PRIMO LEVI FORUM 2011 

    

NOV 7 | THE MARK OF THE CHEMIST

Museum of Jewish Heritage | 36 Battery Park Place, NYC 

November 7 at 7 pm | Box office: 646.437.4202
Admission: $20, $15 MJH, CPL members, $10 for students 

 

Theatrical reading of Primo Levi's writings on science and life. 

Featuring John Turturro and Joan Acocella.  

Soundscape by composer and virtuoso Marco Cappelli.  

Co-presented with Centro Internazionale di Studi Primo Levi and Teatro Stabile, Turin. English premiere. 

 

NOV 8 | SCIENCE & DYSTOPIA 

NYU Casa Italiana Zerilli Marimó. 24 West 12th Street 

November 8 at 5 pm to 8 pm | Admission free, seating is limited on a first come, first serve basis. 

 

Readings and dialogues on Primo Levi's science fiction.  

Film Screening: Sleeping Beauty in the Fridge, RAI, 1979, based on Primo Levi's short story. Co-directed by the writer for the Italian television. Italian w/English subtitles (16 min.) 

 

Paola Mieli (psychoanalyst, Après-Coup,New York, Paris), Gérard Haddad (psychoanalyst, Paris. Author of "Lumière des astres éteints", Grasset 2011), Daniela Schiller (neuroscientist, Mount Sinai, New York).

 

 

FROM THE READING

 

The door opens. Six candidates will be examined in the mornings. The seventh will not. I am the seventh, I have to return to work.

In the afternoon it is my turn. Alex looks at me blackly on the doorstep: he feels himself in some way responsible for my miserable appearance. He dislikes me because I am Italian, because I am Jewish and because of all of us, I am the one furthest from his sergeants' ideal of virility. He shows a profound disbelief in my chances for the examination.

 

We enter. There is only Doktor Pannwitz. Alex, beret in hand, speaks to him in an undertone: "an Italian, has been here only three months, already half kaput... He claims he's a chemist..." I feel like Oedipus in front of the Sphinx. I am aware that the job at stake is important; yet I feel a mad desire to disappear, not to take the test. Pannwitz is tall, thin, blond and sits formidably behind a writing-table. I, Häftling 174,517, stand in his office - shining, clean and ordered - and I feel I would leave a dirty stain whatever I touched. When he finishes writing, he raises his eyes and looks at me.

 
THANKS

The Primo Levi Forum is made possible through the generous support of the Cahnman Foundation, the Viterbi Family Foundation and Dr. Claude Ghez who established the opening night performance in memory of Nella and Giuseppe Treves.
The new logo of CPL  is designed by Jonathan Wajskol.
THE AUSCHWITZ EXPERIMENT

Massimo Bucciantini (University of Siena)  

Auschwitz Experiment, Einaudi, 2011 

 

First of all, let us make some sense of the title, taking a cue from the words of Primo Levi: "Thousands of individuals, differing in age, condition, origin, language, culture and customs, are enclosed within barbed wire: there they live a regular, controlled life which is identical for all and inadequate to all needs." This is the beginning of one of the most celebrated passages of If This is a Man, a genuine description of a mental experiment where every term has been chosen with a maximum of care and precision, exactly like the procedures in a scientific context. As if this were not enough, this passage is preceded by a word of warning that underlines the importance of the experiment and strengthens the conciseness and the terminological rigor all the more: "We would also like to consider that the Lager was pre-eminently a gigantic biological and social experiment" (p. 93). Read