Abstract
Primo Levi was the twentieth century’s preeminent witness—preeminent both in general and, more specifically, among the voices that sought to draw attention to the shape of its central disfiguring tragedy. Levi attained this position because, as Philip Roth wrote of him shortly after his death, he had “the moral stamina and intellectual poise of a twentieth century Titan:”1 Levi’s name will forever be associated with Auschwitz, where he was imprisoned between February 1944 and January 1945. Indeed, he himself later said that but for his time there he would probably not have become a writer.2 I find this hard to credit in view of his exceptional wisdom about life and the world even as early as his mid-20s, when he composed his memoir of Auschwitz, If This Is a Man.3
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
Primo Levi, “Afterword,” in Primo Levi, If This Is a Man and The Truce, trans. Stuart Woolf (London: Abacus, 1987), 397.
See also Ferdinando Camon, Conversations with Primo Levi (Marlboro, Vermont: The Marlboro Press, 1989), 60–61.
Alexander Stille, “Foreword,” in Jean Améry, A t the Mind’s Limits: Contemplations by a Survivor on Auschwitz and its Realities, trans. Sidney Rosenfeld and Stella P. Rosenfeld (New York: Schocken, 1990), vii.
Primo Levi, If Not Now, When?, trans. William Weaver (London: Abacus, 1987), 37.
Levi, Moments of Reprieve, trans. Ruth Feldman (London: Michael Joseph, 1986), 54.
Levi, Collected Poems, trans. Ruth Feldman and Brian Swann (London: Faber and Faber, 1988), 16.
Editor information
Copyright information
© 2016 Norman Geras
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Geras, N. (2016). Hope, Shame, and Resentment: Primo Levi and Jean Améry. In: Vuohelainen, M., Chapman, A. (eds) Interpreting Primo Levi. Italian and Italian American Studies. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137435576_2
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137435576_2
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, New York
Print ISBN: 978-1-349-56392-0
Online ISBN: 978-1-137-43557-6
eBook Packages: HistoryHistory (R0)