Risa Sodi
AN INTERVIEW WITH PRIMO LEVI
RS:
A recent book by the historian H. Stuart Hughes profiles six
Italian Jewish writers, you among them.
1
Does it seem a bit strained
to you to call all six of you ''Jewish writers?"
PL:
Yes, in Italy, it is quite difficult to apply a label such as ''Jewish
writer" or "non-Jewish writer." In my case, it was the Americans, not
the Italians, who first used it. In Italy, I'm known as a writer who is
occasionally Jewish. Not in America. The last time I was in
America, in 1985, it was as if they had pinned the Magen David on
me again! Nonetheless, I don't mind . As far as I'm concerned, it's
fairly easy to define me as aJew because almost all of my books deal
with Judaism in one way or another and also because I had the
adventure of Auschwitz by dint of being a Jew. Certainly, for a
writer like Moravia, for Svevo, or also for Ginzburg, it's extremely
difficult to speak of Jewish writers.
If
Ginzburg weren't a Jew, it
would hardly change anything in her books. Bassani, however, is
another matter. In fact I remember Hughes calls him "the only real
Jew" or "the first real Jew" - I don't quite remember the phrase he
uses. As far as I'm concerned, my science fiction books have almost
nothing to do with Judaism, and
The Monkey's Wrench
is not a "Jewish
book" either. All the same, I gladly accept the label ''Jewish writer. "
RS:
At the beginning of
I sommersi e
i
salvati,
you quote from "The
Rime of the Ancient Mariner" :
Since then, at an uncertain hour ,
That agony returns;
And till my ghastly tale is told
This heart within me burns.
vv . 582-85
After reading that , I wondered, is it ever possible to stop "telling?"
PL:
You read the answer in that same book. Some of my friends,
1.
H.
Stuart Hughes,
Prisoners of H ope: The Silver Age
of
the Italian J ews,
1924-1974
(Harvard
University Press: Cambridge, MA, 1983) . The six authors proflled are
Italo Svevo , Alberto Moravia, Giorgio Bassani , Natalia Ginzburg, Carlo Levi and
Primo Levi.
