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''Journey to the End of the Night'' (''Voyage au bout de la nuit'', 1932) is the first novel of Louis-Ferdinand Céline. This semi-autobiographical work describes antihero Ferdinand Bardamu. Bardamu is involved with World War I, colonial Africa, and post–World War I United States (where he works for the Ford Motor Company), returning in the second half of the work to France, where he becomes a medical doctor and establishes a practice in a poor Paris suburb, the fictional La Garenne-Rancy. The novel also satirizes the medical profession and the vocation of scientific research. The disparate elements of the work are linked together by recurrent encounters with Léon Robinson, a hapless character whose experiences parallel, to some extent, those of Bardamu. ''Voyage au bout de la nuit'' is a nihilistic novel of savage, exultant misanthropy, combined, however, with cynical humour. Céline expresses an almost unrelieved pessimism with regard to human nature, human institutions, society, and life in general. Towards the end of the book, the narrator Bardamu, who is working at an insane asylum, remarks: A clue to understanding Céline's ''Voyage'' is the trauma he suffered during his experience of the Great War 1914–1918. This is revealed by a study of biographical and literary research on Céline, histories of the war, diaries of his cavalry regiment, and literature on the trauma of war.〔Tom Quinn, ''The Traumatic Memory of the Great War 1914–1918 in Louis-Ferdinand Céline's "Voyage Au Bout De La Nuit"'' (Lewistown, NY: Edwin Mellen Press, 2005).〕 Céline's experience of the war leads to "…the obsession, the recurrent anguish, the refusal, the delirium, the violence, the pacifism, the anti-Semitic aberration of the 30’s, () his philosophy of life …."〔From "Foreword" by Frédéric Vitoux of Académie Française in Quinn's ''The Traumatic Memory''.〕 == Literary style == Céline's first novel is most remarkable perhaps for its style. Céline makes extensive use of ellipsis and hyperbole. He writes with the flow of natural speech patterns and writes vernacular, while also employing more erudite elements. This influenced French literature considerably. The novel enjoyed popular success and a fair amount of critical acclaim when it was published during October 1932. Albert Thibaudet, perhaps the greatest of the ''entre-deux-guerres'' critics, said that during January 1933 it was still a common topic of conversation at dinner parties in Paris.〔Henri Godard, "Notice", in Céline, ''Romans'', vol. 1 (Bibliothèque de la Pléiade, 1981 ), p. 1262.〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Journey to the End of the Night」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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