Metamorphoses of the past: a study of Primo Levi´s The Periodic Table

ABSTRACT The Periodic Table (1975), by Primo Levi, is divided into 21 chapters in which the author recounts episodes of his life as a chemist in a linear chronological order. The idea of linearity might suggest a slow pulling away from the past, an issue that can be problematized in at least three chapters (‘Uranium’, ‘Silver’, and ‘Vanadium’), where Levi meets characters that lead him to speak again of the Fascist period and the war. The article’s central question emerges from this perception: what is the meaning of this reencounter with the Fascist past? The elaboration of this question will involve the idea of a double meaning of metamorphosis: that of transformations of the past as well as the way this transformed past itself produces metamorphoses. I will focus on the political implications of this double meaning of metamorphosis, following three stages with distinct goals: (1) to demonstrate metamorphosis as the book’s poetic principle; (2) to show how this principle can be framed in a relative light and tested according to ‘Uranium’ and ‘Silver’; and (3) to propose an idea of recovery of the metamorphosis principle based on a reading of ‘Vanadium’.