The Controversial Legacy of Louis-Ferdinand Céline: a re-evaluation in light of recent discoveries

 

This presentation re-examined Louis-Ferdinand Céline’s controversial literary reputation in light of two recent and interconnected events: the proposed republication of his anti-Semitic pamphlets by Antoine Gallimard in 2017-18, and the rediscovery and publication by the same Gallimard of Céline’s lost literary manuscripts in 2022-23. The first of these generated a fierce backlash and heated debate that extended to the highest echelons of French society, including then Prime Minister Edouard Philippe and President Macron. Although it raised pertinent contemporary questions on the ethical relationship between a work of art and the artist, this project was eventually shelved, as it ultimately proved to be more polarising than consensus-building, reaching a critical impasse that made it harder, rather than easier to assess Céline’s exact place in literary history. However, the republication of the manuscripts -notably, Londres, the main focus of this presentation- has rebalanced debate on Céline in a more nuanced and productive fashion that reminds us once again of his considerable literary achievements, but in a way that neither trivialises the repellent views he expressed in his pamphlets, nor exonerates him of his flaws as a man.

 

ABOUT THE SPEAKER  

 

Dr. Damian Catani is Associate Professor in French in the School of Creative Arts, Culture and Communication at Birkbeck, University of London. He is the former Assistant Dean of the Department of Languages, Cultures and Applied Linguistics at Birkbeck. His research specialisms are 19th- and 20th-century French literature and thought, especially Symbolist poetry, literature and ethics, Louis-Ferdinand Céline and the role of the public intellectual. Among his publications are three books: The Poet in Society: Art Consumerism and Politics in Mallarmé (2003), Evil: A History in Modern French Literature and Thought (2013); and, most recently, a comprehensive intellectual biography of Céline, Louis-Ferdinand Céline: Journeys to the extreme (London: Reaktion Press, 2021). He is on the board of the Société des Lecteurs de Céline, is general editor of the journal Études Stéphane Mallarmé and is currently working on a co-authored book (with Professor Patrick Baert, University of Cambridge), entitled Politics and Intellectuals, to be published by Princeton University Press in 2025.