The Short Narratives of Primo Levi

Primo Levi is often characterised according to a short period in his life. In 1944 he was sent to Auschwitz from his native Italy and in late 1945 he made it back to Turin after an arduous journey home. He is most known for the two autobiographical works he penned on his time in Auschwitz, and his passage back to Italy. If This is a Man, and The Truce, are two of the best of that distinct category of literature, the Holocaust memoirs. They convey the author’s experience in simple style that above all strives for honesty. They represent one of writing’s key modes, and one of its most vital roles, that of recording the documentary experience, of bearing witness.

However Levi had a varied life, and left behind a diverse array of literary texts. He wrote essays, short stories, poetry, two novels, a personal anthology, and the aforementioned memoirs. And it must be admitted that as a result his published work is of a somewhat varied quality. However here I would like to draw attention to two books which I have felt to be his strongest: Moments of Reprieve, and The Wrench. Both of them are composed of disconnected segments but have strong stylistic and narrative continuity.

Moments of Reprieve is a collection of short pieces about individuals the author knew in Auschwitz. Almost forty years after his earlier pair of books, he found that he had things he had left unsaid. Each story clearly delineates its subject and in that way they are character studies, but characters in the most extreme conditions imaginable, people for whom daring to have a personality at all could be live threatening. There is something heartbreaking and yet sublimely beautiful about the simple whims and gestures the characters make, things that in another book might be details to set a scene or a character are transformed in moments of defiance and profound struggles to be, and to be seen as human beings.

Here we see Levi approaching his Holocaust experience with a subtly different intention to his earlier chronicles. Rather than recording his personal experience for its historical and political importance he draws up the memories of figures almost as individual memorials of those who have otherwise vanished. Whilst it is certainly autobiographical, in the sense of being written from the author’s point of view and being factually accurate, it is not as personal as one might expect and is organised entirely around his subjects.

The writing feels like the last relation of memories to those that will listen. It draws much from the pathos of old memories, for all the characters were almost certainly dead when he set them in ink. The book is an act of portraiture and it feels poetic in its effort simply to remember those that are gone. More than any other book it made me feel the loss of Auschwitz, as opposed to its historical presence. The people described are those left out of history or at best scribbled into its margins, but Levi elevates them to the point they feel living and important.

Whilst not as autobiographical as the previously mentioned collection, The Wrench is at least semi-autobiographical, as it draws heavily from Levi’s own experience with work, especially as a chemist in various factories. One can sense this personal touch in the first person perspective and the undertones of a personal philosophy. The book is about work, one’s relation to work, and what it means to engage with practical things. In his personal anthology (The Search for Roots) he included Bertrand Russel’s The Conquest of Happiness, a book that argues among other things for meaningful, interesting work. Levi seems to agree, in his creation of a novel that argues for the fulfilment that can come through working a craft.

Much of The Wrench is a portrait of an engineer told through his dialogue with the narrator. On the first reading it seems more an act of journalism than one of fiction, but it is carefully crafted to include plenty of the author’s own intentionality. Somehow there is a sense in it, that even in fiction Levi has produced the kind of quiet honesty that has given The Truce it’s lasting impact.

In these writings of Primo Levi there is a sense that honesty is a task, not a choice, but an active struggle. One feels that he looks deep down into his self to dwell on the vagaries of memory and meaning and to laboriously find the precise language to express it. In The Truce and then Memories of Reprieve one can see two different approaches to the record of experience, one that is more historical and personal, and one that dwells more on memory and other people. Although The Truce will rightfully always be what Levi is remembered for, I confess to finding Memories of Reprieve far more moving.

However despite everything, in these two short narratives the writing manages to feel so light, and so succinct. Levi’s writing references the rhythm of a solitary human voice, speaking honestly and personally, but in a language all can understand.