Louise Labé, Lilli Marlene, Rape,
And the Fate of
Women in
D’un château l’autre
By Louis Ferdinand Céline
In
this article I shall be treating the poetry of Louis Labé ( 1522-66) and the appearance of the popular song Lilli
Marlene made so famous by Marlene Dietrich and the very sinister
circumstances in which it appears and which puts a whole new context on the
historical background in which the popular song played out during the last year
of the war when Céline was staying in Sigmaringen after fleeing his apartment
in 1944 for fear of reprisals against him for his supposed collaboration with
the Nazi occupiers during the war, a very contested topic even to this day, and
his virulent antisemitic pamphlets that were published before and during the
war, and which sold so well earning Céline a handsome prophet from his
royalties while the trains in France were being loaded up with Jews bound for
the innumerable concentration camps in the East, such is the charge. I shall be
contenting myself to underline the very musical quality of the prose where the
author resorts to repetition, paraphrasing, alliteration, rhyme to achieve the
fluency and orality in the text so that the text reads every so lightly off the
page, making it a delight for the reader. This style of Céline’s which
commenced with the publication of Voyage au bout de la nuit ( 1932) and Mort
à credit ( 1936), and to which Céline is largely famous for, but whose
unique literary style, or ‘petit musique’, doesn’t really fully get into its
stride until the final trilogy of novels which document Céline’s time in war
torn Germany which was finally seeing the whirlwind it had started back in
1939, finally, returning to its own doorstep, and which the French writer
documented like no other.
The
name of Louise Labé, the Rennaisance poet and warrior, appears at the beginning
of the Sigmaringen section in Céline’s first instalment of his exile trilogy D’un
château l’autre ( 1957) and just as Francois Villon was symbolically evoked
in the Meudon section, in which the first part of the novel is set, evoking
memory, both personal and collective, in the symbol of snow, allowing the
author to evoke, through the sign, the medieval French literary tradition so
does the evocation of the celebrated female poet’s name grant Céline a form of
continuity in the narrative to support the major theme of time which runs
throughout the novel. ‘…toute les imposteurs commencent
à l’an 1000! la jean-fouterie s’étale !...’[1]
This
is a very important point that we must underline as Céline’s sense of time is
deep, like all poets, he is not working on mere Greenwich or Central European
time zones which are imposed on the here and now, but, on the contrary his
notion of time is more ontologically connected, as progress is practically
non-existent. So, whereas in the immediate temporal zones time ticks on and if
we miss our appointed rendez vous with A at point B it is because we
failed to show up at the designated zone at the appointed hour, so the illusion
of progress, its tyranny rather, as in Proust, is ever present. The mortal
weight of its shadow pursues us all like some unrelenting banker who will
forever claim the interest that our loan has accumulated over every ticking of
the minutes. This is the infamous clock of Baudelaire that at every stroke
speaks, ‘Meurs, vieux lâche! il est trop tard!’.[2]
The
conception of time in D’un château l’autre is not such a sinister god
with its sole emphasis on disrupting the quotidian, it is much more like
Beckett’s notion of time in Comment c’est and in this I would suggest
that the temporal notion that we are dealing with here, in both works, is more
heraclitean in the sense that there is no notion of progress whatsoever, as,
time is mere ontology so in terms of the human condition, we are at constant 0.
Time is as unmoving as history itself in that it is always one step forward
followed by two steps back. Hence, the apparition of historical figures like
Louise Labé in Céline’s monumental historical literary narrative in which he is
attempting to chronicle what exactly happened, yet setting the circumstances of
the events in the backdrop of greater historical events, and starting with the
castle of Sigmaringen itself, situated on the banks of the Danube, as the
narrator reminds us, dates from the early 11th century. As the
author of the medieval legend La Volonté du Roi Krogold , written
between 1939 and 1940, and which only came to light with its publication
earlier this year ( 2023), we now can appreciate the importance of such a
location to the author who constantly referred to himself as a chronicler.
Peut-être pas encore se vanter, Siegmaringen ?,,,
pourtant quel pittoresque séjour !...vous vous diriez
en opérette…le décor parfait…vous attendez les
sopranos, les ténors légérs …pour les échos, toute
la forêt !...dix, vingt montagnes d’arbes !...Forêt
Noire, déboulées de sapins, cataractes…plateau,
la scène, la ville, si jolie fignolée, rose, verte, un
peu bonbon,
demi-pistache,[3]
After
the prelude of Meudon, with its views onto the Seine, the stage is now set for
act two. The recent publication of La volonté du Krogold suivi de La légende
du roi René puts everything into relief, and this was written at the start
of the war.
Des plaines de la bataille au châteaux d’Elfesdal l’on comp-
tait trois étapes, l’une à travers les tourbes, deux autres en
forêt.[4]
Despite
everything, Céline, as an author, is clearly in his element and nowhere more so
does the thesis of Yannick Gomez ( 2023) , between the correspondence of music
between the 20th century French author and the early 19th
century German composer seem more apt, Céline’s musical references already
indicated above clearly signal the almost opéra bouffe element, and yet
the whole very brooding atmosphere of Beethoven’s Fidelio is, and at all
times, never too far off.
Tout ce château Siegmaringen, fantastique bis-
cornu trompe-l’œil a tout de même tenu treize… qua-
torze
siècles !...[5]
The
reference to the fantastic nature of the situation that Céline is about to
relate, and fantastical in the proper literary sense in the style of Edgar Alan
Poe[6];
‘funeste équipage’ ( p.122), ‘et un bateau mouche! pleine de Fatômes!...’ (
p.123) on which Charon, the ferryman
from out of the Dead from out of Virgil
and later Dante, ferries the assembled mass with Céline and his entourage to
the magical castle.
Traqués à mort qu’on a été…pas qu’un petit peu !...
et en Cour !...ce qu’il a pu être héroïque !...quelle
attitude !
The
heroic attitude of Virgil and Dante, say, not to mention Homer, all three being
poets of the epic long poem which for the great Russian comparativist Mikhail
Bakhtin ( 1895-1975) was the origins of the modern novel, in terms of
structural composition. Indeed, I was much reminded of Bakhtin’s wonderful
study of the novel The Dialogic Imagination ( 1975) while reading D’un
château l’autre as it would appear to follow the ancient structure of the
epic poem – before Sigmaringen[7] (
pp. 9 – 142) and which is mainly situated in Meudon, during Sigmaringen, or
section 2, ( pp.143 – 392), and finally the short epilogue, or after
Sigmaringen ( pp.394-404.).[8]
The
appearance of Louis Labé in all of this should comes as no surprise[9].
Indeed, it is not the first time that Céline mentions her name.[10]
And, when one thinks about it, considering the French woman’s personal life and
how she was a known warrior of her own time, like Céline himself, a member of
the cavalry.
Qui m’ust vú lors en armes fière aller,
Porter la lance et bois faire voler,
Le devoir faire en l’estour furieus,
Piquer, volter le cheval glorieus,[11]
Pour Bradamante, ou la haute Marphise,
Seur de Roger, il m’ust, possible, prise.
War
and love are common themes for the Renaissance poet to which Céline has such a
high regard, and is it any wonder when he himself was injured in the Great War
( 1914) while he was in the 12th Cuirassier Regiment [12]stationed
before the war in Rambouillet. The Cuirassiers, meaning breastplates, were a legendary
regiment and who fought distinguishing themselves in the Napoleonic Wars at
Austerlitz ( 1805) and Borodino ( 1812) before the catastrophe of Waterloo (
1815). Again, in an interview while living in Meudon, Céline, when speaking
about his reason to join the Cuirassiers, in typical dismissive fashion, says
that he was a little bit ‘con’[13].
Labé,
a hero of contemporary feminist studies just like her male counterpart Sir
Philip Sydney in England for example who embodied so much the idea of the much
lauded notion of the Renaissance man,
Louise Labé, likewise, completely embodies the idea of Renaissance woman. The
daughter of a wealthy merchant in Lyon who made his fortune making ropes[14],
Labé, like many women today, considered herself the equal, if not more, of her
male counterparts, a point she makes quite clear in the very first line of the
dedication of her poems.
Es le tems venu, Madamoiselle, que le sévères loix des hommes n’em-
Peschent plus des femmes de s’appliquer aus sciences et disciplines :
il me sem-
ble que celles qui ont la commodité, doivent employer cette honeste li-
berté, que notre sexe ha autre fois tant desiree, à icelles
apprendre : a montrer
aus hommes le tort qui’ils nous faisoient en nous privant du bien et de l’hon-
neur qui nous en pouvoitt venir :[15]
This
then is the poet whom Céline mentions in D’un château l’autre, a female
warrior poet and in the context of a novel set during a war and which touches
on the subject of women quiet a lot, I think the point is significant.
For
example, Madame Raumnitz who is modelled
on the wife of Karl Bömelburg who was non other than the Head of the Gestapo in
France during the war and so with the invasion of France by the Allies in June,
1944, he was charged with escorting Pétain and the Vichy government to
Sigmaringen where he stayed until April, 1945, before fleeing to Germany where
he disappeared without trace until his body was recovered after an accident
while trying to enter Franco’s Spain, where more leniency was shown to former
German fascists by Franco’s government. Céline describes the family atmosphere
pretty well.
de ces appartements somptueux, ultraluxueux…
même là a Siegmaringen les locaux secrets
du Raumnitz, pardon ! autre chose que notre piaule !
je connaissais son « aile » au Château, deux étages !
entièrement fleuris !...azalées, hortensias, narcisses !
…et des roses ! je suis sûr au Kremlim, ils sont
pleins de roses au mois de janvier…[16]
In
the corridors of power, the point being, the powerful look after themselves,
always, no matter where they are while the more vulnerable must deal with
whatever obstacles that are thrown their way as best they can. For someone who
was tried for being a collaborator after the war, it is hardly a sympathetic
portrait that he paints of the Raumitz/ Boemelburg family.
…de quoi nourrir a Siegmaringen!...donc
vous voyez, Raumnitz, Madame, et la fille, avaient
trop de tout…et pourtant ils nous ont offert
la moindre tartine ! biscotte ! ticket !...c’était comme
leur point d’honneur…à nous rien ![17]
Pierre
Assouline, the novelist and biographer, while discussing his novel Sigmaringen
with the academic Christine Sautermeister ( 2014)[18],
touched on the point of how much malnutrition played in the lives of the people
who were sequestered there. Assouline makes reference to the number of
children, of the malice, died because of hunger. So, when you think about the
historic context, as it was, and when you read Céline’s novel, you have, of
course, a much better picture of just what it was he was trying to accomplish
in his writing, particularly the last trilogy of which D’un château l’autre is
but the first instalment. Returning to the subject of women, here is Céline’s
portrait of Madame Raumnitz, the wife of the quintessential Nazi. The image he
paints is almost one of grotesque caricature.
Les deux dogues…il fait signe aux dogues…un
Bond, ils sont aux pieds de sa femme…enfin, à
sa botte !...elle porte bottes…bottes cuir rouge…
elle fait cavalière orientale, toujours à tapoter ses
bottes…et une très grosse cravache jaune…
« Allons, Docteur !... »
J’ai plus qu’à la suivre…[19]
The
image that comes to mind is one of a dominatrix parading around the medieval
castle, and whose husband is the former head of the Gestapo in France,
apparently the last officer to see Jean Moulin alive who was so tortured by the
Gestapo for two weeks in ‘Villa Boemelburg’ that he died from the injuries that
were inflicted upon him. So, this is one part of the spectacle, a glimpse into
the lives of the wealthy and powerful. But, how are the ordinary people down in
the street doing? Leaving the castle then, and the bizarre scenes that go with
it, (almost worthy of Visconti) Céline takes us by the hand and we see…
les hommes en chasse!...miteux aussi
en locques aussi ! et convoleurs ! et si ardents ! tous
les bosquets ! tous les carrefours ! l’âge enragé 14…
17…surtout les filles !...pas seulement celles- là, d’un
lieu bien spécial…l’eloignment, le danger permanent,
les hommes en chasses tous les trottoirs…[20]
Every
where you turn you can here the piano and the sound of Lili Marlene which
Marlene Dietrich was to make so popular during the war that soldiers on both
sides used to sing the song. The image that Céline paints of this time is an
incredibly cold and violent one, there are all kinds of troop movements going
on at the train station, for example. Hundreds of thousands of men from every
corner of the world coming and going, and all of them have pretty much just one
thing on their mind, as ever, but this is during a war like no other. Céline,
as Pierre Assouline reminds us, is a Doctor who pretty much looks after, with
one other doctor, almost 2 000 people that were in their charge from the period
that he arrived[21]at Sigmarengin, and it is
as a Doctor that Céline describes the plight of the many women, some pregnant,
and who are out on the street in a time of brutal war. The picture he paints is
sinister, particularly as he uses the famous song as leitmotif in this particular section of the novel
when he just wants to suggest the horror of rape, ever present, particularly at
the train stations where human traffic is constantly coming and going.
la gare était dans mes fonctions, côté sanitaires,
poste secours, réfugiés…alors forcément, salles
d’attente et prostitution ! je devais y voir !...tout
voir !
The
picture Céline paints, with the language he uses, is what we have come to
expect from Céline, it is céllinienne,
as the French would say – un delire, quoi! A Célinean delirium.
…farandoles des
aiguillages! poésie!...que les viandes bougent ! c’est
pas qu’au ciel que ça cesse pas d’aller revenir…sur
les rails pareil, trains sur trains…convois infinis…
troubades et troubades, toutes les armes et tous
les peuples…et les prisonniers avec !...déchaussés
aussi, pieds pendants hors…assis au portières…
faim aussi ! toujours faim !...bandant aussi !...
chantant aussi « Lili Marlène » !...Monténégrins,
Tchécoslovène, Armée Vlasoff, Balto-Finnois, troup-
bades des macédoines d’Europe !...[22]
The
picture he paints… let us just say that after you have read the novel D’un
château l’autre and you hear the song Lili Marlene, let’s just say that you
don’t quite hear the song, somehow, in the same way, ever again.
[1] Céline, Louis Ferdinand: D’un château l’autre,
Folio, Paris, 2023, p.188.
[2] Baudelaire, Charles: Les Fleurs du Mal, Préface de
Marie-Jeanne Durry, Le Livre De Poche, Paris, 1972, p.207.
[3] Céline, Louis Ferdinand: D’un château l’autre,
Folio, Paris, 2023, p.143.
[4] Céline, Louis Ferdinand: La volonté du Krogold suivi
de La légende du roi René, Pages Retrouvées, Édition Établie et Présentée
par Véronique Chovin, Gallimard, Paris, 2023,
[5]
Ibid, p.146.
[6]
There are a number of
references to the famous Gothic writer in D’un château l’autre ‘ce
quil’s on fait de la maison Roguet’ ( p.41), (a play on Rogêt!) when Céline,
returning again to complain of his unjust imprisonment in Denmark after the
war, takes the opportunity to speak about some of his former patients, ‘ils
savent tout ce qu’il m’est arrivé…ils trouvent tout joliment injuste! De me
jeter moi en tôle!...’ ( p.41) . The offence is plapable, the indignation too,
‘moi’, but as ever with the case of Céline we don’t know if he’s serious or if
it is just for comic effect, as there is a lot of room for comedy, even if we
are never too far off from the grotesque. For example, as if to further
highlight such an injustice, he goes on to speak about the disappearances of
certain people as the possible consequences of murder, ‘le mystère a déménagé’
( p.41), it’s a ‘mystery’, as in a tale by Poe, such as The Mystery of Marie
Rogêt , involving a certain
‘monsieur Roudière’ ( p.42), ‘matraqué, comme!..’( p.42) suggesting that he was
possibly bludgeoned to death, thus appeasing the sense of sensation that people
seem to need in their lives, which are clearly without any so that a veritable
industry is built around entertainment in the guise of crime novels ( beginning
with Poe) and it is the same sense of sensation that leads residents in the area to make the rather
macabre joke that the street where the incident apparently occurred was now known among them as ‘rue
Rodière’ ( p.42). ‘Raconter comme ca…choses et d’autres…me remets en
mémoire l’assassinat de ‘la Maison Verte’…le macabe esquivé…’ ( p.42) Again, Poe’s Tales were
considered macabre, the macabre, a French term, is often associated with his
name and Céline, particularly in this passage
of the novel would appear to be making great use of the associations
with the writer of the Tales of Mystery and Imagination.
[7] Christine Sautermeister referring to ‘la Bibliothèque de
la Pléiade’ calls this section the ‘Prologue, p.3-101’, ‘Recit de Sigmaringen,
p.103-291’, ‘Epilogue, p291-299’.
Sautermeister, Christine : Céline à Sigmaringen,
Éditions Écritures, Version Kindle, Paris, 2013, Chapter 1 ‘Les Dates’.
[8]
‘Now a thing is whole if
it has a beginning, a middle and an end.’
Aristotle:
Poetics, Translated, with an Introduction and Notes, by James Hutton,
W.W. Norton, New York, London, p.52.
[9]
At the beginning of the
Sigmaringen section of the novel, Céline wites the following about the mother
of a minister:
‘chez le Landrat aussi, locataire, j’avais le mère
d’un ministre, 96 ans…ma plus vieille malade…quel bel esprit !
finesse ! mémoire ! Christine de Pisan ! Louise Labé !...
Marceline ! elle m’a tout dit, tout ! récité ! comme je l’aimais
bien !
Seulette, je suis demeurée !
Selette suis !
Comme elle disait bien !
Céline, Louis Ferdinand: D’un château l’autre,
Folio, Paris, 2023, p. 200.
[10]
Refer to interview.
I
give the English here as it is the sole rhymed version in English available and
Annie Finch has done a wonderful job translating Louise Labé into English.
[11]
‘And you should have seen
me in my armour, riding high,
gripping my lance, letting my arrows fly!
I kept my head in the fury of the fight,
Spurring my glorious wheeling horse. You
might
have compared me to great Bradamante with
ease,
or to Roger’s sister, the renowned Marphise.’
[12]
Cuirasse is a word that pops
up quite a bit in the remarkable poetry of Louis Labé, almost like a fetish.
Ou est l’espee, ou est cette cuirasse,
Dont tu rompois des ennemis l’audace.
These
two lines appear in the first Elegy, a poem about ‘All-Conquering Love’.
[13]
Con in French is a very
flexible word and can mean both idiot and cunt, in its more vulgar form. It is
a slang word that is used on a daily basis by French people everywhere. In
Ireland, we would probably say eejit, in comparison. In its more gentle form,
and this is how people typically use it. But, the vehemence in which its used
should demarcate exactly which meaning would should understand. Beckett uses it
a lot in Comment c’est, in screaming capitals too – ‘M’AIMES- TU CON’ –
DO YOU LOVE ME CUNT.
Beckett, Samuel: Comment c’est, Les Éditions de
Minuit, Paris, 1992, p. 141.
[14]
Again the parallels here are
quite extraordinary, whereas Labé’s father was a Ropemaker, Céline’s mother was
a Lacemaker. The analogy of Ariadne is not that far off when we consider that
both of them would become writers, spinning out the interminable web of words
that would become their work. It is just a very interesting point to observe
how both of these writers grew up in households with quite similar backgrounds.
[15]
Labé, Louise: Complete
Poetry and Prose, A Bilingual Edition, Edited with Critical Introductions
and Prose Translations by Deborah Lesko Barker and Poetry Translations by Annie
Finch, The University of Chicago Press, Chicago London, 2006, p.15.
[16] Céline, Louis Ferdinand: D’un château l’autre,
Folio, Paris, 2023, p.204.
[17]
Ibid, p.25.
[19] Céline, Louis Ferdinand: D’un château l’autre,
Folio, Paris, 2023, p.207.
[20]
Ibid, p213.
[21]
Sautermesiter puts the
date at the end of October 1944, till the day that he left with Lucette and
their beloved cat Bebert, on the 22nd March when he left for Demark.
Sautermeister,
Christine : Céline à Sigmaringen, Éditions Écritures, Version
Kindle, Paris, 2013, Chapter 1 ‘Les Dates’.
[22] Céline, Louis Ferdinand: D’un château l’autre,
Folio, Paris, 2023, p.218.
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