First Translation of Celine's *Journey to the End of the Night* was to Czech

Here's an great tidbit on Celine and translation, reported by Eurozine as featured content of Revolver Review #70, the contents of which are unfortunately not available in English (though the excerpt is). I've been trying to learn Czech (and Slovak) for two years, partly so I can read stuff like this, as well as a plethora of Czecho-Slovak underground literature known as Samizdat.

• The very first translation of Louis-Ferdinand Céline's Journey to the End of the Night was into Czech, reveals Anna Kareninová in Revolver Revue. Exactly 75 years ago, Céline happened to come to Prague for the first time. There he met the German filmmaker Karl Junghans, who had directed German and Czech films, including Takovy je zivot / Such is Life. Having seen the film in France and admired it greatly, Céline had a spontaneous idea for collaboration: "Although I do not understand [film] and am not sure whether a film could be made of it, I know that you are the only director in the world who could film Journey to the End of the Night according to my conception." Like many of the best ideas, it never came to fruition.

It's interesting to note that Celine himself wished for a Czech or German film version of the novel, if one was to ever be made. I can't help but wonder what Milos Forman or Jan Svankmajer would do if they had a go at it.

Charles Baudelaire: Two De Profundis Poems

DE PROFUNDIS CLAMAVI

O my sole love, I pray thee pity me
From out this dark gulf where my poor heart lies,
A barren world hemmed in by leaden skies
Where horror flies at night, and blasphemy.

For half the year the sickly sun is seen,
The other half thick night lies on the land,
A country bleaker than the polar strand;
No beasts, no brooks, nor any shred of green.

There never was a horror which surpassed
This icy sun's cold cruelty, and this vast
Night like primaeval Chaos; would I were

Like the dumb brutes, who in a secret lair
Lie wrapt in stupid slumber for a space...
Time creeps at so burdensome a pace.

(translation by Sir John Squire)


OBSESSION

You forests, like cathedrals, are my dread :
You roar like organs. Our curst hearts, like cells
Where death forever rattles on the bed,
Echo your de Profundis as it swells.

My spirit hates you, Ocean ! sees and loathes
Its tumults in your own. Of men defeated
The bitter laugh, that's full of sobs and oaths,
Is in your own tremendously repeated.

How you would please me, Night ! without your stars
Which speak a foreign dialect, that jars
On one who seeks the void, the black, the bare.

Yet even your darkest shade a canvas forms
Whereron my eye must multiply in swarms
Familiar looks of shapes no longer there.

(translation by Roy Campbell)

French Connection