Released in October 2009, the volume of the Pleiades dedicated to Céline letters does not claim to be exhaustive but a general correspondence is a choice, which may not always be the most hateful face. Addressed to nearly three hundred different correspondents, 1907 (Louis-Ferdinand who is thirteen years a language course in Germany) on the eve of his death (June 1961 Meudon), with four months of complete silence between the end of January 1945 ( Sigmaringen) and the end of May of the same year (Copenhagen), these letters that run on nearly 1,600 pages of bible paper are accompanied by 400 pages of notes. Without this extensive critical apparatus, absolutely indispensable for contextualizing and decrypt, numerous letters remain largely incomprehensible for many reasons: slang fell into disuse, verbal inventions unbridled idiosyncrasies, obscure allusions, coded language While many of the reproduced letters do not have a major interest, we regret the absence of some letters published elsewhere, such as that of 8 November 1950 when Celine Paraz told his friend, who just the preface, his admiration for The Lie dUlysse the revisionist Paul Rassinier. When he wrote to Robert Brassillach or Alphonse de Chateaubriand, during the occupation, the author of Bagatelles pour un massacre gives free rein to its racist delirium, and issue invitations to murder. Very moderately reformed after the war (he especially blamed for SETRE stupidly mixed up with what does not concern him, regretting that it has cost him dear), and never a word of compassion for the millions of victims of Nazism, it will persist Completion end in a more or less discreet anti-Semitism, the Yid words or youtron easily from his pen. Dune senseless insolence (letter to Georges Bidault, President of the Council, for example) of a mad cap (letters to Gaston Gallimard), dune unprecedented aggression (in 1950 sadressant Mauriac he bluntly described the rabble future Nobel Prize and damned fool !), Celine is not afraid to justify his attitude collaborationist denfoncer his colleagues Giono, Montherlant and Morand. Having read some his contemporaries (ignoring Joyce and Woolf, he despises Miller and Sartre, as yet there jealous) but lover of gossip, it seems the rumors credence dhomosexualité about Mauriac, "Tartuffe lenculé: Squeegee roundabout" as he writes about léditorialiste Figaro in a letter in December 1958 to roger nimier (the young author blue Horseman, became its publisher Gallimard, had managed to find favor in his eyes). One of the merits of that choice of letters is to make us discover, behind the figure of hate pamphleteer and outcast, someone who had seen the world (Africas, the United States, Russia), attended important personalities (Elie Faure, Abel Gance, Mary Bell, Jean Dubuffet, for example), loved women, especially the dancers (a great passion for lAméricaine Elizabeth Craig, Travel dedicatee of the end of the night, and of course a deep attachment to Lucette Almanzor, which followed him in exile and shared his life until the end). Possibly with a preference pourles anal sex. So he recommends that a Jewish friend: "Learn to love" from behind. " This helps enormously to satisfy men without any risk. In front of this is a wound. " At the time of separation from Lucienne Delforge, in August 1935, he told the pianist: "I'm not normal. "And further:" The reality of life mécrase. " Throughout the pages abound the darkest formulas: "A vocation of unhappiness. " "I do not like the sun. " "I am delighted that the grotesque in the confines of death. " With this profession of faith (to Elie Faure, 1934): "I am an anarchist, to the hair." The letters dadolescence, where the young Destouches not really born in the dèche as he wanted to believe, but rather a spoiled child and a dutiful son, not a rebel is already proving "a disillusioned early," and his letters "hairy" or dAfrique particularly retain attention.
