CÉLINE, Louis-Ferdinand (1894-1961)

In his article “We Would No Longer Spare Louis-Ferdinand Céline,” published by La Tribune des Nations on January 13, 1950, Roger Vailland looks back on the circumstances in which a group of Resistance fighters he belonged to allegedly considered executing the writer, who then lived in the apartment above the one where they held their meetings, at 4 rue Girardon. The plan was reportedly abandoned out of consideration for Céline’s literary talent. This retrospective account belongs to a postwar context marked by debates over collaboration and the purges. Céline quickly identified his “snot-nosed killer,” his “so-called purger,” whom he mocks in Féerie. He would not respond directly to the text until February 1958, in Le Petit Crapouillot. Vailland’s “testimony” was denied by Robert Chamfleury, in whose home the Resistance meetings took place, and then by Jacques Francis Rolland, son of the writer Louis Francis, who frequented Gen Paul’s studio before the war.

A detailed account of the plot to assassinate the writer can be found in Céline, by Yves Buin (2022, Folio): “July 1943, one evening, ten Resistance fighters of the Champfleury-Mabille network are gathered, imprudently, in Robert Champfleury’s apartment on the fourth floor of 4 rue Girardon, below Céline’s apartment. Céline has just received the caricaturist Ralph Soupault, secretary of the Paris Federation of the P.P.F., and Alain Laubreaux, theater critic at Je suis partout. Céline sees them out. Their descent of the staircase is noisy and cannot escape the notice of the group on the fourth floor, who watch from the windows as the trio continues its conversation on the sidewalk. An idea is born, voiced by one of the Resistance fighters, Roger Vailland: ‘What if we killed Céline?’ A grenade thrown from the fourth floor would do the job, but it would doom Champfleury’s apartment, a hub for various Resistance networks (didn’t it once host a meeting of the prestigious C.N.R.?), and would endanger him and his companion. Since Céline is so easy to spot, on the occasion of another visit by the collaborators it would be simple to machine-gun them from the little square on avenue Junot and slip away into the night. Two men would be enough. A classic commando operation. No one the wiser. Exit Céline, the infamous, and his detested accomplices. This scenario existed. As we have said, Céline, on a blacklist, received frequent anonymous threats. From the publication of Bagatelles, he foresaw a settling of scores of which he would be the victim…”