"Le passeport français est moche mais il vaut mieux que rien."

Partly unpublished autograph letter signed by Louis-Ferdinand Céline "ami tenace et obligé" addressed to his lawyer, Maître Thorvald Mikkelsen. Two pages written in blue ink on a large sheet of white paper; number "579" in Céline's hand in red pencil at top left.
Transverse folds inherent to posting.
This letter was very partially transcribed in the Année Céline 2005.
Very enigmatic letter: "Aladin avait déjà une très jolie lampe - avec celle là vous allez voir un peu les trésors que je vais découvrir. Vous avez raison, du reste - Carpe Diem ! Mais vous savez la moitié au moins du destin : c'est le PASSEPORT. Le passeport français est moche et moch. mais il vaut mieux que rien." ["Aladdin already had a very pretty lamp - with this one you're going to see the treasures I'm going to discover. You're right, besides - Carpe Diem! But you know at least half of destiny: it's the PASSPORT. The French passport is ugly and ugly. but it's better than nothing."] Note in passing the play on words with the name of Jules Moch, vice-president of the council from 1949 to 1950.
He informs Mikkelsen: "J'ai aussi merde ! un cadeau à vous offrir et que vous accepterez, nom de dieu ! parce que c'est un livre en Suédois ! donc scandinave ! donc divin ! donc touchable, acceptable, recevable, non puant." ["I also have, damn! a gift to offer you and which you will accept, by God! because it's a book in Swedish! therefore Scandinavian! therefore divine! therefore touchable, acceptable, receivable, non-stinking."]
In 1947, Céline, pursued by French justice for his collaborationist involvement, is confined in Denmark. It is in May 1948, accompanied by Lucette and Bébert, that he arrives at his lawyer Maître Thorvald Mikkelsen's home in Klarskovgaard. The latter owns a large property by the Baltic Sea and invites the exile to stay there. On February 21, 1950, as part of the purification process, the writer is definitively sentenced in absentia by the civic chamber of the Paris Court of Justice for collaboration to one year's imprisonment (which he had already served in Denmark). The Swedish consul general in Paris, Raoul Nordling, intervenes on his behalf with Gustav Rasmussen, Danish Minister of Foreign Affairs, and manages to delay his extradition. On April 20, 1951, Jean-Louis Tixier-Vignancour, his lawyer since 1948, obtains Céline's amnesty as a "severely disabled veteran of the Great War" by presenting his file under the name Louis-Ferdinand Destouches without any magistrate making the connection. Céline would leave Denmark the following summer, after three years spent at his lawyer's home.