The Periodic Table

Quando l'ho comprato pensavo fosse un libro autobiografico (un chimico ebraico??Sembrava interessante). Ma è invece un libro di racconti di molte cose che ha vissuto come chimico. Io, che anche sono chimica, ho trovato un "amico" in Primo Levi. Ho sofferto con lui, ho desiderato il suo successo, ho capito molto bene come si sentiva al lavorare a certi laboratori...
Devo leggere più dei suoi libri perchè ho molta voglia di sapere com'è stato capace di uscire bene di Auschwitz, cosa che qui non racconta.

A great masterpiece, inconceivably beautiful, especially to a person with a bent for chemistry and nostalgia for smells, smoke, and broken glassware. I will buy a copy to be passed to my most deserving child, or incinerated with me, making deliciously sulfurous smoke.

Long on my list, I finally reacted and read this book because of the Science, Technology, and Culture Book Club hosted by the University of Rochester's bubbling and vibrant Humanities Center. I found it interesting that everyone in the group loved and praised the book despite great diversity in our backgrounds and interests. An elegant Italian woman, a professor of Hebrew and Judaic studies, knew it intimately, having read it several times since its introduction to her eighth grade class, and was able to put it into the contexts of  Primo Levi's other work and the history and experience of Jews in Italian society. A young professor of electrical and computer engineering resonated with me on the beauty, humor, and depth of the science, but wondered why Levi had inserted two of his own fictional stories that involved specific elements—a common thread in every chapter. Graduate students and faculty across the sciences and humanities all found aspects of this remarkable work to love, most of all the simple, human stories that he tells.

Yüzyılın en iyi popüler bilim kitaplarından birisi seçilen bu kitabın popüler bilim kitabı olarak tanımlanması bence pek de doğru olmaz. Bir tür Otobiyografi olarak kitap, bir biliminsanının yaşamındaki önemli bulduğu olayları, bunlarla eşleştirdiği elementler üzerinden anlatıyor.
İkinci Dünya Savaşı adı verilen korkunç katliamın mağdurlarından birisi olarak yazar, kitabın ilk bölümünde Yahudilik, İbranice ve Kabala vurgularıyla başta biraz okuru sıksa da, ilerleyen bölümlerde okuru kendine bağlamayı biliyor.
Kitapta elementlerin her birisi bir öyküyü ifade etse de, bazı bölümler birbirleriyle bağlantılı. Kitabın en sevimli, ilgi çekici öyküsü ise bana göre Karbon.

Primo libro di Levi, avvicinato perche' spaventato dal suo piu' famoso. Cosi', tanto per tentare l'approccio. Il libro e' netto e inerte, come alcuni viali milanesi la mattina presto. Mi rimanda la noia della mediocrità, del caffelatte, dei cappotti lisi. Ma nonostante questo, in quei giorni nebbiosi e grigi, c'e' un uomo che ha visto cose che noi mortali ce le sogniamo solo nei nostri peggiori incubi e che conduce una vita banale, di lavoratore in una fabbrica, e cerca di espellere sostanze da vernici raggrumate, e registra le sue attivita' con correttezza e imparzialita'. E' questa distanza apparente dalle emozioni della lingua scritta che piu' di altre cose mi colpisce. L'Uomo ha sofferto, e' stato distante, e' stato allontanato, ha strappato la sua vita futura nei posti più lontani da Dio che la nostra civilta' serbi in memoria: e nonostante tutto non è ricco, e' famoso ma di una fama non appariscente, prende uno stipendio e probabilmente accantona una liquidazione, nel suo quotidiano svolge una attivita' che gia' al suo nominarsi fa arretrare. Eppure attraverso quegli occhi sono passate immagini indicibili; attraverso quelle orecchie e quella pelle sono trasmigrati suoni e climi non di questa terra. Quell'uomo ha visto un inferno e parla di vanadio, oro e carbonio. Ancora non mi capacito, e leggo affascinato le sue storie sull'autobus.

The Connotations of the Elements

All elements have been named in a more or less arbitrary manner: after people, places or mythological characters.

To those who named them, if not necessarily us, these names had metaphorical connotations. For non-scientists, this significance might be lost in the scientific haze that befuddles us.

One achievement of Primo Levi's novel is to revive the power of the metaphors.

Each element he has chosen represents a person, an experience or a story. Each chapter named after an element assumes both an individual and a collective power.

The collective power resides in the periodic table. The tabular presentation of elements not only identifies each element, but, because of the way it has been structured, it also defines their relationships.

In this way, Levi's periodic table symbolises individuals, families, societies and nations.

A Literate Chemist

Science is the foundation of society, even if most of us have forgotten.

It took a literate chemist capable of striding over the two cultures, scientific and creative, to remind us.

Levi recognised that elements rarely manifest themselves to us in a pure, unadulterated form. They appear in combinations, either as mixtures (such as air) or compound molecules.

It was only in the 17th century that scientists started to devote a lot of effort to distinguishing the elements from each other. They had to be separated. They had to be purified, but only for analytical purposes.

Then, with greater knowledge of their properties, they could be artificially joined as new compounds.

There was no particular functional value in the unadulterated purity of a single element in its own right (apart from any beauty that precious metals like silver and gold might be perceived to have).

Enchantment and Adulteration

Levi reached this conclusion from a scientific point of view. The nature of matter is what is of concern to a scientist or chemist.

Still, he managed to find enchantment in matter and its adulteration. It is the stuff of life. Without adulteration, there would be no life and no diversity.

Bit by bit, over the course of the book, he communicates his enthusiasm, happiness and satisfaction to us. It is the wonder of someone who is truly alive.

Racial Purity

Equally importantly, Levi extended the metaphor of adulteration to the type of social and political discourse that emerged in the time of Fascism.

The German and Italian Fascists were trying to achieve purity of their respective races (Professor Googlewiki informs me that in 1921 Mussolini referred to the Italians as the Mediterranean branch of the Aryan race. He later denounced "Nordicism", although the issue continued to simmer).

They regarded other races, in particular Jews, as threats to racial purity. Jews supposedly adulterated Aryan perfection. They had to be eliminated.

What was missing was a perception of different races as different elements in the periodic table.

The universe does not consist solely of one element. There are numerous elements, and all of them have a role, large or small, in making the particular universe that we inhabit. No one element can be said to adulterate the universe.

Matter and Spirit

Race is a product of matter. The Fascists tried to add weight, ironically a rhetorical mass or gravitas, to their arguments by resorting to the language of spirituality.

They believed that a race, the matter behind the physical manifestation of the race, has a spirit.

However, the spirit, according to Fascism, is superior to and dominates matter. It is the desire to preserve and perpetuate the spirit that motivated the political movement behind Fascism.

To do so, other mass, other spirit had to be perceived as inferior, incorrect, defective, deviant, an impurity, something deserving of elimination.

Just as in metallurgy, ore had to be refined: the target metal had to be separated and the impurities discarded on the mullock heap of life or death.

The Fascist modus operandi was to send Jews to extermination camps. Levi, a Jewish chemist, was fortunate to survive the experience, because of the value of his scientific skills.

Tales of Militant Chemistry

For all the horror that the author experienced and witnessed, his novel is not just a compendium of "tales of militant chemistry".

It is an exercise in tolerance of those who would commit or permit evil, as long as they are prepared to repent. His message is one of forgiveness for those who acknowledge the wrong they did.

The chapters are named after 21 elements. I haven't tried to analyse why each one of these elements was chosen or whether there is any significance in the order.

I'm sure that, if you were prepared to put in the effort, it would be like understanding the structure of Joyce's "Ulysses".

These are a Few of My Favourite Elements

The novel starts with n  Argon,n an inert gas, one incapable of aggregation with other elements. Levi applies it to his Jewish family, although he denies that they were wholly inactive:

"The little that I know about my ancestors presents many similarities to these gases. Not all of them were materially inert...on the contrary, they were - or had to be - quite active, in order to earn a living and because of a reigning morality that held that 'he who does not work shall not eat.' But there is no doubt that they were inert in their inner spirits, inclined to disinterested speculation, witty discourses, elegant, sophisticated, and gratuitous discussion.

"It can hardly be by chance that all the deeds attributed to them, though quite various, have in common a touch of the static, an attitude of dignified abstention, of voluntary (or accepted) relegation to the margins of the great river of life. Noble, inert, and rare: their history is quite poor when compared to that of other illustrious Jewish communities in Italy and Europe...

"They were never much loved or much hated...Nevertheless, a wall of suspicion, of undefined hostility and mockery, must have kept them substantially separated from the rest of the population...As is always the case, the rejection was mutual."

n  Phosphorus,n a rare but vital element, applies to a brief love interest, which never really eventuated because of the war:

"We are not dissatisfied with our choices and with what life has given us, but when we meet we both have a curious and not unpleasant impression (which we have both described to each other several times) that a veil, a breath, a throw of the dice deflected us onto two divergent paths, which were not ours."

n  Goldn is the river Dora, which represents youth, joy, life and friendship (even when it is lost).

The n  Silvern chapter details the reunion of two friends, "two positive heroes," at the 25th anniversary of their graduation:

"Each of us would gather more stories like this one, in which stolid matter manifests a cunning intent upon evil and obstruction."

The name of the element n  Vanadiumn derives from the Old Norse "Vanadis", which is one of the variants of the name of the goddess of love, Freya or Freydis (who might also be familiar to W. T. Vollmann fans). It is the chapter in which Levi explores forgiveness and repentance, a way out of the horror of the Holocaust.

This is What Matters

The final chapter is n  Carbon.n

Here, Levi acknowledges that his book is neither a chemical treatise nor an autobiography, except to the extent that, like every other piece of writing, it is "partial and symbolic".

Instead, it is a "micro-history" with a scattering of "sad tatters [and] trophies", both failures and successes.

Yet, this chapter asserts how fundamental to life are atoms, elements of the periodic table. Carbon atoms travel from one form of life to another, from an organic form to an intermediate inorganic form, back to organic life. Carbon atoms travel through time, passing on their characteristics to other matter around them.

The focus of this chapter is elements, atoms, molecules. Chemical energy becomes mechanical energy, and mechanical energy generates heat. "Such is life."

Yet, the great beauty of the novel is that it tells the story of people living, loving, giving birth, parenting, and perpetuating both life and love over the ages.

This is matter. This is what matter does. This is what matters.

The Marvel of Diversity

By the end of the novel, you marvel at humanity and its diversity. You value each and every life. No thing doesn't matter. No life doesn't matter.

The novel subtly encourages you to care. It makes you want to behave like you care. Conversely, you struggle to understand that Fascists might have looked at the same people as we do, and didn't care.

This novel is almost an afterthought to two earlier works by Levi about the Holocaust ("If This Is a Man" and The Truce"). It even leaves gaps where the earlier books would have fit. It houses them, makes a home for them. It is a periodic table into which these other elements fit perfectly.

This novel is rich in its own right, but it invites us to read his other works, to wander around the whole periodic table, one element at a time.

The sense of this man, Primo Levi, who is now no longer with us, makes me want to read his other works, so that, like an atom of carbon, his legacy of vitality, creativity, love and forgiveness, can live on, transcending both his life and his death.

This is a book of memoirs by Italian chemist, Primo Levi. On one level, the book is an autobiography. Each chapter has the name of an element of the periodic table, and the chapter relates some episode in Levi's life that has some relationship to that element.

On another level, the book is about the tragedy of the Holocaust. Primo Levi and his fellow chemists lived through the beginning of the war by pushing the war out of their minds. They saw the war for what it was; they had a fateful attitude, in that they could not do anything about it. But, in 1944 Levi was sent to the Auschwitz concentration camp. The life expectancy for an inmate at the camp was three months, but Levi defied the odds. He remained alive for 11 months, when the Soviet Army liberated the camp. Perhaps the most poignant chapter is about a post-war meeting he had with one of the German guards at the concentration camp.

This book is written in beautiful prose, on a high aesthetic level. Levi comes across as a gentle soul, but does not wallow in sentimentalism. Much of the book is about his studies and his early jobs as a chemist. His writing about the Holocaust is very matter-of-fact. The book is rather short, and it is not a difficult book to read.

Stupendo ...

Прочетох "Периодичната система" на Примо Леви и смятам, че си заслужава твърда 5-ица. Изключителна книга е и не прилича на абсолютно никоя друга. Наистина уникална!
Авторът е италиански евреин, химик, бил е в лагер по време на 2-рата Световна и е един от единиците оцелели. Супер тежка съдба, която предполага натрупване на много горчивина и осъждане. Обаче книгата му е съвсем не такава... Гледната му точка е по-различна. Личното ми усещане е, че е дълбоко по-правдива. Стигам и по-далече. Струва ми се, че неговият светоглед е изиграл ключова роля за оцеляването му.
И ... това не е книга за гадостите по време на войната... Войната присъства, но химията е главното. Химията като избор, като начин на живот, като начин на оцеляване.