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. »
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. 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…’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.
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..
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.
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.
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.
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.
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;
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.
The vision that
Beevor presents is nothing less than Gothic, 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 !
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.
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.
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. 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
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…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…
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.
“Docteur, s’il vous plait!...voulez-vous venir au
Château, demain soir ?...diner ? avec Hoffmann ? sans
façon !...entre nous !...
-Certainement, Monsieur Abetz ! »
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 !...
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. And,
this is very much Céline fulfilling his role as chronicler, ‘chroniqueur fidèle’.
“ 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…
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.
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 !...
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!”
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 ! »
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 !
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 ! »
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.
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.
