Primo on The Parapet ('92)

Primo Levi born in Turin, Italy, in 1919, and trained as a chemist, was arrested during the Second World War as a member of the anti-Fascist resistance and deported to Auschwitz in 1944. His experience in the death camp and his subsequent travels through Eastern Europe were the subject of powerful memoirs, fiction and poetry.

40 years after his imprisonment, in the spring of 1982, Primo Levi returned to Auschwitz ("in the role", as he put it, "of a tourist"). He accompanied a group of students and professors from Florence, as well as some other concentration camp survivors. A troupe from Sorgenti di Vita went along to document the visit. "Springs of Life" was a cultural television program of the Unione Comunita Israelitiche Italiane, offered bi-weekly by Radiotelevisione Italiana [RAI] on Sunday afternoons.

As his friend and fellow survivor Jean Amery once wrote: "Anyone who has been tortured remains tortured" Beneath the buoyancy and reason of Levi's books underlay a similar sense of a wound that simply could not be healed. On April 11, 1987, after a period of prolonged depression, Levi toppled over the railing of a stairwell in his Turin home, and died of his injuries. His (apparent) suicide was greeted by many with disbelief, as if it somehow invalidated the serenity found in his work. But the books, of course, remain, and all of Levi's hard-won knowledge and lucidity and gentle wit will survive him, as long as there are readers with the least grain of curiosity about what it means to be human."

Primo on the Parapet

To crawl on hallowed ground without a map;
to walk on hollow legs, leaving no footprint;
to drift like a ghost through the quarters of lost desire;
breathing underwater,
still running through the fire.

Four horsemen drive the coach of Holocaust home;
and with what sense of history do we view our bright new world,
with the video nasty blasting through the set
of our next door neighbour?
Do we learn to forget? Do we learn just to forget?

And raw barbarity seeps, spore in soil?
And no-one's an innocent, no-one's entirely immune....
Oh, still we wait for a saviour, there are no saints as yet.
Just that guilt badge of survival,
we learn to forget.

The blindest eye is turned on the beast we clothe,
drab in the uniform of silent acquiescence.
I'll raise this toast to Primo, climbing up upon the parapet
with one final word of caution:
we must learn not to forget.

There's pain in remembrance,
but we must learn not to forget.

Here's a toast to Primo,
let's learn not to forget.
Here's a toast to Primo,
forgive but don't forget.
Here's a toast to Primo,
let's learn not to forget.

One last word of caution
from the very rim of the parapet.
One last word in remembrance...
we must learn not to forget.

Written by Peter Hammill

Recordings:

1992 January–September at Terra Incognita, Bath. Studio version released on The Noise Lp March '93
1992 In concert recording released on "There Goes The Daylight" Live cd
2001 In concert recording at The Noga Theatre, Jaffa, Israel, March 20th, released on "Verascious Live (2006)
2010 In Concert recording released on "Pno Gtr Vox Box" cd box set
2018 In concert recording in the UK released on "Not Yet, Not Now" live cd box set

2018 UK Live recording included on "Not Yet, Not Now" cd box set released in 2019

Releases:

1993 'The Noise' LP by Peter Hammill and included on 3 Live cds:
1993 "There Goes The Daylight" live cd
2006 "Veracious Live" with Stuart Gordon
2012 "Pno Gtr Vox Box"
2019 "Not Yet, Not Now" 8 cd live box set

In concert:

1993 PH Band (Hammill/Gordon/Potter/Elias)
1994 (With David Jackson) (Greece)
1994/1995 PH Band (Hammill/Jackson/Gordon/Elias) (UK/Europe/Holland/Germany/Italia/Russia)
1996 PH Band (Hammill/Gordon/Jackson/Elias)
1998-2003 (With Stuart Gordon)
2008 Solo
2009 Solo
2011 Solo (Japan)
2013 Solo
2014 Solo
2017 Solo Tokyo and Italia
2018 Solo: Manchester, Bristol, Dortmund.