SOURCE: "Céline: The Fire in the Night," in Symposium: A Quarterly Journal in Modern Foreign Literatures, Vol. XXXV, No. 2, Summer, 1981, pp. 117-30.

In the following essay, Carson examines picaresque themes and the metaphorical significance of fire in Céline's fiction. "In Céline's novels," Carson writes, "the images of fire reveal many of the author's ideas about creativity and the act of writing."

The narrators of Céline's novels, from Bardamu in Voyage au bout de la nuit to the doctor of Rigodon, share a desire to recount a journey which, as they are the first to point out, leads to no magic solution, no shining Grail. From the opening of the first novel the dominant image in Céline's fiction is black and hopeless night. It is not strictly true, however, that "nothing" shines. Night is frequently brightened by fires, sometimes to the extent that it...