Lettre autographe signée adressée à Maître Thorvald Mikkelsen : "Nous dirons si vous le voulez bien en simple et bon français que Marcel Aymé a : de la pénétration. [...] Et si Marcel a de la pénétration moi j'ai de la vision."

Signed autograph letter, partly unpublished, by Louis-Ferdinand Céline addressed to his lawyer, Maître Thorvald Mikkelsen. Two pages written in blue ink on a large sheet of white paper; number "582" in Céline's hand in red pencil at top left.
Cross-folds inherent to mailing.
This letter was very partially transcribed in Année Céline 2005.
Fine letter mentioning Marcel Aymé: "We will say, if you please, in simple and good French that Marcel Aymé has: penetration. [...] And if Marcel has penetration, I have vision." We will not revisit the friendship that united Céline and Aymé - the latter even visited him at Klarskovgaard in March 1951 - but we will content ourselves with quoting a passage from the text that the Montmartre writer composed in homage to his sulphurous friend: "I knew him twenty-five years ago, before the war when he was celebrated everywhere, admired - but rarely understood - and after his return from Denmark, during the nine years of suffering that led him to death. Before as after the storm, his conversation revealed the idealist whose sarcasms denounced the hundred thousand miseries of a cruel, vain, bulimic humanity, bent on its own destruction. 'Before', his indictments against man's murderous and suicidal follies, against the injustices and snares of society, had the joyful force of a fighter, bursting forth with inexhaustible verbal invention that amazed his listeners." (Ecrits sur la politique 1933-1967)
Céline also speaks in this letter of Albert Naud (his lawyer between 1947 and 1951) who "is strolling in Canada" and "is going to get himself a Thénardière on the St Lawrence". This is followed by a very Célinian consideration: "I also believe that the next and ultimate Capital of France will be Montreal." The Danish exile then fantasizes about a world government to be established: "And [René] Meyer (sic) minister of Justice, always, of course! over there! You will then yourself be minister of War in Denmark (in retirement)."
In 1947, Céline, pursued by French justice for his collaborationist commitment, 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 at 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 purge, the writer is definitively condemned 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 consul general of Sweden 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 under the title of "grand invalide de la grande guerre" by presenting his file under the name Louis-Ferdinand Destouches without any magistrate making the connection. Céline will leave Denmark the following summer, after three years spent at his lawyer's home.