Read Castle to Castle Online

Authors: Louis-Ferdinand Celine

Tags: #Classics

Castle to Castle (2 page)

BOOK: Castle to Castle
3.87Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

Interviewer: Was your poverty a source of suffering when you went to school?

Céline: It was public school . . . We weren't rich. So I didn't have much of an inferiority complex . . . they were all like me, all poor kids . . . Oh no, there were no rich people in that neighborhood . . . But we knew some rich people, there were two or three of them . . . We revered them! My parents told me those people were wealthy . . . the neighborhood drapers . . . They'd moved there by mistake but we knew them and revered them. In those days a rich man was revered. For his wealth! And at first we thought he was intelligent, too
.

Interviewer: When and how did you become aware of the injustice of such things?

Céline: Late, I've got to admit, after the war. When I saw the war profiteers. The slackers who made money while other people were dying in the trenches. That was my first clear sign, something I could see with my own eyes. Later, I was with the League of Nations and that wised me up once and for all, I saw that the world was governed by the Golden Calf, by Mammon! Not a doubt! Implacably. Anyway, my social consciousness came late. I didn't have it . . . I was resigned . . .

Interviewer: Would you say that your parents' attitude was one of acceptance?

Céline: Frantic acceptance! My mother used to say: "You little wretch, if there weren't any rich people (because somehow I already had my little ideas), if there weren't any rich people, we wouldn't get anything to eat. Rich people have a sense of responsibility . . ." You see, my mother revered the rich. So hell . . . I took a leaf out of her book. I wasn't exactly convinced. No. But I didn't dare to have an opinion, oh no . . . My mother who was up to her neck in lace would never have worn any, it was for the customers. Never. It wouldn't do. Even the jeweler didn't wear jewelry and neither did his wife . . . I was a jeweler's errand boy, I worked for a lot of jewelers, Robert on the rue Royale, Lacloche on the rue de la Paix . . .

Interviewer: What about Gorloge? And the Gorloge family?

Céline: Oh yes! That's Wagner on the rue Vieille du Temple! Yes, that's him. I worked for him all right . . . My job was toting the sample cases and going . . . you know those big leather cases they carry the models in . . . the models were made of lead, so you can imagine . . . we toted the cases from house to house, and I covered, we covered, the territory from the rue du Temple to the Opera. We did every jewelry store on the boulevard, and then we got together, all the errand boys got together on the steps of the Ambigu, you know, those steps that go down. So we got together and we all had sore feet because our shoes . . . I always had sore feet. Because I didn't get a new pair of shoes very often, so my nails were crooked, hell, they're still crooked. We did the best we could, our shoes were too small, kids grow. My, oh my! . . . I was very active in those days, I did everything so fast that I beat the Metro . . . I ran all my errands on foot . . . Oh yes, social consciousness . . . When I was in the cavalry, I was present at the hunting parties given by Prince Orloff and the Duchess d'Uzes . . . We held the officers' horses. I remember the Duchess d'Uzes well, on horseback, the old bag, and Prince Orloff who hobnobbed with all the officers in my regiment, and my job was holding the horses . . . That's as far as it went. We were treated just like cattle. It was taken for granted, nobody expected any different.

Interviewer: And anti-Semitism was drafted onto this social consciousness of yours?

Céline: Yes, I caught on to another exploiter. At the League of Nations I saw where the big deals were being made. And later, in Clichy, in politics, I saw . . . yes, I remember, there was this little louse . . . I saw all I needed to see . . . The answer is yes . . .

Interviewer: Did your mother have much influence on you?

Céline: I have her character. More than anything else. She was a hard woman, she was impossible . . . I can't deny it, her temperament was something special . . . she just didn't enjoy life. Not in the least. Always worried and always throwing a fit. She worked up to the last minute of her life.

Interviewer: What did she call you? Ferdinand?

Céline: No, Louis. She wanted to see me holding down a job in a department store, the Hotel de ville, or the Louvre. As a buyer. That was her ideal. My father felt the same way. Because he hadn't got anywhere with his degree in literature! . . . Or my grandfather with his doctorate! . . . They'd made out so badly they thought maybe I'd make a go of it in business.

Interviewer: Wouldn't your father have been better off in the school system?

Céline: Of course he would have, poor man, but here's what happened. He'd have needed a teaching degree, and he only had a general degree, and he couldn't take it because he had no money. His father had died, leaving a wife and five children.

Interviewer: Did your father die late in life?

Céline: He died when
Journey
appeared in 1931.

Interviewer: Before the book came out?

Céline: Yes, just before. He wouldn't have liked it . . . Besides, he was jealous . . . He couldn't see me as a writer, neither could I for that matter. On that point at least we agreed . . .

Interviewer: And what was your mother's reaction to your books?

Céline: She thought they were dangerous and nasty and would make trouble . . . She expected things to end very badly. She was a very cautious type.

Interviewer: Did she read your books?

Céline: No, she couldn't, they were over her head. She'd have thought them very vulgar. Anyway she didn't read books, she wasn't a woman to read books. No, she had no vanity. She worked till the day she died. I was in prison. I heard about her death . . . No, I'd just got to Copenhagen when I heard about it . . . An abominable trip, stinking . . . yes, the timing was perfect . . . Abominable . . . But don't forget things are only abominable from one angle . . . Well, you know . . . experience is a muffled lantern that throws light only on the bearer . . . it's incommunicable . . . better keep these things to myself . . .

The way I felt about it, a man was entitled to die, to go in, when he had a good story to tell. You told your story and you passed on. Symbolically speaking, that's what
Death on the Installment Plan
is. The reward for life being death . . . seeing that it's not God who governs but the Devil . . . Man . . . or nature stinks, just look at the lives of the birds or the
animals
.

Interviewer: When have you been happy in your life?

Céline: Damn well never, I think, because getting old, I'd need . . . I think if somebody gave me a lot of dough so's I wouldn't have to worry—I'd like that—it would give me a chance to go away somewhere and not do a damn thing and watch other people . . . Being all by myself on the seashore with no one to bother me—that would be happiness. And to eat very little . . . that's right . . . next to nothing . . . I'd want a candle. I wouldn't live with electricity and gadgets . . . A candle! Give me a candle and I'd read the paper . . . Other people, the way I see them, are all steamed up, most of all they're prodded by ambition. The life of the rich is a circus, they invite each other back and forth to keep each other's spirits up . . . I've seen it, I've lived with society people . . . Ah, Gontran, he actually said that to you? . . . Ah, Gaston, you were really brilliant yesterday! The way you put him in his place! Yes, really! He mentioned it again only yesterday. His wife said: Oh, Gaston was amazing!—It's a circus. That's how they spend their time. They chase each other around, they meet at the same golf clubs, the same restaurants . . .

Interviewer: If you could start all over again, would you seek your pleasures outside of literature?

Céline: I certainly would! I don't ask for pleasure, I don't feel any . . . the enjoyment of life is a matter of temperament, of diet. You've got to eat well and drink well, then the days pass quickly. If you eat well and drink well, take an automobile ride and read a few newspapers, your day will soon be over . . . You read your paper, you have a few people in, you drink your morning coffee, you take a little stroll, hell, it's time for lunch . . . . In the afternoon you drop in on a few friends . . . the day passes. At night, bed as usual, you fall asleep. And there you are. Especially as you grow older . . . because then the time passes faster. When you're young, a day is interminable, but as you grow older . . . it doesn't take long. When you're an old man living on your pension, a day's a flash; when you're a kid it passes very slowly.

Interviewer: How would you choose to occupy your time if you were retired on an income?

Céline: I'd read the paper. I'd go for a little stroll some place where nobody'd see me.

Interviewer: Can you take walks here?

Céline: No, never. Better not

Interviewer: Why?

Céline: First because I'd be noticed. I don't like that I don't want to be seen. In a seaport you can disappear . . . In Le Havre . . . I don't think a man would be noticed on the docks in Le Havre. They don't see a thing. A retired naval man, an old fool . . .

Interviewer: You like boats, don't you?

Céline: Oh yes! Yes! I like to watch them. To see them coming in and out. Sure, give me a jetty and I'm happy . . . They leave a trail of foam, they go away, they come back, and they've got nothing to do with you, see? Nobody asks you anything. Sure, and you read
Le Petit Havrais
, and . . . and that's all . . . that's all there is to it . . . Yes, if I had my life to live over, I'd do it entirely differently.

Interviewer: Can you think of any individuals whom you look up to as examples? Men you would have liked to imitate?

Céline: No. Because people like that are grandiose, and I have no desire to be grandiose, none at all. All I want is to be an old man nobody pays attention to . . . not . . . people like that have their names in the dictionary, I don't go for that . . .

Interviewer: I was thinking of people you might have met in everyday life . . .

Céline: Oh no. No. They're always putting on an act other people give me a pain. No. I've inherited a kind of modesty from my mother, a total insignificance, and I mean total. What interests me is to be completely ignored. I have a propensity
. . . an animal propensity, for crawling away . . . Yes, Boulogne would suit me all right, Boulogne-sur-Mer. Place where nobody ever goes. I've spent a lot of time in Saint-Malo, but it's not possible any more . . . I'm kind of known there . . . I went to medical school in Rennes . . .

[Céline's last interview, June 1, 1961. André Pardnaud.]

Interviewer: Does love occupy an important place in your novels?

Céline: No place at all. It shouldn't. A novelist should have a sense of shame.

Interviewer: And friendship?

Céline: Let's skip it.

Interviewer: Then you prefer to talk of the less important feelings?

Céline: Let's talk about work, the job of writing. It's the only thing that counts. And even that calls for a good deal of discretion. Too much publicity in the way people talk about these things. We're objects of publicity. It's revolting. It's high time people took a cure of modesty. In literature as in everything else we're befouled by publicity. It's disgraceful. I say: do your job and shut up, that's the only way. People will read it or they won't read it, that's their business. The only thing for the author to do is to make himself scarce.

Interviewer: Do you write for the pleasure of writing?

Céline: No. Certainly not. If I had money, I wouldn't write a word. That's my first principle.

Interviewer: You don't write out of love or hatred?

Céline: Of course not! It's my business if I experience those sentiments, it doesn't concern the public.

Interviewer: But you take an interest in your contemporaries?

Céline: Oh no, none whatsoever. I took an interest in them once, I tried to prevent them from making war. As it happened, they didn't make war, but they came back laden with glory. And then they threw me into the clink. I should have concentrated on myself.

Interviewer: still, certain feelings come through in your most recent novels?

Céline: A writer can make anything come through. There's nothing to it.

Interviewer: Are you trying to persuade us that your latest books reveal nothing of your inner life?

Céline: Inner life? No, absolutely nothing. Maybe one thing, and only one, the fact that I don't know how to enjoy life. I don't live. I don't exist. That gives me a certain superiority over other people who stink, you can't deny it, because they're' always enjoying life. To enjoy life is to eat, drink, belch, fuck, all those things that make hash out of a man or a woman. I don't go in for dissipation and that's lucky for me. I know how to choose. I'm capable of savoring things, but as some Roman said, debauchery isn't going into a whorehouse, it's not coming out. All my life I've gone into whorehouses, but I've come right out. I don't drink, I don't care about eating. Those things bore me. It's my right, isn't it? I have only one desire. To sleep and be left alone, which isn't the case.

BOOK: Castle to Castle
3.87Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

Other books

Powers by Deborah Lynn Jacobs
The Soul Healer by Melissa Giorgio
Way of a Wanton by Richard S. Prather
The Other Side of Truth by Beverley Naidoo
High Country Bride by Jillian Hart
Saving Grace by Anita Cox