About
Primo Michele Levi was an Italian writer, partisan and chemist, author of short stories, memoirs, poems, essays and novels.
Anti-fascist partisan, on 13 December 1943 he was arrested by the fascists in Valle d'aosta, being first sent to a collection camp in Fossoli and, in February of the following year, deported to Auschwitz concentration camp as a Jew. Having escaped the lager, he returned adventurously to Italy, where he dedicated himself with commitment to the task of telling about the atrocities seen and suffered.
His most famous work, as well as the debut, of Memorial genre, if this is a man, tells about his terrible experiences in the Nazi extermination camp and is considered a classic of world literature. Graduated in chemistry, in some of his works appear direct and indirect references to this branch of science.
Primo Levi was born in Turin on July 31, 1919 to Ester Luzzati (1895 – 1991) and Cesare Levi (1878 – 1942), belonging to Jewish families. His ancestors were Piedmontese Jews from Spain and Provence his father Cesare, a graduate in Electrical Engineering and an employee of the Ganz company, was often away from the family for work reasons, mainly abroad (especially in Hungary). Nevertheless, he exerted a profound influence on his son, conveying to him the interests of Science and literature that would become salient features of Primo Levi's personality as well as elements of his future literary production.
In 1930 he enrolled at the Ginnasio massimo D'azeglio of Turin, and then, between 1934 and 1935, he attended the high school, known for having one in the previous years among its teachers a number of figures that have stood out for their opposition to the fascist regime, among whom Augusto Monti, Franco Antonicelli, Umberto Cosmo, Norberto Bobbio, Zino Zini and Massimo Mila. Levi was a good student. He made friends with some classmates (among them in particular Mario Piacenza) united by interest in chemistry; with other companions instead he founded a kind of Sports Group-fan club named after the runner Luigi Beccali. Over the years the School was a companion of Fernanda Pivano; in high School, he attended the Course B, only male, unlike Fernanda Pivano who, in the course, had as a substitute teacher of Italian at The Liceo Cesare Pavese; Levi was a pupil of Azelia Arici, with whom he remained in contact in the course of his life and to which he devoted an obituary published in “The Press” . In 1936-1937 was one of the editors of the unique number of the D'azeglio in spirit, the magazine of the school, on which he published his first poem, You don't know study, in which he recounts his misadventures in an attempt to collect a herbarium, on the recommendation of the professor of sciences. At that time Levi began to pursue a career in chemistry, announcing his decision to do so to his father on his sixteenth birthday, July 31, 1935.
University studies and early work experience
In 1937, after being postponed in Italian in June, he graduated from Liceo classico Massimo D'azeglio passing the baccalaureate exam in September and enrolled in the degree course in Chemistry at the University of Turin. In November 1938 racial laws came into force in Italy after those in Germany, where anti-Semitism had already manifested itself through acts of violence and oppression. These laws had introduced serious discrimination against Italian citizens whom the fascist regime considered "of Jewish race". Racial laws had a decisive indirect influence on his academic and intellectual career.
"In my family, fascism was accepted, with some impatience. My father [...] he had joined the party malavoglia, but he had put on his black shirt. And I was a bailiff and then an avant-garde. I could say that racial laws gave me, like others, free will.»
Racial laws precluded Jews from entering the university, but allowed those who had already undertaken them to complete their studies. Levi was in compliance with the exams, but, because of racial laws, he had difficulty finding a rapporteur for his thesis, until in 1941 he graduated with honors, with a compilative thesis in chemistry (the reversal of Walden, rapporteur professor Giacomo Ponzio). In fact Levi discussed a thesis and two sub-texts, one of which, in experimental physics, would have been the main thesis if the Jews had not been prevented from carrying out research in the laboratory. The Bachelor's degree refers to the clarification "of Jewish race". At that time his father became ill with cancer. The resulting economic difficulties and racial laws made the search for employment difficult. He was hired semi-illegally by a company, with the task of finding a cost-effective method of extracting the traces of nickel contained in the waste material of an asbestos quarry (Balangero's Amiantifera, although Levi never mentions it in his account nickel). The first literary experiments such as the crescenzago poem or the design of a mountain Tale are likely to date back to this period. In 1942 he moved to Milan, having found a better job at a Swiss medicines factory. Here Levi, along with some friends, came into contact with militant anti-fascist circles and joined the clandestine Action Party.
Literary style
The literary style of Primo Levi, in If this is a man develops in a narrative that is dry, concise and comprehensive enough to understand the feelings and the social background of the setting of the work: the style that is well suited to the wide audience to which Levi's aims to address, in a special way in the discussion of a topic of extreme importance, such as that of imprisonment in a labour camp. However, the work is nourished by a deep knowledge of the classics, learned both in High School and thanks to many personal readings.
There are significant differences between the various works, especially with respect to whether this is a man. The first work was, in fact, composed under the stimulus of to bear witness to the lived, the memory of which was still very recent at the time of the facts; in the later works, starting with The truce, Levi composed their books in a much more systematic, and setting clear deadlines, and writing and virtually at fixed hours.