Comparative Analysis of Paratranslational Aspects in Primo Levi`s

VI Congresso Nacional Associação Portuguesa de Literatura Comparada /
X Colóquio de Outono Comemorativo das Vanguardas – Universidade do Minho 2009/2010
Comparative Analysis of Paratranslational Aspects in
Primo Levi’s Se questo è un uomo and Dante’s Inferno
By Maria Helena Guimarães
University of Vigo
Research Group of Translation and Paratranslation
ABSTRACT
Between the Inferno of Dante’s The Divine Comedy and Primo Levi’s Se questo
è un uomo there is an intertextual relation, both in terms of direct citation and reference,
especially in the chapter Il Canto di Ulisse. We would, however, go further in our
analysis and would dare to say that Se questo è un uomo is mostly an hypertext of
Dante’s Inferno. As a matter of fact, by means of a simple transformation, that is, by the
transposition of the action from the Inferno, result of Dante’s imagination, to the real
earthly reality of the Lager of the 20th century, we come to Se questo è un uomo. The
main difference lies in the fact that in Levi’s book, we are talking about real facts. This
explains our point of view that, though full of poetic passages, the so-called Levi’s
testimony of life in the Lager was written in prose. It explains, as well, the degree of
emancipation that Levi’s text achieves in relation to Dante’s The Divine Comedy.
1
Batolomeo’s Inferno
1. Introduction
The aim of this paper is to analyze some paratranslational aspects related with
the transtextuality of Se questo è un uomo, by Primo Levi, that is, to explore the
borderlands, the “outside” to which the text relates and which may eventually disappear
in the process of translating it into any target language. The term transtextuality is here
to be understood as Genette defined it, namely as everything that brings the text into
manifest or hidden relation with other texts1, which implies, in fact, a kind of
transposition, and therefore in itself a translation of contents and structure made by the
writer himself and which the translator of the original text may be able, or not, to
deliver in the target language.
2. The concentric scheme of both Levi’s book and Dante’s Inferno
Between the Inferno of The Divine Comedy and Se questo è un uomo there is an
intertextual relation, both in terms of direct citation and reference, especially in the
unnumbered chapter Il Canto di Ulisse. We would, however, go further and would dare
1
Cf. Gérard Genette, The Architext: An Introduction, 1992, p. 81.
2
to say that Se questo è un uomo is mostly an hypertext2 of Dante’s Inferno. As a matter
of fact, by means of a simple transformation (cf. Genette, 1982: 12), that is, by the
transposition of the action from the Inferno, result of Dante’s imagination, to the real
earthly reality of the Lager of the 20th century, we come to Se questo è un uomo. The
main difference lies in the fact that in Levi’s book, we are talking about real facts. This
explains our point of view that, though full of poetic passages, the so-called Levi
testimony of life in the Lager was written in prose. It explains, as well, the extreme
emancipation of Levi’s text in relation to Dante’s The Divine Comedy.
Let us begin by analyzing some paratextual aspects, which help, as Genette
explains, to direct the reception of the text by the readers, and the eventual translators of
the text:
Dante writes The Divine Comedy using the common toscano language,
instead of Latin, because Dante wanted his epic poem to be understood by
all people3, thus making his idea of an ideal world clear to everyone.
Furthermore, Dante reminds us that the memory he has of these events is
now to be ours:
[I] readied myself to endure the battle
Both of the journey and the pathos,
Which flawless memory shall here record.
(Inferno II, 1-6)
2
"Texte au second degré” (cf. Genette, 1982, p. 12).
This may be inferred from Dante’s own words in De vulgari eloquio (which may be considered as an
epitext) in which he defines people’s language as the most natural because it is learned in childhood. Cf.
Prof. Vieira de Almeida, preface to A Divina Comédia, Lisboa, Editorial Minotauro, 1961.
3
3
In his preface (a peritext) to the last edition of his book Levi affirms that his
text was the result of “il bisogno di racontari agli ‘altri’” the reality of the
Lager.
Genette defines hypertextuality as the relation, linking a text to a previous one,
the hypotext, in a manner that is not that of pure allusion or commentary and whose
meaning depends upon the reader’s knowledge of the latter. Though every hypertext
“peut sans ‘agrammaticalité’ perceptible, se lire pour lui-même” (1982: 450), in
Genette’s opinion, it is important that the translator is able to understand and deliver the
link that exists between both texts; otherwise the hypertext will be somehow amputated
from an existing dimension.
Some remarks concerning the hypertextuality of Se questo è un uomo:
In the 1st book of the poem The Divine Comedy, named by the author
Inferno, Dante travels in hell, having Virgil as his guide.
Dante may be considered as Levi’s guide through the torment and agony of
the Lager. Dante is the ‘light’ that helps him not to forget his humanity. As
the poet Virgil is the guide and savior of Dante, so can we consider Dante as
the guide of Levi. The voice of the poet, his humanism, may be regarded as
what kept Levi alive, what preserved some humanity inside him, while living
in Hell.
The Inferno is composed of thirty four Cantos.
4
Levi’s narrative of his travel to the Hell of Auschwitz counts seventeen
unnumbered chapters, exactly half of the Cantos of the Inferno. In our
opinion, this difference is due to the fact that Dante’s work is an epic poem
and Levi’s book, a testimony in prose.
As Wallace Fowlie refers in his Reading of Dante’s Inferno, “Dante’s poem
is about what had been contemplated by him”. In fact, he keeps telling us: I
was there and I saw. Dante’s writings are therefore primarily
autobiographical.
Primo Levi’s main aim is not to describe the scenes of physical horror, he
lived in Auschwitz. His book is autobiographical and should be read as an
attempt to analyze the moral problems and the psychological conditions
under which the prisoners lived all the time. Thus, the systemic annihilation
of people is described as an indescribable fear.
Going through both works, we may establish a certain correspondence between
certain Cantos and the chapters of Se questo è un uomo. In the 1st Canto, Dante seems
conscious that he is entering a terrible place; he is frightened by the wildness of the dark
wood:
mi ritrovai per una selva oscura4 (v. 2)
4
Translation by James Finn Cotter: “I found myself deep in a darkened forest”.
5
[…]
che nel pensier rinova la paura5 (v. 6)
Levi, in his turn, writes in the first chapter of his book,
L’anuncio della deportazione trovò gli anime impreparati (2005, p. 12)
The first chapter of Levi’s book Il viaggio corresponds to the first and second
Cantos of the Inferno, although at the end of the chapter there is an allusion to the
yelling of Charon, who should take Dante and Virgil to the other shore: “Guai a voi,
anime prave!”6 (Levi, 2005: 18).
These words have the effect of a prolepsis, an
anticipation of all arbitrariness the prisoners were going to be subjected to in the Lager
and charge Levi's text with a deeper current of emotional intensity. In contrast with the
direct speech of Dante’s Charon, Levi’s reports the questions of the German soldier, a
modern Charon, indirectly and in summary form. However, the quotation of line 84 of
the third Canto of Dante’s Inferno induces reflection in the reader by introducing a
semantic change into prosaic language.
The 3rd Canto corresponds, in Levi’s novel, to the second chapter Sul fondo.
Dante passes through the gate of Hell. The last line of the inscription over the gate
“Lasciate ogne speranza, voi ch’intrate”7 (Dante, 2000b: v. 9) means there is no free
will in Hell; Levi, in his turn, passes through the Lager gate, where the inscription
Arbeit macht frei8 (cf. Levi, 2005: 19) was fully illuminated.
5
Translation by James Finn Cotter: “to think of it still fills my mind with panic”.
Translation by James Finn Cotter: "Woe to you, you wicked souls!” (v. 84)
7
Translation by James Finn Cotter: “Abandon all hope, you who enter here”.
8
See plate 3.
6
6
Dante will never be left alone, from the moment of the appearance of Virgil,
who will guide him through the nine circles of Hell. The circles are concentric and
represent a gradual increase in wickedness. The last two circles of Hell are divided into
ten bolgie, or ditches of stone.
The Lager in Primo Levi’s testimony has a concentric scheme as well. The
“underworld” of the prisoners is separated by electrified barbed wire from the outside
human world. Inside the camp is Hell: “Questo è l’inferno […] è come essere già morti”
(2005: 19). Inside the camp, one may also find different ditches (bolgie), depending on
the origin of the prisoners and their function in the camp.
Condemned to the very center of hell for committing the ultimate sin (treachery
against God) is Lucifer. He is completely mechanical, like a windmill, but instead of
being a source of energy, he devours human lives. Though aspects of bestiality are
described in other Cantos of the Inferno, it is possible to detect a strong parallel
between the starvation-induced state of selfishness in the Lager and the frozen
immobility of the souls at the bottom of the Inferno.
The two poets escape by climbing down Lucifer’s shaggy flanks, passing
through the center of the earth and emerging in the other hemisphere beneath a sky
studded with stars. When “I tedeschi9 non c’erano piú” (Levi, 2005: 140), “il ricordo dei
salvamenti biblici nelle avversità estreme passo come un vento per tutti gli animi”
(Ibidem), and instead of stars, impossible to see in the grey winter nights of Auschwitz,
in Levi’s “cameretta […] nacque una fabbrica di candele” (Idem, 151).
The structure of Se questo è un uomo is based upon that of The Divine Comedy.
However, this net of interrelations is but suggested to the readership by the citations and
9
The equivalent to Lucifer in the modern era.
7
allusions to Dante’s Inferno, especially in the unnumbered chapter Il Canto di Ulisse, in
which Levi gives us a hint of the importance of Dante, and of poetry, for his survival in
the camp: Virgilio è la Ragione, Beatrice10 è la Teologia” (2005: 101). In other words,
we may say that Dante helps Levi to keep “la Ragione” in Auschwitz. The last line cited
by Levi in this chapter, Infin che 'l mar fu sopra noi richiuso (2005: 103), brings the
receptor back to the reality of the Lager, a world governed by bestiality and the constant
fear of death. It is to refer that Dantean Ulysses is described as a seeker after knowledge
after human worth. In fact, rather than turning toward Ithaka, Dantean Ulysses turns his
boat toward the deep sea and saw what no man had seen. Levi’s journey into Hell made
him be the witness of crimes never seen or lived by most of the humankind. The fact he
survived to tell his truth about the Lager is comparable to Ulisses’ audacity and
therefore he was condemned to live in perpetual pain, unable to reach that distant
mountain – the hope of peaceful redemption.
In the chapter Il canto di Ulisse, Levi tries to translate Dante into French for
Pikolo. Though he describes his attempt as disastrous, he underlines as well the
importance of translation even if the listener remains only with a fade idea of the
original.
If not familiar with The Divine Comedy a reader will probably understand the
hypertext just as a testimony of the atrocities experienced by prisoners in the
annihilation camp of Auschwitz. Although the text may be, and perhaps should be,
10
In the Inferno of Dante there is only one direct reference to Beatrice, in Canto II, v. 70-72, urging him
to travel, and two other indirect references, one in Canto X, v. 130-132, and one in Canto XV, v. 88/90.
As a symbol of Theology and Beauty, and in The Divine Comedy the real savior of Dante, there is no real
equivalent to her in Se questo è un uomo. Apart from certain characters like, for instance, Lorenzo (“io
credo che proprio a Lorenzo devo di essere vivo oggi”, p. 109), the author shows himself as being very
sceptical about God and the true nature of humankind. A reference is made as well to the “Contrapasso”,
the process by which souls are punished in Dante's Inferno according to the nature of their sins in life. A
literal translation would be "counter-suffering". It is the ironic cosmological law ensuring that "the
punishment fits the crime".
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understood just as a testimony, the fact is that one cannot forget the title of the tenth
chapter, as well as all the quotations included in the book, which suggest that the author
would like us to ask the question: what relation really exists between the two texts?
Though no book exists and lives independently and beyond its author, we think, that
Levi would really like us to understand the relation he himself has built between both
poetical creations. And we stress, here, the term poetical, since Levi’s text, in spite of
the author’s statement in its preface that Se questo è un uomo “potrà […] fornire
documenti per uno studio pacato di alcuni aspetti dell’animo umano”, is above all a
literary creation, full of poetry.
Dante’s Inferno is impregnated with a profound sense of solitude in life,
comparable to the survival fight in the Lager: “La lotta per sopravvivere è senza
remissione, perché ognuno è disperatamente ferocemente solo” (Levi, 2005: 80). In the
crowded cramp of Hell, as in the Lager, there is no privacy. All people are inside
Lucifer himself. Above them souls are whipped, boiled in blood and excrement, beaten,
torn, burned and caked in ice, just like in the Lager.
By quoting and basing the structure of his book on Dante’s Inferno, Levi draws
our attention to the inclusiveness of Dante's imagery which can be seen as enclosing the
extreme modern experience of the Holocaust. In order to reach those who are outside
that experience, Levi, like Dante, has to draw on imagery and apostrophe to the reader,
calling for our response.
All through Levi’s testimony, we may feel the voice of Dante’s humanism, as
well as a painful but nevertheless poetical reference to the Hell surrounding the
protagonists of this terrible moment in the history of mankind. The subject matter of
Levi's text, as well as that of the Inferno, is suffering resulting from evil, but while
9
Levi's characters are the subject of racial persecution and of real annihilation, the souls
in Dante's Inferno are victims of their own wrong-doing.
The miracle of both creations is the power of giving to each scene a realistic
contour and precision, and, at the same time, of giving to the reader the impression that
he is watching a scene belonging to another world, the world of nightmare. The main
difference is that Dante’s Inferno happens at an individual and psychological level,
while Levi’s Hell is collective and suffering is unbearable both physically and
psychologically.
Levi’s descent into the subterranean cosmos of pain, atrocity and soul’s
disintegration should make us understand the constant need to consult the dead figures
of our own personality. Primo Levi wants us to reflect upon a crucial issue for
humankind, namely that, deprived of all freedom, suppressed of all human conditions of
life, of all kind of human dignity, living like a herd of slaves in the closed circle of an
annihilation camp, at the bottom of “hell”, man is incapable of thinking and acting in
terms of the conventional moral values, because he is standing for an unacceptable
unreasonable absurd reality, where he is expected to become a “beast”.
For all the above mentioned reasons, we believe, Se questo è um uomo can be
regarded, at a certain extent, as a modern “palimpsest” of Dante’s Inferno.
3. Conclusion
Testimonies are translations of experiences into words. The testimony given by
survivors is the result of a painful process. Survivors often present their testimony as the
realisation of a form of resistance which consisted, as happens with Primo Levi, of
wanting to survive in order to be able to testify. However, this idea was apparently not
10
in the minds of the detainees initially: their first thought upon arrival in the camps was
to avoid immediate death, to get food and water, not to have their clogs stolen, to avoid
being beaten, in a few words, to survive in spite of the cold, illness and disease. There is
no self-pity, nor a defining moment that makes a man determined to survive; there is no
place in the memoir where it is the heroic character of the narrator that leads to his final
freedom.
The traditional values are no longer sustainable. As has been acknowledged by
Levi, a new morality was operative in the camps: in order to survive, stealing, for
instance, was acceptable behaviour, it was called ‘organising’. While in the camp, the
Italian Culture of the Renaissance was Primo Levi’s only salvation from the horror lived
by the prisoners “al di qua del bene e del male” (Levi, 2005: 70), that is, on the inside of
the electrified barbed wire, that separated them from the outside human world.
After the liberation, Levi’s Italian cultural background was consciously the only
way found by Primo Levi to keep alive, to keep floating at the surface of life, and, what
is more, to help him bear the feeling of “guilt” for having survived. He could not count
on God’s help, since he was not a man of faith, as he could not count on any particular
political ideology. He could but invoke the culture in which he was brought up.
Si questo è un un uomo is indeed an hypertext of Dante’s Inferno. Primo Levi
was the first to establish a literary analogy between real facts and Dante’s Inferno, in the
framework of the literature of the Holocaust. But on its turn, Si questo è un un uomo is
no doubt an hypertext of most of the literature written about the Holocaust afterwards.
And this was not by chance. In fact, it was the result of Levi’s secular, humanistic
Weltanschauung.
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6. Bibliografia
Dante, Alighieri (1961) “O Inferno”, trans. Fernanda Botelho, Lisboa, Editorial
Minotauro.
Dante, Alighieri (2000a) “Inferno”, trans. James Finn Cotter, in
http://www.italianstudies.org/comedy/index.htm (19/03/2008).
Dante, Alighieri (2000b) “Inferno”, Italian Edition, in
http://www.divinecomedy.org/divine_comedy.html. (30/10/2008).
Fowlie, Wallace (1985), A Reading of Dante’s Inferno, Chicago and London, The
University of Chicago Press.
Garrido, X. M. (2006), Traducir a Literatura do Holocausto:Traducción/Paratraducción
de Se questo é un uomo de Primo Levi, in Teses de Doutoramento da Universidade de
Vigo 2004-2006, Vigo, Serviço de Publicacões da Universidade de Vigo.
Genette, Gérard (1982), Palimpsestes, Paris, Éditions du Seuil.
_____________ (1997), Paratexts: threshholds of interpretation, trans. Jane E. Lewin,
Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.
Levi, Primo (2005), Se questo è un uomo, Torino, Einaudi.
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Nouss, A. and Laplantine, F. (eds.) (2001), Métissages: de Archimboldo à Zombi, Paris,
Pauvert.
13