My reflections here build on Lino Pertile’s 2010 essay, ‘L’inferno, il lager, la poesia’. Pertile notes the profound correspondence between the opening poem of the book (OC I, 139) and this chapter. He points out how the main theme of Levi’s book, the dehumanising experience in the Lager, based on the annihilation of people’s identity, is expressed in the poem and resurfaces explicitly again in the chapter dedicated to Dante’s Ulysses. The key term revealing the correspondence of themes and intentions is ‘Considerate [consider]’, used twice in Levi’s poem (‘Consider if this is a man | … | Consider if this is a woman’) and rooted in the memory of Dante’s famous tercet where Ulysses addresses his crew as they sail towards the horizon of their last journey beyond the pillars of Hercules: ‘Considerate la vostra semenza: | fatti non foste a viver come bruti, | ma per seguir virtute e canoscenza’ (Inf. 26, 118-20 and OC I, 228).

There are many other correspondences between the chapter of Ulysses and the opening poem, besides the ‘Considerate’, and that they are profound and filtered through the theme of memory, an eminently Dantean theme: the urgency to fix in the memory itself what is or will be necessary to tell, or the urgency to express and recount what is deposited in memory. Indeed, for Levi, the memory of each individual person contains that person’s humanity.

Memory is immediately activated as Primo and Jean exit the underground gas tank (‘He [Jean] climbed out and I followed him, blinking in the brightness of the day. It was warm [tiepido] outside; the sun drew a faint smell of paint and tar from the greasy earth that made me think of [mi ricordava] a summer beach of my childhood'). Temporarily escaping hell by means of a ladder (a sort of Dantesque ‘natural burella’), it is the tiepido sun and a characteristic smell that evoke the childhood memory and that at the same time the reader cannot avoid connecting to the tiepide case of the initial poem (‘You who live safe | in your heated houses [tiepide case]’ [my emphasis]). It is then around the memory ‘of our homes, of Strasbourg and Turin, of the books we had read, of what we had studied, of our mothers’ that another theme in the chapter coalesces, the theme of friendship (‘He and I had been friends for a week’), a theme that had already emerged in a more general connotation in the opening poem (‘visi amici’). Warmth, friendship (visi amici…Jean), the kitchens as destination for Primo and Jean’s walk (the walk from the tank with the empty pot is ‘the ever welcomed opportunity of getting near the kitchens’, not for that hot food [cibo caldo] evoked in the poem, but for the soup of the camp, an alienating incarnation of Dantesque ‘pane altrui’ whose various names are dissonant). During the respite of the one hour walk from the tank to the kitchens, the intermittent memory of Dante’s canto emerges as if from an underground consciousness, the memory of Inferno as a partial and imperfect mirror of the human condition in the Lager, Ulysses as poetic memory, a sudden epiphany of a semenza, a seed, of humanity that the Lager is made to suppress, and Primo’s wondering in the face of this sudden internal revelation of still possessing an intact humanity. Primo’s memory of his home resurfaces as if springing from the memory of Dante’s text: the ‘montagna bruna’ of Purgatory is reflected in the memory of ‘my mountains, which would appear in the evening dusk [nel bruno della sera] when I returned from Milan to Turin!' But the real, familiar landscape is too heartbreaking a memory of ‘sweet things cruelly distant’, one of those hurtful thoughts, ‘things one thinks but does not say’. There is an epiphanic memory then, the poetic memory that surfaces during the walk and that reveals to Primo that he still is a man, a memory to which he clings despite the sense of his own audacity (‘us two, who dare to talk about these things with the soup poles on our shoulders’); there is also a more intimate memory, equally pulsating with life and humanity - but dangerous, because it makes Primo vulnerable to despair, threatening his own survival in the camp.

The urgent need to remember Dante’s verses in this chapter develops the theme of memory, which has been central from the opening poem. In Levi’s poem, though, memory is perceived from a different angle: the readers (who live safe…) must honour that memory and transmit it as an imperative testimony of what happened in the concentration camp from generation to generation, testifying to the suffering of the man and the woman ‘considered’ in the poem. This is a memory to be carved in one’s heart, which must accompany those who receive it in every action and in every moment of each day like a prayer. Not coincidentally the poem follows the text of the most fundamental prayer of Judaism, the Shemà Israel, which is read twice a day, a memory to be passed on to one’s own children, a responsibility which is a sign of one’s humanity. The commandment to remember of the opening poem (‘I consign these words to you. | Carve them into your hearts') issues a potential curse to the reader, threatening the destruction of what most fundamentally characterises their humanity - home, health, children: ‘Or may your house fall down, | May illness make you helpless, | And your children turn their eyes from you’. Finally, Primo’s act of remembering during the walk to the kitchens is submerged by the Babelic soup (‘Kraut und Rüben…cavoli e rape…Choux et navets…Kàposzta és répak…Until the sea again closed – over us’) and yet the memory of it becomes part of his testimony in such a central chapter of the book written after surviving the Shoah. If the memory of Dante’s verses contributed to Primo’s faith in his own humanity and his psychological and physical survival in the camp, he then accomplishes the commandment of memory and his responsibility as a man through his own writing.

CS

My reflections here build on Lino Pertile’s 2010 essay, ‘L’inferno, il lager, la poesia’. Pertile notes the profound correspondence between the opening poem of the book (OC I, 139) and this chapter. He points out how the main theme of Levi’s book, the dehumanising experience in the Lager, based on the annihilation of people’s identity, is expressed in the poem and resurfaces explicitly again in the chapter dedicated to Dante’s Ulysses. The key term revealing the correspondence of themes and intentions is ‘Considerate [consider]’, used twice in Levi’s poem (‘Consider if this is a man | … | Consider if this is a woman’) and rooted in the memory of Dante’s famous tercet where Ulysses addresses his crew as they sail towards the horizon of their last journey beyond the pillars of Hercules: ‘Considerate la vostra semenza: | fatti non foste a viver come bruti, | ma per seguir virtute e canoscenza’ (Inf. 26, 118-20 and OC I, 228).

There are many other correspondences between the chapter of Ulysses and the opening poem, besides the ‘Considerate’, and that they are profound and filtered through the theme of memory, an eminently Dantean theme: the urgency to fix in the memory itself what is or will be necessary to tell, or the urgency to express and recount what is deposited in memory. Indeed, for Levi, the memory of each individual person contains that person’s humanity.

Memory is immediately activated as Primo and Jean exit the underground gas tank (‘He [Jean] climbed out and I followed him, blinking in the brightness of the day. It was warm [tiepido] outside; the sun drew a faint smell of paint and tar from the greasy earth that made me think of [mi ricordava] a summer beach of my childhood). Temporarily escaping hell by means of a ladder (a sort of Dantesque ‘natural burella’), it is the tiepido sun and a characteristic smell that evoke the childhood memory and that at the same time the reader cannot avoid connecting to the tiepide case of the initial poem (‘You who live safe | in your heated houses [tiepide case]’ [my emphasis]). It is then around the memory ‘of our homes, of Strasbourg and Turin, of the books we had read, of what we had studied, of our mothers’ that another theme in the chapter coalesces, the theme of friendship (‘He and I had been friends for a week’), a theme that had already emerged in a more general connotation in the opening poem (‘visi amici’). Warmth, friendship (visi amici…Jean), the kitchens as destination for Primo and Jean’s walk (the walk from the tank with the empty pot is ‘the ever welcomed opportunity of getting near the kitchens’, not for that hot food [cibo caldo] evoked in the poem, but for the soup of the camp, an alienating incarnation of Dantesque ‘pane altrui’ whose various names are dissonant). During the respite of the one hour walk from the tank to the kitchens, the intermittent memory of Dante’s canto emerges as if from an underground consciousness, the memory of Inferno as a partial and imperfect mirror of the human condition in the Lager, Ulysses as poetic memory, a sudden epiphany of a semenza, a seed, of humanity that the Lager is made to suppress, and Primo’s wondering in the face of this sudden internal revelation of still possessing an intact humanity. Primo’s memory of his home resurfaces as if springing from the memory of Dante’s text: the ‘montagna bruna’ of Purgatory is reflected in the memory of ‘my mountains, which would appear in the evening dusk [nel bruno della sera] when I returned from Milan to Turin!' But the real, familiar landscape is too heartbreaking a memory of ‘sweet things cruelly distant’, one of those hurtful thoughts, ‘things one thinks but does not say’. There is an epiphanic memory then, the poetic memory that surfaces during the walk and that reveals to Primo that he still is a man, a memory to which he clings despite the sense of his own audacity (‘us two, who dare to talk about these things with the soup poles on our shoulders’); there is also a more intimate memory, equally pulsating with life and humanity - but dangerous, because it makes Primo vulnerable to despair, threatening his own survival in the camp.

The urgent need to remember Dante’s verses in this chapter develops the theme of memory, which has been central from the opening poem. In Levi’s poem, though, memory is perceived from a different angle: the readers (who live safe…) must honour that memory and transmit it as an imperative testimony of what happened in the concentration camp from generation to generation, testifying to the suffering of the man and the woman ‘considered’ in the poem. This is a memory to be carved in one’s heart, which must accompany those who receive it in every action and in every moment of each day like a prayer. Not coincidentally the poem follows the text of the most fundamental prayer of Judaism, the Shemà Israel, which is read twice a day, a memory to be passed on to one’s own children, a responsibility which is a sign of one’s humanity. The commandment to remember of the opening poem (‘I consign these words to you. | Carve them into your hearts') issues a potential curse to the reader, threatening the destruction of what most fundamentally characterises their humanity - home, health, children: ‘Or may your house fall down, | May illness make you helpless, | And your children turn their eyes from you’. Finally, Primo’s act of remembering during the walk to the kitchens is submerged by the Babelic soup (‘Kraut und Rüben…cavoli e rape…Choux et navets…Kàposzta és répak…Until the sea again closed – over us’) and yet the memory of it becomes part of his testimony in such a central chapter of the book written after surviving the Shoah. If the memory of Dante’s verses contributed to Primo’s faith in his own humanity and his psychological and physical survival in the camp, he then accomplishes the commandment of memory and his responsibility as a man through his own writing.

CS

Wonderful conversation between Sheila Heti, her brother, and three of their friends, about the Annie Hall 'I need the eggs' joke that ends the film.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pirkei_Avot

The towns in biblical Israel named for Baal were renamed or gone, but there are many towns named after other gods including Shamash, Yarekh, and El.

Like the Canaanites, early Israelites worshiped Baal amongst a wider pantheon of gods despite the fact that later Jews were monotheists. Modern day Israel still has cities named after Baal.

Which cities?

Immunizations and Religion | Vanderbilt Faculty & Staff Health and Wellness. (n.d.). Retrieved August 17, 2021, from https://www.vumc.org/health-wellness/news-resource-articles/immunizations-and-religion

Some of this reminds me of the insularity and abusive practices of the Hasidim in the recent documentary One of Us. I think there are more pockets of people living like this than most people admit or we as a society should allow.

I also think there's a link to Fukuyama's growth of politics here which is highlighted by Jonah Goldberg's Suicide of the West.

Surprisingly, these have only been recently aggregated online at Sefaria a story delineated here: https://www.washingtonpost.com/religion/2018/09/18/quest-put-talmud-online/

References in this video

• 33:44 Rashi
• 34:43 Chofetz Chaim
• 34:52 Mishnah Berurah
• 39:57 Albert Camus . (The quote is from Notebooks.)