CÉLINE (Louis Destouches, dit Louis-Ferdinand). Unpublished manuscript chapter o…
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CÉLINE (Louis Destouches, dit Louis-Ferdinand).

Unpublished manuscript chapter of Journey to the End of the Night. 11 autograph pages in-4, numbered 1 to 10 (2 pages numbered 7), written in black ink on a sheet of Salmorenc stationery (one page on yellowed peeling paper without watermark), bradel black morocco, author's name and title stamped in gold on the first cover, smooth mute spine, brown suede lining and endpapers, half black morocco folder, slipcase (Renaud Vernier 1999) Very precious manuscript of an unpublished chapter of one of the major novels of the 20th century. This chapter would concern the only modification brought by Céline in the plot of his story between the first state of the manuscript and the final text, relating the reunion of Bardamu and Robinson, called in this version "Merluret". It contains 44 corrections, erasures and autograph modifications (one sentence crossed out in blue pencil). Published in 1932 by Denoël, Journey to the End of the Night was a real literary event. However, it is remarkable that we have only found, as a manuscript, a simple typed version of the first draft of the text, which is certainly abundantly corrected, but incomplete. It would thus be the only known traces of a manuscript on which many specialists have glossed over. Céline himself had ended up confusing the issue of his manuscript, claiming that it had originally been much larger than the novel, which would have been nearly a thousand printed pages. However, if we consult the highly corrected typescript of the first draft, we see that the additions far outnumber the deletions. However, this passage, not included in the final text, shows that Céline's work as a novelist was, as he often repeated, a work of ellipses and allusions, bringing the story to life through language, rather than through the traditional ways of narration. Thus this passage is very characteristic of Céline's writing. The action described in this chapter takes place after Bardamu's return from the New World, when the latter, having completed his medical studies, begins the arduous practice of his profession in La Garenne-Rancy. As a dispensary doctor, he earns a difficult living and gets involved in a fraudulent affair. He becomes involved with the local police station and responds to emergency calls at night, accompanied by a police officer. This chapter recounts one of these nighttime excursions: "It was also a good time for me to earn some money. Because of the emergency calls. The medical service was from the police station. One of the cops would come and get me. I would hear him coming up the stairs with a loud thump, the whole cement of the house would vibrate like a gong. And we would go off together to find the street and the number of the man with his lamp". One evening, he was called to a house in the rue des Grimpants and had to go to the bedside of a man in the middle of a crisis, coughing and spitting blood. He recognizes him immediately, and without any pleasure; it was a certain Merluret, companion of misfortune during the war: "It was well me then he said to me. You recognize me well... It's me Merluret" It gave me a strange blow, I don't know what to say in front of people. [...] After all I was not very happy to see him again. I had enough of adventures [...] what it is to know people, you also know their misery, it speaks to you, it attracts you, it doesn't let you go." The narrator then advises the patient to return to the hospital, which triggers a pathetic apostrophe from the latter: "You're going to get rid of me again, aren't you? And he looks at me. You're all like that... Nice to men when they have money, to women when you can fuck them... for the rest of the sentences, nothing but sentences, the best ones, it's like that... And then the fifth takes him". The text ends on the bitter taste of this reunion for Bardamu, as well as the desperate refrain: "I was not proud to have found Merluret, not at all with his funny way of walking his disease like a flag above his misery. [...] Enough traveling like that. Tired I was, yes, very tired of the trip and of the travelers at the bottom. The fear of life. The fatigue in the soul itself, the fear". One can easily recognize in Merluret's features, which do not correspond to any character in the novel, those of Robinson, the narrator's comrade-in-arms, and who comes back to haunt the latter throughout the story. Indeed, it seems that this unpublished passage corresponds in every way to the one mentioned by J. P. Dauphin in his critical study of the writing of Le Voyage au bout de la nuit (Étude d'une illusion romanesque, p. 101), a passage in which Bardamu found Robinson by chance in the person of a sick man to whom he had

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CÉLINE (Louis Destouches, dit Louis-Ferdinand).

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