Louis Ferdinand Céline Libri

Pubblicato nel 1932, questo libro largamente autobiografico - libro dello sradicamento, della rivolta, del sarcasmo, dell'irrisione violenta e acuminata - è ormai considerato un fondamentale "classico" della narrativa europea del Novecento. Il clamore e lo scandalo che lo accolsero, con l'aura di "maledettismo" presto sorta a circonfondere tanto il protagonista quanto l'autore, sono facilmente riconducibili alla disturbante carica di verità che attraversa per intero il Viaggio, e che mette impietosamente a nudo sia le miserie dell'individuo sia quelle ben più gravi e profonde della società in cui si muove. I vagabondaggi del medico Bardamu dagli scenari della prima guerra mondiale all'Africa coloniale, dall'America del fordismo alla Parigi dei poveri, disegnano un quadro complessivo in cui qualsiasi valore morale ha perso tenuta, e in cui drammaticamente più labile e vaga si è fatta la distinzione fra il bene e il male: al duro sfruttamento dell'uomo sull'uomo nelle colonie francesi corrisponde quello del capitalismo americano, alla povertà dilagante degli uni fa eco quella degli altri, in un universo in cui la legge della sopravvivenza impone scelte spesso disgustose, talora aberranti. Eppure da questo tragico materiale Céline sa estrarre di frequente situazioni di esilarante comicità, in una mescolanza di dolore e riso superbamente sorretta da una scrittura assolutamente originale: una scrittura plasmata sul parlato, scandita da un ritmo incalzante e sincopato, in cui i termini gergali, il turpiloquio, l'elementarità e la distorsione sintattica sanno di continuo aprirsi a sprazzi di "sublime" ogni volta del tutto stupefacenti. Un vero e proprio "miracolo" espressivo, marchio inconfondibile della grandissima letteratura.

Death on the Installment Plan is the story of young Ferdinand's first 18 years. His life is one of hatred, of the grinding struggle of small shopkeepers to survive, of childhood sensations and fantasies - lusty, scatological, violent, but also poetic. There is a running battle with his ineffectual insurance clerk of a father, with his mother, who lives and whines around the junkshop she runs for the boys benefit; there is also the superbly funny Meanwell College in England, where the boy went briefly, a Dickensian, nightmare institution. Always there is humiliation, failure, and boredom, at least until he teams up with the "scientist" des Pereires. This inventor, con-man, incorrigible optimist - whose last project is to grow enormous potatoes by electricity - rescues him, if only temporarily; for the reader he is one of the most lovable charlatans in French literature.

The original manuscript of Cannon-Fodder (Casse-pipe) was in part destroyed or stolen when Céline's Montmartre flat was ransacked at the time of Liberation in 1944. Céline, a presumed collaborator and in fear of his life had already fled. This surviving fragment, translated into English here for the first time, is the opening chapter of that work and tells us of the experiences of a raw recruit on the first evening of his enrolment.

With an undercurrent of sensual excitement, C line paints an almost unbearably vivid picture of society and the human condition.

"The tale of a man imprisoned and reviled by his own countrymen, the Fable follows its character's decline from virulent hatred to near madness as a result of his violent frustration with the hypocrisy and banality of his fellow human beings. In part because of the story's clear link to his own case - and because of the legal and political difficulties this presented - Celine was compelled to push his famously elliptical, brilliantly vitriolic language to new and extraordinary extremes in Fable for Another Time. The resulting linguistic and stylistic innovation make this work stand out as one of the most original and revealing literary undertakings of its time."--BOOK JACKET.

In Guignol's Band, first published in France in 1943, Céline explores the horror of a disordered world. The hero, the semi-autobiographical Ferdinand, moves through the nightmare of London's underworld during the years of World War I. In this distressing setting, he meets pimps and prostitutes, pawnbrokers and magicians, policemen and arsonists. He sees social and physiological decomposition as these processes unfold along parallel lines of development. The illusions of existence are nakedly exposed. The narrative erupts in Céline's characteristic elliptical style. His splintered sentences and scatology reflect his fury at the fragmentation of experience and at his own impotence in the face of it. Out of his rage, he forces the meaninglessness back on itself, and the exuberance of his struggle triumphs in the comic exaggeration of satire. Ultimately, his subject is not death but life, and he responds to it by a strengthened commitment to the sensual and concrete. His hallucinatory world is so vividly realized that it does, indeed, challenge the reality of the reader's more conventional world.

Translated now for the first time into English, War is a powerfully vivid, unflinching, darkly comical exploration of the physical and mental trauma of the Western Front, which provides a fascinating missing link in the writing career of one of the greatest - and most controversial - authors of the twentieth century.

Written in Celine's trademark style - a headlong rush of slang, brusque observation and quirky lyricism, delivered in machine-gun bursts of prose and ellipses - London Bridge recreates the dark days during the Great War with sordid verisimilitude and desperate hilarity.

Previously announced on Sun & Moon Press, this is the important volume of dances written by Louis-Ferdinand Céline.