LOUIS FERDINAND CELINE

[Dr Doran]

He has been mentioned on threads here in the past, but there has never been a thread devoted to him. The basic facts of his life off the top of my head: he served in WW1, then became a doctor treating the poor in Paris slums. He came from a somewhat impoverished shopkeeper family. Horribly intelligent. His first two books were "Voyage au Bout de la Nuit" ("Journey to the End of the Night," after which the Doors named a song) and "Mort a Credit" ("Death on the Installment Plan").

The first almost won the Prix Goncourt, the most famous and important French literary prize. Its failure to win it haunted Celine all his life. The book concerns the entry into WW1 of the protagonist. The war is described in very disgusting colors. The protagonist then enters America, which is depicted the way you might expect the French of the 1920s to envision America: there is a Ford plant and a suburb. The protagonist falls in with a prostitute. He eventually leaves and ends up in French Colonial Africa, full of diseases and death. All the way through the book he continually meets his doppelganger. It's rather bizarre.

The second book is more enjoyable. It concerns the childhood of the protagonist. He has a life as a lower-middle class child in the not-quite-slums of Paris. His father is depicted quite well. He goes to England to learn English but never learns it. The boat ride is hilarious and the school, run by a benevolent absent-minded professor type with a highly attractive wife, goes to pot. There is more. The end result is a reflection on the meaninglessness of life.

Celine hated WW1 and opposed France's involvement in WW2. He ended up becoming an anti-Semite. This unfortunate political turn caused the brilliance of his earlier books to be questioned. But their scatology was probably sufficient for questioning as well.

Although a controversial figure, the basic fact that I am left with is that he wrote well. Extremely well. In a new, bizarre, almost crazy, surreal, yet highly grittily realistic manner. He explained the inner feelings of people and did not shy away from writing down the sorts of thoughts that were considered disgusting by his peers.

The definitive biography of Celine was written by Frederic Vitoux. There is an earlier one called Voyeur Voyant that I have not yet read.

 

[Dr Doran]

Who of you has read his works?

 

[Creeping Past]

I've read everything by him.* He's a great writer. Not sure that he was into 'scatology': he was interested in the possible range of linguistic expression, including French, and especially Parisian, argot - and this included dirty words - and ideas it's often thought best not to express in language.

If you've access to a good library, have a look at the lexicon of his argot, which was a PhD thesis, if my memory from the distant past serves me well, and not widely published outside the academic world. As a non-French speaker, using this together to read dual-text editions of Céline's novels opened up a whole new perspective on his work.

Milton Hindus's books about him are very good.

It's worth comparing Céline's later life with that of Lucien Rebatet and wondering why the former remained so hated and the latter was allowed to remain a part of the literary elite.

* Available in English

 

[Baron Kurtz]

I devoured Journey …, and Death … around 10 years ago towards the end of my time at college, and they had a profound effect on my thinking. They certainly convinced me never to write fiction; My message would be essentially the one that Céline put forward in those two books and since he did it so well, it's worthless to produce more of the same. (A crappy cop-out reason, I know, but there it is. And one that I have now abandoned.)

I have recently finished D'un château l'autre (English: Castle to Castle), set during the last days of the war in a castle in Germany, to which the Vichy government has retreated with a varied band of prostitutes and lunatics, including Céline and his wife & cat. Full of flashbacks and crazy from start to finish - a bit like Journey, really - it's a bit of a slog. He was by this time quite mad, I think, if he wasn't always so. And once i've finished Pierce Penniless, I'll be moving on to North, the second in the trio regarding his self-imposed exile. He is, I think, definitive proof that being a delusional, mad, or despicable person, has no bearing on one's ability to produce great art.


One interesting point that Céline harps on about in Castle to Castle is the looting of his Paris apartment after liberation. He claims that all his manuscripts were stolen ("liberated") from his apartment, and that the culprit was a famous publisher, whom Céline claims had them all in his basement waiting to publish when he died. Given that few such manuscripts have appeared, it seems this was simply fantasy, that the manuscripts were burned (not unlikely), or that they still remain hidden away, Céline having outed the person who stole them.

bk

 

[Dr Doran]

By scatology all I meant was farting and a turd here and there, not a sexual fetish - sorry, that was ambiguous.

My uncle (well, a bit more distantly removed than that -- the husband of my mother's first cousin) is a retired psychiatrist and head of a psychiatric hospital in Paris. Also a literature nut. He has a house lined in books. The first time I visited Paris and met him was in 1995. I asked him who he thought the greatest writer of the 20th century was. He said without skipping a heartbeat, "I do not appreciate what he said about the Jews, but the greatest is Celine."

I knew we would get along after that.

Has anyone noticed the persecution complex that Celine has in his writings? It appears quite pronounced.

 

[Baron Kurtz]

Yes, very pronounced. Especially in his later works, he had of course been persecuted quite severely for his political and racist views: forced (or chose) to fly the country, denounced, convicted in absentia and declared a National Disgrace, before being pardoned and allowed to return.

bk

 

[Creeping Past]

Yes, very pronounced. Especially in his later works, he had of course been persecuted quite severely for his political and racist views: forced (or chose) to fly the country, denounced, convicted in absentia and declared a National Disgrace, before being pardoned and allowed to return.

bk

Just what I was going to say...

 

[Dr Doran]

True -- he WAS being persecuted, and understandably so, as he didn't think the Jews were worth WW2, or however one wants to put it.

To be as fair as possible, the disgusting conditions of e.g. trench warfare in WW1 were so near in his mind that he was willing to do anything or believe anything in order to not repeat it.

But naturally, this excuse goes only so far.

I tried to get ahold of his pamphlet "Bagatelles pour un Massacre" which is his most anti-Semitic work; it was too expensive, although one Seine-side book-stall had one.

But I still see, in his personality makeup, a level of shall we say natural paranoia and natural resentment before he was persecuted for his actions during WW2. It's visible in his resentment over not winning the Prix Goncourt.

Have you read the people who consider him their God, and consider themselves his epigones?

Henry Miller is one.

I believe Bukowski is another.

Henry Rollins is a third.

Hubert Selby may be on that list too.

Personally I find Rollins rather talent-free. Miller I liked for some works but I find him kind of a poor man's version of Celine, not as brilliant or dark. Selby: I liked "Last Exit" but it was so depressing that I can barely read it. Bukowski is good for a laugh and has moments of brilliance but that's about it.

I've been trying to get into Ernst Jünger who was also a Rightist in the same period. Has anyone read him?

 

[Creeping Past]

But I still see, in his personality makeup, a level of shall we say natural paranoia and natural resentment before he was persecuted for his actions during WW2. It's visible in his resentment over not winning the Prix Goncourt.

But how much of this is his adopted literary persona acting out how someone like him would behave/speak, and how much is him speaking as he finds? I think he's doing both.

The adoption of enemies for rhetorical effect and professional positioning in literature has a long history, and in my view is a sign of a lively mind aware of the perceived necessity for such enmity in the minds of the consumer and the critic. Céline plays with this idea a lot more than many others, and takes this literary device much further than most.

 

[Baron Kurtz]

Exactly. We must remember that in any of his books, the level of biography (auto- or otherwise) is really very unclear. I don't think from his novels we get much of a view of the man, other than a vague sense that he thinks life is quite absurd. All that pointless running errands for the goldsmith! His injury is a classic example. He's never very clear about the injury or the degree of debilitation caused by it. (Not much, according to biographers, but his characters use it as one of their many crutches.) It's almost Dr Watson-esque in its vagueness.

From interviews with the man - I'll get some quote when I get home tonight - it's quite obvious that he takes great pleasure in telling it how it is. He wasn't scared to point out the absurdities inherent in almost every interaction, sometimes in the basest terms. (I'm told that his French can be almost indecipherable because the slang is so course and colloquial Parisian.) This was shocking at the time. You weren't supposed to say these things!

bk

 

[Creeping Past]

He wasn't scared to point out the absurdities inherent in almost every interaction, sometimes in the basest terms. [...] This was shocking at the time. You weren't supposed to say these things!

Yes, that's it. Céline had little time for the sensibilities of the 'Vrench' (as the word he uses comes out in at least one English translation), least of all concerns about linguistic and literary heritage, formalism of address and professionalism.

It's still regared as impolite to throw life's profound absurdities back in the face of the reader in a way that's not detached and intellectualised to some extent.

 

[Dr Doran]

Interesting. I did read Vitoux's excellent biography and from the interview material used in it, he does indeed come across as a bitter fellow paranoid about his enemies. But I see your point.

I got a copy of L'Eglise in English a couple of years ago. A monstrously long play. I have not read it yet. Have any of you read it?

 

[Creeping Past]

The Vitoux biog is okay, but for insight I prefer Milton Hindus.

I've not read L'Eglise, only the novels and non-fiction in English. I've a libretto for Voyage au Bord de la Nuit hidden away somewhere, but I can't remember where.*

Here's the old misery's wikipedia entry.

* Edit: I also can't remember where I got it, or who wrote it!

 

[Harp]

I asked him who he thought the greatest writer of the 20th century was. He said without skipping a heartbeat, "I do not appreciate what he said about the Jews, but the greatest is Celine."

Warts and all. Joyce second.