Abstract
The writer Louis Ferdinand Céline (1894–1961) developed a personal style which changed twentieth century French literature. As an enlisted soldier in 1912, he was involved in the Great War and his right arm was severely wounded. After the war, he became a medical doctor and a writer who published his first novel, Voyage au bout de la nuit (Journey to the End of the Night), in 1932. In the middle of the 1930s, he began to write anti-Semitic and racist pamphlets and turned to a collaborationist stance with Nazi Germany. After the Second World War, he was declared a national disgrace in France and fled to Denmark. In 1951, he was granted amnesty and went back to France, where he regained fame with his last three novels. Céline was a First World War neurologically wounded soldier who received a severe injury in the right arm leading to a radial nerve paralysis. Furthermore, in his texts and letters, he complained of many symptoms that he considered to be related to the First World War. In reality, to build a heroic image of himself, Céline rewrote his personal First World War history, in particular his war wounds. The aim of this reconstruction was to help him achieve literary fame. At the end of the Second World War, he also used this rewriting to organise his defence when he was accused and tried for collaborationism. Using medical and military archives, Céline’s First World War medical mythology is reviewed to distinguish facts from fiction concerning his wound and other war neurological disturbances. We present the history of his radial nerve lesion and surgery, and confirm that Céline was never trepanned. Two other controversial neurological points, his left ear disease and his possible shell shock, are also discussed.
© 2018 S. Karger AG, Basel
Louis-Ferdinand Destouches (1894–1961), whose pen-name was Louis Ferdinand Céline, is one of the most famous French-speaking writers of the twentieth century. He developed a personal style of writing that changed French literature.
Enlisted in a cavalry regiment in 1912, he was involved in the Great War and was wounded. After the war, he went back to school and eventually completed his medical studies in 1924. The subject of his medical thesis was Ignace Philipp Semmelweis and his war against infection in pregnancy wards.
His first novel, Voyage au bout de la nuit (Journey to the End of the Night), published in 1932, and other texts are deeply marked by the First World War. In the middle of the 1930s, Céline began to write anti-Semitic and racist texts, in particular three virulent pamphlets: Bagatelles pour un massacre (Trifles for a Massacre) (1937), L’École des cadavres (The School of Corpses) (1938), and Les Beaux draps (The Fine Mess) (1941). He turned to a collaborationist stance with Nazi Germany during the Second World War. In 1944, he fled to Denmark where he was imprisoned, and he was declared a national disgrace in France. In 1951, he was granted amnesty and went back to France. From his return to his death, he regained fame with his last three novels D’un château à l’autre (Castle to Castle), Nord (North), and Rigodon (Rigadoon).
Céline was a First World War neurologically wounded soldier. In October 1914, he sustained a severe injury in the right arm leading to a radial nerve paralysis. Furthermore, he complained of many symptoms that he considered to be consequences of war traumatisms. In reality, Céline progressively rewrote his personal history in the First World War, in particular his war wounds, to build a heroic image of himself. This reconstruction aimed to help him achieve literary fame, accompanying the publication of his first novel. He later used this rewriting to organise his defence after the Second World War, when he was accused and tried for collaborationism [Roynette, 2015].
Using medical and military archives, Céline’s First World War medical mythology can be reviewed to distinguish facts from fiction concerning his wound and war neurological disturbances. Here, we present the history of his radial nerve lesion and surgery. We confirm that Céline was never trepanned. We discuss two other controversial neurological points: his left ear disease and his possible shell shock.
The Neurologic War Wound
As a volunteer, Céline joined the 12th Cuirassier cavalry regiment in September 1912. His initiation to military life was harsh, in particular because he had to learn how to ride a horse. He was promoted to brigadier in August 1913 and to maréchal des logis in May 1914 (Fig. 1).
Fig. 1. Louis-Ferdinand Destouches in his full-dress uniform, 1914 (public domain).
When the war broke out, Céline moved with his cavalry regiment to the Meuse sector, in north-eastern France. He discovered the terrifying effects of modern warfare on a battlefield overflowed by the river Meuse: “I dive back into the corpses, the mud, the rain. In the Meuse, how dirty the path to glory is” [letter of September 25th, 1914; Céline, 2009, p. 112]. He quickly understood that the cavalry with its heroic charges had become out of place in this war.
In early October, the regiment was transferred to the front of Flanders in the “race to the sea.” On this new battlefield where the first trenches appeared, the cavalry regiment of Céline fought more and more on foot.
On October 25th, near Poelkappelle, on the battlefield of Ypres, Céline spontaneously volunteered to maintain the liaison between two infantry regiments. His right arm was wounded at around 6 p.m. as he was out of the trenches to transmit a divisional order to an infantry colonel. A few days later, Céline was mentioned in the dispatches of the 7th cavalry division with other soldiers: “(They) maintained the liaison between the 66th and the 125th infantry regiments in particularly dangerous circumstances. They came back to the regiment with the following citation by the head of the 66th: ‘They behaved as heroes’” [Archives de Paris, 1914].
After his injury, Céline walked 7 km to the rear of the battlefield to find a first aid post. He was admitted on October 26th at the ambulance 3/9 set up in Ypres in Belgian infantry barracks [Service des archives médicales hospitalière des armées]. There, the fracture was reduced and Céline boarded a train destined to a military hospital in Dunkirk. However, because of violent pain in his arm, he got off the train at Hazebrouck station and was sent to the hôpital auxiliaire No. 6, set up in the Collège Saint-Jacques, where he was admitted on October 27th. Gabriel Sénellart (1880–1946), the civilian chief doctor of the hospital, performed surgery and removed the bullet from Céline’s arm. For this procedure, Céline refused anaesthesia because he was afraid of being amputated against his will. The bullet which hit him had been damaged and flattened by a first impact. This ricocheting bullet created a broad lesion in Céline’s arm [letter from Ferdinand Destouches of November 5th, 1914; Céline, 2009, p. 120].
Paralysis of the forearm extensor muscles was confirmed by Dr. Sénellart. Over the following days, Céline started to complain of hyperesthesia in the radial nerve sensitive territory: “The bullet shattered the bone on 4 to 5 centimeters. However, it’s starting to heal. However, the nerves have been painfully affected” [letter of November 20th, 1914; Céline, 2009, p. 126].
An evacuation towards a Dunkirk military hospital was planned but Céline’s father managed to organise a transfer towards a Parisian hospital for an electric treatment of the radial nerve paralysis. At the end of November 1914, after 1 month of convalescence in the hospital of Hazebrouck, Céline was transferred to the military hospital of the Val-de-Grâce in Paris. Céline’s uncle, Georges Destouches, the General Secretary of the Faculty of Medicine of Paris, was very helpful in this transfer.
Céline was admitted into the department of Adolphe Jalaguier (1853–1924), one of the most famous surgeons of this time. He described Jalaguier in laudative terms: “Jalaguier with his beard, obviously an authority and a learned man! How many owe him their lives! Saved at the
