Lost since 1944, now the critic Pierre Thibaudat announces: recovered thousands of manuscript pages of the author of «Journey to the end of the night»
A discovery that can change the history of literature and the understanding of one of the most important, complex and discussed writers of the French twentieth century, Louis-Ferdinand Céline (pseudonym of Louis Ferdinand Auguste Destouches, 1894-1961), the author of novels such as Journey at the end of the night (1932) e Death on credit (1936). A French theater critic, Jean-Pierre Thibaudat, found the writer’s archives, considered lost since 1944 and “re-emerged in surprising circumstances”, and after studying and transcribing thousands of pages for years, he revealed to the newspaper “Le Monde” the his discovery. Already in 2001 a manuscript of the first version of the Voyage. But this time the find is more substantial. “There are several blocks of unpublished documents of fundamental importance – said Thibaudat -. In a letter to her publisher Robert Denoël dated July 16, 1934, Céline wrote that she was working on a three-part project: “Childhood, War, London”. Céline deals with childhood in Death on credit, writes of the First World War in Journey at the end of the night, and of London in Guignol’s Band. But the manuscripts found appear to be separate projects, which may have been destined for this triptych ».
The discovery is surprising, also because the archive had disappeared from 1944: Céline, accused of collaborating with the Vichy regime, had followed the Nazis in retreat from France and in 1945 had taken refuge in exile in Denmark; since then, the writer had repeated that after his escape his Parisian home had been ransacked, and that the manuscripts, mostly unpublished (including chapters of the novel Pipe breaker, of which a small part had hitherto been known), had disappeared. Céline had written: “They left me nothing … not a handkerchief, not a chair, not a manuscript …”. And in a letter to his friend Pierre Monnier, continues the French daily, he had denounced: «If Pipe breaker it is incomplete because the Purifiers have thrown the rest, 600 pages in the dustbins of Viale Junot ».
The remaining unpublished works had been collected by Céline’s widow, Lucette Almansor (who passed away in 2019) who had entrusted them to the lawyer Emmanuel Pierrat. Then the discovery: «Many years ago – says Thibaudat -, a reader of“ Libération ”called me saying that he wanted to deliver me some documents: he arrived with huge sacks containing sheets. He handed them over on one condition: not to make them public before Lucette’s death because, being a leftist, he did not want to enrich the widow ».
A 600-sheet manuscript stands out among the papers from the famous Pipe breaker, a novel of which only a hundred pages were known, but there is also an unpublished titled London, as the third novel later should have been called Journey at the end of the night. Right at Voyage belong 240 pages that tell other adventures of the protagonist Ferdinand, Céline’s alter ego: the character, wounded during the Great War, is transported to Ypres, Belgium, to a hospital where he discovers the necrophilic perversion of a nurse, mademoiselle Lespinasse, that “masturbates the dead”. “A hallucinating scene,” explains Thibaudat. But this unedited part of the Journey may shed new light on a hitherto unconfirmed rumor, on Céline’s relationship with a nurse from Hazebrouck in Northern France, Alice David, and on the existence of a secret daughter. The manuscript ends with the account of the boat trip to London, an element which coincides with the biography of Céline, who arrived in London in 1915.
as to“Pipe breaker“, Is the” missing link “ between Death on credit and the Journey at the end of the night (“This shows its importance,” says Thibaudat): fifteen parts in which Céline recounts her life in the 12th Regiment of cuirassiers of Rambouillet, describing moments of her days, such as the grooming of the horses, and the adventure with a canteen girl. The other substantial manuscript found, London, prefigures Guignol’s Band, from 1944, Céline’s “London novel”. But the pages of the literary treasure are thousands and among these there are also sheets of The Will of King Krogold, almost unpublished, as well as letters and photographs, also believed to be lost.
August 5, 2021 (change August 5, 2021 | 22:01)
© Time.News