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Louis-Ferdinand CELINE

Voyage au bout de la nuit

Denoël & Steele, Paris 1932, 12x19cm, broché.

Voyage au bout de la nuit [Journey to the End of the Night]
 

First edition, one of 200 service de presse (advance) copies, the very first print and the shortest after the 23 Arches, including 10 numbered and before the 219 Alfa, including 100 numbered.
Slight sunning to the top and bottom of the spine, three tiny pieces missing from the top of the first endpaper which has signs of writing on the back that have been scratched. Custom box, reproducing the wrappers, signed by Julie Nadot.
 
Rare and precious handwritten inscription signed by Louis-Ferdinand Céline to Marcel Espiau, cofounder and panel of the Renaudot prize which will be awarded to Céline on the very day of the Goncourt failure. We attach an unpublished autograph letter of thanks sent by Céline to Marcel Espiau.
 
"I am one of those who like Céline. I say this because it is true and there are, after all, truths that do ourselves good. I liked Céline straight away, the barely dry proofs of his unalterable Voyage au bout de la nuit. I immediately fought for him within a literary panel – the only one who crowned him – and where, moreover, everyone was quickly won over. "Ferdinand" is a guy. We cannot take that away from him. In our age of cowards or visionaries – in short supply, he would say, a writer of his kind is a blessing from the gods. He is undoubtedly, under his torrential form, and his vocabulary so verbose and so nobly insulting, the only epic poet of this time." (Marcel Espiau, in Les Nouveaux Temps, 5 March 1941)
After the snub inflicted on Céline by the awarding of the Goncourt prize to Guy Mazeline, Voyage au bout de la nuit could perhaps have known much less success and remained for a long time the subject of an eternally renewed row between ancient and modern literary critics.
In the media turmoil that followed the release of the Voyage, few voices were raised in favor of this atypical work that aroused more anger than enthusiasm, even among the future "political friends" of the inflammatory writer. Thus Robert Brasillach described the Voyage as "a sort of epic of catastrophe and injury", to be placed with disdain on the shelf with the «interminable novels». Here he highlighted that the thickness of the novel was a real obstacle to the distribution of the book.
Marcel Espiau himself, in L'Ami du peuple, also feared that "this work so curiously dreamed of, so daringly written"would discourage readers by its size: "but Mr Céline's book has 620 pages. Could it be a popular success"(Marcel Espiau in « À propos du prochain Prix Goncourt » L'Ami du Peuple, 5 December 1932.)
However, Espiau was, like Bernanos, one of the early and ardent defenders of the Voyage. Nine years later, Céline thanked him again, while this time Espiau castigates Les Beaux Draps, in his severe article in Le Temps:
“My dear Espiau,
A very big thank you for your little article in Le Temps. I know you and remain greatly in your debt for the admirable courage with which you defended my first book, at the time when the league of Perfect Thinking already had me in a lasso.” (Letter to Marcel Espiau, March 1941)
 
More than to the laudatory, but short, article by Espiau, here Céline makes reference to the fight that this founder of the Renaudot had to lead to award the prize to Céline, finally obtained by a narrow majority and after three rounds of ballots.
Céline, to his terrible disappointment, did not immediately get the measure of this prize that he thought to be a "consolation", while the Académie Goncourt, shaken by a rare controversy, had just cautiously refused to celebrate such a dark and anarchistic work.
Yet the tragicomedy, which in an astonishing unity of time, place and action took place on 7 December 1932 at Drouant's restaurant, was at the origin of one of the greatest literary successes of the interwar period. While on the upper floor, Lucien Descaves failed to convince the Goncourt jurors of Céline's exceptional talent, Marcel Espiau, on the ground floor, succeeded in making his colleagues admit the incontestable genius of the Doctor Destouches.
Simultaneously condemned and honored by two academies at boiling point, the simple soldier Bardamu became notorious and the modest print of the first edition of 3,264 copies, almost already sold out on the day of the announcement of the result, could not meet the demand. Robert Denoël, who had prepared a reprint at the Imprimerie de Troyes in anticipation of an expected victory at Goncourt, threw away his overly optimistic “Prix Goncourt 1932” advertisements and launched a significant offset reprint at the Imprimerie française d'édition. At the end of January, almost 50,000 copies had been sold.
 
Frightened by this « croayante » [made-up word, contraction of "increasing"and "croaking"] notoriety, Céline almost immediately left France for a "little medico-sentimental tour of Europe" (F. Gibault, Céline 1932-1944 : Délires et persécutions). It was only on 3 January that he sent Marcel Espiau a letter of invitation – which has remained unpublished and is attached to our copy – to one of the most famous restaurants in the capital for the 15th of the month, the day of his return, in order to "celebrate the benevolence and the good taste of [his] jury”, in the company of the previous winner, Philippe Hériat. Dated only with the day "3" without any other calendar mention, we can deduce the early date of this letter by the “Destouches” signature, which he very quickly abandoned after his first success. Two days after this meal, 17 January 1933, Céline had lunch with Lucien Descaves before continuing to "thank all those who had been with him in the battle". (F. Gibault, Céline 1932-1944: Délires et Persécutions)
Marcel Espiau, dedicatee of one of the first service de presse copies, will be a decisive architect of the literary recognition and popular success of the Voyage, which reduced aesthetic and old moral codes to nothing and which, even today, retains its subversive power intact.
 
Precious and significant handwritten, signed inscription and letter to Marcel Espiau on this very rare service de presse copy.
A beautiful historical copy.

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