Primo Levi: uniform edition

31 October 1979: the school year had only just begun, and Primo Levi was already replying to a letter that Giuliana Mamprin, a fourteen-year-old schoolgirl, had written to him from Zelarino, near Mestre, after reading Se questo è un uomo and La tregua: ‘It is my firm belief that no experience, when looked back upon, is negative, and this also applies to people: I believe that there is no human being who is not worth seeing and listening to, who is not “worth the journey”, as the Touring Club guidebooks say. My neighbour, embodied in a single individual, may be boring, stupid, selfish, mad or wrong, but there is always something to be gained from them, even if only as a negative example to be avoided.”

This letter, which is entirely unpublished as it has only just come to light from Primo Levi’s papers, is not included in the volume Mi interessa la gente perché ne faccio parte, edited by Fabio Levi, which brings together his conversations with school pupils and teachers. The title of this volume, which opens the standardised edition of Primo Levi’s complete works in the Einaudi Tascabili series, is like the slogan of a publishing house that, within the space of a year, aims to offer new perspectives on a writer who is already a contemporary classic, whilst the few lines of the letter just transcribed are like an elaboration on the theme Mi interessa la gente perché ne faccio parte: in fact, they contain the essence not only of Levi’s first two books (the ones that prompted the young Giuliana to write to him), but of his entire body of work and, indeed, of his perspective on reality and on everyone he encounters along the way. To Giuliana, just before those lines, Levi wrote as follows: ‘I was amazed that you drew from my books the lesson that “a negative experience can be transformed into a positive one”: it is true, I have always thought so, but I do not think I have written it explicitly; this shows that you are a perceptive reader, and well-suited to understanding stories of alienation and suffering such as mine’.  A few weeks later, on 9 December 1979 (the letter is included in Mi interessa la gente), Levi wrote to the female students of a fifth-year vocational class in Modena, all of whom were already of legal age, stating that ‘without a certain measure of trust in humanity’s ultimate common sense, one cannot live’.

The adventures and misadventures that occur during every journey amongst one’s fellow human beings, and the ways in which one chooses to react to them from time to time, are the very essence of Primo Levi. They are, in fact, the focal point of his interests, and this uniform edition presents him to us not only as a writer, witness and thinker (images by now sufficiently established, at least amongst the most attentive critics, readers and teachers), but as a universal author. This expression, which may seem grandiose, actually points to the human scale of the experience: Levi is a person who, in his relationship with his reader, always places himself on an equal footing, without a patronising tone or intellectual pretensions. He values dialogue and feels a genuine curiosity about all ‘human specimens’ (an expression he often uses).The examination of his correspondence, which has been ongoing for several years and is proceeding in thematic sections, is providing repeated confirmation of this attitude of his; confirmation which, however, holds surprises, one might say, in the content of every single one of his letters: whether through the tone or an adjective, a flash of affection or an unexpected image that would fit perfectly into one of his books, and then always – truly always – through his courtesy and his ability to devote himself entirely to his correspondent, even within the brief space of half a typewritten sheet (among Levi’s talents, the art of concise expression is practised and brought to the fore in his letters).

The first major collection of Levi’s correspondence to appear in print was that with his German translator Heinz Riedt, published by Einaudi in 2024 and edited by Martina Mengoni. This exchange alone is perhaps unique in the world, because it would be difficult to cite other examples of such an intense professional bond and friendship between an author and his translator, and because their dialogue concerns a seminal work of the twentieth century such as Se questo è un uomo, with the challenge of making it accessible to German readers in German, that is, by transplanting it into the language in which the events of Auschwitz had taken place and bringing it before the eyes of a people who had democratically elected Adolf Hitler as their leader. Here, in the Levi–Riedt correspondence, the author and the translator rise to the challenge by spending ten months discussing every word, every expression, every object, institution, figure and peculiarity of the Lager, poring over them until they arrive at the optimal, mutually agreed solution. For Levi, those ten months were a long process of self-reflection regarding his ‘first-born’ book; for Riedt, they were an opportunity to add a new dimension to written German: that of ‘camp jargon’ transformed into literature.

And yet, within Levi’s body of correspondence, there is something that is at least on a par with this collection of letters – which, admittedly, is beyond comparison: the correspondence with German and German-speaking readers who, from December 1961 onwards, wrote to Levi after reading *Ist das ein Mensch?* in Riedt’s translation. These letters – over five hundred, forming an ever-widening and more intricate network – are currently being published on the levinet.eu portal, edited by Mengoni at the University of Ferrara. These are Levi’s dialogues with ordinary readers (ordinary, yes, but many of them with astonishing personal stories that are gradually coming to light), made available here via open access thanks to a five-year project by the European Research Council called LeviNeT. Anyone who visits the levinet.eu portal – as we encourage you to do here – whilst keeping the collection Mi interessa la gente perché ne faccio parte to hand, will soon realise the continuity between these two editorial and research endeavours, and will be able to appreciate both the consistency of Primo Levi’s tone and his stature, described here as ‘universal’.

Mi interessa la gente perché ne faccio parte is, in fact, Levi’s second and substantial collection of correspondence to be made available to the public, and it documents his ‘third profession’ as a speaker presenting himself in schools throughout Italy – a role that Levi pursued from the early 1960s alongside those of industrial chemist and writer. The surviving archival documents date only from 1973 onwards, and the book that opens this ‘uniform edition’ brings together, in chronological order up to 1986, 62 exchanges of letters out of the 124 recorded. Roughly two-thirds of the letters were written by Year 9 pupils, one-third by secondary school pupils and a small minority – six in total – by Year 6 primary school pupils. What matters here, however, far more than the statistics, is the attitude of a man who, as many witnesses have recalled, would always go and sit amongst the desks, right in the middle of the pupils, whenever he entered a classroom.

Sixty or fifty years ago, it was by no means a given that a writer would visit a school to speak; nor was it a given that a writer who wrote about the Nazi extermination camps and was published by a publishing house such as Einaudi would do so – a house which, whilst not an organ of the Italian Communist Party, enjoyed the Party’s trust to the extent that it had published Gramsci’s complete works. Whilst left-wing parties held what was known as ‘cultural hegemony’ in universities, in schools – from nursery to sixth form – it was the Christian Democrats and, more generally, the Catholic presence that dominated. The most significant reform, explains editor Fabio Levi, was ‘the unified lower secondary school, established by the centre-left government from 1963 onwards, to meet the growing demand for education amongst the less well-off, who until then had been forced to see their children’s education end, at best, with the three-year vocational preparatory course following primary school. From that point on,
compulsory schooling was extended to 14 years, the vocational preparatory course was abolished, and access to secondary schools was opened up to all’.

Casa Einaudi immediately seized the opportunity, launching in 1965 a series entitled ‘Readings for Secondary School’, the first title of which was Cassola’s Il taglio del bosco, followed by Rigoni Stern’s Il sergente nella neve and Levi’s La tregua. It was far from obvious to begin with ​​​​​​​La tregua rather than Se questo è un uomo, and here the discussion must weave together editorial strategy, the political context and the author’s personal history: for it was a shrewd choice to present secondary school pupils with the return from Auschwitz rather than the deportation and imprisonment. Even in ​​​​​​​La tregua, the concentration camp is present, in all its atrocity as a death factory now falling into ruin (and there is the page and a half on Hurbinek ‘who was three years old and had perhaps been born in Auschwitz and had never seen a tree’), but above all there is a human adventure across Europe; there is a contemporary odyssey full of humour and excitement that seems tailor-made to spark young people’s interest in human geography, and through this to introduce them to recent history, its complexities and obscure corners, even touching on the moral and political choices of adult life. Therefore, when he was asked to adapt ​​​​​​​La tregua for Einaudi’s school series, Levi took two steps: he removed all references to sex and prostitution (which, whilst chaste, were nonetheless unsuitable for minors at the time) and added an introduction in which, in just a few paragraphs, he summarised the collective and personal history that had led him to Auschwitz. It was not until September 1973 that Einaudi also published Se questo è un uomo in its secondary school series, and on this occasion Levi was able to take a more direct approach, adding a brief bibliography of ‘General works on National Socialism and the Jewish question’ and two maps: the first shows Nazi Germany and its concentration camps (‘As can be seen, numerous camps were located in the occupied territories during the Second World War’), whilst the second depicts ‘The Auschwitz region and the camps that were administratively subordinate to it’.

1973, the year in which the letters collected in Mi interessa la gente begin, is therefore also the year in which the school edition of his ‘first-born’ book was finally published. Towards the end of that year, Levi had a long conversation with Marco Pennacini, who was fifteen years old and the son of a friend of his. Marco asked him precise and concrete questions, and at one point asked him what he would do if he were to write Se questo è un uomo today: ‘Would you write it with the same intentions, as a document?’. Levi’s reply: ‘No, I would write it differently. First of all, I would write it in the style of a man thirty years older: and being thirty years older means a great deal more experience and a great deal less vitality. So I don’t know what would come of it; certainly something completely different. Above all, however, I would write it today with specific reference to contemporary fascism, which is not present in the book. When I wrote Se questo è un uomo, fascism was over; it no longer existed. It was as clear as day that it was gone and would never return. It was effectively over; it had been buried; as a political party, it existed neither in Italy nor in Germany. If I were to write it today, with all the limitations I mentioned earlier, I would be exploiting it.”

‘I would exploit it,’ says Levi, wielding – as if it were a tool – a verb from the
political lexicon of the time: barely four years had passed since the Piazza Fontana bombing, and the country was in the throes of neo-fascist conspiracies involving rogue secret services; 1973 was also the year of Pinochet’s coup in Chile. A well-educated and sharp-witted young man, Marco Pennacini observes that in Se questo è un uomo, the initiative for the extermination lies primarily with the Germans. Levi replies that things have now changed, and that one can recognise ‘a direct, straight line’ running from the fascism of 1922 to Auschwitz: ‘There is a fairly obvious continuity (…) when I wrote Se questo è un uomo, I was convinced it was worth documenting these things because they were over. Now they are no longer over: we must talk about them again.’

The interview with Marco Pennacini serves as both a self-portrait and an outline of Primo Levi’s programme, in which he visits schools and, when unable to do so, replies by letter to teachers and pupils. The effectiveness of his communication is based not only on his candour and respect for every interlocutor, but also on the fact that he never presents himself as a victim seeking revenge or compensation. Indeed, Levi does not even start from the assumption that his experience is significant or instructive: each time, he must demonstrate that it can be so, and that it is therefore worth recounting. One of the exchanges in Mi interessa la gente documents the complaint lodged in 1972 by a family from Locarno against a teacher who had set Se questo è un uomo as reading for his class. The teacher wrote to Levi, explaining the incident and asking him to send a message to his pupils. Even in this instance, Levi did not take the moral high ground: instead, he adopted a critical approach to his own book, avoiding both a row with the family who had objected and praise for the teacher (which would be tantamount to praising himself). He wrote to the pupils in Locarno as follows: ‘I can assure you that I would have been astonished and would not have believed it if, whilst I was writing it (in 1946), someone had predicted that it would still be read nearly 30 years later, in schools, and in a country other than my own. I hope that, in reading it, you have come to realise my state of mind at the time: it was much like that of a sailor returning home after a voyage full of dangers, storms and monsters, and feeling that his life had no other purpose than to tell the tale. My intention was to bear witness rather than to accuse: but I must not, I could not distort or gloss over the truth, and the truth, however incredible and unacceptable, was indeed that. For many years afterwards, I followed the book’s journey: from the reactions of readers and critics, it was clear that it was read chiefly as a historical text, which satisfied me. But over the last ten years or so, things have changed: following the events in Algeria, Brazil, Greece and Mozambique, and in the light of what has come to light about Stalin’s Russia, books like mine are no longer read with detachment, because, unfortunately, they reflect events not of yesterday but of today. Thirty years ago, fascism caused 60 million deaths and immeasurable destruction, and yet, incredibly, it is finding new followers and is tolerated in many countries. For this reason, I believe it is important for young people to read and reflect on the history of past mistakes, even if at times such reading may be uncomfortable and a source of distress.”

It may sound trite, but it is a rare quality: Levi knows how to put himself in the shoes of those he is talking to, even those who are very different from him. He is an adult (a father of two, no less) who not only recognises the normal generational gap, but also understands just how difficult it is to convey an adventure like his – one so distant in time and so different from everyday experience. When dialogue and communication are sparked, when young women like Giuliana Mamprin write to him spontaneously, his surprise is genuine: he likes to be read in this way, ‘with a sense of retrospective anxiety, by readers who do not know him and who might be his grandchildren’, and to a Year 5 class at the Gonzaga Scientific High School in Palermo, who, in light of the events in Se questo è un uomo, ventured the term ‘surrealism’, he responded by proposing the concept of the ‘trans-real’.

As far as Levi is concerned, the fact that he does not take himself for granted has the effect that the pupils, too, do not take him for granted; on the contrary, they feel a particular attraction towards him. He is someone who knows how to portray reality and who knows how to invent fantastic stories, but he is different from other writers because he possesses more than just imagination and style: he has lived experience, and the pupils sense its presence. Giuliana Mamprin tells him quite openly that she wants to dispel ‘the aura of mystery’ that surrounds every writer, but there are many people (girls, boys, whole classes) who share this desire. In 1976, Levi added an Appendix to the school edition of Se questo è un uomo– a full thirty pages in which he answers eight frequently asked questions that he usually received during these very school visits. Even those were not enough, as Fabio Levi explains: ‘In direct interaction, the pupils – especially the younger ones in the third year of middle school – though restrained by the presence of their teachers or intimidated by the writer’s personality, were certainly not shy about speaking their minds. They asked about the feelings Levi had, both then and now, towards his fellow prisoners, his tormentors or the extreme conditions of the concentration camp; about the marks that experience had left on his life afterwards, as if it were incredible that he had managed to return to being a normal person after such devastation. (…)  And Primo Levi, in his replies, once again played along. Without, however, ever failing to apply a filter: he assessed the seriousness of his correspondents on each occasion – as is immediately apparent from his letters.

With him right in front of them – in the flesh or within reach via letter – the young people want to discover
the man of the past in the man of the present, and make sense of the differences. They would like to penetrate his
privacy, decipher his moods, and get him to say more than he has said in his books. Often
they take the liberty of using the informal ‘tu’: Giuliana addresses him informally and explains why she does so. For his part, Levi does not disappoint them, but shifts from the realm of intimacy to that of knowledge, of questions to be asked of the facts and of themselves. In each of his exchanges (even the most stenographic ones: the book reproduces the abbreviations from the handwritten drafts, such as a ‘Buona Pq a ttt’ that foreshadows the style of text messages), contradictory elements coexist: an emotional pulse and an impenetrable discretion, the concreteness of facts and a profusion of circulating ideas. The result? Of each of his letters, Levi himself might say (as he does in the one dated 31 January 1978 to the pupils of Malcesine) that ‘it is both too long and too short’ because nothing can replace a physical presence, and so he makes himself available to the point of telling some students or teachers not to write to him but to ring him or come and visit him. For these meetings, he suggested times after dinner, partly because, as the years went by, his family circumstances made it increasingly difficult for him to travel from Turin.

One must not, however, assume that these discussions with schools concern only the wars and dictatorships of the twentieth century or the possibility that Auschwitz might return, perhaps in other forms. The pupils ask Levi about everything: politics and terrorism, believing in or not believing in God, work and falling in love, literature and his reading preferences, and all his books – including the lesser-known ones such as the collections Storie naturali, Vizio di forma and Lilìt, which showcase his technological, cosmological and visionary streak, to the extent that at times he is served a veritable ‘consommé of questions’ (his own expression) and is even asked about chemistry: in 1980, when he received a meticulously technical letter from a researcher, Levi – who had been retired for four years – he confessed to him that he was by then ‘completely de-chemised’.