via Pieter Bruegel the Elder: The Harvesters (1565)
Pieter Bruegel the Elder: The Harvesters (1565)
20 Saturday Oct 2018
Posted in Art
Category Archives: Art
Sunday Morning
26 Sunday Aug 2018
Tags
Freddy the Great, Grandfather, Jean-Pierre, Lady with an Ermine, Leonardo da Vinci, Massachusetts
Lady with an Ermine by Leonardo da Vinci, 1489–90, National Museum, Kraków, Poland (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
I have been working on the French Revolution, but slowly. I have a brother who was diagnosed with cancer, a few months ago and underwent treatment, a horrible experience. He collapsed about ten days ago and he has since been in intensive care. The cancer has metastasized.
He is twice my size and very strong, so none of this seems possible. The poor fellow.
My first memory of him is the two of us playing in the train that took us down to Athol, Massachusetts. My father had not seen his father in twenty years, so we went to meet him. After this initial visit, we were travelling back and forth between Quebec and the farm in Massachusetts.
My grandfather was different. He had seven cats, two of whom were blind, but Freddy the Great, the largest cat, took care of the whole group. Nanny, his wife I believe, and my mother just loved one another. They went shopping together.
It was a strange situation. My grandfather bought the farm from Nanny, but he asked where she would live. She didn’t know. So he invited her to stay in her house and keep her furniture and belongings. He was alone and he didn’t have anything, but he was a gardener, hence the farm.
My brother loved his grandfather. We will talk about him often.
I love Leonardo’s Lady with an Ermine.
I wish you a happy Sunday and I am returning to my post.
Love to everyone ♥
Head of a Woman Leonardo da Vinci (Wikimedia Commons)
© Micheline Walker
26 August 2018
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michelinewalker.com
France from 1792 to 1870: Moments
23 Monday Jul 2018
Posted in 19th century France, 19th-century f, Art, France, Vignette
Tags
Charles Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord, Eugène Delacroix, Hector Berlioz, Jacques-Louis David, Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, La Marseillaise Hector Berlioz, le Duc de Morny, Liberté guidant le Peuple, Liberty Leading the People, Neoclassicism, Romanticism, Rouget de l'Isle
La Liberté guidant le peuple (Liberty Leading the People) by Eugène Delacroix, 1830 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
On 14 July, I wanted to publish a post on Eugène Delacroix (26 April 1798 – 13 August 1863), one of two illegitimate sons fathered by Charles Maurice de Talleyrand Périgord (2 February 1754 – 17 May 1838) (2 February 1754 – 17 May 1838), but life took me to a second parking lot narrative. I am learning over and over again that planet Earth is not “the best of all possible worlds” (Voltaire’s Candide).
But let us first take a brief look at events, art, and life in 19th-century France.
The Duc de Morny and Eugène Delacroix: Half-Brothers
We have already met le duc de Morny (15–16 September 1811, Switzerland – 10 March 1865, Paris). He transformed the talented and beautiful Marie Duplessis (15 January 1824 – 3 February 1847) into Paris’ most prominent salonnière and courtesan. At that time in history, many marriages were arranged. In the aristocracy, lineage was a priority. Consequently, men took a mistress. The duc de Morny was born to Hortense de Beauharnais (10 April 1783 – 5 October 1837) and Charles Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord’s grandson. But Hortense, whose mother, Joséphine de Beauharnais, married Napoleon I, married Napoleon’s brother, Louis Bonaparte, king of Holland.
David, Delacroix, Ingres: Romanticism and Neoclassicism
Part of Delacroix’s story was told in a post entitled Eugène Delacroix’s “Mandarin Drake” (5 June 2014). Delacroix is associated with Romanticism and therefore differs from Jacques-Louis David (30 August 1748 – 29 December 1825) who is presented to students of the fine arts for works such as his Oath of the Horatii, a painting in the neoclassical style. Yet David is also the artist who painted The Death of Marat (1793), a masterpiece one cannot easily subject to pigeonholing.
The Death of Marat (1793) by Jacques-Louis David (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Oath of the Horatii (second version; 1786) by Jacques-Louis David (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres (29 August 1780 – 14 January 1867) is also a very prominent painter. His Grande Odalisque (1814) is magnificent, despite its share of Orientalism: Art is Art.
Grande Odalisque, Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, 1814 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Régimes from 1792 until the Franco-Prussian War (1870-1871)
Between 1792 and 1871, France was a Republic, twice; a Monarchy, twice; an Empire, twice, and it suffered a Second French Revolution, which took place in 1848. The 1848 French Revolution echoed various uprisings occurring in several European countries, some rooted in decisions made at the Congress of Vienna (November 1814 to June 1815), which ended the Napoleonic Wars, others reflecting national disasters, such as the Greek War of Independence. The Greek War of Independence inspired Delacroix, and Lord Byron (2 January 1788 – 19 April 1824). Lord Byron had in fact, become a militant who died of a fever he contracted at Missolonghi.
Étude d’Arabe assis, Eugène Delacroix, 1830s (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Love & Vive la France ♥
La Marseillaise, Rouget de l’Isle and Hector Berlioz
version intégrale, complete with lyrics, Alex Le Fou (YouTube)
“The Departure of the volunteers of 1792” (a.k.a. La Marseillaise), sculpture by François Rude, Arc de Triomphe de l’Étoile, Paris, France (Wikipedia)
© Micheline Walker
23 July 2018
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La Fontaine’s “The Two Doves”
24 Thursday May 2018
Posted in Art, Beast Literature, Jean de La Fontaine, Wedding
≈ Comments Off on La Fontaine’s “The Two Doves”
Tags
Gustave Doré, Harry & Meghan, Jean de La Fontaine, Les Deux Pigeons, The Fables of Bidpai, The Two Doves, Walter Thornbury
“Les Deux Pigeons,” Gustave Doré [EBook 50316]
Les Deux Pigeons
Recueil 2(IX,2)
Amants, heureux amants, voulez-vous voyager ?
Que ce soit aux rives prochaines ;
Soyez-vous l’un à l’autre un monde toujours beau,
Toujours divers, toujours nouveau ;
Tenez-vous lieu de tout, comptez pour rien le reste [.]
The Two Doves
Vol. 2 (Book IX, Fable 2)
Ah, happy lovers, would you roam?
Pray, let it not be far from home.
To each the other ought to be
A world of beauty ever new;
In each the other ought to see
The whole of what is good and true.
The Duke and Duchess of Sussex
“Les Deux Pigeons,” a fable by Jean de La Fontaine finds its source in The Fables of Bidpai, Les Fables de Pilpay ou la Conduite des Rois. As we have seen in other posts, after publishing his first volume (recueil) of fables, based on Æsop’s Fables, La Fontaine drew much of his material from Gilbert Gaulmin’s Livre des lumières ou la conduite des roys, a translation of Bidpai’s Fables, published in 1644. These tales are rooted in the Sanskrit Panchatantra (300 BCE) and were translated from Middle Persian into Arabic by Ibn al-Muqaffa’, at which point they became The Tales of Kalīla wa Dimna.
Frame Stories & Obliqueness
These works feature a story teller (Pilpay or Bidpai). They are frame stories. The characters are animals and the stories are told by a story teller, not the author. Such a structure serves two purposes. First, it engages the reader by leading him or her to a storyteller: Pilpay. It is as though the author stepped aside spelling a cast. Second, Pilpay’s characters are animals, whose eloquence is based on silence. Animals do not speak. They may say nearly everything. This literary device is often called obliqueness.
Interestingly, Montesquieu’s Persian Letters, 1721, Les Lettres persanes, feature Usbek and Rica, Persian noblemen visiting France. Their comments are the comments of strangers. As such, they may be dismissed, freeing the author to be critical of the land he inhabits, but in a discreet manner and with impunity.
Whatever the origin of Les Deux Pigeons, the lines I have quoted have no source other than the poet’s soul. La Fontaine gives his two pigeons/doves fine advice: be everything unto one another. There’s always a person who makes all the difference and whom we must always cherish.
Love to everyone ♥
RELATED ARTICLES
- The Golden Age of Illustration in Britain (30 October 2015)
- La Fontaine’s Fables Compiled & Walter Crane (25 September 2013)
Sources and Resources
- The Fables of La Fontaine, Walter Thornbury (transl.) and Gustave Doré (illus.), 1886, are Gutenberg’s [EBook #50316]
- Livre des lumières ou la conduite des roys
- La Fontaine (Site officiel)
André Messager: “Les Deux Pigeons,” 1889
La Fontaine’s Fables Thornbury & Gustave Doré (Courtesy: Gutenberg)
© Micheline Walker
24 May 2018
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michelinewalker.com
Apollinaire’s “Sous le pont Mirabeau”
30 Monday Apr 2018
Posted in Art, French Literature, French songs, Love
Tags
a Song, Alcools, Calligrammes, Guillaume Apollinaire, le Tout-Paris, Marie Laurencin, Sous le pont Mirabeau, Visual Poetry
Marie Laurencin, 1909, Réunion à la campagne (Apollinaire et ses amis), oil on canvas, 130 x 194 cm, Musée Picasso, Paris. Reproduced in The Cubist Painters, Aesthetic Meditations (1913)
Guillaume Apollinaire (Britannica.com)
Sous le pont Mirabeau
de Guillaume Apollinaire (1912)
- Sous le pont Mirabeau coule la Seine (1)
Et nos amours
Faut-il qu’il m’en souvienne
La joie venait toujours après la peine
Under Mirabeau bridge flows the Seine and our love. Need I remember ? Joy always came after the pain.
Vienne la nuit sonne l’heure
Les jours s’en vont je demeure
Let night come and the hour ring. Days go away, I remain.
- Les mains dans les mains restons face à face (2)
Tandis que sous
Le pont de nos bras passe
Des éternels regards l’onde si lasse
Hand in hand, let us stay face to face. While, beneath (sous) the bridge of our arms, Tired of being stared at eternally, flow waves, so weary.
Vienne la nuit sonne l’heure
Les jours s’en vont je demeure
Let night come and the hour ring. Days go away, I remain.
- L’amour s’en va comme cette eau courante (3)
L’amour s’en va
Comme la vie est lente
Et comme l’Espérance est violente
Love goes away as this water runs. Love goes away. How slow life is, and Hope, so pressing (violent).
Vienne la nuit sonne l’heure
Les jours s’en vont je demeure
Let night come and the hour ring. Days go away, I remain.
- Passent les jours et passent les semaines (4)
Ni temps passé
Ni les amours reviennent
Sous le pont Mirabeau coule la Seine
Days pass and weeks pass. Neither the past Nor love returns Under Mirabeau bridge flows the Seine.
Vienne la nuit sonne l’heure
Les jours s’en vont je demeure
Let night come and the hour ring. Days go away, I remain.
My translation is mostly literal. The following is more poetical:
Under Mirabeau Bridge the river slips away And lovers Must I be reminded Joy came always after pain The night is a clock chiming The days go by not I We’re face to face and hand in hand While under the bridges Of embrace expire Eternal tired tidal eyes The night is a clock chiming The days go by not I Love elapses like the river Love goes by Poor life is indolent And expectation always violent The night is a clock chiming The days go by not I The days and equally the weeks elapse The past remains the past Love remains lost Under Mirabeau Bridge the river slips away The night is a clock chiming The days go by not I…
https://muse.jhu.edu/chapter/36210
Comments
Guillaume Apollinaire (Wilhelm Albert Włodzimierz Apolinary Kostrowicki), 26 August 1880 – 9 November 1918, is a French writer, born in Rome. He is of Polish descent on his mother’s side. His father is unknown, but he may have been Francesco Costantino Camillo Flugi d’Aspermont (born 1835). Apollinaire learned French as a child, in Rome. His grandfather served in the Russian army and was killed during the Crimean War.
There is an eternal aspect to Apollinaire’s poetry. He writes as did Villon, Ronsard, Du Bellay… But he is associated with Cubism, Surrealism and Orphism. He may have coined all three terms. (See Guillaume Apollinaire, Wikipedia.) Moreover, the apparent simplicity of his poems foreshadows Jacques Prévert‘s Paroles, 1946) Apollinaire’s Calligrammes could be viewed as his contribution to modernisme. Baudelaire would have called it « du nouveau » (something new, Le Voyage, final line). It mixes words and pictures. It is visual poetry. (See La Tour Eiffel, Apollinaire, Calligrammes, Paris à Nu, Gérard, WordPress.com.) It is also a hint of literary nonsense.
Apollinaire knew everyone, le Tout-Paris, including Gertrude Stein, a patron of the arts. She is pictured to his right in the painting featured at the top of this post. (See The Cubist Painters, Aesthetic Meditations, Wikipedia.) Apollinaire wrote poetry, plays, short stories, and he was an art critic. His poem, in the shape of a cat, is a collection of French expressions referring to cats, such as « La nuit tous les chats sont gris. » (At night, all cats are grey.) « Avoir d’autres chats à fouetter [to whip] » means: to have other fish to fry.
Apollinaire was in love with artist Marie Laurencin (« Marie » and, I believe, his amour in « Le pont Mirabeau »). He sustained a brain injury during World War I, and died, two year later, in 1918, of the Spanish Flu, a pandemic.
RELATED ARTICLES
- Johann Amos Comenius: Word and Art (7 November 2015)
- Marie, the Words to a Love Song (29 June 2015)
- Comenius: Orbis Sensualium Pictus (13 November 2011)
- La Tour Eiffel, Apollinaire, Calligrammes (Paris à Nu, Gérard, le 20 avril 2018) ♥
Sources and Resources
- Alcools (pdf)
- Calligrammes is Project Gutenberg [EBook #55569]
- Britannica.com
Marie Laurencin, Le Pont, 1940 (Artnet)
Marc Lavoine chante Sous le pont Mirabeau
Léo Ferré chante Sous le pont Mirabeau (a classic)
Marie Laurencin (Modern Art Consulting)
© Micheline Walker
30 April 2018
Revised 1st May 2018
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A Print by Kenojuak Ashevak & a Diagnostic
19 Thursday Apr 2018
Posted in Aboriginals, Art, Canada, Sharing
The late Kenojuak Ashevak , considered one of the pioneers of Inuit art, saw her first-ever print, Rabbit Eating Seaweed, included in the 1959 Cape Dorset collection. The early work points to the distinctive style for which the famed artist would become renown. (Historymuseum.ca) (Photo credit: CBC.ca)
The Red Fox by Kenojuak Ashevak (Photo credit: Nunatsiaq News (See Aboriginals in North America)
I apologize for not posting for a long time. There has been a change in my life, but it is not a serious change.
Here is my story. A few weeks ago, I told my doctor that my memory was playing tricks on me. Test confirmed mild cognitive impairment. I will lose my driver’s license and my precious little red Toyota.
Do not be alarmed. I was not diagnosed until the early 1990s, but I have suffered from Chronic Fatigue Syndrome/ME since 1976. Victims get lost in mid-sentence and don’t remember words and names. I continued working and had a successful but shorter career than I would have liked. The only difference between the old and the new diagnostic is age. I am now older. But it could simply be that moving tired me out and that taking a mortgage, at my age, was stressful. Life is not always easy.
In short, I could not work on posts for several days because I was making various arrangements that would allow me to stay home for many long years, despite mild cognitive deficiency. Ironically, destiny led me to purchase a lovely apartment in the appropriate building. It has elevators, a heated interior swimming pool, and, as I have told you in an earlier post, it is located very near a small market place that includes a post office and most of the facilities I require.
My next post is on Métis leader Gabriel Dumont and the North-West Rebellion. Métis and Amerindians were losing their land, so surveyors can cut it up into little squares while a railroad was being built that woul take citizens from sea to sea: A Mari usque ad Mare, the Canadian motto.
Canadian Confederation was very costly,
As a leader, Gabriel Dumont was second only to Louis Riel. They resisted losses brought by Canadian expansion westward. The video inserted below is a fine account of events that took Canada from sea to sea, but a post is necessary.
Gabriel Dumont (Photo credit: The Canadian Encyclopedia)
© Micheline Walker
19 April 2018
updated 20 April 2018
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michelinewalker.com
The Singing Voyageurs
31 Saturday Mar 2018
Posted in Art, Canadian History, Voyageurs
Tags
Bois-Brûlés, Edward Ermatinger, explorers, folksongs, Marius Barbeau, Simon Fraser, Sir George Back, Voyageur explorers, W. F. Wentzel
Expedition Doubling Cape Barrow by Sir George Back, 25 July 1821, (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
More on the voyageur’s personality
The explorers left testimonials about the voyageur’s personality. According to Sir John Franklin, they were “creatures of the moment.” Sir George Simpson writes that they loved to eat and that, if a piece of equipment was good, they said that it came from France or “la vieille France de Londres,” London’s old France, and were “witty.” [i]
Sir George Back (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
As for the explorers, they knew the name of every single one of their voyageurs. Most of these explorers came from Scotland. Obviously the Scots and the voyageurs got along very well. By the way, the gentleman who lost so many of his voyageurs was Admiral Sir George Back, FRS [Fellow of the Royal Society] (6 November 1796 – 23 June 1878). I have therefore edited my last post accordingly and, in doing so, I discovered that Sir George Back was an excellent artist.
When they were working for explorers, the voyageurs may have transported pelts. However, when employed by explorers such as Simon Fraser and Sir Alexander MacKenzie, they did not. They were simply finding their way, dangerously, to the Pacific. At that time, they also worked for travellers who were gathering information on Canada.
HMS Terror Thrown up by Ice by Sir George Back
The Singing Voyageur
The voyageurs did sing. We know for certain that they sang mostly old French songs and that their favourite song was “À la claire fontaine.” During the ten years he was in the employ of the Hudson’s Bay Company (1819-1829), Edward Ermatinger (1797-1876) collected eleven voyageur songs. They are traditional folksongs.
As for songs composed by the voyageurs, we know of three:
- Épouser le voyage (To Wed the Voyage),
- Les Bois-Brûlés (The Brullis), (Pierre Falcon),
- Le Six mai de l’année dernière (Last Year on the Sixth of May).
The Bois-Brûlés were Dakota Amerindians. As for the Sixth of May, that was the date on which the voyageurs left for “les pays d’en-haut,” the north or, literally, the countries above.
These were published in the Beaver, a Canadian journal, by Marius Barbeau, the “founder of Canadian anthropology.” There can be no doubt that these songs are authentic voyageur songs.
Moreover, Grace Lee Nute lists voyageur songs. For the most part, the songs she discusses are well-known traditional folksongs. There are two exceptions:
- C’est dans la ville de Bytown [Ottawa] (It’s in the town of Ottawa)
- Parmi les voyageurs (Among the Voyageurs)
Parmi les voyageurs is unquestionably a voyageur song. However, loggers also left from Ottawa. They too had to find a living and left for the winter to work as lumberjacks. As a result, C’est dans la ville de Bytown could be a forestier song or both a voyageur and forestier song. Forestiers worked in the lumber industry. They were lumberjacks or river drivers, riding the wood down riverways.
Sadly, W. F. Wentzel’s collection of voyageur songs has been lost. W. F. Wentzel, a Norwegian trader of the far North West, was also a fine musician. He therefore transcribed voyageur songs that could have been an extremely valuable source to later generations of collectors and ethnologists.
Let us read Grace Lee Nute:
“It is a great pity nevertheless, that Wentzel’s large collection of these songs has not survived. His musical gifts added to his unusual command of languages would surely have made the collection invaluable. Moreover, he collected the songs of the voyageurs, and “mentions the indecorous quality of some of their [the voyageurs’] songs.” [ii]
Also lost are the songs of Pierre Falcon, except Les Bois Brûlés, an account of the Battle of Seven Oaks. Falcon wrote canoe songs that have probably been destroyed due to their ‘smutty’ character. Métis called themselves Bois Brûlés. They were not as dark as Amerindians.
Fortunately, we still have the eleven songs that Edward Ermatinger collected.
____________________
[i] Quoted by Nute in The Voyageur (St. Paul, Minnesota: Minnesota Historical Society Press, 1987 [1931]), pp. 244 and 255.
[ii] “Mr W. F. Wentzel, Letters to the Hon. Roderic McKenzie, 1807-1824,” in Masson, Les Bourgeois, 1:71. Quoted in Nute’s The Voyageur, p. 155.
I am including, below, Blanche comme la neige, a folksong. Sir Ernest MacMillan composed a choral setting of this song. I do not have Sir Ernest’s setting, but we have the song. Blanche comme la neige is featured as a Christmas song, but it could be a song about winter and purity. It tells the story of a young woman who feigned death not to be raped. She is placed in a coffin and discovered, three days later, by her father. She tells him she has preserved her virginity: “pour mon honneur garder,” (to keep my honour).
One of the McGarrigle sisters died in 2010. It saddens me to know that they are now forever separated. Besides, it is difficult to find good renditions of folksongs. I do not know the origin of Ce matin.
Portage
- Kate & Anna McGarrigle: Blanche comme la neige (folklore)
- Kate & Anna McGarrigle: Ce matin
michelinewalker.com
The Voyageurs: hommes engagés
21 Wednesday Mar 2018
Posted in Art, Canadian History, Métis, Voyageurs
Tags
canoe, Grand-Portage, Louis Riel, Manitoba, Métis, Minnesota, portage, songs of the voyageurs, the beaver, The Canadian Boat Song
Shooting the Rapids by Frances Ann Hopkins, 1879 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
The Voyageurs
The voyageurs were the French-speaking Canadian boatmen or canoemen, who travelled in birch-bark canoes from Ottawa or Lachine, to fur-trading posts in what is now Manitoba and Minnesota, Grand-Portage being the main trading post.
- First, they had to short-legged. Being short-legged was important because they had to transport as much fur as possible relatively small canoes and much of the fur was stored under each canoeman’s seat in the canoe. There was very little room for their legs.
- Second, a strong upper body was an essential characteristic. They sometimes had to go from one waterway to another waterway and when they did, they carried fur (usually beaver pelts) and personal supplies on their back, bundles called bales, they carried on their backs, weighed more than 40 kilos (about 90 pounds), perhaps a conservative figure. And they also had to carry their canoe. These parts of their trips were called a portage (from the French porter: to carry).
- Third, they had to be good singers.
The Singing Voyageurs
Travellers to North-America, fur traders, employees and governors of fur-trading companies, such as the Hudson’s Bay Company, historians, and others often reported that the Canadien voyageur, sang as he paddled canoes filled with precious pelts.
Les Trois Cavaliers fort bien montés (The Three Well-Mounted Horsemen), a folksong, inspired Irish poet Thomas Moore to give it new words in 1804. It became the famous Canadian Boat Song.
In Kitchi-Gami [i], J. G. Kohl writes that “They [the voyageurs] were chosen men! The best singers in the world:”
C’était des hommes choisis ! Les plus beaux chanteurs du monde!
Le Portage
Portages were so difficult that the men often chose to “shoot the rapids.” At such times, I doubt that they sang. “Shooting the rapids” was dangerous and many men died. Alongside the rivers the voyageurs used to go from Lachine (Montreal), or Ottawa, the usual points of departure, to what is now Manitoba and Minnesota, there are little white crosses. The voyageurs left small white crosses where boatmen had die.
The Contract: voyageurs and coureurs de/des bois
We have to distinguish between the voyageurs who had a licence to work in the fur trade and those who roamed the forests without the proper permit, called coureurs de/des bois. As for the voyageur, he was a hired man: an engagé. But the coureurs des bois were adventurers. They roamed the woods without a permit and if they got caught fur-trading, they faced sanctions and the beaver pelts they had not sold were confiscated.
These men usually signed a three-year contract which meant that they often left behind, a wife and children to whom the earnings of the voyageur were usually sent. However, many men lived with Amerindian women or married Amerindian women. Their children were Métis.
However, some voyageur wanted to marry a French-Canadian woman and simply waited. Canada’s Louis Riel‘s grandfather, Jean-Baptiste Lagimodière, went to Quebec to marry Marie-Anne Gaboury, the first white woman to settle in Western Canada. Their daughter Julie married a Métis named Louis Riel and they had a son they named Louis Riel. Several Métis remained in Manitoba, but the Battle of Batoche took place in Saskatchewewan. Many retired in Minnesota, USA. Those who did had usually been employed by the American Fur Trade company, founded by John Jacob Astor in 1808.
—ooo—
I will continue to tell the story of the voyageurs, but let this be the background. We have actually gone a long way. For the time being, I will continue to reflect on the fact that these men sang despite the dangers they faced and their isolation from their home.
Voyageurs
[i] G. Kohl, Kitchi-Gami. Wanderings Round Lake Superior (London: Chapman and Hall, 1860). Available in paperback, with an introduction by Robert E. Bieder, under the title Life Among the Lake Superior Ojibway (St. Paul: Minnesota Historical Society Press, 1985 [1860]).
The Beaver
michelinewalker.com
Carpe diem: Love Songs
21 Wednesday Feb 2018
Posted in Art, Courtly Love, Love, Sharing, Songs
Tags
carpe diem, French & other, Gilbert Durant de la Bergerie, Jean-Baptiste Monnoyer, Love songs, Valentine's Day
Still life with basket of flowers by Jean-Baptiste Monnoyer, Flanders, 1690s (Courtery: Art Gallery of South Australia)
This has been a difficult year. I celebrated Valentine’s Day discreetly and failed to write a post on the subject of love. However, if one clicks on Posts on Love Celebrated, a page, not a post, one will find discussion on this subject.
At any rate, I am wishing you, belatedly, a Happy Valentine’s Day.
In Gilles Durant’s poem, the first song, a lover invites his Lady to enjoy the pleasures of love, as life is much too brief. Carpe diem.
Ma Belle, si ton âme… Gilles Durant de la Bergerie & and other love songs
©Micheline Walker
21 February 2018
WordPress
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Maria Chapdelaine
20 Saturday Jan 2018
Posted in Art, French-Canadian Literature, Quebec, Regionalism
Tags
colonisation, coureur des bois, faire de la terre, Louis Hémon a visitor, lumberjack, making land, Regionalism, roman de la terre
The Chapdelaine Farm by Clarence Gagnon
This post was published on 26 January 2012. It was one of two posts on Maria Chapdelaine. These earned me an invitation, by Montreal’s Writer’s Chapel Trust, to the unveiling of a plaque honouring Louis Hémon. Unexpected events prevented me from attending, but I am thankful for the invitation and regret not attending.
See Related Post: Regionalism in Québec Fiction: Maria Chapdelaine.
Louis Hémon[i]
This is the first post I wrote on Maria Chapdelaine. I went on to write a second one.
French author Louis Hémon (12 October 1880 – 8 July 1913) moved to Canada in 1911. By then he had already published several books. As for his Maria Chapdelaine, he wrote it during the winter of 1912-1913, sent his manuscript to France and started travelling west.
Hémon died in a train accident at Chapleau, Ontario. Had he travelled a little further he would have met the descendants of voyageurs, Métis, and aristocrats referred to as “The French Counts.”[ii] They had settled in the Assiniboia region: Count Henri de Soras, the Marquis de Jumilhac, Viscount Joseph de Langle, Count de Beaulincourt and others.
Church at Peribonka by Clarence Gagnon
Historical Background: two choices
- L’Exode or Exodus[iii]
Louis Hémon came to Quebec during a period of its history when there was very little work for French-speaking Canadians inhabiting Quebec and Acadia. This period of Canadian history is called the Exode. Nearly a million French Canadians and Acadians moved to the United States where they could work in factories.
- The Curé Labelle: colonisation
This could not be the Church’s best choice. One priest, the famed Curé Labelle (24 November 1833 – 4 January 1891), was the chief proponent of colonisation. He urged French-Canadians to settle north and “make land,” faire de la terre, faire du pays, as their ancestors had done. This was their mission.
—ooo—
Making Land: Samuel’s Choice
So making land had been Samuel Chapdelaine’s choice. He had taken his family to the Lac Saint-Jean area where he and his sons were turning inhospitable land into arable soil. I should think Hémon named Samuel Chapdelaine after Samuel de Champlain, whom we could call the founder of New France.
Louis Hémon in the Saguenay-Lac-Saint-Jean
When Louis Hémon arrived in Canada, 1910, he lived in Montreal. But two years later he travelled north and stopped at Peribonka, in the Lac Saint-Jean area. At first, he worked as a farmhand, helping “settlers,” but, as noted above, he spent the winter of 1912-1913 writing Maria Chapdelaine.
Hémon had sent his manuscript to France but he never savored the success of his novel. It was serialized in France in 1914 and published by J. A. Lefebvre in Quebec in 1916, with black and white illustrations by Marc-Aurèle de Foy Suzor-Coté. It was an international bestseller. An English translation, by W. H. Blake, was published in 1921.
Maria Chapdelaine
There is a summary of Maria Chapdelaine (just click on the title) on the website of the McMichael Canadian Art Collection, housed in Kleinburg, a village just north of Toronto. Clarence Gagnon‘s (8 November 1881 – 5 January 1942) 1933 illustrations of Maria Chapdelaine are part of the McMichael Canadian Art Collection.
Napoléon Laliberté by Clarence Gagnon
A Summary of the Plot
However, I will summarize the summary.
Maria is the daughter of a “settler.” She is a little plump, but beautiful. One Sunday, the day on which parishioners get together and chat, Maria meets François Paradis. François is a sort of coureur des bois, voyageur, canoeman, lumberjack: the mythic fearless pioneer.
When François meets Maria, he is attracted to her and tells her that he will stop by her family’s farm before escorting Belgian travelers who are looking for fur. Maria and François fall in love. They will be married when he returns from the logging camp. However, he dies in a blinding snowstorm attempting to visit with Maria on New Year’s Eve.
Eutrope Gagnon and Lorenzo Surprenant: the other suitors
Maria has two other suitors: Eutrope Gagnon, a settler and neighbour, and Lorenzo Surprenant, who has travelled from the United States to find a bride. What Lorenzo has to offer is an easier life: no black flies, no back-breaking labour, milder weather, nearness to a Church and to stores. She is genuinely tempted to marry him, despite the fact that she is not in love with him. For Maria, love died the day François died.
However, she rejects Lorenzo. She will marry Eutrope Gagnon, a settler, and will live as her mother lived. When she is making her decision, she hears voices telling her that in Quebec, nothing must die and nothing must change: « Au pays de Québec rien ne doit mourir et rien ne doit changer… »
The names are all symbolic: Paradis for paradise; Surprenant; for surprising or amazing; and Gagnon for winning.
Beaver Coin
My summary of Maria Chapdelaine may have diminished Maria’s suitors. But Hémon makes them very real and anxious to live their lives, which means taking a wife. Although it is a simple novel, finding a more focused, but somewhat stylized, account of life as it was in 1912 would be difficult.
Hémon describes Québec as un pays, a country. In 1937, Félix-Antoine Savard will feature le délié, a person who is no longer tied (lié) to the land and is therefore looked upon as a man who sold himself: un vendu. (See Menaud, maître-draveur, Wikipedia.)
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Folklore: À la claire fontaine, Université de Moncton, Male Choir
(please click to hear the song)
Maria Chapdelaine can be read online. It is a Gutenberg Project e-book. Maria Chapdelaine (Project Gutenberg, FR) [EBook #13585] Maria Chapdelaine (Project Gutenberg, EN) [EBook #4383] Maria Chapdelaine PDF FR Canadian literature: The Montreal School, 1895–1935 First serialized in Le Temps (1914) (Paris) Published in book form in 1916 (Montreal) Translated into English in 1921 (W. H. Blake) Translated into all the major languages ____________________ [i] “Louis Hémon.” Encyclopædia Britannica. Encyclopædia Britannica Online. Encyclopædia Britannica Inc., 2014. Web. 13 Jan. 2014. <http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/261010/Louis-Hemon>. [ii] Ruth Humphrys, “Dr Rudolph Meyer and the French Nobility of Assiniboia,” The Beaver (The Hudson’s Bay Company: Outfit 309:1, Summer 1978), p. 16-23. [iii] Maurice Poteet (ed.), Textes de l’Exode (Montréal: Guérin Litérature, coll. Francophonie, 1987). Johannes Brahms: Drei Intermezzi, Op. 117, No. 2
The White Horse by Clarence Gagnon
