ABSTRACT
The letters that Céline and I exchanged over a two-year period from early 1947 to early 1949 are represented in the following selected excerpts. Some may regret, as I do, that I did not save copies of my first few letters to Céline. At the time, unfortunately, I had no idea that they would initiate a significant body of correspondence. Thus, what is presented here begins with Céline’s first letter to me, dated March 1, where my own earliest surviving letter is dated three months later, on June 5. Céline’s letters were all addressed to me from the town of Korsör, where he spent the greater part of his exile under the protective custody of the Danish government. My own letters usually carry an indication of the place of writing, and the dates of both his letters and mine are provided wherever possible. Céline’s style of punctuation was very erratic, usually using ellipses or dashes instead of periods. The translation that follows attempts to reproduce the effect of his style rather than following in all cases his exact punctuation. Because of the great number of stylistic ellipses in Céline’s letters, editorial omissions have been indicated by three asterisks.
