Rene Descartes
French philosopher, mathematician, and scientist
Louis Ferdinand Auguste Destoucheswon the Prix Renaudot but divided critics due to the author’s pessimistic depiction of the human condition and his writing style based on working-class speech.
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About the Louis-Ferdinand Celine
Louis Ferdinand Auguste Destoucheswon the Prix Renaudot but divided critics due to the author’s pessimistic depiction of the human condition and his writing style based on working-class speech. In subsequent novels such as Death on the Installment Planand Castle to Castle (1957), Celine further developed an innovative and distinctive literary style. Maurice Nadeau wrote: “What Joyce did for the English language…what the surrealists attempted to do for the French language, Celine achieved effortlessly and on a vast scale.”
From 1937 Celine wrote a series of antisemitic polemical works in which he advocated a military alliance with Nazi Germany. He continued to publicly espouse antisemitic views during the German occupation of France, and after the Allied landing in Normandy in 1944, he fled to Germany and then Denmark where he lived in exile. He was convicted of collaboration by a French court in 1951 but was pardoned by a military tribunal soon after. He returned to France where he resumed his careers as a doctor and author.
Celine is widely considered to be one of the greatest French novelists of the 20th century and his novels have had an enduring influence on later authors. However, he remains a controversial figure in France due to his antisemitism and activities during the Second World War.
11 Quotes by Louis-Ferdinand Celine
- 1.
To hell with reality! I want to die in music, not in reason or in prose. People don’t deserve the restraint we show by not going into delirium in front of them. To hell with them!
Louis-Ferdinand CelineFrench writer
- 2.
Life is filigree work. What is written clearly is not worth much, it’s the transparency that counts.
Louis-Ferdinand CelineFrench writer
- 3.
We’ve no use for intellectuals in this outfit. What we need is chimpanzees. Let me give you a word of advice: never say a word to us about being intelligent. We will think for you, my friend. Don’t forget it.
Louis-Ferdinand CelineFrench writer
- 4.
The poetry of heroism appeals irresistibly to those who don’t go to a war, and even more to those whom the war is making enormously wealthy. It’s always so.
Louis-Ferdinand CelineFrench writer
- 5.
Experience is a dim lamp, which only lights the one who bears it.
Louis-Ferdinand CelineFrench writer
- 6.
One can’t relive one’s life. Forgiveness is not what’s difficult; one’s always too ready to forgive. And it does no good, that’s obvious.
Louis-Ferdinand CelineFrench writer
- 7.
Almost every desire a poor man has is a punishable offence.
Louis-Ferdinand CelineFrench writer
- 8.
With two thousand years of Christianity behind him… a man can’t see a regiment of soldiers march past without going off the deep end. It starts off far too many ideas in his head.
Louis-Ferdinand CelineFrench writer
- 9.
Truth is a pain which will not stop. And the truth of this world is to die. You must choose: either dying or lying. Personally, I have never been able to kill myself.
Louis-Ferdinand CelineFrench writer
- 10.
If you aren’t rich you should always look useful.
Louis-Ferdinand CelineFrench writer
- 11.
To philosophize is only another way of being afraid and leads hardly anywhere but to cowardly make-believe.
Louis-Ferdinand CelineFrench writer