Trifles for a massacre

Bagatelles for a massacre is the second Pamphlet of Louis-Ferdinand Céline, after Mea Culpa published in 1936, that it writes during second half of the year of the year 1937. The anti-semitism of Celine is with this openly posted work for the first time, although it does not constitute the single subject of the book. Indeed, although the matter violently antijuif of the book classifies it among works anti-semites, this one milked of subjects of its time, expensive topics to the writer, such as the alcohol, the Cinéma, the Surréalisme, while passing by the academism of the French language and the Littérature, and denounces there the decline in which, according to him, the French company of the Années 1930 is inserted.

Bagatelles for a massacre is a book with the believed language, sometimes obscene, of a style made of short sentences ending in points of suspension or a point of exclamation. The chapters are summarized sometimes with a sentence, and it constitutes a work in the purest style of the writer.

Robert Denoël publishes Bagatelles for a massacre in December 1937 (it will be sold with 75.000 specimens), but in May 1939, the decree Marchandeau obliges the editor to withdraw sale the two lampoons the School of the corpses and Bagatelles for a massacre . Robert Denoël will republish it twice, in 1942 then in October 1943, in an increased edition of twenty photographs. The work is a best-seller for the editor, and Bagatelles for a massacre is, with the Debris of Lucien Rebatet, one of the titles which are sold best under the occupation.

The lampoons of Celine, the School of the corpses of 1938, Beautiful Cloths of 1941 and Trifles for a massacre , are untraceable today in France, except library. Lucette Destouches, widow of the writer, are opposed to any republication, making a point of respecting the will of Celine who did not want that these texts were republished after 1945.

Quotations

“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! ” (Trifles for a massacre, Denoël, 1937, p. 83).
With the publication of Trifles for a massacre , Celine written: " I have just published a book abominably anti-semite, I send it to you. I am the enemy n°1 juifs" (letter with Doctor W. Strauss)
Celine: “The delirious philosemitism of Bagatelles was very badly included/understood by the majority of the Jews which, between us, are crowned idiots when they are put at it. For some of them, on the contrary, especially among the Zionists, Bagatelles is a book of bedside; a monument raised with the glory of Israel. It is absolutely exact. ” (The official reception of the cows, editions of the Dash, 1948, p.88)

External sources and bonds

Trifles for a massacre

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