Volume 12, Number 11 · June 5, 1969
Paranoid Poetics
By John Weightman
Castle to Castle
by Louis-Ferdinand Céline, translated by Ralph Mannheim
Delacorte, 384 pp., $7.50
There can be no doubt about the historical importance of Louis-Ferdinand Céline in the literature of anarchistic revolt. He was the first great foul-mouthed rhapsodist of the twentieth century to proclaim a satanic vision of the godless world, rolling helplessly through space and infested with crawling millions of suffering, diseased, sex-obsessed, maniacal human beings. Voyage au bout de la nuit, which appeared in 1932, was not simply a continuation of the pessimistic literature of the nineteenth-century 'realists.' It was Zola-esque in its blackness, but it had a frenzy, a speed, and a virulence which made the average Zola novel suddenly seem almost as old-fashioned as a horse-drawn bus. Zola had toyed with the idea of using the working-class vernacular as a medium for the expression of social reality, as had Jean Richepin and a number of minor satirical poets, but no one before Céline had exploited the figurative obscenities and racy syntax of the spoken language in such a thoroughgoing and masterly fashion. It was as if the underdog had suddenly found a voice.
Review, 2617 words
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