Le Feu
Céline put Barbusse on his short list of admired moderns, and Journey's opening plunge into the war reads as Le Feu's testimony pushed past despair — the trench-novel tradition's direct line.
Journey to the End of the Night
Louis-Ferdinand Céline's 1932 first novel, which follows one man from the First World War through colonial Africa and industrial America to the Paris slums.
- 1932
- 446
About Louis-Ferdinand Céline
The story, briefly
Spoiler-freeFerdinand Bardamu enlists in the First World War, decides almost immediately that the war is madness, and spends the rest of the novel trying to get away — first to a French colony in Africa, then to America and the Ford factory in Detroit, and finally home to a medical practice among the poor of suburban Paris. A drifter named Robinson keeps crossing his path. The novel is written in the spoken French of the streets, which no serious novel had used before, and it made Céline famous on publication in 1932.
The story, in more detail
The author was a doctor. Louis Destouches treated the poor of suburban Clichy by day and wrote at night, and in 1932 he delivered a seven-hundred-page manuscript to publishers under his grandmother's first name, Céline. Gallimard hesitated; the smaller house Denoël read it overnight and signed it. The novel follows its narrator, Bardamu, through the war, colonial Africa, Ford's Detroit, and back to a medical practice in the Paris suburbs — roughly the author's own itinerary, rewritten as fiction.
A prize scandal made it famous. The 1932 Prix Goncourt was widely expected to go to Céline; at the last minute the jury gave it to a now-forgotten novel called Les Loups. The Renaudot jury awarded Céline their prize the same afternoon, the press covered the scandal for weeks, and the book sold heavily on the outrage. The more lasting shock was the language: spoken French, slang included, used for serious literature for the first time.
Its influence reaches from Henry Miller and Sartre to Vonnegut and Heller. It remains one of the century's most influential novels about war and disillusionment.
The full plot
Ferdinand Bardamu, a Paris medical student, enlists in 1914 almost on a dare and discovers within days what the war actually is. Wounded and decorated, he passes through hospitals and a military asylum, and is then shipped out to a French trading post in colonial Africa, where heat, fever, and corruption undo everything around him. Half-delirious, he leaves the continent on a ship bound for America.
In Detroit he works the assembly line at Ford and meets Molly, a prostitute who loves him; he leaves her anyway, returns to France, finishes his medical degree, and sets up practice in Rancy, a poor suburb of Paris, treating patients who cannot pay. Through every stage of the book drifts Léon Robinson, a man always one step further down than Bardamu, who becomes entangled in a scheme against an old woman and is blinded when his own booby trap goes off in his face.
How it ends — spoilers ahead
Robinson, blinded for a time by his own device, later kills the old woman in Toulouse with a push down a crypt staircase. He and Bardamu end up at a private asylum outside Paris, where Bardamu has become the director. One night, in a taxi, Robinson's discarded fiancée Madelon demands that he say he loves her; he refuses, and she shoots him dead and flees. The novel ends at dawn on a canal bank, with Bardamu asking that nothing more be said about any of it.
Guides to this book
The lineage
What it drew from
Who drew from it
Tropic of Cancer
Published in 1932, mid-drafting of Cancer: the French novel that proved the gutter could talk in print, weeks before the American one at the Villa Seurat finished learning the same lesson.
Why we recommend it
The voice
Céline wrote the novel in spoken French — slang, profanity, and all — which serious fiction had not used before. Many later writers, Henry Miller among them, learned from it.
The war chapters
The opening section, Bardamu's war, is one of the most famous accounts of the First World War in fiction.
The doctor underneath
Céline was a doctor to the poor, and his narrator becomes one. The anger sits on top of real sympathy for the patients Bardamu treats.
What this book explores
Real people in this book
Elizabeth Craig
- Dancer
Dedicated to
The novel's dedication page carries her name. Craig was Céline's companion through the years he wrote it, in his Montparnasse period.
The real history
Céline lived most of it: wounded and decorated in 1914, a posting in Cameroon, a stint at Ford in Detroit, then medicine among the Paris poor. The novel reworks his own itinerary as fiction.
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Bring it to book club
- Bardamu calls cowardice the only rational response to the war. Does the novel believe him? Do you?
- What is Robinson for? Track him — he appears at every hinge of the book.
- Can you separate this novel from what its author later wrote and did? Should a reader have to?
Timeline
1932
Louis Destouches, a doctor treating the Paris poor, publishes the novel under his grandmother's first name, Céline. Gallimard hesitates; Denoël signs it overnight.
1932
The Prix Goncourt goes to Les Loups instead; Céline wins the Prix Renaudot the same afternoon, and the scandal drives large sales.
Book editions
- Paperback
- New Directions
- 2006
- 9780811216548
- Ralph Manheim
- Ebook
- New Directions
- 9780811223614
- Ralph Manheim
Audiobook
- Audiobook
- Ralph Manheim
Reader reviews
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Tropic of Cancer
Written under Journey's direct influence; Miller acknowledged the debt.
Read our take
The Cantos
The era's other stylistic extreme — modernism pushed to its limit in verse as Journey pushed it in prose.
Read our takeJourney to the End of the Night: frequently asked questions
Who wrote Journey to the End of the Night?
Louis-Ferdinand Céline, the pen name of Louis Ferdinand Destouches, a doctor who treated the poor of suburban Paris. It was his first novel, published in 1932.
What is Journey to the End of the Night about?
A man's flight from the First World War. Ferdinand Bardamu enlists in 1914, decides the war is madness, and spends the rest of the book getting away from it — through colonial Africa, industrial America, and finally a medical practice among the Paris poor. A drifter named Robinson crosses his path at every stage.
Why is Journey to the End of the Night important?
It brought spoken French — slang included — into serious literature, and it influenced writers from Henry Miller to Kurt Vonnegut. Miller read it in manuscript while writing Tropic of Cancer.
Is Journey to the End of the Night based on Céline's life?
Largely. It draws on his war service, his time in Africa, a stay in America, and his medical practice among the poor, reworked into fiction.
Did Journey to the End of the Night win any prizes?
It lost the 1932 Prix Goncourt in a decision that caused a scandal, and won the Prix Renaudot the same afternoon.
