two stars in the sky
“The Akkadian victory over [the Lullubi] is commemorated by . . . a masterpiece of Mesopotamian sculpture: the famous stele found at Susa [c. 2239 B.C.]. . . . There Naram-Sin, armed with the bow and the horned tiara of the gods on his head, is shown climbing a steep mountain and treading upon the corpses of his enemies; his infantry, pictured on a smaller scale, follows him. The gods, who dwarfed the humans in Early Dynastic Sumerian sculpture, are now, significantly, reduced to discreet symbols: two stars in the sky.”
—Georges Roux, Ancient Iraq, third edition, 1992.
black and shapeless
“Falling on the people who passed in the street, the long, naked, whistling finger of gas in the entrance turned them instantly into ghosts, gaunt or stout, framed in the black doorway. The same passers-by would then go and find themselves a bit of color here and there, in the light of windows or street lamps, and finally lose themselves, as black and shapeless as myself, in the night.”
—Louis-Ferdinand C’line, Journey To The End Of The Night, 1934, translated by Ralph Manheim, 1983.
No more white! No more black!
“‘For one thing, Ferdinand, from the standpoint of a truly modern intelligence, haven’t all differences and distinctions been defaced? No more white! No more black! Everything dissolves. That’s the new approach! The fashion! . . . I saw the human mind, Ferdinand, losing its balance little by little and dissolving in the vast maelstrom of apocalyptic ambitions! It began about 1900 . . . mark that date!’”
—Louis-Ferdinand C’line, Journey To The End Of The Night, 1934, translated by Ralph Manheim, 1983.
communists
“When the red ants discovered that a new variety of canned goods had arrived, they mounted guard around the cassoulet. It wouldn’t have been advisable to leave a freshly opened can standing; they’d have summoned the whole nation of red ants to the shack. There are no bigger communists anywhere.”
—Louis-Ferdinand C’line, Journey To The End Of The Night, 1934, translated by Ralph Manheim, 1983.
great delirious spurts of scarlet
“The sunsets in that African hell proved to be fabulous. They never missed. As tragic every time as a monumental murder of the sun! . . . For a whole hour the sky paraded in great delirious spurts of scarlet from end to end; after that the green of the trees exploded and rose up in quivering trails to meet the first stars. Then the whole horizon turned gray again and then red, but this time a tired red that didn’t last long. That was the end. All the colors fell back down on the forest in tatters, like streamers after the hundredth performance. It happened every day at exactly six o’clock.”
—Louis-Ferdinand C’line, Journey To The End Of The Night, 1934, translated by Ralph Manheim, 1983.
The Governor
“The Governor seemed to wear all the gold in his treasury on his uniform . . . in the blazing sunshine, it surpassed belief, even without the plumes.”
—Louis-Ferdinand C’line, Journey To The End Of The Night, 1934, translated by Ralph Manheim, 1983.
her perverse red hair
“As she spoke, her perverse red hair (she had the complexion that went with it) was tossed by extraordinary waves that sent vibrations straight to my perineum. When this divine creature questioned me about my feats of arms, I gave her so many poignant details that she began to devour me with her eyes.”
—Louis-Ferdinand C’line, Journey To The End Of The Night, 1934, translated by Ralph Manheim, 1983.
a burning village
“Even from ten or fifteen miles away you get a good view of a burning village. It was a merry sight. A tiny hamlet that you wouldn’t even notice in the daytime, with ugly, uninteresting country around it, you can’t imagine how impressive it can be when it’s on fire at night! You’d think it was Notre-Dame! A village, even a small one, takes at least all night to burn, in the end it looks like an enormous flower, then there’s only a bud, and after that nothing.”
—Louis-Ferdinand C’line, Journey To The End Of The Night, 1934, translated by Ralph Manheim, 1983.
an arc lamp
“A war had been switched on between us and the other side, and now it was burning! Like the current between the two carbons of an arc lamp! And this lamp was in no hurry to go out!”
—Louis-Ferdinand C’line, Journey To The End Of The Night, 1934, translated by Ralph Manheim, 1983.
blackness
“I knew only one thing about that blackness, which was so dense you had the impression that if you stretched out your arm a little way from your shoulder you’d never see it again, but of that one thing I was absolutely certain, namely, that it was full of homicidal impulses.”
—Louis-Ferdinand C’line, Journey To The End Of The Night, 1934, translated by Ralph Manheim, 1983.