Lot n° 25
Estimation :
150000 - 200000
EUR
CÉLINE Louis-Ferdinand (1894-1961).
228 L.A.S. "LF Céline" or "Destouches" (3 unsigned), 1949-1961, to Roger NIMIER; about 350 pages in various sizes, mostly in-4 or in-fol.
Important and remarkable correspondence, testimony of the exceptional literary complicity between Céline and the young Hussar, who will be his editor at Gallimard.
[As a young author, Roger NIMIER (1925-1962) sent Céline his novel Les Épées with this dedication: "To Marshal Destouches, who is paying today for thirty years of genius and freedom, respectfully, 2nd class cavalryman Roger Nimier, February 1949". In February 1950, he sent him again Le Hussard bleu and, in March of the same year, devoted an article to him in La Table ronde. Taken to Céline's home in Meudon by Marcel Aymé, he became a familiar face to Céline and his wife Lucette. Roger Nimier became a literary adviser to Gallimard in December 1956, and in 1957 he successfully launched D'un château l'autre, and from then on served as a link between the novelist and Gaston Gallimard until Céline's death. Nimier played a crucial role in the rediscovery of Céline by the general public.
This correspondence from Céline to Roger Nimier was published in Lettres à la N.R.F., by Pascal Fouché (Gallimard, 1991), with the exception of the first 25 letters (before Nimier joined Gallimard, when he was collaborating with the magazines Arts, Carrefour and
Femina), which have not been published.
Three letters are illustrated with small sketches by Céline; six were written by Céline on the back of letters signed by Roger Nimier.
The first letter is dated February 14, 1949, from Korsør, Denmark, in response to an offer of help from Nimier: "But how can I act without harming myself? It is difficult. Impossible. Everything is a tragic comedy in this world and I have the role of a stinking goat - a horribly harmful beast. It's a problem of vengeance and collective hysteria. It is necessary that Hysteria, eternal, designates other stinking beasts, more interesting, exciting. [...] The role is not pleasant of course, I got stuck in it, I regret it very much. [...] I would rather laugh. I am naturally cheerful, I like ballets, dancers. All this Grandguignolerie, Petioterie seems to me an invention of the Devil. But the Devil doesn't let me go"... February 24: "I don't know if it's my 'freedom' or my 'genius' that got me into the state I'm in, but I think it must be my stupidity! Less stupid I would never have fallen so low! I see many other geniuses who are doing wonderfully well! Malraux, Giono! Gide! Duhamel, hundreds of them! And rotten with honor! You are yourself "genius" I see it, damn! [...] This jovial good-natured cynicism is the genius of the day!"... January 13, 1950: "Oh Sartre, I would give him a pension if he hadn't become so rich and I so poor just for his sentence in Les Temps nouveaux! Think that I don't blame him! This beautiful frankness of hatred, but it is very rare medically speaking! this "open" form... But it is to be shown to the "students"! [...] I continue reading your book... it is a labor, it is terrible work, and it is successful. Unfortunately, I don't have your Proustian subtlety. I don't follow you in the analysis anymore. In medicine I'm an expert, not in literature. But only the song enchants me. I am populous. I don't want to look intelligent and I'm not [...] If it sings, it's fine, and shit!"... October 15: "Ah but you make me very happy by sending me your hussar [The Blue Hussar]. I laugh from the first page and by the twentieth I can't stop! Here is a novel as I like, the direct and learned one nevertheless oh subtle clever cunning... sensitive [...] I would say: you have genius if there were not so many others, who say and that it is false and that we believe them! [...] Don't believe that Casse Pipe was only this prelude, there were 600 pages ! My Purifiers have thrown everything into the streams - full of the Butte... the middle, the end, the most beautiful, the sublime! A cock! the impression which remains me, the Abelard! Castrated of the work!"... November 1: "Ah admirable your hussar! A harassing reading of comicality, of finesse and damn of genius since I seize your rhythm, exciting. As a doctor I observe essential differences between this time, and my old time (1912!) [...] mine in the 12th Cuirassiers - absolutely Breton - ah not Proustian at all - not even its elementary sensuality - 5 years I made peace and war! I know what I am talking about! They did not have a hard-on, so to speak, and what hicks! especially recruited at that time for the Parisian strikes, which were hot! A small erection towards the canteen girl... vague, hardly, sad people, mystics.
I saw them rush into death - without blinking, all 800 of them, as one man
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