Already twice winner (in 1963, first edition of the prize, with La Tregua and in 82 with Se non ora, when?), The writer was honored during the final evening of the 2022 edition of the Prize, that of 60 years. Here the senator remembers him for life
I first met the writer, then the man. It happened while reading Primo Levi’s masterpiece If this a
man, who originally struggled to find a publisher. Already in the opening poem, almost a cry, the one that contains the verse Meditate that this state, I recognized myself: Without hair and without name / Without more strength to remember / Empty eyes and cold womb / Like a frog in winter. I devoured that book. I suffered enormously reading it and at the same time it gave me the feeling that it was almost an invention: not because it did not correspond to what I had seen, far from it, but because of the author’s ability to write down the unspeakable.
I sent a letter to Primo Levi, a letter from an unknown girl, as in the end I would have remained for him all my life. I did it because the Alberto of whom he spoke in If this a man, his fellow prisoner, his friend, I was deluded that he could be my father, who was also called Alberto and became ashes in the wind of Auschwitz. Primo Levi rewrote me, and I met the man. He answered almost coldly, perhaps disturbed by the unexpected impact of his masterpiece, he still didn’t realize he was. The Alberto I am talking about is not the one she is looking for, he let me know. I was upset with my tone, but over the next few years I was hungry for his books. To me, who had been a frog in winter, even though my hair had grown back, his writings served tremendously. They helped me to fully understand what I had experienced, to find the words to express it.
Primo Levi was a witness, and I too have spoken in schools for about thirty years. was an essential duty even if very painful. And on one point I have always said words similar to his: I don’t forget, I don’t forgive, but I don’t hate. I don’t forget anything, I try to remember the faces, the colors, the atmospheres; I do not forgive, because I cannot forgive such a crime. But if I had hated, I would have become like my tormentors, while I am different from them: I choose love.
For sure our relationship was for Primo Levi one among many in his life, while for me his figure – the writer above all, and then the man – was a milestone. It was also fundamental Truce. I deeply understood that title, that absolutely necessary respite for survivors. Whether it was the tour of half of Europe to go home, a time to treat your wounds in a clinic or stand on the top of a mountain before returning down. Because you can’t get out of those gates and go back to your house. You cannot do it, even if the family affections that Primo Levi found, and that I did not find, await you. Coming home after the concentration camp like a landing, like arriving from Mars to Earth where no one understands what you are saying. That is why a truce is needed. It serves to give you back the sense of humanity, the little that remains after what you have seen; it gives you the strength to understand those who do not understand you because you are difficult, because you are wild, because you are one who tells stories that no one wants to believe …
Later in my life, I had another exchange of letters with Primo Levi. This time after I had read The drowned and the saved. I, who was much simpler, less profound than him, had always considered myself a saved person. So at that point I wrote him again and asked him: But even if the saved are submerged, as you say, where is the difference? And he wrote me that he wasn’t there. I understood then why I had gone through times over the years when no one understood me, why it had been so difficult to answer my children when they asked me for the number on my arm. We thought we were saved, but what they had done to us was such that they had condemned us to be submerged.
September 3, 2022 (change September 3, 2022 | 22:46)
© Time.News