| Title | : | North (French Literature) |
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | |
| ISBN | : | 1564781429 |
| ISBN-10 | : | 9781564781420 |
| Language | : | English |
| Format Type | : | Paperback |
| Number of Pages | : | 454 |
| Publication | : | First published January 1, 1960 |
North (French Literature) Reviews
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Philip Roth said “Céline is my Proust! . . . Even if his anti-Semitism made him an abject, intolerable person. To read him, I have to suspend my Jewish conscience, but I do it, because anti-Semitism isn’t at the heart of his books… . Céline is a great liberator.” (New Yorker, 2013)
Martin Amis has often spoken of the "accelerated novel." It's clear to me now that Céline was an early accelerator. Céline is his own most captivating character. Reading him is to understand just how absurd and homicidal humans can be. Anthropocene is a word he never uses, but it's clear his books track the era's "progress."
Just a few notes to give you a sense. This novel is the second of a trilogy. I am reading them in reverse order. The first is
Castle to Castle and the last,
Rigadoon.
Céline was sort of the French equivalent of the American
Ezra Pound. Though to my knowledge, Pound never addressed his Nazi collaboration in print, as Céline does here. He was tried for treason, but declared incompetent and locked up in St. Elizabeth's, an asylum in Washington D.C. Céline wrote three or four anti-semitic pamphlets, at least one of which was removed from circulation by the Vichy collaborators, presumably because if its vitriol. Céline was cleared by a military tribunal in 1951, though I'm not sure what rationale was used. Maybe it was just his great literary fame.
The book starts with a gathering of "anti-Hitlerites" at the Simplon Hotel in Baden-Baden. (Today's Brenners Park Hotel & Spa.) The date is 20 July 1944. It's been reported that an attempt has been made on Hitler's life at the Wolfsschanze, but not whether he lives. Many of the people in the hotel are said by the fictional Céline to have been part of the plot.
Céline, a doctor, is asked by the local Nazi honcho to go to certain hotel rooms and check on the well-being of others. In the first room he sees a picture of Adolf Hitler hanging upside down with a piece of black crape across it. An orgy has been in progress; people lie about in various states of undress.
"They looked pretty dumb, loving it up as if the thing had come off! . . . that Adolf wasn't dead! . . . not in the least! . . . the blond colonel and the elevator boy lying on the carpet . . . drunk! . . . gagging." (p. 24)
Antisemite and Nazi collaborator Céline, in flight from France during World War II, thinks of his neighbors back home viciously stripping his home if its valuables. It's clear, he says a number of times, that had he stayed he and his loved ones would have been mobbed to death.
". . . our place on rue Girardon, I'm thinking it must be the same [looted] right this minute, they must be helping themselves . . . bet they've got sweet ordinances! [allowing them to do so] . . . and we'll never see any of the stuff again . . . one side or the other, Boches or brethren, don't worry! all the same, crooks, scavengers, vampires of disaster . . . bloodsuckers, phony lunatics, shysters barge in! . .. take everything you've got! . . . bad reputation? string him up!" (p. 58)
Céline starves himself because he thinks he will be poisoned by his German hosts. He can't sleep because he feels he or his wife Lili may be stabbed in the night. Never is any attempt made on their lives but he's sick to death with fear of what might happen. What us this but hypervigilance? Mental illness. My point is that he never depicts himself in cushy circumstances. He meets conscientious objectors, gypsies (Roma), SS men, Countesses and other remnants of the old nobility, but never does he feel himself safe. And he is forever suspect of any good turn done for him.
". . . we were talking about the picnic under the sequoias . .. Lili, Le Vig, and me, we've agreed not to touch a thing . . . but we've got to be polite, we pretend . . . Lili hands me a sandwich . . . another . . . Le Vig too . . . I've got enormous pockets . . . only one hand free, but it's very deft. . . I think . . . the only trouble. . . if they see my pockets swelling up . . . they won't like it ... I throw a few sandwiches behind me . . . and I chew . . . and chew some more . . . and tell the old battleax that it's really amazing all she's seen in Paris!. . . . . . have I got pockets? . . . ten! twelve on each side . . . leberwurst! . . . foie gras ... it spreads, it melts, it oozes . . . my pants are full of it ... I'll be afraid to move . . . horrible when I have to . . . but Inge interrupts her mother . . . time to get up . . . the picnic's over . . . at least a three-hour drive ahead of us . . . the horses are rested." (p. 271)
440 pages. So a lot more here I'm not even touching on. The end is so frenetic I am reminded of certain Marx Brothers films. -
گفتار اندر معرفی کتاب
شمال دومین عنوان، از سه‌گانه‌ی «تبعید» به قلم دکتر لویی فردینان اوگوسته دتوش ملقب به «سلین» می‌باشد. عنوان نخست این سه‌گانه «قصر به قصر» نام دارد که در ایران توسط استاد «مهدی سحابی» ترجمه و نهایتا توسط نشر مرکز چاپ و منتشر گردیده است، و عنوان سوم این سه گانه نیز «ریگودون» نام دارد که در آینده به هنگام مطالعه‌ی نسخه‌ی انگلیسی به بررسی ترجمه‌ی آن نیز خواهم پرداخت.
خواننده‌ی ایرانی و به خصوص علاقه‌مند به دکتر سلین باید آگاه باشد که به هنگام مطالعه‌ی این سه اثر چه خواهد خواند تا انتظارات خود را پیش از آغاز مطالعه تعدیل نماید. این سه عنوان هیچ شباهتی با عنوان‌های ناب «سفر به انتهای شب» و «مرگ قسطی» از مجموعه‌ی «فردینان باردامو» ندارند و اساسا رمان نیستند. اگر بخواهم به ساده‌ترین شکل ممکن برایتان وصفشان کنم، می‌گویم سه گانه‌ی تبعید، دفتر خاطرات دکتر سلین در دوران در به دری از اینجا به آنجا به همراه همسرش لیلی و گربه‌اش «بِبِر» است. سلین با همان ادبیات ناب، بی‌آلایش و عریان خود از وقایع زندگی‌اش برای ما نوشته و بنابراین خواننده‌ای که به سراغ این سه اثر می‌رود باید صبور باشد و به رگبار ناله‌های دکتر مجبوب ما گوش جان فرا دهد وگرنه در همان ابتدای کار از هر کدام از این سه کتاب خسته خواهد شد.
گفتار اندر جهل مترجم و سودجویی ناشر ایرانی
شمال توسط مترجمی نادان، کم سواد و بی‌شناخت نسبت به شخصیت و از همه مهمتر قلم دکتر سلین، به نام آقای «محمود سلطانیه» به صورت کاملا مبتدیانه و نیمه‌کاره ترجمه و این ترجمه که به معنی واقعی کلمه یکی از ریدمان‌های ادبی‌ست توسط ناشرِ سودجو، فاسد و جیب‌بری به نام «جامی» بدون هیچ توضیحی به اهل کتاب و جامعه‌ی کتاب‌دوست ایرانی چاپ و منتشر گردیده است.
بارها از اهل کتاب شنیده‌ام که منظور محمود سلطانیه از اینکه در صفحه‌ی پایینی ترجمه‌ی خود نوشته «ادامه دارد» این است که ادامه‌ی داستان کتاب بعدی سه گانه یعنی ریگودون است! که این نظری کاملا اشتباه است. البته که وقایع در هر سه کتاب به ترتیب به وقوع پیوسته‌اند اما صفحه‌ی آخر ترجمه‌ی فارسی محمودسلطانیه، دقیقا صفحه‌ی ۲۱۷ کتاب انگلیسی‌ست که تعداد صفحات این کتاب که از روی آن مطالعه نمودم ۴۵۴صفحه است. این مورد به ما نشان می‌دهد ایشان حتی نیمی از کتاب را نیز ترجمه ننموده و در طی سال‌ها هیچ توضیحی در مورد این حرکت مبتدیانه و سودجویانه توسط مترجم و ناشر ارائه نگردیده است. بنابراین به خواننده‌ی ایرانی و علاقه‌مند به دکتر سلین صمیمانه پیشنهاد می‌کنم که پول در جیب چنین ناشر فاسد و سودجویی بابت خرید کتاب نریزند.
در شمال چه خواهیم خواند؟
کتاب با مقدمه‌ای بسیار خوب در باب معرفی دکتر سلین به قلم آقای «کورت ونه‌گات»، نویسنده‌ی امریکایی آغاز می‌گردد. سلین، نویسنده‌ی محبوب من است و پیشتر اطلاعاتی از او داشتم اما این مقدمه به من کمک کرد تا اطلاعات جدیدتری از او بدست آورم نظیر برخورد جسمی که در جنگ به سرش خورد و باعث شد، در موقعیت‌های مختلف در زندگی بی‌ارتباط با شرایط لبخندی غیرارادی بزند که چون مطالعه‌ی کافی در حوزه‌ی روان‌شناسی ندارم، نمی‌دانم این چه نوع بیماری‌ای محسوب می‌گردد.
روایت وقایع در شمال، با یک گردهمایی که توسط مخالفان هیتلر در «بادن-بادن»، مورخ بیستم جولای ۱۹۴۴ برگزار گردیده بود، آغاز می‌گردد. سلین، همسرش و گربه‌اش از فرانسه به آلمان گریخته‌اند و در سفر در فکر این است که همسایه‌اش هرچه اقلام قیمتی در خانه‌اش قرار دارد را به سرقت خواهد برد. او با ورود به آلمان نگران است که مسمومش کنند و به همین دلیل تا مجبور نشود غذا نمی‌خورد و به خود گرسنگی می‌دهد. شب‌ها نمی‌خوابد چون فکر می‌کند ممکن است مورد سوقصد یک آلمانی واقع شوند و در یک جمع‌بندی او از سایه‌ی خود می‌ترسید. ترس سلین برای من غریبه و بیگانه نبود و خود در روزهای ابتدایی مهاجرتم آن را تجربه کرده و از سایه‌ی خود نیز می‌ترسیدم. سلین در ۴۵۴ صفحه بصورت رگباری به شرح وقایع پرداخت و تلاشی برای بهتر شدن شرایط انجام نمی‌داد، او پذیرفته بود که نمی‌توان چیزی را تغییر داد و صرفا می‌بایست زندگی را به شکلی پیش برد که از بین نرفت. قلم سلین در این کتاب نیز آغشته به طنز سیاه و مختص به خود اوست که همیشه بوده، گاهی با تمام حرصی که می‌خوردم و می‌خواستم سر خود را به دیوار بکوبم لبخند به روی لبم می‌نشست، اما آن لبخند از مرگ نیز تلخ‌تر بود.
در پایان امیدوارم که عمرم آن‌قدر کفاف دهد که روزی «ریگودون» را نیز مطالعه نمایم تا بفهمم مقصد این در به دری نهایتا کجا بود.
فایل ای‌پاب کتاب را در کانال تلگرام آپلود نموده‌ام،در صورت نیاز می‌توانید آن‌را از لینک زیر دانلود نمایید
https://t.me/reviewsbysoheil/655
سیزدهم مردادماه یک‌هزار و چهارصد و دو -
By the time cranky French anti-patriot Louis-Ferdinand Celine scratched out North, he had wandered a far distance from the truculent cataclysms of his Journey to the End of the Night. Celine had slipped from acclaimed iconoclast to outsider disgrace. Branded an anti-Semite, reviled as a Nazi sympathizer, Dr. Destouches had etched a paper trail to support both those assessments. North depicts the squalid exile of Celine, his wife and his cat (the cat is much more fleshed-out than the wife), accompanied by a neurasthenic French actor, in a Nazi German countryside darkened by perpetual clouds of RAF bombers on flybys toward dumping deluges of ordnance on Berlin, 70 miles away. The book corrals a scurvy crew of feckless killers, ruthless refugees and aristocratic buffoons and shuffles the human rubble along for nearly 500 pages. North exhibits no conceit of plot and no identifiable narrative drive, is exempt of sympathetic characters and is narrated with far more score-settling complaint than apology. These chapters were written through the hindsight of three prison stints and in the foreshadow of a death that wouldn’t stay away for much more than a year, perspectives reflected in the narrator’s unrelenting humors of lamentation. Reading North took just a little less than forever—just as it had my first time through as a snoozy youth with cigarette burns in all my clothes—but as the last 40 pages closed out, I was already missing Louis-Ferdinand’s whiney extolment of the human condition, not a complex of frailties and refined sensibilities, but a brutish will to endure that is every bit sacred for being entirely profane.
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Céline nunca desilude: foi com este pensamento que terminei a leitura deste magnífico livro.
A leitura desta obra trouxe-me à memória uma outra: Kaputt, de Curzio Malaparte. Um livro denso e tortuoso onde este autor faz uma viagem similiar à de Céline.
A escrita de Céline não é subserviente a adjectivos bonitos e metáforas polidas.
Nasce e permanece crua, sombria. Persegue-nos até ao fim, indiferente, desassossega-nos. Permanece. Insiste em ser lembrada. Serve-nos o coração fétido do homem. Faz-nos desacreditar.
Uma descida aos infernos da Alemanha nazi, numa peregrinação de desencanto, cheia de apátridas e onde apenas a morte (mais do que a vida!), é a única capaz de revelar a verdadeira igualdade fraterna dos homens.
Excelente. A cada obra sua, percebo que será sempre o meu autor favorito.
~
"...é que não interessa onde ou quando, haja paz, calmaria, guerra, convulsões, são tantas as vaginas, os estômagos, as vergas, as fuças, que não sabemos onde os meter! são às pazadas!... e os corações?... extremamente raros! desde há quinhentos milhões de anos os pénis e os tubos gástricos já não têm conta, e os corações?... contam-se pelos dedos!..." -
Kakvo je samo iskustvo bilo citati ovu knjigu. Selin je jedan veliki genije, majstor svog zanata! Nacin na koji on poima stvarnost je moguc samo za ljude visoke inteligencije. Uz to on je talentovan, talentovan za zivot, ne samo za pisanje. Bas zbog svega ovoga je i najebao kao niko. Putovanje Nakraj Noci, Smrt na Kredit, Od zamka do Zamka, Sever....... Samo citajte, uzivajte. Veliki Selin.
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One of the best books I have ever read! By turns grotesque and savagely funny, Céline is in top form here.
Who knows how much of this story is fictionalized, but the writer - a Nazi collaborator - did flee Paris as the Allies invaded the continent at the end of WWII.
The journey is a harrowing one but only Céline could make such a thing laugh out loud funny.
HIGHLY recommended. -
I wish I could go on adventures with Celine and his wife and his cat
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سه ستاره دادم به ترجمه نه به کتاب!!
آخه مترجم گرامی آقای محمود سلطانیه!کجای دنیا کتابی رو نصفه ترجمه میکنند؟!انتهای کتاب نوشتن ادامه دارد !!هشت سال از چاپ کتاب گذشته و هنوز ادامه کتاب ترجمه و چاپ نشده!
افسوس -
The image of Celine, his wife, best homey and THEIR CAT wandering through bombed out europe during the war, alternating stops between resistance and nazi strongholds is one you will never forget.
Great because it's true (for the most part, I think). -
کتاب ته ندارد، یعنی در واقع ادامه ای دارد که ترجمه نشده، در ویکیپدیا نوشته بعدش ریگادون است. کتاب ابتدا هم ندارد، در ویکیپدیا نوشته قبلش «قصر به قصر» است، که این یکی ترجمه شده، اما چون حواسم نبود که در کتابخانه دارمش و هیچ جای مقدمه به آن اشاره ای نشده متاسفانه نخواندمش
داستان در هتلی در سوییس شروع می شود، آقای سلین مثل خودش دکتر است و زن دارد، اولین بار است که داستانی از سلین میخوانم و ایشان متاهل است، اما تقریبا شخصیتش هیچ جایی حضور ندارد، بیشترین محبتی که آقای نویسنده به زنش کرده فصل آخر بود که برایش از آشپزخانه ی روس ها یک قابلمه سوپ دزدید، تقریبا هیچ مکالمه ای با هم ندارند و جز اینکه با او از این شهر به شهر بعدی می رود تقریبا هیچ نقشی هم در داستان ندارد
نویسنده زبانش به تندی «دار و دسته ی دلقک ها» و «مرگ قسطی» نیست و اوضاع انقدر همیشه بحرانی است که فرصتی ندارد برایش در زندگی بدشانسی های عجیب پیش بیاید، و از آدم های اطرافش رذالت ببیند، به عبارتی جنگ است دیگراینجا در این کتاب هیچ کس حتی ادای خوب بودن هم در نمیاورد
از شخصیت ها فقط «هاراس» یاد آدم می ماند، «لویگ» هم در طول این همه صفحه هیچ حرفی ندارد بزند یا شاید هم در واقعیت زده و سلین انقدرمطالب خودش مهم تر بوده، حوصله نداشته بنویسد
کتاب خیلی خوب است، نثر سلین مگر می تواند بد باشد، کسی که این همه از آدم ها بدش می آمده -
Run Ferdinand! Run!
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Hilarious. Céline translated by Manheim is just sheer perfection and I wouldn't mind traveling with Céline, Lili and Bébert.
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very nice celine, probably his funniest post ww2 novel imho, + nice splenetic h8 for everyone except his wife and bebert the cat. everyone who says journey and morte on the installment plan are his only good books are wrong and imma punch you if you say it to my face. well, not really. but please to reading about a horde of attack geese trained by angry german housewives and have a larff or two. kind of wish they would update the footnotes tho, like, i don't know who all these political ppl form the 60s who are also frenchmen are, mannheim, except de galle.
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On a reread (2022), the book was a bit too long, and not as astonishing (of course) as when I first read this. I have now reread, in the past two years or so, Voyage, Mort, Castle, and North — and will presently reread Rigadoon.
I have a copy of the French at hand for passages that were particularly interesting. Certainly, Céline is unique. -
Yes, Celine was more than merely politically incorrect, but the old bastard could write. Always interesting and often funny, he gives a master-class in the art of ridicule – his off-hand curses continue to maim reputations.
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J'ai lu la moitié et je suis fasciné. Imaginez un melange de que sais-je? Virginia Woolf et Ernst Junger, peut-être cas donne une idée de cet débordement des récits, obervations, exclamations. Nous sommes aux temps des derniers mois du Troisième Reich. Celine, "collabo" s'échappa de Paris afin de se sauver d'une France invahie par les alliés et les "francais libres" de de Gaulle, une Franmce où il serait surement éxecuté. Comme le francais n'est pas ma langue maternelle j'ai rencontré pas mal des most nouveaux pour moi qui ne se trouvent pas ni dans mon dictionnaire Cassels ni dans mon "petit Robert". Afin de les trouver, je peux prendre mon ordinateur..Bravo la toile! L'energie, le drole d'humeur, le perspective-tous assurent que le récit ne soit jamais ennuyeux. La neutralité parfaite du raconteur fait partie de l'humeur ironique, distance stoicienne, le dieux raconteur, ce qui me fait penser, bizarreemnt peut-être à Jeremy Clarke du "Low Life" dans le "Spectator".
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Cleline continues his grotesque and unbearably funny journey to the end of the night as WWII ends and he must flee Paris, where he has been rightly branded a Collaborator. This is the story of his escape from France and his journey through a crumbling Germany . . . an absolutely must read for Celine nuts, like me.
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At 450 pages, it's quite a challenge to get through it. I tore through the last 100, though. Celine's style has matured a lot from Journey to North. He's only gotten more despicable and charming over the years. He paints an interesting picture of Nazi Germany on the cusp of defeat. There's a lot to learn from it, and Celine keeps the reader on his toes. I highly recommend this book.
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ترجمه‌ی بد در حد فاجعه
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چیز زیادی از کل کتاب نفهمیدم... به نظرم یه روایت نگاری اومد اما خیلی برام مفهوم نبود...
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چرا که حقیقت همان بازتاب اندیشه است
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Céline's writing style isn't for everyone, but I dig it. I got into him in a European Lit class in college where we read Guignol's Band, which wound up being one of my favorite novels. North comes nowhere near the excellence of that book, but along the way Céline provides us with many great insights and entertaining moments.
North is a sequel to Guignol's Band, and I feel like at this point Céline wasn't as passionate about the events happening to his characters (the main one being a fictionalized version of himself). Where every page of GB screamed to life, here everything seems tired and worn-out. Which is more or less where the characters are, having been on the move throughout much of World War II, but to have the tone match the action this much often left me feeling bored and indifferent to what was going on. A non-ending didn't help either.
Worth reading if you're really into Céline, but otherwise not necessary. -
I'm lying, I only read half of this. Lots of useless ellipses in a fairly dry autobiographical account from this cantankerous French dude in Germany during WWII. I guess I see why Mark E. Smith dug this guy's writing, and also why so many Fall songs surpass the 5 minute mark. My guess is this book is like 300 pages longer than it needs to be, but I can't really say since I had to bail.
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nothing needs to be said here. but as a personal footnote, this book changed my life as a writer and thinker, the first time i read it, in 1977. bébert the cat, especially, has remained indelible for me, as a perfect witness to the disorder, irrationality, contradictions and chaos of human society and its woes. bébert lives!
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The second of Celine's end of war trilogy. It is not my favourite and had to be withdrawn and changed because of its depiction of one of the characters. Still, yet another wild ride en route to the finale...
