«Tornare. Mangiare. Raccontare». I bisogni primari nelle testimonianze dei sopravvissuti

Abstract

Primo Levi is considered to be the foremost author of testimonial literature, that is, of self-referential texts that do not recount one’s entire life or the events in which one has participated as a spectator, but rather a fragment delineated in time and space in which one’s individual life has been disrupted by extreme events that one wishes to account for on behalf of those who lived through them but did not survive. Recognised in other parts of the world as ‘testimonial literature’, in Italy it struggles to establish itself as an autonomous genre. However, in this essay, through three actions of a verse by Primo Levi, we attempt to identify an embryonic twentieth-century corpus recognisable as “testimonial literature”.