Un feuillet autographe manuscrit pour Normance (Féérie pour une autre fois II) : "ça arrivera pas à Lauriac ! ni à Tartron ! ni Larengue !... Ils ont pris le bon versant de la vie : le flan !"

Autograph manuscript signed by Louis-Ferdinand Céline written in blue ballpoint pen on a sheet of white paper numbered 243 in the left corner. Some stains as well as a central fold of no consequence. A tiny lack of paper at the lower right margin of the sheet. Some pinholes in the upper margin, evidence of the organization of Céline's manuscripts in "bundles".
"pour aller traverser les lignes, des barrages, quelque chose !... au galop ! et je me suis bien fait sonner ! ça arrivera pas à Lauriac ! ni à Tartron ! ni Larengue !... Ils ont pris le bon versant de la vie : le flan !... pour ma concerne je regrette rien ... c'est fait ! c'est fait ! la preuve ma tête... mais enfin pour la griserie, cette sorte de bravoure somnambule, j'admire les doués... je les respecte... j'arrive moi que par le stoïcisme, le sang froid, là ! hop !" ["to go cross the lines, barricades, something!... at a gallop! and I really got myself beaten up! that won't happen to Lauriac! nor to Tartron! nor Larengue!... They took the right side of life: the flank!... as for me I regret nothing... it's done! it's done! the proof my head... but finally for the intoxication, this sort of sleepwalking bravery, I admire the gifted ones... I respect them... I only achieve it through stoicism, cold blood, there! hop!"]
The passage from our sheet, referring to Mauriac, Sartre and Aragon, conforms to the published version.
Published in 1954, Normance is a direct sequel to Féérie pour une autre fois published two years earlier. The two parts were written during Céline's years of exile and imprisonment in Denmark. Upon his return to France in 1951, Céline undertook a work of "polishing" and published these two titanic texts independently, originally conceived as one. "Céline, while working on it, thought of this novel as a second Voyage au bout de la nuit, capable twenty years later of astonishing the public as much as the 1932 novel." (Henri Godard)