CELINE LOUIS-FERDINAND (1894-1961) - Lot 81

Lot n° 81
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20000 - 25000 EUR
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Result : 13 000EUR
CELINE LOUIS-FERDINAND (1894-1961) - Lot 81
CELINE LOUIS-FERDINAND (1894-1961) 34 L.A.S., 1940-1948, to Dr. Alexandre GENTIL, at the Maison de santé Sainte-Marie in Nogent-sur-Marne; 88 pages in various formats, mostly in-4 or in-fol., one postcard, numerous envelopes (cracks in some letters). Important set of letters to his Danish friend and lawyer, while Céline is imprisoned in Copenhagen; some of the letters are addressed to his wife Lucette. We refer (LP) to the edition of Lettres de prison (Gallimard, 1998). 20 Ved Stranden. Sunday [May 1945] [LP1]. Very first letter to Mikkelsen. Céline (who is staying with his friend Karen Jensen) thanks Mikkelsen for his kindness and his charitable friendship: "It is difficult, I think, to find in history a writer whose case was more 'pitiful' than mine... And yet, how many French writers have had to flee their homeland at one time or another!... Almost all of them were exiled... from Villon to Verlaine, Daudet, passing by Zola, Chateaubriand, Lamartine, Chénier, unfortunately guillotined"... Crippled, he suffers more than them of this exile, because the times are more cruel. He begs him to intercede in his favor: "I do not want to plead my innocence cowardly for the needs of my cause, it is not my way nor my intention however I beg you dear master to make the authorities consider that I always remained very strictly a writer". He is only responsible for his book Les Beaux Draps, and has "never done any propaganda for the Germans". He recalls that all his books were banned in Germany under the Nazi regime, and that he never collaborated with any newspaper, never spoke in public or on the radio, despite the many proposals made to him: "this may seem singular, but it is a fact". He has always earned his living from his books and from medicine, which he certainly practiced a little in Germany "and under what conditions! I only accept responsibility for Les Beaux Draps. It is enough to make me hang in France"... He calls for help so that his situation is fixed; the merchants refuse to sell to them, because they do not have a visa: "It would be a way obviously to perish slowly of hunger"... He "dares to suggest" a diplomatic precedent: "they treat me as they treated the Jews who sought asylum in mortal peril... I am largely as threatened as they are, in my own country and alas also in other countries... The curse against "us" is furious and global... totalitarian! "... The other letters are written from prison, in 1946. March 25 [LP30]. On his conditions of captivity and the decay of his health. The dreaded "Fængselinspecktor", who seems to be rather well-disposed towards him, has come to visit his cell, has found that he receives too many newspapers, Danish, French or English, and wants to suppress the Politiken for him: "Too bad! I won't learn Danish anymore! But above all, he wanted to order the French newspapers himself from the prison supplier, and Céline feared that he would no longer receive them, since French newspapers arrived very irregularly in Denmark; his wife worked miracles to get them for him. This press was very useful for keeping up to date. Without offending the inspector, could we not, in view of his case "so complex, and so harmless too", keep this special permission for him? His health, in spite of appearances, did not improve: "I have been so used to suffering from headaches and buzzing and atrocious attacks day and night and insomnia and various torments for thirty three years that I have composed for myself a rather jovial appearance for the presentation to the world, but a doctor is not mistaken. [...] I can only hold on by willpower and oblivion in my work, this kind of delirium which also overcomes me on the other hand". He is incurable, rebellious to any treatment, and suffers from an irremediable constipation: unable to go to the stool naturally, without enemas, pills, kerosene; and during crises he is forced to go to the toilet twenty times in one day, in the small pot of his cell: "If I were not alone in my cell, I would not know how to hold. [Without the help of an enema, I would die of intestinal obstruction - or appendicitis. Here are, I believe, infirmities low enough, alas Rabelaisian and trivial enough to be admitted without boasting. I got this enteritis from a dysentery contracted in Africa in the service of the French Army in 1917. I am an absolute invalid of the intestine. Wednesday, August 15 [LP110]. He is in his new cell 609, section K, "alone and very well", and he will get back to work. He continues to worry about Lucette, who has suffered so much and who is of a worried and sensitive nature. Plea for Bébert the cat: "We left all three of us, my wife, me and the cat for this terrible odyssey. Then we will save ourselves or perish together. I will not survive.
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