Primo Levi shame Flashcards
a certain fixed image has been proposed innumerable times, concentrated by literature and poetry and picked up by cinema
“quiet after the storm’
the disease runs its course and
health returns
the universal suffering that all round; their own exhaustion , which seemed definitive,
past cure
the problems of a life to begin again
amid the rubble, often alone
leaving pain behind was a delight for only a few fortunate beings
or only for a few instants, or for very simple should; almost always it coincided with a phase of anguish
anguish is know to everyone, even children, and every one knows that it
is often blank, undifferentiated
one can think that one is suffering at facing the future and instead be
suffering because of ones past
one can think that one is suffering for others, out of pity, out of compassion
and instead be suffering for ones own reasons, more or less profound, more or less avowable and avowed
coming out of the darkness one suffered because of the required
consciousness of having been diminished
we had lived for month and years at
an animal level
we endured filth, promiscuity, and destruction
suffering much less than we would have suffered from such things in normal life- because our moral yardstick had changed
all of us had stolen: in the kitchen, the factory, the camp, in short “from the others: from the opposing side, but it was
theft nevertheless
some had fallen so low as to steal bread from there own
companions
we had not only forgotten our country and our culture, but also our
family, our past, the future we had imagined for ourselves
like animals we were
confined to the present moment
precisely because of the constant imminence of death there was no time
to concentrate on the idea of death
in the majority of cases suicide is born from a feeling of guilt that no punishment has attenuated; now the
harshness of imprisonment was perceived as punishment the feeling of guilt (…) was regulated to the background, only to reemerge after liberation
what guilt? when all was over, the awareness emerged that we had not done anything, or not enough,
against the system into which we had absorbed
on a rational plane there should not have been much to be ashamed of, but
shame persisted nevertheless, especially for the few bright examples of those who had the strength and possibility to resist
few survivors feel guilty about having deliberately damaged, robbed, or beaten a companion
those who did so (Kapos but not only they) block out the memory
the demand for solidarity, for a human word, advice even just a listening ear
was permanent and universal but rarely satisfied
the principle rule of the place which made it mandatory that you
take care of yourself first of all
that of selfishness extended to the person closest to you
(…) a friend of mine appropriately called us-ism
we drank all the water, in small avaricious gulps changing places under the spigot
just the two of us
but Daniele had caught a glimpse of us
in that strange position
why the two of you,
not I? it was the civilian moral code surfacing again
changing moral codes is always costly
all heretics, apostates and dissidents know this
we cannot judge our behaviour or that of others, driven
at the time by the code of that time, on the basis of today’s codes
are you ashamed that you are alive in place
of another? and in particular of a man more generous, more sensitive, more useful, wiser, worthier of living than you?
you did not usurp anyone’s place,
you did not beat anyone
he told me that my having survived could not be the work of chance, of an accumulation of circumstances
(…) but rather of providence. I bore bank, I was elect: I the non believer after the season of Aushcwitz, was a person touched by grace,, a saved man
such an opinion seemed monstrous to me. it pained me as when one touches an exposed nerve, and kindled the doubt I spoke of before:
I might be alive in the place of another, at the expense of another; I might have usurped that is, killed
the ‘saved’ of the lager were not the best, those predestined to be good, the bearers of a message:
what I had lived through proved exactly the contrary
I felt innocent yes, but enrolled among the saved and therefore in permanent
search of a justification in my own eyes and those of others
I must repeat: we, the survivors
are not the true witnesses
we who were favoured by fate tried, with more or less wisdom
to recount not only our fate but also that of the others, indeed of the drowned
and there is another shame,
the shame of the world
it was useless to close one’s eyes or turn one’s bak to it
because it was all around
never again could it be
cleansed
it would prove that man, the human species- we- inshore- had the
potential to construct an infinite enormity of pain and that in pain is the only force created from nothing, without cost without effort
these factors can occur again and are
already recurring in various parts of the world
