Smiley 's review of If This Is a Man & The Truce (original) (raw)

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If This Is a Man & The Truce by Primo Levi

If This Is a Man & The Truce
by

2580971

Reading this epic-like memoir, his first-hand accounts as one of the prisoners-of-war detained in a camp at Auschwitz as a legacy of World War II by Primo Levi was stunningly descriptive, inhumane and hopeful. My background reading was that I nearly finished reading its first part, "If This is a Man," depicting his arrest in late 1943 and his life along the ruthless route to the notorious camp at Auschwitz where he survived because the authority there needed his expertise as a chemist. Then I quitted after reading a few pages (Chapter 13 October 1944) a decade ago due to lack of motive. Till around New Year's Day, a GR friend notified me she liked my review on another of his equally-famous memoir, "The Periodic Table," and kindly urged me to read this one for his unimaginable hardships and persistence. At last I found the paperback, tried reading each episode under each title and switched to the hardcover I bought last week.

Moreover, it was a pity I couldn’t substantially recall what I had read in “If This is a Man,” since my reflection might be quite fragmentary and reading again on page 149 (hardcover), Chapter 13 till the end didn’t help me recall anything read and quitted after such a long time. Therefore, I would like to focus my review on the second part, “The Truce,” depicting his unthinkably tough and surrealism-like journey back home in Italy. First, it has since been agreed that Primo Levi naturally described people, things, camps, etc. per se, in other words, as objectively as possible. It might be done out of his character, his educated mind and possibly his god-like compassion. If you prefer reading short and long paragraphs of descriptions with innumerable good words and sense of humor, this book is for you.

I couldn’t help wondering what he meant by this sentence: “… It (the announcement of their return) came in the theatre and through the theatre, and it came along the muddy road, carried by a strange and illustrious messenger.” (p. 416) I would leave you to read how they knew it in the theatre in the book itself; the following three excerpts would reveal my point, the first being a complete paragraph, the second and the third being partial:

The next morning, while the Red House was already buzzing and humming like a beehive whose swarm is about to leave, we saw a small car approach along the road. Very few passed by, so our curiosity was aroused, especially as it was not a military car. It slowed down in front of the camp, turned and entered, bouncing on the rough surface in front of the bizarre façade. Then we saw that it was a car all of us knew well, a Fiat 500A, a Topolino, rusty and decrepit, with the suspension piteously deformed.

It stopped in front of the entrance, and was at once surrounded by a crowd of inquisitive people. An extraordinary figure emerged, with great effort. It went on and on emerging; it was a very tall, corpulent, rubicund man, in a uniform we had never seen before: a Soviet General, a Generalissimo, a Marshal. …

This celestial messenger, who travelled alone through the mud in a cheap ancient ramshackle car, was Marshal Timoshenko in person, Semyon Konstantinovich Timoshenko, the hero of the Bolshevik revolution, of Karelia and Stalingrad. After his reception by the local Russians, which was singularly sober and lasted only a few minutes, he emerged once more from the buildings and chatted unaffectedly with us Italians, …; he told us that it was really true; we were to leave soon, very soon; “War over, everybody home”; … (pp. 417-419)

Just imagine how he has marvelously described such a 'strange and illustrious messenger'. I think it’s hard not to appreciate reading these superbly descriptive pages from one of the most important writers in the twentieth century.

Second, right at the beginning of the first story, "The Thaw," he has told us something horribly inhuman of which we may never dream; however, we have to keep reading with pity and sorrow from this excerpt:
... Thus all healthy prisoners were evacuated, in frightful conditions, in the direction of Buchenwald and Mauthausen, while the sick were abandoned to their fate. One can legitimately deduce from the evidence that originally the Germans did not intend to leave one man alive in the concentration camps; but a fierce night air raid and the rapidity of the Russian advance induced them to change their minds and flee, leaving their task unfinished.
In the sick bay of the Lager at Buna-Monowitz eight hundred of us remained. Of these about five hundred died from illness, cold and hunger before the Russians arrived, and another two hundred succumbed in the following days, despite the Russians' aid.
... (p. 217)

Third, we can read his innumerable episodes on his plight as one of the detainees in search of their route back home; miraculously, he had never lost hope, he simply persisted day in day out hoping to return home. For instance, he has described how he got lost in the woods and fortunately, coolly made it in getting out of such a deceiving labyrinth as told in this excerpt:

... The first time I penetrated it, I learnt to my cost, with surprise and fear, that the risk of "losing oneself in a wood" existed not only in fairly tales. I had been walking for about an hour, orienting myself as best I could by the sun, which was visible occasionally, where the branches were less thick; but then the sky clouded over, threatening rain, and when I wanted to return I realized that I had lost the north. ...
I walked on for hours, increasingly tired and uneasy, almost until dusk; and I was already beginning to think that even if my companions came to search for me, they would not find me, or would only find me days later, exhausted by hunger, perhaps already dead. ... So I continued in the prolonged twilight of the northern summer, until it was almost night, a prey now to utter panic, to the age-old fear of the dark, the forest and the unknown. Despite my weariness, I felt a violent impulse to rush ..., and to continue running so long as my strength and breath lasted.
Suddenly I heard the whistle of a train: this meant the railway was on my right, ...Following the noise of the train, I arrived at the railway before nightfall; then I kept to the glinting railway lines, ..., and reached safety, first at Starye Dorogi, then at the Red House.
... (pp. 377-378)

Therefore, we couldn't help feeling like we're watching a horror or suspense film and imagining how we could make it and be lucky like him. In brief, this memoir is worth reading due to its testament narratives and episodes unique in horrible details unthinkable to humankind, and the best we can do is that we need to pray and hope, those who know and have power please help, that such atrocities won't and shouldn't happen anywhere again on earth.

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Reading Progress

August 1, 2002 –Started Reading

October 3, 2009 – Shelved

January 14, 2013 – Shelved as:memoir

January 21, 2013 –84.79% "... I met Marya at the surgery, and told her that I had greatly enjoyed myself, and that all the Italians had much admired her and her colleagues' theatrical qualities; ...
She replied with didactic seriousness. She thanked me for the praise, ...; then she informed me with great gravity that dancing and singing, as well as recitation, form part of the scholastic curriculum in the Soviet Union; ... (pp. 310-311)"

January 22, 2013 –Finished Reading

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