Celebrating Levi by exploring humanity

A Tranquil Star: Unpublished Stories of Primo Levi
Translated by Ann Goldstein and Alessandra Bastagli
W.W. Norton, 167 pp., $21.95

To read the hauntingly whimsical, wondrously sculpted stories of Primo Levi is to experience life at its most austere, stripped of the excesses with which we adorn existence so as to viscerally illuminate what it means to be human.

In these 17 stories, published by the famed Auschwitz survivor in his native Italy from 1949 to 1986, and translated into English in this collection by Ann Goldstein and Alessandra Bastagli to commemorate his death in 1987, the elemental ascends to the allegorical. Levi affirms the imperative of being singularly alive, unshackled by social constraints, his wisdom as fierce as it is playful, as unwavering as it is gracious.

In "Bear Meat," a 1961 story recently published in The New Yorker, a climber survives a hike by eating bear meat, a primal act that provided "the taste of being strong and free, which means free to make mistakes; the taste of feeling young in the mountains, of being your own master, which means master of the world." In "The Fugitive," a 1979 story, an insurance company employee writes a poem that "seemed perfect: not a line or syllable had to be changed." But it takes on a physical life of its own, fleeing its author, who never again experiences the "whistles nor shivers" of such an epiphany.

Often, Levi vents his rage over the tyranny of such collectives as Nazism and fascism on the individual, who transcends the madness. "The Death of Marinese," a 1949 story, spans the last 10 seconds of the life of a man taken captive by German soldiers. He chooses to kill himself and them with a grenade. In "Censorship in Bitinia," a 1961 story and one of the more darkly satiric, animals censor people. "Curiously, the mammals closest to humans were found to be least useful for the task." In "Fra Diavolo on the Po," an autobiographical 1986 story, his contempt for the military is on full display.

Elsewhere, Levi explores tyrannies deeper than the political and ideological, such as modernity's technological and bureaucratic indifference. In "The Magic Paint," a 1973 story, a manufacturer comes across a paint that protects what it coats from misfortune and tests it on the glasses of a man whose right eye casts misfortune. The paint inside the lenses reflects misfortune back on the man, who dies. In "Bureau of Vital Statistics," a 1981 story, an official quits his job in an office that decides who dies, when, and why.

In "A Tranquil Star," an especially poignant 1978 story also recently published in The New Yorker, and the last of the collection, what it means to be human comes to be measured in limitations, suggesting life is ultimately unknowable and mutable, rather than knowable and permanent. In the decency such humility allows, we find our greatest strength, an eloquent close to this collection, whose questions are eternal.

Robert Braile reviews regularly for the Globe.