Codex Seraphinianus
Texts
The Fresh Air Had Killed Them
A little further down the Passage there was a family of bookbinders. Their children never went out. The mother was a baroness. De Caravals was her name. She didn't want her children to learn bad language at any cost.
They played together all year long behind the windowpanes, putting their noses in each others' mouths and both hands at the same time. Their complexions were like celery.
Once a year Madame de Caravals took a vacation all by herself. She'd go visiting her cousins in Périgord. She told everybody how her cousins came to meet her at the station in their "break" drawn by four prize-winning horses. They would drive together through endless estates . . . The peasants would troop out to kneel on the castle drive as they passed . . . that was the kind of stuff she dished out.
One year she took the kids with her. She came back alone in the wintertime, much later than usual. She had on deep mourning. You couldn't see her face behind the veils. She offered no explanation. She went straight up to bed. She never spoke to anybody after that.
The change had been too much for those children who never went out. The fresh air had killed them . . . That disaster gave everyone pause. From the rue Thérèse to the Place Gaillon all you heard about was oxygen . . . for more than a month.
-- Louis-Ferdinand Céline, Death on the Installment Plan, tr. Ralph Mannheim (New York: New Direections, 1971), 69-70.
Nobody Uses Minium Anymore
It was he, Courtail des Pereires, who had obtained the second driving license for racing cars issued in France. Over the desk we had his diploma in a gold frame and his photograph as a young man at the wheel of a monster, with the date and the rubber stamps. The end had been tragic . . . He often told me about it.
"I was lucky," he admitted. "Take it from me. We were coming into Bois-le-Duc . . . the carburation was perfect . . . I didn't even want to slow down . . . I catch sight of the schoolteacher . . . she had climbed up on the embankment . . . She motioned to me . . . She'd read all my books . . . She waved her parasol . . . I didn't want to be rude . . . I threw on my brakes outside the school . . . In a minute I'm surrounded, fêted . . . I take a drink . . . I wasn't supposed to stop again before Chartres . . . another ten miles . . . The last control station . . . I invite the young lady to come along . . . 'Climb in, mademoiselle,' I say . . . 'Climb in beside me. Come along.' She was cute. She hesitated, she shilly-shallied, she coquetted some . . . I pressed her . . . So she sits down beside me and off we go . . . All day long, at every control station, there'd been cider and more cider . . . My machine as really humming, running fine . . . I didn't dare to make any more stops . . . But I needed to bad . . . Finally I had to give in . . . So I throw on the brakes . . . I stop the car, I stand up, I spot a bush . . . I leave the chick at the wheel. 'Wait for me,' I sing out, 'I'll be back in a second . . .' I'd hardly touched a finger to my fly when so help me I'm stunned! Lifted off my feet! Dashed through the air like a straw in a gale! Boom! Stupendous! A shattering explosion! . . . The trees, the bushes all around, ripped up! mowed down! blasted! The air's aflame! I land at the bottom of a crater, almost unconscious . . . I feel myself . . . I pull myself together . . . I crawl to the road . . . A total vacuum! The car? . . . Gone, my boy . . . A vacuum! No more car! Evaporated! Demolished! Literally! The wheels, the chassis . . . oak! Pitchpine! All ashes! . . . The whole frame . . . Oh well! . . . I drag myself around, I scramble from one heap of earth to the next . . . I dig . . . I rummage . . . A few fragments here and there . . . a few splinters . . . A little piece of fan, a belt buckle. One of the caps of the gast tank . . . A hairpin . . . That was all . . . A tooth that I've never been sure about . . . The official investigation proved nothing . . . explained nothing . . . What would you expect? . . . The causes of that terrible conflagration will remain forever a mystery . . . Almost two weeks later in a pond, six hundred yards from the spot, they found . . . after a good deal of dredging . . . one of the young lady's feet, half devoured by the rats.
"For my part, though I can't claim to be absolutely certain, I might in a pinch accept one of the numerous hypotheses advanced at the time to explain that fire, that incredible explosion . . . it's possible that imperceptibly, little by little, one of our 'long fuses' shook loose . . . When you come to think of it, it would suffice for one of those thin minium rods, shaken by thousands of bumps and jolts, to come into contact for only a second . . . for a tenth of a second . . . with the gasoline nipples . . . The whole shebang would explode instantly! Like melinite! Like a shell! Yes, my boy, the mechanism was mighty precarious in those days. I went back to the place a long time after the disaster . . . There was still a charred smell . . . At that critical stage in the development of the automobile, I might add, a number of these fantastic explosions were reported . . . almost as powerful! Everything pulverized! Horribly scattered in all directions! Propelled through the air for miles! . . . If pressed for a comparison, the only thing I can think of is certain sudden explosions of liquid air . . . And even there I have my reservations . . . Those things are commonplace! Perfectly easy to explain . . . from start to finish . . . beyond the shadow of a doubt. Whereas my tragedy remains an almost complete mystery . . . We may as well admit it in all modesty. But what importance has that today? None whatever. Fuses haven't been used in ages. Such speculation only impedes progress . . . Other problems demand our attention . . . a thousand times more interesting! Ah, my boy, that was a long time ago . . . Nobody uses minium anymore . . . Nobody!"
-- Louis-Ferdinand Céline, Death on the Installment Plan, tr. Ralph Manheim (New York: New Directions, 1966), 335-37.
How to Equip a Bicycle in All Latitudes and Climates
One day Uncle Édouard got the brilliant idea of going up to the Genitron office to sound out the possibility of a little job for me. He had another reason, he wanted to consult him about his bicycle pump . . . He'd known de Pereires a long time, since the publication of his seventy-second handbook, the one that people still read more than any of the others, that was most widely distributed all over the world and had done the most for his reputation, his fame: How to equip a bicycle in all latitudes and climates for the sum of seventeen francs ninety-five, including all accessories and nickel-plated parts. At the time of which I am speaking this little manual published by the specialized firm of Berdouillon and Malarmée, on the Quai des Augustins, was in its three-hundredth printing! . . . Today it is hard to conceive of the enthusiasm, the general craze that this piddling, insignificant work aroused when it came out . . . But around 1900 How to Equip a Bicycle by Courtail-Martin des Pereires was a kind of catchism for the neophyte cyclist, his bedside reading, his Bible . . . Still, Courtail never ceased to be shrewdly self-critical. A little thing like that didn't turn his head. Naturally his rising fame brought him bigger and bigger mountains of mail, more visitors, more tenacious pests, extra work, and more acrimonious controversies . . . Very little pleasure . . . People came to consult him from Greenwich and Valparaiso, from Colombo and Blankenberghe, on the various problems connected with the "oblique" or "flexible" saddle . . . how to avoid strain on the ball bearings . . . how to grease the axles . . . the best hydrous mixture for rust-proofing the handlebars . . . He was famous all right, but the fame he got out of bicycles stuck in his craw. In the last thirty years he had scattered his booklets like seeds throughout the world, he had written piles of handbooks that were really a good deal more worthwhile, digests and explanations of real value and stature . . . In the course of his career he had explained just about everything . . . the fanciest and most complex of theories, the wildest imaginings of physics and chemistry, the budding science of radio-polarity . . . sidereal photography . . . He'd written about them all, some more, some less. It gave him a profound feeling of disillusionment, real melancholy, a depressing kind of amazement to see himself honored, adulated, glorified for the stuff he had written about inner tubes and freewheeling . . . In the first place he personally detested bicycles . . . He'd never ridden one, he'd never learned how . . . And on the mechanical side he was even worse . . . He'd never have been able to take off a wheel, not to mention the chain . . . He couldn't do anything with his hands except on the horizontal bar and the trapeze . . . Actually he was the world's worst butterfingers, worse than twelve elephants . . . Just trying to drive a nail in he'd mash at least two of his fingers, he'd make hash of his thumb, it was a massacre the minute he touched a hammer. I won't even mention pliers, he'd have ripped out the wall, the ceiling, wrecked the whole room . . . There wouldn't have been anything left . . . He didn't have two cents' worth of patience, his thoughts moved too fast and too far, they were too intense, too deep . . . The resistance of matter gave him an epileptic fit . . . The result was wreckage . . . He could tackle a problem in theory . . . But when it came to practice, all he could do on his own was swing dumbbells in the back room . . . or on Sunday climb into the basket and shout "Let her go" . . . and roll up in a ball to land when he was through . . . Whenever he tried to do any tinkering with his own fingers, it ended in disaster. He couldn't even move anything without dropping it or upsetting it . . . or getting it in his eye . . . You can't be an expert at everything . . . You've got to resign yourself . . .
-- Louis-Ferdinand Céline, Death on the Installment Plan, tr. Ralph Manheim (New York: New Directions, 1966), 331-33.
Torn Limb from Limb for Pickles
None of the brats came back from Easter vacation. There was nobody left at Meanwell but Jongkind and me. The joint was a desert.
To save on housework they closed off a whole floor. The furniture had gone, they sold it piece by piece, first the chairs, then the tables, the two cupboards, and even the beds. There was nothing left but our two beds. They were really liquidating . . . There was more to eat though . . . Quantities of jam . . . all we wanted . . . we could take seconds on pudding . . . The food was plentiful, what a change . . . that was really something new . . . Nora did the heavy work, but she prettied up all the same. At the table she was perfectly charming, almost playful . . .
The old geezer didn't hang around long, he'd fill up in a hurry and start off again on his tricycle. Jongkind kept the conversation going, all by himself. "No trouble!" And he'd learned another word: "No fear!" He was proud of that, it made him jump with joy. He never stopped saying it. "Ferdinand! No Fear!" he kept saying to me between mouthfuls.
Outside I didn't like to be noticed . . . I gave him a few kicks in the ass . . . He got the drift, he left me alone . . . As a reward I gave him pickles. I always took a supply with me, my pockets were full of them . . . They were his favorite delicacy, that way I made him behave . . . He'd let himself be torn limb from limb for pickles . . .
-- Louis-Ferdinand Céline, Death on the Installment Plan, tr. Ralph Manheim (New York: New Directions, 1966), 254-55.
Obtained from Lettuce
At last I tired of bread and water, got on my good behavior, and took to reading. The prison had a splendid library, not a worthless book in it. All the best English authors were there and I went through them hungrily. I became so immersed in reading that I was careful not to break the rules lest I lose three days or more from my books. I got schoolbooks and studied them. Remembering my poor arithmetic, I tried mathematics but couldn't get anywhere. Then the grammar, but the rules seemed to have been made for no other purpose than to confuse the beginner and "repress his noble rage," so I gave that up, got intensely interested in a small dictionary, and almost went into the dark cell for carrying it out with me to work and looking into it when the guard's back was turned. I read the best books in the library, except the Bible, and would have taken that only I already had six months with it in the Scotchman's jail.
I went through Chambers's Encyclopedia from A to Z. Read all about acids and paper, metals and metallurgy, dies and molds. I studied the history of locks and lockmaking, poring over the pictures of locks and their escutcheons -- all kinds of locks and keys, door locks, padlocks, combination locks, nothing was neglected. I read a most interesting paper on picklocks and lock-picking by a famous lock-maker of London. I followed the history of explosives from gunpowder down to nitroglycerin. I found a passage that old clearly and concisely which explosives did the greatest damage and made the least noise. What a mine of information! I was fascinated. I studied guns and pistols, drills and saws and files, braces and bits and drilling machines of high and low pressure and fast or slow motion.
I investigated poisons, herbs, and drugs. I discovered that the finest quality of morphine may be obtained from lettuce and proved it in the prison garden by extracting it and eating it. I read up on sleeping and dreaming and learned just what kind of noise is most apt to wake a sleeping person; just when he sleeps the deepest and at what hour of the night his courage is at the lowest ebb. I can sit in a hotel lobby today and pick out the sound sleeper, the medium sleeper, and light sleeper. I got it out of the encyclopedia, and proved it in practice later.
Jack Black, You Can't Win (Edinburgh, UK: AK Press/Nabat, 2000), 189-190.
Suppose I Take This Ludicrous Little Radish . . .
"But what about that big radish? You see it, don't you? Right there in the palm of your hand? And the little one? You see it too, don't you? Stunted! Dwarfed! This miserable puny radish! . . . A radish is a perfectly simple matter, isn't it? No, it's not simple? Ah, you disarm me! . . . And a giant radish, Ferdinand? Imagine an enormous radish! . . . Say as big as your head! . . . Suppose I take this ludicrous little radish and blow it up to enormous size with telluric blasts . . . Well? Like a balloon! Ah? And suppose I make a hundred thousand of them . . . a hundred thousand radishes! More and more voluminous! . . . And each year as many as I please . . . Five hundred thousand . . . enormous radishes! . . . As big as pears . . . As big as pumpkins! . . . Radishes such as nobody has ever seen! . . . Why, it's automatic . . . I eliminate the small radish . . . I wipe small radishes off the face of the earth! . . . I corner the market, I erect a monopoly! All your measly undersized vegetables are finished! Unthinkable! Through! All these baubles! These small-fry! No more tiny bunches! No more piddling shipments! If they keep, it's only by miracle . . . It's wasteful, my friend . . . anachronistic . . . shameful! . . . Enormous radishes, that's what I want to see! And here's our slogan: The future belongs to the radish . . . my radish . . . And what's going to stand in my way? My market? The whole world! . . . Is my radish nutritious? Tremendously! . . . Radish flour is fifty percent richer than the other kind . . . 'Radicious bread' for the army! . . . Far superior to all the wheat in Australia! . . . The analyses bear me out! . . . Well what do you think of it? . . . Is it beginning to dawn on you? You're not interested! Neither is she . . . But I am . . . If I devote myself to the radish . . . I'm only taking the radish as an example, I might have chosen the turnip . . . . But let's take the radish! The shock value will be greater. So there you are! I'm going into it! To the hilt! . . . to the hilt, do you hear . . . You catch my meaning?"
-- Louis-Ferdinand Céline, Death on the Installment Plan, tr. Ralph Manheim (New York: New Directions, 1966), 467-68.
Beethoven and Haydn
Hoshino . . . returned to his biography. Beethoven, he learned, was a proud man who believed absolutely in his own abilities and never bothered to flatter the nobility. Believing that art itself, and the proper expression of emotions, was the most sublime thing in the world, he thought political power and wealth served only one purpose: to make art possible. When Haydn boarded with a noble family, as he did most of his professional life, he had to eat with the servants. Musicians of Haydn's generation were considered employees. (The unaffected and good-natured Haydn, though, much preferred this arrangement to the stiff and formal meals put on by the nobility.)
Beethoven, in contrast, was enraged by any such contemptuous treatment, on occasion smashing things against the wall of anger. He insisted that as far as meals went he be treated with no less respect than the nobility he ostensibly served. He often flew off the handle, and once angry was hard to calm down. On top of this were radical political ideas that he made no attempt to hide. As his hearing deteriorated, these tendencies became even more pronounced. As he aged his music also became both more expansive and more densely inward looking. Only Beethoven could have balanced these two contrasting tendencies. But the extraordinary effort this required had a progressively deleterious effect on his life, for all humans have physical and emotional limits, and by this time the composer had more than reached his. . . .
"Yeah, I've been reading a biography of Beethoven," Hoshimo replied. "I like it. His life really gives you a lot to think about."
Oshima nodded. "He went through a lot -- to put it mildly."
"He did have a tough time," Hoshino said, "but I think it was mainly his fault. I mean, he was so self-centered and uncooperative. All he thought about was himself and his music, and he didn't mind sacrificing whatever he had to for it. He must've been tough to get along with. Hey, Ludwig, gimme a break! That's what I would have said if I knew him. No wonder his nephew went off his rocker. But I have to admit his music is wonderful. It really gets to you. It's a strange thing."
"Absolutely," Oshima agreed.
"But why did he have to live such a hard, wild life? He would've been better off with a more normal type of life."
Oshima twirled the pencil around in his fingers. "I see your point, but by Beethoven's time people thought it was important to express the ego. Earlier, when there was an absolute monarchy, this would've been considered improper, socially deviant behavior and suppressed quite severely. Once the bourgeoisie came to power in the nineteenth century, however, that suppression came to an end and the individual ego was liberated to express itself. Freedom and the emancipation of the ego were synonymous. And art, music in particular, was at the forefront of all this. Those who came after Beethoven and lived under his shadow, so to speak -- Berlioz, Wagner, Liszt, Schumann -- all lived eccentric, stormy lives. Eccentricity was seen as almost the ideal lifestyle. The age of Romanticism, they called it. Though I'm sure living like that was pretty hard on them at times. So, do you like Beethoven's music?"
-- Haruki Murakami, Kafka on the Shore, tr. Philip Gabriel (New York: Vintage, 2005), 376-8.
The Reign of Charles the Beloved of Zembla
That King's reign (1936-1958) will be remembered by at least a few discerning historians as a peaceful and elegant one. Owing to a fluid system of judicious alliances, Mars in his time never marred the record. Internally, until corruption, betrayal, and Extremism penetrated it, the People's Place (parliament) worked in perfect harmony with the Royal Council. Harmony, indeed, was the reign's password. The polite arts and pure sciences flourished. Technicology, applied physics, industrial chemistry and so forth were suffered to thrive. A small skyscraper of ultramarine glass was steadily rising in Onhava. The climate seemed to be improving. Taxation had become a thing of beauty. The poor were getting a little richer, and the rich a little poorer . . . . Medical care was spreading to the confines of the state: less and less often, on his tour of the country, every autumn, when the rowans hung coral-heavy, and the puddles tinkled with Muscovy glass, the friendly and eloquent monarch would be interrupted by a pertussal "backdraucht" in a crowd of schoolchildren. Parachuting had become a popular sport. Everybody, in a word, was content -- even the political mischiefmakers who were contentedly making mischief paid by a contented Sosed (Zembla's gigantic neighbor). But let us not pursue this tiresome subject.
-- Vladimir Nabokov, Pale Fire (New York: Knopf, 1992 [orig. pub. 1962]), 75.
The Death of Abner
During the afternoon Toby had worried less about Abner than on any day since he had been sick; he had felt that his friend's recovery was certain, and a load was lifted from his shoulders when he and Joe had decided regarding the circus; for, that out of the way, he could devote all his attention to his sick friend. Surely, with the ponies and the monkey they could have a great deal of sport during the two weeks that yet remained before school would begin, and Toby felt thoroughly happy.
But his happiness was changed to alarm very soon after he entered the house, for the doctor was there again, and from the look on the faces of Uncle Daniel and Aunt Olive, he knew Abner must be worse.
"What is it, Uncle Dan'l? Is Abner any sicker?" he asked, with quivering lip, as he looked up at the wrinkled face that ever wore a kindly look for him.
Uncle Daniel laid his hand affectionately on the head of the boy, whom he had cared for with the tenderness of a father since the day he repented and asaked forgiveness for having run away, and his voice trembled as he said:
"It is very likely that the good God will take the crippled boy to Himself to-night, Toby, and there in the heavenly mansions will he find relief from all his pain and infirmities. The the poor farm boy will no longer be an orphan or deformed, but, with his Almighty Father, will enter into such joys as we can have no conception of."
"Oh, Uncle Dan'l! Must Abner really die?" cried Toby, while the great tears chased each other down his cheeks, and he hid his face on Uncle Daniel's knee.
"He will die here, Toby boy, but it is simply an awakening into a perfect, glorious life, to which I pray that both you and I may be prepared to go when our Farmer calls us."
For some time there was silence in the room, broken only by Toby's sobs; and, while Uncle Daniel stroked the weeping boy's head, the great white-winged messenger of God came into the chamber above, bearing away with him the spirit of the poor farm boy.
-- James Otis, Mr. Stubbs's Brother (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1910), 279-83.
The Book of Dave
The Chief Examiner turned his attention on Carl and Antonë. He pushed his mirror away from his face and confronted them with his sweaty and distorted sneer. Judgement was nigh:
-- Az 2 U 2 -- the harsh Mokni consonents cut like knives through the thickening atmosphere of the forecourt -- U lì, U cheet, U R trayters, U R Fliars. U raze up ve toyist an drag dahn ve dävyn! He drew a scrap of black cloth from a fold of his robe and slapped it on to his bald wig. He parted his robe so that the sign of the Wheel was clearly visible on the sweaty breast of his T-shirt. he drew himself up to his full height and pronounced terrifying anathema on them:
-- U wil B takun bakk 2 ve Towa an brökun on ve Weel. Yaw tungs wil B cú aht. U wil B brandid an ung aht 2 dye inna box! Tayk em dahn! Ware2, guv? he bellowed.
-- 2 Nú Lundun, the forecourt responded in a subdued fashion.
-- Will Self, The Book of Dave (New York: Bloomsbury, 2006), 430.