Paris (AFP)

What will become of Louis-Ferdinand Celine's house in Meudon, near Paris, after the death of his widow and his purchase by an individual?

Some, like former Minister of Culture Jack Lang, advocate for its preservation, others like the host Stéphane Bern fear to make a "place of pilgrimage".

"Celine's house must be listed in the heritage inventory," said Jack Lang, who had started unsuccessful steps in this direction in 1992.

For Stéphane Bern, in charge of the heritage mission by President Emmanuel Macron, "Celine's work deserves to be read". "But his life is more controversial and it should be avoided as a place of pilgrimage for those who want to recover the author for polemical purposes."

Author of violent antisemitic pamphlets, close to the Vichy regime that collaborated with Nazi Germany and doctor by training, Louis-Ferdinand Destouches, aka Celine, is considered one of the greatest writers of the twentieth century.

Faced with an outcry after the announcement of a reissue of his pamphlets, the publisher Gallimard had preferred to suspend this project last year.

Louis, who died in 1961, and his wife Lucette, who died at the age of 107, settled in "Villa Maïtou" in Meudon in 1951.

Rejected by the literary milieu, the author finds in this Louis-Philippe style pavilion the haven necessary to write three masterpieces: "From one castle to another" (1957), "North" (1960) ) and "Rigodon" (1969, posthumous).

This trilogy allows him to find the audience of "Journey at the end of the night" and "Death on credit". It is there that he receives Marcel Aymé, Roger Nimier, Michel Simon or Arletty.

"Jack Lang wanted to classify it, the prefect refused", summarizes Me François Gibault, lawyer of the family of Céline and president of the Society of céline studies.

The state left last year the widow of Celine sell life to house - restored after burning in 1968. "The Ministry of Culture told me he did not want to buy it," said Me Gibault . "The new owner will do what he wants."

- "Keep track" -

In the Department of Heritage of the Ministry, it is recognized that "there is as yet no protection for historical monuments envisaged".

"Celine has lived there for ten years," says Jean-Michel Loyer-Hascoet, deputy director.

The house "is located at the same time in the vicinity of historical monument and in registered site under the code of the environment, for this reason all works are already subject to the opinion of the ABF" (architect of the buildings of France), he reassures.

"Nobody told us that there was an emergency," says Anne-Laure Sol, curator of heritage in the Ile-de-France Region.

"It was sold in life, there is nothing more to say," slice it in the office of the Mayor of Meudon.

This apparent lack of interest in Celine's home contrasts with the craze across France for writers' houses, controversial or not.

Stéphane Bern has obtained that Pierre Loti's house in Rochefort, author of anti-Armenian and anti-Semitic texts, benefits from a restoration financed by the Loto du Patrimoine.

Saint-Paul-de-Vence has just bought the "Villa Alexandrine" in which the Polish writer Witold Gombrowicz lived from 1964 to 1969, setting up a "Musical Space Gombrowicz".

Cabourg will inaugurate in 2020 a "Villa of time found" in a house with no direct link with Marcel Proust ...

For David Alliot, of the Society of Celsian Studies, "the house deserves to be protected" (...) Why not make it a writer's residence? "

Without protection, the house could be sentenced, although Mr. Gibault believes that his current owner "will take care of it".

"You can not do anything alone," says Sophie Vannieuwenhuyze, General Delegate of the National Federation of Houses of Literary Heritage and Heritages. "If there is a project, we will do our best to help (...) it would be nice to keep track".

© 2019 AFP