François Villon, Louis Ferdinand Céline,
Samuel Beckett,
Memory and the Oral Tradition
In
the following article I will be looking at the motifs of cars, dogs and
eventually boats in D’un château l’autre ( 1957) by Louis Ferdinand
Céline seeing them as signs of the quotidian and which the writer uses to
anchor the reader in the first part of the novel which is mainly set in Meudon
where the author lived after he had returned to France after having been
acquitted of his apparent crimes of collaboration during the war by a French
military tribunal in 1951. I shall also be examining the character of La Vigue
who acts as a locus to the narrator’s memories of his time during the war and
particularly at the castle of Siegmaringen where the author stayed during the
remainder of the war with members of the Vichy government that was now in exile
as the allies fought their way into Germany having driven the Wehrmacht out of
France. The character of La Vigue enters into the story after Céline describes
two bateaux-mouches , or barges, La Publique and l’Héraclite,
and it is exactly at this point in the novel, which up to now has been strictly
concerned with the author’s day to day life dealing with his status as an
undesirable after his imprisonment in Denmark and his very public denunciation
as a collaborator, a charge he always furiously denied and which is still the
subject of contested debate, when the novel takes on an altogether fantastic
dimension and with the further motif of snow, Céline, I will be making the
case, introduces very clearly the memory of the great criminal poet Francois
Villon, thus adding to the fantasy, but also aligning himself in what he saw as
his place in French literary history with figures like Baudelaire and who have
been described as poète maudit or the school of the damned, a school, as
an Irishman, that I have to say has many correspondences with Irish writers
such as Oscar Wilde and James Joyce and, of course, Samuel Beckett to whom I
shall also be referencing, particularly in relation to D’un château l’autre and
Comment c’est ( 1961).
To
begin, I should first remark that I have just returned from a short trip to
Paris where I visited the house of Céline, Doctor Destouches, in the town of
Meudon and which figures so prominently in the novel that is under discussion. ‘La pluie qui m’envoie des clients!...ça arrive!... pas beaucoup! Quelques-uns…qui
montant au vrai Meudon,’ ( p.78). This is the Céline of the later years,
‘l’ermite de Meudon’ as he is described by Yannick Gomez[1],
famous from the photographs of him in his garden with his colony of dogs,
typically German shepherds, or in his office at his consultation table, where
he also wrote, in the company of his parrot. Once again, I must stress how
personal all of this is to me as the last time I read this book was back in the
mid-nineties when I was finally taking my leave of Paris where I had lived for
around five years. At the time, I had read the two most famous novels Voyage
au bout de la nuit ( 1932) and Mort au Credit ( 1936), and was
familiar with the whole polemic about the antisemitic tracts, but had not yet
read them. And this last point is absolutely crucial, as now that I have[2],
again mainly due to the publication of the stolen manuscripts ( 1944) which
include Guerre ( 2022), Londres ( 2022) and La volonté du roi
krogold ( 2023), all of which I have read, and which motivated me to read
more of Céline, as I too had been sold the idea that he was a completely crazy
man, a lunatic, a degenerate and so when I read that famous passage from D’un
château l’autre all those years ago, when I was gullible and a very young
man, I had not forced myself to reflect further and continue my reading of him
but, lazily, at the time, I had decided to accept the common idea that was out
there and which was that Céline was just a madman.
rengainez votre blouse, et la reste!...
le reste ?...on m’a tout volé à Montmarte !...
tout !...rue Girardon !...je le répète… je le répéterai
jamais assez !... on fait semblant de ne pas m’en-
tendre…juste les choses qu’il faut entendre !...je
mets pourtant les points sur les i…tout !...des gens,
libérateurs vengeurs, sont entrés chez moi, par
effraction, et ils ont tout emmené aux Puces !...
tout fourgué !...j’exagère pas, j’ai les preuves, les témoins,
les noms…tous mes livres et mes instruments, mes meubles
et mes manuscrits !...tout le bazar !...[3]
I
can still remember reading these lines over thirty years ago, and erroneously, I
thought, “Oh dear, poor old Louis has really lost it this time!” And this is
why this book has become so important for me, so much so that I feel obliged to
write an article about it as I really feel that all of the kind of issues it
raises are very much contemporary, and from my own experience, in which I
explain my culpability, in a sense, I was very young, and the wisdom that I
have finally found today. I think that there is a serious lesson to be learned
from this story, and that it is the kind of story that needs to be heard over
and over again. Not just mine, you understand, I am not so much of a narcissist
to think that I am so important, but rather my error, my youthful error, who
knows, may cause others to reflect and to repair. As, let us be clear, this is
a job of reparation. A man’s good name is at stake, after all we are only what
our name conjures up to others, and it is time, finally, I believe, to bring
the name of Louis Ferdinand Céline in from the cold.
de chez moi de mon Jardin, du sentier…je dis le jardin,
oui !...positif petit Eden, trois mois sur douze !...
quels arbres !...et aubépines et clématites…vous
diriez pas à peine une lieue du Pont s’Auteil !l’en-
clos de vedure, l’extréme bouquet de bois d’Yveline…
tout de suite c’est Renault !...sous nous !
Céline
is describing the views from his house in Meudon making reference to an earthly
paradise because of the great wood which separates Meudon and Vélizy
Villacoublay and then looking onto the Seine towards Boulogne- Billancourt
where Renault has a plant on one of the islands, and while he is in this
earthly paradise in Villa Maïtou he is also furtive, as there is trouble in
paradise, keeping a keen eye out for any would be assassins who might want to
put an end to him after his infamous trial when the French military tribunal
who were responsible for trying him, eventually released him on the grounds of
his military service in the first world war. So, he is in disgrace. The
undesirable neighbour personified, former collabo, ex-convict, pamphleteer of
antisemitic tracts, writer…but what is perhaps worse than all of this, he does
not even drive a car!
Le boucher, l’épicier, l’ébéniste, vont pas à leurs
affaires à pied ! médecin à pied ?...vous méritiez tout
ce qu’on dit de vous !...pas d’auto ? l’effronterie de
cette cloche !...charlatan dangereux bon à pendre !...[4]
Céline
uses it all to wonderful effect, building up very easily the image of a very
ordinary bourgeois town in the wealthier suburbs of Paris where everyone is
being judged on their appearance, and having a car is, of course, a status
symbol. I am reminded of my own situation here in Skerries in north county
Dublin where I live in one of the newer housing estates in a small two bedroom
apartment surrounded by three or four bedroom houses which are so expensive
that each of the neighbours has at least two cars having done with the
possibility of having a front car and instead have a tarmac parking lot to
house the two fossil fuel guzzling, for the most part, SUVs, the ultimate
status symbol, where I, along with one or two others, cycle about in vain
attempt to keep carbon emissions to a minimum while also exercising daily.
Céline paints a very clear picture on the environs and milks the irony for all
he’s worth showcasing double standards and the wholly superficial judgements of
the so called successful for all he’s worth.
le pavé, trottoir aux voyous!...aux filles !...aller
voir un malade à pied ? vous insultez ! le malade
vous
chasse !...plaignez-vous ![5]
I
am now reminded of a doctor whom I knew while I was living in the same regional
area of Paris as Céline, Yvelines, and who informed me that one of the reasons
why he drove a black BMW was to impress his clients as it was the kind of car
that they expected their doctor to be driving, him being a member of the so
called professional classes.
After
his diatribe on cars, the next symbol or sign of the quotidian that Céline
treats is the dog Agar and whose name is Jewish in origin and which means exile
or flight from the homeland and which
because of the author’s past is highly significant. In the environs of Meudon,
Céline doesn’t go anywhere without his faithful dog, his best friend after ‘la
meute’, the mute, based on his wife Lucette Almansor.[6]
presque toujours j’emmène Agar…il m’attend, il ronfle…
je m’aventurerais pas sans chien...il est pourri de défauts
Agar, grogneur, hurleur...et comme emmêleur de sa chaîne!
…vous l’avez devant…elle vous tortilla entre les jambes!...
il est derrière !...vous arrêtez pas d’hurler... “Agar! Agar!”[7]
It
has often been observed how dog-owners come to resemble their charges, many
wonderful photographs were taken of Céline during this period when he was
living in Meudon, he had become famously misanthropic. So, Céline’s portrait
above of a dog with a Jewish name that barks and howls tied up as it is to a
chain suddenly takes on a very personal symbolism, the author having just been
released from prison mainly in part to his antisemitism and apparent
collaboration with the Nazis. But for the narrator of D’un château l’autre Agar
has a very particular quality which draws him even closer to the creature, as
it is something, yet again, that they share.
“Agar! Agar!...” vous faille en fait de compagnie
vous étendre, fracture, cent fois… oui,
mais une qualité d’Agar, il fait ami avec personne!...
c’est pas le chien social…il s’occupe que de vous!...[8]
The
dog is as anti-social as its master, preferring to remain only with him. Apart
from a few visitors, Céline at the end of his life was to be seen in the
company of dogs generally confining himself to the garden, there is a famous
film where he is interviewed[9]in
his home in Meudon and you can see him walking with his dogs in the garden, and
this is very much the atmosphere that he is describing in the novel D’un
château l’autre. It really does put a whole new perspective, seeing a
figure in such splendid isolation, on the popular expression a man’s best
friend!
But
it is when Céline writes about boats and water as he looks from the grounds of
his house in Meudon that he becomes at his most poetic and the novel D’un
château l’autre takes on its most fantastic dimension, in the exact meaning
of the word.
Oh! le traffic du fleuve demeure…tout le movement!...
remorqueurs et leurs ribambelles, haut- bords, ras de
l’eau, charbons, sables, décombres… queue leu leu...
aval...amont...de chez Mme Niçois vous pouvez voir tout[10]
Water
is the element which takes the narrator back to his childhood when he saw the
barges and the bateau mouches for the first time and it transports him back to
a more innocent time, idyllic.
je suis fanatique des mouvements de ports, de tous trafics de
l’eau...de tout ce qui vient vogue accoste…j’étais aux jetée avec
mon père…huit jours de vacanes au Tréport…qu’est-ce qu’on
a pu voir! …entrées sorties des petits pêcheurs, le merlan au
peril de la vie!...les veuves et leurs mômes implorent la mer![11]
‘Homme libre, toujours tu chériras la mer!’[12] The
famous phrase by Baudelaire just seemed to be evoked here by Céline, and not
for the first time as in the universe of Céline the legacy of Baudelaire seems
ever present; what is Voyage au bout de la nuit but a 20th
century French novelist’s account of the poem Le Voyage by the famous 19th
century French poet? ‘Pour l’enfant amoureux des
cartes et d’estampes, L’univers est égale à son vaste appétite.’ [13]
The
image of Céline standing with his father looking at the boats sailing in the
bay that he evokes in the novel is arresting, and this is a quality that is
typical of the novelist, after first describing the awful circumstances in
which he finds himself in, be it in D’un château l’autre, Voyage or any
other of his novels, or indeed pamphlets, he then will surprise you with
moments of extreme tenderness, as in the passage above, and of course this is
the emotional contact that he is a master at. The truth is, Céline remained a
lover of boats and the sea, indeed all things aquatic, all his life and there
is a passage in D’un château which perfectly demonstrates his love of
water and all things related to boats the point is extremely pertinent as we
are talking about a writer who was at such pains to talk about style, ‘j’ai le
style émotif, intérieur!...oui!’[14]
As a writer of style, Céline’s writing flows, like water.
Oh! le traffic du fleuve demeure…tout le mouvement !
…remorqueurs et leurs ribambelles, haut-bords,
ras de l’eau, charbons, sables, décombres…
queue leu leu…aval…amont…de chez Mme Niçois
vous pouvez voir tout…elle est pas intéressée…cela
dépend évidement la sensibilité que vous êtes…[15]
Céline
is always going on about his sensitivity, due to his family upbringing. There
is a whole discourse in célinienne studies on dentelle and the influence of the
author’s mother’s professional occupation, largely put out by Céline himself,
but it is how he uses the theme of the sea and its associations with freedom
and liberty and childhood recollection and innocence in the motifs of the boats,
or barges, ‘ce bateau mouche -la des mystères?[16]’
to fantastical effect by first of all introducing the pre-Socratic figure
forever associated with water, and particularly rivers…
mais la berge l’autre bord ?...
j’e la vois mieux que
celle-ci !...et mieux qu’en
plein jour ! …je voyais
même, l’Héraclite l’autre berge…une péniche tout ce
qu’il y a de sérieux…à linge pendu…cuisine qui fri-
cote…
I
must say, when I saw the reference to Heraclitus I had to sit up as the stoic
of Ephesus has been the subject of a prolonged engagement by me in relation to
Samuel Beckett, and particularly with Beckett’s last full length novel Comment
c’est – How It Is which I wish to make the subject of the latter half of
this article and the many other correspondences with Céline’s novel. But for
the moment, I would just like to content myself by referencing Heraclitus’s
perhaps most popular aphorism, or fragment, in relation to the river, as it
would appear to be very clear why Céline is referencing this very particular
philosopher in relation to the ‘mysterious’ barge named after the one they call
‘the Obscure’ [17]and who is perhaps most
famous for his fragment about the river which for him symbolises flux, his
greatest theme.
We step into and
we do not step into the same rivers. We are and we are not.[18]
In
relation to the text by Céline, this fragment by Heraclitus would appear to be
perfectly calibrated as it is inserted exactly when the narrator is unclear
about the appearance of this second barge, as there are two – l’Héraclite and
La Publique, the latter appeared first and we are even given a number …
j’ai pas perdu son nom de vue,
son écusson : La Publique…ni son numero : 114,
voila les
faits !...[19]
Céline
is very insistent on this, the facts. He goes on…
Je suis le médicin du tout scruple !... je supporte pas
l’anormal !...
un fait est un fait !…[20]
And
then, after evoking Heraclitus, of whom both Nietzsche and Heidegger both
considered to be the most superlative thinker[21],
than Céline introduces the figure of La Vigue, who is actually based on the
French actor and friend of Céline Robert Le Vigan[22] and
after underlining his scientific background, he then goes on to introduce the
figure of Charon from antiquity and who is the boatman in the underworld who
transports the dead across the River Styx; the figure of La Vigue is the
catalyst as he is symbolic for Céline of his time in the Castle of Siegmaringen
where both the actor and the writer both stayed in 1944 along with members of
the Vichy government. This is when the narration shifts to the war, ‘j’ai le
style émotif, intérieur!...oui!...mon privilege!...mais de tells hallucinations?’ and we, the readers are transported back to
the period of the war, which is all based on Céline’s time spent there. The
text enters here at the peak of Céline’s delirium, when the two barges seem to
converge and the narrator is unclear of which one is which and Charon would
appear to be transporting all of the souls of the dead who died during the war
across the Seine which is now the river Styx.
Le Vigan! pas Le Vigan! Déjà une autre fois à Siegmaringen
on s’était expliqué pareil ! Messieurs, mesdames ! une trempe !...
dans la neige ! et pourquoi ?...je savais plus…Ca serait bien un
peu
que je vous explique…Siegmaringen…une autre foi !...vous explique
bien, avant que les mensonges s’y mettent…mensonges et véroles
et punaises !... racontars de gens qui jamais y foutirent les pieds !...
voila !...promis !...[23]
And
just as when I first read the name l’Héraclyte on the barge, when I read
the word ‘neige’ in the context of the passage above, I could not but imagine
the reference to Francois Villon and which is so famous throughout France, particularly
the famous line which ends each of the verses of Ballade des Dames du Temps
jadis…
Où est la tres sage Heloïs
Pour qui chastré fut et puis moine
Pierre Esbaillart à Saint Denis ?
Pour son amour eut ceste essoine.
Semblement, où est la roine
Qui commanda que Buridan
Fut jeté en un sac en Seine ?
Mais où sont les neiges d’antan ?[24]
With
poem’s references to intrigue and possible murder, the ancient Roman way of
punishing a thief was to tie them up in a sack and throw them into a river, and
of course the famous reference to snow, I couldn’t help but make the
correspondence to Céline’s text…
But
I wish to stop here, at the peak of the delirium, and turn my attention away
from content in order to focus now on form, and so to Beckett and his novel Comment
c’est ( 1961) How It Is ( 1963). Yoann Loisel in Louis Ferdinand
Céline, Samuel Beckett – Un abécédaire d’agonie ( MJW Fédition, Paris,
2022) quotes from the letters of Barbara Bray, Beckett’s lover who worked for
the BBC Third Programme was responsible for introducing his work to so many
listeners. The letter Beckett writes to her is pertinent in relation to Céline,
but more to the point for our present purposes in relation to the novel we are
discussing here D’un château l’autre.
“J’ai acheté ici d’occasion un exemplaire très abîmé de
D’un château l’autre que je n’avais pas
lu, ce que je fais maintenant
avec plaisir, « Pas plaire et vioquir et des rentes !...le vrai
bonheur ! »[25]
Céline’s
novel was first published in 1957, Beckett’s letter to Barbara Bray is dated the
5th March, 1972, and Beckett’s novel Comment c’est was
published in 1961, so there is no question that Beckett read Céline’s novel
before commencing his own last effort at a full length novel, not at all, as it
is clearly not the case. But, what is fascinating here is to see how much
apparent pleasure Beckett gets from Céline’s novel, as the similarities in
style, and here I mean to say in orality of style, is something which I really
want to explore now. So, if you take any page of Céline’s novel D’un château
l’autre you will find an immediately recognisable style, and we can say the
same for Beckett’s novel Comment c’est and to show you what I mean, let
us take the very first page of both.
Pour parler franc, là entre nous, je finis encore
plus mal que j’ai commencé…Oh ! j’ai pas très bien
commencé…je suis né, je le répète, à Courbevoie,
Seine…je le rèpète pour la millième fois…après bien
Des aller et retour je termine vraiment au plus mal…[26]
One
of the signatures of the Céline’s style, and which is very explicit, is the act
of repetition and this is a characteristic of Beckett as well. Repetition is a
musical element, in terms of orality. But it is also a recurring factor in
human speech, we repeat ourselves constantly paraphrasing ourselves as if never
trusting language completely, we say over again, time and time again, what we
have just said, in order to make sure that we are understood.
mais avant tout, par dessous tout, de charme personnel…
le charme personnel passé 60 ans…[27]
This
constant act of repetition and paraphrasing creates a rhythm which is very
pleasing and which creates a very musical quality to the language that is being
used. Both Céline and Beckett, particularly when he was working on Comment c’est,
worked extremely hard in order to achieve this orality, often writing and
rewriting countless pages of texts so as to achieve the desired level of
fluency[28].
comment c’était je cite avant Pim avec Pim après
Pim comment c’est trois parties je le dis comme
Je l’entends[29]
And
while Céline uses his celebrated three dots… to rupture French syntax, so
successfully, breaking up the sentence into these short phrases which pass so
quickly into one another like a voice whispering so gently into your ear. This
is the so very striking quality about both these two works is their singular
orality and while Céline ruptures the sentence in his stylistic way…Beckett
ruptures it by taking out all punctuation entirely and by breaking up the texts
into a series of unpunctuated fragments which somehow, miraculously almost, fit
so perfectly into one another without any apparent effort of will at all.
Repetition and paraphrasing, just as in D’un château l’autre are what
help push the text effortlessly, for the reader at least, along.
voix d’abord dehors quaqua de toutes parts puis
en moi quand ça cesse de haleter raconte-moi
encore finis de ma raconter invocation[30]
So
stylistically, both writers are searching for and achieving the same effect, creating
a work of singular orality by breaking away from the confines of traditional
syntax, jettisoning stylistic conventions such as normal punctuation and in the
case of Beckett normal paragraphing in order to better achieve a style of complete
fluidity. But the similarities would not appear to end in stylistic matters, as
the content of both works, both works written after the end of WWII, would
appear to be also concerned with one thing, and that is human memory. But
memory in the sense of the collective. Beckett, for example, references the
ancient muse in an attempt at inserting an invocation in the very opening of Comment
c’est, and again, for two stylistically innovative writers, again, this is
something that they both share; this deep channelling of both ancient and
modern literary and historic referencing. This stylistic feature is constant in
both works. For example, I have already laboured much on Céline’s referencing
of Heraclitus in D’un château l’autre, well, Beckett also inserts the
very same philosopher in the first part of Comment c’est.
sur le bas-ventre boueux j’ai vu un jour faste pace
Héraclite l’Obscur au plus haut de l’azur entre les
grandes ailes noire étendues immobiles vu sus-
pendu le corps de neige de je ne sais quel oiseau
voilier l’albatros hurler des mers australes l’his-
toire que j’avais mon Dieu la naturelle les bons
moments que j’avais[31]
Of
course what is fascinating to see here is the reference to snow again and of
course the bird which Beckett evokes must summon very clearly also the reference
to Baudelaire, and if such correspondences would seem to be mere conjecture on
my part, then how would you then explain the reference to the sack just some
fragments before this reference to Heraclitus, the sack that is referenced by
Francois Villon, and which is referencing Roman punishment, and the sack that
is referenced by Beckett in Comment c’est?
c’est le scene du sac les deux mains en écartent les
bords de quoi peut-on encore avoir envie la gauche
y plonge dans le sac c’est la scène du sac et le bras
après jusqu’à l’aisselle et après
In
truth, I have no answer to these questions, all I would appear to have is an
infinite number of correspondences which go back and forth, back and forth, ricocheting
about, back and forth and which can send me back to the time of the Roman
empire, or ancient Egyptian, for that matter, in Céline…
y a qu’à regarder les pyramides, l’imposant extérieur est
rien ! ce qui compte : ce qu’est dessous ! dans les
archi-cryptes profondeurs ! là, cesig monie, et ses
fortes devises ! et ses deux milles acteurs esclaves ![32]
Or,
if we are in the company of a couple of scribes in Comment c’est and who
would appear to have escaped from the scriptorium of Nineveh, in ancient
Babylon, one thing is assured in the company of Beckett and Céline in these two
great novels and that is we are constantly time travelling…
[1] Gomez, Yannick: D’un musicien l’autre, De
Céline à Beethoven, Éditions La
Nouvelle Librairie, Paris, 2023. p.50.
[2]
As the book is still banned
in France, I leave the link where it can be read here. https://childrenofyhwh.com/multimedia/video/bibliotheque/bibliotheque/C%C3%83%C2%A9line/Bagatelles%20pour%20un%20massacre.pdf
[3]
Ibid, p.10.
[4]
Ibid, p.77
[5]
Ibid, p.77.
[6]
Naming his
wife thus is an act of pure provocation, anyone who wishes to gain an insight
into the author’s relations with the woman who would spend the last twenty or
so years of his life, enduring exile with him in Denmark, should watch the film
which is based on interviews with the former dancer, who was clearly extremely
devoted to her husband.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cOKS8jI5LrI&t=3s
[7]
Ibid, p.89.
[8]
Ibid, p.89.
[10]
Ibid, p.85.
[11]
Ibid, p.93.
[14]
Ibid, p.115.
[15]
Ibid, p.85.
[16]
Ibid, p.102.
[17]
“He was called by the epithet
‘The Obscure’.”
Heidegger,
Martin: Heraclitus – The Inception of Occidental Thinking and Logic:
Heraclitus’s Doctrine of the Logos, Translated by Julia Goesser Assainte
and S. Montgomery Ewegen, Bloomsbury, London, 2018, p.17.
[18]
McKirahan, Richard D.: Philosophy
Before Socrates, And Introduction with Texts and Commentary, Hackett
Publishing Company, Indianapolis/Cambridge, 1994, p.122.
When
reliant on translations, it is best to have numerous efforts, I have noticed.
‘We
step and do not step into the same rivers, we are and we are not.’
Barnes,
Johnathan: Early Greek Philosophy, Penguin Books, London, 1987, p.70.
This
fragment has been made very popular and has been loosely translated as ‘You
never step into the same river twice.’
[19]
Ibid, p.101.
[20]
Ibid, p.102.
[21]“ Concerning such human beings,
it is important that we are hardly able even to imagine them; in itself, all
striving after knowledge of his essence is unsatisfactory, and for this reason
his regal air of certainty and magnificence is something almost unbelievable.
Nietzsche,
Friedrich: The Pre-Platonic Philosophers, Translated from the German and
Edited, with an Introduction and Commentary, by Greg Whitlock, University id
Illinois Press, Urbana and Chicago, First paperback edition, 2006, p.55.
As I
will be citing Samuel Beckett later inn the text, here is what the character
Belacqua has to say about the Sage from Ephesus in the chapter Yellow of
Beckett’s first novel.
“for
Belacqua could not resist a lachrymose philosopher and still less when, as was
the case with Heraclitus, he was obscene at the same time. He was in his
element in dingy tears and luxuriously so when these were furnished by a
pre-Socratic man of acknowledged distinction. How often had he not exclaimed,
skies being grey: “Another minute of this and I shall consecrate the remnant of
my life to Heraclitus of Ephesus, I shall be that Delian diver who, after the
third or fourth submersion, returns no more to the surface.”
Beckett,
Samuel: More Pricks than Kicks, Picador, London, 1974, p. 149.
[22]
A French actor who had an
extremely checkered career due to his overt collaboration with the Nazis during
the occupation, he was imprisoned after the war and after his release he went
into exile in Latin America for fear of reprisals and was never to return to
his native France.
[23]
Ibid, p.121.
[24]
The Penguin Book of French
Verse, Edited and Introduced
by Brian Woledge, Geoffrey Brereton and Anthony Hartley, Middlesex, England,
1975, p.123.
[25] Loisel, Yoann: Louis-Ferdinand Céline, Samuel Beckett,
Un abécédaire d’agonie, MJW Fédition, Paris, 2022, p.9.
[26]
Ibid, p.9.
[27]
Ibid, p.9.
[28]
‘It was desperately hard
going. Comment c’est proved to be one of the most difficult texts that he had ever
written. He found that he could face working on it only two or three hours a
day at the most; a dozen lines a day were an achievement; half a page almost a
triumph. There are five manuscript notebooks for the original version and,
unusually, all of them are written at Ussy. For the text demanded an intensity
of concentration that he could only find in his isolated country retreat; as
one reads it, the silence which he surrounded himself is almost tangible.’
Knowlson,
James: Damned to Fame, Bloomsbury, London, 1996, First Paperback Edition,
p. 461.
[29] Beckett, Samuel: Comment c’est, Les Éditions de
Minuit, Paris, 1992, p.9.
[30]
Ibid, p.9.
[31]
Ibid, p.53.
[32]
Ibid, p.43.
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