Céline, alias Ferdinad Destouches and Venice

LOUIS FERDINAND CELINE AND VENICE

André J. Fabre                                    Decembre 2012

Dr. Louis Ferdinand Destouches alias Céline has deeply marked his century.

Many writers have nothing to say, but Céline had so much to say that he needed to create his own language in order to channel his vehemence, forging a sort of "Braille" bumped  with  asperities

One thing is certain: medicine never quitted Céline since the time of his first work: his thesis on Semmelweis [1], the man who claimed all its truth and ends with asylum

Actually we know little about the journey than Céline made in Venice. There is only one reference, in his books about  the City of Doges  and this is in the mouth of another Ferdinand, called Bardamu, the hero of "Journey to the End of the Night" [2]: "No, what I want... among other nonsense, I thought to study the comparative influence of central heating on hemorrhoids in of North and South countries . What do you think? From hygiene? …Such a study conducted properly would drag me to the Academy . May it get to me a Prize… Ten thousand? Huh? That's what I pay a trip to Venice ... I was there when I was a young man, my friend. Yes you can starve to death there as in any other place but you know there is in Venice a sumptuous smell of death that you will never forget all the rest of your life…"

This is a "concentré" of Céline who could have said, as the Mephistopheles of Goethe, "I am the one who always says no" [5]

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