SemiAntics

The Periodic Table by Primo Levi is by far the best book that I have read in recent months. I learned about Levi in my Genocide, The Holocaust, and Human Rights class last semester. Primo Levi was Italian chemist and a Jew who grew up in Mussolini’s Italy. He joined the Italian resistance during WWII and was captured and deported to Auschwitz. There he was put to work in the chemistry lab at Buna. After the war, he dedicated much of his time to bearing witness to the horror of The Holocaust in order to prevent its happening again. He committed suicide in 1987.

I thought that The Periodic Table would be all about chemistry. It wasn’t. The book is a memoir of Levi’s extraodinary life written through chemical metaphors. Several chemical compounds had a great affect on Levi’s life. For example, Levi attributed his survival of Auschwitz to his job in the chemistry lab and especially to the element, cerium, which he stole from the lab and made into lighter flints to trade for food.

One needn’t be a chemist to enjoy this book. It is more philosophical than anything else. If you do happen to be a chemist, the book has all the more meaning.

A snipit from the chapter on Argon and the noble gases-
“The little that I know about my ancestors presents many similarities to these gases. Not all of them were materially inert, for that was not granted to them. On the contrary, they were—or had to be—quite active, in order to earn a living and because of a reigning morality that held that “he who does not work shall not eat.” But there is no doubt that they were inert in their inner spirits, inclined to disinterested speculation, witty discourses, elegant, sophisticated, and gratuitous discussion. It can hardly be by chance that all the deeds attributed to them, though quite various, have in common a touch of the static, an attitude of dignified abstention, of voluntary (or accepted) relegations to the margins of the great river of life.”