Céline célébrant l’apocalypse de l’ennui

Celine’s novel Voyage au bout de la nuit is structured around the traumatism of World War. Like in Pascal’s (negative) anthropology, the protagonist of the novel, Bardamu, is torn between boredom (ennui) and diversion (divertissement). By their lifestyle, upper-class people are already diverted from contemplating the private misery, the poor however need the few diversions they can afford – as cinema or cheap wine – in order to escape boredom. Instead of being satisfied by the modest diversions of the lower and middle class people aspiring for a life at normal temperature – “normal from year’s end to year’s end” (J. Conrad), Bardamu is searching the extreme: Only by going into delirium – Nietzsche would call it the “Dionysian” – you might escape from boredom. And this search for delirium leads “to end of the night”. The result is a radical nihilism which can be described, to use the words of Fondane, as “the apocalypse of boredom”.