An authentic legal war over the “treasure of unpublished manuscripts” by Louis-Ferdinand Céline (1894-1961) ends up in front of the Paris court: the Gallimard publishing house and two heirs are in the dock. According to information gathered by the weekly «Marianne», after months of discreet discussions with Gallimard and the heirs of the last wife of the French writer, Lucette Destouches, Céline’s family has decided to take legal action in the absence of an agreement, in particular on the return of family objects and documents.
The complaint was filed by two sons and five grandchildren of the only daughter of the author of “Death on Credit”, Colette Turpin. These direct descendants (together with the great-grandchildren there are 25 in all) believe that the death of Lucette in 2019 and the discovery of the “literary treasure” which took place in 2021, made up of unpublished texts, letters and private documents, will reshuffle the cards of a little legacy orthodox and, in their eyes, shaky on the issue of moral rights.
“Today they wake up, but their claims are worth nothing, not even a cent,” replies the lawyer François Gibault, one of the two heirs cited in court, executor of the will of Céline’s wife. Gallimard also decided not to listen to the family’s requests. The publishing house is publishing today, April 27, «La volonté du roi Krogold», an «unpublished medieval legend of Céline», of which two versions were found in the «treasure» which reappeared in the summer of 2021.
Next May, a new edition of the Pléiade will include excerpts from «Casse-pipe» and Céline’s other unpublished works already published, «Londres» and «Guerre», released by Gallimard in 2022. «We will thus have exhausted all the new unpublished works» , says François Gibault, noting that these posthumous publications have “revitalized Céline’s work”.
“We have dozens of requests for translations, a request for a play and even a film based on ‘Journey to the End of the Night'”, confides the lawyer Gibault, also announcing a forthcoming reprint of Céline’s anti-Semitic pamphlets.
“They will be in the public domain in 2032, so they must be published before then with a critical apparatus,” says Gibault. Again, this is enough to jolt the writer’s family, who aren’t involved in all of these decisions.