Mario Pezzella
mario.pezzella@sns.it
Abstract: Bagatelle for a massacre and Céline’s anti-Semitism. The first novels. Journey at the end of the night. The trauma of war, colonialism and the Fordist factory. Death on credit. The disintegration of the patriarchal family and the loss of the father figure. Orphanhood as an obsessive metaphor. The passage from nihilism as an object of description to nihilism as a self-destructive drive. The influence of Freud and Beyond the pleasure principle. Céline as a mirror of the collective unconscious and of the affective tone of fascism. Psychological reasons for anti-Semitism. The novels of the second postwar period. From the description of personal trauma to collective trauma. The bombing and destruction of cities as an obsessive metaphor. Céline “chronicler” of the self-destruction of Europe.
Keywords: Céline; Antisemitism; Voyage au bout de la nuit; Adorno.