JOURNEY TO THE END OF THE NIGHT
by Louis-Ferdinand Celine
dir. by Joshua Carlebach
2008
set design
Voyage au bout de la nuit is a nihilistic novel of savage, exultant misanthropy, combined, however, with cynical humor. Céline expresses an almost unrelieved pessimism with regard to human nature, human institutions, society, and life in general. Towards the end of the book, the narrator Bardamu, who is working at an insane asylum, remarks:
…I cannot refrain from doubting that there exist any genuine realizations of our deepest character except war and illness, those two infinities of nightmare.