…in Gulag, you were so broken down that you were beyond the tragic dignity. That's why if you read the ultimate book, Primo Levi, If this is a man. It's full of genuinely comical details. So things are much more, just be careful, ambiguous here. Comedy…

…stories about Gula. This is what happened, yeah. This is It's sort of like the difference between like Elie Wiesel and Primo Levi and like Holocaust literature. Like every American school kid reads Elie Wiesel. Here we get another point about jokes. Nobody…

…Levi and like Holocaust literature. Like every American school kid reads Elie Wiesel. Here we get another point about jokes. Nobody knows Levi. Yeah, about jokes. You know what fascinates me now? My idea was in the most deeply respectful way that if this…

…humor where you don't laugh. You're just too horrified emerges again. The idea at least came to me when I was reading Primo Levi, if this is a man, and I discovered that many most horrifying scenes that he described from Auschwitz read as jokes. But…

…comedy. You know where also came this idea to me? Did you... did you see, no, did you read, I hope you did, Primo Levi, Sequestro Enomo, if this is a man. And I discovered that some of the most horrifying scenes that he depicts are objectively comical…

…a way. I'll go even a step further. Probably it is, okay, you read it in English, it's not translated in your languages, Primo Levi, his famous memoirs of Auschwitz, if this is a man, where with a couple of scenes, You cannot avoid the temptation of…

…sense, like often the SS doctor, you know, put the wrong name, got it wrong, and so on. But then when Primo Levi describes how prisoners tried to prepare themselves, it's almost a comedy. They knew everything is focused in those two, three seconds.…

…reversibility and so on. And it's perfectly clear if you read the best memoirs of Gulag and of Auschwitz, for example, Primo Levi. Auschwitz was a carnival at a certain level. It began, the carnival began with Arbeitsmarktfreiheit, you know. This is for me…

…not surrender, all this. You cannot play these games in Auschwitz. Which is why when I reread recently big great book on Auschwitz, Primo Levi, if this is the man, I was struck to what extent many things there are in a way, comical. You know when Levi…

…Primo Levi, if this is the man, I was struck to what extent many things there are in a way, comical. You know when Levi describes the process of selection, like once a two-month Lakers prisoners had just to run in front of an SS doctor and he just…

…my limit. Believe me. No, that's too much. But my point is only this one. I simply thought that you know like what Primo Levi says, that famous conversation that a Nazi torturer in Auschwitz tells him, nobody will believe us and so on. I had the same…

…but nonetheless again, let me Quote, you hear a brief passage from Primo Levi's, if this is a man, where he, Primo Levi, his Auschwitz memoirs, where he describes the dreadful procedure of, the term used in the camp was selekcja, Polish, selection. the…

…quote. So right means survival, left means gas chamber. Is there not something properly comic in this ridiculous spectacle? Because as Primo Levi reports how, you know, before running, just for a second, to be observed in front of the SS doctor, prisoners…

…parallel between this scene, maybe one of the most terrifying scenes. Sorry, not scene like scene, but scene like picture. from Primo Levi, I strictly think that there is a parallel between this and the Last Judgment. I think that the truly subversive…

…course not a personal other, but you can imagine the case. You know, basically Freud gives a version of a wonderful insight by Levi Strauss, who wrote somewhere that he encountered one of those mythic tribes, this time in North America I think, who had a…

…but it's crucial, I think, extra dramatic case, but don't be afraid, this is real tragedy, I'm not bullshitting with bad jokes, from Primo Levi. it's from his, I think it's in the first one, Sequestro Nomo, This is a Man. He reports how he had again…

…should just be aware that, how should I put it, Auschwitz was also for Nazis in a way, literally. My god, if you read Levi, it's clear that it was also in a very strange book called This Way for the Gas, Ladies and Gentlemen, by Tadeusz Borowski. I…

…guessed, you can survive. Of course, they learned a couple of days in advance when this selection will take place. And the way Primo Levi, it was in your interest or not, I'm sorry to tell you, but there is something not to laugh. Isn't there something…

…blah, blah. That was the point where usually then suicides occur. And make you know it, he has a wonderful, terrifying dream, Primo Levi, along a very weird dream, along the same lines, where he reports on a dream, don't show me the pornographic image, I…

…It's a horrible logic. It's as if the disappointment in the dream is so horrible that you prefer to awaken to the Primo Levi reports that he thought this dream is his peculiarity, but he discovered that practically all others had this same dream. Sorry,…

…that it was not possible to do a conflict at the level of tragedy, which is why Some of the scenes, if you read Primo Levi, the way he describes, you cannot but describe them as comical. For example, one of the most horrible scenes, read it in, if…

…categorized you to be burned or to be allowed to leave. But there is something obscenely, madly comical in this. How Primo Levi describes this, you know, like the prisoners were trying to pinch their lips to appear more healthy, more red, their stomachs…

…of its normal base? This is why the vigor of the Musulman signals the limitation of Levinas. When describing it, Primo Levi repeatedly uses the predicate, faceless. And this term should be given, I think here, its entire Levinasian weight. When confronted…