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c h a p t e r 8 The Partisan and His Doppelganger: The Case of Primo Levi Ilona Klein Published in 1982, Se non ora, quando? (If Not Now, When?) is Primo Levi’s first novel proper. Perhaps Primo Levi so regretted not fully living life as an Italian Jewish partisan that he re-created his lost dream through its pages, and had his partisan brigade not been captured, perhaps Levi’s underground fighting might have continued until the end of the war. If Not Now, When? thus might reflect Levi’s need to explore that soughtafter life as a partisan, which he had been denied after only three months of activity.1 Did Levi write If Not Now, When? as a mental antidote to his arrest? Was he trying to re-create for himself the underground world of freedom fighters, which he was not able to fulfill? Edoardo Bianchini points out that the main theme of the novel is to reclaim human dignity. During the time in which the fictional core of If Not Now, When? takes place, Primo Levi was a prisoner in Auschwitz. Since it is obvious that, while Levi was interned, he could not simultaneously also be a free man, I propose here that If Not Now, When? might be read and understood as the ‘‘other’’ story, the narrative of that partisan experience that Levi did not live in full, the story of his destroyed dream as an aspiring freedom fighter against the Nazi and Fascist tragedy. I submit, then, that the narrative of If Not Now, When? develops the theme of Levi’s doppelganger through the discourse of a fictional, projected alter-ego protagonist. In the 114 115 The Partisan and His Doppelganger novel, Levi focuses on the vicissitudes of a group of Jewish partisan fighters of Eastern Europe, celebrating their courage and writing about their adventures perhaps as a way to counteract the misperception that Jews went to the gas chambers without trying to resist arrest and deportation. The framework for this novel is not entirely fictional. Levi explained, in the author’s note following the end of the book, that Emilio Vita Finzi ‘‘narrated to me the kernel of the story,’’ for Vita Finzi had ‘‘worked as a volunteer at the assistance center [in Milan] described in the final chapter’’ (347–348). Moreover, Levi acknowledges that the resistance actions described in his novel are ‘‘invented but plausible. . . . Actions of harassment such as sabotaging railroads . . . are amply documented in the literature on partisan warfare in Eastern Europe’’ (348). As Primo Levi wrote in the first chapter of Se questo è un uomo (Survival in Auschwitz), he was arrested by the Fascist militia on December 13, 1943. By then, he had spent about three months in the Italian regions of Val d’Aosta and Piedmont as part of a small Italian partisan brigade of young and inexperienced men.2 During the interrogation following his arrest, Levi declared himself to be an ‘‘Italian citizen of the Jewish race.’’ As his readers know, the long agony of Auschwitz and its aftermath were the consequences of such a statement. A cursory glance at the table of contents of If Not Now, When? clearly shows that the fictional narrative time frame of this novel spans from July 1943 through August 1945. Comparing these dates to Levi’s own life, parallels can be created: one finds a first temporal fragment spanning a sevenmonth block (July 1943–February 1944) that precedes Levi’s internment in the concentration camp; a second and longer segment, which overlaps his year as a slave prisoner in Auschwitz (February 1944–January 1945); and a third part forming yet another seven-month block (January 1945– August 1945) whose vicissitudes are retold in his work La tregua (The Reawakening), the sequel to Survival in Auschwitz. In fact, Nicholas Patruno claims that The Reawakening ‘‘may be considered this work’s [If Not Now, When?] direct antecedent since it too recounts the pilgrimage through central Europe of a group of prisoners.’’3 While in Auschwitz, like the majority of concentration-camp prisoners, Levi did not have a chance to participate in organized revolts against the Nazi machine (other than his own valiant struggle against death). Like most other Auschwitz inmates, he was kept unaware of any external partisan actions against the Nazis. Since the prisoner Levi could not fight against the Nazis nor against the civilians’ general indifference, Levi lets the characters of If Not Now, When...

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