3 Transgressive Legacies of Memory

In a book called Holocaust Testimonies: The Ruins of Memory, Lawrence L. Langer noted that the common aspect of verbal and written testimonies provided by various witnesses is 'the struggle with the impossible task of making their recollections of camp experience coalesce with the rest of their lives .... Each work reflects not defiance but a basic human need to interpret the meaning of one's experience, or to pierce the obscurities that shroud it in apparent meaninglessness' (1991: 3, 57). It is precisely this comprehension impetus that drove Italian writer and first-generation survivor Primo Levi to write his award-winning books beginning with the very early Se questa e un uomo (If This is a Man, 1947) and continuing with La Tregua (The Truce, 1963), Storie naturali (Natural Histories, 1966), Viz io di forma (Formal Defect, 1971) and the much-appreciated II sistema periodico (The Periodic Table, 1975).1 The aspect that distinguishes The Periodic Table from the bther works is the summative and intrinsically humanist intent of combining in narrative form the author's technical skills as a chemist with his experience as a camp inmate and Holocaust survivor. Hard to classify in terms of genre due to its intriguing mix of technical science, poetic mythology and life writing, this piece is often referred to as a memoir, 'a condensed Buildungsroman,' (Gordon 2001: 140) a 'symbolic autobiography' (Scheiber 2007: 47) or 'an intellectual biography,' (Guiliani 2003: 7) and even a mystery; each description covers but a limited array of this work's many facets. In The Periodic Table, the ethical concept of integrity as related to {personal) history, research and writing is closely associated to Levi's reflections on humanity. His main concern is human probity or the lack thereof, pa rticularly in connection with the problematics of moral survival and the consequences of traumatic history for the present. Equally, Levi stresses man's lack of rectitude in relationship with other humans and with nature by establishing connections between his family's history, his preand post-World War II experiences and the physical world of chemistry. Additionally, integrity and humankind are examined at the mythical, philosophical and literary levels.