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Primo Levi: Tragedy of an Optimist

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As many reviewers have noted, this English translation whittles down the original French two-volume work, so perhaps an English-language reader's perspective is likewise narrowed; perhaps the publisher and translator of the English version are also responsible for the admittedly scattershot coverage given by Anissimov to Primo Levi's inner complexity. Again, Levi was certainly not the most forthcoming of men, even as he was a writer most famous for his autobiographical accounts. His wife and children receive little more than fleeting mention in the hundreds of closely-printed pages, and inevitably her treatment serves sometimes more as a commentary on the works of Levi himself than a fresh work. How difficult it must be, after all, to write the biography of an autobiographer! Yet, having pointed out some faults, this biography is worthwhile for its picture of the Piedmontese Jewish community into which Levi was born and returned to; its explanations of how Fascist Italy differed from Nazi Germany in its anti-Semitic actions; and most of all how the inner workings of the lager--Auschwitz-Birkenau--played out in Levi's classic accounts as well as the larger context of the privations endured by many of his fellow inmates. Here, the two lengthy chapters on the camp are astoundingly detailed and intimately rendered, and would make an ideal follow-up to readers who have read Levi's own descriptions, for Anissimov is alert to what Levi says and what he leaves out. Apparently the child of refugees herself, the sensitivity and acumen with which Anissimov describes how and why Levi gave the famous accounts for which he is justly famed makes her biography--especially in these two long chapters which themselves comprise almost a monograph--necessary for those who have first read Levi's own works. Her book will not tell you much new about the content of these works, but you will understand better why they were written when in his career, and why such a reticent man remained so in his own life while his books spoke for--only some part--of the pain and hope he carried within and guarded carefully.

Primo Levi: Tragedy Of An Optimist is a major biography which delves deeply into the life, mind and work of an influential writer, philosopher, and Holocaust witness. Drawing from exhaustive research, interviews with friends and relatives, as well as numerous unpublished texts and testimonies, biographer Myriam Anissimov explores the complex nature of a most singular, shy, intelligent, and diffident man who was both a strong-spirited survivor and a sufferer of depression, a man who felt misunderstood, certain that future generations would inevitably forget, and even deny, that the Holocaust happened. Indeed, on April 11, 1987, his self-deprecating depression was to lead him to suicide by throwing himself down the staircase of the building in which he was born. Primo Levi is a superbly presented biography and an important, singular contribution to Holocaust studies.

I bought this book with great expecations--partly on the strength of Victor Brombert's NYT review and partly because I was midway through the wonderful Periodic Table when the biography came out. My hopes were disappointed--big time. The problem is, the writer has collected a lot of details, only to be confronted with the necessity of doing something with the details. She was not up to the task. In many cases, information is put forth without any attempt to integrate it into Levi's life story. The reader asks, What does this have to do with Levi? How did it have an impact? How should we interpret the information--should we interpret it at all? Alas, one senses that the author dug up some fact or other and said, well, now I'm going to cram it into my book. You figure it out, reader. Another problem with the author's treatment of detail is her very annoying repetition of facts. Sometimes the language is close to verbatim in different places throughout the book. Levi's books are constantly being published and then, a few pages later, published again (and I'm not talking about different translations). A third problem is that much of the information seems to have been gleaned from Levi's published books. And yet there are no new interpretive glosses that add anything to what Levi himself wrote. Finally, as the Amazon review notes, Levi the man does not emerge from the pages. If you want to know about Levi, stick with Survival in Auschwitz, the Periodic Table, and his other works. Wait for a better biography than this one.

Until Myriam Anissimov published this comprehensive biography of Primo Levi in 1998, the world knew him primarily through his own writings. He was born into an assimilated middle-class Jewish family in Turin, Italy, in 1919. His people were not observant Jews, and Levi, apparently, knew little about "Jewishness" until Mussolini's anti-Semitic policy taught him something about his heritage. His father, Casare, was an electrical engineer and an avid reader. Primo learned from him that the humanities and the sciences need not be separate worlds.

Trained as a chemist, he was arrested during the Second World War as a member of the anti-Fascist resistance and deported to the Monowitz concentration camp, part of the Auschwitz complex in 1944. Badly beaten and half-starved, Levi was determined to spend his time mentally recording his irrational world "with the curiosity of the naturalist." His background in chemistry actually saved his life, Levi was to acknowledge later. After being transferred to work in the camp laboratory his situation improved dramatically. Anissimov's account of the final days at Auschwitz - when Levi, suffering from scarlet fever, managed to forage, with a few comrades, through a semi-dismantled concentration camp in the freezing cold - is the focal point of her book. Her research is meticulous. Levi survived 11 months as slave laborer 174517 until the liberation of what he called "that hideous distortion of humanity." Seven months after the war, he was still a refugee in Russia, trying to make his way home.

When he returned to Turin, to the same apartment where he had always lived, he felt a terrible need to bear witness. He had watched as fellow inmates were stripped of their essential selves before they died in the flesh. His powerful memoirs, works of fiction and poetry describe his experience in the death camp and his later travels in Eastern Europe. Levi wrote. "And I felt like Coleridge's Ancient Mariner, who waylays on the street the wedding guests going to the feast, inflicting on them the story of his misfortune." The civilized world did not seem to care what he had to say, however. No large publisher would accept his powerful manuscript, "Survival in Auschwitz." Anissimov reports that the book received a few positive reviews but was "distributed rather than sold."

For the last forty years of his life Levi devoted himself to understanding why he was not killed in the concentration camp. "The worst survived, that is, the fittest; the best all died," he said. He spent much of his time writing about literature, astronomy, philosophy, the wonders of the natural life and the dignity of manual labor. Married with two children, he was a lifelong agnostic, and was described by some coreligionists as a stranger to Jewish culture. He worked at his profession, as a research chemist and factory manager, until his retirement. Plagued by survivor's guilt, and inner wounds, as well as the coverage the media was giving to Holocaust deniers, Levi, the most gentle of men, died in Turin in April 1987, an apparent suicide.

This biography delves deeply into the life and mind of the man who was a philosophical student of life. Ms. Anissimov, a French journalist and novelist, explores the complex nature of the man, who was at once such a vital force, a real survivor in many senses, and the man prone to dark moods, disillusionment and bouts of severe depression. She writes, with riveting detail, about Levi's year in Auschwitz, drawing on his autobiographical accounts and those of other survivors. Hers was the supremely difficult task of attempting to do what Levi himself said he could not. He was not able to show how the survivor and the scientist, separately and together, perceived the world. "Primo Levi: Tragedy of an Optimist" is based primarily on Ms. Anissimov's reading of Levi's work, her correspondence or interviews with men and women associated with him, and interviews and essays on him by others. This painstaking journalistic endeavor is concise and clear, which is what Mr. Levi believed his own work should be - "avoiding embellishments and convolutions." She has accomplished all this and more. I have read that many are disappointed that this biography did not delve more into Levi's personality, his psyche. I understand that his wife would not be interviewed. Nor would she release intimate personal papers. When close family members do not cooperate, and first-hand information is not available, it is almost impossible to form an accurate analysis of someone's inner complexities.

I was deeply moved by this biography. There are flaws here, but overall it presents an extraordinary portrait of a great man. His writings were fundamental in shaping many people's understanding of what the Holocaust meant when he originally wrote about it, and what it means today, in the context of the 21st century. Some people, devastated by the manner in which he died, say that the Holocaust finally killed him. I do not believe this. Primo Levi fought almost all his life to live. He struggled to enjoy life and the world around him, and to bear witness, an enormous responsibility for anyone. He fought courageously for forty plus years. I respect him greatly for that, and for allowing us all to know him a little bit.
JANA

Readers of Levi's works will find this bio complements the works. Entering Auschwitz in his early twenties - on the brink of life itself, love, work, education, friendship - young Primo through his works of literature, his school visits, his articles, his interviews, bore witness to the efficient workings of the German business and military machine as it worked its way through murdering millions of undesirables, mainly people of the Jewish faith. One of the interesting contradictions in Levi's world was his belief in the power of the scientific method on the one hand, which governed his approach to literature, and his love of the inefficiencies and carelessness of the Russian liberators of the death camps, on the other. In the former, it was the Germans very use of science and methodical organization that made it so successful in killing then cremating so many so efficiently. In the latter, it was the absence of method that he found so endearing, so human. If his goal was to bear witness, he has achieved that goal, and his legacy will live forever. No matter how many films we see, or pictures of the dead, or documentaries, it will be through literature that the real legacy of Naziism will be immortalized and it is mainly to this chemist, this great writer, that we owe thanks, a writer who manages to reach the soul of the reader.
His other great legacy will be his respect for the accurate and most effective use of language which he was passionate about and which he sees as being directly connected to the search for "truth" in his work as a scientist (chemist). It is this passion which connects him directly to such writers as George Orwell. Undoubtedly, the reader leaves Levi's works and this biography with a a greater, perhaps lasting, sensitivity to words, words such as ARBEIT MACHT FREI (work sets free) which was the gateway motto of Auschwitz death camps, but which, ironically, Levi believed and practiced throughout his life.
Ms Anissimov's work makes excellent reading and she has done a great service in bringing us closer to this fine human.

Primo Levi, an Italian Jewish chemist, apparently committed suicide in 1987, after writing several books about his life and his experiences at Auschwitz. Why would Levi, who was like the Italian Elie Wiesel, commit suicide after a life of bearing witness and surviving a death camp? Did he feel survivor's guilt? Did he feel that only the good died, and the bad were allowed to survive? This major biography by Anissimov, the French journalist, delves deeply into the life and mind of the controversial Levi. Why did he feel guilt? Why did he feel misunderstood? Did people die and suffer for nothing? Did he continue to suffer in Turin after the war by caring for his blind and senile mother and mother-in-law? Was he right in thinking that the Holocaust will become just a forgotten footnote in history? This book begins to answer some of these questions, and paints the first of many portraits of the post-Holocaust philosopher.