Writing, Rewriting, Translating, Retranslating: The Evolution of Primo Levi's Se questo è un uomo

This chapter investigates the extensive network of texts and stakeholders that make up the publishing history, both in Italian and English, of Primo Levi’s seminal account of his time in Auschwitz, Se questo è un uomo [If This is a Man]. The network approach will be used to outline the fluctuating diachronic interest in the book as well as how certain features of Levi’s text are foregrounded over others according to the (perceived) target audience. Levi wrote a first factual account on the sanitary conditions in the Camp (1946), followed by a fourteen- page short story (1946) before completing the first version of the memoir that would bring him fame (1947). Poorly received, a further eleven years went by before the publication of a revised version with Einaudi (1958). This was followed by subsequent paratextual transformations and intermedial adaptations. All these rewritings are here viewed as intralingual and/ or intersemiotic (re)translations and, alongside the interlingual translations and retranslations into many languages – this investigation will limit itself to those into English – they comprise the extensive textual fabric around the atrocities narrated by Levi. In the light of Postmemory Studies, the (re)editions and (re) translations can be seen as contributing dynamism to historical legacy as they address different constituencies.