CÉLINE (Louis-Ferdinand). The Church. Comedy... - Lot 79 - Ader

CÉLINE (Louis-Ferdinand). The Church. Comedy in five acts. Paris: Denoël et Steele, [1933]. - In-12, 185 x 117: frontispiece, 242 pp., (6 ff. 3 last blanks), illustrated cover. Beige half-maroquin, spine ribbed, gilt head, untrimmed, cover and spine preserved (M.-P. Tremois). Original edition dedicated to Karen Marie Jensen, illustrated with a frontispiece casting of the face of the "unknown of the Seine" from a photograph by Amsler and Ruthardt. This is the only play by the author of "Journey to the End of the Night", which he wrote in 1926. " The action takes place in Africa, in a small French residence, then in the United States in the backstage of a New York music hall, then in Geneva at the headquarters of the League of Nations and finally in the Paris suburbs, in a bistro transformed into a clinic in the last act. Celine themes appear at random: contempt for ambitious and mediocre colonials, man's powerlessness in the face of suffering and death, the need for beauty and harmony, love for simple people and children. Ferdinand Bardamu appears as a being defeated in advance by fate and general cynicism, trying to survive in the shadows. As one of the characters says: "Bardamu is a boy of no collective importance. He's barely an individual." Sartre will epigraph that phrase in The Nausea. The great interest in The Church is that it is one of Celine's earliest works and contains the seeds of the elements that will place its author next to Faulkner and Joyce" (Gallimard Editions). One of the 40 copies on pure thread vellum, this one being one of the 15 out of trade. Precious copy, enriched by this sending of the author: To Jacques Deval // Beautiful and good // Health of others // triumphs in 1934 // LF Céline . Jacques Deval (1890-1972) was a French playwright and director, and a close friend of Celine. The latter said of him, in a letter to Milton Hindus on July 18, 1947, that he was "an admirable heart and