Human Beings after Catastrophe: Poetical Portraits by Primo Levi and Tamiki Hara

January 27, 1945: the Red Army set Auschwitz concentration camp free, making this date the liberation day for thousands of inmates, victims of the Nazi’s idea of a master race. August 15, 1945: Emperor Hirohito announced the surrender of Japan on Japanese radio after the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. XX century witnessed two of the most abominable atrocities of human history whose repercussions still affect not only German and Japanese societies involved in the first place but also each individual’s consciousness. Over the past decades, different studies have been investigating these indelible marks on history on many levels: historical, political, sociological, psychological, and even artistic approaches were called into question in the search for the truth about Shoah and atomic bombing catastrophes. This study offers a different perspective on the topic by comparing the poetical responses of two representatives of the so-called Shoah Literature and Atomic Bombing Literature: Primo Levi and Tamiki Hara. Despite the space-related distance and the different nature of the traumatic experiences they witnessed, both authors gave birth to similar poetical responses under the title of Se Questo è un Uomo (“If this is a man”) and Kore ga Ningen na no desu (“This is a human being”). This research sets itself the ambitious goal to demonstrate how, regardless of territorial, cultural, and stylistic boundaries, a similar human response toward catastrophe can be detached in the literary productions of Levi and Hara: a comparison on stylistic, figurative, and expressive levels reveals the analogous literary solutions adopted by the authors to depict human’s frailty in front of trauma. Both authors answer the literary imperative of writing: their commitment unveils the aim to bear witness and convey memory to future generations. Words, enriched by authors of allusive and critical meanings, represent an effective and necessary means to keep alive and preserve the traumatic memory. The catastrophe literature then becomes a language that unites, rather than divides, different societies. It serves as a universal mouthpiece for victims’ experiences to prevent Auschwitz, Hiroshima, and Nagasaki from happening again.