Alfred L.: Risoluto e Senza Gioia

[See update below]

I said something a few days ago about how much I admired Primo Levi, and how difficult I found it to pin down his peculiar virtue. Here’s an example that shows both the possibilities and the difficulties. In Se questo è un uomo –If This is a Man…, Levi’s great account of his year in Auschwitz, he includes a chapter entitled “I sommersi e I salvati”—“The Drowned and the Saved” (a title he also gave to his last book). Here Levi tries to explain Auschwitz through sketches of the lives of three inmates.

One of them is Alfred L., engineer, whose life, Levi tells us, “shows among other things the vanity of the myth of original equality among men.” Alfred had been director of a chemical products factory. Levi says he does not know how Alfred came to be arrested but he arrived in Auschwitz “come tutti entrato: nudo, solo, e sconosciuto”—as everyone comes in: naked, alone, and unknown. From first appearance, Alfred clearly had a manner about him, but two points in particular stand out: one, he has a pair of wooden shower clogs. And two, he washes his shirt. Can we conceive of how hard it must have been to wash a shirt in Auschwitz? You had to find the time and the place, and water, and soap—and you had to watch every minute so that no one stole it. But Alfred washes his shirt.

By such prodigies of inner discipline, Albert maintained an appearance:

Sapeva che fra l’essere stimato potente e il divenire effetitivemente tale il passo è breve; a che dovunque, ma particolarmente framezzo al generale livellamento del Lager, un aspetto rispettabile è la miglior garanzia di essere rispettato. (85)

He knew that between being esteemed and effectively being powerful the step is short; and that everywhere—but particularly in the general leveling of the Lager—a respectable aspect is the best guarantee of being respected. (94)

There comes a time when the guards undertake to select prisoners to work in a chemical factory. This is clearly good duty; if nothing else it greatly enhances the chance of survival. No wonder, then, that Albert is one of the first to be selected. He undertakes his new duties with the same air of command that have carried him so far. Levi concludes:

Ignoro il seguito della sua storia; ma ritengo assai probabile che sia sfuggito alla morte, e viva oggi la sua vita … (86)

I do not know the sequel to his story; but I count as reasonably likely that he eluded death, and lives his life today… (95)

Lives his life how? The Italian says:

fredda di dominatore risoluto e senza gioia. (86)

I really don’t know quite how to translate this. The standard English translation says:

cold life of the determined and joyless dominator. (95)

This is not right, but it is not easy to do better. Well: for “risoluto e senza gioia,” I think we can simply track the original: "resolute and without joy." “Fredda”=”cold,” which is good enough (but it perhaps it could be “cool”). But “dominatore”=”dominator” is a problem—I can’t think of any acceptable English expression that captures the idea so well. The point is that Albert is nobody’s victim, and will never be so. In the end, I would rather stick to the original:

Ignoro il seguito della sua storia; ma ritengo assai probabile che sia sfuggito alla morte, e viva oggi la sua vita fredda di dominatore risoluto e senza gioia. (86)

Sources: English quotations are from Survival in Auschwitz (Touchstone, 1995); Italian, from Se questo è un uomo (Einandi Tascabili 1958).

Update.: Must be something with the Italians and domination. I find this in a manuscripts by Eugenio Montale:

Sono codeste l’arche e le figure
Per chi nel mondo è trascorso
Con passo de dominatore
E encore sono gli emblemi che si guardavano
Senza tremore.

These are the arches and figures / for him who passed through the world / with a dominator’s step/and are still the emblems that were looked on / without terror.

--Eugenio Montale, Collected Poems 1920-1954 451 (2000)
(Jonathan Galassi trans.)