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Abstract
Written between 1940 and 1945, Céline's third novel, Guignol's Band I and II, evokes early World War One London where Céline spent twelve carefree months in 1915 and 1916. The diachronic relation between narration and narrative is often referred to throughout the novel, emphasizing its temporal layering, the merging of fiction and reality, and the role played by memory. Close to the London-based French underworld, Céline's semi auto-fictional protagonist Ferdinand roams the streets of the city, where he encounters numerous burlesque characters and tries to escape both from the police and members of the 'milieu' (mafia). This article argues that writing London and following his character wandering around its streets enables Céline to disclose the fundamental modernist wandering and palimpsestic qualities of words, language, narrative and literature themselves. To do so, it analyses the London represented in Céline's novel and shows that it is constructed as urban, cultural and narrative palimpsests. It also highlights the modernist interplay between literature and the city, and discusses Ferdinand's relation to the flâneur.
Keywords: Guignol's Band I and II, London, Louis-Ferdinand Céline, modernism, urban palimpsest
Louis-Ferdinand Céline is as famous for his modernist roman-fleuves [novel-sequence] that revolutionized French literature and made him one of the greatest stylists of all times, as much as he is infamous for the anti-Semitic pamphlets he published before and during the Nazi Occupation of France. However, these two aspects of his literary production do not necessarily overlap. Céline's two-volume third novel Guignol's Band I et II was written between 1940 and 1947 (concurrently with his last pamphlet Les Beaux draps [The Fine Mess] published in 1941) in occupied Paris and in Denmark where he went into exile after the war. The Céline archives hold manuscripts in which fragments of the first volume of Guignol's Bands appear on the other side of Les Beaux draps, and vice versa (Godard 1988: 951). Yet, despite this palimpsestic proximity, the novel bears no explicit indication of the hatred evident in the pamphlets. Rather, deliberately distanced from occupied Paris, Guignol's Band evokes early World War One London where Céline spent twelve carefree months between May 1915 and May 1916, working as a clerk at the French Consulate after having been injured on the front. In proximity to...