Journey to the End of the Night
Louis-Ferdinand Céline
Quotations reprinted without permission from the New Directions edition
(translated by Ralph Manheim)
I knew only one thing about that blackness, which was so dense you had the
impression that if you stretched out your arm a little way from your
shoulder you'd never see it again, but of that one thing I was absolutely
certain, namely, that it was full of homicidal impulses.
The biggest defeat in every department of life is to forget, especially the
things that have done you in, and to die without realizing how far people
can go in the way of crumminess. When the grave lies open before us, let's
not try to be witty, but on the other hand, let's not forget, but make it
our business to record the worst of the human viciousness we've seen
without changing one word. When that's done, we can curl up our toes and
sink into the pit. That's work enough for lifetime.
Proust, who was half ghost, immersed himself with extraordinary tenacity in
the infinitely watery futility of the rites and procedures that entwine the
members of high society, those denizens of the void, those phantoms of
desire, those irresolute daisy-chainers still waiting for their Watteau,
those listless seekers after implausible Cythereas. Whereas Madame Herote,
with her sturdy popular origins, was firmly fastened to the earth by her
crude, stupid, and very specific appetites.
Even from ten or fifteen miles away you get a good view of a burning
village. It was a merry sight. A tiny hamlet that you wouldn't even notice
in the daytime, with ugly, uninteresting country around it, you can't
imagine how impressive it can be when it's on fire at night! You'd think
it was Notre-Dame! A village, even a small one, takes at least all night to
burn, in the end it looks like an enormous flower, then there's only a
bud, and after that nothing. Smoke rises, and then it's morning.
We'd line up for the privilege of being killed... In the end we were
sleeping in the fields... Those who still had a bit of spirit lost it. That
was when they started shooting men to bolster their morale, whole
squadrons, and when our M.P. got a citation for the way in which he was
carrying on his little private war, the real honest-to-goodness war.
"Kersuzon," I say, "We're in the Ardennes now... Do you see anything in the
distance? I don't see a damn thing..." "It's as black as an asshole,"
Kersuzon says. That was enough... "But," I suggest, "haven't you heard
anyone mention Barbigny in the course of the idea? Give you and idea where
it is? "No." That was that. Kerzuzon always gave the same answer when I
questioned him at night, as if I'd pressed a button, it kind of tickled me.
Two or three times more he said the same thing about the asshole darkness
and a while after that he was killed, on his way out of some village we'd
mistaken for some other village by some French soldiers who'd mistaken us
for somebody else.
Claude Lorrain was right in saying that the foreground of a picture is
always repugnant and that the interest of an artwork must be seen in the
distance, in that unfathomable realm which is the refuge of lies, of those
dreams caught in the act, which are the only thing men love.
In that despondent changeless heat the entire human content of the ship
congealed into massive drunkenness. People moved flabbily about like squid
in a tank of tepid smelly water. From that moment on we saw, rising to the
surface, the terrifying nature of white men, exasperated, freed from
constraint, absolutely unbuttoned, their true nature, same as in the war.
That tropical steam bath called forth instincts as August breeds toads and
snakes on the fissured walls of prisons. In the European cold, under gray,
puritanical northern skies, we seldom get to see our brothers' festering
cruelty except in times of carnage, but when roused by the foul fevers of
the tropics, their rottenness rises to the surface. That's when the frantic
unbuttoning sets in, when filth triumphs and covers us entirely. It's a
biological confession. Once work and cold weather cease to constrain us,
once they relax their grip, the white man shows you the same spectacle as a
beautiful beach when the tide goes out: the truth, fetid pools, crabs,
carrion, and turds.
The edifice when we got there was absolutely empty except for a few
utensils and my so-called bed. As soon as I lay down on that wobbly
filiform object, two dozen bats emerged from the corners and took to
whishing back and forth like a volley of fans over my apprehensive repose.
From what I seemed to discern of the compact malevolence that held me in
its vise, the female section of the conspiracy was masterminded by one of
the schoolteachers. She was going back to the Congo to die, or so at least
I hoped, the bitch. Almost always she was trailing around after the
officers, so handsome in their resplendent tight-fitting tunics and further
embellished by the oath they had sworn to crush me like a noisome slug well
before the next port of call. They wondered out loud whether I would be as
repulsive flattened out as I was erect. In short, they were having a fine
time. The schoolteacher whetted their fury, called down thunders on the
deck of the Admiral Bragueton , resolved to know no rest until I
had been picked up gasping, punished forever for my imaginary impertinence,
chastised for daring to exist, brutally beaten, bruised and bleeding,
imploring pity under the boot and fist of one of those heroes, whose
muscular prowess and spectacular rage she was burning to admire. A scene of
high carnage, from which her weary ovaries promised themselves an
awakening. As good as being raped by a gorilla. Time was passing, and it's
dangerous to keep the aficionados waiting too long. I was the
bull. The whole ship was clamoring, quivering from port to starboard.