Chanson de geste ou Roman de la
Rose
Céline’s novel Nord ?
After
the three appearances of the Erlkönig, we could count this as the first
movement of the novel Nord[1],
Céline introduces the subject of women and the portrait of Adolf Hitler and
these two subjects would appear to be the main area of focus of part two for
the next 100 pages. What is intriguing here is the fact that both these topics
are also extremely indicative of two very distinct genres in medieval French
literature- chansons des gestes and the Roman de la rose. With
the publication of La Volonté du Roi Krogold ( 2023) earlier this
year, the importance of early medieval literature has become self-evident to
any reader now in the works of Céline, and for such a stylistic innovator this
clarification has huge implications on how we perceive the later novels,
particularly. In the following article, I shall be looking at the importance of
the portrait of Hitler in Nord symbolic as it is as a motif of the
ancient chansons des gestes, dealing as it does with a war leader, and
in strong contrast then I shall be looking at the portrait of women in the
novel, but particularly the figure of Isis von Leiden, ‘la tigresse’, as
a motif of the Roman de la Rose, women and attitudes to women were
typical of such novels. So, in this sense, this particular reading of
the novel Nord by Céline becomes a very curious exploration of both
topics, women and war, and which are treated with the added interest that the
author is very conscious of the blending of the main topics of interest in
medieval French epic poetry, though whether the novel Nord by Lousi
Ferdinand Céline is chanson des geste or an example of a Roman de la
Rose, I will leave the reader to decide.
In
a letter to Albert Paraz, dated September 10th, 1949, Céline writes
the following, I will quote him in full as it is important given the context of
the current article.
Mon cher Vieux-
(…) Dieu sait merde s’il m’insupporte de parler
de mes livres !...Mais puisqu’on cause…
Ils ressemblent plutôt aux chansons de geste.
Ils sont chansons nullement PROSE –
absoluement rien à faire avec le naturalisme
français le romanticisme ou le néo naturalisme
Américan. Ils sont en tension transposée
musicale extrême du premier mot au dernier
sur 700 pages -, pas un syllabe au hasard. Je
me sers du langage parlé, je le recompose pour
ma besoin – mais je le force en un rythme de
chanson – Je demeure toujours en danse. Je ne
marche pas. Ce qui fasait Bruant en couplets
je le fais en simili prose et sur 700 pages -[2]
I
must say, when I read these lines by the writer I was very happy, as they simply
confirmed what I had thought all the time. So, Céline, one of the greatest
prose stylists of the 20th century compares his prose writing to the
writing of the chansons de geste underlining that fact that they are
‘chansons’ ( songs) rather than ‘PROSE’. What does he mean by this remark that
his prose is more like song than prose? In order to see exactly what he means,
let us take a short section from La Chanson de Roland, the most famous chanson
de geste that we have and then we will compare it with a section from prose
from perhaps Céline’s most musical novel, at least in my opinion, Nord’s predecessor
D’un château l’autre. First, here are four couplets from La Chanson
de Roland, this is the oldest example of chanson de geste that exists and
the author is unknown. It dates from around 1100.
…Paien s’adobent des osbercs sarazineis,
Tuit li plusor en sort doblé en treis ;
Lacent lor helmes molt bons sarragozeis,
Ceignent especes de l’acier vianeis ;
Escus ont genz, espiez valentineis
Et goanfanons blancs et blois veremils ;
Laissent les muls et tos les
palefreis,
Es destriers montent, si chevalchent estreis.[3]
In
typical epic style, the couplets are formed in iambic pentameter which creates
this beautiful steady rhythm, almost in imitation of the marching horse,
and which is perfect for the material,
which is war.
…Paien s’adobent des osbercs
sarazineis,
1 2 1 2 3/ 1 2 3 1 2 3 4
Tuit li plusor en sont doblés e treis ;
1 2 1 2 3/
1 2 1 2 1 2 3
This
is the pentameter handed down from Homer and Virgil and which the author or
authors of the Chanson de Roland clearly wished to imitate. The
craftmanship of the song is very striking, and it is the highly musical
composition, each couplet ending in a rhyme, which largely, as well as the
exquisite descriptions of each scene, moves the epic poem/or chanson
along. This is something which we have largely forgotten about these days, at
least in the world of contemporary modern poetry, the very songlike nature of
medieval and indeed renaissance poetry. When one thinks of twentieth century
poetry or poems, T. S. Eliot’s The Wasteland for example, this kind of
musical clarity, has largely been done away with. And while passages of Ulysses
and Finnegans Wake are considered to be highly musical compositions, the
later prose of Beckett too, I can think of very few novelists, if any, that
reference the musical properties of French medieval chanson de geste as
a musical influence for their prose[4].
là on faisait pipi à même, sur les banquettes…
et en chantant et contre le pianiste !...
« où y de la gêne ! » jamais j’ai vu un instrument
tant dégouliner que ce piano de la gare !...
pourtant j’ai fait les pianos de Londres,
montés suspendus sur voitures à bras,
qu’étaient aussi de ces jeux d’urine !...[5]
What
is really interesting to note is that the iambic pentameter remains in the
prose of Louis Ferdinand Céline. The rhyme too! It is an extraordinary reading
experience as the rhythm, as he says himself in the letter above quoted, plays
out throughout the novel. I would say once again that in comparison to Nord there
is a very different rhythm at work in D’un château l’autre. But I wish
to speak of the subject of women now in Nord after the third appearance
of the Erlkönig now, as I believe that it is no accident that Céline
treats the subject of women before he introduces the portrait of Hitler which
is the second subject that I will be discussing as outlined in the
introduction.
On
the nature of women and war, the two subjects that are up for discussion here,
there is a very apt and timely insight by Céline some pages before the third
and final apparition of the Erlkönig.
In retrospect to the topic of rape and women during the fall of Berlin, I have
already mentioned how Céline, who was an eyewitness to the events that passed,
is one of the first eyewitnesses to have discussed the phenomenon in his novel D’un
château l’autre and which was first published back in 1957. In the English
speaking world, at least, it wasn’t really until Antony Beevor published Berlin
– The Downfall 1945 that people, at least in the English speaking world
were made aware of the extent of the mass rape of German women by the Red Army
during the battle for Berlin, a subject which Céline covers extensively in the
first instalment of his German Trilogy. But, what is even more
astonishing to see, perhaps, is how he treats the subject of women in Nord,
and how they played their part in the war, again, a subject that was not really
dealt with until only recently[6]. Before I
turn to the character of Isis Von Leiden in Nord, there is a passage in
the novel just before she makes an appearance that is really quite pertinent, I
feel, and would be most appropriate to be highlighted now.
J’ai connu des
soldats allemands qu’avaient fait la guerre aux
Russes dans les forêts, Est de Trondjem,
qu’avaient fait des prisonnières, des très très
dangereuses fillettes, tireuses d’élite…leur truc,
perchées haut des arbres, elles savaient recon-
naitre l’officier, à plus de deux mille mètres,
pourtant vêtu comme ses hommes, tout blanc…
elles le rataient pas ! ptaf ! d’une seule balle,
rigodon !...l’instinct ! les femelles savent…
les chiennes aussi…celui qui commande !...[7]
This
observation on the extraordinary observatory faculties of Russian female
snipers is made just before Céline is introduced to Marie Thérèse von Leiden,
the sister of the count Hermann von Leiden, who confides in Céline and his
entourage divulging quite a few of the family secrets as she does. She is aware
of Céline’s stature as a writer and doctor and is a great admirer of French
culture, in general. It is she who first speaks to Céline about her adopted
niece Isis von Leiden.
cette femme me
hait, je ne l’aime pas !...elle n’est pas laide, je
conviens, mais quelle âme ! comment s’est-elle
fait adopter par les Tulff-Tcheppe…personne
ne le sait !...Harras peut- être ?...en tout cas elle
ne sera jamais comtesse von Leiden !... elle est
baronne par mon neveu, et c’est tout !.... il
faudrait que je meure, je ne veut pas !...[8]
But
before he gets to encounter Isis, Marie – Thérèse, while the flying fortresses
are dropping bombs above their heads, invites Lilli, a former ballerina, if she
would like to dance in the manor for her, as she points to the great library
containing books in English, French and all of the scores for the ballets,
praising the parquet which will be ideal for a little show. And, while all of
this is going on, Céline, the so called collaborator contemplates his fate
after having been obliged to leave his beautiful apartment up on the fifth
floor on rue Girardon which was broken into and all of his things were stolen,
which is why he was forced to go into exile in Germany and to seek refuge in
the houses of people like the von Leidens who, being German, have the ‘goût des
catastrophe… ‘comme les Francecaille le goût des bons vins…’ [9] But, as Céline the chronicler reminds himself in the same passage,
‘l’homme est identique et même depuis cinq cents millions d’années !...’[10]
While
his wife Lili, who is modelled on his real life companion the dancer Lucette
Almansour who lived with him until he died in 1961, is paying a visit to
Marie-Thérèse von Leiden, no doubt to dance for her as she suggested, Céline
and his faithful companion, Le Vigan, pay a visit on the pastor where the
‘cul-de-jatte’ ( amputated in both legs) and his wife Isis von Leiden, the
adopted daughter in law whom Marie-Thérèse has spoken to him about. But before
we meet the couple, we are first introduced to the other members of this
household, which is found in another part of the estate. The SS man Kracht
being among them and who on being introduced to Cèline, the French doctor,
laments the fact that he will probably never get to see Paris. This is the
passage when some common and not so common ideas on women are inserted, just
before he meets Isis who will be, in a sense, the heroine of the novel. “ Aus
Paris? aus Paris?” Kracht questions.
-
Schöne frauen da!...jolies femmes ! »
It is the typical response to which Céline
responds:
Que vous vous trouviez n’importe où…sous
les confettis, sous les bombes, dans les caves ou
en stratosphére, en prison ou en ambassade, sous
l’Équateur ou à Trondhjem, vous êtres certain de
pas vous tromper, d’éveiller le direct intérêt,
tout ce qu’on demande : le fameux vagin
de Parisienne ! votre homme se voit déjà les
cuisses, en plein épilepsie de bonheur, en plein
vol nuptial, inondant la barisienne de son enthou-
siasme…il me disait, le sergent manchot…
bien triste…
« Niemhr wieder !...niemhr ! jamais plus !...’[11]
What is funny here to observe is Céline’s
satirical disgust at the stereotypical response of the soldier to the sexual
allure of Paris, the French nation’s capital. So when he finally encounters
Isis von Leiden, the woman he has heard so much about, he tries his best not to
speak of her in a banal way even though he has literally stopped looking at
women now for quite some time, he casually informs us.
Mais là, l’Isis? hé la ! prudence ! c’était d’avoir
l’air ému, sensible…elle s’attendait…beaux
yeux en amande, noirs…les femmes se
regardent dans les glaces depuis leur toute petite
enfance, vous pensez si a quarante ans, leur
fascination est au point…bon !...elle tenait que
je sois fasciné…moi question des « miroirs de
l’âme »…quand il faut il faut, je peut aussi être
très attentif…ses yeux valent la peine…d’habi-
tude les yeux des dames sont simplement « garce
veloutée »…elle, un peu plus, une prête à tout !...[12]
Then, after making this kind of blanket
statement on the nature of women, Céline starts to satirize the kind of
literary erotica one is expected to find in novels which go on to win the Prix
Goncourt, a prize he never won, nor the Nobel, and which he never stopped going
on about even in the middle of his novels. I must say, I find this quite
comical and it is a side to him which I find very human, though whether he
consciously did this to make his readers laugh, I am pretty sure he did, I will
never be able to say, of course, for sure.
Elle s’est allongée…enfin, presque…assez
pour que je lui voie les jambes même un peu les
cuisses…par l’énchancrure, les seins aussi, sans
soutien- gorges…voici le moment, j’y pense, où
toutes les littérarires, de la mercière ou des
Goncourt, des sacristies ou des fumeries, partent
a débloquer… » la peau satinée exquise, le galbe
des reins… » je devrais moi aussi, je sens, y aller
du couplet…voilà, je n’ai plus le sens ni l’esprit !
… bien sûr j’aurais pu autrefois !...[13]
There, then ! It is at the mention of
the couplet, once again, but this time not in a letter but in one of his
novels, a novel in which he is in the middle of a tremendous war, the likes of
which the world has never seen before; a World War, and the Second of its kind;
the first he had seen up close as a young man in his twenties and one in which
he had also been wounded, but now, here he is, as a doctor, and a famous
writer, travelling through the bombed out country of the ‘enemy’, in exile from
his home country, and which is being ‘liberated’, with his wife and cat and a
loyal friend, and he finds himself very much at the pleasure of the kindest of
strangers...Just as I started this article out with a passage from Le
Chanson de Roland, I would like to take a short extract, six couplets this
time, from Le Roman de la Rose. This passage is taken from the second
part which was written by Jean De Meung, in which the subject of women is all
pervading.
Car nul vieuz
sanglers hericiés,
Quant des chiens est bien hericiés,
N’est si crueus, ni lionesse
Si triste ne si felonesse,
Quant li venerres qui l’assaut
Li renforce en ce point l’assaut
Quant ele alaite ses chaiaus,
Ne nuls serpens si desloiaus
Quant il marche sur la queue,
Qui de marchier pas ne se jeue,
Comme est feme quant ele treuve
O son ami s’amie neuve :[14]
I
was reminded of this passage precisely when I read how Céline went onto
describe Isis von Leiden when her husbands starts loosing it accusing Céline
and Le Vigan of being spies, after an old tapisery falls off the wall due to a
bomb explosion.
Le geant lui passe son fusil de chasse…et de
lá haut, d’a califourchon, il nous ajuste, pour
ainsi dire, à bout portant…enfin quatre, cinq
mètres…on n’a pas le temps de réfléchir, Isis
qu’était en pose languide, à nous faire du charme,
cuisses et sanglots…jaillit ! tigresse ! y
empoigne son flingue ! le jette l’autre bout de
la pièce ! et lui avec !...qu’il va rebondir tête
premièr !...qu’il hurle : putain !...putain !...
deux
fois !...[15]
It
is just another extraordinary scene from the trilogy of books that Céline wrote
chronicling his time in Nazi Germany while the regime went up in flames. But,
it does not stop here, things are only getting started. Now, before we come to
the next subject that is the second topic of this article, Céline’s treatment
of the portrait of Adolf Hitler, I think that now would be the perfect moment
to deal with two of the most controversial aspects of the writer; namely, his
supposed collaboration with the Nazis during the war, and his extraordinary
antisemitism.
Among
some of the other colourful folk who appear in the Céline’s novel Nord
are the appearance of some French prisoners of war and who are aware of
Céline’s celebrity, or rather his notoriety. Just after the incident involving
Isis and her husband, there is a scene where the French prisoners, Leonard and
Joseph, question Céline as to his
reasons why he would want to be in bombed out Germany, as opposed to enjoying
the freedom of liberated Paris?
“Vous ça vous fait pas votre affaire, hein ?...
Nous, c’est ce qu’on veut ! tout les nazis au
phosphore !... et les autres !...toute la bochie !...
gonzesses et les chiars !...tout !...vous vous les
aimez !...
- Nous !...on peut pas dire…et eux nous
piffrent pas ! sûr !
-
Alors pourquoi êtres
-vous ici ?[16]
Here it is, here is the $60 question.
Monsieur Céline, why are you in bombed out Germany? What are you doing here?
Céline has at least the courage to put the question to himself in the mouths of
two French prisoners. His answer, of course, is not so simple. As Louis
Ferdinand Destouche’s story is hardly a simple one, and yet if we are at all to
speak of the author we must, inevitably, attempt to deal with some of the
difficult questions. Particularly when we are discussing a book like Nord,
set as it is in war torn Germany during the dying months of the war when France
was being liberated by the allies.
So, to start with we must treat his so-
called collaboration with the Germans during the occupation of France during
WWII. This is a charge which Céline furiously denied, and even took the German
writer Ernst Junger to court on the 13th October, 1951. Junger had
published a Journal covering the years 1941-1943 in which he claimed that
Céline had been shocked by the leniency of the Germans towards the Jews and,
according to Céline, this had deeply prejudiced the French military tribunal
which had eventually granted him an amnesty against the charges of his
collaboration with the Germans and his antisemitism. What had saved Céline was
his military record, the writer had been decorated for bravery for his
participation in the war in 1914, this experience is the subject of the
recently published Guerre, 2022. In respect to Nord, Céline
refers to all of this and his position would seem quite clear on where he
stands considering the position of a lot of French people during the war, in
terms of loyalties, which was not going to endear him either.
Bernadotte, de Pau, le maréchal, un autre
genre, retourne sa veste quand il fallait, passe
roi, et vas-y ! l’est encore !... je connais quarante
millions des Français qu’en ont fait autant,
benouzes, flingues, et la reste !...[17]
According to Céline, it would all come out
in the end. And, of course it did, the amount of historical studies on the
scale of the collaboration between the French population during the Nazi
occupation started to really appear in the nineties, the French president
François Mitterrand, at the time, was investigated I remember. As id the nature
of these kind of witch hunts, no one is exempt. However, one thing that cannot
be denied is the nature of Céline’s antisemitism, which also crops up just
before the appearance of Hitler.
L’Histoire déjà, les vociférations
eteintes, c’est qu’ils pensaient aux moindres
détails…tenez pour les Juifs, combien étaient
appointés à la Chancellerie ?...et tout proches
d’Adolf ?... des beaux et des belles !…un jour
on fera un livre sur eux…comme les fusillés des
cours des Justice, si épuratrices, combien de yites
nazis, collaboraeurs de choc ?...Sachs était pas
une exception…du tout !...j’ai connu à Sigma-
ringen, des examples bien plus magnifiques !...la
terrible catastrophe des goyes c’est qu’est pas bien
ettendu, admis, bien conforme…existe tout
simplement
pas !...[18]
Historic facts are historic facts, you
cannot argue with them. Everyone knows that there were Jewish collaborators, it
has been well documented over the years. But, noting can excuse the tone of the
language that is being used by Céline here, and I must admit, it is still
shocking and reprehensible to read, still. There can be no excuses, here. This
is just plain ugly antisemitism, and of the very worst kind. Céline was more
than aware of the atrocities that were committed, and he had even recognised, to
a certain extent, the error of his ways[19]. But,
alas, if one is going to appraise the writing of Céline, one simply cannot
avoid this ugly factor that is inextricably linked to the writer. There is
simply no avoiding the fact that Céline, along with the majority of the French
writers of his time, was profoundly antisemitic, it is not a pretty thing to
see in his writing, but there it is in black and white in Nord the first
sign of his antisemitism and it appears just a few pages before he inserts the
portrait of Adolf Hitler, so this is something very well judged by Céline. In
other words, he has thought very carefully about this, of this we can be sure,
and it only puts the history of the times into greater relief.
Now, before I go onto the portrait of
Hitler, the bowl of tepid soup and Frau Kretzer, ‘la Kretzer’, I need to first
refer to the element of parallelism that would also appear to be at work in Nord
as just as the lieder Erlkönig by Schubert is evoked and referenced
three times in the novel, so too is the portrait, the bowl of tepid, or cooling
soup, in relation to la Kretzer and her hysterical outburst in front of the
portrait of Hitler, which appears in the centre of the novel. As we have
already seen, Céline’s mode de travail is, at all times, absolutely
systematic. As he insisted a lot of the time, indeed systematically we can say,
not to labour the point, Céline far from leaving anything to chance in his
writing he was extremely rigorous in application. His apparent spontaneity is
simply the naturalness of his exigence which was totally complete and so the
parallelism is part of that, as it is but another outil or tool in his arsenal which helped him give an
architectural format or scaffold to the great edifice that he was building,
which of course Nord is, and of course by extension the whole trilogy of
novels themselves. The number three is of course a highly important number in
all domains, but particularly in literature. One only has to think of Dante and
his Commedia and one can see how the famous Florentine wrote a trilogy
of books each composed of thirty three cantos which were all written in terza
rima, and being of course a fundamentally Christian writer there are
mystical reasons for this for in the Christian religion there is the holy
trinity of father, son and holy ghost, which indeed are central to the whole
system of belief. In science, we speak of three dimensions, and in mathematics
the number 3 is extremely important as it evokes π.
In writing, we encourage students, when
giving lists, for example, to include three things, always, as this creates a
symmetrical and so rather pleasing aesthetic quality to a text, rather than
randomly giving things in say twos or fours, and this feature of parallelism
would appear to be at work also in Nord.
For example, the first time that the
portrait of Hitler is referred to in the novel it is when Céline wants to
discuss ‘la tartuferie boche’[20]
and this is just after the antisemitic piece that I have already treated. It is
a very singular and comic observation on the part of Céline as he is using the
hypocrisy of the Nazi party which believed to its core in the power of the
German race being a super race made up famously, or infamously, of ‘supermen’.
It is for this reason that the German army was one of the few armies during the
war which did not conscript women into the armed forces to fight alongside of
their men, as the Russians famously did. Over two million Russian women were
conscripted, much to the astonishment of the wehrmacht as the war
progressed and millions of Russian men were either taken prisoner or were
killed. For the Motherland. The Germans referred to their nation as the
Fatherland. Céline, as a writer as socially aware as he was, was not blind to
such things, indeed, I would postulate, such ideas and notions are fundamental
to explore when you are looking at a writer like Céline who is at the same time
looking back at medieval French texts, such as chanson de geste and Roman
de la Rose, particularly the latter when women were the topic of interest,
and specifically. As this is exactly, I would say, is actually happening here
in Nord. As a fundamentally comic writer in the tradition of Voltaire
and Rabelais, Céline wishes to highlight the absolute absurdity of what exactly
is taking place inside the very heart of the country, Prussia, which has been
the cause of such misery due to human stupidity and ignorance. And, in order to
do so, he puts women, or at least a particular woman, at the heart of it.
les tartufe-
ries sont comme des langues, elles ont chacune
leurs façons, leurs tours… la tartufferie boche
rigole pas avec les fortes démonstrations, défilés
des masses, aboiements de chefs, fols enthou-
siasmes, über alles ! mais dans les familles,
mahlzeit la crève, bien faire voir qu’on se nourrit
juste d’un semblent de soupe, tout en gueulant
bien fort ! plus fort !...heil !...heil !...le
portrait
d’Hitler, haut du mur, idole, minces mous-
tache, mince lèvres, rit pas du tout…[21]
It is so typical of our times, a time of
so- called cancel culture, that when Céline’s manuscript Guerre was
published in 2022, when it was reviewed in The New Yorker
rather than focusing on Céline’s
incredible sense of irony, his wit, and his remarkable eye for social
observation, he was a chronicler of his times after all, that all the reviewer
could focus on was his ‘vile anti-semitism’,[22]
when it is so very rare to witness this kind of social observation, and this is
from a so-called collaborator, as it is so very clear in his novels that he is
absolutely taking the mick out of the Germans and particularly Hitler! In
typical Roman de la Rose manner he goes on to speak about all of
the women, particularly, who are fattening themselves in private eating all
manner of cakes and whatnot, when they are not in the austere public eye of the
Fuhrer, and co.
la preuve j’en voyais pas un maigre…un
fait certain, notre protectrice Marie-Thérèse
était pas privée, elle ne vivait pas que de
friandises !...j’espère que Lili avait pu lui
demander des ‘restes’ pour La Vigue, moi…
où que j’aie vu, tous ces rassemblements de
dames, tourneuse de tables, liseuses de mains,
diseuses d’avenir, ou folles sensuelles, où que ce
soit, Londres, Neuilly, New York, Dakar, sont
nº 1 folles gourmandes…[23]
Now, this is a classic trope of Roman
de la Rose, where the author interrupts the chronological narrative,
typically involving some war or some other trouble, with a diversion about the
subject of women. It is really revealing about Céline, I believe, as it sheds
some real light on the scope of his vision, and in this sense, for English
speaking readers who may not be familiar with his writing, or even his name, is
that I can only think of a few other writers, namely James Joyce and Samuel
Beckett in this country and possibly Flann O’Brien also, who are writing comic
works and on such a deep level. It must no longer seem extravagant to make such
a claim, as Louis Ferdinand Céline is really, like Beckett and Joyce, a
veritable literary universe unto himself.
To continue on with my discourse on the
Portrait of Hitler, the lukewarm soup and the hysterical outburst of Frau
Kretzer, after Céline treats the hypocrisy of the actual situation on the
ground, as opposed to Nazi propaganda where we the readers can see how Germans
actually where behaving while the Third Reich was largely up in flames, [24]he
continues using the character of Frau Kretzer, a widow who has lost two of her
sons during the war and is holding up two of their uniforms as a token as to
all that she has left of them in the world, again this is a typical trope of Roman
de la Rose where women are prone to highlight issues in society[25]and,
again, typically in a playful manner to entertain. If we recall, Chaucer’s Wife
of Bath is thought to have been inspired by his reading of Guillaume de Lorris
and Jean de Meun, Geoffrey Chaucer otherwise known as the ‘Father of English
literature!’
A sign of Céline’s
comic genius is the way he reintroduces the bowl of lukewarm soup again in the
narrative, under the austere gaze of the great leader. By the act of
repetition, Céline once again gets the reader to focus again on the subject in
question, but also paraphrasing in order to emphasize over and over again, this
is a very particularly characteristic trait in early French medieval
literature, as the purpose, a lot of the time, was to instruct. Jean De Meung
in the latter half of Le Roman de la Rose never ceases to give advice to
the reader, particularly on the subject of women.
Femes n’ont cure de chasti,
Ainz ont si leur engin basti
Qu’il leur est vis qu’els n’ont mestier
D’estre aprises de leur mestier ;
Ne nul, s’il ne leur veut displaire,
Ne deslot rien qu’els veuillent faire.[26]
Céline in Nord,
which mainly takes place in Eastern Prussia the bastion of German
militarism since the time of Frederick the Great, whom Hitler and the Nazis
adored, using the model of the Roman de la Rose takes women - Mme von
Seckt whom we first meet in the ‘rose garden’ of the Brenner Hotel in Baden
Baden, on the 20th July when Stauffenberg attempts to assassinate
Hitler with a bomb, and Isis von Leiden and Frau Kretzer with whom he describes
in Zornhof in the country manor where Harras thinks Céline will find refuge
from the destruction of Berlin – and elevates them to key positions in his
novel in which he chronicles the events which happened to him and his Lucette
their cat Bébert and the actor La Vigan, Le Vigue, and just as Medieval
chroniclers, such as Jean de Meung ( 1305?), he uses women as agents to
highlight deep inadequacies in the society in which they find themselves.
Hitler’s Germany was a place where women, in general, were in subservient
roles. They could not, for example, join the army like women in Russia. They
were to remain at home, instead, and look after the home and ensure the
continuance of the ‘master’ race. For a writer like Céline, who was being
accused of collaborating with the Germans, a very serious crime which could be
punishable by death, it seems absurd. As one thing becomes very clear when you
are reading the trilogy of novels that are set in Germany during the end of
WW2, and that is that Céline, a virulent pacifist since his own engagement in
the previous war in which he was wounded and decorated, had absolutely no
respect for the Nazi regime that was in place as he spends the majority of his
time in the novels, and particularly in Nord, satirising the events that
occurred there. The bowl of lukewarm soup is perhaps the greatest metaphor that
Céline conjures up for the reader in Nord, placed below the great
portrait of Hitler, it is in stark contrast to the dreams of world domination
by the master race.
Je vous parlais d’Isis, du cul-de-jatte, des
bibelforscher, des Kretzer, de nos mahlzeit
à la
soupe d’eau tiède dans la haute sombre salle à
manger sous l’immense portrait de celui qui
devait se mettre au feu lui-mêmé quleque mois
plus tard…heil !
heil ! tous ces gens autour de la
table faisaient semblant d’aimer la soupe,[27]
This is Céline the
chronicler, as he says from the word go in Nord ‘chroniqueur fidèle’.[28]But
it is the woman that is married to Herr Kretzer, ‘chef de l’Annexe et des
Archives’[29], that Céline wants to
hone in on now after first treating Isis von Lieden and Mme von Seckt. Céline
in that very distinctive manner of his comes back to and delays the topic,
inserting diversion after diversion, and in this you could say that he is very
like Proust in his own way building up
anticipation in the part of the reader and tension, and this would explain the
very systematic way in which he writes and which eventually transforms into a
kind of delirium[30].
…là c’etait le
portrait d’Hitler, son beau regard bleu, ses
petites moustaches et pas autre chose !... son
cadre au mur en prenait un coup ! tremblotait,
comme nos assiettes et la soupe tiède, par
répercussion des bombes pourtant j’ai dit, à plus
de cent borne…[31]
It
is a scene of the apocalypse but seen from the domestic dimension, we the
readers are privy to the underlying unbearable tension of German society during
the last months of the war. The lukewarm soup becomes transformed into an
iconic image or metaphor of Nazi Germany as the whole rotten edifice starts to
finally crumble. But, it is, once again, through the character of a woman, Frau
Kretzer, again a symbol of the domestic interior which the supreme leader, in
the symbolism of the painting, looks over; both the women and the soup. Céline
has been building up the tension for this moment. Something has to give,
something has to pop!
Toujours, on a mis la Kretzer en méchant
état…elle nous roule des yeux !...elle est prête
aussi à bondir, comme Isis…je connais l’hysté-
rie, vous pensez…mais vous observez
peu en
France de ces formes, je dirais, guerrières…ce
sont plutôt, chez nos femmes et nos jeunes gens,
des petites secousses, pâleurs, larmes, grands
cris…[32]
This
is Doctor Destouches talking now, or Céline as Doctor giving his prognosis on
the situation that was not before them all as Frau Kretzer finally explodes and
starts screaming blue murder holding the uniforms of her two dead sons up
before the portrait of the Fuhrer. It is a scene of the final apocalypse. Céline
uses the term hysteria in relation to Frau Kretzer’s crisis, and it makes you
think back to the scenes of those scenes in the films made by Leni Riefenstahl[33]when
German women and men flocked around Hitler as if he were the messiah. The
collective hysteria that is involved when you see those scenes today, this is
what it all came to in the end – a bowl of tepid soup, uniforms of the
countless dead, and mourning women and men left waiting for the end. The famous
line from The Hollow Men by T.S. Eliot comes to mind;
This is the way
the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way
the world ends
Not with a bang
but a whimper.
[1] Céline, Louis Ferdinand: Nord, Collection Folio,
Gallimard, Paris, 2022, pp.1-268.
[2]
Ref!
[3]‘The Paynims arm themselves with
Saracen hauberks, almost all of them with triple thickness of chain mail, they
lace their excellent Saragossa helmets, and gird their swords of Viana steel;
they have noble shields and lances from Valance, and pennons white and blue and
red; they have left the mules and palfreys and are mounted on chargers and ride
in serried ranks.’
The Penguin Book of French Verse: Edited and Introduced by Brian
Woledge, Geoffrey Brereton and Anthony Hartley, Penguin Books Ltd, Middlesex,
England, 1975, p.17.
[4]
Jack Kerouac’s referencing
bebop jazz as a musical influence on his own prose is quite possibly the
nearest thing I can think of, in comparison. In the link below you can hear
Kerouac reading an extract from his novel On the Road to the
accompaniment of some jazz.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3LLpNKo09Xk
[5] Céline, Louis Ferdinand: D’un château l’autre, Collection
Folio, Gallimard, Paris, 2022, pp. 224-225.
[6]
The Russian author and Nobel
Prize winner Svetlana Alexievich published The Unwomanly Face of War – An
Oral Account of Women in WW2 in 1985 in Russia and which was translated
into English by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky in 2017, and to much
critical acclaim. It was the first real study of its kind by a female
historian.
[7] Céline, Louis Ferdinand: Nord, Collection Folio,
Gallimard, Paris, 2022, p.213.
[8] Céline, Louis Ferdinand: Nord, Collection Folio,
Gallimard, Paris, 2022, p.232.
[9] Ibid, p.236.
[10] Ibid.
[11] Céline, Louis Ferdinand: Nord, Collection Folio,
Gallimard, Paris, 2022, p.270.
[12] Ibid, p.277.
[13] Céline, Louis Ferdinand: Nord, Collection Folio,
Gallimard, Paris, 2022, p.279.
[14]
‘For no old bristly boar
is so fierce, when the dogs are worrying him, nor is the lioness so cruel, so
desperate, or so deadly when the hunter attacks her at the moment when she is
feeding her cubs, nor is a snake so much to be feared when you thread on its
tail and it doesn’t consider it to be a joke, as is a woman when she finds a
new mistress with her lover.’
The
Penguin Book of French Verse:
Edited and Introduced by Brian Woledge, Geoffrey Brereton and Anthony Hartley,
Penguin Books Ltd, Middlesex, England, 1975, p.80.
[15] Céline, Louis Ferdinand: Nord, Collection Folio,
Gallimard, Paris, 2022, p.281.
[16] Ibid, p.288.
[18] Céline, Louis Ferdinand: Nord, Collection Folio,
Gallimard, Paris, 2022, p.295.
[19] “Question Juifs. Imagine qu’ils me sont devenus sympathiques depuis que
j’ai vu les Aryens à l’œuvre : fritz et français. Quels larbins !
abrutis, éperdument serviles. Ils en rajoutent ! et putains ! et
fourbes. Quelle sale clique ! Ah j’étais fait pour m’entendre avec les
Youtres. Eux seuls sont curieux, mystique messianiques à ma manière. Les autres
sont trop dégénérés. »
Zagdanski, Stéphane : Céline seul, Collection
L’infini, Gallimard, Paris, 1993, p.78.
[20] Céline, Louis Ferdinand: Nord, Collection Folio,
Gallimard, Paris, 2022, p.305.
[21]
Ibid, pp.305-306.
[22]
Gopnik, Adam: A Newly
Discovered Céline Novel Creates a Stir, The New Yorker, July 15, 2022.
https://www.newyorker.com/culture/cultural-comment/a-newly-discovered-celine-novel-creates-a-stir
[23] Céline, Louis Ferdinand: Nord, Collection Folio,
Gallimard, Paris, 2022, p.306.
[24]
On this particular point, I
should like to reference the recently deceased French writer Phillip Sollers
here in relation to Céline as he was one of the few contemporary writers,
particularly in France, who continuously defended Céline and his exceptional
writing, a writer of genius as he often called him, and particularly in
relation to the German Trilogy. Sollers makes the point that Céline’s novels in
this last period of his life are a remarkable testament of the war seen from
the perspective of someone, a writer of genius, from inside the burning edifice
( see link below provided), and these novels are seldom read by anyone,
particularly by English speakers which is why I have decided to consecrate a whole
book on the study of them with the hope that they might make them better known
with the reading public in general.
What
follows id an interview for the programme Livres et Vous, the recently
deceased Phillip Sollers discusses his novel Centre ( Gallimard, 2018)
in which he particularly discusses Céline’s German Trilogy, singling it
out among his work as a testament to his literary genius but also as remarkable
historical document in itself.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UDTScVxIz9k&t=6s
[25]
For anyone interested in
following up the connection between Céline and Le Roman de la Rose, and
medieval chronicles in general, the publication L’Année Céline, 2022,
published by Du Lérot, Éditeur, contains a lengthy study on this very
particular correspondence written by Bernabé Wesley ( Université de Montréal)
titled Céline l’indémodable: la réécriture des genres désuets dans la
trilogie allemande in which he particularly singles out Nord in
relation to medieval chronicles. I must express my sincere thanks, once again,
to Yannick Gomez for his help in directing me to this text. Wesley, in his
lengthy study, encourages us to imagine a Céline on his pilgrimage through
Germany with a copy of Chroniquers et Historiens du Moyen Áge, an
anthology published in the famous Collection Pléiade established by
Albert Pauphilet.
[26]
‘Women do not like to be
corrected,
But their minds are so formed
That they think they know their own
business
Without being taught, and let no one who
doesn’t
Want to annoy them take exception to
that.’
The
Penguin Book of French Verse, Edited and Introduced by Brian Woledge, Geoffrey
Brereton and Anthony Hartley, Penguin Books, Middlesex, England, 1972, p.84.
[27] Céline, Louis Ferdinand: Nord, Collection Folio,
Gallimard, Paris, 2022, p.325.
[28] Ibid, p.14.
[29]
Ibid, p. 325.
[30]
Yannick Gomez, the classical
pianist and composer, has compared Céline’s writings with the musical
compositions of Beethoven.
Gomez, Yannick: D’un musicien l’autre, De Céline à
Beethoven, Préface de Michael Donley, La Nouvelle Librairie, Paris,
2023.
[31] Céline, Louis Ferdinand: Nord, Collection Folio,
Gallimard, Paris, 2022, p.339.
[32] Céline, Louis Ferdinand: Nord, Collection Folio,
Gallimard, Paris, 2022, p.342.
[33]
Triumph of the Will was filmed in 1934, so just ten
years previous, thereabouts, to the events that Céline is describing in his
novel Nord, ten years later! Not 1000 years, as the Nazis had promised.
Ten years of Nazi delirium which had a stranglehold on the German people is now
coming to an end.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9PClcUxNc_M&t=10s
