starrwriter
10-28-2005, 04:21 PM
Louis Céline, born Louis Ferdinand Destouches in 1894, was a French writer and doctor whose novels Journey to the End of the Night (1932) and Death on the Installment Plan (1936) are innovative, chaotic, and anti-heroic visions of human suffering. Pessimism pervades Céline's fiction as his characters sense failure, anxiety, nihilism, and inertia. Céline was unable to communicate with others and during his life he sank more deeply into a hate-filled world of madness and rage. A progressive disintegration of personality is visible in the stylistic incoherence of Guignol's Band (1944), Castle to Castle (1957), and North (1960). His novels are verbal frescoes peopled with horrendous giants, paraplegics, and gnomes, and are filled with scenes of dismemberment and murder.
"From up high where I was, you could shout anything you liked at them. I tried. They made me sick, the whole lot of them. I hadn't the nerve to tell them so in the daytime, to their face, but up there it was safe. "Help! Help!" I shouted, just to see if it would have any effect on them. None whatsoever. Those people were pushing life and night and day in front of them. Life hides everything from people. Their own noise prevents them from hearing anything else. They couldn't care less. The bigger and taller the city, the less they care. Take it from me. I've tried. It's a waste of time." -- from Journey to the End of the Night
Accused of collaboration, Céline fled France in 1944 to live in Germany at Sigmaringen and then moved to Denmark in 1945. Condemned by default in France to one year of imprisonment and declared a national disgrace, Céline returned to France after his pardon in 1951. He died in 1961 at the age of 67.
Celine once sent this message to his literary critics: "I piss on all of you from a great height."
"From up high where I was, you could shout anything you liked at them. I tried. They made me sick, the whole lot of them. I hadn't the nerve to tell them so in the daytime, to their face, but up there it was safe. "Help! Help!" I shouted, just to see if it would have any effect on them. None whatsoever. Those people were pushing life and night and day in front of them. Life hides everything from people. Their own noise prevents them from hearing anything else. They couldn't care less. The bigger and taller the city, the less they care. Take it from me. I've tried. It's a waste of time." -- from Journey to the End of the Night
Accused of collaboration, Céline fled France in 1944 to live in Germany at Sigmaringen and then moved to Denmark in 1945. Condemned by default in France to one year of imprisonment and declared a national disgrace, Céline returned to France after his pardon in 1951. He died in 1961 at the age of 67.
Celine once sent this message to his literary critics: "I piss on all of you from a great height."