The periodic table

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The periodic system (original title: Il Sistema Periodico ) is a collection of 21 short stories by the Italian author and chemist Primo Levi , which, with a few exceptions, have a direct autobiographical reference. It is named after the periodic table of the elements . The Italian original was published in 1975, the German translation by Edith Plackmeyer was published in 1979 by Aufbau-Verlag in the GDR and in 1987 by Hanser Verlag in the FRG. In October 2006, the Royal Institution of Great Britain voted the book the “best science book ever” (about “best popular science book of all time”).

The periodic system is according to Se questo è un uomo (Eng. Is that a person? ), Which describes his time in Auschwitz, and La Tregua (Eng. The respite ), in which he speaks of his wandering through Eastern Europe after the liberation from the KZ reports, his third autobiographical work.

The elements that appear in the book

content

In 21 chapters, each named after a chemical element , Levi tells partly autobiographical and partly fictional stories. The naming of the individual chapters after an element has content-related references to the chapter or compares the chemical properties of this element with the situations described. The chapters go from Levi's origins as a Piedmontese Jew through his training as a chemist, his experience as an anti-fascist partisan , his imprisonment in Fossoli and in Auschwitz to his life as an industrial chemist after the Second World War .

chapter

The descriptions of the fictional chapters are - like the corresponding chapters in the book - in italics .

  1. argon
    A description of his Jewish-Piedmontese background and the local Jewish special dialect. His ancestors are presented with their peculiarities and peculiarities with love and without judgment. Argon is an inert noble gas and does not enter into any chemical reactions. Levi's Jewish ancestors are withdrawn and inert towards the Christian environment.
  2. hydrogen
    When Levi and a friend were sixteen, they conducted prohibited experiments in their friend's brother's laboratory. There they carry out simple experiments with glass tubes, which they heat up and deform, and use electrolysis to produce hydrogen , which Levi ignites and which burns with a bang. He also explains his ingenious, idealistic thoughts as a teenager and compares them with those of his friend, who has a completely different, far more rational view of the world, even if they have a lot in common.
  3. zinc
    The first year of his chemistry studies, the first attempt in the laboratory is the production of zinc sulfate from zinc and sulfuric acid . In the laboratories he forges the first tender bonds of love.
  4. iron
    His sophomore year. In Sandro Delmastro, Levi finds a kindred spirit and friend with whom he goes hiking in the mountains. So they steel themselves physically, but also intellectually for the fight against the ruling fascism, iron becomes a symbol of their hardening. Sandro Delmastro was shot dead in 1944 as a partisan of the anti-fascist resistance.
  5. potassium
    Because of his Jewish origins and the racial laws in force in Fascist Italy , none of the chemistry professors accepted him as a doctoral candidate . He is doing his doctorate at the physical institute with an assistant of Greek descent. There he works with elemental potassium , which, if he is careless, starts a fire.
  6. nickel
    Levi is picked up by a lieutenant and taken to an actinolite mine, where he is supposed to extract nickel from the overburden , which has become expensive due to the war effort. However, it is not possible to obtain it economically with the resources available to him. Levi only realizes late that with a successful completion of this work he would have supported the ruling system and the war, and so copes very well with the failure.
  7. lead
    A man introducing himself as Rodmund reports on his hikes and experiences that have taken him through Europe for years. He comes from a family that has been searching for and exploiting lead for generations and whose members have the ability to recognize minerals that indicate lead without any formal education. Its origin is not mentioned explicitly and neither is the identity of its destination, the island of Icnusa (ancient name of Sardinia ).
  8. mercury
    The episode takes place shortly after Napoleon's death on the remote island of Tristan da Cunha in the South Atlantic, although the name is not explicitly mentioned. In the 'Nickel' chapter, however, Levi mentions that he wrote the 'Lead' and 'Mercury' chapters during this time and, through a note about Tristan da Cunha that happened to him, he wrote it as the setting for the story 'Mercury' 'chose. Corporal Abrahams lives there alone with his wife and is only visited once a year by a whaler who brings news and supplies. One day he brings two Dutch people with him who face the death penalty in their homeland; a little later Abrahams rescues two Italians from a neighboring island. The constellation of five men and only one woman is very tense, so that the next time the whaler visits, they “order” four women who are paid for with mercury that is found in a cave after a volcanic eruption.
  9. phosphorus
    Levi is lured away from the mine by a Swiss entrepreneur in order to develop a remedy based on phosphorus , or more precisely phosphates, for diabetes in Milan . There he meets a fellow student who recommended him. A certain erotic tension develops between the two, but Giulia is engaged and does not let the relationship deepen.
  10. gold
    Despite the depressing circumstances, Levi lives relatively carefree with friends in Milan, but joins anti-fascist partisans and is captured in December 1943. While in custody, he meets a fellow prisoner who tells him about a flood point for gold that has been used by his family for many generations. Only small amounts of gold are washed ashore there, just enough to live on, but steadily. Levi takes this as a metaphor for the continuity of nature and an ideal of frugality, as a contrast to the hectic, chaotic conditions of the time.
  11. cerium
    To survive the hunger in Auschwitz, Levi steals Auermetall , an alloy of cerium and iron that can be used as flint , in the laboratory where he works . He and his fellow prisoner Alberto can exchange this travel for bread. Alberto is a support for Levi, who always lifts him up when he is in despair. Tragically, Alberto later dies on one of the hunger marches, while Levi survives lying in the infirmary.
  12. chrome
    Some time after the war, Levi's friends sit together and tell each other stories. One of these friends worked for a while in a factory where Levi had worked a decade earlier and reports that a recipe contained a completely nonsensical component, namely ammonium chloride , which none of the employees could explain. Levi then remembers his time in this company and how he had made incorrect batches of a chromate-containing rust inhibitor effective again by adding this compound, which was then included as a component in the recipe. After the war the raw materials were of better quality and the ammonium chloride was no longer necessary, but following the recipe it was still added after many years. In this chapter he also tells how he met his future wife.
  13. sulfur
    This short chapter tells how a lonely worker makes a preparation containing sulfur in a production kettle at night . There is no direct reference to Levi's life.
  14. titanium
    This shortest chapter of the book has a dedication: Felice is the name of Felice, as is the painter who uses the titanium compound titanium white (titanium dioxide, TiO 2 ) to paint the furniture of an apartment white. He's having fun with a child while he's painting. This chapter also has no recognizable reference to the life of Levi.
  15. arsenic
    Levi ran a private chemistry laboratory with a person named Emilio, in which one day an elderly man appeared and brought him a bag of sugar for analysis. What to look for, the man didn't want to or couldn't say, only that Levi should look carefully. Levi finally finds arsenic and learns from his client that he had received the sugar from a competitor. Hardly astonished but also not angry, the man takes the sugar and leaves.
  16. nitrogen
    A lipstick manufacturer wants to know from Levi why its products are worse than the competition and lets him examine both of them. To improve his lipsticks, he wants to use Alloxan , a nitrogen-rich compound, and asks Levi to get him some . Levi finds that chicken droppings contain large amounts of uric acid, which can be used to make alloxan, but fails to successfully synthesize them.
  17. tin
    During the synthesis of a tin compound ( tin (II) chloride ) for a mirror maker, Levi and his partner Emilio realize that the joint laboratory is no longer sustainable, especially since Levi, newly married, now needs a regular income. When the laboratory, which was always a makeshift solution, was closed down, a large extractor hood fell from the fourth floor and barely missed both.
  18. uranium
    As a sales representative, Levi visits a customer who tells him a long, confused story that supposedly happened to him and that he was given a piece of uranium by a fleeing German soldier . He sends Levi a sample so he can see for himself. However, he states that the alleged uranium is cadmium .
  19. silver
    Levi is invited by an initially unrecognized student colleague to attend a dinner for the 25th anniversary of graduation. Despite reluctance, he takes part and meets a colleague from whom he asks a story from his life. He tells how problems arise during the production of silver-containing emulsions for X-ray films and how he works out the unlikely solution through detailed detective work.
  20. Vanadium
    There are problems in the production of a paint, and Levi complains to the German manufacturer that a raw material from this manufacturer must be faulty. First it is turned off, but then a Dr. Müller that the deficiency can be remedied by adding small amounts of the vanadium compound vanadium naptenate (sic!). This typo (it must be vanadium naphthenate) reminds Levi of his stay in Auschwitz, where he also found a Dr. Müller met who wrote α-naptylamine instead of α-naphthylamine . When asked whether he is the said gentleman, it turns out that it really is, and Müller suggests a meeting that Levi shrinks from at first, but then agrees after long hesitation. Shortly before the meeting, Dr. But Müller, so that in the end there is no meeting. In this chapter it becomes clear that Levi, even more than 20 years after his imprisonment in Auschwitz, had not come to terms with this time and he was still tormented by it.
  21. carbon
    The story of a carbon atom in the course of the earth's history, as a metaphor for eternity and transience. A carbon atom was bound in limestone for millions of years and was released in 1840. It is then repeatedly bound in organic molecules through photosynthesis and released again by other organisms. The punch line is that at the end of the story it is in the mind of the author as he sets the last point in the story.

epilogue

  • Natalia Ginzburg wrote an afterword for the German-language edition of the Hanser Verlag , which, like the remarks , was translated by Barbara Kleiner , who also translated other works by Levi. Despite the same last name (Natalia Ginzburg's maiden name is Levi), they are not directly related to each other. However, they share a similar social and cultural background as Italian Jews and experiences during the time of fascism and the Second World War. Ginzburg also puts a strong point on this common background, about half of the epilogue goes into the first chapter Argon , in which Levi literarily processed his origins as a Piedmontese Jew. The explanations of the remaining chapters are less of a scientific interpretation than a cultural-personal one.

Special position of the chapters lead, mercury, sulfur, titanium and carbon

In contrast to the other chapters, the chapters lead and mercury are fictional and were already written during the time when Levi was working in the actinolite mine. In the book (and also here in the chapter description), these two chapters are set in italics in order to indicate this fact externally. In the Nickel chapter, Levi describes how they came about, including that these texts seemed lost to him for years and only reappeared surprisingly when they looked through old documents.

Sulfur and Titan are short chapters in which Levi does not appear directly. It is not clear to what extent they are related to his biography.

The chapter on carbon has clear parallels to Hermann Römpp's "Life story of a carbon atom", as Jens Soentgen has established. This work by Römpp, which appeared in a volume of the Kosmos series in 1946, is the only one of his works that did not appear under his name but under the pseudonym Dr. Helmut Schmid. As mentioned in the chapter on gold , carbon was planned as early as the 1940s and written as early as 1970, but only published with the "periodic system". Its narrative style differs noticeably from the other chapters, among other things in that it tells the story from the perspective of a single atom and not from the perspective of a person. A text-critical analysis by Soentgen suggests that Levi used the story of Römpp / Schmid at least in part as a template, there are many striking parallels, and the punch line is also comparable. With Römpp / Schmid the carbon atom ends in the printing ink of the Kosmos ribbon available to the reader, with Levi it ​​ends in the writer's brain at the moment of writing the story. In addition, Levi spoke German well enough to be able to read Rompp's work in the original.

History of origin

Levi stated in 1976 that all of his books were made in pairs. The periodic table , the biography of an inorganic chemist, was originally intended to be contrasted with a second text that would describe the craft of an organic chemist. The book had the working title Il doppio legame (The Double Binding ), but was never completed. Instead, Levi decided to combine the periodic system with La chiave a stella (German: The ring spanner ), another collection of short texts that appeared in 1978 and has a mechanic as the main character. Pierpaolo Antonello describes the pairing of these two texts as a diptych dealing with Levi's version of Homo faber .

reception

Heinz Thoma and Hermann H. Wentzel see in The Periodic System the attempt to "bring order into the chaos of remembered experience" using a system borrowed from chemistry. There are parallels to the novel The Invisible Cities by Levi's friend Italo Calvino , who also has a scientific background. Even after the decline of Italian neorealism, Levi stuck to the task of literature to convey meaning and did not question the ability of language to communicate. As a result, he stands in contrast to contemporaries like Samuel Beckett , although absurdity also plays a role in his work . Thoma and Wentzel see in Levi an heir to the Enlightenment and positivism , who is committed to the understanding of the natural legal foundations of the experienced.

Barbara Kleiner emphasizes in Kindler's Literature Lexicon that Levi intertwines the scientific attitude of the chemist with that of the writer. In doing so, he proves that observation and investigation, which are essential in chemistry, are also part of the tools of the trade for the writer.

Catalina Botez emphasizes that the elements science, autobiography and fiction are on an equal footing in The Periodic System . The focus of the text is the attempt to step out of the shadow of the Holocaust by working as a scientist on the one hand and as a writer on the other. This (scientific as well as intellectual) work itself is presented as an opportunity to restore human dignity. It is only partially possible to see the author, narrator and protagonist as one and the same person. For Botez, who works out narrative and linguistic contrivances in the periodic system , the fictionalization of memory plays a decisive role.

The book was voted the “best science book ever” by the Royal Institution of Great Britain in October 2006 (about “best popular science book of all time”).

In 2016, the BBC produced and broadcast a 12-part dramatization of the book. Henry Goodman and Akbar Kurtha spoke to Primo Levi.

Thomas Kerstan included the book in his canon for the 21st century in 2018 , a selection of works that he believes "everyone should know".

The periodic system has also been used for didactic purposes : At the Universidade de São Paulo , the potassium chapter served as the basis for tasks that were given to chemistry students in the first semester. The lecturers concluded that it had successfully uncovered difficulties and false assumptions in the students.

expenditure

  • Il sistema periodico . Einaudi, Turin 1975, ISBN 88-06-05373-6 .
  • The periodic table . Translated by Edith Plackmeyer. Aufbau-Verlag, Berlin / Weimar 1979.
  • The periodic table . With an afterword by Natalia Ginzburg. Translated by Edith Plackmeyer. Hanser Verlag, Munich 1987, ISBN 3-446-14551-6 .
  • The periodic table . With an afterword by Natalia Ginzburg. Translated by Edith Plackmeyer. Deutscher Taschenbuch-Verlag, Munich 1991, ISBN 3-423-11334-0 .

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Entry in the German National Library, accessed on November 4, 2019
  2. ↑ Entry in the German National Library, accessed on November 4, 2019
  3. ↑ a b James Randerson: Levi's memoir beats Darwin to win science book title , in: The Guardian , October 21, 2006
  4. ↑ Is that a person? / The respite . Translated by Robert Picht , Barbara Picht, Heinz Riedt, Hanser, Munich 2011, ISBN 978-3-446-23744-5
  5. ↑ a b Jens Soentgen: Atome und Bücher ( Memento from August 30, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) , in: Arbeitsblätter für die Sachbuchforschung # 21, Mainz, May 2014, pp. 4–23. Retrieved October 22, 2016
  6. ↑ Life story of a carbon atom / Helmut Schmid. (Text drawn by K. Porupsky) , accessed on November 23, 2017
  7. ↑ Pierpaolo Antonello: Primo Levi and 'man as maker' , in: Robert SC Gordon (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Primo Levi , Cambridge University Press: Cambridge (2007), p. 89 f.
  8. ↑ a b Heinz Thoma and Hermann H. Wentzel: Novecento , in: Volker Knapp (ed.), Italienische Literaturgeschichte , Metzler: Stuttgart, Weimar (1992), p. 364
  9. ↑ Barbara Kleiner: Il sistema periodico , in: Heinz Ludwig Arnold (ed.): Kindlers Literatur Lexikon , 3rd edition, Vol. 10, Metzler: Stuttgart, Weimar (2009), p. 82
  10. ↑ Catalina Botez: Contiguous spaces of remembrance in identity writing: chemistry, fiction and the autobiographic question in Primo Levi's The Periodic Table , in: European Review of History: Revue européenne d'histoire , Volume 19, 2012 - Issue 5: The politics of contested narratives: biographical approaches to modern European history , pp. 711-727
  11. ↑ Primo Levi's The Periodic Table - 2016 BBC radio broadcast, accessed November 24, 2017
  12. ↑ Th. Kerstan: What our children need to know. A canon for the 21st century. Hamburg 2018. p. 11, 212f.
  13. ↑ Viktoria Klara Lakatos Osorio, Peter Wilhelm Tiedemann, Paulo Alves Porto: Primo Levi and the Periodic Table: Teaching Chemistry Using A Literary Text , in: Journal of Chemical Education , 2007, Vol. 84 (5), pp .775-778