Rabelais & Céline and the Hippocratic Nature of Language

                                                            Lafayette House, Dublin. 

 

 

 

 

Rabelais & Céline

The Hippocratic Nature of Language

in D’un château l’autre

 

« Rabelais avait voulu faire passer la langue parlée

dans la langue écrit ; un échec. » [1]

Céline

 

 Two doctors and two writers and both of a prodigious nature and who also both came up against the authorities all their lives and often at great expense to their reputations and who both almost lost their lives[2]. But, asides from these two very important factors, in this chapter I will also be looking at the use of language which both writers use, their incredible invention and humour, particularly when they are addressing some of the issues of society that were troubling them and this is why both writers are described as being Hippocratic, as by describing the madness of the world which surrounded them this was a way for both men to literally keep sane themselves and in turn to help to keep their readers mental health in order. In the case of Céline, during the historically circumstances that he now found himself sequestered with the remnants of the Vichy government in the medieval castle of Sigmaringen, humour is really the last resort. I shall be particularly focusing on the final section of D’un Château l’autre when the occupants of the castle, in order to keep up morale, are preparing to hold a festival for ‘La reprise des Ardennes…[3]’The irony for Céline, having fled France as he was receiving death threats for apparently collaborating with the Germans, is that he now finds himself at the end of the war in a mediaeval castle with the collaborationist government who will choose to believe anything rather than the allied victory which is certain, and which Céline is well aware of. Not only must he confront his own past, which brings him to his current predicament, but also that of his country and that of Europe’s. Sigmaringen is a medieval castle and so it is a physical manifestation of a world that Rabelais would have known. All his life, Rabelais sought refuge in similar structures from the noble people of his time due to his ‘heretical’ stance. Finally, just as I will later be examining the role of music in the further two instalments of the trilogy, ( Erlkönig by Schubert in Nord and Polonaise in G minor by Chopin and Piano Sonata No. 23 Apassionata by Beethoven in Rigodon ) in D’un château l’autre I will be looking at the role that Wagner plays and in particular the famous Ritt der Walküren[4].  

One of the fundamental literary tropes that both Rabelais and Céline share are and indeed are staple of epic poetry since ancient times are lists. Both writers use lists to great comic literary effect as a very simple and effective way of demonstrating their literary prowess and powers of invention. In D’un château l’autre, as in all his novels, Céline uses them to great comic effect. For example, when Ferdinand Brinon, modelled on the same Brinon who presided over the Vichy government commission who were housed by the Nazis in the ancient castle of Sigmaringen during the last months of the war, informs Céline that he has been condemned to death by the “Comité de Plauen!” back home in now recently liberated Paris, Céline, typically, goes into a tirade about all the supposed horrors he has committed. It is a hallmark of his style, and it is also one of the aspects of his writing that readers of Céline deeply enjoy as they know that Céline will use the occasion to become as inventive as he possibly can, typically trying to outdo himself in playful derision of his enemies, who are legion. Here is his response to the news from France.

 

…s’il y a quelque chose de fastidieux c’est

les « terrible accusations »…rabâchis pires que les amours !...

je vois encore plus tard, en prison, au Danemark…et par

l’Ambassade de France…et par les journaux scandinaves…

pas de mal à la tête !...simplement : « le monstre et vendu

le pire de plus pire ! qui dépasse les mots !...que la plume

éclate !... » sempiternels forfaits de monstre : vendeur de

ceci ! de cela !...de tout la Ligne Maginot ! les caleçons

des troupes et cacas ! généraux avec ! toute la flotte, le rade

de Toulon ! le goulot de Brest ! les bouée et les mines !...

grand bazardeur de la Patrie ! question des « collabos »

féroce ou « fifis » atroces épurateurs de ci…de ca..[5]

 

This is hallmark or signature of Rabelais also, and Céline, in this sense, is really his true inheritor. Let us take a passage or two from Pantagruel just to show exactly what I mean. I have decided to take two passages from chapter eight in which Rabelais wishes to demonstrate why the codpiece, or ‘braguette’, is the most important piece of equipment for soldiers, or men of war. So, to begin, while first introducing the subject, Rabelais makes the point that as with all things, man is inspired by nature first and he wishes to first demonstrate how in the natural world plants are suitably protected or fortified against the natural elements so that they can propagate, and in order to this he lists out numerous examples.

 

Voyez

comment nature voulent les plantes, arbres, arbrif-

feaulx, herbes, & Zoophytes vne tois par elle créez,

perpétuer & durer en toute fucceffion de temps,

fans iamais deperir les eípeces, encores que les ind-

uiduz periffent, curieufement arma leurs germes &

femences, es quelles confifte icelle perpetuité, & les

a muniz & couuers par admirable induftrie de

gouffes, vagines, teftz, noyaulx, calicules, coques,

efpiz, pappes, efcorces, echines poignans : qui leurs

font comme belles & fortes braguette naturelle.[6]

 

Comparatists typically would point out the ‘horizon of expectation’ that such lists invoke in the mind of the reader, in other words the reader knows what is coming ahead, and this phenomenon builds up in the reader a form of confidence that they now share with the author. In other words, a bond or implicit pact between the reader and the author has been forged because of the inclusion of such literary tropes, and this can simply be attributed to the reader’s inherent respect for the poetic art or craft of the writer. Such technical accomplishments are always deeply prized by the reading public, and it is a testament to the ever- pervading character of the human mind, how in a sense it is forever unchanging in terms of structural underpinnings, or tropes. As just as Céline, in a sense, is taking up the baton from Rabelais, Rabelais himself, who very much prized his classical education, is merely aping or parroting the stylistic tropes of Homer[7]. 

 

These, these were the captains of Achaea and the kings.

Now tell me muse, who were the bravest of them all,

of the men and chariot-teams that came with Atreus’ sons?

 

The best by far of the teams were Eumelus’s mares

and Phere’s grandson drove them – swift as birds,

matched in age and their glossy coats and matched

to a builder’s level flat across their backs.

Phoebus Apollo lord of the silver bow

had bred them both in Perea, a brace of mares

that raced the War -god’s panic through the lines.[8] 

Before I go on, I should, at this stage, like to refer to the North American poet T. S. Eliot who I have been going back to again and again since I first picked up his poetry when I was a very young man in the nineteen eighties, and so who I have been reading for now for over a period of four decades…I will always remember reading his short essay Tradition and the Individual Talent, the date that I have scribbled inside the flyleaf of the book, as is my habit when I purchase a book that I have need of, is 2003, so I have been going back to this particular text for over two decades now, but I recall reading it first in a library book when I was much younger. Let me just give you the quotation by Eliot himself on tradition, as it is still a quote that resonates[9].

 

Tradition is a matter of much wider significance.

It cannot be inherited, and if you want it you must obtain

it by great labour. It involves in the first place, the historical

sense, which we may call nearly indispensable to anyone

who would continue to be a poet beyond his twenty fifth year;[10]

 

Returning to Céline now and the influence of Rabelais and particularly in the context of D’un château l’autre, after having examined the first two sections of the novel beginning in Meudon in the fifties; when Céline is writing the novel after his return to France having left in fear of his life and now very much keeping a low profile under still a cloud of disgrace; to the train station and streets around Sigmaringen where Céline describes particularly the horrendous possibility of rape for countless women and the sporadic and often random nature of death for countless civilians due to the indiscriminate carpet bombing by the approaching allies; to the final section in the novel which very much takes place inside the castle itself as the occupants, in order to keep their spirits up start planning to have a festival to celebrate the future victory of the newly reformed SS panzer divisions, recently redeployed from the eastern front, and the Wehrmacht in the Ardennes. In order to situate us better historically, before returning to Céline in the medieval castle of Sigmaringen, I should like to first refer to Antony Beevor’s image of Hitler who was also sequestered in a medieval castle during this time preparing to address the assembled gathering.

 

Late that afternoon, buses brought divisional commanders to the

Alderhorst to be addressed by Hitler. Each officer was searched by SS

guards and had to surrender his pistol and briefcase. At 18:00 hours,

Hitler limped on to the stage. Generals who had not seen him for some

time were shocked by his physical deterioration, with pallid face, droop-

ing shoulders and one arm which shook. Flanked by Keitel and Jodl, he

sat behind a table.[11]

 

The vision that Beevor presents is nothing less than Gothic[12], and I think this is very useful to see before we now turn our attention to the events which Céline is about to recount as I think it is very easy to forget how absolutely mad, insane is perhaps a better term being more clinical, a lot of the events were in Europe at the time, mad, at least, in the very real medical sense of the term.

Je laisse Lili à travailler, répéter ses danses avec le

couple Delaunys, ses numéros pour la Fête…il s’agit

plus de plaisanter…à fond « ça va de soi » !...cha-

connes, passe-pieds, rigodons !...un moment y a plus

que de sérieux…pas faire basculer la marmite !...que

vous verriez plus que les diables ! la « Reprise des

Ardennes ? »…certainement ! tous les Ambassadeurs y

seront !...bien sûr !...le triomphe de l’Armée Rundstedt ?

ah là là ! Triomphe, c’est peu dire ! [13]

 

Céline loved dance, so much so he married a dancer. Lucette Destouches, who is Lili in the novels, was a dancer and the way Céline describes her in the passage above contains some of the fundamental elements of dance amongst them being discipline, rhythm and cadence. It is coming back to his qualities as a musician.[14]

 

Je laisse Lili à travailler,

répéter ses danses avec le couple Delaunys,

 

This is a rhyming couplet, almost in iambic pentameter.

 

ses numéros pour la Fête…

ils s’agit plus de plaisanter…

à fond « ça va de soi » !...

chaconnes, passe pieds, rigodons !...

 

And it goes on and on…Céline’s ‘petite musique’. Content dictates form; Céline is writing about a dancer, and so the music dances! This is James Joyce, language is the thing not merely representation and the two writers have so much in common, in this sense. Of course, the further association with Rabelais is another. Joyce too was a great admirer, he too had his innumerable lists. But Joyce too was a music lover, particularly of Italian opera and he was considered, in his say, to be a very fine tenor.[15]

But it is not Italian opera that I want to focus on here but rather German, Wagner’s Valkyrie to be more precise as it is the piece of music that Abetz, Chateaubriand and Hoffman are discussing with Céline as the ideal piece of music to celebrate ‘le triomphe de l’Armée Rundstedt’. This is a reference to the Ardennes offensive which was to prove so disastrous to the German army. All of his generals said it was madness, but Hitler had long ago ceased to listen to them, much to the delight of the Allied generals. In the novel D’un château l’autre, this chapter is critical as it shows the full farce of the situation that Céline, the antisemitic collaborationist author, now found himself in holed up in a Germanic castle, dating from medieval times, with the entire Vichy government which the Nazis had installed there. Abetz is of course the German Ambassador to France who Céline met previously in Paris during the occupation and these meeting were recorded as there is testimony to them. In fact, the writer Alphonse Châteaubriand, who actually was a collaborator with the Germans, was in the company of the Ambassador and Céline in the Café de la Paix in Paris for a reception given by a Japanese newspaper and Céline, who happened to be dressed like a tramp, was overheard asking a German colonel what month the Wehrmacht would they loose the war[16]. So, the accusations that Céline was a collaborator simply do not fully stack up, anyone who has read the German Trilogy could tell you that as the majority of the time in the three novels Céline is simply being quite satirical about the whole Nazi debacle that he witnesses and the scene with Abetz, Chateaubriand and Hoffmann is typical of the humour of the trilogy.

 

Abetz, je le connaissais vrai-

ment tré peu…nous étions pas en sympathie…cer-

tainement rien à nous dire…on les voyait guère qu’en-

touré de « clients »…courtisans…clients-courtisans

de toutes les Cours !...les mêmes ou leurs frères…vous

pouvez aller chez Mendès…Churchill, Nasser ou

Krouchtchez…les mêmes ou leurs frères ! Versailles,

Kremlin, Vel’d’Hiv, Salle des Ventes…chez Laval !

de Gaulle !...vous pensez !...éminence grises, voyous,

verreux, Académistes ou Tiers État, pluri-sexués,

rigoristes ou proxénétistes, bouffeurs de croûtons ou

d’hosties, vous les verrez toujours sibylles, toujours [17]

 

The style is always slightly mocking and the lists, Rabelaisian, all help with the flow of the language making it light and comical, and of course Céline, as it is also his custom to do, uses the momentum to build the scene up into a kind of a delirium which transports the reader also. This is the main hallmark of Céline, commentators have often remarked about it, the delirium that he manages to build up in his books, or indeed in the pamphlets. This is what carries the readers away, and of course such kind of artistry took Céline an inordinate amount of time to write, as he was always saying. It is simply staggering to think about how he actually found the time to write all of the novels that he did, ten in total, not to mention all of the other texts and letters, he really was one of the most prolific writers, and of course there is something Rabelaisian in this also, the almost gargantuan appetite that Céline had for not only writing but also living!

 

Je vous éloigne de Siegmaringen[18]…puzzle que ma

tête !... je vous parlais de la rue à Siegmaringen…des

schuppos…mais pas que des schuppos !...des militaires

de toutes les armes et de tout les grades…refoulés

de la gare…grands blessés de régiments dissous…

unités des divisions souabes, magyar, saxonnes, hachées

en Russie…les cadres on ne sait d’où !...officiers d’armées

de Balkans à la recherche de leurs généraux…plus

sachant…ce que vous avez vu ici même, pendant le

grand « rally-culotte » I’Escaut-Bayonne…les colonels

plus sachant!...Soubises sans lanternes…vous les voyez

devant les vitrines comme cherchant quelqu’un à l’in-

térieur…faisant semblant…  [19]

 

Of course, the fact that all of the action is taking place in a medieval castle which was around in Rabelais’s time, Rabelais like Céline had to go into hiding due to his heretical thinking and was offered protection by Jean du Bellay, a nobleman, and Rabelais is typically associated with La tour Rabelais in the Abbey of Saint-Maur in the suburbs of Paris among other domiciles.[20]

 

“Docteur, s’il vous plait!...voulez-vous venir au

Château, demain soir ?...diner ? avec Hoffmann ? sans

façon !...entre nous !...

-Certainement, Monsieur Abetz ! »[21]

 

 

The humour here is clearly evident, the way Céline mocks the elevated tones and decorum of the denizens of Sigmaringen, while war rages all about and the very foundations of their society are being blown, literally, into a hundred thousand pieces. Yet, the Ambassador and his entourage are behaving with all of the graces of petit bourgeois society, and of course this is what Céline, in his writing, was at war with all his life.

 

Là, à table, je regardais Abetz, il jouait avec sa ser-

viette…un homme replet, bien rasé…il remangerait

quand je serait parti !...oh, pas ce qu’on nous servait

là juste ! radis sans beurre, porridge sans lait !...il péro-

rait pour ce que je l’écoute et que je répète…pour ça

qu’il m’avait invité !...on nous sert un rond de saucis-

son, un rond chacun…alors mon Dieu, qu’on s’amuse !...[22]

 

Céline’s comic timing is simply exquisite, apparently he was very good company in real life and enjoyed making people laugh, a lot. We can well believe it, as his sense of humour is simply deliriously funny[23]. And, this is very much Céline fulfilling his role as chronicler, ‘chroniqueur fidèle’[24].

“ Que ferez-vous Monsieur Abetz quand l’Armée

Leclerc sera ici ? Á Siegmaringen ? ici-même !...

au Châteaux ? »

Ma question les trouble pas…ni Hoffmann ni lui,

Ils y avaient pensé…[25]

 

And now we are right at the heart of the matter, Nazi fanaticism. Now, it is routinely the stuff of comedians, one immediately thinks of John Cleese’s performance in the popular TV program Faulty Towers, for example, when some German tourists stay at the hotel and all of the ridiculous comedy ensues.[26] In D’un château l’autre, Céline’s comic genius is such that he stages a ‘human comedy’ in the grand style of Balzac before him and Dante before him, chronicling the nightmarish events of WW2, yet doing so with the most madcap sense of humour. I can only think of one other writer who did something similar and that is Joseph Heller in Catch 22, again a book based on Heller’s own experiences in the American army based in Italy during the war. But, once again, Céline goes one better as he is chronicling the war as seen from the point of view of an ordinary citizen, not from the perspective of the military.

“Mais nous avons en Forêt Noire des hommes abso-

lument dévoués ! Monsieur Céline !... notre maquis

brun !...[27]

 

The comedy which is at work here is the apparent blindness or sheer stupidity of the characters involved, blinded by their fate in Nazi ideology.

 

-       Oh certainment, Monsieur Abetz!”[28]

 

Céline speaks to the man as if he were talking to a child, and the reader is in on it. As pure spectator. Céline’s dramatic sense of genius is to put the reader right there in the castle with the German Ambassador to France and to give them a bird’s eye view into the madness that ensues.

 

-       Comprenez- moi mon cher Céline ! avec quelque

compagnons «  de choc », nous avons choisi notre

endroit !... oh j’ai connu d’autres épreuves ! »

Il se recueille…trois très énormes profonds soupirs !...

et il reprend…

« Un endroit, une vallée absolument inaccessible,

très étroit, un Cirque nous dirons, entre trois som-

mets…au fond du Tyrol !...et là ! là Céline !...

nous nous isolons !...vous me comprenez ?...nous nous

concentrons !...nous mettons au point notre bombe ! »[29]   

 

And just when you think the madness cannot get any worse, it does!

 

“Avec quoi votre bombe?

 

-       Oh cher Hoffmann!... pas un bombe d’acier

ni dynamite !... mille fois non !...une bombe de concentra-

tion ! de fois ! Hoffmann ![30]

 

The fact that Céline is a doctor and so is using, clearly, his best bedside manner as he talks to this lunatic merely adds to the sense of delirium, as his manner, one of reason, contrasts so strongly with the almost insane babblings of the Ambassador. But it does not stop here, it is only starting. The delirium continues…

 

C’est à ce moment-là, je ne sais pourquoi, qu’ils se

sont mis à ne plus s’entendre…Chateaubriand réfléchis-

sait…Abetz aussi…Hoffmann aussi…je disais rien…

Chateaubriand rompt le silence…il a une idée !...

« Vous ne trouvez pas mon cher Abetz que pour un

tel événement ? L’Opéra de Berlin ? l’Opéra de Paris ?

les deux orchestres ?

-       Certainement ! certainement mon cher !

-La Chevauchée des Walkyries ! le seul air ! oh,

le seul air ! oh, le seul air ! celui-là ! »[31]

 

 

 

In the previous three chapters, I have looked at various aspects of Céline’s style in the first novel in the German Trilogy D’un château l’autre and I have also looked at Yannick Gomez’s study on Céline and Beethoven and the extent to which music plays such a significant role in the author’s writing. So far, the popular song Lili Marlene made so famous by Marlene Dietrich and just now Wagner’s The Ride of the Valkyrie made so famous by Francis Ford Coppola in Apocalpse Now ( 1979). But, as we continue into the trilogy, we will see that this is but the start of the importance that music will play in Louis Ferdinand Céline’s writing, as in Nord, the central novel and the most voluminous, Céline uses the famous lieder Erlkönig by Franz Schubert to great dramatic effect, and then again in Rigodon, the final third instalment, a polonaise by Chopin is evoked in order to simulate the firestorm created by the bombing of Hanover which Céline actually witnessed in March, 1944.    

---

[1] Rabelais, Il a Raté son Coup, Louis Ferdinand Céline, Entretien

 http://archiveslfc.blogspot.com/2016/11/rabelais-il-rate-son-coup-quand-celine.html

 

[2] Louis Ferdinand Céline was actually incarcerated for almost two years in a Danish prison on the charge of collaborating with the Nazi regime, charges which he always fundamentally rejected and which he was eventually acquitted of in a French military court allowing him to return home to his native France after years of exile. Céline himself was convinced that the real reason for his imprisonment was all down to petty jealousy coming from left wing figures like Jean Paul Sartre, who had their own personal agendas and which there is some truth to his accusations and which rather reminiscent of the kinds of witch hunts that are going on today against many scientific members of the academic community who, like Céline, have gone against the driving ideologies that have infested our universities. Likewise, Rabelais was also persecuted all his adult life by religious groups, be it the Sorbonne, which was a theological college during his time, or the puritanical Calvinists who were gaining a stranglehold of mainly northern countries but also had power in France. The parallels with what is happening today are simply dumbfounding.

[3] Céline, Louis Ferdinand : Céline Romans ii, D’un Château l’autre, Nord, Rigodon, Édition Présentée, Établie, et Annotée par Henri Godard, Bibliothèque de la Pléiade, Éditions Gallimard, Paris, 2016, p.219.

[4] Music plays an incredibly important role in the writing of Céline, he often referred to his writing as his ‘petite musique’. My own recent reading of the novelist has been highly influenced by Yannick Gomez whose recent study D’un musicien l’autre, de Céline à Beethoven ( La Nouvelle Librairie, 2023) helped me to appreciate to what degree music plays a role in the writings of this formidable, misunderstood and highly controversial writer.  

[5] Céline,  Louis Ferdinand: D’un château l’autre, Collection Blanche, Éditions Gallimard, Paris, 1981, pp. 156,157.  

[6] Rabelais, Francois: Pantagruel, LES ŒVVRES de Maiftre Francois Rabelais, Tome deuxième, Alphonse Lemere, Éditeur, Paris, M. DCCC. LXX., p.45.

[7] A note here on so called ‘critical reading of texts’ in terms of the ‘Other’, I am referring now to the very mass of ‘so called’ critical readings of texts with respect to ‘minority groups’; in other words LGBT, BLM, Feminist Theory, Queer Readings, etc, etc…It is very simple, either you accept a literary tradition as you would a linguistic inheritance and all of the grammatical rulings that go with it, or,  you do not! Us Irish have been dealing with post-colonialism and all of the subsequent trauma, either identified or otherwise, since the day that we were delivered unto this cruel earth… Deal with it! 

[8] Homer: The Illiad, Translated by Robert Fagles, Introduction and Notes by Bernard Fox, Penguin Classics, London, 1990, 124.

[9] On a more personal note, I will be fifty- seven this year and I have been writing poetry since the mid-1980s. My first full-length collection was published in 2015, and since then I have had ten books published, again, mainly poetry. This current book on Céline is all part of it, it is research that I am doing into the novel as I am currently working on my second novel. It is part of my ongoing literary research that first started with Samuel Beckett and which led onto my translations of Baudelaire, both ongoing projects that I have been engaged on since I did my post-graduate studies over ten years ago. Personally, I couldn’t afford a doctorate so I have been working as an independent scholar now for over the last decade, presenting papers at conferences whenever I can get an opportunity, but it is all, all of this research, it is all done for but one purpose, and that is to strive to attain some level of excellence in the craft and art of writing, be it novels, poems, or indeed, literary essays! I think it is important to state all of this as a practitioner, as that is what I am. Although, I have an academic background or training, I am not an academic but rather a writer who uses academic research to further my own literary output and I think it is very important for me to state this here as there is, in my opinion, a real lack of academic rigour in the written arts these days, particularly poetry and this is mainly due to the thoroughly appalling ideology which has been promoted in the arts and in so called academic sectors and which promotes individuals in minority groups as opposed to pursuing artistic excellence. This of course has been a complete disaster for the arts, and in particular poetry.    

 

[10] Eliot, T.S.: The Sacred Wood, Essays on Poetry and Criticism, Faber and Faber, London, 1997, p.40.

[11] Beevor, Antony: Ardennes 1944, Hitler’s Last Gamble, Viking, Penguin Books, First publication, 2015, p.95.

[12] Kransberg Castle dates from the 12^th century, it was appropriated by the Nazis in 1939 and Albert Speer built the Adelhorst bunker and command headquarters where Hitler staged the meeting before the Battle of the Bulge.

[13] Céline, Louis Ferdinand : Céline Romans ii, D’un Château l’autre, Nord, Rigodon, Édition Présentée, Établie, et Annotée par Henri Godard, Bibliothèque de la Pléiade, Éditions Gallimard, Paris, 2016, p.224.

[14] « Je suis musicien de langue. » ( give reference !)

[15] References to music and Rabelaisian use of language abound in Finnegans Wake.

‘But, thunder and turf, its not alover yet. One recalls Byzantium. The mystery repeats itself todate as our callback mother Gaudyanna, that was daughter to a tanner, used to sing, as I think, now and then consinuously once her possetpot in her querhomolocous humminbass hesterdie and istherdie forivor.’

Joyce, James: Finnegans Wake, With an Introduction by Len Platt, Wordsworth Classics, London, pp. 294-295.

[16] Vitoux, Frédéric : La vie de Céline, Collection Folio, Gallimard, Paris, 2004, pp. 645-646.

[17] Céline, Louis Ferdinand : Céline Romans ii, D’un Château l’autre, Nord, Rigodon, Édition Présentée, Établie, et Annotée par Henri Godard, Bibliothèque de la Pléiade, Éditions Gallimard, Paris, 2016, p.225.

 

[18] Note the very Joycean play on words ‘Siegmaringen’ with the Nazi Sieg, as in “Sieg Heil!” as opposed to Sigmaringen, the actual name of the castle.

[19] Céline, Louis Ferdinand : Céline Romans ii, D’un Château l’autre, Nord, Rigodon, Édition Présentée, Établie, et Annotée par Henri Godard, Bibliothèque de la Pléiade, Éditions Gallimard, Paris, 2016, pp.225 – 226.

 

[20] Just thinking about the similarities between Céline and Rabelais, I jotted down the following: both doctors, persecuted, prodigious inventors of language, stylists, anarchic, both wrote under pseudonyms ( Rabelais published under the name of Alcofribas Nasier), both were extremely popular in their own lifetime, both used extremely vulgar language and slang, and both were anti-academic.   

[21] Ibid, p.226.

[22] Céline, Louis Ferdinand : Céline Romans ii, D’un Château l’autre, Nord, Rigodon, Édition Présentée, Établie, et Annotée par Henri Godard, Bibliothèque de la Pléiade, Éditions Gallimard, Paris, 2016, p, 226.

[23] Samuel Beckett, another great comic stylist of the 20^th century, in his novel Watt, which he wrote during WW2, in Languedoc. The parallels between both writers, Céline and Beckett, particularly when looking at their experiences during the war are simply fascinating; Celine the antisemite apparent ‘collabo’ and Beckett the Irish expat resistance member who flew Paris to the south of France in fear of arrest by the Gestapo…

What I wanted to show here was this fragment on laughter.

‘Where were we. The bitter, the hollow and – Haw! Haw! – the mirthless. The bitter laugh laughs at that which is not good, it is the ethical laugh. The hollow laugh laughs at that which is not true, it is the intellectual laugh. Not good! Not true! Well well. But the mirthless laugh is the dianoetic laugh, down the snout – Haw! – so. It is the laugh of laughs, the risus puris, the laugh laughing at the laugh, the beholding, the saluting of the highest joke, in a word the laugh that laughs – silence please – at that which is unhappy.

Beckett, Samuel: Watt, Grove Press, New York, No Date of Publication given.  

 

[24] Céline, Louis Ferdinand : Céline Romans ii, D’un Château l’autre, Nord, Rigodon, Édition Présentée, Établie, et Annotée par Henri Godard, Bibliothèque de la Pléiade, Éditions Gallimard, Paris, 2016, p, 307.

[25] Céline, Louis Ferdinand : Céline Romans ii, D’un Château l’autre, Nord, Rigodon, Édition Présentée, Établie, et Annotée par Henri Godard, Bibliothèque de la Pléiade, Éditions Gallimard, Paris, 2016, p, 227.

[26] « Don’t mention the war. » becomes the watchword for Cleese’s character.

[27] Ibid, p.227.

[28] Ibid, p.227.

[29] Céline, Louis Ferdinand : Céline Romans ii, D’un Château l’autre, Nord, Rigodon, Édition Présentée, Établie, et Annotée par Henri Godard, Bibliothèque de la Pléiade, Éditions Gallimard, Paris, 2016, p, 230.

[30] Ibid, p.231.

[31] Ibid, p. 231.