Journey to the End of the Night

Journey to the End of the Night is a novel by Louis -Ferdinand Céline, published in 1932 under the title Voyage au bout de la nuit in Paris.

Content

The episodic novel tells the story of Ferdinand Bardamu who escapes the turmoil of the First World War and after stints in Africa and America returns to Paris, studied medicine there, is evident even as a poor doctor and finally is acting head of a psychiatric facility on the outskirts. Time and again the tragic and ruthless figure of Léon Robinson and gives the action the decisive turns. The stations are Bardamus assigned liaisons as characteristic female figures.

Language

His linguistic vividness refers to the novel from the dramatic use of oral idioms, without being limited to the direct speech. Céline used in the travel Argot not only to persons characterization, he goes on decisively and used it in the narrator text in addition to the full range of written language; where both him is not enough, he coined neologisms. His narrator blasphemes against sacred values ​​of the Grande Nation as patriotism, militarism and colonial glory as well as against hypocrisy, the fears of the petty bourgeoisie or the arrogance of the upper class - nothing remains unscathed. "The fact that Céline for the journey of the highly respected Prix Goncourt - unlike first reportedly - was not awarded, but instead the Prix Renaudot ( the only slightly less renowned, Céline nevertheless appeared as a consolation prize ), in any case had also with academic surprise given the linguistic do freedoms and innovations that the author had made ​​himself, "wrote his translator Hinrich Schmidt- Henkel.

Translations

A translation that Isak Grünberg had created immediately after the appearance of the French original by order of the Piper -Verlag, was not brought out of this because it does not meet the requirements, as they were told Grünberg. The publication of a decidedly anti - heroic work appeared after Hitler seized power, probably not more opportune. Piper sold the German rights, including the Green Mountain translation to the publisher Julius Kittls successor ( Mährisch-Ostrau/Leipzig ), who in December 1933 as " mutilated, deformed, distorted " published that Grünberg, as he in April 1934, Klaus 's exile magazine wrote The collection, no more than its recognized. Only four sides have remained unchanged.

In 2003 brought the Random House, which had acquired the rights to Céline's work after the Second World War, a new translation by Hinrich Schmidt- Henkel out the "sensational" called Ina Hartwig in the Frankfurter Rundschau. Even otherwise, the most important German feuilleton expressed consistently enthusiastic.

Dramatization

At the Munich Residenz Theater Frank Castorf staged in 2013 the novel as a theater spectacle.