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Friday, March 22, 1985
THE DETROIT JEWISH NEWS
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BY JOSEPH COHEN
Special to The Jewish News
353-1424
DESIGNER COSTUME
JEWELRY
Though it seems a quaint,
faint-hearted notion to us today,
some subjects traditionally were
considered inappropriate for seri-
ous literature. But the vicis-
situdes of modern history have
now projected passive suffering
and science onto literature's cen-
ter stage.
The catalyst for this phenom-
enon was the Holocaust. The ad-
vances in scientific technology
made genocide possible, and the
decimation of the Jews of Europe
engendered passive suffering on a
scale never before witnessed by
humankind. The Holocaust, we
see now, was the frightening pre-
lude to the events which have
placed us on the threshold of a nu-
clear holocaust which could de-
stroy, if it is allowed to happen,
life on this planet. Under that
threat, we have all, in a sense,
become passive sufferers.
How central passive suffering
and science have become to litera-
ture is superbly demonstrated by
Primo Levi's The Periodic Table
(translated by Raymond Rosent-
hal; Schocken Books). Autobiog-
raphical, the book is part memoir
and part history. It is composed of
21 vignettes, each of them tied to
an element from science's periodic
table (hydrogen, zinc, lead, nitro-
gen, carbon, etc.), in which a story
is told -and observations are made,
constituting a subtle combination
of narrative and exposition. All of
the stories are related with great
charm and literary agility. The
book has been praised unstint-
ingly by Saul Bellow, Cynthia
Ozick, Umberto Eco, John Gross
and Italo Calvino.
Readers will find fascinating
the relevant information about
the properties of the chemical
agents and their impact on our
lives. Beyond fascination, I was
amazed at Levi's stunning
capacity to transmute the base
matter of these elements into bril-
liant artifact. This new book of his
is a work of spiritual alchemy. It is
a lyrical, indeed, a passionate af-
firmative of life, of all life in na-
ture by a writer who has no illu-
sions about reality and the human
condition after having been
trained as a chemist and having
endured the cauldron of Au-
schwitz.
Levi has already told his story
of surviving the Holocaust in two
earlier memoirs, Survival in Au-
schwitz and The Re-Awakening.
Respected and admired for his
writing in Italy, he has made his
living as a commercial chemist
analyzing resins and other sub-
stances used in the production of
varnishes. The Periodic Table is
so good it will undoubtedly give
him the international reputation
he deserves. In his sixties now,
Levi, with wisdom, gratitude and
the joy of consciousness, tells us
much about the trials of his youth
as a Jew growing up in Musso-
lini's fascist Italy.
Not at all grim, one of the most
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Levi Memoirs Detail
Jewish Life In Italy
0
Joseph Cohen is director of the
Jewish Studies Program at
Tulane University in New
Orleans.
.
•Balance due October 31, 1985 or delivery if sooner — or easy monthly terms may be arranged at that time
sON-
delightful episodes is the first one
entitled "Argon" in which Levi re-
calls his Jewish forbears living in
the Piedmont. He brings them
vividly to life, describing their
foibles and idiosyncrasies in affec-
tionate detail, commenting know-
ingly upon their strange hybrid
language, a combination of He-
brew and Piedmontese, out of
which emerged a colorful and un-
forgettable rhetoric. Silk farmers
and merchants, they composed
one of those isolated, culturally
rich, out of the mainstream
Jewish communities that were,
though we are only beginning to
realize it, the glory of European
,Jewry, now mostly gone and only
occasionally recovered in oral his-
tories, and in the stories of I.B.
Singer, Aaron Appelfeld, and,
now, Primo Levi.
In that,respect, the descriptions
of the extended families with all
their real, and quasi-real aunts
and uncles will recall for many
readers of Levi's generation the
"Old World" relatives of their
youth whose lives were such a
The Periodic Table"
by Primo Levi.
Schocken Books.
wonder. Levi tells us of his Uncle
Gabriele, a fastidious rabbi who
loved to schnorr rides. Obtaining
one, he climbed onto a peasant's
cart only to realize a little later
that it carried the corpse of a
Christian woman and with it, for
the pious rabbi, a double con-
tamination.
There is the story of Levi's
Grandpa Leonin whose memora-
ble curse leveled at an enemy was:
"May he have an accident shaped
like an umbrella."
The peccadillos of relatives
apart, the book is rich in the evo-
cation of courage, generosity and
perseverance in the hard years of
Mussolini's absurd but lethal fas-
cism, the Nazi occupation, Levi's
fighting with the partisans, his
capture and his trial in Au-
schwitz. His subsequent struggle
to make a living in devastated
post-war Italy, though safer, was
not without privations. Levi re-
counts it all.
Dante is evoked on several oc-
casions, reminding us that his
protagonist in the Divine Comedy,
the poet himself, had to descend
into hell before he could raise
himself up to heaven. Levi has in
common with Dante his own des-
cent into the modern day equiv-
alent of that hell. But from that
point on, he parts company with
the great Italian poet.
Dante sought a Christian re-
demption through purification in
Purgatory and a union with the
beatific vision in Heaven. Levi's
redemption is in growing beyond
his suffering and turning to na-
ture and science to find the mean-
ing of existence in the substances
of the earth. That has always been
the Jewish view of life, and while
Levi doesn't say so, it is one of the
several reasons why this book is a
memorable treasure.
,