Answering Auschwitz: Primo Levi's Science and Humanism after the Fall

Chapter 12: Literary Encounters and Storytelling Techniques

c h a p t e r 1 2 Literary Encounters and Storytelling Techniques Elizabeth Scheiber At first glance, Primo Levi’s Lilı̀t appears to be a loosely connected collection of stories divided into three unequal parts. The first section contains autobiographical material from Auschwitz and descriptions of other Shoah victims that Levi discovered in literature. The next two sections are a hodgepodge of fictional stories that range from fantasy tales and science fiction to musings on literature and stories about apparently everyday people . The tendency to view these stories as merely a heterogeneous assembly of material is reinforced by the fact that the tales themselves were written at different times and often published in newspapers such as La Stampa. English translations of the work have broken the collection up as well: the tales about the Holocaust have been published under the title of Moments of Reprieve, while other stories have been placed with stories from other collections to form A Tranquil Star. As such, the stories in Lilı̀t are usually read in the register of memoir to elucidate Levi’s experiences at Auschwitz.1 Such readings tend to regard the collection as a miscellany and seek out reflections of Levi’s biography and philosophy in the stories he tells.2 Lilı̀t is, however, a more unified collection than it appears to be, and, as I will argue in this essay, the work deserves to be examined as a cohesive work. The three section titles frame their content, orienting an encounter of some kind toward a crisis or catastrophe. Taken as a whole, 156 157 Literary Encounters and Storytelling Techniques the collection makes an interconnected statement on the nature of writing and communication. The organizational structure centers on Levi’s intriguing section titles and borrow from the realm of grammar, using verb tenses as an orientation . At first glance, however, these titles may appear whimsical, since they do not always reflect the time frame of the stories. While the first section, ‘‘Passato prossimo’’ (‘‘Recent Past’’) clearly deals with a past time, since its stories focus on the Holocaust, ‘‘Futuro anteriore’’ (‘‘Future Perfect’’) and ‘‘Presente indicativo’’ (‘‘Present Indicative’’) only sometimes pertain to the content. The second section, ‘‘Disfilassi’’ (‘‘Disphylaxis,’’ an invented word in both Italian and English), which recounts a future time when a vaccine allows different species to interbreed, could appropriately be housed in ‘‘Future Perfect,’’ but others take place in a past or are set in our present. One story, ‘‘Cara Mamma’’ (Dear Mom), an epistolary story about a Roman soldier in Britain, most obviously belongs to a more remote past. Similarly, in ‘‘Present Indicative,’’ some stories occur in the past, among them ‘‘Ospiti’’ (Guests) and ‘‘Finesettimana’’ (Weekend), both of which are set during the Second World War. Andrea Rondini argues that Levi’s section titles are ‘‘temporal hybrids’’ (ibridi temporali) that ‘‘indicate not only the circularity of time . . . or indeed the prison of time and of the past that does not pass but also, maybe, a way to announce a new beginning, the spark that is born from the union of what is different, from vital chaos’’ (268). Rondini has touched on a central aspect of Levi’s literary universe. Circularity is certainly present in Lilı̀t, as it is in other works by Levi. In addition, the section titles indicate a compression of time, in which all times seem to constrict or constrain the present. The tenses chosen to describe each section indicate a nearness or relationship to the present time. It is not the ‘‘passato remoto’’ (remote past) of historical experience but the ‘‘passato prossimo’’ (near or recent past), with its connection to the present, that Levi chooses for the Holocaust encounters. Also, it is not the simple future, but the ‘‘futuro anteriore,’’ the ‘‘near’’ future, so to speak, that gives voice to the second section. Finally, the ‘‘Presente indicativo ’’ stands in sharp contrast to a subjunctive present. Levi points to a present of fact, not one of opinion, emotion, or necessity. A paratextual analysis of the titles in the collection elucidates the literary drive behind these tales and Levi’s organizational scheme. Rather than being plot-driven, the narrative impulse throughout the collection stems from an encounter, one that reveals something about human beings in general or a single character in particular. Each encounter is the result of 158 Elizabeth Scheiber or produces some catastrophe or...