Céline has elicited so much critical commentary—especially in the past decade—the corpus of interpretations devoted to him is so rich and varied, that one might well ask what still remains to be said. Yet his work, by its extraordinary complexity and vitality, constantly inspires, even demands, new explorations. Among these, the treatment of myth elements in his fictions suggests itself as a fecund although (to date) insufficiently used approach. This essay, while necessarily limited in scope, will attempt to make at least an initial incursion into that challenging domain.

At the very outset, however, a clarification is mandatory: the analysis of myth elements here will not deal with factors immediately visible, such as the use of characters, situations, or sites from mythology or the recreation of ancient myths in modern form (as found in the works of many contemporary French writers, for example, Anouilh, Butor, Cocteau, Giraudoux, Sartre, and Wittig). True, mythological figures do at times appear in Céline's fictions (Charon, the Minotaur, Jupiter, Neptune, Venus, centaurs, and sirens), and, on occasion, the author claims the title of mythographer or creator of legends. But these phenomena are only of minor interest for the present undertaking. Matters far less evident and thus—characteristically—much more fundamental in Céline's writings are those that are based on his recognition of the plight of modern man who lives in a desacralized world, yet feels a profound (though hidden) nostalgia for legend or myth. This nostalgia, also observed by one of the great specialists in the field—Mircea Eliade—translates itself, according to the latter, into what he terms "mythological behavior" manifesting itself in a variety of ways in our lives dominated by the profane. Since, however—and this is essential for the purposes of the present analysis—this "mythological behavior" finds its essential expression in the domain of the imaginary, it demands, for its discovery and analysis in literature, the study of myth patterns that are evident in some aspects of a fiction and follow specific models with which specialists of mythology are well acquainted.

Three of these patterns, representing a choice determined by the richness of the material found in Céline's major fictions as well as by their importance in any consideration of myth structures, will furnish the principal areas of exploration in this essay: (1) Initiation; (2) The Modalities of Time; and (3) Cosmogony and Eschaton. It must immediately be added, however, that, although Céline's adherence to myth patterns is of great interest, his subversion, truncation, or suspension of them is just as fascinating and speaks equally of the author's profound originality. Both as creator and destroyer, Céline remains here—as elsewhere—one of the most innovative of contemporary French writers.

Our point of departure will be Initiation—the point of departure par excellence. Traditionally, the pattern it follows consists of a certain number of motifs and stages: separation of the novice or candidate for initiation from his birthplace, native soil, or the maternal domain; segregation in a place both distant and unknown; crossing of a threshold; encounter with a guardian, guide, double, or spirit; trials (frequently in the form of torture); symbolic death (mutilation, sacrifice, circumcision, subincision); a night journey or visit to the underworld/otherworld; a radical transformation in his mode or level of being; the acquisition of a different name; the revelation of a fundamental truth or mystery; the triumphant return of the initiate, now in the possession of important secret knowledge; the transmission of this knowledge to the community.

Even when seen by itself, this list of motifs and phases in the initiation scenario already reveals many striking parallels with the itinerary of Journey to the End of Night (whose very title, of course, suggests the motif of the night journey): the protagonist, Bardamu, like the traditional neophyte, is separated from his native world (Paris, the Place Clichy) and will proceed to a series of distant and unknown places (battlefields, Africa, America); he crosses the first threshold (represented by the image of an empty space obscured by rain but also—perhaps even more powerfully—through stylistic means such as a brutal change of rhythm, the suspension of punctuation, a different lexical register); he encounters a guide or double (Robinson) who will appear at every important turning point, or crossing of another threshold, in the novel; Bardamu undergoes trials, torture, and mutilation, as well as a radical change in his mode of being. Most important of all, a fundamental truth is revealed to him. This occurs in two stages: the first marks his passage into adulthood (which, in the traditional initiation, introduces the neophyte both to death and sexuality) and is here expressed in the famous sentence: "One is as virgin to Horror as to sensuality"; the second, after this loss of virginity and the progressive discovery that occurs throughout the novel (in a pattern repeated several times), is summed up in the formula: "The truth of this world is death."

It is at this point that Céline's fiction ceases to adhere to the mythological model and its subversion begins. After having explored and left the "Other World" (at the exact center of the novel), the initiate, Bardamu, does not return triumphant, although in possession of important secret knowledge. On the contrary, he remains a stranger, an outsider, fixed in a pose of failure at the conclusion of his long night journey. And the transmission of the fundamental truth acquired (usually the final stage of the initiation scenario) is completely reversed, for Journey to the End of Night ends in an appeal for silence: "Let's speak no more about it."

While the Initiation pattern illuminates many aspects of Céline's early novels (for one could, space permitting, trace similar parallels in Death on the Installment Plan and Cassepipe), a much more dramatic (although related) scenario is applicable to the later works, from Le Pont de Londres onward: that of the shaman. The mythological model in question contains the following elements: illness, seizures, possession, disintegration of personality, as signs of vocation, of being chosen; tortures (even involving the symbolic dismemberment of the body or its reduction to a skeletal state); manifestations of furor, heat, trance, ecstasy; ascension or levitation; astral voyages or descents into hell; extraordinary powers in the realm of poetry, prophecy, medicine; visionary states; a prodigious memory; the discovery of a new language; communication with animals, especially birds; the transmission of illuminations to the members of the tribe.

It will certainly have become apparent to those who know Céline's works well, how many parallels can be found between these attributes and those of the narrators (and their companions or doubles) in his later fiction, such as Sosthène de Rodioncourt and Mille-Pattes in Le Pont de Londres or Jules in Féerie pour une autre fois. The first enters repeatedly into trance states; the second is, in effect, reduced to a skeletal shape and performs vertiginous acts of levitation at the Touit-Touit-Club (a place whose very name suggests, among other things, the sound of a bird-call); the third, whose body has undergone dismemberment (he is a double amputee) ascends to the top of the Moulin de la Galette (an image of the Axis Mundi?) and directs an infernal round. Descents into hell occur quite frequently in Céline's last trilogy and are represented by entry into subterranean labyrinths, tunnels, room no. 36, and bomb craters, or assemblies of monsters and demons in Castle to Castle, North, and Rigadoon. The protagonists of these novels also manifest others of the shaman's unusual powers: that of prophecy (for example, the "extra-voyant" narrator of Castle to Castle); of poetry (such as the writer-doubles of almost all the narrators); of communication with animals (the cat, Bébert, chief among them) and especially with birds (the role of "bird-charmer" had already been attributed to Sosthène and will revert to the narrator at the end of Céline's last novel, Rigadoon); of medical skills (which make the protagonist of almost all the later fiction a witch doctor or medicine man, in the truest sense of the word).

In this case, as in the previous one, it can be seen that the subversion of the mythological model (as powerful as adherence to it) operates at the moment of the scenario where the triumphal stage usually begins. Thus, ascension inevitably ends in a fall or a derisive failure—for Mille-Pattes as well as for Jules. (Of course, this pattern had already been prefigured by the grotesque end of Courtial des Pereires' balloon in Death on the Installment Plan, but it becomes more dramatic in the later works.) Ecstasy, if it occurs at all, leads to nothing (as in the case of Sosthène); the discovery of a new language is limited to that of an apocalyptic Esperanto or the sign language of cretins; the transmission of an illumination to the members of the tribe either ends in disaster or never takes place at all.

Let us now proceed to the second stage of our itinerary: the Modalities of Time. According to mythological thinking, there are two kinds of time: profane time—linear, chronological, irreversible—which leads to degeneration, decrepitude, and death; the time of origins, of absolute beginnings—primordial, auroral, infinitely recuperable—characterized by strength, purity, perfection. For modern man, who considers himself defined by history, it is the former that dominates, creating a profound sense of anguish that is the result of his "fall into time" and the temporal flow that leads, inevitably, toward death. It is this kind of time that is so powerfully evoked in a passage of Death on the Installment Plan (a work whose very title translates this obsession): "Ah! it's really terrible … how one loses people along the way … pals one never sees again … never … who've vanished like dreams … it's all over … gone … then one will also be lost … in the dreadful torrent of things … of days…." An attempt, overwhelming in its futility, to halt the flow of time, follows this pronouncement: "A mad desire took hold of me … to jump into the fray … to block their path … to stop them in their tracks … so they wouldn't move at all anymore!… so they'd stand still … once and for all!… So I wouldn't see them leave anymore!" But the "dreadful torrent of … days" cannot be halted nor turned from its course. One cannot be cured of the ravages of time. At most, one can attempt to nullify it by projecting oneself out of the temporal. Bardamu had already expressed this wish in his cry: "To leap out of Time!" and had momentarily succeeded by various forms of escape—the cinema, voyages, eroticism, delirium. But they provided only a short respite and rapidly gave way to an awareness of temporality and its accompanying anguish. It is of no avail either to circumnavigate the globe and to visit the "other world." For once one stops running, "one picks up the thread of the days again, the way one has left it dragging here, filthy, precarious. It waits for you."

If, according to mythological thinking, the return to the Origin is the only way to kill the dead time that leads to death and if, by ritually returning to the beginning of the world one can re-create the paradisial state which preceded our fall into time, then in Céline's fiction, any attempt to break the temporal flow fails in the final analysis. At most, what remains is a nostalgia, an unslated thirst for such a state and some frenetic attempts to attain the Time of Origins (i.e., a Golden Age when a strong, pure race of supermen peopled the earth). The latter seem to lead to the monstrous pronouncements made by the narrators of the pamphlets that coincide (both temporally and historically) with Aryan myths and the racist theories of the Nazis.

The only true means of escaping linear and destructive time (according to nearly all mythologies) is by a repetition of the act of creation—or cosmogony. Such an act is possible for the creator of fiction even if it is impossible for his creatures. First of all, because any construction (in this case, that of a book) is a repetition of the act of Creation, an absolute beginning and, as such, a way of restoring the initial instant, the plenitude of a present without any trace of history. Second, because the writer (and the reader) can move outside of historical and personal time and gain access to an ahistorical and transpersonal dimension: the time of the imaginary that contains all the liberty lacking in the temporal realm of living—a time that is expanded or contracted and where one can, once again, experience all things with the same intensity as when they occurred at the very first instance. The writer can also refuse linear time in his fiction and, by means of structures, suggest a world sheltered from the ravages of chronological time. In his early novels, Céline seems to have undertaken this task by a relatively simple chronological reversal of episodes or of entire works (such as Journey to the End of Night, Death on the Installment Plan, Guignol's Band, parts 1 and 2). In his late works however, fictional time itself is expanded or contracted; it even exists simultaneously (for example, in Rigadoon where, in numerous passages, verbs in the past, present, and future tense are found in the same paragraph, even in the same sentence); it is exploded, winds back upon itself, and finally becomes so chaotic that it no longer seems to exist at all. It is then no more the representation of a leap out of time but the very annihilation of time itself. This state of nothingness, this regression or return to the amorphous and to original chaos, is the point where what one could term Endzeit rejoins the Urzeit that figures in all the myths of the End of the World.

This brings us to the last stage of our exploration: Cosmogony and Eschaton. Traditionally, the order of these two terms would be reversed, for the Eschaton supposes the total destruction of the cosmos and its return to chaos—to the primordial massa confusa—in order to subsequently permit the renewal or absolute regeneration of the world. Whether it is a question of the diurnal and nocturnal cycle, the round of the seasons, or the Great Year of the cosmos, the pattern remains the same.

In the case of Céline's fiction, the eschatological phase is, of course, the most evident. According to most critics, he is an "apocalyptic" writer, the destroyer par excellence of an existing (literary) universe, a specialist in the reduction to zero. He himself reinforces this impression by the pronouncements of many of his narrators: "I am the thunder, the cataclysms," one of them says; "I write the opera of the Flood," another adds. All of this might lead one to think that the mythological model would constantly be subverted or sabotaged and that, in his works, cosmogony would never follow the eschaton. It will be seen, however, that even this subversion would be subverted by Céline on occasion.

Naturally, readers of Céline are well aware of the fact that the stages of the destructive phase are painted in great detail and occupy the predominant place in his fictions and that, from Journey to the End of Night to Rigadoon, an apocalypse of human origin is taking place. All the motifs of the eschaton are present: destruction by fire due to criminal acts of war; floods of all kinds, often tragic but at times comical—such as the deluge of vomit during the Channel crossing in Death on the Installment Plan or the flooding of toilets in North; the reign of demons and the resurrection of the dead, in Death on the Installment Plan or in Castle to Castle; the ruin of entire civilizations and the destruction of humanity as a whole, in the last trilogy and especially in Rigadoon. Not only on the mimetic but also on the stylistic level, this annihilation is reflected. The latter is expressed by the fragmentation of the novels' structures, the atomization of syntax, the deluge of words, the chaotic nature of fictional time and space.

However, and this is most important, the subversion of the mythological model—exceptionally—does not take place at the moment when Céline's life and work come to an end. For, if one closely examines the second part of Rigadoon (from the moment the narrator suffers a head wound), one sees that a transformation takes place and a turning point has been reached: the end of the world allows a new creation to take place. The first indication of this is that the "infernal music" that has pursued the narrator ever since the initiatory head wound inflicted during World War I (described also as "excruciating noises," "the opera of the Flood," "the small song of Death") undergoes a metamorphosis the instant the final head wound is suffered during World War II. The music now heard is: "A song!… magnificent! as magnificent as the panorama … a song like a symphony for this ocean of ruins … crazy ruins … 'waves of little flames' … pink … green … and small crackling bouquets … the souls of the house … far … very far away … dancing…." Noises have changed into a "magnificent song," "a symphony"; the Flood image has given way to that of the "ocean" and of the "wave" (symbols of birth and becoming); the harsh and brutal colors of destruction have become tender tints of "pink" and "green"; flames have changed into flowers; the round of demons and witches has been transformed into a dance.

From this moment on, a sense of calm and peace will reign; a pause occurs that is neither emptiness nor absolute ending, but rather a time of rest before something takes place. This something, ushered in by inexplicable laughter (the laughter of creation), is the birth of a new world. In the beginning, the seeds of primordial life appear, breaking forth from the original and most primitive substance—clay (or mud)—in the form of creatures existing on the simplest level, beings in a larval state, animallike, functioning on a preverbal level: the "little cretins" with whom "everything is possible" and "everything begins again." Together with the author-accoucheur we witness the birth of new life which, truly, arises from its own ashes.

Thus, not only does cosmogony follow the eschaton but, in the last part of Rigadoon, there is a brief yet extraordinary passage in which one sees a kind of garden of Eden where the narrator and his wife (resembling the first human couple) are surrounded by fabulous birds that eat from their hands (in the presence of Bébert, the cat) as trusting as the animals at the dawn of creation, before the Fall.

This renewal out of the void takes place not only on the level of mimesis, however. Céline, after having submitted literary style to eschatological action, assures us (parodying Genesis of Judeo-Christian mythology) that "In the beginning was emotion" and to re-create style from the base of emotion. And, although the narrator of his final work announces that "each creation carries within itself, with itself, its birth as well as its end," we might add that each end (and this is substantiated by all his novels) carries within it its own birth or rebirth. And, although the title, Rigadoon, contains the image of a target riddled with bullet holes (and thus, of death), it contains at the same time a reference to creation through dance, by dancing.

Thus, Céline, in the work completed at the moment of his death before entering into absolute silence, gives us a brief glimpse of dawn at the end of cosmic night.