Chapter 10, In the Beginning and Without End . . . Summary and Analysis

Celine himself claimed that his style was the most important part of his writing. To once again return to the subject of the abject, this seems to follow rather logically. The abject is abject precisely because of its relationship—or, rather, its lack of a relationship—with language. Language, then, is the province of objects and what creates the demarcation between objects and non-objects. Celine's goal, then, is to pervert and twist language and, in a certain sense, undermine it—if language remains completely intact, there is no way to experience abjection. This chapter is probably one of the most difficult to understand for an English reader as it betrays the fact that it is a translation. Many of Celine's stylistic oddities are difficult to understand...