FROM JOURNEY TO THE END OF THE NIGHT (L.F. CÉLINE)
......................without even coming to talk to us first and right in the middle of the road, there was a gap and even an abyss. Too much difference. The war, in short, was everything we didn't understand. It couldn't go on. So something extraordinary had happened to these people? Something I didn't feel at all. I must not have noticed... My feelings towards them still hadn't changed. I had a desire, despite everything, to try to understand their brutality, but even more, I wanted to leave, enormously, absolutely, so much did it all suddenly seem to me like the effect of a tremendous error. "In a story like this, there's nothing to do, there's just to get the hell out of here," I told myself, after all.............................
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ResponderExcluirFirst of all, the countryside, I have to say it right away, I could never stand it, I always found it sad, with its endless quagmires, its houses where people are never there and its roads that go nowhere. But when you add the war on top of that, it's unbearable. The wind had risen, brutal, on each side of the embankments, the poplars mingled their gusts of leaves with the little dry noises that came from over there towards us. These unknown soldiers missed us constantly, but while surrounding us with a thousand dead, we felt as if we were dressed in them. I didn't dare move anymore. The colonel, was he a monster then! Now, I was sure of it, worse than a dog, he couldn't imagine his death! I realized at the same time that there must be many like him in our army, brave men, and then just as many, no doubt, in the opposing army. Who knew how many?
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ResponderExcluirNow I was caught up in this mass flight, towards mass murder, towards fire... It came from the depths and it had happened.
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ResponderExcluirPost script
ResponderExcluirGilles Deleuze saw Céline as a writer who took language to an extreme point of "musicality," beyond grammar, in an attempt to approximate music and express a void. Deleuze rejected the idea that Céline was simply introducing speech into the written text, but rather that, by exhausting the limits of language, it transformed into a rhythmic flow devoid of conventional meaning, like a "vaporization" of the verb.
Language as music and flow: Deleuze understood Céline's writing not as a reproduction of speech, but as an expansion of language to its musical and rhythmic limits.
Vaporization of meaning: Language, taken to this extreme, becomes a flow without aim or purpose, a "vaporization" that echoes the emptiness of the world, with nothing more to "say."
Gilles Deleuze saw Louis-Ferdinand Céline's writing as a revolutionary aesthetic, valuing its unique style, which he described as "little music," for its ability to express extreme states of being. Deleuze, alongside Félix Guattari, viewed Céline's work as an important example of a "minor literature," where a marginalized language is used to disrupt dominant cultural and political norms.
ResponderExcluirStyle and aesthetic: Deleuze and Guattari praised Céline's revolutionary aesthetic, which evolved to become a new language that was both "part poetry and part music," according to Wikipedia.
Minor literature: They considered Céline's work to be a prime example of "minor literature," a concept they developed to describe how a minority writer can destabilize a dominant national literature through the use of a marginalized language.
Expression of extreme states: They saw Céline's style as a direct expression of the extreme conditions and states of being that are depicted in his novels, which are often characterized by nihilism, abjection, and an overwhelming sense of chaos.
Rejection of judgment: Deleuze's approach to literature also emphasized the importance of moving beyond judgment and "nationalism in letters," which is a perspective that aligns with his analysis of Céline's work.
Continue with Céline hehe!
ResponderExcluirContinue with Céline here!
ExcluirHow long would their delirium have to last, for them to finally stop, exhausted, these monsters? How long could an attack like this last? Months? Years? How long? Perhaps until everyone, all the madmen, died? Every last one? And since events were taking this desperate turn, I decided to risk everything, to take the last step, the supreme one, to try, myself, all alone, to stop the war! At least in this corner where I was. The colonel was strolling nearby. I was going to talk to him. I had never done so.
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