North (60 page)

139.
ESTHER LOYOLA
. Probably Anne Frank. "Frank" and "loyal" are related concepts. The name Loyola also suggests the hypocrisy traditionally attributed to the Jesuits. In choosing it Céline apparently wished to stigmatize the "hypocrisy" of the many millions of people who were moved by the fate of Anne Frank.

139.
MIRRUS
= Mirus, a make of wood stove then common in France.

145.
LOURCHA
. This word is not identifiable in Russian or Polish. Conceivably it is a garble of
leur chat
, "their cat."

148.
EIGHTEENTH
. The i8th arrondissement of Paris, which includes Montmartre.

149.
LANDWEHR
. German territorial troops, made up of conscripts over forty and ordinarily used for rear echelon duty.

150.
MADON OF SLEEPING CABS
. Masoilinized form of the title of Maurice Dékobra's once famous novel
La Madone des sleepings (The Madonna of the Sleeping Cars)
, which appeared during the twenties.

162.
DENTAL INSTITUTE
. One of the Paris Gestapo headquarters was located in a dental clinic.

166.
LE NAIN
. Louis Le Nain (1593-1648), who painted scenes of peasant life.

168.
JACOB
. Madeleine Jacob, French journalist of the extreme left. Specialized in court proceedings.

169.
COCCINELLE
. A transvestite performer who was a celebrity in the fifties. Transformed into a woman by surgery, she married and disappeared from the public view.

186.
MADAME DE THÈBES
. A famous clairvoyante early in the century, consulted by leading figures in French society and political life.

199.
LISIEUX
. St. Teresa of Lisieux, canonized in 1925, was a member of the Carmelite convent in that city (Normandy). An important place of pilgrimage.

199.
BERNADOTTE
, Charles Jean-Baptiste Bemadotte, born in Pau, 1763; died in Stockholm, 1844. One of Napoleon's marshals. Relieved of his command in 1809 and elected heir to the Swedish throne in 1810. Entered into an alliance with Russia against France. Became king in 1818 under the name of Charles XIV. Founder of the present Swedish dynasty.

199.
ABBESS OF MONTMARTRE
. There was formerly an abbey of Benedictine nuns on the hill of Montmartre. Founded in 1133, it was destroyed in 1794. The memory is preserved in the Place des Abbesses.

200.
MONNERVILLE
. Gaston Monnerville, French political figure, born in Cayenne in 1897. President of the Senate from 1958 to 1968. He is a Negro, hence Celine's animosity. Céline calls him "king of France" because if the President of the Republic dies in office the President of the Senate assumes the interim.

200.
SACHS
. Maurice Sachs. Well-known figure in the art world and night life of Paris between the wars—esthete, pederast and, according to his legend, something of a crook. Often seen at Le Boeuf sur le Toit, a night club that had its heyday in the twenties. In 1942, hoping to escape from anti-Semitic persecution, he signed a contract to work in Germany and became a crane operator in Hamburg. Arrested and imprisoned, he was believed to have informed on a number of people. He is thought to have been killed in a bombardment 

200.
MAYOL
. Concert Mayol. A Paris music hall famous for its nude reviews, named after a famous cabaret singer of the early twentieth century.

200.
GRAND-GUIGNOL
. Montmartre theater specializing in horror plays. Tortures were shown in detail and the blood flowed in streams.

210.
TALLEMANT
. Gédéon Tallemant des Réaux (1619-1690), French memorialist, author of the
Historiettes
, an enormous collection of anecdotes giving a faithful and vivid picture of the society of his day.

214.
VICHY-BRISSON
. Pierre Brisson (1896-1964) was director of the newspaper
Le Figaro
from 1934 to 1942 and from 1944 to the time of his death. The linking of his name with Vichy seems to be an allusion to the fact that
Le Figaro
was published in Lyons in the unoccupied zone of France from the time of the Armistice to the invasion of the unoccupied zone by the Germans.

215.
COLOMBEY-LES-DEUX
. Colombey-Ies-Deux-Églises, a village in the Marne department east of Paris, where de Gaulle made his home in 1946. In Celine's abbreviation (Colombey-the-Two) à Frenchman tends automatically to supply the word
couilles
(balls).

216.
ROGER
. Roger Nimier ( 1925-1962 ), journalist and novelist Literary adviser to the Gallimard publishing house. Member of a group of right-wing anarchists popularly known as "Les Hussards" after Nimier's novel
Le Hussard bleu
 (1950). 

218.
MADAME LAFENTE
. Uncertain whom Céline means to insult with this name.
Fente = crack.

218.
FIGARO IMMOBILIER
(Real-Estate Figaro).
Le Figaro littéraire
weekly, read as much for the housing ads as for the book reviews and articles.

219.
ENCYCLOPEDIA
.
The Encyclopédie de la Pléiade
, published by Gallimard.

219.
SON OF THE PEOPLE
.
Fils du peuple
is the title of the autobiography published in 1937 by Maurice Thorez (1900-1964), secretary of the French Communist Party from 1930 to the time of his death.

223.
REVIZOR
. This is not German but the Russian title of Gogol's comedy
The Inspector General.

232.
PAUL LAFFITTE
. Possibly the publisher Pierre Lafitte ( 1872-1938), who introduced the modern illustrated magazine into France. Published the illustrated weekly Femina and founded the daily
Excelsior.

232.
GANCE
. Abel Gance, horn in 1889, early French film director. Made his first film in 1911. Best known for
Napoléon
(1926,), which required the use of three screens.

232.
MARDRUS
. Joseph-Charles Mardrus (1868-1949), physi-, dan and Orientalist, bom in Cairo. Did a French translation of the
Thousand and One Nights
(1898-1904).

232.
MADAME FRAYA
. Famous clairvoyante early in the century.

232.
VASCHID
. Perhaps Rachilde, pen name of Marguerite Eym-ery (1860-1953), novelist, wife of Alexandre Vallette, founder of the
Mercure de France.

232.
VAN DONGEN
. Kees Van Dongen (1877-1968), French painter of Dutch extraction. He lived in the street named Villa Saïd.

236.
LES BEAUX DRAPS
. Title of a pamphlet published by Céline in 1941. In it he attacks the Jews and speaks of everything under the sun—liquor, the spurious culture of the French left, his writing technique, his trip to the U.S.S.R., and his ambivalent, not unpleasant relations with the little Chekist girl who acted as his guide. The pamphlet was withdrawn from circulation by the Vichy government.

238.
KATYN
. A village in Russia, west of Smolensk. In 1943 the Germans found there eight pits containing the bodies of 4,500 Polish officers. They accused the Russians, who in turn put the blame on the Germans. An investigation carried out by an American commission in 1953 attributed the massacres to the Soviet police.

238.
LESCA
. Journalist, contributed to
Je suis partout.

238.
SARTRE, THE RESISTER OF THE CHÂTELET
. Refers to the Théâtre du Châtelet and implies that Sartre's resistance) was limited to the theater.

238.
VAILLANT GONCOURT
. Roger Vailland (1907-1965), novelist, co-founder of the Surrealist magazine
Le Grand jeu
. Active in the Resistance.

256.
ABBEY OF THÉLÈME
. L'Abbaye de Thélème, a famous night club on Place Pigalle at the beginning of the century. It took its name from the abbey that figures in Rabelais'
Pantagruel
, whose motto was: "Do as you please."

256.
LEON BOURGEOIS
. French political figure ( 1851-1925), Prefect of Police, foreign minister and premier. Awarded Nobel Peace Prize in 1920.

258.
LEAKS
. A reference to
l'affaire des fuites
, a political scandal that shook France from 1954 to 1956. In 1954 it was discovered that information about the meetings of the National Defense Commission bad been leaked to the Communist Party. After a long investigation a number of persons were convicted and sentenced to long prison terms. In liberal and left circles the affair is widely thought to have been a frame-up, aimed at discrediting certain political figures.

259.
LA CROIX
. Catholic daily founded in 1883 by the Augustas de l'Assomption. Since the Second World War its editorial policy has been a left-of-center liberalism.

262.
JAVERT, JEAN VALJEAN
. Characters in Victor Hugo's novel
Les Misérables.
Jean Valjean is sent to a penal colony for stealing a loaf of bread He escapes and becomes an honest man and philanthropist He is recognized by Javert, the incorruptible and ruthless detective. Javert does his best to arrest him, but Valjean always escapes. In the end Javert pursues him through the sewers of Paris, and in the course of the chase Valjean saves Javert from drowning. Torn between his duty as a policeman and his gratitude to the man who saved his life, Javert commits suicide by throwing himself into the Seine.

270.
DUCHESS DE CAMASTRA
, A descendant of Marshal Ney. She married a Neapolitan nobleman During the First World War she founded a Franco-Italian hospital She was a friend of Gabriele d'Annunzio.

270.
BONI DE CASTELLANE
, Boniface de Castellane ( 1867-1932), French nobleman Married Anna Gould, daughter of Jay Gould, the American railroad magnate. Lived on a sumptuous scale and became a deputy. Built the "Palais Rose" on Avenue Foch, an imitation of the Grand Trianon in Versailles.

270.
SEM
. Pen name of Georges Coursât, a caricaturist (1863-1934). In 1900 published an album,
Les Sportsmen.
Prominent as a caricaturist of social and literary figures.

274.
FONTANE
. Theodor Fontane (1819-1898), German writer, author of
Effi Briest 
(1896),
Wanderungen durch die Mark Brandenburg
(1861-1882), etc. In the Franco-Prussian War he followed the German army, was taken prisioner at Domrémy and interned on the island of Oléron. After various vicissitudes he was set free by order of Gambetta and Crémieux.

299.
RENNENKAMPF
. Pavel Karlovitch Rennenkampf ( 1854-1918), Russian Generali Fought in the Russo-Japanese War. Put down mutinies in Siberia. Was defeated by Hindenburg in the lake region of East Prussia and relieved of his command Was offered a command in the Bolshevik army by Trotsky and was. shot when- he declined.

299.
TANNENBERG
. Battle of Tannenberg (August 26-29,1914)-Decisive victory of the Germans under Hindenburg over the Russians commanded by Samsonov, who committed suicide after the battle.

311.
AMBIGU
. Théâtre de l'Ambigu-Comique. Paris theater, founded in 1769 by the actor Audinot on the Boulevard du Temple. Burned down in 1827 and rebuilt on Boulevard Saint-Martin. Recently torn down.

325.
BOUGRAT
. Dr. Pierre Bougrat (1890-1961). Accused in 1925 of assassinating a bill collector, whose body was found in a closet in Bougrat's house. Condemned to forced labor for life. Six months after his arrival in Guiana, he escaped to Venezuela, where he practiced medicine until his death in 1961.

344.
ECHO DU PAPE
. Presumably the Vatican organ
L'Osservatore Romano.

344.
ABBÉ PIGGYBANK
. L'abbé Tirelire. Probably l'Abbé Pierre, pseudonym of Henri Groues, born in 1912. Entered the Church and took the.name of Abbé Pierre in 1942. Founded the Association d'Emmaiis (1951) devoted largely to building emergency housing for the homeless.

344.
DUNKIRK TO TAMANRASSET
. In a speech delivered at Algiers in 1958 General de Gaulle declared that France extended "from Dunkirk to Tamanrasset," that is, from the extreme north of France to the extreme south of Algeria. Tamanrasset is a small town in the Algerian Sahara.

353.
MONTROUGE
. A working-class suburb on the south edge of Paris.

367.
MONTROUGE
. Montoire-sur-le-Loir, site of a meeting on October 24, 1940, between Hitler and Pétain, at which they tried to define the terms of Franco-German collaboration.

379.
PETZAREFF, THE HONORARY BUCHENWALD
. Pierre Lazareff, French journalist born in 1907. Directed
Paris-Soir
from 1937 to 1940. During the war directed the French section of the War Information Office, first in New York, then in London. Now director of
France-Soir
and other publications. The basis of this transformation of Lazareff s name is that
pet
= fart. He is called an "honorary Buchenwald" because at the time when he would otherwise have been sent to a concentration camp he was in America.

379.
DEATH-HOUSE COUSTEAU
. See
COUSTEAU
note to p. 63.

381.
RASTIGNAN
. The name is no doubt modeled on Bastignae, an ambitious, unscrupulous young man who figures in several of Balzac's novels. Here Céline seems to be speaking of Jean Paulhan, director of the
Nouvelle revue Française,
though there was no evident reason for identifying him with Rastignac.

409.
HÉROLD PAQUI
. Jean Hérold, alias Jean Hérold-Paquis 1912-1945), journalist. Took part in the Spanish Civil War on the side of Franco. Appointed by Vichy government Delegate for Propaganda in the Hautes-Alpes department (1940). Beginning in 1942, daily news broadcasts over Radio Paris. Joined the P.P.F. Fled to Baden-Baden and Landau. Directed the Radio-Patrie radio station. Escaped to Switzerland in 1945. Handed over to the French authorities, sentenced to death and executed.