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TESSIER SARROU
117
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CELINE, Louis-Ferdinand: Prison Notebooks (February–October …
See original version (French)
117
-
CELINE, Louis-Ferdinand: Prison Notebooks (February–October …
See original version (French)
Estimate €30,000 - €50,000
Voluntary lot
Description
CELINE, Louis-Ferdinand: Prison Notebooks (February–October 1946). An exceptional collection of handwritten notebooks compiled by Louis Ferdinand CELINE whilst imprisoned at the West Prison in Copenhagen following his odyssey across Europe at the end of the war and his arrest on 17 December 1945. A set of school exercise books, each containing 32 lined pages, issued by the prison authorities to any prisoner wishing to write. Some volumes include a handwritten label bearing the prisoner’s name and cell number (84). The collection is bound into a single volume in 8° red long-grain half-maroquin, with a faded spine. Written in pencil on paper with numerous crossings-out and additions. Both in terms of content and form, these manuscripts are unique within the writer’s oeuvre and constitute the last manuscripts to come up for public auction. Over 300 pages of rough draft, a continuous sequence of facts without any concern for style, the writing entirely focused on the presentation of the facts. The writer reflects on his exile from France, his experiences in prison, and his thirst for reading. Calling upon the great writers who had clashed with the established order of their time, he exclaims: ‘To me, Descartes!
To me, Voltaire! To me, Chateaubriand! To me, Hugo!’ Throughout the pages, he quotes writers and songs, sketching out his defence, evoking his prison world and recalling London, Brittany and Paris.
And Lucette Destouches, the tireless companion ever-present throughout the pages. An extraordinary and moving account which, in the words of Maître François GIBAULT at the conclusion of the introduction to these notebooks published in 2019 by Gallimard, constitutes ‘an exceptional document in which one of the central themes is the repeated assertion of the misfortune of being an artist, of being a lyricist… whilst awaiting the moment to embark upon his second narrative and stylistic revolution’. This raw material would, at the same time, enable the writer to begin drafting his ‘German trilogy’.
See original version (French)
Auto-translation. Refer to original language for legal validity.
Pictures credits: Contact the Auction House
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