This story was hidden in the thousands of unpublished manuscript pages of Louis-Ferdinand Céline unexpectedly found in the summer of 2021. After being thought lost for almost 80 years.
Gallimard announced on Friday that it would publish an unpublished novel by the author of Voyage au bout de la nuit on April 27.
Entitled
The Will of King Krogold
, it is a medieval tale that Céline (1894-1961) called a “Gaelic legend.
Gallimard specified that he would publish two versions, one typewritten by the author, "dating from the first half of the 1930s", and entitled "The Legend of King René", then the manuscript bearing the title finally retained, "possibly dated to 1939-1940".
"
These two major pieces, unpublished and variously incomplete, are part of the same project while being distinguished by significant stylistic and narrative developments
," said the publishing house.
They come from the nearly 1,200 handwritten sheets that Céline, a fervent collaborationist, had left behind when he fled Paris for Germany in June 1944. Confiscated by a resistance fighter, then put away for three quarters of a century, these writings have reappeared unexpectedly in 2021. They gave rise to two unpublished novels published in 2022, “War” and “London”.
A new novel and an enhanced edition of the Pléiade
This new novel, "
whose main episodes take place between Brittany and Scandinavia
", recounts "the
war waged by King Krogold against the traitorous prince Gwendor, the murder of the prosecutor Morvan by the trouvère Thibaut, Joad's passion for the beautiful Wanda
,” explained Gallimard.
Céline had not convinced her publisher, Denoël, to publish this work which clearly stood out from the rest of her novels, contemporary realistic fictions.
Excerpts from it can be found in one of them,
Death on Credit
.
An unpublished short story from the same manuscripts, “La Vieille disgusting”, is also due to appear on March 23, in number 655 of La Nouvelle Revue française devoted in large part to Céline.
Lastly, Gallimard subsequently had to revise the volumes of the Bibliothèque de la Pléiade devoted to Céline, as well as the novel
Casse-pipe
, which appeared unfinished in 1949 and which would be supplemented with unpublished passages.
