Primo Levi: Literature and Life

(3 Credit Hours) · Undergraduate

Primo Levi has been called “a major, universally recognized, icon in Holocaust literature” (Geerts), indeed “the witness-writer par excellence,” because “his narrative, poetry and essays about his time in Auschwitz are among the most widely read and most widely lauded of all writings on the Holocaust” (Gordon). Levi was this and more: witness and storyteller, scientist and writer, he was among the greatest authors and moral authorities of the twentieth century. In this course, taught in Italian, we will read Levi’s first and most famous work, Se questo è un uomo (If This is a Man, 1947), a masterpiece and milestone in the Italian tradition, in which Levi recounts his internment in Auschwitz. With Levi, we will ask what it means to live, what it means to be human, in and after the Nazi death camps. With Levi, too, we will broaden our exploration to address vital questions of faith, identity, meaning, truth, responsibility, love, friendship, freedom, diversity, survival, science, and salvation as we read selections from such fundamental works as La tregua (The Truce, 1963); Il sistema periodico (The Periodic Table, 1975); Lilìt e altri racconti (Moments of Reprieve, 1978); and I sommersi e i salvati (The Drowned and the Saved, 1986). Throughout the course we will also make use of materials from the Primo Levi Collection of Notre Dame’s Hesburgh Library, one of the world’s foremost collections dedicated to the study of Primo Levi. Taught in Italian; LIT - Univ. Req. Literature. Ways of Knowing Core designations: Advanced Language and Culture; Fine Arts and Literature.