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PRIMO LEVI'S NEW BOOK

Abstract:

Review Articles Levi's II Sistema Periodico A great moralist, rather than a literary critic, could-better than anyone-state in exact terms the value of this SISTEMA PERIODICO (Einaudi 1975), and draw up a balance-sheet for the trilogy that opened in 1947 with the inferno of SE QUESTO E UN'UOMO,(') traversed the purga-tory of LA TREGUA,(2) after sixteen years of decantation,(3) and concludes now, twelve years later, with the third cantica of the human and Jewish tragedy of Primo Levi. For our parts, we can't help feeling, after contrasting this journey into memory of the generation born between the two world wars with Elsa Morante's much-heralded populist rhapsody, that Levi's is the real book to which the History (4) of our era is en-trusted through the words of a survivor who is now reconciled with life. The book's title refers to the chemical elements, and each chapter of the autobiography is named after one of these …