[In the following review, Freidin is dismayed by Levi's negative portrayal of Germany and its citizens in The Linden Trees.]

Germany has many scars that go more than skin deep. Gifted, highly sensitive Carlo Levi seems to have run his delicate fingers over them like an expert surgeon. He made his diagnosis before he set out from his homeland, Italy. It was based on what Mr. Levi calls pre-judgment. Some would call it prejudice. The talented Italian writer probably would not disagree if it were put to him that way. He admits he has prejudices especially when Germany and its Germans are up for analysis and assessment.

This slender book is more than just a travel narrative. It is the compulsive attempt of an artist to sift through the sights, sounds and smells of a divided Germany. Mr. Levi tries to tell, from his point of view, why Germans—East and West—behave today as they do. The Linden Trees is an apolitical book in the sense that other contemporary efforts are consciously, and often ponderously, political.

Mr. Levi has found, in his travels and encounters in Germany, deeply-rooted senses of guilt, a haunting desire to belong to someone or something and a search for the future in today. He does not attempt, as he writes, to compare gross national products or assess the sordid by-play of ambitious men who make political deals. The German, Mr. Levi believes, is today in a great squeeze. He may have a lot but his life is empty. Or, his may be the plight of misery and poverty. His life is still empty.

In a stream of consciousness approach, Mr. Levi reviews Germans he met and to whom he talked on this rather unsentimental journey. On the whole, he finds too many distasteful. But, as he contends, they are looking for something and this emptiness in their lives cannot long endure without explosion. His prose is often marmoreal; his political conclusions are frequently naive.

For example, in his wanderings, Mr. Levi found saber-scarred students. Duelling for scars goes on in the universities today. But in the years since World War II, I think that I found only four thin-lipped, devoted young duellists with scars creasing their cheeks. It could be that I didn't look hard enough as Mr. Levi obviously did. The practice is abhorrent even to those not so keenly sensitive as Mr. Levi. I daresay that German students play more “chicken” with motorcycles than they slash at each other with sabers.

German eating habits, the gorging kind, didn't please Mr. Levi. You can find that habit a daily routine at many restaurants and cafes. The annual gargantuan eating-and-drinking Oktoberfest in Munich would make an outsider quail and swear eternal fidelity to a strict diet. You can look for—and find—George Grosz tintypes in Germany. Yet you also can find others—alert, keenly aware, difficult and diffident. Mr. Levi didn't seem to find many of these.

In Berlin, Mr. Levi did the tours all newcomers make. He trod the glittering main streets of West Berlin and went across, past the Brandenburg Gate, to the shoddy exteriors of East Berlin. There aren't any more linden trees, by the way, on Unter den Linden. The sight and atmosphere of East Berlin depressed Mr. Levi as much as the out-thrust opulence bemused him on the other side of the line. Mr. Levi finished his trip some time before the wall was erected by the Communist Germans. Sight of the wall, an offense to human dignity, would certainly have moved him. One can only hope he will complete some sort of sequel to his present travel narrative, even for his own satisfaction, by making another trip some time soon to Berlin.