“I never said I would give it up. I suspended the project,” declared Antoine Gallimard, on the sidelines of the opening of the exhibition Céline, the found manuscripts in Paris.
Gallimard editions still intend to republish the anti-Semitic pamphlets of Louis-Ferdinand Céline, with an adapted critical apparatus, said Thursday the CEO of the house, Antoine Gallimard. “I never said I would give it up. I suspended the project,” declared Antoine Gallimard, questioned by AFP on the sidelines of the opening of the exhibition Céline, the found manuscripts in Paris.
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The prestigious publishing house had faced a multitude of negative reactions to the announcement of this project at the end of 2017. Believing that the conditions were not “not met”she had receded in January 2018. These three books published by the author of the journey to the Edge of the Nightbetween 1937 and 1941 (Trifles for a massacre, The School of Corpses et The Beautiful Sheets), are full of insults against the Jews, presented as personal enemies of the author. They cannot be found in bookstores.
Gallimard wishes to bring them together under the title Polemical writingsby recontextualizing them in the work of Céline, a virulent anti-Semite, and in their time. “For the moment the task is to publish the unpublished novels. It’s a great sequence.”explained Antoine Gallimard, who published Thursday Guerreand will follow up in the fall London et The Legend of King Klogoldbefore a completed edition of Casse-pipe in 2023. “I know it’s very different. But we don’t want to give up, and we are going to study the conditions of a reception that will allow us to republish and analyze these pamphlets. They will be in the public domain in ten years. It would be a shame not to do a critical edition before”he added.
“And besides, these pamphlets will not accelerate anti-Semitism in France. I do not believe that. There is a whole historical, historiographical and Celinian material there to make a rich edition”, continued the publisher. “I know that I will have the agreement of the rights holders. The problem is reception.