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Primo Levi Zinc and the Pure Race
There is a place so deep in hell that Virgil could not bear to show it to Dante. Science, in unholy coupling with prejudice, indifference and self-interest, discovered it in our own times: and called it Auschwitz. Primo Levi, an Italian Jew, passed through that hell, and survived. Although, until Fascism made of him a thing to be exterminated, Levi hadn’t given any importance to his Jewishness. Zinc is a short story of Primo as a young chemistry student. Like countless young men before him he meets a girl: Rita, and shares the exhilaration of the first faltering steps of getting to know her. It could be the story of…
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The Divine Comedy begins: Lost and on the Road to Hell
The Dante Alighieri of the Divine Comedy is lost. He needs help and is afraid. He doubts himself and often weeps at the human suffering or folly he will see on his journey. Will he be able to reach the end? He doesn’t know. It’s this kind of frail humanity of Dante’s poetry that still speaks to us across hundreds of years. Dante writes in the first person, and that’s part of his magic. We see the world through his eyes, as if we ourselves were sharing the journey. Indeed Dante says we are. Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita, the poem begins: In the middle of the journey…
