Correspondences -
Erlkönig in the novels Nord
by Louis Ferdinand Céline
and Le roi des aulnes by Michel Tournier
In
Céline’s novel Nord there is not one but three separate references to
the lieder Erlkönig[1]
by Schubert which the German composer composed in 1815 using the poem by
Goethe[2] , which
was published in 1782. The music is so atmospheric so full of brooding dread
evoking the terror of the father as the mysterious creature from the forest
attempts to entice the child from him speaking to the boy of his daughters,
only to eventually mortally wound the child who is to die in his father’s arms.
It is not difficult to see how the song, possibly Goethe’s most famous poem,
should be so emblematic in Céline’s novel set in the final months of the war in
eastern Prussia where the French writer found himself in the company of his
wife Lilli, their cat Bébert and the actor Le Vigan, all who have been with him
in the previous novel which instigates the trilogy D’un château l’autre (
1957), and which I have already written about on more than one occasion. The
purpose of the present article is to highlight the three moments in question,
as they are critical moments which punctuate the novel rather like musical
phrases in a symphony or orchestral work. The symbolism of Céline’s choice of
mythological character is hardly accidental, of course. The ghoulish Erlkönig
is an appropriate symbol for Hitler’s indoctrination of German children in
organisations like the Hitler youth, and the subsequent slaughter of an entire
generation of children which is both a sign of the author’s astonishing
artistic genius, but also so completely and appropriately apt. Perhaps only a
Hippocratic artist, like the good Doctor Destouches, could have conjured up
such a powerful image, and it is in such contrast to the rather elaborate
mythological blending, mixing pagan with Christian iconography, in the figure
of Saint Chrostopher of Michel Tournier’s novel, which we shall also be looking
at in parallel.
The
first time that Céline inserts lyrics from Erlkönig into the novel Nord
is relatively early in when the author finds himself in the Hotel
Brenner in Baden Baden [3].
It is the 20th of July, to be exact, 1944. This is a very momentous
day, indeed. As while the good Doctor has been engaging in pleasant
conversation with the very striking personage of Mme von Seckt in the rose
garden, which will be the focus of my next article, the assignation attempt on
Hitler’s life has been announced; this is the botched bomb plot of Claus von
Stauffenberg, and rather than weeping the citizens of Baden Baden break into
joyous song little realising that the ogre is not in fact dead, but horribly
alive. It really is the most striking historical picture of what this most
singular event must have been like, and the song Erlkönig by Schubert
must be heard in this absolutely unique context. [4]
Perhaps only Céline, really, with his recuring penchant for the grotesque and
the sublime could have done justice to such an event.
Yet,
a rather curious thing happens in the text, as when Céline frames the two key
words from the song ‘Vater!...ô Vater!’ it appears that he erroneously credits
the song to Schumann!
Ils se doutent pas les autres là bas l’autre
aile…ce qui les attend…ils chantaient toujours…
on les entendait…un petit peu…ils écoutaient
un autre artiste…cette fois, un Allemand… une
très belle voix…
Vater !...ö Vater !
Schumann…je n’ai jamais revu personne de
ces réfugiés de Baden-Baden… [5]
The
second time the song appears is when the character Harras starts singing it
while he is driving the intrepid quartet ( Céline, Lilli, Bébert and Le Vigan)
through the desolation of war- torn Germany. Harras who is modelled on Doctor
Hauboldt, who looked after Céline while he was in Berlin in real life, is
driving a Mercedes through the war thorn landscape leading out of Berlin into
eastern Prussia where Harras wants to bring Céline and his small entourage far
from the desolation of the bombed out German capital. This is the setting that
Céline deliberately depicts before reintroducing the Erlkönig, which we
must understand is perfectly orchestrated by Céline. I deliberately use the
musical term as the writer often referred to the style of his written
compositions as musical, a fact which many commentators have remarked upon, but
perhaps most poignantly the pianist and composer Yannick Gomez ( 2023) who in
his wonderful study D’un musicien l’autre, De Céline à Beethoven traces
the many different correspondences between the 20th century French
writer and the 19th century German composer.
Before
I refer to this particular scene, it would be useful I think to remind the
reader of the setting in the song poem of Schubert. So, in the song, the
singer, like the novelist, takes on many voices. Firstly, the voice of the
father who is travelling through the forest with his son on a horse and who is
being pursued by the Erlkönig. While the father tries to escape, pushing
the horse harder and harder, as the music becomes more and more urgent, we hear
also the voice of the boy who sees the Erlkönig who calls out to the boy
whom we also hear and whose daughters also appear to the boy enticing him to
come with them and yet who is father dismisses as mere optical illusions
created by the mist. The voice of the singer, as can be evidenced in the
recording, for example, by the baritone Hermann Prey, attached below in the
notes , and who is conducted by James Levine in Vienna ( 1986), flits from deep
bassy tones when he is taking the role of the father and the Erlkönig,
and the strident strains of the cellos and violins come in heralding the
approaching menace ahead, to the lyrical flights and high notes of the boy’s
voice and the daughters of the Erlkönig, who are trying to be desirous.
All
of this is, of course, not lost on Céline. The fact that Harras is driving a
Mercedes is not idle. We are all aware of the famous newsreels of Hitler
parading around Nurenburg and Berlin in his fleet of custom- made Mercedes
cars. The iconic black car is synonymous with the Third Reich. Céline in D’un
château l’autre is at pains to point out how his neighbours must consider
him to be such a looser and an oddball not to drive a car, he being a Doctor,
after all, and the ultimate sign of post-war success was to be seen driving a
quality car. Mercedes being the very apex of success, ironically. This irony
would not have been lost on a writer as socially aware as Louis Ferdinand
Céline. And so, in the scene just before Doctor Harras starts singing lines from
the famous lieder by Schubert, Céline first describes the route that they have
been travelling on and it is indeed worthy of the most brooding strains of
German romanticism.
First,
we are privy to the sight of refugees from the east, possibly Polish or Russian
women who are also barefoot in the middle of winter. This is on the way to
eastern Prussia during the dying weeks of 1944 when the Red army are pushing in
from the east towards Berlin in what will become a monumental battle for the
city in which hundreds of thousands of women will be raped in one great orgy, a
fact which Céline already alluded to in the first instalment of his German
trilogy but which very few people paid any heed to, at least in the English
speaking world, as it wasn’t really until 2002, when Antony Beevor published Berlin:
The Downfall 1945 having being granted access to previously
undisclosed German and Russian files,
that the scale of the rape became apparent to the reading public, and which was
quite shocking at the time. So, Céline really was way ahead of his time, yet
again, from a historical point of view and of course this to be expected by a
writer who, rather like Dante, decides to travel through the Third Reich while
it is being systematically annihilated by both the Red armies in the east and
by the allied armies in the west.
Céline
introduces an almost Shakespearean motif in the final two scenes when the song Erlkönig
is evoked in Nord. I am referring to the three witches at the
beginning of Macbeth, as in both scenes there are three women, and this fact is
far too symbolic to pass unnoticed. For example, in the second apparition, when
Harras is driving in the Mercedes, they come across three barefoot women who
fall upon their knees supplicating Harras to have pity on them and to take them
with them in the car, as they merely want to flee from where they are as they
have been raped.
Il les laisser parler…une chose, elles ont pas eu
peur…ni de la Mercédes ni d’Harras
ni de son
revolver…dans les sanglots elles nous racontent
…que leurs pères et mères sont morts, qu’elles
sont seules à Felixruhe, que tous les hommes
veulents les
violer…[6]
Harras
listens unmoved as he has heard it all before, he tells his French companions.
Only the other week, the very same thing happened, he explains. And without any
further ado, he gets back in the Mercedes and they speed off continuing on
their journey. Such, then, is the second apparition of Schubert’s lieder,
Goethe’s famous poem.
“Vous avez été à Berlin ?
-Nein ! nein ! »
Hereureusement Harras avait des forts bras,
pour tenir la route, il fallait…de plus en plus
de fondrières !...de ces embardées, d’une à l’autre !
il la fait voler, cette énorme ! plein gaz par-
dessous les crevasses ! moins vite, à aller !...le
retour, on peut dire, on chargeait ! il chantonne…
Vater ! ô Vater !
Ö père ! ô père !
Le roi des Aulnes !
« Il faut cher Céline ! il faut !...je me m’amuse
pas ! »[7]
The
contrast of the scene which has just happened with the three kneeling women,
terrified for their lives appealing to Harras to take them with them for fear
of being raped, and the almost mundane discussion which follows between Harras
and Céline in the car is beautifully contrasted, and of course the fact that
Céline has Harras singing Erlkönig, a song which is about a mysterious
creature which lives in the woods and who kidnaps people, particularly
children, and kills them, all helps to create a very troubling mood. The motif
of the three women, indicative of Macbeth, further underscores the very
operatic atmosphere in the novel and so when this motif reappears in the third
and final appearance of the song, it creates in the mind of the reader a kind
of recall, so that this second scene is recalled.
Many
commentators on Céline speak about the grotesque element in his writing, along
with the deliriums, these are the two fundamental hallmarks of his style that
most commentators attribute to his writing. Stéphane Zagdanski, the son of
Polish immigrant Jews, is certainly one of the most interesting commentators on
Céline, particularly when it comes to defending the infamous pamphlets
published in the thirties and forties[8].
Zagdanski’s reading of Céline, emphasising its Talmudic element, is profoundly
interesting and I bring it up here as it can, I believe, help clarify the point
I made earlier about the grotesque element in Céline’s novels, and in his
writings in general, and this of course includes the antisemitism of the
pamphlets. I will try to paraphrase Zagdanski’s theory on Céline’s delirious
element as it is really quite an extraordinary one and one that is backed up
also by academics in the English speaking world who have dedicated their lives
to examining the writings of this most extraordinary and little understood
writer.[9]
So,
one of the things that Zagdanski underlines when he is discussing Céline is the
almost larger than life element to his work, and he is not alone here. For
example, Voyage au bout de la nuit ( 1934), Zagdanski points out, is a
truly international novel in the sense that the action takes place first
in Paris, moves to the trenches of the
WWI, then goes to the African colonies, only to move onto to the Ford factories
in New York and then back to the suburbs of Paris where the author finally
starts his medical practice as a doctor. We can see that the scope of the
novel, in over 600 pages, treats the subjects of war, post-colonialism,
capitalism and finally the quotidian. Practically, not one aspect of life is
left uncovered ,and this is mainly due to the fact that Céline himself is
writing about all of these subjects not from some theoretical point of view,
but rather directly from his own experience and using ordinary language, the
language that people use on the street so slang and popular expressions of the
time. Zagdanski uses the expression ‘ être à l’hauteur de l’époque’ in relation
to Céline and it is a phrase that Céline himself uses when talking about
writers in relation to style and writing for their times.
If
I first clarify what Céline means, in one of his last televised interviews[10]he
speaks about how technology in the 20th century has changed the game
for writers rather like Francis Bacon spoke about how painters had to adapt in
relation to photography. For example. Céline, in the same vein as the British
painter, who also famously shocked the public with his visions of ‘horror’,
talks about cinema and also the news, mass media really, and how it has
rendered the way in which people used to rely on novelists, like Balzac say,
redundant as people no longer refer to novels when they want find out about
things but go rather to the mainstream media and of course social media today.
So, today, or in the twentieth century, at least, Céline makes the case that writers
no longer need to write novels in the same way as Balzac, say, in terms of both
content or style because of the enormous capacity for people to readily get
information on almost any topic under the sun, due to newspapers and newsreels
this had, according to Céline, to a large extent, freed up the novelist to
focus on other things. Céline decided to focus on the emotive element as
technology, films etc, cannot be as effective as novels in allowing the public
to enter fully into this particular domain. Hence Céline’s exploitation of
style and language. Hence his deliriums,
‘ le style émotif’ as he calls it in Entretiens avec le professeur Y using
the Parisian metro as an analogy, as, like the Metro around Paris, his style
can take you, as he says himself, directly to anywhere you want to go[11].
Zagdanski
is really very good at getting across just how well Céline understood ‘blah
blah’, a phrase he invented, and which he used to describe the language of
marketing which Céline already saw back in the thirties, forties and fifties,
altering the way people saw the world. His whole engagement with antisemitism
comes from this period. Zagdanski points out that Céline was typical of French
writers at the time who had grown up with the Dreyfus affair, almost every
single French writer of prominence at the time was writing antisemitic
articles, as it was well in vogue. France is, historically, an antisemitic
society, one only has to look at contemporary France today to see the evidence.
Yet, what distinguishes Céline’s antisemitism from everyone else is the extent
of his delirium, and this is where the Jewish reading of Céline, or Talmudic as
Zagdanski refers to it, is an essential part of understanding what exactly the
French writer was trying to achieve. This is crucial. It is crucial in the sense of understanding
Céline’s epic dimension, his German Trilogy of which Nord is just the
second instalment, for example. The more one enters into Céline’s universe the
more one becomes aware that it is of the same ‘hauteur’ of Joyce or Beckett.
This might appear to sound extravagant, but it is a simple fact and Céline knew
this, yet because of his incredible complexity ( his antisemitism being just a
part of it) most readers in his own native France have no idea of just what it
was he was trying to achieve in his writing. This is why I believe that
Stephane Zadansgki ( 1992)[12]
reading of Céline is so important as he can really can get across the profound
nature of how the French writer tried to engage with the Talmud by outdoing it,
in a sense, in terms of writing and delirium.
For
example, he reminds us that the Jewish religion is the only religion which
starts with a book, in other words even before God comes into the equation,
there is a book! For Zagdanski, in relation to Céline, this point is absolutely
crucial. So, it is a religion of writers for writers in that the written word
comes before all others. Only a writer like Céline can really understand this.
So, Céline sees the world around him, a world in which Jewish writers and
intellectuals are being promoted everywhere – Freud, Proust, Einstein, Roth,
Zweig, Mussil, Kafka, Wittgenstein…the list just goes on and on. Zagdanski, in
the film documentary attached, is hilarious almost imitating Céline in his
delirium when he describes Céline like a child who feels completely excluded
from the club of the elect.
« Écoutez-moi encore un peu, monsieur le Colonel
Réséda ! vous irez uriner plus tard ! le grand libéra-
teur de style ? toute l’émotion du « parlé » à travers
l’écrit ? c’est moi ! c’est moi ! pas un autre ! »[13]
Zagdanski
is at his best when he explains that this is exactly what Céline got from the
Talmud, and this is what he meant when he said that only the Jews could
understand him, as the Talmud is a book coming from the oral tradition, and so
is written in a style full of voices and which speak to you directly not
confined as they are to tenses. This is what Céline owes to the Jewish religion
- his orality! If we just look at one of Céline’s most successful novels in
terms of orality in the later period, Nord’s predecessor D’un château
l’autre is perhaps the best place to start.[14]
To begin, the very first phrase which D’un
château l’autre begins is the following, ‘Pour parler franc,’[15] and it is
the first signpost which starts the novel, one out of a series of signposts
which most of the opening paragraphs commence with – ‘Je vous parle de ma
mère,’[16], ‘Je
reviens à Bellevue…’[17], ‘Je vous
parlais d’en bas,’ [18] ‘Parlons
médecine…’[19] ‘Les
malades don’t je vous parlais,’ [20], ‘Pour ce
qui me concerne, je vous disais que la vie,’[21] – and it goes on
and on creating in the mind of the reader the impression that the narrator,
Louis Ferdinand Céline, the pseudonym of Doctor Destouches, is sitting there
beside you having a good chat with you, and speaking quite frankly as he does.
These signposts are just the first factor in a systematic use of language by
the author in which he creates an incredibly fluid oral quality; repetition, he
repeatedly tells you that he is talking to you, as Lucretius knew well, is the
great instructor. Céline repeats and repeats and repeats the fiction that he is
talking to you, when in fact he is writing the words down on a page, but while
he repeats and repeats the lie, as Goebbels knew, you, the reader, begin to
believe it. Another factor is the use of pronouns. He insists on addressing you
the reader all through the novel sometimes even imitating people talking by
using spoken expressions like ‘vous me direz: “ saignez votre Achille! il a qu’
a vendre un peu vos livres!...” [22]
Notice also that Céline, despite such overt familiarity with the reader,
remains in the formal vous. Then, there is the famous three dots…where
conventional punctuation is completely jettisoned to be replaced by the dots…
and, of course, the exclamation marks! Emotive, emoting…! Paraphrasing is
another device that is systematically applied throughout the novel and this is
what gives the writing, as it does in human speech, its particular rhythm.
Pour parler franc, là entre nous, je finis encore pas mal
que j’ai commencé…Oh, j’ai pas très bien commencé…
je suis né, je le répète, à Courbevoie, Seine… je le répète pour
la millième fois…[23]
This
is something I tell my own students to do when they are writing that they must
paraphrase themselves, in order to show fluency[24]. Nord
in contrast to D’un Château l’autre has a much different rhythm, it
is a much slower book and so its orality is less pronounced than its
predecessor, but this is not at all to suggest that it is a lesser work, far
from it.
Now,
let us turn our attention to the third and final appearance of the lieder. We
are now in the region of the village of Zornhof in what was formally Eastern
Prussia, but is now, since WW2, part of West Pomeranian Voivodeship in Poland.
The village is famous for the great battle that took place in the
mid-eighteenth century when Prussian troops under the command of Kind Frederick
the Great fought Russian troops commanded by Count William Fermor. Because of
the historic connotations, but also because of the extraordinarily strange
atmosphere which permeates Nord, set in the central section in this old
noble house which is falling into ruins while the American Flying Fortresses
fly above in great squadrons overhead, I found myself thinking of Tolstoy’s
great novel War and Peace, and this is a further testament to Céline’s
genius as a novelist. Yes genius, I do not use the term lightly. In France,
among his devout readers, he is known, particularly by his most famous
biographer and avid supporter François Gibaut, during this particular part of
his ‘career’ as a writer as the horseman of the apocalypse[25].
« Vous
voyez cette plaine, cette route,
ces
gens ?... tout ça triste, n’est ce pas ?...
russe !...triste !...jusqu’à
l’Oural !...et après ! »[26]
Harras
explains to Céline, when they first arrive. This is the final setting for the
third appearance of the mythic Erlkönig. What is very
interesting about this third and final appearance of the lieder is the fact
that Céline orchestrates it in a similar way to the second insertion, as the
song is prefigured, once again, by the appearance of three bare foot women. Are
these mimicking the three daughters of the Erlkönig in the famous song?
Voici, nous approchons de l’autre porte…je
vois, leur cuisine est grand ouverte…les trois
servantes sortent, elles sont pieds nus, les
cheveux dans les dos…ce sont des
gaillardes,
pas maigres, je dis : elles se privent pas…[27]
The
house where the quartet are lodged is an old country estate that has seen
better times. What is interesting to note is that Goethe, who is the author of
the lyrics of the song, was a contemporary of Frederick the Great. This time the singer is a pastor, and while
he sings the American flying fortresses are flying in the sky overhead on their
way to bomb Berlin…
il chante plus
des psaumes, maintenant, des lieder! et il a de
la voix, il le sait ! un organe !... ratichon artiste,
on entend plus que lui, il gueule plus fort
que les étables…les cuisinières russes qui le
trouvaient ennuyeux aux psaumes, godent aux
lieder… elles sortent toutes de la cuisine, par trois
six qu’elles sont !...et elles applaudissent
qu’il recommence !
ô Vater ! ô Vater ![28]
This
is Céline’s speciality, he slowly builds and builds up the intensity until the
delirium, the ‘metro emotif’ can no longer support the intensity and it spills
over…
Il faut avouer il chante bien, la vrai voix de
lieder, grave, passionnée, chaude…passionnée
d’arriver ou ?... « ô père ! ô père » Le Roi des
Aulnes !...précipitation ![29]
Now,
we shall look a little at Michel Tournier’s treatment of the same material in
his novel Les rois des aulnes ( 1970). The first thing to note is the
year of publication, so this is only ten years after the publication of Nord,
1960. In the central section of Tournier’s novel, the Earl King, or Erlkönig
, is ‘actually’ located in the forest of Walkenau discovered by the
narrator of the text which is presented as the diary of Abel Tiffauges and
which is predominantly set during the thirties and forties when the Nazis came
to power and finally Europe was to erupt into Total War. Tournier very cleverly
inserts quotations taken from Baudelaire[30],
and blends Christian and pagan narratives, Saint Christopher ( patron saint of
travellers) and the mythic Erl King, all against the backdrop of Hitler’s
Germany. But most revealingly, in the central section of the novel, Tournier
has Tiffauges appear as the archaeologist who presents a bog body, the Man of
Walkenau, as the possible source of the German myth of the Erlkönig.
-Qu’il me soit permis d’ajouter que notre
ancêtre a été exhumé près d’ici, dans un petit bois
d’aulnes, de la variéte noire qui hante les marais. Et
là je ne puis manquer de songer à Goethe, le plus
grand poète de langue allemande, et à son œuvre
la plus illustre et la plus mystérieuse à la fois,
cette ballade du Roi des Aulnes. Elle chante à nos oreilles
allemandes, elle berce nos cœurs allemands, c’est
en vérité la quintessence de l’âme allemande.[31]
I feel compelled to confess that I
discovered Tournier’s novel in 1988 when I met my first wife, who is French,
and who became the mother of my son in 1992 in whose company, while walking up Boulevard
Saint Michel when Paris once again opened after Covid 19 (2021), I came across
a first edition published by Gallimard in the iconic Collection blanche. So,
imagine my surprise when I discovered the song mentioned not just once, but three
times in Louis Ferdinand Céline’s novel Nord the second instalment in
his German Trilogy of novels set during the collapse of the Third Reich, when
the notorious French author was in exile. The correspondences were too dazzling
not to explore, but, and here is the thin, in one of his last televised interviews,
Céline mocks writers who have no style, but, I am paraphrasing, who are full of
ideas. While I was rereading Tournier’s novel, which won the Prix Goncourt
in 1970, remember, I must further confess that I was reminded of Céline’s
words, he who never won a Prix Goncourt in his life! This is something he
never forgot, nor a Prix Nobel for that matter. So, let us leave him have
the last word..
J’étais en pleine digression! loin de mon histoire !
mon Colonel perdit le fil…vit à mon histoire !
mon histoire !...ma propre histoire !...les dons que
j’avais reçu, moi du Ciel !...pourtant tous les tons
j’avais insisté ! des dons vraiment extraordinaires !
j’y avais fait répéter cent fois !...basta, qu’il se sou-
vienne ! que c’était moi le vrai seul génie ! le seul
écrivain du siècle ! la preuve : qu’on parlait jamais de
moi !...que tous les autres étaient jaloux ! Nobel, pas
Nobel ! qu’ils avaient tous essayé de me faire fusillier !
…et que je les emmerdais d’autant !...à mort ! puisque
c’était question de mort entre moi et eux !...que je
ferai sauter leurs lecteurs ! tous leurs lecteurs ! que
je ferai se dégoûter de leurs livres ! cabales, pas cabales !
qu’il y avait pas de place pour deux styles !... c’était
le mien ou le leur !...[32]
[5] Céline, Louis Ferdinand: Nord, Collection Folio,
Gallimard, Paris, 2022, p.45.
[9] See Alice Kaplan particularly in relation to Voyage au
bout de la nuit.
[11] Céline, Louis Ferdinand: Entretiens avec le Professeur
Y, Collection Folio, Gallimard, Paris, 2022, p.111.
[12] Zagdanski, Stéphane: Céline seul, Collection
L’Infini, Gallimard, Paris, 2014.
[13] Ibid, p. 70.
[14]
What is interesting to note
here is that among non-Jewish writers, Céline was not alone in his exploration
of Jewish ideas in his writing, as both Joyce and Beckett were also profoundly
interested in Judaism and there are a number of studies on this topic. See my
article :
[15] Céline, Louis Ferdinand: D’un château l’autre,
Collection Blanche, Gallimard, Paris, 1981, p.7.
[16]
Ibid, p.10.
[17]
Ibid, p.11.
[18]
Ibid, p.12.
[19]
Ibid, p.12.
[20]
Ibid, p.13.
[21]
Ibid, p.14.
[22]
Ibid, p. 30.
[23]
Ibid, p. 8.
[24]
https://resources.trinitycollege.com/teachers/english_language/webinars/developing-writing-fluency
[25] The third volume in François
Gibaut’s monumental biography in three parts is called Cavalier de
l’Apocalypse which covers the years 1944, when he quite France to go into
exile, and when he died in 1961.
[26] Céline, Louis Ferdinand: Nord, Collection Folio,
Gallimard, Paris, 2022, p.211.
[27] Céline, Louis Ferdinand: Nord, Collection Folio,
Gallimard, Paris, 2022, p.266.
[28] Céline, Louis Ferdinand: Nord, Collection Folio,
Gallimard, Paris, 2022, p.268.
[29]
Ibid, p.268.
[30] In the second entry in his diary,
Abel Tiffauges, the fictious narrator of Michel Tournier’s Le roi des aulnes
( 1970), which earned him the Prix Goncourt, paraphrases Baudelaire
when he first mentions the name of Saint Christopher, the patron saint of
travellers who becomes so important in the context of the Earl King in his
novel. Tournier combines the German myth of the marauding Erlkönig of
Goethe’s poem, made famous by Schubert to music lovers worldwide, the
mysterious character who kidnaps children taking them away with him into the
forest. Hence the title of the article, as Tournier takes the famous lines ‘La
nature est un temple oú de vivants piliers Laissent parfois sortir de
confuses paroles;’ and evoking as he does Saint Christopher, the name of
his school when he was a child, to evoke what is to become the iconic saint of
his book blending him with the myth of the Erlkönig challenging Christian
symbolism and iconography which is one of the hallmarks of Tournier’s novel.
[31] Tournier, Michel: Le Roi des Aulnes, Collection
Folio, Gallimard, Paris, 1996, p.253.
[32] Céline, Louis Ferdinand: Entretiens avec le Professeur Y, Collection
Folio, Gallimard, Paris, 2022, p.70.
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