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The Failure of Memory and Literature in Primo Levi's Il sistema periodico
- MLN
- Johns Hopkins University Press
- Volume 121, Number 1, January 2006 (Italian Issue)
- pp. 225-239
- 10.1353/mln.2006.0041
- Article
- Additional Information
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In Il sistema periodico Primo Levi achieves an analogy between an element from the Periodic Table and people and events in his personal and professional life. "Vanadio," however, establishes an imperfect analogy which becomes the locus of Levi's symbolizing process. It represents the inability of memory to reconstruct the past and at the same time it also stands for literature's failure to recreate the past faithfully and communicate the truth of the Holocaust effectively.