I'd try any reader's patience if I copied every passage from Celine that moved me. I'm posting the following because it introduced a lucid moment into an otherwise disordered day. I also feel like it offers some consolation to the late twenties/early thirties set, if only to know that someone else has traversed the dark spaces of this time in life and managed to do so with eyes open. This paradox of clear vision in deep darkness is an important figure for Celine and I find it gives me a sort of hope, despite the often melancholic tone. Without further ado, this passage is from Journey to the End of the Night, Ralf Manheim translation.
In the whole of your absurd past you discover so much that's absurd, so much deceit and credulity, that it might be a good idea to stop being young this minute, to wait for youth to break away from you and pass you by, to watch it going away, receding in the distance, to see all its vanity, run your hand through the empty space it has left behind, take a last look at it, and then start moving, make sure your youth has really gone, and then calmly, all by yourself, cross to the other side of Time to see what people and things really look like.
To be clear, I'm not encouraging a radical break with the past. But, I appreciate seeing the temptation laid bare in all of its metaphysical seductiveness. By giving voice to the desire, I feel like Celine relieves some of the anxiety that builds from its inscrutable force. I guess, in a sense, this is a typical romantic trope: using poetry to transform pain into a sublime aesthetic of self-reflection. But Celine's black humor keeps the reader from lapsing into a solipsistic enthusiasm. There's no heroism of spirit here, only an excess of vision that borders on the neurotic. And we are the beneficiaries of this excess. At least, I like to think so.
What an excellent excerpt. I'd be curious to hear your counterargument against the temptation Celine's passage exudes. This time in life does seem to have the character of a teetering balance. Though that may be another vanity.
ReplyDeleteAs a suggestion, the first thing I did in reading this was Google Celine - unless this is a text-only thing, hypertext excluded, an introductory link would be useful for readers (like me) who aren't up on the subject.
In my slog through Thomas Mann's 'The Magic Mountain' there have been several passages, not of self-reflection but I believe of self-education, which have been very touching.
I don't exactly have a counterargument to Celine's proposition. But, I do think there are hidden stakes here. Passing to the other side of time implies a sort of self-imposed exile from action, from the creative (and destructive) flow of history. On the other side of time where we "see things as they really are," are we not in fact seeing a sort of reified image of the status quo? We have the comfort of having transcended time, of having escaped from its dialectical violence; however, there is no real possibility for transcendence, only a capitulation to the prevailing forces which naturalizes their otherwise arbitrary function. In this way, I think Celine's proposition betrays a certain bourgeois moralism, warning against the imprudence of action against the status quo. What's impressive is how he captures the metaphysical dimensions of this proposition, as if it were the choice between seeing things as they appear and seeing things as they really are, between the world and its ideal form or image etc.
ReplyDelete"the other side of time". time considered spatially, as a sheet or ball or a region or a gulf? we are already on one side of time, moving across it; from this side we can't "see things as they really are". when celine speaks of crossing to the other side of time, does he mean a radical acceleration of the natural aging process whereby we'd find ourselves on the other side immediately, with the benefit of our age and experience (and the perspective it promises) without having actually experienced it? or is this a crossing more like an extra-dimensional shift that lets us see the whole plane from some hypothetical objective vantage point, everything formerly bewildering now obvious, even elegant in its clear pattern of relations?
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