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Authors: Primo Levi
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their abominable hodgepodge of ideas and language, their confessed interest in gold, their Levantine swindles typical of charlatans or magicians; instead, at the origin of physics lay the strenuous clarity of the West—Archimedes and Euclid. I would become a physicist, ruat coelum: perhaps without a degree, since Hitler and Mussolini forbade it.
A brief course of exercises in physics formed part of the fourth-year chemistry program: simple measurements of viscosity, surface tension, rotatory power, and suchlike exercises. The course was conducted by a young assistant, thin, tall, a bit hunched over, polite, and extraordinarily shy, who behaved in a way that we were not used to. Our other teachers, almost without exception, showed themselves convinced of the importance and excellence of the subject they taught; some of them were in good faith, for others it was evidently a matter of personal supremacy, of their private hunting grounds. That assistant, however, almost had the air of apologizing to us, of ranging himself on our side: in his somewhat embarrassed and well-bred ironic smile, one seemed to read: “I too know that with this antiquated and worn-out equipment you’ll not be able to put together anything useful, and that furthermore these are all marginal futilities, and knowledge lives elsewhere; but this is a trade that you and I too must work at—so please try not to do much damage and to learn as much as you can.” In short, all the girls in the course fell in love with him.
During the span of those months I made desperate attempts to be taken on as a student assistant by this or that professor. Some of them snidely or even arrogantly told me that the racial laws prohibited it; others fell back on hazy or flimsy excuses. After having imperturbably collected the fourth or fifth rejection, I was going home one evening on my bike, with an almost palpable load of disheartenment and bitterness on my back. I was pedaling listlessly up Via Valperga Caluso, while from the Valentino Park gusts of freezing wind overtook and passed me; it was night by now, and the light of the street lamps, covered with purple for the blackout, did not prevail over the mist and darkness. The passersby were few and hurried; and then suddenly one among them caught my attention. He was going in my direction with a long, slow stride, he wore a long black overcoat, and his head was bare. He was walking a bit hunched over and looked like the assistant—it was the assistant. I passed him, uncertain as to what I should do; then I plucked up my courage, went back, and once again did not dare speak to him. What did I know about him? Nothing. He could be indifferent, a hypocrite, even an enemy. Then I thought that I risked nothing but another rejection, and without beating around the bush I asked him whether it would be possible to be accepted for experimental work in his school. The assistant looked at me with surprise; and instead of going into the long explanation I expected, he replied with two words from the Gospel: “Follow me.”
The inside of the Institute of Experimental Physics was full of dust and century-old ghosts. There were rows of glass-doored cupboards packed with slips of paper, yellowed and gnawed by mice and paper moths: these were the observations of eclipses, registrations of earthquakes, meteorological bulletins from well into the last century. Along the walls of one corridor I found an extraordinary trumpet, more than thirty feet long, whose origin, purpose, and use no one any longer knew—perhaps it was to announce the Day of Judgment, when all that which is hidden will appear. There was an Aeolipyle in Secession style, a Hero’s fountain, and a whole obsolete and prolix fauna of contraptions for generations destined for classroom demonstrations: a pathetic and ingenuous form of minor physics, in which stage setting counts for more than concept. It is neither illusionism nor conjuring trick but borders on them.
The
A brief course of exercises in physics formed part of the fourth-year chemistry program: simple measurements of viscosity, surface tension, rotatory power, and suchlike exercises. The course was conducted by a young assistant, thin, tall, a bit hunched over, polite, and extraordinarily shy, who behaved in a way that we were not used to. Our other teachers, almost without exception, showed themselves convinced of the importance and excellence of the subject they taught; some of them were in good faith, for others it was evidently a matter of personal supremacy, of their private hunting grounds. That assistant, however, almost had the air of apologizing to us, of ranging himself on our side: in his somewhat embarrassed and well-bred ironic smile, one seemed to read: “I too know that with this antiquated and worn-out equipment you’ll not be able to put together anything useful, and that furthermore these are all marginal futilities, and knowledge lives elsewhere; but this is a trade that you and I too must work at—so please try not to do much damage and to learn as much as you can.” In short, all the girls in the course fell in love with him.
During the span of those months I made desperate attempts to be taken on as a student assistant by this or that professor. Some of them snidely or even arrogantly told me that the racial laws prohibited it; others fell back on hazy or flimsy excuses. After having imperturbably collected the fourth or fifth rejection, I was going home one evening on my bike, with an almost palpable load of disheartenment and bitterness on my back. I was pedaling listlessly up Via Valperga Caluso, while from the Valentino Park gusts of freezing wind overtook and passed me; it was night by now, and the light of the street lamps, covered with purple for the blackout, did not prevail over the mist and darkness. The passersby were few and hurried; and then suddenly one among them caught my attention. He was going in my direction with a long, slow stride, he wore a long black overcoat, and his head was bare. He was walking a bit hunched over and looked like the assistant—it was the assistant. I passed him, uncertain as to what I should do; then I plucked up my courage, went back, and once again did not dare speak to him. What did I know about him? Nothing. He could be indifferent, a hypocrite, even an enemy. Then I thought that I risked nothing but another rejection, and without beating around the bush I asked him whether it would be possible to be accepted for experimental work in his school. The assistant looked at me with surprise; and instead of going into the long explanation I expected, he replied with two words from the Gospel: “Follow me.”
The inside of the Institute of Experimental Physics was full of dust and century-old ghosts. There were rows of glass-doored cupboards packed with slips of paper, yellowed and gnawed by mice and paper moths: these were the observations of eclipses, registrations of earthquakes, meteorological bulletins from well into the last century. Along the walls of one corridor I found an extraordinary trumpet, more than thirty feet long, whose origin, purpose, and use no one any longer knew—perhaps it was to announce the Day of Judgment, when all that which is hidden will appear. There was an Aeolipyle in Secession style, a Hero’s fountain, and a whole obsolete and prolix fauna of contraptions for generations destined for classroom demonstrations: a pathetic and ingenuous form of minor physics, in which stage setting counts for more than concept. It is neither illusionism nor conjuring trick but borders on them.
The
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