I read the Periodic Table only knowing that Levi was a chemist and a Holocaust survivor. I had not read his autobiographical works about life in Auschwitz. I'm actually glad that I read this book first because it gives such great insight into Levi's personality, especially his intelligence, ability to observe the world around him, and great love of life. You can take this understanding of him into your reading of Life in Auschwitz (original title: If This Is a Man).

In the Periodic Table the Holocaust is always there behind the stories because you know Levi's history, but Auschwitz itself is the setting of only two short chapters. It's Levi's life as a free man in all its richness that dominates. His focus is on chemistry and its effect on his life -- from his first experiments in his friend's brother's prohibited lab to tales of his university years to accounts of interesting jobs he's had analyzing strange chemical phenomena. Each of the twenty-one short chapters is named for an element (argon, potassium, etc.) that plays a central role in the chapter's story. Throughout the book the war is there, however, and he writes of the growing sense of being a Jewish outsider in Italy and the looming sense of doom as the war progresses.

I was drawn to the book because I was interested in how a chemist (who can write really well) sees the world. Levi's love of chemistry comes shining through -- especially his curiosity about chemical analysis and problem-solving. I left this book thinking more about the chemical world and how little I understand of it. I also left it eager to read Levi's account of Auschwitz, which I highly recommend along with this book.

Първия разказ чета в един бавен следобед – нещо трябва да се случи, но не се. И за следобеда, и за разказа се отнася. Няма я химията. Не след дълго съзнавам, че Примо Леви е от авторите, на които трябва да позволиш да развият историите си; да ги омесят и бухнат във фурната, за да се разнесе ароматът им. По странен, свой си начин, авторът на Периодичната система ми напомня да забавя темпото, да не бързам всичко да ми се случи сега; прошепва ми, че има време, хвърля ми камъче и ме кани да правим жабки на едно голямо езеро. Езерото на живота е, езерото на историите – а в случая май са тъждествени.

Леви (какво Леви, Примо!) е душеприказчик, когото бих поканила на трапезата – да извади някоя история от пазвата си и да я разпръсне като солта на живота.

Тази история е съчинена и все пак нищо чудно да е вярна.

Примо, също като Миленко Йергович, като Етгар Керет, като Дино Будзати, носи едно специфично усещане – смесица между хумор, сериозност и човечност. Ако можех да съдя за характера на писателя по краткия му разказ, бих обсипала тези сладкодумци с комплименти и бих ги поканила да пием по нещо. И това е, което грабва, в тази книга – историите не са необикновени в своята фантазност; историите не грабват, а прилягат. Историите са на всекиго, историите са споделеност. И това е, което поддържа пламъка на разказването; причината, поради която продължаваме да се нуждаем от истории – победата на съпоставката, победата на съпричастието, триумфът на човешкото, на това-можеше-да-ми-се-случи-на-мен. Нещо толкова важно и нужно, когато човешкото ни тежи. (Чувствах се по-близо до мъртвите, отколкото до живите; и виновен, че съм човек, понеже човекът беше построил Аушвиц.)

Навярно поради цялата си човечност и скромност, Примо не държи да ни направи съучастници в най-тъмните си истории. За него е достатъчно да продължи да разказва, спомените му имат плодотворна сила и той избуява като растение, възползвайки се словесно от тях.

Примо (най-безцеремонно го отъждествявам с героя, няма как иначе) е приключенец – от тези, дето се съмняваме, че са съществували – затваря децата в тебеширени кръгове, изкачва върхове и яде мечешко, жени се за непозната жена на безлюден остров, съчинява си минало по свой вкус и литва като Супермен през векове, меридиани и паралели.

При все това той в никой случай не се е разсеял във фантасмагории; напротив – здраво стъпил на земята е, където е цялата му химия, където са елементите, които познава най-добре (в това число и човешките). А мъдростта му е привична (Дори и в нашия занаят светът е голям и има място за всички: той това не го знае, но аз знам.). Особено когато изкуството престава да е дълго.

"Perfection belongs to the narrated events, not to those we live"

The part autobiographical, part essay/short story(?) book of a chemist-author who survived Auswitz, left me ambivalent.

The book is named as a pun on an almost chronological tabling of anecdotes from the life of a (not ordinary) chemist. Each of the 21 chapters are tied loosely with the Elements which form the title of the chapters. And yet all chemistry is incidental.

I loved chemistry in school, so much so that, I was able to understand the tests/experiments/processes described in the book. So the book seemed fascinating and at the same time like a scholarly article. The author slips in multiple metaphors from the world of chemistry and projects it onto the world.

The couple of fiction stories inbetween - I did not find the place for the books (and maybe should have been kept outside like Lanthanides). The anecdotes linked with his life were a bit of mixed bag to me. I could not help feeling, this book in itself was more important to the author than the honesty of the content.

Mixed bag. Not for everyone.

Levi names each chapter by a different chemical element and compares and draws parallels between the elements, or their characteristics, with the features and traits of his experiences. What a marvellous idea.

The Periodic Table (1975) is a collection of illustratively written autobiographical essays about the authors triumphs, tribulations, and ordinary events that took place in Italy: before, during, and after WWII.

Primo Levi (1919-1987) was an Italian-Jewish chemist and Holocaust survivor. In an originale manner he narrates the story of his life mostly through his observations and interactions with people, his evolving profession, and environment by which he was surrounded.

The book also includes two fictional tales, each named by a certain element too, but embodied in alchemical symbolism. He must have written them during the time he needed an escape from the uncomfortable reality. They seem to be a metaphor for Levi's state of emotion (I sensed frustration and regret) and discontent with his personal life and endured discrimination.

I would have liked if some of the stories topics were a bit more intimate. Also, the book did not include the period the author spent in the concentration camp. Although, Levi, mentions in the book that this was done for logical reasons as he wrote about it in two of his other books. But their absence felt like a gap in the periodic table and a break in the timeline. I would highly recommend this book to those interested in chemistry and learning about the Piedmont Jewish community.

Elogio della chimica...
...quella solitaria, inerme e appiedata, a misura d’uomo. Quella dei fondatori, che non lavoravano in équipe ma soli, in mezzo all’indifferenza del loro tempo, per lo più senza guadagno, e affrontavano la materia senza aiuti, col cervello e con le mani, con la ragione e la fantasia; quella che rappresenta il ponte fra il mondo delle carte e il mondo delle cose; col suo sapore forte ed amaro, che è poi quello della vita.
La tavola periodica consiste in una raccolta di ventuno episodi, legati in qualche modo ad altrettanti elementi chimici. Episodi in gran parte autobiografici, quasi tutti scritti da Primo Levi nella piena maturità. Sono soprattutto ricordi di gioventù: di studente prima e, poi, di esperto chimico; pochi qui i riferimenti al suo passato nei campi di concentramento di Se questo è un uomo.
Primo Levi aveva soprattutto una mente pensante, scientifica, curiosa, pratica, ma anche un cuore poetico.
La sua scrittura è piana, sintetica e semplice: riesce a comunicare, con grande compostezza e dignità, il suo entusiasmo e la sua passione, che gli hanno permesso di rimanere fedele alla vera nobiltà dell’Uomo, acquisita in cento secoli di prove ed errori, consistita nel farsi signore della materia.
E solo chi può scorgere nel sistema periodico di Mendeleev una poesia più alta e solenne di tutte le poesie, può esprimersi con tanta appassionata lucidità e trasmettere con tanta sensibilità l’amore per la materia, per la natura e per l’Uomo.

I have to admit as I spent most of my science and chemistry lessons staring out the window daydreaming my knowledge of the Periodic Table sucks, Primo Levi has now changed all that. Using each element to fascinating effect in his own experiences, from the classrooms and studies of his youth through fascist Italy to his capture by the Nazi's and ultimate test of the human spirit to rally and remain mentally strong to survive to tell of the aftermath also. The linking of stories to eponymous elements is in a few cases purely metaphorical — in the opening piece the inertness of Argon represents characteristics of his ancestors, Sephardic Jews in Savoy. Levi worked as a chemist, however, and a thread running through the books is what it is to be a chemist, to wrestle with matter; the connection of the stories with elements is usually quite immediate, though sometimes circumstantial rather than substantial. One thing I learned in the second half of reading, he was a seriously intelligent guy and as a free-lance chemical consultant and problem solver the talk baffled the hell out of me!. The shifts in tone make this stand out from similar writings and each small segment can quickly change your perceptions. An interesting and important piece of true life story telling.

Levi is writing on himself before, in the time and after the hollocust. Is there life after this. He choose death. Great achievement and must read

Chemistry as a metaphor for life. Blurb writers love phrases like that. They are short, succinct and intriguing. But how hard is it to write something that would deliver on such a promise?
I had never read anything quite like ‘The Periodic Table’. It more than delivered – it exceeded my expectations. The book is a beautiful marriage of life and science, perfectly accessible to a regular reader. The truth is that anything can be fascinating provided it’s explained by a person truly passionate about the subject (and it doesn’t hurt if they are also mind-blowingly good writers like Primo Levi).

You might know Primo Levi as an Auschwitz survivor and you might worry that ‘The Periodic Table’ would be too dark of a read. But it is not ‘If This is A Man’. Holocaust is still lurking around shadowy corners of this book and it is quite obvious that Primo Levi would be a different kind of writer if it weren’t for that trauma (some might even ask if he would be a writer at all) but this collection of anecdotes, recollections, allegory and glimpses is, I would venture to say, an ultimately almost positive (if not downright optimistic) work.

The very first story might be a little odd and discouraging but either soldier on or skip it altogether – it’s not really representative of the rest of the book. I found reading about the intricacies of a Piedmont dialect with its borrowings from Hebrew rather fascinating. I am interested in the process in which words change their meaning entirely (not unlike they did in cockney rhyming slang) but I can appreciate that such linguistic elaborations are not to everyone’s taste.

Further chapters – each named after a different chemical element document Levi’s life as a chemist and they are often funny, tender and bitter-sweet. They are intersected with fictional short stories which read like fairy tales and where chemical elements take on almost mythical qualities.
The most striking story is the penultimate one in which Levi comes across a German who oversaw his work in the laboratory in Auschwitz. Like a true scientist Levi wants to rationalise and understand his feelings. He wants to know what it is he expects from the encounter. His struggle to organise the swarm of emotions is probably the most touching part of the book.

‘The Periodic Table’ is not a science book, whoever calls it that has no idea what they are talking about. It’s a book about the love for science. It’s about what every scientist wants us to believe – that their subject is not some obscure knowledge of interest to few, but it’s life and reality that makes us breathe, move and think. The last story in the collection spells it out for you in case you missed the more subtle hints in the previous chapters. I liked it a lot because it reminded of the times when, as a little girl, I fantasised about the history of atoms in my body – where they had been before me. I imagined them as a part of dinosaurs, king and queens, old houses, wild horses… The story is Levi’s crown argument for his thesis that it is only through matter (not sprit) we can know the universe. (And this is a thesis I can easily believe in – it appeals to me. I am not what you call ‘spritual’).

If you made it this far in my review, I will reward you with a link to an excellent interview with Primo Levi in the Paris Review of Books: http://www.theparisreview.org/intervi...

Една уникална книга. Всеки от разказите е кръстен на химичен елемент. Леви желае света и хората да са ясни както химията. Но при режимът, в който той попада истината не е ценност. Точно тази липса на яснота, и замаскираните лъжи пораждат омразата в хората, които с лекота погубват милиони човешки животи.

Но дори ако сте като мен и химията ви се струва толкова чужда, че спокойно може да я приеметеза за магьосничество, пак има какво да научите от тези разкази.

After reading If This Is a Man • The Truce and The Drowned and the Saved by Primo Levy, I was a little disappointed with The Periodic Table because I felt it was a bit uneven. Here, Primo Levy uses elements (Argon, Hydrogen, Zinc, Iron, etc) from the periodic table (he was a chemist professionally and this saved him at Auschwitz) to describe 21 stories related to his life before, during and after his imprisonment. Some are great stories and often have a great ironic sense of humor. Others, well, they spoke less to me. I appreciated the idea as a motif, but as stated earlier, I feel the writing was uneven.

In terms of the stories I appreciated most were:
- Iron is the story of his capture as a partisan before being captured by the Nazis.
- Uranium is the story of his life after the war in customer service
- Vanadium is a confrontation with a former SS after the war
- Carbon is a more fantastical story about how we are all connected and closes the volume

Fino's Reviews of Books about the Holocaust
Nonfiction:
If This Is A Man/The Truce by Primo Levy
The Periodic Table by Primo Levy
The Drowned and the Saved by Primo Levy
The Night by Elie Wiesel
Auschwitz by Laurence Rees
Fiction:
The Tatooist of Auschwitz by Heather Morris
Cilka's Journey by Heather Morris
Travel to Krakow to visit Auschwitz:
Krakow:City Guide [Blue Guides]

From the Concluding Section of the Book:

"The reader, at this point, will have realized for some time now that this is not a chemical treatise: my presumption does not reach so far - 'ma voix est foible, et meme un peu profane.' Nor is it an autobiography, save in the partial and symbolic limits in which every piece of writing is autobiographical, indeed every human work; but it is in some fashion a history. It is - or would have liked to be - a micro-history......"

The point is made very clear by Primo Levi himself. But what is to be considered here is that Primo Levi was a Jew/prisoner in Auschwitz and among the handful few who survived the Holocaust. Thus, the micro-history becomes an important document of the time. I had already read P. Levi's Survival in Auschwitz and was struck by his account. It was like a third party observation seeking no sympathy and passing no judgment. Yet, the impact was poignant. Levi succeeds in this book as well to convey the message in 'a seemingly disinterested third party style but with a powerful after effects'.

Here is a snippet from one of the episodes in which he speaks of his life after Auschwitz:

"...I had returned from captivity three months before and was living badly. The things I had seen and suffered were burning inside of me, I felt closer to the dead than the living, and felt guilty at being a man, because men had built Auschwitz, and Auschwitz had gulped down millions of human beings, and many of my friends, and a woman who was dear to my heart....."

Finally:

The episodes are organized under the title of chemical elements in the Periodic Table. Each element is symbolic of an event or a person that appears in that episode. Being a chemist, Levi knew the qualities of each element and the way they react. Like a chemistry teacher, he introduces the element to a novice in chemistry (a lay reader) and then all of a sudden jumps from chemistry to history. The whole history of Levi's family from its ancestry to his present state - a survivor of Auschwitz - is narrated in this book. History is a good teacher. So, read it.

Un gentiluomo della parola. La grazia della sua scrittura nell’ esprimere i concetti è ciò che mi fa amare la letteratura.