dnf –– will come back to this, eventually. It uses some of my favourite medieval poetry, the chansons de geste, to make the wild claim that the Carolidnf –– will come back to this, eventually. It uses some of my favourite medieval poetry, the chansons de geste, to make the wild claim that the Carolingians set up a Jewish princedom as a sort of buffer state between themselves and the Muslims in Spain. I don't know enough about Muslim or Jewish history to make heads or tails of his other sources and I just don't have the attention span to focus on this right now. ...more
The prose in this felt opaque at times, and my gut instinct is that it was the translation more than Bassani, but I can't say for sure. Read the McKenThe prose in this felt opaque at times, and my gut instinct is that it was the translation more than Bassani, but I can't say for sure. Read the McKendrick translation in The Novel of Ferrara omnibus, btw....more
Really liked The Story of My Dovecote, My First Goose, The Story of a Horse, The Tachanka Doctrine, Salt, the one about the icon painter, but ultimateReally liked The Story of My Dovecote, My First Goose, The Story of a Horse, The Tachanka Doctrine, Salt, the one about the icon painter, but ultimately didn't finish this one.
I don't know if it was the translation, or just my lack of knowledge of the time period, but a lot of this remained quite obscure to me. I have the Penguin translation but I'm told the Pushkin Press one is better. Might come back and finish this at a later date.
Collection included Babel's early Jewish stories, autobiographical stories, and Odessa Tales as well as Red Cavalry. ...more
Reading this reminded me of Houellebecq's quote about what makes literature unique, in that it is the only artform where you can commune directly withReading this reminded me of Houellebecq's quote about what makes literature unique, in that it is the only artform where you can commune directly with the artist's personality (view spoiler)[ Like literature, music can overwhelm you with sudden emotion, can move you to absolute sorrow or ecstasy; like literature, painting has the power to astonish, and to make you see the world through fresh eyes. But only literature can put you in touch with another human spirit, as a whole, with all its weaknesses and grandeurs, it limitations, its pettinesses, its obsessions, its beliefs; with whatever it finds moving, interesting, exciting, or repugnant. Only literature can grant you access to a spirit from beyond the grave–a more direct, more complete, deeper access than you’d have in conversation with a friend. Even in our deepest, most lasting friendships, we never speak so openly as when we face a blank page and address an unknown reader (hide spoiler)]. He's very down to earth and analytical and thoughtful. He's imaginative but he doesn't get credit for it.
Also kind of funny is what I've come to think of as the Primo Levi paradox: if you had to explain the concept of science fiction to someone who didn't know what it was, they would think of something along the lines of Primo Levi's writing. Yet if you explained Primo Levi's writing to a science fiction fan, they would be hard-pressed to consider it science fiction.
Only got as far as Phosphorous, but I will come back and finish this someday....more
Best essays were on the house he spent most of his life in, his grandfather's shop in Turin (very charming), and a study on the internationNot great.
Best essays were on the house he spent most of his life in, his grandfather's shop in Turin (very charming), and a study on the international spread of spontaneous children's games (games that don't require an adult or any objects like balls or chalk or whatever).
Also essays on translation, writing, his profession as a chemist, Rabelais, Queneau, Alduous Huxley, butterflies, his fear of spiders, chimaeras, going back to school as an adult, the moon landing, that one Italian novel I can never remember the name of....more
Vizio di forma . Short stories published in English in The Sixth Day and Other Tales and A Tranquil Star, but I'm reading it as Flaw of Form in Jenny Vizio di forma . Short stories published in English in The Sixth Day and Other Tales and A Tranquil Star, but I'm reading it as Flaw of Form in Jenny McPhee's (no relation) translation in the Complete Works of Primo Levi.
My favourites:
With the Best Intentions – Reminiscent of The Moon is a Harsh Mistress. The European telecommunications grid grows sentient and starts interrupting people's phone calls. It commits suicide when its told how annoying it is. Sad.
Recuenco: The Nourisher – a futuristic airship called The Nourisher flies over an impoverished village, spraying it with a milk that can sustain them and their livestock, though much of it is lost in the spraying. Too much milk is deadly, but they're illiterate and decipher the pamphlets too late.
Recuenco: The Rafter – A sequel from the other side. The airships (called Rafters and not really airships) are an attempt to wipe out hunger, the milk is cheap but the ships (not really airships) are more expensive to run than moon flights, so they can't stop at villages to explain. They have sensors to detect acetone, which is the chemical smell of hunger.
His Own Maker – a diary of evolution, dedicated to Italo Cavino. Very funny.
The Servant – a rabbi makes a golem, which has its own personality. It is courageous and willingly protects the Jews of the Prague ghetto, but when asked to chop wood or haul water, it simply removes the slip of paper from under its tongue so as to return to its inanimate state. A horrible accident happens when it's forced to work on the Sabbath. Interestingly, Primo Levi connects the words golem and robot, which both come out of Eastern Europe and had similar connotations.
Written on the Forehead – a newly married couple makes rent by taking out temporary advertising on their forehead for a new ad firm. The preposterous idea slowly catches on, and soon they're offered less money for their space. Advertising prices plummet and eventually people start buying vulgar sayings on each other's foreheads. The couple's son is born with an ad on its forehead for a firm that doesn't exist.
Best is Water – water starts getting viscous. (view spoiler)[The current situation was established within little more than a year. Defenses gave way much earlier than was expected. All the body’s humors thickened and became defiled, just as the seawater, the rivers, and the clouds had. The sick are dead, and now all of us are sick—our hearts, miserable pumps created for another epoch’s water, tire themselves out from dawn to dawn trying to push the viscous blood through our network of veins. We die at thirty, or forty maximum, of edema, of sheer exhaustion, of a constant fatigue, merciless and unabated, which weighs upon us from the day we’re born and prevents any rapid or sustained movement.
Like the rivers, we, too, are sluggish. The food that we eat and the water we drink must wait hours before it can become absorbed into our bodies, and this renders us inert and heavy. We don’t cry. The lacrimal liquid remains uselessly in our eyes and doesn’t form into teardrops but oozes like a serum denying us all dignity and relief from our tears. Before we knew what was happening, we were ambushed by this evil, and now all of Europe is afflicted. In America and other places, they are only beginning to suspect the nature of the water’s alteration, but they are a long way from finding a remedy. In the meantime, it’s been reported that the level of the Great Lakes is rapidly increasing, that the whole of the Amazon is turning into a swamp, that the upper Hudson continually floods, destroying its banks, and that the rivers and lakes of Alaska freeze into an ice that is no longer brittle but as elastic and strong as steel. The Caribbean Sea no longer has waves. (hide spoiler)]
Stories worth mentioning:
Heading West – lemmings and a suicidal indigenous group reject a drug that scientists invented to disable the feeling of existential emptiness.
Protection – humans wear armoured suits 24/7 bc of perceived (possibly fake) threat of micrometeorite strikes, so human touch is precious.
The Synthetics – school kids realize one of theirs pals is a synthetic human, born from a test tube. He copes first by hiding, then by insisting he's better. Tha his kind will make the world better. He loses his temper and realizes he's not all that different. No belly button though!
Observations from a Distance: People on the moon make astronomical observations of Earth from 1900-45, consider if life is possible.
The Brokers – in a prelife, brokers try to convince S to be born as a human to fix the 'flaw of form' (hey that's the name of the book!) in humanity. They try to sweeten the deal by offering him a good position at birth, which he declines.
Vilmy – a new pet produces in its milk a more powerful version of the chemical that bonds infants to mothers, creating addicts of those who drink it.
Creative Work – a writer is visited by one of his creations, who describes a National Park inhabited by fictional characters. The writer is to become a resident there, as his character has been writing about him. The writer sabotages the plan by convincing his publisher not to buy the book. He regrets this in his later years and so writes a fictional autobiographical book to gain entry into the Park. Kind of magical realist, I guess. Roland gets mentioned as an interesting example of a person who was real (Hrothland in the Vita Karoli Magni) but is known primarily for his fictional exploits (there's only one sentence recorded on the 'real' Roland). Also Bradamante and Ruggiero are mentioned but the footnote says they're from some French novel not Orlando Furioso. Weird.
In the Park – a sequel to Creative Work. A fictionalized version of the author moves to the National Park for fictional characters and lives there until he fades out of human memory.
Strangely jubilant, given the dark subject matter. About his recovering health and return home from Auschwitz. Sort of an Odyssey to If This Is A Man'Strangely jubilant, given the dark subject matter. About his recovering health and return home from Auschwitz. Sort of an Odyssey to If This Is A Man's Iliad. I don't know. I liked Cesare, his friend who's a bit of a schemer. But apparently the guy the character is based on didn't like his portrayal in the book. ...more
Agree with Bro_Pair's review: some great poems mixed with a lot of disappointments. The animal ones, though, are fantastic. And of course the ones reAgree with Bro_Pair's review: some great poems mixed with a lot of disappointments. The animal ones, though, are fantastic. And of course the ones reflecting on the Holocaust are haunting and somber.
To be fair to Levi, he points out that he's not a poet and some of them are little more than scribblings he occasionally jotted down when he couldn't convey it in prose. And the ones that work are, despite his own misgivings, excellent. Maybe some of the best poetry I've ever read.
Favourites: Arachne, Unfinished Business, Wait, Shema, Sunset at Fossoli, Epitaph, Song of the Crow I, For Adolf Eichmann, Get Up, The Glacier, February 25, 1944, Old Mole, A Mouse, Meleagrina, The Snail, The Elephant, The Fly, The Dromedary.
Epitaph
You, traveler on the hill, one among many Who leave marks on this no longer lonely snow, Listen to me: pause for a few moments Here where my comrades buried me without tears: Where every summer, fed by me, the tender field grass Grows thicker and greener than elsewhere. It’s not many years that I’ve been lying here, Micca the partisan, Killed by my comrades for my not insignificant crime, And I hadn’t lived many more when the shadow took me.
Passerby, I don’t ask forgiveness of you or others, No prayer or lament, no special observance. I ask just one thing: that this peace of mine will last, That heat and cold will alternate above me always, And no new blood filtered through the soil Seeps down with its deadly warmth To wake to new pain these bones now turned to stone.
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