Atoms and Memories: Il Sistema Periodico by Primo Levi

Abstract

This article aims at investigating how the relation between literature and science in Il sistema periodico by the Italian Jewish chemist and writer Primo Levi. In addition to being an overview of chemical elements, using Mendeleevs ́s periodic table template as a frame, this book is also a short story collection of the writer's life, an intimate and seemingly unpretentious encyclopedia. However, unlike the aspiration that moved many of the encyclopedists, Levi ́s narrator does not intend to reach the totality; the entry, so explored in his work, just confirms the lacunar and residual character of his memories.