Céline Voyage au Bout de la Nuit Notes PDF

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Full notes on Céline’s Voyage au bout de la nuit...

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Céline, Voyage au bout de la nuit - Notes • Voyage follows aa hero who is coming to terms with the cruel reality of the human condition • Bardamu’s travels across the world. Surrounded by the horrors of man’s condition and The Fall. • Characters in novel are mocked as an attempted relief • Flanders - Africa - New York - Detroit - Paris • Each location provides comments on the human condition (slavery, way, capitalism) • Humans as “hateful puppets pulled by an invisible hand” - McCarthy 50 • Travels without goals or purpose - adds to pessimism as one cannot attach logic • No conclusions, characters come and go • There is no internal logic or cause to the events in the novel • Nothing happens for a reason • No logic to the human monstrosities of war/colonialism/industrialisation • Everything in the novel leads to death, inescapable, our fate • Death as ugly. Reduces humans to animals (war scene in Flanders. Similar to Malraux’s heroes in prison) • Absence of dignified deaths, last words • Death is all powerful. War colonel is arrogant and does not understand death. • Death cannot be avoided - Bébert as a child who has no understanding and death is not his fault - disease • Complete attempt to stop man’s fate but impossible • Man is constantly dying - from the moment we arrive on earth we start dying so our lives are futile • Realisation of personal void/emptiness - Bardamu in New York (178) • Not tragic heroes but anti heroes. • Tragic heroes - punished by Gods for wrongdoings or arrogance • Anti heroes - death comes to all as it is man’s fate - alone in universe • Jansenism - awareness of original sin in Voyage • Bardamu’s mother says that whilst people aren’t aware, they are to blame nevertheless • Bardamu also feels slightly guilty for everything he sees • Disgusted at his moral emptiness and feels responsible for it • Hatred and negativity springs from fear of death. Prevalent in novel • Man’s hatred is evil • Man is his own victim (The Fall) • Absurdity of life but cannot act upon it • Malraux’s heroes attempt to transform through politics and revolution. Céline’s are futile as man’s fate is inescapable and Man has no control • Links to Pascal. Not religious but “his belief in fate, guilt and sin reminds one of the pessimistic side of Christianity” McCarthy 57. • However Céline does not believe so no redeemer or God’s grace, just nothing and man’s unavoidable fate (anti hero) • Characters are energetic and take on many different activities. Have no control, cling on and change at random. Doing anything to prove existence - futile • Pascalian idea of divertissement (see notes). Attempt to occupy oneself with frantic activities to forget about our emptiness and lonesome metaphysical state in a universe we cannot comprehend • Bardamu at the New York cinema • But divertissement just brings on death - alcohol, bravery etc. • Contact with others through hatred - allows for explanation of misery at the world • Not necessarily truthful but gives reason • Positivity in sex. It is both a distraction from the horrors of life but female beauty offers a potential glimpse of escape to a “dream that lies beyond reality” McCarthy 67

• Female beauty brief reminder of LIFE. Stops ageing briefly • Constant running, from nothing to nothing. Just escaping life but never being able to • Negative path - war, women using men… • Breaking down of habit through travel so is privy to a view on human’s true empty existence - McCarthy • Realises that to be a man one must experience true emptiness and solitude. Be left to the absurdity of the horrendous human condition. True knowledge of condition comes with self-destruction and breaking oneself down to nothingness • Anti hero • Malraux - knowledge of this condition leads to revolt, for Céline it is an internal understanding that one can’t do anything • Asylum reveals the true human state - Bardamu realises that the mad are not different they have just given up trying to understand life and have resigned to nothing • Robinson as a symbol of the worst/pure negativity. Every episode sees Bardamu discover Robinson in a worse state drawing close to the human condition. - Externalises man’s inner feelings • Truth and hatred for the human condition and the acceptance that there is no changing it leads to Robinson’s blunt death. • Ends with no solutions, they have failed and it is that to be human • Antihero does not act upon events but is carried along by them, helplessly • The antiheroic voice is helpless as can do nothing • Humanity is merely portrayed as one continuous journey towards death • Defined by his solitude and despair at the human condition • Structure of the novel made up of accidental and unpredictable events. Life is pointless, we have no control • TIME as negative factor. Humans are “imprisoned by time in the flesh” Matthews 44. Time just brings us closer to unavoidable destiny • Malraux came before Céline and thought that action was a way out, revolt as man’s salvation from his miserable existence • Céline’s antihero has no hope of escape. Cannot act • Céline stood out for his sheer lack of optimism compared with his contemporaries. • “To Céline, the fatal flaw of existence- of what Malraux termed the human condition is inherent in man himself, not merely implicit in his situation.” Matthew 49 “La vérité, c'est une agonie qui n'en finit pas. La vérité de ce monde c'est la mort.” “C'est peut-être ça qu'on cherche à travers la vie, rien que cela, le plus grand chagrin possible pour devenir soi-même avant de mourir.” “Être seul c'est s'entraîner à la mort.” “Le cinéma, ce nouveau petit salarié de nos rêves, on peut l'acheter lui, se le procurer pour une heure ou deux, comme un prostitué.”...