Mort à crédit
One of 22 hors commerce copies [unexpurgated] on Imperial Japan paper (no. XXI).
Signed presentation inscription: “A monsieur Charles Hayoit, en toute amitié LF Céline,” on the third blank leaf.
Posterity has restored the book to its rightful place among the greatest works of French literature. With inspired rage, uncommon vigor and a truculent ferocity, the narrator recounts his childhood, marked by poverty and destitution. Céline depicts his pathetic daily existence with extreme radicalism. Deliberately excessive in its narration, the story combines the grotesque with horror, and its form reveals its author’s constant pursuit of style, for Céline held that only style ultimately mattered. Even more than Le Voyage au bout de la nuit, Mort à crédit marked Céline’s entry into what he himself called a “path of spontaneous refinement.”
It should be noted that only the hors commerce copies of the first three paper issues contain the complete, unexpurgated text, which would not be made available to the public until the 1982 Pléiade edition: “Sex is aggressively present in Mort à crédit… In 1936, the suppression, at the publisher’s request, of the most scandalous words or passages had somewhat shifted the meaning of the provocation.”
From the Charles Hayoit library, with bookplate (signed presentation copy, then Sotheby’s, 2005, no. 178).
On 6 May 1936, Denoël wrote to Descaves, who was eager to read a novel whose publication date had been repeatedly postponed: “Here are the first 544 pages of ‘Mort à crédit.’ I do not want to keep you waiting any longer for this magnificent work. I will receive the ending on Friday evening and will have it brought to you at once.” These must therefore have been proofs.
In the same letter he adds: “And next week you will receive the unexpurgated copy on japon intended for you. I will include, for ease of reading, an ordinary copy as well.”
If the schedule was kept, the japon copy intended for Descaves must have come off the press during the week of 11 to 17 May. It is not known what Gen Paul did in the japon copy of Mort à crédit (a watercolor as frontispiece, perhaps?), but it seems unlikely he produced it overnight. Céline and Gen Paul must therefore have delivered Descaves’s “enhanced” deluxe copy after 18 May 1936. It is impossible to be more precise.