On Reading If This Is a Man

Description

In 2012, Einaudi and the Centro Internazionale di Studi Primo Levi in Turin published a new annotated edition of Primo Levi’s seminal work If This Is a Man, with commentary by Alberto Cavaglion. On Reading If This Is a Man is Cavaglion’s introduction to that edition. His essay offers new insights, historical context, and detailed commentary that deepen the understanding of Levi’s text.

“My humble commentary on If This is a Man aims above all to dig into the rich literary mine from which many of its words and expressions come. To give just one example of this mine’s material diversity, one of its ores, Dante, lies beside one of its gems, Baudelaire. The commentary also explores the relationship between what Levi called its “grammatical derivations” (for example, the frequent use of oxymorons and repeated conjectures, the many hypothetical passages) and a worldview “opposed to everything infinite,” fascinated but at the same time suspicious of two extremes – both the demons and degenerates and the saints and martyrs.”

About the Author:

Alberto Cavaglion is a professor of history at the University of Florence. He curated the 2000 and 2012 editions of Primo Levi’s Se questo è un uomo (If This is a Man) and has written extensively on the history and culture of Italian Jews, with a particular focus on the Jews of Piedmont. His publications include Felice Momigliano’s correspondence with Giuseppe Prezzolini and Benedetto Croce, (1984, 1985), Ebrei senza saperlo (2002), La Resistenza spiegata a mia figlia (2005), Il senso dell’arca (2006) and Gli ebrei nell’Italia unita, Milano (2012).