Primo Levi

Today is a literary blip in honour of being able to teach again and my first tutoring session in many months ... my students sometimes ask me what the point of English is ... and I guess that is a very personal question ... for me it is the opportunity literature provides to see into someone else's life ... their thoughts ... their feelings ... their desires ... their life could be the complete opposite to mine and yet through reading I can gain some understanding. I often think of characters during my day ... they become part of my world ... and can help to define my experiences. I chose Primo Levi as the subject of the image because I feel he had a desire to communicate his experiences, to not remain silent, no matter how much pain that brought him ... he questioned the essence of humanity, of what was destroyed by the Holocaust ... if that does not have value, I'm not sure what does ...

If This Is a Man

You who live safe
In your warm houses,
You who find, returning in the evening,
Hot food and friendly faces:

Consider if this is a man
Who works in the mud,
Who does not know peace,
Who fights for a scrap of bread,
Who dies because of a yes or a no.
Consider if this is a woman
Without hair and without name,
With no more strength to remember,
Her eyes empty and her womb cold
Like a frog in winter.

Meditate that this came about:
I commend these words to you.
Carve them in your hearts
At home, in the street,
Going to bed, rising;
Repeat them to your children.

Or may your house fall apart,
May illness impede you,
May your children turn their faces from you.