Talk:Primo Levi

Primo Michele Levi

According to some recent sources his complete name should be "Primo Michele", but on the Italian Wikipedia we discussed about it and we discovered that this is a case of citogenesis (it was added in 2007, all the books referring to Michele have been published after it). You can read the discussion here. We got in touch with the Centro Internazionale di Studi Primo Levi and they showed us his graduate diploma (from the book Album Primo Levi) in which the name is simply Primo Levi. That's why I removed Michele from the article. Please, be careful in the future since someone else could add again Michele to the article using one of those (unreliable) sources. --Martin Mystère (talk) 18:56, 3 February 2021 (UTC)

Noted - thanks much for the intel! Ckruschke (talk) 15:13, 4 February 2021 (UTC)Ckruschke

It should be noted that Thomson in his 2003 biography pp.17-18, long predating the 2007 hypothesis of citogenesis argued on the Italian talk page (2007), states quite plainly that Michele was his middle name, modeled on that of his paternal grandfather.Nishidani (talk) 16:09, 4 February 2021 (UTC)

Are you sure that you are not looking at the 2019 updated edition, titled Primo Levi: The Elements of a Life? Because if I look for "Michele" in the 2002 biography (you said 2003, but I think that it has been published in 2002) I can find only references to his grandfather, but not to Primo himself. Thank you for your help. --Martin Mystère (talk) 17:45, 4 February 2021 (UTC)

Ian Thomson’s award-winning biography was published by Heinemann in 2002. The Vintage edition came out in 2003. It was reprinted without revision by Random House 2019.

• The Heinemann edition has only snippet views but can be googled by searching for the phrase 'Primo Michele Levi was to spend most of his life in Turin.' It occurs on p.17 of that edition as it does on
• p.17 of the Random House edition
• The book in all three editions states on p.109 Primo Michele Levi (Matriculation 808 of the Jewish race) 13 June 1941 p.109

(1) Ian Thomson interviewed Levi one afternoon in 1986. He embarked on his biography in 1993, and spent eight years writing it, consulting over 300 people, including Levi's family, relations and acquaintances, and numerous obscure archival documents.

(2) This is prima facie evidence that the source is absolutely reliable for such details.

(3) What has happened is a result of WP:OR. Namely, the International Centre for Levi studies was asked, and provided scans of two primary documents (school or university certificates, not, nota bene, the birth certificate) where the name Michele does not appear. On the basis of this partial research into primary sources an inference was made that his major biographer got that detail wrong. I don't think it within our remit to question an authority who has consulted everyone and everything he could lay his hands on, simply after a very partial check of two pages of a scanned album dealing with school certificates, as has occurred.

(4) Reading the Italian wiki discussion, this flaw in procedure is apparent. And the other argument, i.e. that even if he bore such a middle name, it is rarely mentioned, falls flat because while everybody knows him only as James Joyce we duly note in the incipit his full name, James Augustine Aloysius Joyce, just as we annotate Virgil with his full name Publius Vergilius Maro or Dante's baptismal Durante di Alighiero degli Alighieri, or Boris Pasternak as Boris Leonidovich Pasternak or Hegel 's complete name, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel e via dicendo.Nishidani (talk) 18:17, 4 February 2021 (UTC)

Don't take this note harshly. I commend the practice on wiki, very rare but often crucial, of crosschecking wherever possible, primary and secondary sources. Sometimes this allows important revisions.(strong secondary sources quoting the Qur'an often screw up, as Walter Laqueur once did, for example. In such cases, one simply erases the secondary source because, in that case, Laqueur lacked the requisite qualifications to judge the Arabic source and scholarship on it.) But in the present case, this otherwise commendable spirit of meticulous source control actually acted on an inference, which trumped a very strong authority, and that constitutes a WP:OR violation.Nishidani (talk) 18:24, 4 February 2021 (UTC)

Don't worry, I didn't take your note harshly. I could find his second name in the snippets of the 2002 edition (look for matriculation 808 if you want). I would like to clarify that we didn't act simply as you said, but we asked to the International Center if they knew a second name of Primo Levi and, if they did not, to provide some official documents showing the name. I personally talked with the responsible of the archive and of the bibliographic heritage of the center, hence she should know Levi and his documents as good as Ian Thomson. Moreover we searched in old newspapers, and this second name was never present in any of those articles. I think that I will write again to the Centro Internazionale di Studi Primo Levi. However, to me is really strange that most of the biographies that have been written on Levi do not have that second name, books as reliable as the Thomson one. --Martin Mystère (talk) 19:10, 4 February 2021 (UTC)

Thomson's book is acclaimed as definitive. I'm a published author, cited a 1,000+ times in the relevant literature, but you'll never find my third name, only my family knows it. Your confidence in the omniscience of a specialist research centre is generous, but the first thing any scholar learns is that authorities in their fields screw up, leave gaps. The second thing they learn, if they prove worthy of their salt or cut the mustard, is that the same precarious frailty of exhaustive control over history applies also to themselves. The CIPL does not have in its archives Ian Thomson's harvest of archival transcripts and his 300+ interviews. Take any writer and you will find no one centre that has all the relevant manuscripts, publications, interview transcripts - that is why biography is almost invariably a globe trotting peripeteia. What you find strange is not strange at all. It is, ask a RS specialist around here. For my money, your elision based on the above surmises still amounts to original research undermining an authority who did massive primary research gathering materials that you won't find in that centre. The Horatian principle of bonus dormitat Homerus might apply to Thomson, as to anyone, but you cannot make the assumptions you are making to undermine his authority. The rule must be stet until a source disproves Thomson otherwise it is OR.Nishidani (talk) 20:03, 4 February 2021 (UTC)

I am not making any assumption to undermine Thomson's authority, I am simply saying that other authors could have written it and the people of the CIPL should have been able to find that information in their archive. Thomson is reliable to me, no doubts, but there are other authors who wrote books on Levi as meticulously as him (see Belpoliti). Unluckily I don't have access to everything. An IP wrote "Michele" on en.wiki, a vandal did it on it.wiki, hence we had plenty of reasons to be suspicious, the point is that we were finding it in recent books only, as the snippet search did not work smoothly. By the way, I sent a new message to the CIPL and if they reply I will let you know. In the following day I will add Michele to all the articles using Thomson's book as source. --Martin Mystère (talk) 21:35, 4 February 2021 (UTC)

It is utterly irrelevant to Wikipedia whether other authors on any topic mention or confirm the same data available in an authoritative text per WP:RS. Belpoliti's book if you are referring to his 2015 volume, is not a biography but predominantly a literary study, and he certainly had no access to the vast range of Levi's contemporaries that Thomson had, judging by his introductory remarks. What an IP writes, if corroborated later by an excellent source, cannot be expunged because the IP has no wiki handle, or because a vandal repeated it. For the moment I do appreciate your sedulousness in tracking down these obscure spoors, adding Thomson back (for the moment) and look forward to the feedback you gather. I myself will try to ascertain something about the matter. The hunt is on! Cheers Nishidani (talk) 22:07, 4 February 2021 (UTC)

In ogni modo, sicuramente non è per caso che Michele fu anche il nom de guerre di Primo Levi (Dr Michele) secondo una testimonianza conservata in un diario dell'epoca scritta da Vittorio Finzi, un dottore torinese (ed ebreo). Nishidani (talk) 15:03, 5 February 2021 (UTC)

Interesting, where did you read it? Do you have Finzi's diary? --Martin Mystère (talk) 19:23, 5 February 2021 (UTC) (IT) Interessante, dove lo hai letto? Sei in possesso del diario di Finzi?

Sempre nella biografia di Thomson. Precisamente:

They gave him his middle name Michele after his paternal grandfather. As time went on, Ester preferred to call her boy Mino from the affectionate diminutive Primino, ‘Little Primo’,' p.18

‘In his diary (Vittorio) Finzi noted: 'Primo Levi, who goes by the name of “Dr Michele’, has come down from the Colle di Joux (Col de Joux) to help us decide what to do.' Levi’s nom de guerre of Michele (his middle name and that of his unfortunate grandfather) was a clear indication that he was now part of a partisan band, p.138

Thomson consulted his diary of the time.Nishidani (talk) 19:42, 5 February 2021 (UTC)

So, from that book we can use p. 17,18,109,138. --Martin Mystère (talk) 20:55, 5 February 2021 (UTC)

Yes. I think the correct procedure is to restore Michele since Thomson refers several times to this name, and one is grounded in an archival document he consulted. This satisfies Wikipedia's standard criteria. Of course, editors can continue to consult works, and email around to research centres, but if no answer comes up, one cannot use an argument from silence to silence research that affirms a detail these centres may lack. I haven't access to Carole Angier's later and equally exhaustive bio, an art in which her research qualities are acute, but perhaps someone can check a library for the Italian edition's first chapter 'Paradiso'. In any case, the only sufficient ground for removal at this point is a source that challenges Thomson's annotation. Regards.Nishidani (talk) 21:29, 5 February 2021 (UTC)

I can check three other books (maybe four if someone that I know will go to read Carole Angier's Il doppio legame in the public library). After that I think that I will add Michele again, independently of the answer from the CISPL. --Martin Mystère (talk) 21:48, 5 February 2021 (UTC)

The point is this. Technically, at least on the English Wikipedia, the procedure used on the Italian site was odd. Here we don't rub out a datum from an authoritative source, based on scrupulous scholarship which mentions four times Michele, as his second name, taken from his grandfather, and influencing his nom de guerre and even citing for the last fact an archival diary. Suspicion only arose because an IP added this, and then was seconded by someone deemed a 'vandal'. The given datum, to use a tautology, was deemed guilty by association.

When the oversight was noted, and inferences, deductions, illazioni et caetera, were tossed around, it somehow came up that we need the imprimatur of a research assistant at the Centro Internazionale di Studi Primo Levi. What are the academic credentials and standing of this group? All this is wholly unacceptable, since the premise is that they have everything in Ian Thomson's personal archives of research. The Pope is infallible, but only God is omniscient, according to local legend.

So, I won't wait for the imprimatur. If they cannot come forth with proof that Thomson erred, then keeping this off Wikipedia amounts to an argumentum ex silentio adsumptivo.

It may turn out that it can be shown Thomson got this wrong. If so, one will of course remove it. Otherwise, the silence of other sources is irrelevant. Nishidani (talk) 22:18, 5 February 2021 (UTC)

As I already explained you, we didn't rub out a datum from an authoritative source. There wasn't an authorative source, only now we have access to that book. And as I said I am not waiting for an imprimatur from the Centro Internazionale di Studi. I have never done illazioni here. --Martin Mystère (talk) 11:56, 6 February 2021 (UTC)

You all did have an authoritative source, Ian Thomson's biography. The problem arose because no one was familiar with it. I do appreciate your going the extra mile here. But to restore the elided name does not mean the datum is correct: in wiki terms, it simply states that we have a highly reliable secondary source which provides that datum. As an I/P editor, every other day I see time and again material I personally regard as spurious or inaccurate or as meme reproduction but leave it in because the cited sources pass our WP:RS criteria. I don't get galvanized to remove such material, unless I can find RS that correct the misleading material. The same applies here. Apropos 'illazioni' I used several harsh words to cover all the comments in that discussion, and by no means intended that to imply you personally engaged in them. Nishidani (talk) 12:31, 6 February 2021 (UTC)

I suspect the reliable source (Thomson) refers to a name imposed in a religious ceremony, which it actually describes just before saying his parents gave him a middle name Michele. If so, it could be the same with me: I carry three baptismal names, but just a legal one --Actormusicus (talk) 16:40, 6 February 2021 (UTC)

Of course we can't say more than what RS report, just as we shouldn't underreport what they affirm. The Levis were highly secularized Jews, bar mitzvahs at 13 don't carry the extra name load that confirmation bears for Christians at a similar age and the imputed middle name clearly nods towards his grandfather. There is nothing prime facie suspicious about this.Nishidani (talk) 19:17, 6 February 2021 (UTC)

Well, one fact: a RS clearly says a second name was imposed 8 days after birth, it seems on the occasion of circumcision. I do not know how abroad, but in Italy babies are given a name on the same day they are born, before a registry officer, not a priest or rabbi. More often, though not always, it is a single name; additional names could be imposed in religious initiatic ceremonies such as baptism (not confirmation) in Catholicism. Thus, since the birth certificate is lacking, and the source makes no reference to it, we have a name, Primo Michele, he never used (only Michele as nom de guerre), by which he is not generally known, and maybe not even legal --Actormusicus (talk) 21:57, 6 February 2021 (UTC)

I think nonetheless that all such speculation is beyond wikipedian editors' remit. If you have an excellent source for things like this, one cites it with a note, and preferably a page link. If this is then controverted by further documentation that comes to light or our attention, one alters the article, excising or adding an explanatory footnote. The odd thing, in any case, is that the Torino Centre consulted cites school and university certificates, but not his birth certificate, which existed in the Torino anagrafe in 1919, since it was brought by Levi's father to the Turin registry when it became obligatory to register oneself as a Jew. He bought all of the family birth certificates to the registry office, indeed, on a precise date, 16 February 1939, and the details would have been filed there. Was that bombed, and the archive obliterated during the war? I dunno, and it's pointless speculating. Some eager beaver overwhelmed by a lyceum course on Sextus Empiricus, might, won over to Pyrrhonism insist we hold our fire (refrain from adding the data from Thomson) until the Turin registry copy turns up, or if bombed, found, with permission from the Belle Arti, in a funded excavation of wartime detritus under the new ground floor of whatever building now stands there. What's that I hear in the corridor of my drooping ear, something marvellous like

Had we but world enough and time,

This coy reluctance to define

Primo by his grandpa's name

Till some gnomish vegetative brain

Consults the future for some proof

To anchor Thomson's words in truth. . .

. .but I really must read something serious, Quammen's The Tangled Tree arrived yesterday on the history of the theory of horizontal gene transfer, fit pabulum for an academic blowhard as he trots his nagging off beyond Wikipedia's infinite capacity to waste serious time.Nishidani (talk) 23:02, 6 February 2021 (UTC)

Actually Actormusicus is even more careful than you in not making WP:OR. On pag. 17 we can read: "Primo Levi was delivered at home on the morning of 31 July 1919 [...] His parents named him Primo, not a common name in Italy, after primogenito, first-born. In keeping with Jewish custom, the baby was circumcised on the eight day of his life, and a drop of wine placed on his lips in blessing. They gave him the middle name Michele after his paternal grandfather". You can't say that these sentences are explicitely pointing in the direction of a middle name given at birth and written in the birth certificate (otherwise Thomson would have written that his parents named him Primo Michele immediately). However, we cannot even say with no doubts that Primo Michele has been used in religious practices only. That's why I think that we would respect both WP:RS and WP:OR reporting Primo Michele Levi in a note, while using Primo Levi in the incipit. By the way, I don't think that your poem is useful in any way in this discussion and you should try not to be so sarcastic. --Martin Mystère (talk) 12:45, 7 February 2021 (UTC)

Oh dearie dearie me! I pointed sceptics to those two pages, what is it, a week ago, and we are still dithering. What do you expect me to do, transcribe whole pages? In what religious context and the precise date in his first weeks it was conferred is utterly irrelevant. I pointed to James Joyce, whom our wiki bio dutifully names in the lead as 'James Augustine Aloysius Joyce'. 'Augustine' his second name commemorated his paternal grandfather, just as 'Michele' commemorates Primo's paternal grandfather. And we add Aloysius, because that was his confirmation name, taken in June 1891 (Richard Ellmann, James Joyce, rev.ed.Oxford University Press 1982 p.l30 - don't ask me to transcribe the whole page). Why the fuck are people making such an exception about Levi? Because he's Jewish? It is utterly weird, this habit of niggling whenever someone of that background or denomination is written about here, making exceptions to our standard practice (I gave several instances earlier) of treating all biographical subjects in the name neutral way?

There is zero reason for this arch equivocation, after a 'tedious argument of insidious intent' leading to some imaginary 'overwhelming question', to keep wondering “Do I dare?” and, “Do I dare?”, for not proceeding to simply state in the lead incipit what the source notes, that Levi had, like innumerable people, three names, the second of which is Michele, and deserves the dignity of his family's choice of monickers as much as any other great writers, like James Joyce, or Ezra Pound (Ezra Weston Loomis Pound), Aldous Huxley (Aldous Leonard Huxley), George Orwell (Eric Arthur Blair), Wyndham Lewis (Percy Wyndham Lewis), Rilke (René Karl Wilhelm Johann Josef Maria Rilke). We don't frig about as we have here getting one's knackers in a knot with other 'Jewish' writers like Arthur Waley (Arthur David Waley), Sigmund Freud (Sigismund Schlomo Freud), Marcel Proust (Valentin Louis Georges Eugène Marcel Proust), Philip Roth (Philip Milton Roth), Norman Mailer (Norman Kingsley Mailer), Howard Jacobson (Howard Eric Jacobson), Leonard Woolf (Leonard Sidney Woolf ), Patrick Modiano (Jean Patrick Modiano) etcetera. In all of these instances, the overwhelming evidence is that the writers in question are 99% referred to in books and scholarship and conversation by two names, but biographies register the full set of names, so the argument that 'Michele' is extremely rare doesn't apply, anymore than one would elide 'David' from Authur Waley's bio because 99% of references to that great writer never mention his middle name.

In short, this pedantic hullabaloo is making an exception of Levi, and while he once wrote that 'occorre diffidare del quasi uguale' (Primo Levi, Le Opere Einaudi 3 vols, 1987 vol.1 p.484), he deserves precisely the exact same registration of a full name as is given to his peers on wikipedia. To do otherwise is to create 'una piccola anomalia' (poco) 'allegra' (idem p.460).Nishidani (talk) 14:45, 7 February 2021 (UTC)