The Left Atrium

a spear, like an arrow.” It’s an apt de- The centaur’s memory scription of my initial response, a dozen The voice of memory: interviews, 1961–1987 years ago, to a borrowed copy of The Primo Levi Drowned and the Saved. A reprise of his Edited by Marco Belpoliti and Robert Gordon Auschwitz experience 40 years after the Translated from the Italian by Robert Gordon fact, it proved to be his final book. My New York: New Press; 2001 reaction then was not so much to the 304 pp $36.95 (cloth) ISBN 1-56584-645-1 content but to this voice, the voice of memory that speaks eloquently, with- n the train from the Munich air- of his life in the Lager, appeared in out rancour, resonating with moral en- O port not long ago I was reading 1947. He had difficulty finding a pub- ergy and an unceasing desire to under- the English edition of Frankfurter All- lisher, and the first edition sold poorly. stand those days. gemeine. The front page had a story on More than 15 years passed before he A recurring motif in The Voice of compensation payments for Nazi-era wrote his second book, The Truce. Al- Memory is the comparison of Levi to slaves. Primo Levi would have been eli- though known primarily for his writing Coleridge’s Ancient Mariner, the re- gible for a cheque and an apology. An about the Holocaust, he also wrote po- turning survivor who must tell and Italian Jew and chemist, he was de- etry and science fiction, and was for a retell his story. Levi says, “If you asked ported in 1944 to the Monowitz con- time a regular contributor of essays to me why I wanted to tell the stories, I centration camp, part of the Auschwitz the Italian paper La Stampa. (A selec- couldn’t answer. Probably it was part of complex. He first worked helping to tion of the latter was published as Other an understandable instinct: I wanted to build a chemical factory and later was People’s Trades.) free myself from them.” assigned to a laboratory. Levi survived The last few years have been good The Voice of Memory includes 3 differ- 11 months as slave labourer 174517 un- ones for admirers of Levi and his work. ent forms of interviews: questions an- til the liberation of what he called “that Myriam Anissimov’s biography, Tragedy swered by Levi in writing (including a hideous distortion of humanity.” of an Optimist, was published in 1999. “self-interview” in which he composes The Monowitz Lager (Levi preferred The Search for Roots, Levi’s personal an- answers to 8 of the questions most fre- this German word for camp) was part of thology from those favourite books that quently put to him), traditional inter- a huge industrial plant financed and “accompany you through the years” views by journalists, and transcriptions built by I.G. Farben, a conglomerate of came out this year, 20 years after its first of Levi in conversation. The content is chemical companies. As one initiative in Italian publication. Also published in divided into 6 major sections: encoun- its wide support for the German war ef- 2001 is The Voice of Memory, a selection ters with prominent writers like Philip fort, the industrial giant manufactured of media interviews given between 1961 Roth and Germaine Greer, diverse as- Zyklon B, the gas used in the death and 1987. Most of the interviews in- pects of Levi’s life, interviews given at chambers. The special compensation cluded in the book took place in the 80s the time of publication of some of his ceremony, under the auspices of the as Levi’s stature as a writer and speaker books, more general reflections on his Jewish Claims Conference, took place grew, especially outside of Italy. and other writers’ books, a major section in the I.G. Farben building, now home The Voice of Memory provides access entitled “Auschwitz and Survival” and a to the humanities departments of the for interested readers to the person be- final part concerned with Levi’s identity university in Frankfurt. The irony neath the writer. Each of Levi’s works as a Jew. would not be lost on Levi. In the latter of nonfiction presents an opportunity In his introductory essay to The Voice part of his life he’d become an arche- to listen to his precise, articulate and of Memory, “I am a Centaur,” editor typal witness to the horrors of Nazism. refreshingly dispassionate voice: Marco Belpoliti describes Levi as a man Although he would probably have de- of four métiers: chemist, witness, story- clined such a designation, he might have [W]hen describing the tragic world of teller and “talker.” Levi’s training as a Auschwitz, I have deliberately assumed the taken some satisfaction that the un- calm, sober language of the witness, neither chemist contributed to his unlikely sur- healed wound of the Holocaust con- the lamenting tones of the victim nor the vival in the death camp. It was during fronts us periodically in the daily papers. irate voice of someone who seeks revenge. and after Auschwitz that he became a The works of Primo Levi continue witness and, in turn, a writer and to command attention 14 years after his Levi once described Kafka’s The speaker, all the while continuing his ca- death. It wasn’t always that way. His Trial (which he translated) as “a mar- reer as a chemist. In an interview re- first book, If This Is a Man, an account velous book that runs you through like lated to his collections of science fiction

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stories, he states: “I am amphibian, a beautiful word. Our language is human, man, but not all men; I only feel able to centaur … . One half of me is of the born to describe things at a human level. judge case by case. If I had had Eichmann factory, is the technician and the It collapses, falls apart, cannot cope … . before me, I would have condemned him to death. I do not accept, as some ask me chemist, but there is to, a wholesale pardon. another, quite separate It’s also worth half that lives in the spending a few minutes world of writing, giv- considering the moral Any literate person should, during a ing interviews, work- sensibility of Primo lifetime, read one account of the Holo- ing on my past and Levi, a sensibility that is caust. The Voice of Memory is not that present experiences.” neither moralistic nor book. It is a luxury for those readers To listen to the self-righteous. When he who have time to listen at greater compelling voice of writes about forgiveness length to one important author. Those Primo Levi is not the only good rea- his comments reveal the who are pressed for time should go di- son to sit down with one of his books. ambivalence many of us feel in these rectly to If This Is a Man or The He possessed a powerful gift of lan- days of repeated crimes against human- Drowned and the Saved. But don’t be guage. Beyond that, he was a writer who ity, trials, apologies and compensation: surprised if a kinship develops … . recognized that language is imperfect: To forgive is not my verb. It has been in- Vincent Hanlon I sometimes feel the inadequacy of the flicted on me … . I think of myself as, in Emergency physician medium. Ineffability, it’s called, and it’s a my own way, a just man. I can forgive a Lethbridge, Alta.

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