D.W. Griffith

Louis-Ferdinand Destouches , more known under its pen name Louis-Ferdinand Celine (first name of her grandmother), generally shortened in Celine (May 27th 1894, Courbevoie - July 1st 1961, Meudon), doctor and writer French, more translated and diffused in the world among those of the 20th century, after Marcel Proust.

Its nihilist thought is tinted accents Héroïcomique S and epic. Discussed because of its writings containing of the remarks Anti-semite S, i.e. his lampoons published between 1937 and 1941 (reprinted during the Occupation), he does not remain about it less one major writer of the French literature for the remainder of its work, more particularly its novels (their ideology put aside, the lampoons of Celine them were also considered to be stylistiquement remarkable, certain specialists disputing even the separation often operated between the latter and the remainder in célinienne creation). Its racism is expressed until in its last writings, other face of that which agreed to look after the poor of Paris. Creator of a Language which translates all the one time difficulty of being and of being said, expressing his hatred of the modern world, Céline, Rabelais délusionné and Pessimiste, Prophète hallucinated new times which lived one time with the measurement of its torrential genius, very expensive paid this attitude and his behavior under the Occupation. He is regarded today as one of the largest prosateurs of the 20th century, at the sides of other experts of human deafness like Sartre, Albert Camus and Beckett.

Biography

Celine was born in Courbevoie, department of the Seine, to the 11, slope of Bridge-of-Neuilly (fitted today of President-Paul-Doumer), as it repeats it with insistence in Of a castle the other . Resulting from a noble family of origin (relationship with the Destouches knight immortalized by Barbey d' Aurevilly) but desilvered, of a father employed of insurances who was correspondence clerk according to the proper words of a commercial the lace writer and mother, it receives a summary instruction, in spite of two language course abroad in Germany and England. It occupies of small employment during its adolescence, in particular in jewelleries, and engages in the French Army in 1912 by preceding of call. It joined the 12 {{E}} regiment of cuirassiers to Rambouillet. It will use its memories of childhood in Mort in credit and its memories of incorporation in Breakage-pipe (1949).

Its regiment takes part in the combat of the First World War. To have achieved a connection risked in the sector of Poelkapelle (Flanders Occidentale), during which it with the right-hand man and not with the head, contrary to a tough legend (volunteer in the army in 1912, it was seriously wounded with the right shoulder and in 1914, it is wounded had the damaged tympanum). It will be decorated with the Military decoration, which will confer the to him Military Cross with money star. It is initially affected like auxiliary with the service of the visas of the French consulate in London (directed by the army because of the state of siege) then reformed with 70  % because of the after-effects of its wound. It then contracts an engagement with a company of draft which sends it in Africa. The experiment of the war will play a decisive part in the formation of sound Pacifisme and its pessimism.

Important meeting which supplements its intellectual formation: he works in 1917-1918 near the scientist-inventor-journalist-lecturer Henry de Graffigny. Recruits together by the mission Rockfeller, they traverse Brittany in 1918 for a prevention campaign of the Tuberculose.

After the war, it is fixed at Rennes. Having married Edith Merry the girl of the director of the Medical school of Rennes, it prepares the Baccalauréat, which it will obtain in 1919, then studies of medicine of 1920 with 1924 continues while profiting from the reduced programs reserved to the war veterans. Its thesis of doctorate, the Life and the work of Ignace Philippe Semmelweis (1924), is regarded today as its first literary work. It publishes Quinine into therapeutic (1925). After its doctorate, he is engaged with Geneva by the Fondation Rockefeller which subsidizes a station of the Institute of hygiene of SDN, is rested and directed by Dr. Rajchman. Its family does not accompany it. Equipped as a dandy, with the clear blue eyes, it allures a young American dancer, Elizabeth Craig. It will accompany several voyages by doctors in Africa and America. That in particular leads it to visit the factories Ford during a stay with Détroit which will last 36 hours.

As much of writers, Céline skilfully knew to build a whole series of myths on her personality. At the same time as Voyage at the end of the night , Céline wrote articles for a medical check ( the medical Press ) which do not correspond to the image of libertarian that one was made of him. In the first of the two articles which it gave to this review in May 1928, Céline praises the methods of the American industrialist Henry Ford, methods consisting in engaging preferably tared workmen physically and mentally and that Céline calls too the deposed ones of the existence . This kind of workmen, notices Céline, deprived of critical direction and even of elementary vanity , form a stable labor and which is resigned better than another . Celine deplores that it still does not exist nothing similar in Europe, under pretexts more or less traditional, literary, always futile and practically disastrous .

In the second article, published in November 1928, Céline proposes to create doctor-police officers of company, vast medical and medical police force charged with convincing the workmen that the majority of the patients can work and that the policy-holder must work as much as possible with less possible interruption due to disease . It acts, affirms Céline, of a company has patience of correction and intellectual correction completely realizable however because The public does not ask to include/understand, it asks to believe. Celine concludes unambiguous: Popular interest? It is a quite inaccurate, impulsive and vague substance. We renonçons there readily. What appears much more serious to us, it is the employers' interest and its economic interest, not sentimental. One can however wonder about the correspondence between these writings and the real feelings of Celine, on the degree of irony of these comments medical (or on a possible evolution) because, a few years later, several passages of Voyage at the end of the night will clearly denounce the inhumanity of the capitalist system in general and fordist in particular.

Contrary to the often taken again legend, it will be never to advise medical company of the cars Ford with Detroit. Its contract with SDN not having been renewed, it will be committed, after having planned to buy a private clinic in Parisian suburbs and a test of liberal exercise of medicine, by the dispensary of Clichy where it will carry out four two hours vacations per week for which it will be paid: 2000 francs per month. To supplement its incomes, it will occupy a general-purpose post of originator of advertizing documents, proprietary medical products and even of medical representative in three pharmaceutical laboratories.

It is all this part of its life which he reports through the adventures of his anti-hero Ferdinand Bardamu, in his novel more known, the first, Voyage at the end of the night (1932), for which he receives the Prix Renaudot, after having missed little the Prix Goncourt.

After the unloading of June 6th, 1944, Celine, fearing for her life, leaves France on June 14th, 1944. It is found initially with Baden-Baden, in Germany, before leaving for Berlin, then for Kraenzlin (Northern Zornhof of ) from where it could not join Denmark… Learning that the French government was formed with Sigmaringen, Céline proposed then with Fernand de Brinon, the representative of Vichy for occupied France, to exert medicine there; this one accepted. It is not established besides that it exerted there. Here is how Céline gained by the Sigmaringen train, voyage which he reports in Rigodon ; over there, it côtoie the last square of the petainists and the dignitaries of the Mode of Vichy ( Of a castle the other ). It is only after, on March 22nd, 1945, that it leaves Sigmaringen for Denmark, occupied by the Germans, in order to recover his gold which was preserved there. Chronologically, the German “trilogy” thus begins with Northern , is prolonged by Of a castle the other, and finishes by the posthumous book Rigodon . Celine, in Northern , makes several winks with the supposed reader have already read Of a castle the other . In short, any literary consideration passed, it reached finally Denmark to live there in captivity: nearly one year and half of prison, and more than four years in a hut close to the Baltic.

He lives in a slum that he cannot heat, boycotted by the literary world whereas he is the only valid writer and that he wrote his lampoons only to prevent the war . At the time of the Purification, condemned to one year of imprisonment (which it already carried out in Denmark) and to the national Indignité, Céline is amnestied in 1951 thanks to its new lawyer Tixier-Vignancour. It then signs a contract with Gallimard. Eager to profit from the retirement, it is registered with the Order of the doctors, but request an exemption of contributions, because it does not have customers . It must affix a plate of doctor at the entry of his house, but does not seem to have arranged site where it could have received his possible patients. At 65 years, it withdraws the plate and obtains the benefit of its retirement.

The writer finds success starting from 1957 with German trilogy , in which it lovesong its exile. Published successively and separately, Of a castle the other (1957), Northern (1960) and Rigodon (1969) form actually three shutters of only one novel. Celine puts herself at it personally in scene like character and narrator.

Louis-Ferdinand Destouches dies in 1961 with Meudon (Hauts-de-Seine), leaving widowed the dancer Lucette Destouches (born Almanzor), for whom he wrote his arguments of ballets. He is buried with the cemetery of Long Réages, with Meudon.

The style Celine

Celine revolutionizes the traditional romantic account, playing with the rates/rhythms and sonorities, in what it calls its small music . The vocabulary at the same time Slang ic and scientific, familiar and required, is with the service of a terrible clearness, oscillating between despair and humor, violence and tenderness. Stylistic revolution and real revolt (the literary critic Gaetan Picon went until defining the Voyage like one of the most insupportable cries that the man ever pushed ).

It is in 1936 that, in Mort in credit , this stylistic revolution takes a turn much more radical, in particular by the use of short sentences, very often exclamative, separated by three points from suspension. This technique of writing, conceived to express and cause the emotion, will be found in all the novels which will follow. It will décontenancera a good part of criticism to the publication of Mort in credit . In this nourished novel of the memories of her adolescence, Céline presents a vision chaotic and antihéroïque, at the same time burlesque and tragic, human condition. The book, however, knows little success, and is even criticized by the partisans of Voyage at the end of the night . Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir sees there “a certain heinous contempt of the people of modest means which is a prefascist attitude” while Élie Faure, which had encensé the Voyage , judge simply that Céline “tramples in the shit”.

On the stylistic level, the progression which appears between its first novel and its ultimate trilogy is marked by an increasingly clear correspondence between the time of the account (or time of the action) and the time of the narration (or write time). Thus the present of narration invades romantic space so much so that the action does not seem any more to be held in the past, but quite to the contrary at the time when the written narrator. The text approaches thus gradually like the chronicle, giving to its reader the impression which the events proceed on line , under its eyes.
It is interesting to bring it closer to its contemporary Ramuz, whom it said being the initiator of the transfer of the spoken language in the written language .

It is in its second novel, Mort in credit , putting in scene the childhood of Ferdinand Bardamu, alter literary ego of Celine, whom it develops her true style, of which the points of suspension are characteristic, style that one finds in the following novels. These famous points of suspension were the thesis object many. They can be explained by the will of the author to combine written and oral language.

Policy

The violent critic of the Militarism, the Colonialism and the Capitalism which is expressed in its books, reveals Céline like a writer close to the left-wing ideas. In 1936, it is invited in the USSR, in particular under the influence of Elsa Triolet, to validate its royalties for Voyage at the end of the night (in Soviet Union the royalties were blocked on an bank account which one could even use only in the country). He writes on his return its first lampoon, Mea culpa , pitiless load against a bureaucratic and barbarian Soviet Russia, the same year as Retour of the USSR of André Gide.

Celine then expresses by a series of lampoons violently anti-semites. In 1937, Bagatelles for a massacre appears then, in 1938, the School of the corpses . These books are a great success: it spreads out there a racism and an anti-semitism radicals, but also the desire to see creating a Franco-German army and an apology for Hitler which would not have any aiming on France: So tomorrow Hitler made me approaches with its small moustache, I râlerais like today under the Jews. But if Hitler said to me: “Ferdinand! it is the great division! All is divided! ”, he would be my pal!

And in the School of the corpses (1938):

“the Jews, racialement, are monsters, hybrids, magnifying glasses pulled about which must disappear. In the human breeding, they are not, any bluff with share, that bastard gangréneux, devastating, pourrisseurs. The Jew persecuted forever by the Aryan ones. He persecuted itself. He is damné of the tuggings of his meat of hybrid. ” ( the School of the corpses , Paris, Denoël, 1938, p. 108).

After the defeat and the occupation of France, Céline writes a third lampoon: beautiful cloths , where he denounces not only the Jews and the freemasons but also the majority of the French, suspected of interbreeding. The lampoonist also asks, inter alia considerations, for a reduction of the working time (at 37 hours, to start) and predicted a black future in Germany and with collaboration, that displeases so much with the Régime of Vichy (criticized in the work) that the book is put at the index. The writer addresses then forty open letters published by the most virulent bodies of collaboration while remaining in margin. In these letters it is presented in the form of a pope of racism, deplores the insufficiency of repression against the Jews, the freemasons, the Communists and the gaullists. It publishes in 1944 Guignol' S band , account of its stay of 1915 in England.

Several interpretations were given anti-semitism célinien, which breaks out in this extract of a letter to its literary secretary:

I want the Jews to cut the throat of… When Hitler decided “to purify” Moabit in Berlin (their district of the Villette) it made emerge to the improvist in the usual meetings, the bars, of the teams of machine-guns and by salvos, indistinctly, to kill all the occupants! Here is good method. ( Letters in Marie Canavaggia , Of Lérôt ED., 1995).

Thus, according to the historian Philippe Burrin: Its lampoons of the pre-war period articulated a coherent racism. If he denounced in bulk the left, the middle-class, the Church and the extreme right-hand side, without forgetting its head of Turk, the Pétain marshal, it is for the reason that they were unaware of the racial problem and the warmonger role of the Jews. The solution? Alliance with the Nazi Germany, in the name of a community of race conceived on the lines ethnoracists of the Alsatian, Breton and Flemish separatists. ( France at the German hour , 1940-1944, Threshold, 1995, p. 63.)

Burrin still writes: As much as anti-semite, it is racist: the elimination of the Jews, desirable, essential, is not the whole. It is necessary to rectify the French race, to impose a cure of abstinence to him, a setting with water, a body and physical rehabilitation. Vichy being worse of all, and while waiting for that a new education had time to make its work, it is necessary to attract by “Labiche Communism” these French calves who think only of the money. For example, in their distributing the Jewish goods, only means of waking up a racist conscience which is hopelessly lacking. ( ibid , p. 427.)

Work analyzes

Its first novel, Voyage at the end of the night , is built around two main axes which correspond to two most of work. The first axis relates to the discovery with Ferdinand Bardamu, the narrator-character, of a world where the Paix and the Amour between the people seem impossible: the War S, the Colonization, industrial exploitation; everywhere men control others of them. The second axis, as for him, is a prolongation of the first. It confirms the essentiel  of it;: the love is impossible today . However, this topic from now on is explored more closely. Thus the couple formed by Robinson and Madelon invests the center of the narration gradually. Celine then dissects the will of domination and control which are with work in the most idealized relations which are the love affairs. The novel thus progresses of the general to the private individual in order to check one of the aphorisms present as of its opening: the love, it is the infinite one put at the range of the poodles . poodles that are the human beings, being able to only claim with this abstract ideal is the love because of their definitively bestial nature; Celine joining here the thought of Arthur Schopenhauer. However, some (minority), such Woolly Pierre, see as a Celine a humanistic author in spite of his excesses and its crudeness; bits of humanity persisting in work célinienne, like when, in the Voyage , Bardamu apitoie on the Bébert child.

Its last novel, Rigodon , to rather regard as a Chronic , since it describes itself there as: “Me, chronicler of the large puppets”, was written with Meudon in 1960 and 1961. Its last book makes literary figure of will. Indeed, on July 1st, 1961, Céline his wife prevents whom the work in question is completed, writes in addition a letter with Gaston Gallimard, and even dies the evening, with 18  hours. Of this novel one will retain the integral rejection of the Occident vis-a-vis the dislike which its History can inspire: wars, colonization, decline of the Europe:

“You like too the paradoxes! Celine! the Chinese are antiracists! … blacks too!

- This foutery! that they come here only one year they kiss everyone! the turn is played! more one white! this race forever existed… a “make-up foundation” it is all! The true man of truth is black and yellow! the white man métisseuse religion! religions! Jewish Protestant catholics, the white died! there does not exist any more! who to believe? ”

“… but one saw worse, quite worse… and one will see I ensure you still much more owl… the Chinese Brest, the White in the rickshaws, not drawn! in the stretchers! … how all this Gaulle and all Europe, the yites with, change color, which they made well enough shit the world! … it and its pretentious blue blood, christianemic! ”

Works

Novels

Lampoons

  • Mea Culpa , ED. Denoël & Steele, Paris, 1936

  • Trifles for a massacre , ED. Denoël & Steele, Paris, 1937
  • the School of the corpses , ED. Denoël, Paris, 1938
  • Beautiful Cloths , New French Editions, Paris, 1941

Except for Mea Culpa , the lampoons were never republished, at the request of its widow. It are concerned in any case with the Marchandeau Order in Council of 1939 and the law Pleven of 1972, which prohibit the provocation with the racial hate.

Other texts

  • Life and the work of Philippe Ignace Semmelweis , Simon, Rennes, 1924

  • Discussions with professor Y , ED. Gallimard, Paris, 1955
  • Arletty, young girl from the Dauphine , panpipes, Paris, 1983
  • Forewords and dedications , Of Lérot, Tusson, 1987
  • History of small Mouck , Editions of the Rock, 1997
  • the Church , ED. Denoël & Steele, Paris, 1933
  • the Lightnings and arrows , ED. F. Chambriand, Paris, 1948
  • Scandal with the abyssals zone , ED. F. Chambriand, Paris, 1950
  • Ballets without music, anybody, anything , ED. Gallimard, Paris, 1959. This volume contains the ballets the Birth of a fairy , Voyou Paul, honest Virginia and Van Bagaden which appeared already in Bagatelles for a massacre , like Foudres and arrows and Scandale with the abyssals zone .
  • Progress , ED. Mercure de France, Paris, 1978
  • Celine living , anthology of the audio-visual talks with LF Céline, ED. Montparnasse, Paris, 2007

Correspondences

  • 1979 : Books Celine 5: Letters with friends. ED. Gallimard

  • 1981 : Books Celine 6: Letters with Albert Paraz 1947-1957. ED. Gallimard
  • 1984 : Letters with its lawyer: 118 new letters with Maître Albert Naud. Paris: Panpipes
  • 1985: Letters with Tixier: 44 new letters with Maître Tixier-Vignancour. Paris: Panpipes
  • 1987: Letters with Joseph Garcin (1929-1938). Paris: Bookstore Monnier
  • 1988: Letters with Charles Deshayes, 1947-1951. Paris: Library of Contemporary French Literature
  • 1989: The Sandfort questionnaire, preceded by nine new letters with J.A. Sandfort. Paris: Bookstore Monnier
  • 1991: Letters with the NRF 1931-1961. Paris: Gallimard
  • 1991 : Letters with Marie Beautiful. Sourness: Of Lérot
  • 1991: Celine and the editions Denoël, 1932-1948. Paris: IMEC
  • 1995 : Letters with Marie Canavaggia, 1: 1936-1947. Tusson: Of Lérot
  • 1995: Letters with Marie Canavaggia, 2: 1948-1960. Tusson: Of Lérot
  • 1998: Letters of prison with Lucette Destouches and Maître Mikkelsen (1945-1947). Paris: Gallimard
  • 2002 : Letters with Antonio Zuloaga (1947-1954) , text established, presented and annotated by Eric Mazet, foreword of Philippe Sollers, the Siren, Paris, 2002 (printing works Of Lérot, Tusson).
  • 1979 :Pierre Monnier: " Ferdinand furieux" (with 313 new letters of Louis-Ferdinand Celine). Lettera, the Old one Of Man.
  • 1999 :Milton Hindus: " L-F Céline such as I have it vu" , Herne.

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