ABSTRACT
Voyage au bout de la nuit (1932) is more overtly in dialogue with the traditions of literature than Céline’s other novels and is not so directly recuperable according to an autobiographical model.1 As such, it exhibits a more ambivalent play between the arena of the cultural heritage of literature, the participant world of Céline, and fictional manifestations of a context of situation. As Godard remarks, in Voyage the ‘échos de «littérature», apparemment pris on ne peut plus au sérieux, pourraient être considérés, de même que les passés simples, comme un effet de rémanence.’ (1985:158)
The position of Céline’s novel in the contempory cultural field differs from that of the radical avant-garde movements of Dada and Surrealism. Céline’s novel resembles Balzac’s in its appropriation and transformation of existing conventions, manifesting its similarity with the Naturalist novel (in its semantic domain) and the consciousness novel (in its techniques of narration). It presents a more complex relationship with literary tradition than the unremittingly negative refusal of identity of the Dada event. And, unlike the Surrealists, who set themselves up as a liminal group with a shared mission to transform the literary space, Céline, in Voyage, performs an individual infiltration of cultural territory, playing the role of the maverick enemy within the gates who cannot be categorized according to creed or group loyalties.
