Céline, le cinématographe de la catastrophe

Abstract

In Féerie pour une autre fois II (also titled Normance), Céline recounts the chaos engendered by the Allied bombing of Paris in April 1944, which killed 1,800 people in seven days. The novel, published in 1954, was a commercial flop. Among the reasons could be a narration that almost completely disappeared, or a traditional chronology that literally imploded. The writing seems subject to delirium and presents a body in direct contact with the surrounding destructions. This article underlines the difficulty for the storyteller to render such a catastrophe. Since Céline notes that the newly-born cinema and its technique overthrew the novel, this work argues that for Céline, the novelistic writing has no choice but to evolve and beat cinema on its own ground. Céline presents himself first as the impressionist of writing. Then, adding the soundtrack to the light and movement, he finally becomes the true cinematographer of literature.

Keywords:

• Céline
• cinematographer
• novel
• disaster
• Impressionism
• Wagner

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Alexis Chauchois

Alexis Chauchois is a Ph.D. student in French Literature and Francophone literature at Florida State University. His research interests extend to novels from the nineteenth to the twenty-first century, and particularly writers like Louis-Ferdinand Céline, Michel Houellebecq, Makenzy Orcel, and Jean-Claude Charles.

Gilles Glacet

Gilles Glacet received his Ph.D. from Emory University with a specialization in twentieth-century French literature. His areas of interest include nineteenth- and twentieth-century French literature, contemporary French literature and culture, as well as Francophone literature.