Louis-Ferdinand Céline

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It is Germany near the end of World War II, the Allies have landed and members of the Vichy France government have been sequestered in a labyrinthine castle, replete with secret passages and subterranean hideaways. The group of 1,400 terrified officials, their wives, mistresses, flunkies, and Nazi protectors—including Céline, his wife, their cat, and an actor friend—attempt to postpone the postwar reckoning under the constant threat of air raids and starvation. With an undercurrent of sensual excitement, Céline paints an almost unbearably vivid picture of human society and the human condition.

Called by Atlantic Monthly "the blackest of the black" of Céline's novels and hailed by the Washington Post Book World for its "intense sympathy with individual human beings," Castle to Castle is brilliantly rendered in Ralph Manheim's translation, for which he won the National Book Award.

ISBN-10 1-56478-150-X

ISBN-13 9781564781505

Publication Date Mar 1997

Nb of pages 360

Dimensions 5.5 x 8 in.

Onix What's this?

Frankly, just between you and me, I’m ending up even worse than I started . . . Yes, my beginnings weren’t so hot . . . I was born, I repeat, in Courbevoie, Seine . . . I’m repeating it for the thousandth time . . . after a great many round trips I’m ending very badly . . . old age, you’ll say . . . yes, old age, that’s a fact . . . at sixty-three and then some, it’s hard to break in again . . . to build up a new practice . . . no matter where . . . I forgot to tell you . . . I’m a doctor . . . A medical practice, confidentially between you and me, isn’t just a question of knowing your job and doing it properly . . . what really counts . . . more than anything else . . . is personal charm . . . personal charm after sixty? . . . there might still be a future for you in the wax works, or as an antique vase in a museum . . . a few old fogies in search of enigmas might still take an interest . . . but the ladies? Your dapper graybeard, painted, perfumed, and lacquered? Doctor or not, practice or no practice, the old scarecrow will stick in people’s craw . . . If he’s loaded? . . . well, maybe . . . hmm, hmm, . . . he’ll be barely tolerated . . . but a white-haired pauper? . . . take him away. Just listen to the ladies, on any street corner, in any shop . . . talking about some young colleague . . . “Oh, Madame, oh, Madame, that doctor, what eyes . . . he understood my case at a glance . . . and those drops he prescribed . . . noon and night . . . those miraculous drops . . . why, that young doctor’s a wonder . . .” Then wait and see what they have to say about you: “Crabby, toothless, ignorant, hunchbacked, always hawking and spitting . . .” you’re cooked . . . the ladies’ chit-chat rules the country . . . the men bat out laws, the ladies attend to the serious business: public opinion . . . or a medical practice is made by the ladies . . . you haven’t got them behind you? . . . go drown yourself . . . the ladies in your neighborhood are feebleminded, they’re blithering idiots? . . . perfect! The stupider, the more bigoted, the more chronically asinine they are, the better they rule! . . . you can put your shingle away, and all the rest . . . The rest? Everything was stolen from me in Montmartre . . . everything . . . on the rue Girardon . . . I repeat . . . I can’t repeat it enough . . . people pretend not to hear . . . the exact things they need to hear . . . though I’ve said it plainly enough . . . the works! . . . Somebody, liberators, avengers, broke into my place and carried everything off to the Flea Market . . . they sold it all . . . I’m not exaggerating, I’ve got proof, witnesses, names . . . all my books and instruments, my furniture, my manuscripts . . . the whole shebang . . . I didn’t find one thing . . . not a handkerchief, not a chair . . . they’d sold even the walls . . . the apartment, everything . . . put it in all their pockets . . . and there you have it . . . Oh, I know what you think . . . it’s only natural . . . I can hear you . . . that such things can never happen to you, that you’ve taken your precautions . . . that you’re as good a Communist as any millionaire, as good a Poujadist as Poujade, as Russian as the dressing, more American than Buffalo . . . hand in glove with everything that counts, Lodge, Cell, Sacristy, the Law! . . . the champion new-style Vrenchman . . . the historical trend runs straight through your asshole . . . honorary brother? . . . certainly! . . . executioner’s helper? we’ll see . . . guillotine licker? . . . Oh, well!

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