Primo Levi Quotes

This is the most immediate fruit of exile, of uprooting: the prevalence of the unreal over the real. Everyone dreamed past and future dreams, of slavery and redemption, of improbable paradises, of equally mythical and improbable enemies; cosmic enemies, perverse and subtle, who pervade everything like the air.

If it is true that there is no greater sorrow than to remember a
happy time in a state of misery, it is just as true that calling up a
moment of anguish in a tranquil mood, seated quietly at one's desk, is
a source of profound satisfaction.

"Аз обаче си извлякох друга поука, по-простичка и по-конкретна, и смятам, че всеки радетел на нашата наука би могъл да я потвърди: не бива да имаме вяра на почти същото (натрият е почти същият като калия, но с натрия нищо подобно нямаше да се случи), на практически еднаквото, на приблизителното, на разните "горе-долу" и "или евентуално", на заместителите и кръпките. Макар и нищожни, несходствата могат да доведат до драматично различни резултати - както железопътните стрелки - и голяма част от професията на химика се състои тъкмо в предпазването от такива несходства, в познаването им отблизо, в предвиждането на техните последици. Впрочем нещо, което важи не само за химиците."

Today the only thing left of the life of those days is what one needs to suffer hunger and cold; I am not even alive enough to know how to kill myself.

Perfection belongs to narrated events, not to those we live.

Tutti scoprono, più o meno presto nella loro vita, che la felicità perfetta non è realizzabile, ma pochi si soffermano invece sulla considerazione opposta: che tale è anche una infelicità perfetta. I momenti che si oppongono alla realizzazione di entrambi i due stati-limite sono della stessa natura: conseguono dalla nostra condizione umana, che è nemica di ogni infinito.
Vi si oppone la nostra sempre insufficiente conoscenza del futuro; e questo si chiama, in un caso, speranza, e nell'altro, incertezza del domani. Vi si oppone la sicurezza della morte, che impone un limite a ogni gioia, ma anche a ogni dolore. Vi si oppongono le inevitabili cure materiali, che, come inquinano ogni felicità duratura, cosi distolgono assiduamente la nostra attenzione dalla sventura che ci sovrasta, e ne rendono frammentaria, e perciò sostenibile, la consapevolezza.
Sono stati proprio i disagi, le percosse, il freddo, la sete, che ci hanno tenuti a galla sul vuoto di una disperazione senza fondo, durante il viaggio e dopo.

Logic and morality made it impossible to accept an illogical and immoral reality; they engendered a rejection of reality which as a rule led the cultivated man rapidly to despair. But the varieties of the man-animal are innumerable, and I saw and have described men of refined culture, especially if young, throw all this overboard, simplify and barbarize themselves, and survive. A simple man, accustomed not to ask questions of himself, was beyond the reach of the useless torment of asking himself why.

The harsher the oppression, the more widespread among the oppressed is the willingness, with all its infinite nuances and motivations, to collaborate: terror, ideological seduction, servile imitation of the victor, myopic desire for any power whatsoever… Certainly, the greatest responsibility lies with the system, the very structure of the totalitarian state; the concurrent guilt on the part of individual big and small collaborators is always difficult to evaluate… they are the vectors and instruments of the system’s guilt… the room for choices (especially moral choices) was reduced to zero

We are slaves, deprived of every right, exposed to every insult, condemned to certain death, but we still possess one power, and we must defend it with all our strength for it is the last - the power to refuse our consent. So we must certainly wash our faces without soap in dirty water and dry ourselves on our jackets. We must polish our shoes, not because the regulation states it, but for dignity and propriety. We must walk erect, without dragging our feet, not in homage to Prussian discipline but to remain alive, not to begin to die.

"There is no rationality in the Nazi hatred: it is hate that is not in us, it is outside of man.. We cannot understand it, but we must understand from where it springs, and we must be on our guard. If understanding is impossible, knowing is imperative, because what happened could happen again. Consciences can be seduced and obscured again - even our consciences. For this reason, it is everyone duty to reflect on what happened. Everybody must know, or remember, that when Hitler and Mussolini spoke in public, they were believed, applauded, admired, adored like gods. They were "charismatic leaders" ; they possessed a secret power of seduction that did not proceed from the soundness of things they said but from the suggestive way in which they said them, from their eloquence, from their histrionic art, perhaps instinctive, perhaps patiently learned and practised. The ideas they proclaimed were not always the same and were, in general, aberrant or silly or cruel. And yet they were acclaimed with hosannas and followed to the death by millions of the faithful."

An enemy who sees the error of his ways ceases to be an enemy.

Todos descobrem, mais tarde ou mais cedo na vida, que a felicidade perfeita não é realizável, mas poucos se detêm a pensar na consideração oposta: que também uma infelicidade perfeita é, igualmente, não realizável. Os momentos que se opõem à realização de ambos os estados-limite são da mesma natureza: derivam da nossa condição humana, que é inimiga de tudo o que é infinito. Opõe-se-lhe a certeza da morte, que impõe um limite a qualquer alegria, mas também a qualquer dor. Opõem-se-lhe as inevitáveis preocupações materiais que, assim como poluem qualquer felicidade duradoura, também distraem assiduamente a nossa atenção da desgraça que paira sobre nós e tornam fragmentária e, por isso mesmo, suportável, a consciência dela.

There are people who wring their hands and call it an abyss, but do nothing to fill it; there are also those who work to widen it, as if the scientist and literary man belong to two different human subspecies, reciprocally incomprehensible, fated to ignore each other and not apt to engage in cross-fertilization.

The conviction that life has a purpose is rooted in every fibre of man, it is a property of the human substance. Free men give many names to this purpose, and think and talk a lot about its nature. But for us the question is simpler. Today, in this place, our only purpose is to reach the spring. At the moment we care about nothing else. Behind this aim there is not at the moment any other aim. In the morning while we wait endlessly lined up in roll-call square for the time to leave for work, while every breath of wind penetrates our clothes and runs in violent shivers over our defenceless bodies, and everything is grey around us, and we are grey; in the morning, when it is still dark, we all look at the sky in the east to spot the first signs of a milder season, and the rising of the sun is commented on every day: today a little earlier than yesterday, today a little warmer than yesterday, in two months, in a month, the cold will call a truce and we will have one enemy less. Today the sun rose bright and clear for the first time from the horizon of mud. It is a Polish sun, cold, white, distant, and only warms the skin, but when it dissolved the last mists a murmur ran through our colourless numbers, and when even I felt its lukewarmth through my clothes I understood how men can worship the sun.

"To the Germans, these Jewish foreigners, so different from the local bourgeois Jews who had, with discipline, allowed themselves t be rounded up and slaughtered, seemed suspect: too quick, too energetic, dirty, tattered, proud, unpredictable, primitive, too "Russian". The Jews found it impossible, and at the same time necessary, to distinguish the headhunters they had eluded and on whom they had taken passionate revenge from these shy, reserved old people, these blond, polite children who looked in at the station doors as if through the bars of the zoo. They aren't the ones, no; but it's their father, their teachers, their sons, themselves yesterday and tomorrow. How to resolve the puzzle? It can't be solved. Leave: as soon as possible. This land, too, is searing under our feet, this neat, trim town, loving order, this sweet bland air of full summer also scorches Leave, leave: we haven't come from the depths of Polessia in order to go to sleep in the Wartesaal of Plauen-am-Elster, and to while away our waiting with group snapshots and the Red Cross soup."

Dawn came on us like a betrayer; it seemed as though the new sun rose as an ally of our enemies to assist in our destruction.