CÉLINE Louis-Ferdinand (1894-1961). Lot n° 41

CÉLINE Louis-Ferdinand (1894-1961). L.A.S. "Destouches", [Copenhagen Prison] Thursday, August 1, 1946, to his Danish lawyer Thorvald MIKKELSEN and to HIS WIFE Lucette DESTOUCHES; 2 pages in-4 in pencil on pink paper headed Københavns Fængsler Prison, Vestre Foengsel. Beautiful letter from prison, mostly to his wife Lucette, published in Lettres de prison à Lucette Destouches et à Maître Mikkelsen (Gallimard, 1998, no. 103). "VOLTAIRE characterizes France as a "light and hard" nation. Nothing, alas, could be more accurate"; waiting for an amnesty is futile: "I expect nothing from French magnanimity! As for CHARBONNIERE, "this little rabid screw-up represents my poor Patrie"... To his wife: don't count on being released any time soon, he'll be here for years: "Impatience is the vinegar of torments". It's pointless to expect help from BIDAULT, "a poor little shit hatched in the masquerade of the Resistance, where any little shit capable of robbing a tobacconist's has taken himself for a new Clemenceau", from TEITGEN and other nabobs, "catastrophe lice". He makes winter recommendations for Lucette, and for the cat BÉBERT. He regrets: "I lacked reflexes, vivacity and the instinct for self-preservation. [...] When I was more alert, I'd gone to Spain 1 year earlier and everything had been said. [...] It's the old boars who fall first in the hunt".