A phone call with Primo Levi
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Friday May 11, 10:30 AM - International Book Fair of Torino
Lingotto Fiere, Via Nizza 280, Torino
A phone call with Primo Levi: A conversation with Stefano Bartezzaghi
Presentation of the book based on the Third Primo Levi Lecture and published by Einaudi in an Italian / English bilingual edition
In collaboration with Giulio Einaudi, publisher.
In a radio interview, Primo Levi happened to quip, “A book has to be a telephone that works, and I think that chemistry taught me these two skills -- clarity and concision.” Levi said he cultivated other people’s trades, and the trade of a linguist is one of the most fundamental that he cultivated. Whether we read of popular etymologies, dialectal or Yiddish idioms or of fearful commands in German or Polish, every one of Levi’s pages is a musical score of voices, tones, levels of language, as well as various levels of volume. In this, every once in a while, there are perfect silences acting like the pauses calculated by an expert composer.
