Qu'on S'Explique - Postface au Voyage au bout de la nuit

First edition printed in 36 copies with a frontispiece portrait of the author, one of 30 numbered copies on vellum, the only issue after 1 Japan and 5 Holland paper copies.

Admirably printed, this extremely rare bibliophilic object is particularly precious for its complementarity with the first edition of Voyage au bout de la nuit.

Handsome copy presented in a full beige cloth chemise (with light dampstaining at foot) which appears to be the publisher's slipcase.

Bookplate affixed to verso of front cover.

Céline published his text for the first time on March 16, 1933, on the front page of the popular weekly Candide. 

A few days earlier appeared in L'Intransigeant an article by Émile Zavie in which he castigates the surrealist testimony of an erudite forest ranger pruning his library with secateurs:

« Il y a des livres de toute sorte, mais, si vous alliez les ouvrir, vous seriez bien étonnés. Ils sont tous incomplets ; [...] je lis avec des ciseaux [...] et je coupe tout ce qui me déplaît. [...] Des Loups j'ai gardé dix pages, un peu moins du Voyage au bout de la nuit. De Corneille, j'ai gardé tout Polyeucte, et une partie du Cid. Dans mon Racine, je n'ai presque rien supprimé. De Baudelaire, j'ai gardé deux cents vers et de Hugo un peu moins. [...] de Proust, le dîner chez la duchesse de Guermantes ; le matin de Paris dans La Prisonnière. »

Zavie (who, coincidentally, is himself the son of a forest ranger) here publishes undoubtedly the most beautiful and Célinian compliment that the Voyage could receive, whose Bardamu has nothing to envy the man of the woods, neither his mocking intelligence nor his nihilistic impertinence. A very opportune polemic ensued which had the main advantage of allowing Céline to emerge from the reserve to which he had confined himself since the book's release. He then gave free rein to his ironic and biting spirit, displaying a sublime complicity with this savage double who cuts through literature as he does through language and, mischievously, honors him with a comparison to the greatest writers.

Much more than a response, Céline's "explanation" sounds like a manifesto and a powerful reflection on his invention of a style that disconcerts and divides the critics. Robert Denoël renamed the article "postface" and added it to the pamphlet of laudatory press extracts that he had published in August 1933, to celebrate the one hundred and eightieth edition.

However, the true separate edition of this essential text would only be distributed to a few rare informed bibliophiles in 1969 by À la lampe d'Aladdin editions by Pierre Aelberts in his "Le Bahut des Aromates" collection.

Officially published a few months after the Candide article, in a very small number of copies immediately sold out – with the exception of the deluxe copies preserved with the 14 other titles of the collection in a precious wooden piece of furniture, the famous "bahut" – this little bibliophilic jewel was more likely printed, like the entire collection, shortly before its miraculous appearance on the market, at the dawn of the 1970s.

As for the deluxe copies, it seems that most remained in the mythical bahut!