I am forwarding links leading to a discussion of a novel entitled Trente arpents(Thirty Acres). Ringuet’s Trente arpents was published in 1938, at the very end of the period of French-Canadian literary history labelled “régionaliste.” (See Philippe Panneton, Wikipedia). Unlike earlier régionaliste literature, Trente arpents is characterized by its realism. A farmer, prosperous in his youth, “gives himself” (his land) to one of his sons. Everything goes wrong. This novel reflects the difficulties habitants faced when they had to divide the ancestral thirty acres among sons. It is also an excellent depiction of an habitant’s family
One presumes Euchariste Moisan, an habitant, owns his thirty acres. When the Seigneurial system was abolished, in 1854, “habitants” who could purchase the thirty acres they had farmed since the beginning of the 17th century. Those who couldn’t buy had to pay a rente for the rest of their life, as though they still had a seigneur. As noted in an earlier post, the rente was a form of debt bondage which ended in 1935, when Alexandre Taschereau was Premier of Quebec. Whenever the priest arrived at their door, these “habitants” no longer wanted to pay thite (la dîme). Trente arpents was published in 1938. At that time, the United States and the world were nearing the end of the Great Depression and migration was less frequent. It should be noted that the exodus started at the time of the Rebellions of 1837-1838. It endured. Trente arpents was discussed in two parts.
Forthcoming: John Neilson on Canadiens, and the potatoe famine
Alexis de Tocqueville’s inverviewed John Neilson, a bilingual polititian in Lower Canada. I have translated this interview. In 1831, John Neilson, Scottish, praised Canadiens and looked upon French-speaking and English-speaking Canadians as compatible. The interview took place six years before the Rebellions of 1837-1838. The French had friends. Among them were the Irish who had fled their country because of the potatoe famine. When they arrived in Quebec, they were very sick, which caused a cholera epidemic. Canadiens had survived various blows and survived again. In fact, Canadiens bonded with the Irish, many of whom went to work in factories but were never promoted. So, we know why the music of Ireland and Scotland exerted a great deal of influence on Québécois music. We also know why my grandfather, on my father’s side, had an Irish mother.
Confederation
To a very large extent, Quebec entered Confederation because Confederation pleased Quebec’s bourgeoisie, French and English, as well as the Clergy. The Clergy feared dissention. My source is Denis Monière‘s Développement des idéologies au Québec[1] and the sources he quotes. For a very long time, the bourgeoisie, including Quebec’s bourgeoisie and the Château Clique, attempted to minoritize and assimilate French-speaking Canadians. The Clergy sided with the British. The Clergy was in favour of confederation. Moreover, several Englishmen and United Empire Loyalists, who were given the Eastern Townships, les Cantons de l’Est, now l’Estrie, wished to absorb French-speaking Canadiens. The Townships were home to Abenaki Amerindians. I have Amerindian ancestry.
French-Canadian literature is a subject I taught for several years. In 2001, I gave a lecture on La Patrie littéraire at the University of Stuttgart. As you know, I had huge workloads, so many subject-matters. A mission impossible is the only accurate description of the tasks expected of me when I taught at McMaster University. Yet I was elected to the presidency of the Canadian Association of University and College Teachers of French, l’Apfucc and to the Fédération des Études humaines, and to its Executive. But let us call these years an epiphany.
Music video of “A la claire fontaine” (By the clear fountain/spring) performed by Vancouver choir musica intima, arrangement by Stephen Smith. My own urban re-interpretation of the traditional French folk song.
Director/producer: Nigel Hunt. DOP: Terry Zazulak, Editor: Brian Nemett. Actors: Jerry Prager, Sigrid Johnson. Funding: Bravo!FACT. Video copyright: Garrison Creek Productons, 2000.
Allégorie de l’automne par Suzor-Coté (paperblog.fr)
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 hisMaria 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 theSaguenay-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 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.)
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, 1895–1935First 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 Blacksmith’s Shop by Cornelius Krieghoff (Courtesy the Art Gallery of Ontario)
Dear Readers,
Once again I am a blogger. But planning one’s life is not always easy.
Belaud, my dearest cat, walked on the computer shortly after my article, written on 18 January, was posted. Belaud, my cat, uses the freedom I have always given him to rearrange the computer, which he is not allowed to do.
My post is in Word and will be retrieved. But it keeps returning to earlier drafts, primitive drafts.
I will do my best to reconstruct it and put its paragraphs in the correct order. You should know, however, that two weeks ago, I could not find my car after seeing a doctor at a very large hospital. The doctor who examined a little white spot told me there was nothing wrong with me. No biopsy was needed or performed.
It was snowing and very cold. My fingers started to freeze. I therefore returned to the main door of the hospital and told a gentleman helping patients that I could not retrieve my bright red Toyota Yaris. I knew the numbers and letters of my licence plate in the correct order and a few minutes later, my car was returned to me and I was escorted to it. The gentleman was so polite that I gave him a hug. He helped me get into the car.
Blogging again
Yes, I am blogging again but it could be with slightly diminished capacities, given yesterday’s events. My face does not tell my age, but I have aged. I was 65 when the pictures that appear on screen were taken. I may now be a little thinner, but the pictures are mostly accurate. However, I’m now letting my hair go white.
So, I will reorganize my post. It should be dated 18 January 2018. I posted it a few minutes too late.
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 hisMaria 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 theSaguenay-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 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.)
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, 1895–1935First 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
— Boy with Bread, by Ozias Leduc (8 October 1864 – 16 June 1955)
I believe this is the complete list of posts on regionalism, “roman de la terre,” “roman du terroir” I have written so far. They are at times repetitive because I do not know whether or not someone has read earlier posts. Maria Chapdelaine was written by Louis Hémon, a Frenchman, or an outsider. However, it is the one novel interested persons should read. Menaud, maître-draveur (a draveur is a river driver taking lumber logs to their destination) is a very poetical novel.
Louis Hémon, the author of Maria Chapdelaine, sees Quebec as eternal. Such hope is not expressed by Félix-Antoine Savard whose 1937 novel, Menaud, maître-draveur, is embedded in Hémon’s Maria Chapdelaine. Foreigners have come…
As you will notice, I did try to give more descriptive titles to older posts, but failed miserably. Fortunately, my cat said: enough! He’s in charge, so what could I do. Lists were my solution.
Unless otherwise indicated, the artwork featured in this post is used with permission from La Galerie Walter Klinkhoff.
Yet, both Maria ChadpelaineFélix-Antoine and Savard’sMenaud, maître-draveur,a novel literally intertwined with Maria Chapdelaine,as in a liturgical responsory, express nationalistic sentiments. But there is legitimate nationalism, attachment to one’s root, and somewhat hostile nationalism: nationalism as perceived in indépendantiste ideology.
The Voice of Quebec: Maria Chapdelaine & Menaud
As Maria is trying to decide whether she will marry Eutrope Gagnon, a cultivateur (a farmer) or leave for the United States as Lorenzo Surprenant’s wife,she hears inner voices, one of which is the voice of Quebec. The voix du Québec directs Maria to live as her mother lived. Jack Warwick[ii] has defined this voice as “l’appel du Nord,” the call of the north. The voice Maria hears no doubt resembles the voice her father, Samuel Chapdelaine, also heard when he went north to “make land.” I should think it is also the voice Menaud is hearing and has always heard. Menaud is the main character in Savard’s Menaud, maître-draveur (1937).
In Maria Chapdelaine, the voice of Quebec is a mélopée (from the Greek melopoia), a recitative and monotone chant, but in Menaud,l’appel du Nord is at times a tearful lament and at other times a visceral and angry scream. Menaud loves the land he has inherited from his forefathers. He loves its smell, its voice, its ‘wind in the willows,’ its rugged shape and the majestic Saguenay River.
So Menaud lives up the Saguenay River, as does Samuel Chapdelaine and as did Savard. Félix-Antoine Savard, an ordained priest, was born in Quebec City (1896), but he was raised in Chicoutimi and died (1982) in Charlevoix,where he had founded the parish of Clermont.
Photo credit: Wikipedia
Menaud’s Story: the Plot of the Novel
Menaud is, first and foremost, a draveur, or river driver. All his life he has driven wood down the river dancing atop the wood boxed in so it is transformed into rather fragile rafts. But Menaud is also an agriculteur, a voyageur, a coureur de(s) bois and a hunter. A widower, he lives in his grey house with Marie, his daughter, and Joson, a son he will lose to the river but not the Saguenay. Joson, Menaud’s son, drowns in the Malbaie (formerly: Murray Bay).
Le Délié: the first Suitor
However, Menaud and his neighbours in Mainsal (main sale means: dirty hand) are also on the verge of losing access to their mountain, a mountain that has provided them with part of their sustenance since the early days of New France. The mountain has been rented out to Englishmen by le Délié (the unattached). Lier is to bind, as in to link.
The same Délié has also made plans to marry Marie when winter comes. He tells Menaud that, as his father-in-law, he will be allowed to go to the mountain. Menaud is therefore mourning his son and knows that his daughter plans to marry le Délié. Having lost his son, he is about to lose his daughter. Finally, he and his people have lost their mountain, not so much to Englishmen as to le Délié‘s greed and lack of respect for his roots. The mountain did not belong to anyone in particular, but le Délié will be renting it and making money. We are witnessing faithlessness from within.
Alexis le Lucon: a second suitor
Fortunately, Alexis le Lucon, who has tried to rescue Joson, finds a place in Marie’s heart. She chases away le Délié and tells Alexis le Lucon that it might be pleasant to live peacefully “here” (icitte): « Il y a de la bonne terre, avait-elle dit; ce serait plaisant devivre icitte tranquille ! » (There is good land, she had said, it would be nice to live here quietly.)
« Je n’ai plus que toi » (I have no one left but you)
Then, as her father enters into a delirium bordering on dementia, Marie tells Alexis that she has no one left but him. « Je n’ai plus que toi[,] » (p. 211) and that, if he loves her (avoir de l’amitié [love as it was then called]), he will continue, as did Joson, as did Menaud. « Alors, si tu as de l’amitié pour moi tu continueras comme Joson, comme mon père ! » He opened his arms and made himself a refuge, she cried for a long time with her head leaning against his face: « Puis, dans le refuge des bras qu’il ouvrait, longtemps elle pleura contre son visage. » (p. 212)
Félix-Antoine Savard (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Félix-Antoine Savard: biographical notes[iii]
Félix-Antoine Savard, OCMSRC (August 31, 1896 – August 24, 1982) was a priest, a poet, a folklorist and, in 1945, a few years after the publication, in 1937, of Menaud, maître-draveur, he became Professor of Literature at l’Université Laval, in Quebec City, and served as Dean of his Faculty from 1950 to 1957. He was a member of the Order of Merit of Canada and a member of the Royal Society of Canada.
Menaud, maître-draveur earned Savard a medal from the French Academy, l’Académie française, an honour he richly deserved given his exceptional command of the French language and proficiency as a writer. Consequently, Menaud, maître-draveur changed the course of Savard’s life. From a parish priest, he was transformed in an academic and a very productive poet and novelist.See Wikipedia ‘s entry on Félix-Antoine Savard for a list of his works and a list of his awards.
Although Félix-Antoine Savard was born in Quebec City, his family moved to Chicoutimi, up the majestic Saguenay River and near Lac Saint-Jean. That is Maria Chapdelaine‘s country, then filled with raftsmen, whom Savard often visited, lumberjacks, coureurs des bois, men like Maria’s François Paradis. He was also acquainted with men, cultivateurs, who tilled an inhospitable land tirelessly. In other words, Savard knew the people and the region that led Louis Hémon to write his epochal Maria Chapelaine, published in 1914. Savard’s Menaud, maître-draveur, a novel successfully embedded in Hémon’s poetic Maria Chapdelaine, but further poeticized.
Moreover, as a priest, Father Savard occupied various ecclesiastical positions in Charlevoix and founded a parish in Clermont. Savard calls Charlevoix, his land, a metaphysical land. In 1989, it was designated a World Biosphere Reserve by UNESCO.[iv] You may remember that Du Gua de Monts, under Tonnetuit and Gravé Du Pont, tried to establish a settlement at Tadoussac, now a town located at the confluence of the St Lawrence River and the Saguenay. Savard died in Charlevoix in 1982, at the age in 1982 at the age of 85.
First, it is both a novel and a poem. As a poem, it is a formulaic poème en prose. It contains a recurring refrain and the refrain is borrowed from the novel’s source, Maria Chapdelaine: « Nous sommes venus il y a trois cents ans et nous sommes restés. » (Menaud, p. 31)[v] (We came three hundred years ago and we stayed.) Menaud has his daughter Marie read passages from Maria Chapedelaine to him and he feels comforted. Louis Hémon wrote: « Au pays de Québec, rien n’a changé. Rien ne changera. » (p. 194) (In the land of Quebec, nothing has changed. Nothing will change. Louis Hémon also wrote: « Ces gens sont d’une race qui ne sait pas mourir…Nous sommes un témoignage. » (Maria Chapdelaine, p. 194): “These people belong to a breed that does not know how to die… We are a testimonial.”
I have translated the word “race” by the word “breed,” which is the word’s meaning in the current context. A breed of cats is une race de chats.
Second, Menaud is un homme du Nord, a voyageur, a coureur des bois, and perhaps an explorer. He is, at any rate, bigger than life and, therefore a mythic figure. He has lived dangerously and, by dint of doing so, although he is now an older man, he suddenly feels young again, puts on his snowshoes and starts walking in the in the direction of the Royaume [kingdom] du Saguenay, as that region is often called. The snow is thick, he gets tired, and he can’t continue. He takes off his snowshoes and sends Baron, the dog, to fetch help. Alexis finds him, but Menaud’s legs will no longer take him very far. So Menaud is not a typical farmer.
But there is a third dimension, a dimension I have introduced: nationalism, but nationalism with a slightly different twist. There is abundant nostalgia, but more importantly, there is a French Canadian, le Délié (the unattached), who has rented the mountain and will collect the rent. So Menaud, maître-draveur features a new breed of men: the capitalist. Money is now the motive. Le Délié is therefore a “vendu,” (a sold man). Was that mountain for him to rent out? We are entering a new world in which Menaud’s profound pride in his land and lineage will not be taken into account no more than ecological concerns. It is the world we live in.
The last words of Savard’s novel are spoken by Alexis: “Ce n’est pas une folie [Menaud’s dementia or madness] comme une autre ! Ça me dit, à moi, que c’est un avertissement.” (It is not just another madness. What it tells me, what I hear, is a warning.) (p. 231)
As for my post, I will close it by quoting the most nationalistic statement contained in Maria Chapdelaine and repeated in Menaud, maître-draveur. I will close, but I prefer not to comment except to say that estranged people are cutting down the rainforest and letting the planet melt. Not to mention that we can no longer afford to buy our father’s house. It’s too expensive.
Autour de nous des étrangers sont venus, qu’il nous plaît d’appeler des barbares ; ils ont pris presque tout le pouvoir ; ils ont acquis presque tout l’argent ; mais au pays de Québec rien n’a changé. Rien ne changera. »Maria Chapdelaine. p. 194; Menaud, maître-draveur, p. 32 and elsewhere.[vi]
(Around us, foreigners have come, whom we like to call barbarians! they have taken nearly all the power; they have acquired nearly all the money: but in the land of Quebec nothing has changed. Nothing will change.)
The next step in our examination of regionalism in Quebec literature is Maria Chapdelaine. I have published a short post on Maria Chapdelaine, a novel written by Louis Hémon (12 October 1880 – 8 July 1913), a Frenchman born in Brest. After studying law and oriental languages at the Sorbonne, Hémon moved to London and, in 1911, to Quebec, Canada. In 1912, he spent several months working with cultivateurs, or farmers, in the Saguenay-Lac-Saint-Jean area, up the beautiful Saguenay River. He lived in a community called Péribonka and spent the winter of 1912-1913 in that community, writing his novel.
Having completed his manuscript, Hémon sent it to France and started travelling west, probably to Edmonton, where French citizens had settled at that time. Hémon was killed in a train accident on 8th July 1913, at Chapleau, Ontario. He did not live to see Maria Chapdelaine become a bestseller. It has been translated into more than 20 languages in 23 countries and it has been made into three movies.[i]
The plot is simple. But, although Maria Chapdelaine is a roman du terroir, it differs substantially from Patrice Lacombe’s La Terre paternelle and from Pierre-Joseph-Olivier Chauveau’sCharles Guérin. Louis Hémon did not feel dispossessed of his ancestral land and betrayed. And he had not transformed the insurrections of 1837-1838 into an ethnic conflict, which they were not, at least initially.
The artwork featured in this post are illustrations for Maria Chapdelaine, executed by Clarence Gagnon and housed at the McMichael Museum, in Kleinburg, Ontario.
However, Hémon worked with men like Maria Chapdelaine’s father, Samuel Chapdelaine a name not coincidentally resembling that of the Father of New France, Samuel de Champlain. These otherwise unemployed men were trying to transform rebellious soil into arable land. They had gone north, as the colourful curé Labelle (24 November 1833 – 4 January 1891) advocated, and were “making land” (faire de la terre).[ii] Father Labelle preached “colonisation.” That was the “patriotic” alternative to leaving for the New England states.
Maria’s ‘Choices:’ F. Paradis, L. Surprenant & E. Gagnon
As indicated in my post, Hémon gives Maria Chapdelaine three suitors: François Paradis, Lorenzo Surprenant and Eutrope Gagnon. François dies in a snow storm, which was to be expected. In traditional Quebec society, happiness was viewed not only as impossible, but as dangerous.Lorenzo Surprenant has come north to find a wife and take her down to the United States, but Maria turns him down. She will marry a neighbour, Eutrope Gagnon, and live as her mother lived. The names of the suitors are revealing: Paradis is paradise, Surprenant, surprizing, and Gagnon, close to the verb gagner: to win. Hémon’s novel is somewhat stylised.
Maria Chapdelaine also differs from La Terre paternelle and Charles Guérin in that, unlike Chauveau’s Charles Guérin, it does not feature an ‘ugly’ Englishman: Mr Wagnaër. As for La Terre paternelle, although the novel does not feature an explicit ‘ugly’ Englishman, Jean Chauvin fails where an Englishman would have succeeded. I believe this is the reason why Lacombe views cities as unhealthy.
—ooo—
Our next regionalistic novel is Father Félix-Antoine Savard‘s (August 31, 1896 – August 24, 1982) Menaud maître-draveur, 1937 (translated as Boss of the River, or Master of the River by Alan Sullivan (1947). It earned Savard a Medal from the French Academy.
[ii]Curé Labelle, a legendary figure, is featured in Claude-Henri Grignon’s (Sainte-Adèle, 8 July 1894 – Québec, 3 April 1976) novel Un homme et son péché (1933). Grignon’s novel was transformed into a very popular serialized radio and television drama. A film adaptation, entitled Séraphin: Un homme et son péché, Séraphin: Heart of Stone, was released in 2003, but it had been filmed in 1949. Séraphin is a miser and he is cruel to his wife Donalda.
by Ringuet (pseudonym of Philippe Panneton), 1938
translated by Felix and Dorothea Walter
Fall
The fall chapters of Trente Arpents start with he a praise of life on one’s thirty acres. It is a “un chemin paisible et long,” (a lengthy and peaceful road) despite various difficulties: storms, winter.
[l]à-dessous, toujours, la terre constante, éternellement virginale et chaque année maternelle. (p. 149)
(And underneath, the soil forever faithful, eternally new and each year maternal.)
The land has a persistent face: “un visage (a face) persistant,” (p. 149) but as he praises the land’s persistence and fertility, Euchariste is confronted with a series of unfortunate events, some of which he has helped create…
Oguinase
Oguinase becomes a priest, but he does not live in a lovely parish and he works too hard. When Euchariste visits him, he is coughing and weak. He will soon die of tuberculosis. During Oguinase’s last visit home, he tells his sister Lucinda that she should not be sleeveless in the presence of an ordained priest. She feels offended and is not seen again.
The Conscription Crisis of 1917
Then comes conscription: World War I. Suddenly, these farmers remember pre-Revolutionary France: Christ and the King: “la France du Christ et du Roi.” (p. 158) They remember a somewhat revisionist Rebellion of 1837, called ’37. Would that they had a leader and were their own masters! The past is mythified.
Éphrem
Euchariste had hoped his son Éphrem would settle of his own thirty acres. There is money at the notary to buy “la terre des Picard,” the Picard’s farm, and Euchariste has even thought of a possible bride. There is no room for him on Euchariste’s thirty acres. The land cannot accommodate several sons. Yet Éphrem is not ready to become a farmer.
C’est vrai que not’ terre elle est bonne, mais elle n’est pas ben grande! (p.163)
(It’s true, our land is good, but it isn’t very large.)
Éphrem eventually decides to leave for the United States. His uncle, Alphée Larivière (Walter Rivers), who visited during the summer, has found work for him in Lowell, Massachusetts. Later, Éphrem marries an Irish woman and moves to White Falls.
Phydime Raymond vs Euchariste Moisan
Oguinase dies, which saddens Euchariste immensely, and he then gets embroiled in an expensive legal battle with his neighbour Phydime Raymond. Decades ago, Euchariste sold a small piece of his thirty acres to Phydime, but Phydime is now taking more land that he bought.
Étienne: “le seul maître”
Matters do not improve. Having been burdened with legal fees Eucharist never thought would be astronomical, misfortune does not relent. One night Eucharist’s barn burns to the ground and he suspects that Phydime set fire to it. There are losses but the farm animals are safe. They had been removed immediately and a new barn is built but not according to Euchariste’s wishes. It is built according to Étienne’s standards. Étienne loves the land. Each year, it grows more and more into “a spouse and a lover:”
épouse et maîtresse, sa suzeraine [like a feudal lord] et sa servante, à lui Étienne Moisan. (p. 165)
Napoléon or Pitou: the arrangement
An arrangement is made. Étienne will run the farm with Napoléon, called Pitou. A new house will be built for Pitou and his family. All is arranged, except that Euchariste is in the way. It would now be convenient for him to live elsewhere. However, the notary leaves town taking with him Euchariste’s savings. He is dispossessed.
Winter
When the winter of his life begins, an impoverished Euchariste gives his land and his possessions to Étienne. In exchange, he will receive an allowance, a rente (a pension). But he is nevertheless again dispossessed, “land and beasts, gains and debts.” He is blinded by tradition: from father to son.
Il se ‘donna’, terre et bestiaux, avoir et dettes. (p. 219-20)
(He ‘gave’ himself, land, beasts, assets and debts.)
Euchariste has therefore lost his home. Étienne is now the only master: “seul maître.” (p. 220) He has already moved into the large house, which he hopes his father will soon leave. After all, Étienne is the new owner.
The Holiday in the United States: The “Exode”
Euchariste is therefore sent on a “holiday” to the United States to visit Éphrem who works in a factory and lives in White Falls. Euchariste is completely disoriented. Moreover, his daughter-in-law does not speak French, nor do his two grandchildren. Not once does his daughter-in-law express pleasure at his being in their household. In fact, Sunday mass becomes Euchariste’s only respite.
Sundays: the only day
Sunday is the only day Euchariste meets a few persons who do not feel at home in the United States. It has been a long and disappointing holiday, all the more since Étienne has not been sending the monthly allowance, la rente (the pension),he had promised he would give his father in return for ownership of Euchariste’s lost thirty acres.
Going home has therefore become difficult. In fact, Euchariste has no home and, suddenly, the market crashes and he is “needed” in the United States. The factory where Éphrem has been working for six years is letting people go or making them work on a part-time basis.
The Great Depression: Euchariste returns to work
Therefore, an older and sadder Euchariste wants to work again, possibly for a farmer. Éphrem finds a job for his father, that of night watch in a garage. But, Euchariste hesitates to accept this position, not because he will not work on a farm, but for fear of falling asleep for a moment and being remiss in his duties. Times have changed!
Ce qui le terrifiait au début, c’était la crainte de s’endormir, de manquer un instant à son devoir de surveillance. (p. 268)
(What terrified him at first, was fear that he would fall asleep and fail for a moment to be vigilant, which was his duty [devoir]).
He earns fifteen dollars a week, but Éphrem takes ten of the fifteen dollars. Moreover, Étienne also wants money. It is as though there had been no arrangement between Étienne and Pitou. Euchariste is therefore needed not only in the US but also in Canada. His daughter Marie-Louise is sick. She is dying of tuberculosis and needs medical care, which is expensive. She soon dies.
* * *
At the end of the novel, Euchariste is depicted as a very frail old man huddling near a little stove in the garage where he works.
Yet, although it is sad, the end is also poetical. Ringuet takes us away from the plight of one man to the plight and joy of mankind, or from the particular to the general. He writes that every year spring returns and that, every year, the land is generous. The land is always the same, toujours la même, not to the same men, men pass, but to different men:
…à des hommes différents…
…une terre toujours la même.
Suggested reading:
The Canadian EncyclopediaRinguet (Athabaska University)
—ooo—
Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky (7 May 1840 – 6 November 1893)
Andante Cantabile
Yo-Yo Ma, Cello
After the Breakup, Marc-Aurèle de Foy Suzor-Coté, 1914 (National Gallery of Canada)
Sans l’homme la terre n’est point féconde c’est ce besoin qu’elle de lui qui le lie à la terre, qui le fait prisonnier de trente arpents de glèbe. (p. 65)
[Without man, the land is arid. It is because the land needs him that man is tied to it and becomes the prisoner of thirty acres of soil.]
Thirty Acres (Trente Arpents)[i]
by Ringuet (pseudonym of Philippe Panneton), 1938
translated by Felix and Dorothea Walter
Trente Arpents is considered the last of the regionalist novels. It is a gem of a novel and won its author, Ringuet, a pseudonym for Dr Phillippe Panneton (30 April 1895 [Trois-Rivières] – 28 December 1960 [Lisbon]), a medical doctor who went on to write more novels and became a diplomat.
However, among his other novels, none is so moving as the story of the rise and fall of Euchariste Moisan who is wedded to the trente arpents he has inherited from his uncle Éphrem. L’oncle Éphrem and his wife never had children, but they brought Euchariste whose entire family perished in a fire when he was still a tiny child.
Spring
At the very beginning of the novel not only does Euchariste learn that he will inherit his uncle’s land, but arrangements are being made for Euchariste to marry a neighbour’s daughter a neigbours’s daughter who will dutifully have “son nombre,” or the number of children she is destined to bear, as though her numerous and draining pregnancies had nothing to do with sexual intercourse.
Soon after Éphrem tells Euchariste that when he dies he will inherit the thirty acres, he dies and Euchariste finds himself the owner of the thirty acres farmers, the habitants of New France, rented from their SEIGNEUR. Because Éphrem dies, Euchariste and Alphonsine may marry a little earlier than anticipated and occupy the large room: “la grande chambre” The household also includes “la vieille Mélie,” an unmarried elderly woman who simply arrived at Éphrem’s door and never left. Mélie helps Alphonsine until she is very old and dies almost imperceptibly in her chair. As for Alphonsine, she gives birth first to a son, Oguinase, then to a daughter who dies shortly after the birth of the couple’s third child.
Il [Euchariste] les accueillait ces naissances, sans plaisir comme aussi sans regret…. Il fallait qu’Alphonsine eût ‘son nombre’. (p.67)
[He welcomed these births, without pleasure, yet without regret. Alphonsine simply had to have ‘her number’.]
Summer
In the second part of the novel, appropriately divided into the four seasons, Euchariste is more of an owner, but tilling the land and looking after the farm animals is onerous. Despite years of draught, Eucharists prospers. He puts money in the notary’s safe regularly. As for Alphonsine, she is raising her children and still “féconde” (fertile). At this point, Éphrem is asked to see the curé, the parish priest. Oguinase is old enough and sufficiently gifted to be recruited for the priesthood by the curé. He will not have to pay tuition fees.
So Oguinase leaves for the petit séminaire, the private school, now abolished, that allowed graduates to enter the priesthood, le grand séminaire, or university (law or medicine). Euchariste talks about his projetcs. On their way home, they visit a cousin living in a village. The house is more humble than Euchariste had expected. Euchariste talks about his projects: raising hens. Two events now mark the year: Oguinase’s departure for the college and his return.
Euchariste hopes his son Éphrem will now help more and more, but Éphrem is growing into rebel. Moreover, the world is changing. Machines are being used by farmers, machines that can cut fingers off, and cars the kill Euchariste’s hens. The parist has grown to such an extent that a new parish is founded. All around him, Euchariste’s world is changing and his new circumstances cause him to stiffen.
Moreover, it seems Alphonsine is again pregnant, but she feels that something is amiss. She sees her reflection in a mirror and the woman looking at her is no longer Alphonsine. In the mirror she sees an old and sick woman. A doctor is called who tells her to stay in bed, her death-bed.
Alphonsine raises her family; there are good years and years of draught. Euchariste saves his money. Oguinase is sent to the petit séminaire. On their way to the séminaire Euchariste stops in a village to visit with a cousin and says he will be raising hens. Machines, cars, enter the picture and they are very destructive. Machines, cars, enter the picture and they are very destructive. Euchariste will be raising hens. Éphrem turns into a bit of a rebel. Alphonsine dies. An American cousin and his wife visit. We suspect Éphrem will leave for the United States.
(Allow me to pause at this point as this blog is now too long. I am posting a sequel.)
Suggested reading:
The Canadian EncyclopediaRinguet (Athabaska University)
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[i] Ringuet, Trente Arpents (Paris: Flammarion, collection bis 1991[1938]).
Winter Landscape, 1909, Marc-Aurèle de Foy Suzor-Coté, (National Gallery of Canada)
“It was not the over-sensitivity of the misunderstood that made me move to Paris… Over there, I paint only Canadian subjects, I dream only of Canada. The motif remains fixed in my mind, and I don’t allow myself to be captivated by the charms of a new landscape. In Switzerland, Scandinavia-everywhere, I recall my French Canada.” (Clarence Gagnon)
I am republishing two posts that describe regionalism and the period when Quebeckers were leaving for the United States looking for employment.
Ringuet, or Dr Philippe Panneton, is the writer I am featuring. He is the author of Trente arpents (Thirty Acres). The novel was published in 1938, when the habitant had become a “cultivateur.” Colonisation had ennobled his work.
You will note a considerable degree of acceptance. The protagonist’s wife, Alphonsine, gives birth year after year, but her husband, Euchariste Moisan, sees the birth of children as Alphonsine’s inescapable fate. She has to have “son nombre,” her number. Therefore, Euchariste is somewhat indifferent. Yearly pregnancies and the death of children do not seem to affect him. Life goes by as inexorably as the seasons.Euchariste does not welcome changes: machines.
Euchariste also accepts the curé‘s, or parish priest, request. He will contribute a son to the Church. This was normal. Whenever a child showed intellectual promise, he was chosen by the parish priest and eventually entered the Grand Séminaire. Oguinase’s destiny is to become a priest.
Another son, Éphrem, is somewhat rebellious and is influenced by a relative who has left Canada for a more comfortable life in the United States. This relative has even changed his name.
I have chosen this particular post as it documents the rise and fall of the habitant turned cultivateur.
So good morning to all or you.
The Lake, Séminaire Saint-Sulpice, Montréal by Clarence Gagnon, 1917 (National Gallery of Canada)
— Boy with Bread, by 
© Micheline Walker
14 June 2012
© Micheline Walker
7 June 2012
WordPress
revised
14 January 2014
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