It is an extraordinary event which agitates the literary world: Warunpublished novel by Louis-Ferdinand Céline, published by Gallimard Thursday, May 5. His admirers had been waiting for this publication since the mysterious reappearance, in August 2021, of 6,000 handwritten pages of the controversial writer. Doriginal documents, letters and entire projects which would have been stolen from Céline at the end of the Second World War and which everyone thought were lost.
The hope of finding them had vanished when his widow, Lucette Destouches, died in 2019. However, it was her disappearance that allowed journalist Jean-Pierre Thibaudat, a former theatrical critic of the daily Release, to reveal to the author’s heirs that a donor, wishing to remain anonymous, had given him these sheets fifteen years earlier. Built like a thriller, the documentary Celine: the last secrets, by Elise Le Bivic and Paul Sanfourchereturns for the program « Stupéfiant » (France 5) on this major artistic discovery.
The documentary tries in particular to unravel the enigma of the identity of the author of the theft. When Paris was liberated in 1944, Louis-Ferdinand Céline, a notorious anti-Semite, fled the capital for Nazi Germany. The writer is informed that his apartment in Montmartre, which he hastily left leaving a large number of manuscripts there, has been looted. Very quickly, he accuses a man: « Oscar Rosembly, a Corsican Jew, came after my departure to destroy my apartment ».
Celine’s allegations seem plausible in the eyes of Jérôme Dupuis, a journalist who revealed the affair in The world. « It is even said that Oscar Rosembly was somewhat Louis-Ferdinand Céline’s accountant, he says in the documentary. (…) In August 1944, there are a number of resistance fighters from the French Forces of the Interior who take some possession of Montmartre. Oscar Rosembly is part of this group of resistance fighters who interrogate people, visit apartments, carry out searches… »
« Except that at one point, it seems that Oscar Rosembly made some somewhat wild, somewhat illegal searches. »
Jérôme Dupuis, journalistin the documentary « Céline, the last secrets »
Véronique Robert-Chovin, friend of Céline’s widow and one of the heirs, also believes in the involvement of this man. She puts on the detective’s costume and follows in the footsteps of Oscar Rosembly in Poggiolo (Corse-du-Sud), where he is from. « It’s a bit of a movie and a crime novel, she laughs in the documentary. I am researching where these manuscripts, which had disappeared for so long, may have been hidden. The hypothesis which seems to me the most likely is the hypothesis corse with Oscar Rosembly. »
On the Island of Beauty, she meets Pierre Martini, a cousin of Oscar Rosembly. The latter has him « talked about Céline, because he knew it by heart », says this man in the documentary. « He told me he had gone up in the apartment, so he probably had a key. (…) DIn the drawers, in the cupboards, there were writings, he continues. He didn’t tell me that he took them, but that he saw them, that he touched them. »
For Pierre Martini, the Oscar Rosembly track is beyond doubt. The fact remains that nearly 80 years later, there is no formal proof that he stole the manuscripts of Louis-Ferdinand Céline. If the mystery remains, it will probably not affect the joy of the convinced « Céliniens »: the publication of War should be followed by two other unpublished works, in the fall of 2022 and then in 2023.
The documentary Celine: the last secrets by Elise Le Bivic and Paul Sanfourche, broadcast on the program « Stupéfiant » on France 5, can be viewed in replay on france.tv