Louis-Ferdinand Cline

Louis-Ferdinand Cline (French: [selin] ( listen)) was the pen name of Louis
Louis-Ferdinand Cline
Ferdinand Auguste Destouches (pronounced [detu]; 27 May 1894 1 July 1961), a
French novelist, pamphleteer and physician. He developed a new style of writing
that modernized French literature. His most famous work is the 1932 novel, Journey
to the End of the Night.

Cline used a working-class, spoken style of language in his writings, and attacked
what he considered to be the overly polished, "bourgeois" language of the
"academy". His works influenced a broad array of literary figures, not only in France
but also in the English-speaking world and elsewhere in the Western World; this
includes authors associated with modernism, existentialism, black comedy and the
Beat Generation.

However, Cline's vocal support for the Axis powers during the Second World War
and his authorship of some offensively antisemitic pamphlets, has meant that his
legacy as a cultural icon is a tangled one.

Louis-Ferdinand Cline on winning

the Prix Renaudot for his novel
Journey to the End of the Night in
Contents 1932
1 Life Born Louis Ferdinand
1.1 Early life
Auguste Destouches
1.2 World War I and Africa
27 May 1894
1.3 Becoming a doctor
Courbevoie, France
1.4 Becoming a writer
Died 1 July 1961 (aged 67)
1.5 Literary life and awards
1.6 Antisemitism, collaborationism and exile
Meudon, France
1.7 Later life and death Occupation Novelist,
pamphleteer, doctor
2 Work and legacy
Nationality French
3 Bibliography
4 See also
Notable
works Journey to the End
5 Notes of the Night (1932)
6 References Death on Credit
7 Further reading (1936)
8 External links Castle to Castle
(1968)

Life

Early life
The only child of Fernand Destouches and Marguerite-Louise-Cline Guilloux, he was born Louis Ferdinand Auguste Destouches in
1894 at Courbevoie, just outside Paris in the Seine dpartement (now Hauts-de-Seine). The family came originally from Normandy
on his father's side and Brittany on his mother's side. His father was a middle manager in an insurance company and his mother
owned a boutique where she sold antique lace.[1][2] In 1905 he was awarded his Certificat d'tudes, after which he worked as an
apprentice and messenger boy in various trades.[2] Between 1908 and 1910 his parents sent him to Germany and England for a year
in each country in order to acquire foreign languages for future employment.[2] From the time he left school until the age of eighteen
Cline worked in various jobs, leaving or losing them after only short periods of time. He often found himself working for jewellers,
first, at eleven, as an errand boy, and later as a salesperson for a local goldsmith. Although he was no longer being formally educated,
he bought schoolbooks with the money he earned, and studied by himself. It was around this time that Cline started to want to
become a doctor.[3]

World War I and Africa

In 1912, in what Cline described as an act of rebellion against his parents he joined the French army
, two years before the start of the
First World War and its mandatory French conscription. This was a time in France when, following the Moroccan crisis of 1911,
nationalism reached "fever pitch" a period one historian described as "The Hegemony of Patriotism" (19111914), particularly
affecting opinion in the lyces and grandes coles of Paris.[4]

In 1912, Cline began a three-year enlistment in the 12th Cuirassier Regiment stationed in Rambouillet.[2] At first he was unhappy
, he adapted, and eventually attained therank of Sergeant.[5] The beginning
with military life, and even considered deserting. However
of the First World War brought action to Cline's unit. On 25 October 1914, Cline volunteered to deliver a message, when others
were reluctant to do so because of heavy German fire. Near Ypres, during his attempt to deliver the message, he was wounded in his
right arm. (He was not wounded in the head, contrary to a popular rumor that he perpetuated.)[6] For his bravery, Cline was awarded
the mdaille militaire in November, and appeared one year later in the weeklyl'Illustr National (November 1915, p16).[2]

In March 1915, he was sent to London to work in the French passport office. While in London he married Suzanne Nebout but they
divorced one year later.[2] In September, his arm wounds were such that he was declared unfit for military duty and was discharged.
He returned to France, where he began working at a variety of jobs.

In 1916, Cline set out for Africa as a representative of the Sangha-Oubangui company. He was sent to the Cameroons and returned
to France in 1917.[2] Little is known about this trip except that it was unsuccessful.[7] After returning to France he worked for the
Rockefeller Foundation: as part of a team it was his job to travel to Brittany teaching people how to fight tuberculosis and improve
hygiene.[8]

Becoming a doctor
In June 1919, Cline went to Bordeaux and completed the second part of his baccalaurat. Through his work with the Institute Cline
had come into contact, and good standing, with Monsieur Follet, the director of the medical school in Rennes. On 11 August 1919,
Cline married Follet's daughter dith Follet, whom he had known for some time.[9] With Monsieur Follet's influence, Cline was
accepted as a student at the university. On 15 June 1920, his wife gave birth to a daughter, Colette Destouches. During this time, he
studied intensively obtaining certificates in physics, chemistry, and natural sciences. By 1923, three years after he had started the
medical program at Rennes, Cline had almost completed his medical degree. His doctoral thesis, The Life and Work of Ignaz
Semmelweis, completed in 1924, is actually considered to be his first literary work. Ignaz Semmelweis's contribution to medicine
"was immense and, according to Cline, was directly proportional to the misery of his life."[10] In 1924 Cline took up the post of
intern at a Paris maternity hospital.

Becoming a writer
In 1925, Cline left his family, never to return. Working for the newly founded League of Nations, he travelled to Switzerland,
England, the Cameroons, Canada, the United States, and Cuba. At this time he wrote the play
L'Eglise (1933; The Church).

In 1926, he visited America, and was sent to Detroit to study the conditions of the workers at the Ford Automotive Company. Seeing
the effects of the "assembly line" disgusted him. His article described the plant as a sensory attack on the worker, and how this attack
had literally made the worker part of the machine.
In 1928, Cline returned to medicine to establish a private practice inMontmartre, in the north of Paris, specializing inobstetrics.[11]

He ended his private practice in 1931 to work in apublic dispensary.

Literary life and awards

Cline's best-known work is considered to be Journey to the End of the Night (Voyage au bout de la nuit, 1932). It violated many of
the literary conventions of the time, using the rhythms and the vocabulary of slang and vulgar speech in a more consistent and
occasionally more difficult way than earlier writers, who had made similar attempts in the tradition of Franois Villon (notably mile
Zola). The book was a success, but Cline was not awarded the Prix Goncourt despite strong support. The award went to Guy
Mazeline's novel Les Loups (The Wolves). The voting was controversial enough to become the subject of a book (Goncourt 32 by
Eugne Saccomano, 1999). The first English translation was by John H. P. Marks in 1934. A more current English translation is by
Ralph Manheim in 1983.

In 1936, Cline published Mort crdit (Death on the Installment Plan), presenting an innovative, chaotic, and antiheroic vision of
human suffering. In it he extensively used ellipses throughout the text to enhance the rhythm and emphasise the style of speech. In
both these books he showed himself to be a great stylistic innovator and a masterly storyteller. French author Jean-Paul Sartre
publicly praised Cline at this time.

Antisemitism, collaborationism and exile

In 1935, British critic William Empson had written that Cline appeared to be "a man ripe for fascism".[12] Two years later Cline
began a series of pamphlets containing antisemitic themes: Bagatelles pour un massacre (Trifles for a Massacre) (1937), L'cole des
cadavres (The School of Corpses) (1938) and Les Beaux draps (The Fine Mess) (1941). The Fine Mess was last published in France
during the German occupation. These works were characterized by a virulent antisemitism, racism and bigotry. His Trifles for a
Massacre is an endless litany critical of French Jews and their influence on French society. Both The School of Corpsesand The Fine
Mess contain antisemitic themes.[13]

Before the war, Cline campaigned for an alliance between France and Nazi Germany.[14] In L'cole des cadavres he contrasted
Hitler with the French Communist party leaderMaurice Thorez, writing:

Who is the true friend of the people? Fascism is. Who has done the most for the working man? The USSR or Hitler?
[15]
Hitler has... Who has done the most for the small businessman? Not Thorez but Hitler!

During the Occupation of France, he wrote letters to several collaborationist journals, denouncing the Jews.[16] Even some Nazis
thought Cline's antisemitic pronouncements were so extreme as to be counter-productive. Bernhard Payr, the German superintendent
of propaganda in France, considered that Cline "started from correct racial notions" but his "savage, filthy slang" and "brutal
[17][18]
obscenities" spoiled his "good intentions" with "hysterical wailing".

When Germany invaded the Soviet Union in June 1941, he expressed his support for Jacques Doriot's recently founded
collaborationist force Legion of French Volunteers Against Bolshevism(LVF):

We do not think enough about the protection of the white Aryan race. Now is the time to act, because tomorrow will
be too late. ... Doriot behaved as he always has. This is a man ... one must work and campaign with. ... This Legion,
[19]
so maligned, so criticised, is proof of life. ... I tell you, the Legion it's very good, it is all that is good.

, and of what he called "Aryan baloney".[20][21]

Despite this, Cline could also be critical of Hitler

In February 1944, while Cline was having dinner in the German embassy in Paris with his friends Jacques Benoist-Mchin, Pierre
Drieu La Rochelle and Gen Paul, he asserted to German ambassador Otto Abetz that Hitler was dead and had been replaced by a
Jewish double.[22]
After Germany's defeat in 1945, Cline fled to Denmark. Named a collaborator, in 1950 he was convicted in absentia in France,
sentenced to one year of imprisonment and declared a national disgrace. He was subsequently granted amnesty and returned to
France in 1951.

Later life and death

Cline regained fame in later life with a trilogy of books which described his exile:
Castle to Castle, (describing the fall ofSchloss Sigmaringen), North and Rigadoon.

Following his return from exile he lamented his ruined reputation but never voiced
regret for his antisemitic works, rather preferring to make additional statements of
Holocaust denial.[23] He declared that "white Aryan Christian civilization" had
ended with Stalingrad and that early in his life he had recognized the Jews as
"exploiters."[24]

He settled in Meudon, where he was visited by several friends and artists, among
them the famous actress Arletty. He became famous among the Beat Movement.
Both William S. Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg who was Jewish visited him in
his Paris apartment during the 1950s. Cline died on 1 July 1961 of a ruptured
aneurysm, the day after finishing Rigadoon, and was buried in a small cemetery at
Drawing of Louis-Ferdinand Cline
Bas Meudon (part of Meudon in the Hauts-de-Seine dpartement). His house burned
down during the night of 23 May 1968, destroying manuscripts, furniture and
mementos, but leaving his parrot Toto alive in the adjacent aviary.

Work and legacy

Cline's writings are examples of black comedy, where unfortunate and often terrible things are described humorously. While his
writing is often hyper-real and its polemic qualities can often be startling, his chief strength lies in his ability to discredit almost
everything and yet not lose a sense of enraged humanity. Pessimism pervades Cline's fiction as his characters sense failure, anxiety,
nihilism, and inertia. Will Self has described Cline's work as an "invective, which despite the reputation he would later earn as a
rabid antisemite is aimed against all classes and races of people with indiscriminate abandon".[25] The narrative of betrayal and
exploitation, both real and imagined, corresponds with his personal life. His two truest loves, his wife, Lucette Almanzor, and his cat,
Bbert, are always mentioned with kindness and warmth.

Where some critics see a progressive disintegration of personality reflected in the stylistic incoherence of his books based on his life
during the war (Guignol's Band, D'un chteau l'autre and Nord), others claim that the books are less incoherent than intentionally
fragmented. They see the development of the style introduced withJourney to the End of the Night continuing, suggesting that Cline
maintained his faculties in clear working order to the end of his days. In Conversations with Professor Y (1955) Cline defends his
style, indicating that his heavy use of the ellipse and his disjointed sentences are an attempt to embody human emotion in written
language. Cline saw literature as the art of mapping human emotions on a piece of paper. Such a mapping is far from natural, and it
distorts the emotions. He likens it to looking at a stick partially immersed in a tub filled with water. Because of the refraction of light
you see the ruler as if it were broken.Template:Luce, Stanford pp. 113-114 If your aim is to give as accurate a picture of a straight
ruler as is possible in this environment, then before immersing the ruler in the water you have to bend it in such a way that after
refraction it will look straight. If you want to convey human emotions as accurately as you can on a piece of paper, you must bend
them before describing them on the page. According to Cline, the tool for bending emotions is style.

Journey to the End of the Night is among the most acclaimed novels of the 20th century. Few first novels have had a comparable
impact. Written in an explosive and highly colloquial style, the book shocked most critics but found immediate success with the
French reading public, which responded enthusiastically to the violent misadventures of its petit-bourgeois antihero, Bardamu, and
his characteristic nihilism. The author's military experiences in World War I, his travels to colonial French West Africa, New York,
[26]
and his return to postwar France all provide episodes within the sprawling narrative.
Guignol's Band and its companion novel London Bridge center on the London underworld during World War I. In London Bridge a
sailboat appears, bearing the name King Hamsun, obviously a tribute to Knut Hamsun, another collaborationist writer. Cline's
autobiographical narrator recounts his disastrous partnership with a mystical Frenchman (intent on financing a trip to Tibet by
winning a gas-mask competition); his uneasy relationship with London's pimps and prostitutes and their common nemesis, Inspector
Matthew of Scotland Yard.[27]

Cline's legacy survives in the writings of Samuel Beckett, Queneau and Jean Genet among others. Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clzio,
Robbe-Grillet, and Barthes expressed admiration for him. In the United States, writers Charles Bukowski, Henry Miller, Jack
Kerouac, Joseph Heller, Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., William S. Burroughs, Edward Abbey, Jim Morrison and Ken Kesey owe an obvious
debt to the author of Voyage au bout de la nuit, yet not in terms of style in writing, but as major aesthetic, amoralistic influence.[28]
Bukowski wrote "'first of all read Cline; the greatest writer of 2,000 years"[29] Cline was also an influence on Irvine Welsh, Gnter
Grass, Karl Parkinson (The Blocks) andRaymond Federman.

The antisemitic books of the 1930s have not been reprinted because Cline's wife has forbidden their publication. At the 50th
anniversary of Cline's death in 2011, Frdric Mitterrand, the French Minister of Culture and Communication, announced that
[30]
Cline would be excluded from the list of 500 French Cultural Icons to be honoured that year because of his antisemitic writings.

Bibliography
Carnet du Cuirassier Destouches, 1913
Des vagues short story, 1917
The Life and Work of Semmelweis(La Vie et l'uvre de Philippe Ignace Semmelweis), Ph. D. thesis, 1924; tr. by
Robert Allerton Parker, Little, Brown and Company, Boston, 1937
La Quinine en thrapeutique, 1925, published as Docteur Louis Destouches (untranslated)
Journey to the End of the Night(Voyage au bout de la nuit), 1932; tr. by John H. P. Marks, 1934
The Church (L'glise), 1933; tr. by Mark Spitzer and Simon Green, Green Integer, 2003
Hommage mile Zola, a 1933 speech that was published in 1936
Death on Credit (Mort crdit), 1936; tr. by John H. P. Marks, Little, Brown and Company, Boston, 1938 aka Death
on the Installment Plan(US), tr. by Ralph Manheim
Mea Culpa, 1936; tr. by Robert Allerton Parker, Little, Brown and Company, Boston, 1937
Trifles for a Massacre (Bagatelles pour un massacre), 1937; translated anonymously
School for Corpses (L'cole des cadavres), 1938; tr. by Szandor Kuragin, 2016,
http://schoolforcorpses.wordpress.com
A Nice Mess (Les Beaux Draps), 1941 (untranslated)
Guignol's Band, 1944; tr. by Bernard Frechtman and Jack T. Nile, 1954, Vision Press., London
Reply to Charges of Treason Made by the French Department of Justice(Rponses aux accusations formules
contre moi par la justice franaise au titre de trahison et reproduites par la Police Judiciaire danoise au cours de mes
interrogatoires, pendant mon incarcration 19451946 Copenhague , 6 November 1946; tr. by Julien Cornell, South
Atlantic Quarterly 93, no. 2, 1994
Cannon-Fodder (Casse-pipe), 1949; tr. by Kyra De Coninck and Billy Childish, Hangman, 1988
Fable for Another Time (Ferie pour une autre fois), 1952; tr. by Mary Hudson, U of Nebraska Press, 2003
Normance, 1954; tr. by Marlon Jones, Dalkey Archive Press, 2009; sequel to Fable for Another Time
Conversations with Professor Y(Entretiens avec le Professeur Y), 1955; tr. by Stanford Luce, Dalkey Archive Press,
2006
Castle to Castle (D'un chteau l'autre), 1957; tr. by Ralph Manheim, Delacorte Press, New York, 1968
North (Nord), 1960; tr. by Ralph Manheim, Delacorte Press, New York, 1972
London Bridge: Guignol's Band II(Le Pont de Londres Guignol's band II), published posthumously in 1964; tr. by
Dominic Di Bernardi, Dalkey Archive Press, 1995
Rigadoon (Rigodon), completed in 1961 but published posthumously in 1969; .trby Ralph Manheim, Delacorte
Press, New York, 1974

See also
Henri-Robert Petit
Notes
1. Chronology given in the Pleiade edition of his novels, volume I,Bibliothque de la Pliade, ditions Gallimard,
ISBN 978-2-07-011000-1, pp. LV-LVI.
2. O'Connell, David (1976).Twayne's World Author Series: Louis Ferdinand-Cline. Twayne Publishers. ISBN 0-8057-
6256-6. p. 14
3. McCarthy, Patrick (1975). Cline: A Biography. Viking Press. ISBN 0140045341.
4. David Cottington, Cubism in the Shadow of War: The Avant-garde and Politics in Paris, 19051914(New Haven and
London: Yale University Press, 1998), pp. 3337
5. McCarthy p. 22
6. McCarthy p. 24
7. McCarthy p. 26
8. McCarthy p. 27
9. McCarthy p. 28
10. McCarthy p. 30
11. O'Connell, David (1976).Twayne's World Author Series: Louis Ferdinand-Cline. Twayne Publishers. ISBN 0-8057-
6256-6. p. 15
12. Empson, William, Some Versions of the Pastoral, Chatto & Windus, 1935, p.11
13. Fraser, Nicholas (2002-11-26).The Voice of Modern Hatred: Tracing the Rise of Neo-Fascism in Europe(https://boo
ks.google.com/books?id=B_OS0S5t9tgC). Woodstock, NY: Overlook Press, The. p. 36.ISBN 978-1-58567-332-2.
Retrieved 4 April 2012.
14. Stephen E. Atkins, Holocaust Denial As an International Movement
, ABC-CLIO, 2009, p. 87.
15. Axelrod, Mark (2004). Borges' Travel, Hemingway's Garage: SecretHistories. University of Alabama Press. p. 101.
16. See the article lettres aux journaux in Philippe Almras,Dictionnaire Cline, Plon. Also, "Notre combat pour la
nouvelle France socialiste", reprinted inMmoire juive et ducation; 9 July 1943, in the collaborationist journalJe
suis partout.
17. Edward Andrew, "George Grant's Celine, Thoughts on the Relation of Litereature and Art", Arthur Davis (ed),George
Grant and the Subversion of Modernity, University of Toronto Press, 1996, p.83.
18. Grard Loiseaux, La Littrature de la dfaite et de la collaboration, Fayard, 1995.
19. On ny pense pas assez cette protection de la race blanche. Cest maintenant quil faut agir , parce que demain il
sera trop tard. [] Doriot sest comport comme il la toujours fait. Cest un homme il faut travailler, militer avec
Doriot. [] Cette lgion si calomnie, si critique, c'est la preuve de la vie. [] Moi, je vous le dis, la Lgion, c'est
trs bien, c'est tout ce qu'il y a de bien". Interview with Cline. "Ce que l'auteur du V
oyage au bout de la nuit pense
de tout a ", L'mancipation nationale, 21 novembre 1941, inCahiers Cline, n 8, pp. 134-135.
20. O'Connell p. 32
21. Introduction to Conversations with Professor Yby Stanford Luce p. xii
22. Jacques Benoist-Mchin, lpreuve du temps. Souvenirs, Perrin, 2011
23. Atkins, Stephen E. (April 2009).Holocaust denial as an international movement(https://books.google.com/books?id=
M9Uj6u6b-ZIC). ABC-CLIO. pp. 878.ISBN 978-0-313-34538-8. Retrieved 4 April 2012.
24. Cline, Louis-Ferdinand.Castle to Castle. New York: Delacorte Press. pp. v, xii.
25. Will Self (10 September 2006)."Cline's Dark Journey"(https://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/10/books/review/Self.t.ht
ml). The New York Times. Retrieved 17 July 2010.
26. The Nation, quoted in the New Directions Paperbook (Eighteenth Printing) of
Journey to the End of the Night
27. Dalkey Archive Press, London Bridge translation by Dominic Di Bernardi
28. O'Connell p. 148
29. Bukowski, Charles. Notes of a Dirty Old Man.San Francisco: City Light Books 1969. p. 69.
30. Mitterrand retire Cline des clbrations nationales ,Le Figaro, 21 janvier 2011 (http://www.lefigaro.fr/livres/2011/
01/21/03005-20110121ARTFIG00637-mitterrand-retire-celine-des-celebrations-nationales.php)
References
"Louis-Ferdinand Cline Is Dead". The New York Times. 5 July 1961. p. 33.
The Nation, quoted on back of New Directions Paperbook Eighteenth Printing ofJourney to the End of the Night
Philadelphia Inquirer, quoted on back of Dalkey Archive Press French Literature Series ranslation
T by Dominic Di
Bernardi of London Bridge
Dalkey Archive Press Translation by Dominic Di Bernardi of London Bridge

Further reading
L'Art de Cline et son tempsby Michel Bounan (1997)
Critical Essays on Louis-Ferdinand Clineedited by W. K. Buckley (1988)
Cline's Imaginative Spaceby J. Carson (1989)
The Golden Age of Louis-Ferdinand Clineby N. Hewitt (1987)
Cline: Man of Hate by Bettina Knapp (1974)
Introduction to Conversations with Professor Yby Stanford Luce (1986)
Louis-Ferdinand Clineby David O'Connell (1976)
Cline and his Vision by Erika Ostrovsky (1967)
Louis-Ferdinand Clineby M. Thomas (1980)
Cline: A Biography by Frdric Vitoux, trans. by Jesse Browner (1992).
The Crippled Giant by M. Hindus (1950)
Biographical Dictionary of the Extreme Right Since 1890edited by Philip Rees (1991, ISBN 0-13-089301-3)
Notes of a Dirty Old Manby Charles Bukowski p. 86 (1969)
Gran Enciclopedia Catalana, edited by Joan Carreras i Mart (1977, ISBN 84-300-5511-8)
Cline seul, by Stphane Zagdanski, edited by Gallimard, (1993)

External links
Trifles for a Massacre English translation
Petri Liukkonen. "Louis-Ferdinand Cline". Books and Writers
Louis-Ferdinand Cline Collectionat the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas at Austin
Louis Destouches/Cline, a double imposture, a conference held on 22 May 1999 about Cline and Semmelweis
Society of Cline Studies French association that organizes international symposia on Cline

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