The discovered manuscripts of the literary classic LFCéline raise the question of the conflict between the artist’s views and creativity | Culture

The resulting manuscripts are a real sensation in the literary world. The texts that were discovered in unclear circumstances and had been hidden for a long time brought both the author’s work and his personality back to the public space. One of the discovered works – the novel “War” – has just been published in Lithuanian (translated by Stase Banionytė-Gervienė, publishing house “Kitos knogos”). The writer portrays war in a grotesque style as a deadly contagion, the most terrible of the 20th century. a disease that still plagues humanity to this day. The novel is full of sexuality, acting as an antidote to death and physical suffering.

LF Céline is not only an important literary figure, but also a controversial figure, notorious for his anti-Semitic views. Literary expert Vytautas Bikulčius and Eglė Kačkutė, head of the Department of French Philology of Vilnius University, discussed the writer and the newly discovered book at the Vilnius Book Fair in February, and they were interviewed by journalist Valdas Puteikis. The publishing of “Karo” was financed by the Lithuanian Culture Council and the French Institute in Lithuania (O. Milašius program to support book publishing).

– What does it mean to see the inscription on the book “War” in the conditions of the war in Ukraine? Is it an additional stimulus to read it, to delve deeper, or just a certain caution arises: “Well, maybe not now“?

Spruce: Ambiguous situation. I think, if not for the war, this novel would not have been translated into Lithuanian and would not have received support. Whether it is necessary to talk regarding war even more when we are forced to think regarding it so much, to live with it every day, I don’t know. But the fact that this novel has been translated and published means that we still need to talk regarding the war.

Vytautas: I would think differently. in 2021 Céline’s manuscripts have been discovered – the sensation of the last few decades in France. No one expected that anything else might emerge from his work, and it caused a bombshell effect in France. The history of the appearance of the manuscripts is rather confusing, of which three novels have already been published in France: “The War”, “London” and “King Krogold’s Will”. As soon as “War” appeared in France, 200 thousand copies were sold in a month. “War” release in 2022 coincided with the start of the war in Ukraine in May.

LFCéline book launch

– What is the history of the discovery of manuscripts?

Vytautas: Céline as a writer in the 20th century. stands next to Marcel Proust in literature. Proust turned French literature in one direction and with his famous cycle of seven novels “In Search of Lost Time” drew attention to how man experiences the present and past time. And here Céline turned in another direction – absurdity, existence – and emphasized spoken language. Considered his best novel, Journey to the Edge of Night is a treasure trove of colloquial language, embellished with slang. It was a completely unexpected turn in French literature. These two names are the greatest of the 20th century. French literary innovators.

Céline, who did not receive the Goncourt prize for “Journey to the Edge of the Night”, visited the Soviet Union and wrote a pamphlet in which, in contrast to George Bernard Shaw and Lion Feuchtwanger, who were singing hymns to Stalin at the time, he argued that the Soviet Union was a degenerate country . As a result, Stalin strictly banned the publication of his books in Russia. Céline’s misfortune was that he then began writing screeches regarding Jews. At the outbreak of World War II, Céline collaborated with the Germans. At the end of the war, he fled to Germany, then to Denmark. He had to sit in prison, but because he had a very good lawyer, in 1951 he managed to bring the writer back to France, and he lived there until his death. However, due to his controversial past, it was not easy for him to do business, he was somewhat saved by the publisher Gaston Gallimard (grandfather of the current publisher Antoine Gallimard). Céline’s dream was to enter the prestigious series, Plejados is a library, and Gallimard agreed to publish fiction novels. However, the writer was half a month late to see the result because he died.

When Céline returned to Paris following his exile, he might no longer find his manuscripts in his apartment. A cubic meter of manuscripts is gone! General Charles de Gaulle’s associate Yvon Morandat stayed in that apartment and later kept the manuscripts with him. Before his death in 1982 Morandat told his daughter, “Don’t you dare return these manuscripts to Céline’s wife.” He suspected that Céline’s widow might reveal hidden anti-Semitic writings, if any were found. Morandat’s daughter gave that cubic meter of manuscripts to theater critic Jean-Pierre Thibaudat and allowed them to be published only when Céline’s wife died. She lived for 107 years and died in 2019. And only following her death did he report the manuscripts to the literary world. “War” was the first book prepared for the press.

– I would like you to extend the idea of ​​anti-Semitism and anti-Semitic views of the writer. However, they did not become an obstacle for the publication of this novel in today’s politically correct Europe. How is it in literature in general, when political views and creativity are controversial? For example, Peter Handke supported Slobodan Milosevic during the Balkan war, but he received the Nobel Prize three years ago and is regarded as a great wordsmith.

Eglė: The biggest critical look given to Céline, which I had the chance to read and which is close to me, is the book “Powers of Horror” by the psychoanalyst, philosopher Julia Kristeva, in which she creates a philosophy of the abject, theorizes a certain, abject state. An abject is not an object, but also not a subject. The object is that which is next to the subject, it is neither subject nor non-subject. It is not quite being, but it is not non-being. In other words, the abject is a dimension of existence that is too monstrous for us to understand as part of our subject existence. In terms of society, the abject is something we cannot integrate, cannot recognize as part of our society? And Kristeva, theorizing this abject state, chooses Céline’s work as an example. She argues that in Céline’s work, horror and death are existence. Therefore, his anti-Semitic views are a central part of his abject state, which protects him from going insane. He has to direct all that nothingness, dirt, pain, humiliation of being to something, and he directs it to the Jewish people. He was deeply, fundamentally, ontologically and sincerely anti-Semitic. He believed in this and anti-Semitism is a central part of his aesthetics, which helps to understand his unhealthy view of the world. But the fact that it is unhealthy does not mean that it has no right to exist, especially in literature.

– The main character of the novel, Ferdinand, who is a writer another self, does not experience images of battles or the chronology of war, but a state associated with pain, blood, rotting flesh, corpses. In this context, the only thing that saves is sex, lust. What is the literary value of sensuality and sensuality in the work?

Egle: The value is really great, because we don’t have that much in the literature of corporeality and body description, and this kind of phenomenology of the body is one of the most popular reading angles for Céline. He says something regarding the sexy body that we may not have heard much. Again, this is abject sexuality. There is no pleasure or beauty in that sex, it is something that life demands. A living organism requires sex. Women in his novel are portrayed very terribly, not as subjects, not even as objects – as abjects. But it says something regarding the death and sex impulses defined by Freud.

– In many places in the work, cynicism and ugliness are connected with infinite sensitivity, with the subtlety of the hero. Where is the line between cynicism, brutality and completely vulnerable, mimetic sensitivity?

Egle: At the age of 18, Céline went to war voluntarily – it was a teenage protest once morest his parents. It affected and shaped his entire personality. He no longer saw the war differently, the noise of the war was constantly buzzing in his head, the war was his existence and it didn’t matter what he did following that, how he lived, how he looked for beauty. He was looking for the meaning of helping people, he worked as a doctor. Still, the war was in him, in his deepest being. He lived the war sincerely, integrated it into his being. This is the interest of his literature, that he sincerely testifies to the incomprehensibility of war and does it masterfully from the point of view of language. It leads us to an abject state of war.

Vytautas: It can be added that while experiencing the horrors of war, he always remains a living person, because his main goal is to fight with death. Note the scene in the book when the doctor wants to operate on him, but not the surgeon. Ferdinand refuses because he knows that everything can end in death. The author’s goal is to show that the protagonist and narrator of the novel, Ferdinand, does not succumb to death.

– This novel is associated with these days, because when I read the poems of the Ukrainian soldier and poet Artur Dronis, which is wonderfully translated by Marius Burokas, I feel that vulnerability, sensitivity and appreciation of the environment, poetic metaphors and once more that “desperately to survive, to shoot the enemy with a gun”. As if the combination of incompatible things is vivid, no matter what, in 1914 or today, war is war. Human instincts and consciousness to fight have not fundamentally changed either then or now.

Egle: When the war in Ukraine started, there was a lot of talk regarding the fact that this war is like the First World War – a trench war. Now he has moved to heaven, but it is still the same war as the First. You have to kill the person you see in front of you, and that’s different than killing from a tank or from the air. It seems to me that this is why we are reading this novel right now.

– There are two literary concepts: Hemingway’aus, Note’o represented by the “lost generation“ and the “returnee generation“which was active following the Second World War, for example, Wolfgang Borchert and his wonderful play “Outside the Dooruh”, where people crippled by war do not know where to go, what to do. If LF Céline’and if we were to compare “War”, his imagination and manner of representation with the aforementioned authors and literary currents, what would be the difference?

Vytautas: Writers, called the lost generation by Gertrude Stein, who suffered on the fronts of the First World War, saw that the heroism they wanted to demonstrate was fake. They were encouraged to be heroes, but in reality the war was a meat grinder. The patriotism he talked regarding then and the encouragement to fight is also a fiction – a fictional, false patriotism. In this context, “War” was a new step that led the writer towards absurd literature. All life becomes absurd and war only emphasizes that situation. Céline steps towards the absurd with his work, but he is not yet the true author of the absurd, the era of the absurd will begin later.

Spruce: The absurdity will begin later, when there is no God, something higher, at all. For the lost generation, all social and moral levers still exist, they still need to be argued with and discussed. I think what’s interesting regarding Céline is that the social, cultural and moral basis still exists in his work, but he no longer reckons with those things.