Louis Ferdinand Celine Biography and List of Works

French writer and physician, who became famous with his first novel VOYAGE AU BOUT DE LA NUIT (1932, Journey to the End of the Night). Céline was wounded severely in World War I and respected as a national hero.

"In this world we spent our time killing or adoring, or both together. 'I hate you! I adore you!' We keep going, we fuel and refuel, we pass on our life to a biped of the next century, with frenzy, or any cost, as if it were the greatest of pleasures to perpetuate ourselves, as if, when all's said and done, it would make us immortal. One way or another, kissing is as indispensable as scratching."
(from Journey to the End of Night)

Louis-Ferdinand Céline was born in Courbevoie in the Seine Department. His father was employed by an insurance company and mother dealt in quality lace. Céline grew in Paris, where his mother set up a shop in the Passage Choiseul. Céline's parents planned him a career in business and sent him abroad to learn languages. He studied at a school at Diepholz in Lower Saxony , then at an English boarding school and worked in various commercial companies.

In 1912, at the age of 18, he enlisted in a cavalry unit, the Twelfth Regiment of the Cuirassiers. He was seriously wounded during World War I in Ypres, which left him with a permanently damaged arm, a buzzing and ringing in his head and headaches that lasted all his life. He was awarded the Médaille militaire and a seventy-five percent disability pension.

Céline was then assigned to the French passport office in London. In 1916 he worked for a lumber company in the Cameroons and was sent back to France with malaria and dysentery. In 1915 he married Suzanne Nebout, a Frencwoman working as a barmaid in London, but this marriage was not registered with the French consulate. In 1919 he married Edith Follet, whose father was a director of a medical school. Céline studied medicine in Rennes and received his degree from the University of Paris in 1924. In the following year he left his practice, his wife, and his child to work for the League of Nations. His second marriage ended in 1926.

Employed by the League of Nations Céline traveled in Switzerland, the Cameroons, the United States, Cuba, and Canada. In Detroit he studied working conditions in the Ford factory. In 1928 he opened a private practice in a suburb of Paris and in 1931 he began to work for a municipal clinic at Clichy, in Paris.

"Those who talk about the future are scoundrels. It is the present that matters. To evoke one's posterity is to make a speech to maggots."
(from Journey to the End of the Night, 1932)

As a novelist Céline made his debut with Journey to the End of the Night, which appeared in 1932. It was praised both the right-wing extremist Léon Daudet and Leon Trotsky, an exiled Communist. The modern antihero of the story, Ferdinand Bartamu, had much in common with Céline and covered author's life from1913 to 1932, although the events are rearranged and re-created to fit in the epic tale. Céline's second novel, Death on the Installment Plan (1936) also gained critical success. His journey to the Soviet Union produced the pamphlet, MEA CULPA, where Céline declared his disenchantment with the Communist system. He started to work on a third novel but interrupted it because he thought it was more urgent to try to prevent his country from entering a new war that he thought would be disastrous.

Céline produced anti-Semitic, pacifist pamphlets, two of which were condemned by the courts. In BAGATELLES POUR UN MASSACRE Céline argued, that there is an international Jewish conspiracy to start a world war. Although Céline´s political ideals had much in common with the Nazis, he claimed that Hitler was a Jew. Céline's writings also expressed the fears of an anti-Semitic petit bourgeois who bitterly resented Léon Blum's Popular Front government (1936-38).

"If you aren't rich, you should always look useful."

At the outbreak of World War II Céline served as a volunteer doctor on a French naval vessel, which was sunk by a Nazi submarine. After the fall of France in 1940, he rejected both resistance and collaboration and worked in municipal clinics in Satrouville and in a dispensary at Bezons. Céline was denounced on the BBC as a traitor and to avoid execution during the Allied liberation of France, he fled to Berlin with his third wife, the dancer Lucette Almanzor. In Germany he was arrested for a short time.

In Sigmaringen Céline treated refugees of the Vichy regime and settled in Denmark, where he had deposited his savings. He was imprisoned over a years because of accusations of the Resistance, and released then on the grounds of ill health.

During his stay in Denmark Céline was convicted in absentia by a civil court, but in 1951 he was cleared and permitted to return to France. Gallimard, France's leading publishing house, printed in the 1950s such Céline's works as FÉERIE POUR UNE AUTRE FOIS I-II (1952-54) and D'UN CHÂTEAU A L'AUTRE (1957). They were badly received. Soon after finishing the novel RIGADON, Céline had a stroke. He died on July 1. 1961.

Céline's reputation as a writer has been shadowed by his anti-Semitism and anti-Communism, although his importance as an innovative author has been recognized. Céline used in his works slang, which owed much to the Parisian poet Jehan Rictus (Gabriel Randon, 1967-1938). The author's attacks against war, colonialism, and the nightmarish conditions of urban life influenced such writers as Henry Miller, Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., and William Burroughs. All of Céline's books are more or less based on his own life. In the post-war works the narrator is a Louis-Ferdinand Céline / Dr. Louis Destouches, exept in Conversations with Professor Y, which is a series of imaginary interviews.

For further reading: The Crippled Giant by M. Hindus (1950); Louis-Ferninand Céline by D. Hayman (1965); Céline and His Vision by E. Ostrovski (1967); Voyeur, Voyant by E. Ostrovski (1971); Céline: The Novel as Delirium by A. Thiher (1972); Céline: Man of Hate by B. Kanpp (1974); Céline by P. McCarthy (1975); The Inner Dream by J.H. Matthews (1978); Understading Céline, ed, by W. Burns, J. Flynn and C.K. Mertz (1984); Critical Essays on Louis-Ferdinand Céline, ed. by W.K. Buckley (1988); Enfin Céline vint: A Contextualist Reading of Journey to the End of the Night and Death on the Installment Plan by W. Burns (1989); Céline: A Biography by F. Vitoux (1992) - SEE ALSO: Other writers with Nazi symptahies: Knut Hamsun.

LA VIE ET L'OEUVRE DE PHILIPPE-IGNACE SEMMELWEIS, (1924)