Louis-Ferdinand Celine / Signed Autograph Letter / Unpublished / Despair / Enchantment

  

Signed autograph letter "LFCéline" to his friends Descaves Copenhagen, July 7 [1947], (c/o Mikkelsen), 2 pages in-folio Creases. "France does not deserve its writers.

" A poignant letter from Céline despairing over his eighteen months in prison and mentioning his work on Guignol's Band II and Féerie pour une autre fois. "Dear friends, It has been a long time since we have heard from each other.

On our side, a slight legal improvement thanks to Mikkelsen's visit to Paris to see Naud and other friends. La Butte has given its all!

Has given its all in my favor. I am no longer the total damned, the absolute rot.

People are starting to realize that I was unjustly martyred while so many others. Get away gloriously and fruitfully. Fortunately, Lucette has regained her shape and health. I am not doing well. I have had pellagra again and a terrible rheumatism crisis despite the heat.

The cell, the winters in the cell have worn me out. I did not endure the confinement.

I have weaknesses, I lose consciousness for no reason. I am promised a less troublesome, much improved regime. Unfortunately, there is no question of returning to France, and I suffer greatly from exile. Furthermore, all my poor means of existence have been taken away from me, medicine, books.

While Montherlant, Chadourne, Claudel, Romains. I fear that Humanity will only return to France with the atomic bomb. Then what reconciliations, what whining!

Is the master preparing something else for us? Despite everything, I have resumed work, but Guignol's Band II was burned!

I am working on Féerie pour une autre fois, the first chapter, the bombing of Montmartre. I will publish it in Switzerland and America. Let them gorge themselves on Aragon, Cassou, and Triolet, and translations of Miller under Céline!

Since that is their taste! France does not deserve its writers. Its soul never wanders between Félix Potin and La Samaritaine. All my best regards to Max and Pierre! And to little Mozart Descaves.

Céline published virulent pamphlets as early as 1937 (the year Bagatelles pour un Massacre was published). He was close to collaborationist circles and the Nazi security service during the occupation.

After the Allied landing on June 6, 1944, and fearing for his life, Céline left France with his wife a few days later to go to Baden-Baden. This was followed by wanderings in Germany before he joined the Vichy Regime's exile government in Sigmaringen in October 1944 (an episode that inspired his novel D'un château l'autre, published in 1957). He was arrested in December of the same year, following the liberation, and spent a year and a half in prison. Unpublished letter in the Pléiade correspondence.