Това, което най-много ми хареса е, че Примо Леви успява много деликатно и ясно да обясни чувства и ситуации, които наричаме необясними. А ги наричаме така не защото са особено странни, чудновати или се случват рядко, не - всеки човек ги изпитва, изживява. Просто опита ли се да ги облече в думи, те се обезценяват, звучат кухо или пошло. А при Леви не е така, напротив! необяснимото, съкровеното за човека се изрича и зазвънтява, и придава повече смисъл и красота на света.

Успях да запомня имената само на два от разказите, които ми харесаха - "Олово" и "Церий". Но се влюбих в историите за Сандро, за Джулия, за събирането на курешки, за острова и разменените жени - да не ги изреждам всичките.

Мисля да прочета и "Нима това е човек". Подозирам, че без стресиращото за мен присъствие на химията книгите на този автор ще ми харесат още повече.

А сега, време за цитати:

"Днес зная, че опитът да се облече един човек в думи, да се възкреси на изписаната страница е обречен, особено човек като Сандро. Той не беше такъв, че да бъде разказан или да му се вдигне паметник - на паметниците гледаше с насмешка. Бе вдаден цял-целеничък в своите действия и когато те се изчерпаха, от него не остана нищо. Нищо освен точно думите."

"Не сме разочаровани от изборите, които сме направили, и от всичко, което ни е поднесъл животът, само дето когато се срещаме, и двамата изпитваме особеното, но не неприятно усещане (многократно сме си го описвали взаимно), че някакво було, повей или търкулване на зар ни е отклонило по два раздалечаващи се пътя, които не са били нашите."

"Смъмри ме: никога не бива да униваме, защото унинието е вредно, значи и неморално, значи и неприлично."

Primo Levi (1919-1987) was an Italian Jewish chemist who survived Hitler's Holocaust. This is my second time to read a book by him. I read his first novel Survival in Auschwitz (3 stars) last year and I feel in love with it so that I had to make sure that I have this book and If Not Now, When?. These seem to be his trilogy of memoirs directly recalling his experiences in the concentration camps.

This book is composed of short stories and annecdotes from before, during and after his life in Auschwitz. Each of those pieces of beautiful writing is somehow related to the an element or group of elements in the Periodic Table (that explains the title of the book). However, I think The London's Royal Institution on 19 October 2006 got it wrong when they voted this book onto the shortlist for the best science book ever written. The reason is, despite direct references to chemisty and the elements, this is a memoir and not a science book.

There are also two seemingly Italian folklores and standalone short stories "Lead" and "Mercury" that are said to have been published separately. Other than those and the offplaced first story "Argon" everything else are about the Holocaust. My favorite part is when he was hired as a chemist and this explained well why he was able to survive his life in the concentration camps: his being a chemist made him stay inside the laboratory even if he was not doing anything except on how to steal food in every opportunity. I found this humorous now but of course, there was definitely not an iota of fun while he was doing all those stealings as one lapse could mean his life.

I found Survival in Auschwitz (It This is a Man) too heavy but I of course liked it. The Periodic Table on the other hand is a sweet mixture of sadness, poignancy, fantasy, humour and a lot of chemistry. Even if one of my favorite subjects in high school and college was chemistry, there were just too many references for my taste as my schooling days were a least three decades ago and all I could recall about chemistry are some of the elements symbol, some salts, some valences, the carbon bond, parts of the Krebs cycle. That's it. But this book has a lot more.

If you are a reader who has background in Chemistry and you dig the Holocaust stories, in movies and in prints, this book is for you.

Partiamo dal fondo: in appendice di questo Sistema periodico viene riportata la nota intervista che Philip Roth fece a Primo Levi non più di sette mesi prima della sua morte. In una delle domande lo scrittore americano ricorda le parole usate in "La chiave a stella" riguardo al presentarsi nella persona di Levi di "due anime": quella del chimico e quella dello scrittore, forse troppe per una sola persona, ma così "ben saldate" fra loro da non poterne vedere una netta separazione.

La separazione, almeno a livello narrativo, la troviamo invece in questa raccolta di racconti autobiografici, che ci ricordano dell'importanza che questa attività, protrattasi per quasi quarant'anni, ha avuto nella vita di Primo Levi. Si passano così in rassegna ventuno elementi chimici che in un modo o nell'altro hanno richiamato alla mente dello scrittore le esperienze vissute, dai primi studi universitari ai momenti precedenti all'internamento, dall'esperienza come chimico ad Auschwitz fino al ritorno in Italia nell'industria delle vernici. Primo Levi è un grande narratore, soprattutto quando si tratta di raccontare esperienze personali: in questi ventuno capitoli è capace di coinvolgere il lettore, facendolo entusiasmare al suo pari nelle piccole conquiste giornaliere nel campo della chimica. Mi sono ritrovato, io che la chimica l'ho sempre guardata con un senso di superiorità per tutto il mio periodo di studi - mai piaciuta, la chimica, devo esser sincero -, mi sono ritrovato non solo a provare per questa materia un senso di grande rispetto, ora che del chimico ne ho capito meglio il mestiere, ma proprio una sorta di acceso interesse. Primo Levi nel suo raccontare ricco di dettagli, ma mai pedante né saccente, riesce infatti a incuriosire il lettore, a fargli capire da vicino l'importanza della materia - ma al tempo stesso ha tutto il tempo di raccontarci la sua storia personale, il suo rapportarsi alla materia e il significato che quest'ultima ha svolto nella sua crescita come persona.

Questi racconti non sono un'autobiografia ma al tempo stesso ci raccontano della sua vita, non sono un manifesto della materia ma comunque la mettono in primo piano. È da tutto questo "non essere" che "Il sistema periodico" è una raccolta tutta particolare, che poteva nascere solamente dall'esperienza diretta e solamente dalla penna di uno scrittore capace di raccontare di se stesso. Le esperienze raccontate suonano vere solamente perché sono vere: non c'è esperienza migliore da raccontare che la realtà, così come non ci sono personaggi migliori per un libro che le persone reali. Primo Levi deve averlo capito, e riassumendo in 250 pagine tutta la sua esperienza nel campo fa un regalo a lui quanto a noi. Se in "Se questo è un uomo" viene rappresentato l'"uomo Primo Levi", in questo libro troviamo il "chimico Primo Levi", due anime ben saldate nella stessa persona.

Siamo partiti dal fondo, quindi chiudiamo con la copertina: troviamo qui una citazione di Saul Bellow che recita: "Tutto in questo libro è essenziale, meravigliosamente puro". Penso sia un riassunto perfetto dell'opera di Primo Levi. In questo libro non ci sono sbavature né riempitivi, anche i due racconti di fantasia inseriti verso metà hanno lo scopo di rappresentarci un determinato periodo della vita dello scrittore. E tutto è meravigliosamente puro: Primo Levi racconta in una maniera tanto semplice quanto autentica, quasi fosse un bambino un po' cresciuto che ci racconta le sue prime avventure e i suoi primi esperimenti. Sembra infatti di vederlo, lì al tavolo da chimico del fratello maggiore del suo amico, ancora intento a mescolare fra loro questi elementi chimici che hanno segnato un po' tutta la sua vita, e i suoi amori, e il suo lavoro, e anche la sua salvezza.

Quattro stelle e mezzo, ad un passo dalla perfezione.

Un po' di chimica e tutta la vita
E' una autobiografia per elementi chimici -parziale – perchè di elementi ce ne sono solo una ventina e Primo Levi parla solo di sé, lasciando fuori doverosamente i congiunti: ma elargendo storie sugli antenati, dei quali fa quadretti molto spassosi, un po' irriverenti (I gas nobili). Unica eccezione alla sua discrezione, una giovane collega della quale era innamorato da neolaureato e che portava in bici a raggiungere il fidanzato, lei presente con nome e cognome e che frequentava ancora ai tempi della pubblicazione del libro; ma era ormai un'amica e se ne poteva ridere insieme, dopo tutte le vicissitudini successive.
Il libro è imperdibile per due categorie: gli ammiratori di Primo Levi e gli studenti di Chimica.
PL ci racconta, insieme, capitoli della sua vita e il suo amore per la chimica e per la vita. La scrittura è garbata, sobria, ironica e divertente ma attraverso il tono lieve si sentono echeggiare i suoi stati d'animo, mai dimenticati. L'amore per la montagna, quella praticata in roccia con l'attrezzatura degli anni '30, e si potrebbe dire Silicio. L'insofferenza per la sorte dell'Italia dopo l'8 settembre, che è stata raccontata così bene da Fenoglio. L'energico e istintivo attaccamento alla vita, raccontato da lui stesso in Se questo è un uomo. Dopo il ritorno a casa, il desiderio di avere un amore, nel cui tepore sciogliere i propri nodi -storia di tanti, in tutti i tempi. In molte occasioni, il desiderio di superare l'ostacolo facendo uso del proprio ingegno – conoscenza e razionalità- sono le sue storie di chimico; senza dimenticare i fallimenti, il rispetto per la verità è più grande della vanità professionale. C'è anche qualche racconto a sé stante, quello del cercatore d'oro incontrato nel carcere di Fossano; quello dell'omino che aveva ereditato dal padre scandinavo il mestiere di cercatore di piombo ed era finito in Sardegna, migliaia di anni fa. La musica del caso è quella che gli fa riincontrare, da chimico, un chimico per il quale aveva lavorato ad Auschwitz (vanadio).
E' un libro bellissimo, che resiste bene alle riletture, perchè contiene in sé una vita vissuta, intera e scritta bene.

Primo Levy was a chemist, a poet, and a novelist--a man of luminous imagination and spirit, despite his forced descent into darkness as an Italian Jew during World War II. This book is a memoir, with each chapter named after an element culled from the periodic table.

In each chapter, Levy's awe for the alchemical power of the chemist shines through. But he has a poet's heart rather than a chemist's sterile exactitude. The opening chapter "Argon" describes how this element is much more common in the atmosphere than any other, but we are hardly aware of it, and he relates this fact to the comic yet lovingly evoked life of his family, who spoke a rare dialect of Italian Yiddish.

The chapter "Titanium" is short and sweet, regaling the reader with the tale of a majestic house painter and a little girl, as he paints circle of titanium white housepaint around her and keeps her enthralled--the task of all great liars and storytellers.

And Levy's yearning for the more ethereal life of the physicist as opposed to the hapless chemist, cooking up combustible potassium recipes and tapping potatoes for phosphorous in his lab, will ring true to those who deep down, long for a life of the mind.

Truly, this book is as fundamental to life and how we might understand it as carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen.

"Периодичната система" е събрала едни от най-човеколюбивите и фино написани текстове, на които някога съм попадала. Химията никога повече няма да е лишена от очарование в моите очи.

"Това са абстракции: преходът от общото към частното винаги носи вълнуващи изненади, когато лишеният от контури, призрачен образ се материализира пред тебе, лека-полека или изневиделица, и стане себеподобеден – Mitmensch, съ-човек – с всичките си измерения, чудатости, аномалии и непоследователности."

Finally, an argument in favor of being forced to read books! I hated the beginning of this and fell asleep twice during the first chapter, so I never would've kept on going if I hadn't had to for school. But The Periodic Table got progressively better then finally peaked at the end, as is my personal preference for books. I cried for like twenty minutes after I finished this, though I'm not sure if that had to do more with Primo Levi or with my own lady hormones.

In any case, though it took me awhile to get into it, I did really like this book and recommend it, especially if you're interested in chemicals. Levi insists that it's fiction, not autobiography, but it feels very true, whether it all is or not. Each chapter is structured around an element from the periodic table, and tells the life story of an Italian Jewish chemist who grows up under Fascism, survives the Holocaust, and then works -- among other things -- as a varnish manufacturer. I haven't read Levi's Holocaust stuff, but the way that experience is handled here is unexpected and moving -- there is a little bit about it, but basically he's like, "I already wrote that book" and elides most of it, so the story is more about how his life continues on after that. Again, slow start for me but ultimately got into the Big Shit in a strikingly human, profound, and lovely way.

Това е Човек.

La mia adolescenza è stata contrassegnata dallo studio della chimica. Ho avuto docenti bravi, precisi, innovativi, umani. Non posso dire altrettanto di quelli delle materie umanistiche che, ancora oggi a scuola, vedo così ottusi nei confronti delle scienze e della tecnologia.
Primo Levi è il "prof" che raccontandoci della materia le restituisce dimensione poetica in "UNA conoscenza" che non distingue tra classificazioni artificiose.
Tra tutti i brani spesso autobiografici che hanno come titolo un elemento della tavola periodica vorrei ricordare l'ultimo, Carbonio, per la descrizione del ciclo inorganico-organico (ogni duecento anni circa...)a cui è inevitabile associare l'immagine dei camini di Auschwitz. Siamo fatti di materia che ci sopravvive.

4.5 stars
This is a collection of short stories, twenty-one in all, each one named after an element of the periodic table. In the UK the Royal Institution has voted it the best science book ever. There is a variety of stories: some are very personal memoirs, a few are fictional, some look at industrial processes and there is a good deal about the nature of words. Sometimes Levi does describe a search for a particular element, but in others he uses the fundamentals of the element for comparative purposes. In Argon he uses its almost complete inertness as a symbol for the marginalisation of his Piedmontese Jewish ancestors.
Levi explains his passion for chemistry and the reasons for his pursuit of it as a career; as always the reasons are complex:
“I have often suspected that, deep down, the motives for my boyhood choice of chemistry were different from the ones I rationalised and repeatedly declared. I became a chemist not (or not only) from a need to understand the world around me; not in reaction to the cloudy dogmas of Fascism; and not in the hope of riches or scientific glory; but to find, or create, an opportunity to exercise my nose.”
Levis also writes well and tells a good story and there is a lyricism to his writing and even humour:
“Zinc, Zinck, zinco: they make tubs out of it for laundry, it is not an element which says much to the imagination, it is grey and its salts are colourless, it is not toxic, nor does it produce striking chromatic reactions; in short, it is a boring metal. It has been known to humanity for two or three centuries, so it is not a veteran covered with glory like copper, nor even one of those newly minted elements which are still surrounded by the glamour of their discovery.”
There is a poignancy to it as well, as when he leaves a job at a nickel mine to go to a lab in Milan, describing his essential belongings:
“..my bike, Rabelais, the Macaronaeae, Moby Dick translated by Pavese, a few other books, my pickaxe, climbing rope, logarithmic ruler, and recorder.”
The most powerful piece in the collection is Vanadium. It is post war and the firm Levi is working for has a query about the quality of some compound being purchased from a firm in Germany. He begins a correspondence with his opposite number. Gradually he realizes that he knows the man, a civilian scientist in the war who worked for the Nazis and he met him in Auschwitz. Levi explores his feelings and reactions to a man who was not unkind to him, but who essentially was a moral coward in the face of evil. The last chapter on carbon could be described as a little sentimental, but I can forgive Levi that.
This isn’t a book about science, although there is plenty of science in it; it’s about humanity and the quirks and idiosyncrasies of everyday life. Levi is a good storyteller expressing human warmth, puzzlement and a sense of justice. A must read.

This is a collection of autobiographical snapshots bonded together by elements from the Periodic Table. Each chapter is closely, or loosely, centred around an element. There are also two fictional short stories, which took me by surprise. Levi, a chemist, writes fiction which is just a good as his non-fiction.

In "Nickel", Levi recounts his time working at a chemical plant near Turin, in Mussolini's Italy. He describes a small community during wartime, as he was pressured to extract more nickel for the war effort.

"Lead" is a short story that I think may be set in the early medieval period. (The date is not specified.) Rodmund travels south from Northern Europe, teaching people along the way how to identify lead, and it's uses, in the surrounding landscape in return for money. Rodmund ends up on an island in the Mediterranean.

Hydrogen, zinc, arsenic, uranium, vanadium, gold, silver ... each episode has something to offer about Levi's life and thought between the 1930's to around the 1960's.

"A writer should have the precision of a poet and the imagination of a scientist." - Vladimir Nabokov
Primo Levi, a chemist by trade, survivor and documenter of Auschwitz, was one of the 20th century’s great humanists. That Levi was able to keep his positive outlook on human beings and human nature after being tortured and thoroughly dehumanized by two fascist regimes, that he could keep his dry, ironic sense of humour and keep up his child-like wonder for a world which had often offered him only pain and degradation, is in a miracle-yet for Levi life and the world itself was an endless source of miracles, the never-ending wonders of chemistry and human nature are the elements which make up the essence of ‘The Periodic Table’
Levi starts with a brief if humorous account of various relatives and half-relatives and half-remembered relatives, a kind of eulogy to the lost world of Piedmontese Jewry, to its dialects and the noble inertia of the cranks and eccentrics who populated it. Yet the humorous tone is hiding something irrevocably tragic-that this culture was not lost via the vestiges of time but via the evil of the gas chamber, that these people who were deemed subhuman, sly and usurious, responsible for the fall of civilizations and depravation of a race, were just human beings, with the same quirks, foibles and eccentricities of any other people. As Levi states; “According to the above-mentioned regime, a Jew is stingy and cunning, but I was not particularly stingy or cunning, nor had my father been.”
Levi found his answer to the dehumanization of both himself and all the other groups who fascists deemed sub-human via two things: chemistry (or science) and art. For many the two are not linked, yet for Levi the two are one and the same thing, if chemistry allows us to explore the elements and atoms which make up the world around us, then literature allows us to express their beauty-one cannot exist without the other; “It was enervating, nauseating, to listen to lectures on the problem of being and knowing, when everything around us was a mystery pressing to be revealed, the old wood of the benches, the sun’s sphere beyond the windowpanes and the roofs, the vain flight of pappus down in the June air. Would all the philosophers and all the armies in the world be able to construct a little fly? No, not even understand it…” For Levi the didactic nature of Nazism was the death of both science and art, once we open our eyes to the intransigence of Nazism we close our eyes to the beauty of the world, to the sanctity of life or to the beauty of an insignificant fly. Levi was distrustful of the dictatorial nature of Nazi scientists, of its unquestionable logic and unquenchable ignorance. For Levi the ideal scientist would be certain of nothing and uncertain of everything, he would constantly seek to test his views and hypotheses, for Levi science was merely his pathway to explore the wondrous nature of the universe; “My legs were shaking a bit, I experienced retrospective fear and at the same time a kind of foolish pride, at having confirmed a hypothesis and unleashed a force of nature. It was indeed hydrogen, therefore the same element that burns in the sun and stars, and from whose condensation the universes are formed in eternal silence.” Levi is able to counteract Nazi theories of racial purity via a scientific experiment via the importance of impurities in creating balance, that there was no such thing as purity without impurity and quite often is was impossible to differentiate between the two and know which was which; “the praise of purity, which protects from evil like a coat of mail; the praise of impurity, which gives rise to changes, in other words to life. In order for the wheel to turn, for life to be lived, impurities are needed, and the impurities of impurities in the soil too, as is known, if it is to be fertile. Dissension, diversity, the grain of salt and mustard are needed: fascism does not want them, forbids then, and that’s why you’re not a fascist; it wants everybody to be the same, and you are not.” For Levi art was another way of overcoming the degradation of fascism, it was an avenue for him to regain his humanity via his life, his memories and the people he loved and lost, whose individuality Levi is able to bring out and celebrate by comparing them to the various chemicals which make up ‘The Periodic Table’. “The things I had seen and suffered were burning inside of me; I felt closer to the dead than the living, and felt guilty about being a man, because men had built Auschwitz, and Auschwitz had gulped down millions of human beings, and many of my friend, and a woman who was dear to my heart. It seemed to me that I would be purified if I told the story…by writing I found peace for a while and felt myself become a man again, a person like everyone else, neither a martyr nor a debased saint: one of those who look to the future rather than the past.”
Levi was fascinated by the rise of fascism, yet he was not one to propose simple solutions or to paint all Germans, or even all fascists with the same brush, however contemptuous he was of them. Take, for example, the case of Dr Muller, who rescued Levi from the gas chamber by giving him a job in a laboratory, yet turned a blind eye to the horrors of the holocaust, to the gas chambers and genocide, thinking them an anomaly, an unfortunate by-product of a well-meaning regime. This kind of mass myopia which took over the minds of so many German’s following the holocaust, this inability to admit that many good and honest people had taken part in or ignored the systematic dehumanization and destruction of an entire race, that the German people were unable to admit to their guilt was almost a bad a crime as fascism itself, because this collective exoneration would do nothing to prevent further atrocities from taking place. Fascism would never regard itself with ironic self-abasement like Levi, never know the stoic individuality of the heroic Sandro, never possess the vivacity of Guilia or the humility and wisdom of the old cobbler who had no wish to revenge himself on the upstart cobbler who tried to poison him. No fascist would ever know the beauty of phosphorous, the wonders of chemistry or the world around us.