ART AND LITERATURE IN PROUST AND CÉLINE

Pascal A. Ifri

Washington University

Even if a growing number of critics believe, in Michel Tournier’s terms, that “Proust et Céline sont les deux plus grands romanciers [français] du XXème siècle” (80), few have attempted to bring their works together on the assumption that they are the most dissimilar authors one can find and that they are situated, to quote Frédéric Vitoux, “à des années-lumières l’un de l’autre” (21). However, these opinions are slowly but surely being reconsidered. Pierre E. Robert and Serge Gavronsky have shown that parts of Céline’s work can be read in the light of Proust’s, while Henri Godard has studied the relationship between both writers in the area of poetics. Likewise, Colin Nettelbeck, in his article “Notion et fonction de la ‘transposition’ chez Céline et Proust,” has discovered intriguing similarities in their ideas about the creative process.

Focusing on the creative process in Proust and Céline, we intend to show in this presentation that they share also many ideas about Art, particularly in their conception of painting and music. These two activities, crucial in their thoughts and in their works, play, for a number of their characters, the part which literature ultimately plays for their narrators. Indeed, Proust and Céline have not restricted their artistic interest to literature, but have also concerned themselves just as much with the other arts, in their theoretical writings as well as in their novels. They have inscribed their works within a vast artistic context where painting, music and literature are equally represented. Before dealing with the place of painting and music in their novels, though, we shall note that their ideas about writing reflect their interest in the other arts and announce the parallel we are about to draw between these other arts and literature in their works.

Proust, in A la recherche du temps perdu, and Céline, in his theoretical writings and his correspondence, have insisted that the good writer cannot offer his reader his thoughts as they come to him, or present his ideas or impressions just as they are. He must have them undergo a transformation which they both call “transposition.” The Proustian narrator develops this idea on several occasions. Thus, when the young Marcel, the protagonist, hears the writer Bergotte speak, he understands that the latter’s words “n’auraient pas pu s’insérer dans ses livres à la façon d’un puzzle qui s’encadre entre d’autres” because “elles étaient dans un autre plan et nécessitaient une transposition”; it is because, he explains further, “le génie, même le grand talent, vient moins d’éléments intellectuels et d’affinement social supérieurs à ceux d’autrui, que de la faculté de les transformer, de les transposer” (1: 542, 544). Céline does not say anything else when he explains, in letters to Milton Hindus, that the writer must strive to make the reader feel that somebody speaks in his ear and that “Cela s’obtient par une transposition de chaque mot,” this being done “par le truc qui consiste . . . en un monologue d’intimité parlé mais transposé” (73, 75). Elsewhere, he explains that, in order to write, “il s’agit de se placer dans la ligne où vous place la vie, et puis de ne pas en sortir, de façon à recueillir tout ce qu’il y a; et puis de transposer en style” (“LFC vous parle” 85).

What interests us beyond the striking similarity in the two writers’ conception of writing is the fact that their idea of “transposition” exactly corresponds to the transformation brought to reality by impressionistic painting, which Proust and Céline did not fail to note. Proust, through his narrator, constantly makes comparisons between the literature he advocates and the painting of Elstir whose art is reminiscent of Monet’s. For example, criticizing “la littérature qui se contente de ‘décrire les choses’, d’en donner seulement un misérable relevé de lignes et de surfaces” (4: 463), he praises, on the contrary, the art which, like Elstir’s, attempts to “dissoudre cet agrégat de raisonnements que nous appelons vision” (2: 713). Indeed, Marcel has understood that the writer must transform reality after the manner of the impressionistic painter who “recrée” things, who shows “la nature telle qu’elle est, poétiquement” by making them undergo “une sorte de métamorphose” “analogue à celle qu’en poésie on nomme métaphore” (2: 191–92). He thus appreciates Madame de Sévigné because “c’est de la même façon que lui [Elstir] qu’elle nous présente les choses, dans l’ordre de nos perceptions, au lieu de les expliquer d’abord par leur cause” (2: 14), and Dostoevski whose characters’ actions “nous apparaissent aussi trompeuses que ces effets d’Elstir où la mer a l’air d’être dans le ciel” (3: 880).

Céline, for whom the word “transposition” has the exact same meaning, draws the same parallels as Proust between the literature he favors and impressionistic art. He thus writes to Hindus that his “truc,” “c’est l’impressionnisme” explaining that “Pour rendre sur la page l’effet de la vie parlée spontanée il faut tordre la langue en tout rythme, cadence, mots et c’est une sorte de poésie qui donne le meilleur sortilège—l’impression.” Further down, he writes that he wishes to imitate Manet thanks to whom “on retrouvait le chant des couleurs” (73, 75). Elsewhere, in his Entretiens avec le professeur Y, he claims that his contribution to literature can be likened to that of the impressionists’ to painting, that the latter have invented “le ‘rendu’ du plein air” while he has discovered “le style ‘rendu émotif’” (31, 40). In the same work, he also compares himself to Van Gogh and repeats that his “trick,” which makes the the reader believe that “quelqu’un lui lit dans la tête” “c’est de l’Impressionnisme . . .! tout le truc de l’Impressionnisme! le secret de l’Impressionnisme!” (114, 122). Finally, right before his death, in an interview, he defines himself in this way: “je suis un impressionniste” (Audinet 199).

That being said, Proust and Céline do not use only painting to present their ideas about writing and style, but also music, and again in a curiously similar fashion. Indeed, in order to emphasize the fact that style reflects the writer’s soul and thus possesses a unique and personal quality, both assimilate it to some music or song. For instance, in Contre Sainte-Beuve, Proust claims he can, when he reads, make out “bien vite sous les paroles l’air de la chanson qui en chaque auteur est différent de ce qu’il est chez tous les autres” and adds that talented writers are those who “entendent un air délicieux” and are able to “rapprocher d’eux cette musique confuse, de l’entendre clairement, de la noter, de la reproduire, de la chanter” (303, 312). Elsewhere, in his correspondence with Madame Straus, he observes that “Chaque écrivain est obligé de se faire sa langue, comme chaque violoniste est obligé de se faire son ‘son’” (Kolb 8: 276) and in another letter considers his novel as “une oeuvre où [il a] tâché de faire . . . résonner toute [sa] ‘musique’” (Kolb 11: 256–57).

Once again, Céline offers the same ideas and uses the same musical comparisons when he explains to Hindus that he wants people to discover “dans les mots le chant de l’âme” and that he tries to capture “la musique de l’âme,” and when he assures him that the novels in his head are “de [sa] véritable musique” (75, 99, 76). To another correspondent he maintains that one must hold on to the tone “qui est . . . le [sien] authentique et y conformer tout le reste” because “Il faut choisir sa musique et c’est tout,” in short imitate him, who is only “un ouvrier d’une certaine musique” (Pollet 99, 105). Elsewhere, he declares that what counts “c’est la puissance des mots . . . la musique . . . c’est très important la musique . . . elle vient de l’intérieur . . .” (Brissaud 228) and that all he invented is “une certaine petite musique introduite dans le style” (Chapsal 20).

Proust’s and Céline’s interest in painting and music does not only appear in their theories about writing and style, but it manifests itself also and mainly in their novels. First of all, it is important to note that the two authors’ works can be compared now to paintings, now to musical compositions. For example, the Proustian narrator himself reveals in Le Temps retrouvé that he intends to use in his novels the various techniques which struck him so much in Elstir and other impressionistic artists. He remarks that he would like to imitate

ce qu’ont fait si souvent les peintres quand ils peignent, très près ou très loin de nous, selon que les lois de la perspective, l’intensité des couleurs et la première illusion du regard nous les font apparaître, une voile ou un pic que le raisonnement déplacera ensuite de distances quelquefois énormes. (4: 622)

Indeed, he understands that he must recount his life “comme Elstir peignait la mer, par l’autre sens, et partir des illusions, des croyances qu’on rectifie peu à peu” (4: 560). On that account, A la recherche du temps perdu, which indeed never initially presents people or things as they are, can be compared to a gigantic impressionistic fresco.

The same can be said of Céline’s novels in which the “langue tordue” and the “style ‘rendu émotif’” aim at creating an impressionistic effect. However, their pictorialness is especially evident in works like Normance, even if its narrator, marvelling at the colors created by the bombing of Montmartre which he is describing, regrets the limitations of literature and notes that “faudrait du genre pictoral” (218). Indeed, in his desire to convey emotion directly to his reader, he relies more on the images evoked by the words he uses than on their meanings. He also uses ellipsis and punctuation in such a way that his art has been compared to that of the pointillist painters, notably by Jan Hokenson:

Just as the lacemaker or the pointillist works with blank or undotted space, shaping forms by utilizing emptiness, their novelistic counterpart works with silence, the absence of words, ellipsis or aposiopesis. The lace, the Sisley boat, the Célinean novel are alike dependent upon the blank space which they template, and we are in each medium forced to see or hear the absence as well as the presence of the artist’s “ligne essentielle.” The pointillist’s dots are “blended by the eye” to constitute the subject. That Céline was attempting a similar procedure aurally has important implications for his goal of a “roman rendu émotif” in the Impressionist manner, and for any assessment of the late fiction. (333–34)

In addition, Céline’s particularly macabre vision and his fondness for allegory, which mainly comes out in his later novels, are extremely reminiscent of the works of painters such as Pieter Breughel and Jerome Bosch, who, as Philip Day has demonstrated (127–47), seem to have influenced him deeply.

At the same time, Proust’s and Céline’s works possess a strong musical component. Indeed, their writings reflect their life-long interest in music as well as an apprehension of the world which can be called musical.^[1] This musicality appears globally in the construction of their novels as well as in individual sentences. Georges Piroué has demonstrated in his magistral study, Proust et la musique du devenir, that A la recherche du temps perdu is written like a musical composition while Colin Nettelbeck, in his article “Coordonnées musicales de l’esthétique romanesque de Céline,” has demonstrated that the same holds true for Céline’s works, except for the fact that they should be compared to ballets or operas whereas the Recherche is closer to a symphony. At any rate, Nettelbeck shows that in novels like Guignol’s band, where music is used “comme un principe structural,” “la parole, la musique et la danse s’interpénètrent pour composer un ensemble, une sorte d’harmonie dans laquelle la musique prime, d’abord parce qu’elle donne à la parole sa valeur émotive, et ensuite parce qu’elle est le sine qua non de la danse” (86, 87).

At the sentence level, just as his narrator borrows some techniques from the painter Elstir, Proust draws his inspiration from the musician Vinteuil: like the writer Bergotte, whom Norpois calls “un joueur de flûte” who “[agence] des mots d’une façon harmonieuse” (Recherche 1: 464–65), he composes long sinuous sentences while being concerned with aspects characteristic of classical music, such as harmony, tune or recurrence. As for Céline’s sentence, less elegant and more popular, like the society which it deals with, it evokes a more plebeian tradition, the one represented, for instance, by Borokrom, the musician in Guignol’s band. With its peculiar rhythm and sonorities, it is nonetheless just as musical as Proust’s. Thus, both writers use the technique of what Marcel calls “cuivres phonétiques” (1: 544), typical of Bergotte’s style, which designates alliterations, anagrams, phonic correspondences and homophonies. Jean Milly, who has studied the sonorities in Proust’s novel, has analyzed a number of its sentences, among them the following one, precisely about a musical piece, full of “phonetic ‘brasses’”:

Et ç’avait déjà été un grand plaisir quand, au-dessous de la petite ligne du violon, mince, résistante, dense et directrice, il [Swann] avait vu tout d’un coup chercher à s’élever en un clapotement liquide, la masse de la partie de piano, multiforme, indivise, plane et entrechoquée comme la mauve agitation des flots que charme et bémolise le clair de lune. (1: 205)

“[Cette] accumulation des sonorités” (1: 544), to use Proustian terms, can also be found in Céline, for instance in the following passage from Guignol’s band which constitutes a perfect counterpart of the one just quoted and which describes Borokrom playing piano:

C’est là qu’est l’astuce! . . . la magie! . . . la plaintive perdue gentillesse! . . . et c’est gagné pimpant pointu! . . . tous les petits vivants déboulinent! . . . à pas s’en faire . . . et puis c’est tout! . . . dandinent d’une gamme à la tierce enlacent en motifs et clabotent! clapotent tous les doigts! . . . la preste ronde! . . . la ritournelle! et tout bascule! . . . et tout reprend à la va-vite! . . . à l’étourdie! . . . Dzim! Dim! Pimp! . . .

Ainsi de suite jusqu’au dîner, des fois trois quatre heures à la file! . . . à la bagotte à la galope! . . . à la moustille! . . . à la rémoule! . . . une pluie de dièzes! . . . de triste à liesse! et rigodon! . . . (195)

Finally and above all, Proust’s and Céline’s novels present numerous ideas and theories about painting and music, usually in passages dealing with specific painters and musicians. In the Recherche, it is well known that Elstir, Vinteuil and other artists play a prominent part. The narrator devotes dozens and dozens of pages to the analysis of their works while the hero spends a good part of his life trying to read these works, to understand them, to experience their meaning deep inside. As we shall see later, Marcel will benefit from this deep interest in other artists’ production since it will put him on the path to his final illumination by showing him the redeeming character of Art. As for Céline’s novels, they are also filled with artistic allusions and references, essentially musical ones even if the narrator of Voyage au bout de la nuit mentions the painters Watteau and Claude Lorrain (74, 80) and if Féerie pour une autre fois is dominated by the character of Jules who is a painter and a sculptor in addition to being a musician.

Indeed, music permeates Céline’s works. Voyage au bout de la nuit, for example, contains a number of episodes having a musical background (78, 228, 296–97, 355, 459, 477), not to lighten the particularly dark atmosphere of the novel, but because, for the narrator, music is an integral part of the condition of the poorer classes:

Et la musique est revenue dans la fête celle qu’on entend d’aussi loin qu’on se souvienne depuis les temps qu’on était petit, celle qui ne s’arrête jamais par-ci par-là, dans les encoignures de la ville, dans les petits endroits de la campagne, partout où les pauvres vont s’asseoir au bout de la semaine, pour savoir ce qu’ils sont devenus. Paradis! qu’on leur dit. Et puis on fait jouer de la musique pour eux, tantôt ci tantôt là, d’une saison dans l’autre, elle clinque, elle moud tout ce qui faisait danser l’année d’avant les riches. C’est la musique à la mécanique qui tombe des chevaux de bois, des automobiles qui n’en sont pas. . . . C’est la fête à tromper les gens du bout de la semaine. (310)

Probably because music is such a part of poor people’s lives, it is also omnipresent in other Céline’s works. Actually, Colin Nettelbeck has discovered close to one thousand references to music or dance in Voyage, Mort à crédit, and especially Guignol’s band (“Coordonnées” 80). But music also appears in his later novels, Féérie pour une autre fois, where the narration is constantly interrupted by various songs, tunes, refrains, musical themes and even bars of music, and the novels of the Wartime Trilogy which are, in Nettelbeck’s words, “le produit d’une imagination profondément pénétrée par un esprit chorégraphique très conscient” (“Coordonnées” 86). In addition, musicians play a noticeable part in Céline’s novels, with, besides Borokrom, the pianist of Guignol’s band, and Jules, Musyne, in Voyage, “Un véritable petit ange musicien, une amour de violoniste” who “ravissait” the hero Bardamu “de classiques” (76, 78) and, in Mort à crédit, Madame Divonne and Nora, both talented pianists.

It is important to add that the multiple references to music and painting in Proust’s and Céline’s novels, far from being gratuitous, meet a very specific goal and fit perfectly in the general context of the works. In the Recherche, the long hours Marcel spends contemplating Elstir’s paintings and listening to Vinteuil’s compositions allow him to realize that one can penetrate the secret of an artist’s works only by discovering the common thread which runs through them. In Elstir, this thread can be found in his seascapes, in the metaphors which, “comparant la terre à la mer, supprimait entre elles toute démarcation”:

C’était cette comparaison, tacitement et inlassablement répétée dans une même toile qui y introduisait cette multiforme et puissante unité, cause, parfois non clairement aperçue par eux, de l’enthousiasme qu’excitait chez certains amateurs la peinture d’Elstir. (2: 192)

Likewise, Marcel is able to find the accent that unites Vinteuil’s compositions:

Et c’était justement quand il cherchait puissamment à être nouveau, qu’on reconnaissait, sous les différences apparentes, les similitudes profondes et les ressemblances voulues qu’il y avait au sein d’une oeuvre, quand Vinteuil reprenait à diverses reprises une même phrase, la diversifiait, s’amusait à changer son rythme, à la faire reparaître sous sa forme première, ces ressemblances-là, voulues, oeuvre de l’intelligence, forcément superficielles, n’arrivaient jamais à être aussi frappantes que ces ressemblances dissimulées, involontaires, qui éclataient sous des couleurs différentes, entre les deux chefs-d’oeuvre distincts; car alors Vinteuil, cherchant puissamment à être nouveau, s’interrogeait lui-même, de toute la puissance de son effort créateur atteignait sa propre essence à ces profondeurs où, quelque question qu’on lui pose, c’est du même accent, le sien propre, qu’elle répond. (3: 760)

This discovery is capital in Marcel’s journey because it leads him to the realization that all genuine creation is the reflection of the creator’s soul:

Comme le spectre extériorise pour nous la composition de la lumière, l’harmonie d’un Wagner, la couleur d’un Elstir nous permettent de connaître cette essence qualitative des sensations d’un autre où l’amour pour un autre être ne nous fait pas pénétrer. (3: 665)

However, “connaître cette essence qualitative” is not easy: it requires an effort which allows one at the same time to “descend into oneself” as Elstir and other original artists present “quelque image singulière d’une chose connue, image différente de celles que nous avons l’habitude de voir, singulière et pourtant vraie et qui à cause de cela est pour nous doublement saisissante parce qu’elle nous étonne, nous fait sortir de nos habitudes, et tout à la fois nous fait rentrer en nous-même en nous rappelant une impression” (2: 194). Thanks to Elstir, Vinteuil and other artists, Marcel is thus able to “descend into himself” and to understand that he too must translate what he finds there into a work of art which will reflect his soul and give meaning to his life.

The Celinian narrator’s story, although less distinctive, turns out to parallel Marcel’s. However much Bardamu/ Ferdinand realizes the futility of the human condition, he also understands, all along his journey, that a certain beauty exists around him, notably created by pictorial art and music. In Mort à crédit, for instance, the young Ferdinand, usually gloomy and depressed, shows real enthusiasm when he contemplates the illustrations of a medieval epic:

Il était plein d’images ce livre, des magnifiques illustrations. . . . J’avais pas besoin de savoir lire, j’étais tout de suite renseigné. . . . Je voyais bien les princes, les hautes lances, les chevaliers . . . la pourpre, les verts, les grenat, toutes les armures en rubis. . . . Tout le bastringue! . . . C’était un boulot. . . . C’était bien exécuté. . . . Je m’y connaissais en travail, c’était réussi. . . . Les deux pages les plus admirables, c’était au milieu du bouquin. . . . Toute une bataille, en haut, en large . . . ça représentait une mêlée extraordinaire. . . . Des dromadaires, des éléphants, des Templiers à la charge! . . . Une hécatombe de cavalerie! . . . Tous les Barbares en déroute! . . . Vraiment c’était merveilleux. . . . Je me lassais pas d’admirer. . . . (750–51)

Likewise, at his uncle Edouard’s, the young boy “contemple en silence” a huge reproduction of Millet’s L’Angélus (830).

However, it is mainly music, together with dance, which brightens the Celinian protagonist’s life. Even if, as Colin Nettelbeck has shown (“Coordonnées” 81–82), it possesses a negative dimension connected with war and violence, it is, in Céline, one of the rare elements (with physical love) which engenders gaiety and happiness in a world dominated by illness, war, horror, and death. Indeed, the few moments of joy in Céline’s first two novels, Voyage au bout de la nuit and Mort à crédit—for instance, in Voyage, the episodes taking place in the Detroit brothel or at the Tarapout—, are inevitably associated with music. In the other novels, especially Guignol’s band and, with the appearance of the dancer Lili/Arlette, Ferdinand’s mistress, Féerie pour une autre fois, as horror is growing, music and dance become more and more prevalent. It is because Ferdinand understands that, in Nettelbeck’s terms, “le pouvoir de la mort est en quelque sorte exorcisé par la musique” (“Coordonnées” 86) and, we should add, by dance, Lili/Arlette being always spared by the tragic events around her. In fact, in Féerie as in the Trilogy, the female dancer fascinates Ferdinand because she seems above the human condition and untouched by the ravages of time.^[2]

What is important to note, though, is that these pictorial and musical experiences help the Celinian protagonist reconsider his conception of life by showing him that, beyond everyday horrors, exists a certain beauty which redeems the tragedies and atrocities he experiences. More importantly, like Marcel, he realizes that he too can produce such beauty, that he can transform ugliness into beauty as well, by creating works of art, namely by writing books. Thus, in Voyage, Bardamu starts writing short stories in the Detroit brothel, spurred by the “promiscuités érotiques” of the young women of the establishment, but also, undoubtedly, by the “gros phono” of the madame (227–28). In Mort à crédit, Ferdinand decides to write the story of his childhood as he hears his neighbor, a pianist, play “Black Joe,” “l’air qu’il nous faut” (542). As for Guignol’s band, it is a work, as we already noted, entirely dominated by music, to such an extent that it can be said, with Colin Nettelbeck, that its narrator, not satisfied with producing a literary work after discovering the beauty of Art through music, transposes the beauty of music into literature (“Coordonnées” 86). In Féerie pour une autre fois, the redeeming side of Art is emphasized several times throughout the story which features a number of artists, notably Jules and Lili/Arlette. The example of the latter incites Ferdinand to write, as he observes at the end of the second volume: “heureusement que j’ai Lili dites, pour faire un livre! pour en faire un livre! . . .” (436). Indeed, in the final scene, which represents the triumph of Art, the narrator shows us his manuscripts fly in the sky, instead of the planes and the bombs of the beginning of the story. Finally, in the Trilogy the movement is the same: once again, we have a narrator who transcends his condition thanks to literature, spurred by the example of the artists who share his misfortune, especially Lili, who symbolizes the positive side and the power of Art against the forces of evil and destruction.^[3]

In conclusion, in view of the place of painting and music in Proust’s and Céline’s works, on the compositional as well as thematic level, one must reconsider the meaning of the word “novel” as it applies to these two writers. Indeed, it appears that one of their contributions has been to emphasize the multiple relations between writing and the other arts and to play a part in the suppression of the artificial barriers separating the various artistic disciplines, particularly, on the one hand, painting and music and, on the other one, literature. They have thus prolonged a movement which has been started in France by Baudelaire, the Symbolists and Huysmans and which has undoubtedly revolutionized modern Art.

Works Cited

Beaujour, Michel. “Temps et substances dans le Voyage au bout de la nuit.” Cahiers de l’Herne 5 (1965): 173–88.

Brissaud, André. “Voyage au bout de la tendresse.” Cahiers de l’Herne 3 (1963): 226–31.

Céline, Louis-Ferdinand. Voyage au bout de la nuit and Mort à crédit. Romans I. Paris: Gallimard, Coll. “La Pléiade,” 1981.

___. Guignol’s band. Romans III. Paris: Gallimard, Coll. “La Pléiade,” 1988.

___. Féerie pour une autre fois II: Normance. Romans IV. Paris: Gallimard, Coll. “La Pléiade,” 1993.

___. Entretiens avec le Professeur Y. Paris: Gallimard, 1981.

___. “L.-F. Céline à Eveline Pollet.” Cahiers de l’Herne 3 (1963): 96–112.

___. “L.-F. Céline à Milton Hindus.” Cahiers de l’Herne 5 (1965): 67–112.

___. “L.-F. Céline vous parle.” Cahiers Céline 2: Céline et l’actualité littéraire, 1957–1961. Paris: Gallimard, 1976. 83–90.

___. “Interview avec Madeleine Chapsal pour L’Express.” Cahiers Céline 2: 18–36.

___. “Interview avec Pierre Audinet pour les Nouvelles Littéraires.” Cahiers Céline 2: 197–201.

Day, Philip. Le Miroir allégorique de L.-F. Céline. Paris: Klincksieck, 1974.

Gavronsky, Serge. “Proust dans l’appareillage célinien.” Céline: Actes du colloque international de Paris, 17–19 juillet 1979. Paris: Bibliothèque L.-F. Céline de l’Université Paris-VII, Société des études céliniennes 3. 57–71.

Godard, Henri. “Un art poétique.” Revue des Lettres Modernes 398–402 (1974): 7–40.

Hokenson, Jan. “Céline: Impressionist in Language.” L’Esprit Créateur 13.4 (1973): 329–39.

Milly, Jean. La Phrase de Proust. Paris: Larousse, 1975.

Nettelbeck, Colin W. “Un art conscient: structures, symboles et significations dans les derniers romans.” Revue des Lettres Modernes 462–67 (1976): 107–18.

___. “Coordonnées musicales de l’esthétique romanesque de Céline.” Australian Journal of French Studies 13.1–2 (1976): 80–87.

___. “Journey to the End of Art: The Evolutions of the Novels of Louis-Ferdinand Céline.” PMLA 87 (1972): 80–89.

___. “Notion et fonction de la ‘transposition’ chez Céline et Proust.” Céline: Actes du colloque international de Paris, 27–30 juillet 1976. Paris: Bibliothèque L.-F. Céline de l’Université Paris-VII, Société des études céliniennes 1. 7–25.

Piroué, Georges. Proust et la musique du devenir. Paris: Denoël, 1960.

Proust, Marcel. Contre Sainte-Beuve. Paris: Gallimard, Coll. “La Pléiade,” 1971.

___. A la recherche du temps perdu. 4 Vols. Paris: Gallimard Coll. “La Pléiade,” 1987–1989.

___. Correspondance. Vol. 8, 11. Ed. Ph. Kolb. Paris: Plon, 1981, 1984.

Robert, Pierre E. “Marcel Proust et Louis-Ferdinand Céline: un contrepoint.” Bulletin de la Société des Amis de Marcel Proust et des Amis de Combray 29 (1979): 34–46.

Tournier, Michel. “Qu’est-ce que la littérature: un entretien avec Michel Tournier.” Magazine Littéraire 179 (1981): 80–86.

Vitoux, Frédéric. Céline. Paris: Belfond, 1978.

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^[1]See Colin Nettelbeck’s “Notion et fonction de la ‘transposition’ chez Céline et Proust,” 16–19.

^[2]See Michel Beaujour, “Temps et substances dans le Voyage au bout de la nuit,” 178.

^[3]See Nettlebeck, “Journey to the End of Art,” 86–89; and “Un Art Conscient,” 107–18.