Lot n° 121
Estimation :
5000 - 6000
EUR
Result with fees
Result
: 15 165EUR
Louis-Ferdinand Céline.
Journey to the End of the Night. Novel. New edition with 155 drawings by Gen-Paul. Paris, Éditions Denoël, 1942.
Fort in-8 : black half-maroquin with bands, smooth spine, boards decorated with a geometrical composition mosaic of grey and black box and white vellum, untrimmed, gilt head, cover and spine kept (Pierre-Lucien Martin, 1956).
First illustrated edition: 15 full-page compositions by Gen Paul.
One of the 42 first copies on Arches vellum, this one one of the 7 hors commerce (nº III) specially printed for Gen Paul who has enhanced in gouache and watercolour all the illustrations.
The painter has noted, under the justification: "Enhanced in colours by myself, Gen Paul 42."
Two original drawings by Gen Paul, dated 1943, added: one in the frontispiece and one on the title: portraits of Celine and himself.
Double mailing from the author and then from the illustrator:
To Gen-Paul
Smile of the Butte
Ferd Céline Louis [drawing of a steamboat]
To my pal
Geninasca le roi de la feraille [sic]
Gen Paul
Only two works by Céline are known to have been sent to Gen Paul: this one and a copy of Mort à crédit (cat. Coulet-Faure, 1963)
The relationship between the Montmartre painter and the novelist, which was very friendly, was to sour at the Liberation: fearing to be compromised because of his closeness to Céline, Gen Paul distanced himself. However, having met
Milton Hindus during a stay in the United States in 1946, he facilitated Hindus' relations with Céline. Similarly, although he did not go to Denmark, he sent his second wife, Gaby, there in 1949. They had a definite falling out in 1952 with the publication of Féerie pour une autre fois, in which Gen Paul is portrayed as a diabolical legless.
As for Geninasca, it seems he was a rich scrap dealer from the Butte: was he related to Robert Geninasca, potato merchant nicknamed Robert Patate, born in 1932? According to André Roussard, "his small business belonged to the Geninasca family, Helvetians from Ticino, owners of a market hall at the bottom of rue Lepic.
An in-4 sheet of Céline's notes is mounted at the top: the murderous and insulting formulas set the tone: I'll make you eat cow skin [...] unparalleled thug, disgusting thug...
Notes on the back concerning a granulated medicine called Agocholine.
An impeccable copy.
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