Coffeeor Water Follower

Il dottor Primo Levi

- I've had enough - he told me. - Currency. Fire me, I am a normal work, perhaps the general markets download the stuff. Or childbirth, I'm leaving, and if one travels, spends less than staying at home, and on the road some way of earning is always at the factory but I do not go anymore.
I told him that we thought about, that you should never make decisions hot, place in a factory is not to be sneezed at, and that anyway it was better if he told me things from the beginning.
Rinaldo joined the university, but it shifts at the factory: take turns unpleasant, changing pace of life and time every week, In short we must get used to not getting used to. In general, people are more successful middle-aged young people.
- No, not a matter of shifts, is that I started cooking. Eight tons of throw. (...)
(Primo Levi, the beginning of the story "The challenge of the molecule, from the book" The manufacturer of mirrors ")

Not many people know, but Primo Levi wrote only "If This Is a Man" and "The Truce". I read with dismay, even major newspapers, some criticism of his work: that Levi was not a writer (!) And it was primarily a diarist (!!). We have things in order: Primo Levi was, first, a Doctor: Doctor in chemistry. As told in his most famous books, was saved from death in Nazi concentration camps for this, there was a chemical factory near the camp of those big and important (there is still but has changed its name) served a pair of people working in the lab and thought it well to look for them among the prisoners. They were just jobs, but stay in the lab, heat, Levi helped to pass the winter. Other reasons why she was saved, apart from luck, was the fact that they have twenty years (over forty is almost always ended in the gas chambers) to know a little 'German, and have come to the camp when it missing little to Liberation. How
still tells himself, Dr. Primo Levi became a writer out of necessity: an inner necessity, could not tell what had happened. But the writer Primo Levi is not an improvisational writer, literary critics and just a little 'common sense to avoid writing and talking rubbish.

I studied a bit '(little) of chemistry, and I'm glad I did because the chemistry is good, and because so I could read other books of Primo Levi, and understand its greatness. Not only that, "If This Is a Man" and "truce", but "The Periodic Table," "The key to star," poems, drugs fairy tales ("Disfilassi" in the "Tales") and much more. For example, this story, which speaks of things very familiar to me: shift work (which affects thousands of people, never forget it), and preparation of raw materials for the most common things in our lives, a paint, a shampoo, a plastic material.
In particular, the fact told here was successful in the factory where I worked three thousand pounds of resin had hardened into the machine (one pot, in essence), making the texture of the stone, very similar in appearance to amber. To clear the car was to enter and split piece pezzo, con il martello pneumatico.
A quel tempo, avevo fotocopiato queste pagine di Levi e le avevo fatte circolare in fabbrica: erano piaciute moltissimo, e mi dispiace molto di non aver potuto a continuare di queste cose, ma così va il mondo.
Il racconto si chiama "La sfida della molecola" ed è pubblicato nel volume "Il fabbricante di specchi", edito da La Stampa; ed è un vero capolavoro, anche se sarà ben difficile trovare un critico letterario che se lo sia letto fino in fondo...

In rete (non so se siano mai state pubblicate in volume: bisogna cercare "Siva Primo Levi" su un motore di ricerca, Siva era la ditta dove Levi fu direttore di produzione) si trovano testimonianze su com'era il dottor Levi, in fabbrica: era infatti dirigente in un'industria di vernici. Il ritratto che ne esce è esattamente quello che ci si aspetta, il ritratto di una gran brava persona, uno di quelli che – in silenzio, lavorando sodo e senza farsi pubblicità – mandano avanti il mondo. Probabile che non fosse una persona particolarmente cordiale, da buon piemontese; ma a me sarebbe piaciuto avere un capo così, un bravo chimico da cui imparare. Per dieci anni ho avuto un buon capo, poi le cose sono cambiate e mi dispiace molto; ma questa è un'altra storia, tutta mia; tiro un sospiro e chiudo.
Ricordo solo un’altra cosa, per chi ne fosse all’oscuro: Primo Levi non fece mai part of the "tour" of the literati. He wore his stories to the newspaper, and tells him to do almost apologizing for the disturbance and they are beautiful stories, written in a clear Italian, exemplary. Clarity of writing is a gift for the few, to the greatest. And being out of that round, the round of letters, I think it has helped a lot in Primo Levi, not so much in his daily life, as in being a writer with a capital. Money aside, better to not frequent certain rooms (TV, publishing, advertising, big bosses ...). Better be with the workers, the best of Faussone "The key to star," Rinaldo best player in this story.