Mea culpa. Suivi de La vie et l’oeuvre de Semmelweis

Mea culpa was Céline’s fourth published book, and the only one of his pamphlets to be reissued, as it contains not a single line of the rampant antisemitism found in the later ones. The indictment here is directed against communism, at a time rich in such writings (Gide, Aragon…). “The great pretension to happiness, that is the enormous imposture (…) that makes people so venomous, vile, unbearable. There is no happiness in existence, only misfortunes more or less great, more or less delayed…” Deliberately positioned outside the discourse of the intelligentsia, Céline, after the relative failure of Mort à crédit published the previous year, increasingly turned his pen toward political subjects, with the consequences we know.

The text is followed by La Vie et l’Œuvre de Semmelweis, marking the first public edition of Céline’s doctoral thesis, defended and published in 1924.