Primo Levi: An Identikit

Critic Belpoliti (Settanta) delivers a thorough overview of the life and works of writer and Holocaust survivor Primo Levi (1919–1987). “There were always three identities at work in his writing: witness, writer, and chemist,” Belpoliti argues, and he explores each as he tracks the origins, influences, and publication of Levi’s books. The Levi that emerges is highly methodical, an author whose approach to writing was shaped by his work as a chemist; Levi’s background in science, Belpoliti posits, also enabled him to view the horrors of his imprisonment at Auschwitz through the lens of animal behaviorism, as he believed that “men were not beasts, but could easily be transformed into animals depending on the situation.” Levi first wrote about this experience in 1947’s If This Is a Man, in which he used humor and irony to “relativize—or at least judge from a distance—the things that happened to him” without moralizing. Though the work is organized in an odd way—there’s a dizzying number of headers and subheaders—Belpoliti succeeds in capturing Levi’s unique talents and offering a penetrating look into his oeuvre. Insightful and comprehensive, this is a fine introduction to a towering literary figure. (Jan.)