Primo Levi. Chemistry, Languages and Literary Style

Abstract

Twenty-five years after Levi’s tragic demise, the deepest links between his scientific education and his literary work are still waiting for a full investigation. Levi himself repeatedly insisted he was a writer not despite his being a chemist but thanks to it: yet, this statement is oft-quoted but rarely considered seriously. Levi himself has openly revealed his chemical spontaneous approach, his insight, concerning his own psychological and intellectual behaviour in the Lager and in his thought after it. It was the ‘naturalistic’ approach he got from chemistry which made of Levi a ‘saved one’. Most Levi scholars have emphasized the analogy between his style and the chemical analysis. Few have wondered why there must be such a strict relationship between chemistry and the need for a strong linguistic rigour, i.e., what is the chemical specificity of the problem. Such relationship, in fact, is the outcome of the very historical development of chemistry, which consolidated itself through «a terrible confusion of languages» (Levi). The repeated statements by Levi on the conditions for his own writing, allude to a true discourse on style.