Inc.