The border crossed. Fantabiology of the Everyday in Primo Levi’s “Storie naturali”

Abstract

This paper aims at investigating a peculiar stimmung of Primo Levi's artistic production, which from a literature based on the experiences in concentration camps slips into these dystopian tales and is declined by sketches of the daily machine-traps. Therefore, in the series of short stories that compose the collection of Natural Histories, Levi sketches an alienating universe, describing the destructive effects that the reckless use of technology can have on humans. Levi's science fiction can be palpably experienced, it is an effect of reality, in perpetual tension between scientific optimism and apocalyptic pessimism. A genre that, inherently cryptic, once distilled by the writer's labor, becomes material for transparent reflection. One deduces, therefore, that humanity still lurks in the possibility of understanding and communicating; and it is this necessity that the Lagers of daily incomprehension attempt to threaten.