Primo Levi - the Burden (and Joy) of Living

In the film Crimes and Misdemeanors, Woody Allen's character finds solace and inspiration in the life and words of one of his documentary subjects, the (fictional) philosopher and Holocaust survivor Professor Louis Levy. Despite the tragedies he experienced, Professor Levy has the strength to carry on and live a full, rewarding life. As he says in the movie, "Human happiness does not seem to have been included in the design of creation. It is only we, with our capacity to love, that give meaning to the indifference of the universe."

[22 year old Woody Allen movie spoiler alert!] By the end of the movie, Professor Levy has killed himself and thrown Woody Allen's character into a full-fledged spiritual crisis. Why did Levy commit suicide? Why now? And if this great man can't bring himself to carry on, what hope is there for the stuttering, neurotic, hypochondriac Woody Allen? [End of 22 year old spoilers]

Woody Allen's cinematic Professor Levy was clearly modeled after the Italian writer, chemist and Auschwitz survivor Primo Levi.  Chronicling his descent into Auschwitz in If This Is a Man ("Survival in Auschwitz" in the American edition....ugh) and his return home in The Truce, Levi provided for his millions of mesmerized readers a glimpse of how one could be and remain human in the most dehumanizing of conditions.   

In a moment, with almost prophetic intuition, the reality was revealed to us: we had reached the bottom. It is not possible to sink lower than this; no human condition is more miserable than this, nor could it conceivably be so. Nothing belongs to us any more; they have taken away our clothes, our shoes, even our hair; if we speak, they will not listen to us, and if they listen, they will not understand. They will even take away our name: and if we want to keep it, we will have to find in ourselves the strength to do so, to manage somehow so that behind the name something of us, of us as we were, still remains. 

What made Levi remarkable wasn't just his ability to approach every situation with an absurdly clear-eyed thoughtfulness or his spare, unpretentious prose. More importantly, Levi's writing glows with a kind of warmth and humanity I've rarely seen in other books. I devoured most of his memoirs decades ago, but his descriptions of the people he met as a prisoner are so vivid and perfectly crafted that they are etched in my mind even now. Chemist, writer, survivor. It was as if, having survived the camps, he spent the rest of his life in a laboratory, frantically mixing words together to somehow keep the dead alive. 

And of course, that's probably exactly what he was doing. Performing a sort of literary alchemy. An eternal battle against the camps. In the process, he was also wrestling with all the biggest questions of human life.  How can I make sense of this tragedy and grief? Are these fleeting moments and memories destined to be lost in time? (like tears, in rain). What is my duty to the dead and disappeared? And what will become of us in the end? 

My guess is that to Primo Levi, the role of the survivor was to keep the memory of the dead alive, and that reclaiming the essence of these lives was a way of coping with despair. He clearly loved people, and he cherished random, fleeting moments between friends and between strangers. Through his writing he gave those who had disappeared around him a second life in words.  He was a dogged inspiration to people all over the world.

And then on April 11, 1987 he plunged three floors to his death in his Turin apartment. The coroner listed the death as a suicide. He was 67.

The collective trauma to Levi's readers and admirers was (and continues to be) brutal. Now we were the ones left to stare tragedy in the face and try to make some sense of it.  

Still, it isn't all bad news. His writing is charming and beautiful, and you likely haven't experienced it yet. The first sentence of Levi's Author's Preface to If This Is A Man makes me laugh every time I read it. Keep in mind, this is the first sentence of a Holocaust memoir:

It was my good fortune to be deported to Auschwitz only in 1944, that is, after the German Government had decided, owing to the growing scarcity of labour, to lengthen the average life-span of the prisoners destined for elimination; it conceded noticeable improvements in the camp routine and temporarily suspended killings at the whim of individuals. 

Well, thank Goodness!