L’École des cadavres

Céline’s third pamphlet, published less than a year after Bagatelles pour un massacre, intensified the controversy over Céline’s antisemitism, leading six months later, in May 1939, to the withdrawal of both titles from sale after Dr. Rouquès filed a defamation suit for “insults, public defamation” against Céline and “complicity” against his publisher, Denoël. The charge was justified: this pamphlet is arguably the most ferociously racist, antisemitic and hate-filled of the three, and one blind to the tragedy about to unfold: “Who has done the most for the small shopkeeper? Not Thorez — Hitler! Who is keeping us from war? Hitler! The communists (Jewish or Judaized) only want to send us to the slaughter, to have us die in Crusades. Hitler is a good breeder of peoples, he is on the side of Life, he cares about the life of peoples, even ours (…) I feel very friendly toward Hitler, very friendly toward all Germans, I find them brothers, and quite right to be so racist. It would grieve me enormously if they were ever defeated.” A Céline blind, or nearly so, who foresees fifty million dead in an imminent war…

A fine copy, beautifully bound by Patrice Goy.