The Periodic Table: A Chemical Narrative Framework for Primo Levi's Life

That is what nature does: it draws the fern's grace from the putrefaction of the forest floor…

The Periodic Table, which I read for the Classics Club Challenge, is author Primo Levi's autobiography told in a series of elements (and translated into English by Raymond Rosenthal). Levi worked as an industrial chemist and survived a year in Auschwitz after being captured while fighting in the Italian resistance against the Nazis. Each chapter in his book centers on a different element and how it ties into some facet of his life.

I loved this unique, poetic approach to the elements. What an element symbolizes or what its association is with his life might be subtle. But it's the organizing principle of his life's narrative (at least the one he shares here) - sometimes because a memorable episode of his life involved the use of a given element, other times because someone or something reminded him of it and its properties.

There might be an important lesson from chemistry.

… one must distrust the almost-the-same (sodium is almost the same as potassium, but with sodium nothing would have happened), the practically identical, the approximate, the or-even, all surrogates, and all patchwork. The differences can be small, but they can lead to radically different consequences…

But it isn't as if he spends the entirety of the text talking in chemistry-related terms. There's poetry too, and an exploration of philosophy and emotions. As when he's captured as a partisan.

During those days, when I was waiting courageously enough for death, I harbored a piercing desire for everything, for all imaginable human experiences, and a I cursed my previous life, which it seemed to me I had profited from little or badly, and I felt time running through my fingers, escaping from my body minute by minute, like a hemorrhage that can no longer be stanched.

Or when he falls in love.

In a few hours we knew that we belonged to each other, not for one meeting but for life, as in fact has been the case. In a few hours I felt reborn and replete with new powers, washed clean and cured of a long sickness, finally ready to enter life with joy and vigor…

And the poetry and chemistry freely mix too, as during his stint at a mine analyzing the soil for the presence of certain elements, he compares the elusive nickel to a sprite darting out of reach "with long perked ears, always ready to flee from the blows of the investigating pickax, levying you with nothing to show for it."

The use of the elements lends a certain weight and permanence to his life's story; he's tying himself to the stuff of the Earth. At the same time, his forays into chemistry often mirror the messiness and transitory qualities of his life; it's not all about simple, tidy formulae, though it feels like a triumph when a formula turns out as expected. Throughout the book he unearths episodes of his life and examines them. What holds them together? He constructs a loose narrative framework of chemistry and poetry. And somehow his life's story can hang together on that. (Which raises other questions about what constitutes a narrative, and how does one find meaning in life? He found an approach unique to his own life.)

Week in Seven Words #45

chapped
My knuckles crack open in the cold.

culmination
All eight candles are lit along with the presiding shamash; the light they give is defiant and cheerful.

fragment
A slender journal in Hebrew, and the story of a girl who lived decades ago and died young. She left a deep impression on her teacher, who wrote about her elevated spirit and discerning mind; this teacher wanted to preserve her writing and keep her memory alive. In her black and white photo she looks serious and severely lovely.

listing
The project drifts off course and onto some rocks. It groans, tilts, and waits in weary silence for intervention.

peepers
Their eyes appear on the screen as two blank white circles on a black square. The circles squeeze to nothing and spring to full circumference; they waver and blur and shift from side to side. They seem to belong to a cartoon character blinking out of a dark room.

tight-lipped
My front door won't admit me, and at first I'm not sure why.

twinkle
Snow drifts down in the late afternoon. It's the best time of day for it, knowing that there are warm places waiting for me at the end of the day's work.

Spotlight on Pancake

Over at the bookworm blog there's an "author fun facts" post, encouraging bloggers to share some interesting facts about an author they've come across. It's a great idea and will hopefully introduce people to authors they haven't heard about.

This week I checked out the collection of short stories by Breece D'J Pancake (unfortunately I forgot the book at a friend's place, and I'll have to wait for a break in the wild sleet and snowstorm to head out and retrieve it). I found out about Pancake through the Omnivoracious blog's wonderful post, "The Books of the States", which recommended good books and authors from each state in the US. I also read about Pancake in this NPR piece.

Some facts about Breece D'J Pancake:

- He died in 1979, a couple of months before his 27th birthday. Suicide, most people say (a handful think it was an accident).

- He was born in West Virginia, and his stories are rooted in his home state.

- He published 6 stories in his lifetime, which were compiled posthumously with 6 unpublished stories into one volume: The Stories of Breece D'J Pancake.

- According to wikipedia, the 'D' stands for Dexter, the 'J' for John, and that D'J was a misprint of the initials D.J. in The Atlantic (the wikipedia article also mentions his conversion to Catholicism)

- He's an acclaimed writer who's been compared to Hemingway (including in a non-literary sense; in addition to the way both authors died, they also both loved and spent a lot of time outdoors). Pancake's skill, craft, substance, and clarity, however, are considered uniquely his own.

- From his biographer:

"He'd stay up real late at night, maybe four or six hours later, he'd wake in the wee hours of the morning and maybe write some more. His work ethic was incredible. His fiction is very tight and very well-phrased. And that comes from writing over and over and over again. And some of these stories, he wrote maybe twenty times, maybe ten handwritten drafts, then typewritten drafts..."

Ben Franklin and formative books

I've been reading Walter Isaacson's biography of Ben Franklin and thinking about the descriptions of Franklin's childhood in Puritan Boston, including books he cited as favorites or key influences:

- John Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress
"A central theme of Bunyan's book... was contained in its title: progress, the concept that individuals, and humanity in general, move forward and improve based on a steady increase of knowledge and the wisdom that comes from conquering adversity." (Isaacson, pg. 25)

- Plutarch's Lives
"... also based on the premise that individual endeavor can change the course of history for the better." (Isaacson, pg. 25)

- Bonifacius: Essays to Do Good by Cotton Mather
"'If I have been,' Franklin wrote to Cotton Mather's son... 'a useful citizen, the public owes the advantage of it to that book.'" (Isaacson, pg. 26)

It's interesting to consider how these books shaped Franklin (and also what ideas he accepted, and which ones he ultimately disregarded and discarded, such as Calvinism's notion of predestination); remember also that Franklin did not come from a wealthy home - his father was a tallow chandler, and Franklin did not have any sort of extensive schooling - these books were available to him at home, and at age 10 he started apprenticing at an older brother's print shop (an education in and of itself and an experience that influenced the course of his life). A lot of personal initiative then, from an early age. And while his knowledge and intellectual endeavors expanded throughout his life, these books seemed to form the germ of his later thinking and his attitude towards an individual's personal development and civic responsibilities (undertaken out of a sense of personal duty).


I wonder what books are considered foundational by modern young readers. There are different religious texts; and what about secular books? Which books did you find left a lasting impression on you, helped shape your ideas (to whatever extent and for whatever duration), impacted decisions you've made or values you've cultivated and considered important? Did you find these books in your home, on your parents' bookshelves? Were they given to you by a good friend or teacher?

Also, to what extent were the books influential - did you recognize them as being important or life-altering shortly after reading them? Or only years later? (or do you mostly just say they were, as part of the narrative you're constructing of your life and how you got to where you are?)