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Fig. 4. Louis Ferdinand Destouches with his head bandage in the Val-de-Grâce Hospital (Paris) in 1914 (public domain).
Céline’s First World War history reveals another inconsistency. Written by another hand, the evocation of a mixed wound by sabre and bullet appears in his military record. None of the medical reports discussed a sabre wound. It is unclear why this mention was added to the military report but it might be linked to the picture of the typical fighting cavalry man published in L’Illustré national.
Marcel Brochard, a close friend during Céline’s stay in Rennes for his medical studies between 1918 and 1922, summarised the trepanation myth after his friend’s death as such: “At last Louis, old soldier, will you tell us the truth on your famed trepanation. They all believed you of course, you the trepanned man from the battles of August 1914, with your poor hammered brain; even Henri Mondor, Professor, though a professional, repeats over and over again that your skull was broken […] We, your mates from Rennes, know very well that your head has never been wounded nor trepanned” [Brochard, 2007].
Fig. 5. L’Illustré national, No. 52, November — December 1915 (private collection).
A Train in the Left Ear
After the First World War, Louis Destouches also complained of frequent and severe tinnitus sometimes accompanied by vertigo. These phenomena appeared on several occurrences in his work and letters. Unlike the issue of trepanation, Céline mentioned tinnitus in the left ear very early, in particular to Marcel Brochard. His father-in-law, and director of the Medical School of Rennes, Prof. Athanase Follet (1867–1932) performed an air insufflation in Céline’s ear. However, this procedure worsened the tinnitus [Gibault, 1985, pp. 157–164].
Around the publication of Voyage au bout de la nuit (Journey to the End of the Night), Céline described his ear disorders in detail, while he was creating his trepanation legend. He even discussed the implausible aetiology of a very small piece of shrapnel in his inner ear. In 1932, in the newspaper L’Intransigeant, Céline explained: “As I am talking to you, at this very moment, there is a train in my left ear, a train in Bezons station. It arrives, it stops, it leaves. Now, it is no longer a train, it’s an orchestra. This ear is lost. It hears only pain” [Bromberger, 1932].
In his later novels, Céline specified that the symptoms began after his First World War wound: “My sleep has been constantly interrupted since November 1914… I deal with ear sons… I listen to them as they become trombones, complete orchestras, stations” [Céline, 1960, p. 180]. In Rigodon (Rigadoon), published posthumously in 1969, Céline highlighted the medical reality of his ear troubles: “(They) have been medically confirmed, with two … or three assessments… as early as 1916 and much later at the Ryshospital Copenhague” [Céline, 1969, p. 175].
It is interesting to note that Céline worked on the topic of tinnitus when a medical student, 1 year before he obtained his medical thesis. In 1923, in L’Union pharmaceutique, he wrote the summary of a communication he presented to the Société de thérapeutique: “Sur une petite thérapeutique des acouphènes par le son et la transmission osseuse” (“On a Small Treatment of Tinnitus with Sound and Bone Transmission”). The device he developed sought to help patients suffering from tinnitus and improve their hearing impairment [Céline, 1923] (Fig. 6). This early medical interest in tinnitus may confirm that Céline suffered from ear disorders from his First World War wound.
The question of the origin of these disorders is still a matter of debate. Some aetiologies may be evoked: a noise trauma, a direct traumatism of the left petrous bone during the First World War, or Menière’s disease as discussed by the writer Élisabeth Porquerol (1905–2008) in 1933 [Les Cahiers, 1976, p. 30]. As a medical doctor, Céline also raised the issue of a potential Menière’s disease in Féérie pour une autre fois (Fable for Another Time) published in 1952: “…I vomit!… I buzz! … Vertigo! It’s called Menière’s vertigo… The houses are spinning! And then! They rise!” [Céline, 1952, p. 295]. A noise trauma was the explanation given by Marcel Brochard: “The one and only blow which put an end to your war also hurt your eardrum with its noise, leaving you with noxious tinnitus” [Brochard, 2007].
Fig. 6. L’Union pharmaceutique, 1923.
Lucette Destouches, Céline’s wife, also gave her point of view on the origin of his ear troubles: “Louis often told me of his 1914 wound. A shell had thrown him to the ground. Once back on his horse, his arm was hit. There was no patent wound on his face. Only his left ear was bleeding. No one took care of it. He was severely shocked by the wound and the blow. Afterwards, Louis thought he had suffered from a petrous bone fracture” [Vitoux, 1988, pp. 87–88]. In 1946, during his incarceration in Denmark, he wrote about his first potential wound during the First World War: “Complete deafness in the left ear with intensive and permanent buzzing and whistling sounds. This has been my state since 1914 and my first wound when a shell explosion threw me against a tree… These troubles have become particularly intense for two years and especially during my incarceration” [Gibault, 1985, pp. 157–164].
Céline: A Shell-Shocked Soldier?
There is no medical evidence that Céline suffered from shell shock, contrary to certain hypotheses developed in recent years [Quinn, 2002]. None of the cardinal signs of war commotion, war emotion or hystero-pithiatism, the three main clinical expressions of war psychoneuroses, are present in Céline’s war experience.
In the writings of Destouches or his father, some observations underline that Céline, like all combatants, was marked by the hardships of the conflict without the clear clinical signs of war commotion or war emotion defining the shell shock.
At the beginning of the war, Destouches, besides the fear surrounding the first attacks, witnessed some violent war scenes, such as summary executions: “This morning, when we woke up, summary execution of three spies. Each of us then emptied his gun on this scum who caused the loss of an entire squadron of the 20th chasseurs. Only two fighters remain” [letter of September 15th, 1914; Céline, 2009, p. 106].
In the last letter sent to his parents before his wound, Destouches reported a scene of civilian massacre by German troops: “…a little show of the kind that we saw yesterday in La Fosse, where a family of 14 persons, all defenceless civilians, had been killed with spears. The oldest grandmother was 78 years old and the youngest child was 15 days… plus the pregnant mother whose belly had been torn open by a soldier” [letter of October 1914; Céline, 2009, p. 118].
On November 5th, 1914, Destouches’ father, who visited him in Hazebrouck military hospital, wrote: “…the presence of acute, constant danger that he is only now aware to have escaped, has triggered in him as in all others a nervous over-excitement that an almost complete deprivation of sleep has only made worse. He only sleeps an hour now, an hour then, and wakes up with a sweat-drenched start. Visions of every horror he has witnessed constantly visit him” [letter from Ferdinand Destouches of November 5th, 1914; Céline, 2009, p. 121]. These transient reactions were frequent in soldiers faced with the horrors of the battlefield and should not be misinterpreted as a delirium or formal signs of a war psychoneurosis. The only occurrence of slight psychic troubles appeared in a letter of Céline to his parents
