Literature: the incredible story of Céline's unpublished writings found
These items relating to Celine had been exhibited in Paris on the occasion of the fiftieth anniversary of the author's death, in 2011. AFP - LIONEL BONAVENTURE
Text by: RFI Follow
3 min
A rare event in the literary world: thousands of Louis-Ferdinand Céline leaves, stolen in 1944, have reappeared.
A story worthy of a thriller which fills a number of gaps in the work of the author of
Voyage au bout de la nuit
.
The case made the front page of the daily
Le Monde
.
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Céline, who
died in 1961
, has never stopped repeating it: when he had just fled to Nazi Germany with the ultras of the Collaboration, looters stole from his Parisian apartment, in Montmartre, from voluminous manuscripts, mostly unpublished. The sheets sought in vain until then reappear today. It is the newspaper
Le Monde
which
revealed the epilogue
.
The story is incredible. The manuscripts, in the possession of
Jean-Pierre Thibaudat
, drama critic and former
Liberation
journalist
, were entrusted to him 15 years ago by a mysterious donor with one condition: not to make them public before the death of Céline's widow. , because he did not want to enrich it. Lucette Destouches died at the age of 107 at the end of 2019.
So here are the manuscripts unveiled. Thousands of pages, including 600 unpublished pages from the novel
Casse-pipe
, the missing element between
Death on Credit
and
Voyage to the End of the Night
. But also another novel of 1000 pages, entitled
London
. There is also the manuscript of
Death on Credit
that
Celine's
beneficiaries
must give to the National Library of France (BNF). Unpublished works must be published by Gallimard.
Letters, manuscripts, but also unpublished photos… “
Céline's recovered archives constitute an extraordinary discovery.
According to the very few experts who have been able to consult them, these documents should profoundly modify the knowledge of the work of the writer
",
writes
the" daily evening ".
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