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GRUBER R ome — One is an a- ward-winning author, another a Nobel Prize- winning medical researcher. But writer Natalia Ginzburg and scientist Rita Levi Mon- talcini share many influences and views, as revealed during a recent interview. Both were born to upper middle class Jewish families in Turin, in northwestern Ita- ly. They are two of Italy's most honored and respected women. Levi Montalcini, in fact, who won the Nobel last year, was a student of Ginz- burg's father, histologist Giuseppe Levi. Following the publication of 78-year-old Levi Montalcini's autobiography Eulogy of Im- perfection, the Italian newsweekly L'Espresso asked the two women, who have known each other for decades, to talk together about their lives, their roots and their feelings about the contem- porary world. It was, said L'Espresso, a meeting between two leaders of the intellectual scene who have experienced dramatic and memorable events, such as anti-Jewish persecution and fascism. During the conversation, Ginzburg noted that she was moved most in Levi Mon- talcini's autobiography by the description of her childhood. "When you, as a little girl, asked your father if you were Catholic or Jewish, and he answered, 'We are free- thinkers' — this detail .. . moved me greatly, because I recall asking the same ques- tion as a child," she said. Asked by Levi Montalcini what her father had respond- ed, Ginzburg replied: "He told me, 'We aren't anything? But this didn't con- vince me. I wanted to be Jewish like my father or Catholic like my mother. The problem is that my parents were both materialists. They didn't go to church, but they didn't go to synagogue either. "For me it was painful to hear it said that God did not exist. I thought to myself, . there may not be proof that he exists, but there are no proofs either that he doesn't exist." Levi Montalcini said her parents never denied to her the existence of God, but her education concentrated on ethical problems and passed over religious matters. She noted that her relation- ship with her father was uneasy, but that this helped push her into her career as one of the century's most noted medical researchers. "My father was very authoritarian, severe," she said. "According to him, we all had to do what he thought. I didn't tolerate this aspect of his character, I wanted to be independent . his in- telligence crushed me: I was constantly in terror that he would consider me a fool. "I respected him enormous- ly, but there was a wall bet- ween us. I felt unable to ex- press myself either intellec- tually or affectionately," she said. Levi Montalcini carried out most of her research in the United States, journeying there on her own. She said her life was almost totally dedicated to her work, which her family at first considered unsuitable for a woman. "I don't believe I ever was in love with anyone," she said. "I was never attracted to the idea of a married life. I never felt the maternal instinct. I don't think I ever held a baby in my arms. "Even my nieces and- nephews, whom I adore — I only began to love them, to understand them, when they were five or six years old, from the time, that is, that they began to express themselves." Levi Montalcini turned to the view of another close friend and Turin Jew — chemist and author Primo Levi, a man who survived to write eloquently about the Holocaust, but committed suicide last year in a fit of depression. Levi said that one should mistrust messages and prophets, she noted. Swastikas and anti-Semitic slogans have been scrawled on walls and Jewish leaders have received hate mail. "Un- fortunately, the rebirth of racism today is expressed not only against the Jews," said author Ginzburg. "Look at the case of the gypsies, of homosexuals. Nonetheless, it's monstrous." Said Levi Montalcini: "Cer- tainly there is racism today. But I have never felt touched by this. Not even in the hardest years of the persecutions. "Now, racism is obviously a barbarous phenomenon — but it's like water off a duck's back, not even to be taken in- to consideration. If I despise someone, that someone for me does not exist."