Journey to the End of Night: A Dark Descent into Humanity
Journey to the End of the Night
A Child’s Walk
After lunch, a child, after being told to take a walk, reluctantly obeyed. He started to dress, his only consolation being his brand new yellow shoes. His aunt kissed him goodbye, giving him money to buy something. He set off from the courtyard. It had rained that morning, and the child tried to keep his new shoes dry, though he was drawn to the puddles. Accustomed to walking with his hands in his pockets, whistling or chewing gum, he now found himself unable to do so. He boarded a crowded train and tried to find a double seat by the window, but none were available. The conductor gestured for him to pay, and he carefully made his way to present his ticket. He avoided sitting next to anyone, but when a lady stumbled, he gave up his seat, even pushing another woman aside to let the lady sit. Getting off the train, he felt dizzy from the ordeal of navigating the crowd. He sat on a bench, suddenly struck by the idea of leaving his current situation and seeking amusement. He fed some pigeons, then felt remorse for leaving his responsibilities. His stomach ached as he returned to the now empty train, wondering why he hadn’t just left.
A Descent into Darkness
Journey to the End of the Night: provocative, insulting, nauseating, cruel, immoral, misanthropic. All these adjectives aptly describe this novel, crucial to understanding much of 20th-century literature, particularly French. Céline, arguably the father of modern pessimism, influencing writers like Michel Houellebecq and Frédéric Beigbeder, never surpassed this, his first novel.
The narrator, Ferdinand Bardamu, is an anti-hero who defies reader identification. Céline’s signature style, direct and transgressive, penetrates the mind like a knife. Bardamu enlists in the army on a whim (his memorable speech on nationalism: “A bunch of crooks! It’s war! We’ll deal with them, the bastards of nation No. 2, and we’re going to burst their skulls! Come on! Come on! All aboard! Everything you need is here! All together now! But I want to hear you shout: ‘Long live nation No. 1!’ “) only to suffer the stupidity of officers and the cowardice of soldiers. Wounded, he returns to Paris, where he competes with others to tell absurdly heroic war stories and gain female attention.
Bardamu’s Travels
Later, Bardamu travels to the French colonies in Africa, a hell of heat, filth, and disgusting food. Fate then leads him to the United States to pursue his own American dream, experiencing the noise and monotony of industrial labor. Returning to France, he works as a doctor, exposing the pettiness of the disadvantaged. Céline’s storytelling is unflinching. Among his exploits is a scheme with Léon Robinson, involving an elderly woman and her children’s rented house.
The world is a nasty place, Céline seems to say. While his message resonates, a 21st-century reader might find Houellebecq’s The Elementary Particles an easier read. However, any assessment of Céline’s literary quality must acknowledge his anti-Semitism.
A Protagonist for Our Time
Bardamu, wounded in World War I, in love with a prostitute, surviving in the African colonies, pursuing his American dream, is a hero for our time. His story reaches the depths of the human heart.
Céline’s Impact
Journey to the End of the Night secured Céline’s place in French literature. His bitter prose, fast-paced narrative, gritty lyricism, and the haughty gaze with which he views existence are essential for understanding key European and Latin American literature.
Death on Credit
Published in 1936, Death on Credit, partly autobiographical, tells of a young man’s harsh upbringing in pre-World War I Paris, his time in London, and his parents’ attempts to control him. It explores the feelings of a character reflecting a mad and miserable world.
Following the success of Journey to the End of the Night (1932), which revolutionized the novel’s structure and purpose, influencing writers like Jean-Paul Sartre, Henry Miller, and Bukowski, Céline continued his dazzling style in Death on Credit (1936). This fascinating and breathtaking work dives, with acidic humor, into the depths of human experience. The pseudo-autobiographical approach continues with an evocative portrayal of the protagonist’s formative years in a stifling home environment within a world of misery and ugliness.