Category Archives: Regionalism

Germaine Guèvremont’s Le Survenant

24 Sunday Jun 2012

Posted by in French-Canadian Literature, Regionalism, Roman de la terre

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Le Survenant, Deviant Art

Given the more intimiste and poetical quality of her novels, Germaine Guèvremont’s (born Grignon) Le Survenant, published in 1945 and its sequel, Marie-Didace (1947), Germaine’s  television series could not be as popular as Un Homme et son péché, Les  Belles Histoires des pays d’en haut, or Séraphin: Heart of Stone, the title of the 2002 movie’s based on Un Homme et son péché. Le Survenant was nevertheless an extremely successful television series.

The 138 30-minute televised episodes ran from 30 November 1954 to 30 June 1959 on Télévision de Radio-Canada. We rushed to the living-room the moment we heard its theme: Greensleeves. In 1957-1958, it was presented under a different title, Au Chenal du Moine. Its sequel, Marie-Didace, ran from 25 September 1958 to 25 June 1959 32 60 minute episodes.

Germaine Guèvremont: the author

  • Le Survenant, 1945
  • sequel: Marie-Didace, 1947
  • not quite a roman du terroir, roman de la terre, regionalism (mostly synonyms)
  • Eric Sutton, translator (The Monk’s Reach) London, New York & Toronto
  • also translated as The Outlander, a combination of Le Survenant and Marie-Didace in the United States
  • a popular television serial (1954 – 1959)
  • a film adaptation: Éric Canuel‘s Le Survenant (2005) FR

Germaine Guèvremont’s Le Survenant, 1945

It is possible to see glimpses of Le Survenant as a television serial on a Cinéma québécois site, but the character’s accent makes it difficult to understand the words and the television clips are very old. A little updating would benefit the site, but I would nevertheless recommend it as well as a Télé-Tag and the IMBd site. In 2005, the novel was made into a movie, not a great movie, no more than Séraphin: Heart of Stone, but a respectable movie. 

The Plot

On a fall day, a man knocks on Didace Beauchemin’s door. No one knows anything about him and he does not seem to remember his own past. We suspect, however, that he was brought up in an anglophone or bilingual milieu. He often says “Nevermind” (spelled differently) and he is obviously a well-educated “god-of-the-roads” (grand-dieu-des-routes).

Didace Beauchemin

When he arrives, unexpectedly, at Didace’s house, le survenant is hungry and asks to join the family at the dinner-table. Later, he explains that he will earn his keep by working for Didace who is a well-to-do, solid, and very likable  “cultivateur” (the renamed habitant).  Didace has a son, the rather limp Amable, and a daughter-in-law, Alphonsine, both of whom live upstairs in Didace’s large house. They live upstairs. They have no children. So Didace is disappointed. How will there be continuité, a concern for French Canadians. He would therefore like le survenant to be his son.

Jean Coutu, as Le Survenant

Jean Coutu, as Le Survenant

Angélina Desmarais

Angélina Desmarais, who limps a little and keeps turning down potential husbands, falls in love with le survenant. The feeling is mutual, but Angélina knows that he will leave. She has no illusion. However, le survenant is rejected by many of the inhabitants of le Chenal-du-Moine. He is not one of theirs.

A year after his arrival, le survenant leaves, without saying good-bye, not even to Angélina.

A Discovery:The Outlander’s identity

However, going through old issues of Le Soleil, Quebec City’s main newspaper, le curé, the parish priest, finds a note.  The Espéry de Lignères family members are looking for a relative: Malcolm Petit de Lignères or Marc Delignières, as he had transformed his name.  Malcolm or Marc was brought up by a great-grandfather, Malcolm McDowey and disappeared when studying Law at McGill University. He is heir to a fortune.

Guèvremont does not take us further. At any rate, Didace wants to speak to the curé about his plans to marry an Acadian woman who will bear him a fine daughter: Marie-Didace.

Comments

  • Le Survenant has appeal as a suspense story. We keep going from chapter to chapter and from episode to episode wondering who he is.
  • Moreover, the novel opposes a nomadic individual and sedentary ones. That creates tension. French Canada had voyageurs and coureurs des bois and it had farmers. In Louis Hémon‘s Maria Chapdelaine, François Paradis is nomadic as opposed to Eutrope Gagnon, a farmer.
  • The inhabitants of Le Chenal du Moine are a closely knit society, almost impenetrable, which also creates tension. What if le survenant were an Englishman?  At that time, there still was motivation, on the part of certain officials, to assimilate French-speaking Canadians.[i] 
  • Finally, as a remembrance of times past, the novel exudes nostalgia. The action takes place in 1910 when French-speaking Canadians were about to experience the beginning of their industrial revolution. Actually, it did not happen until the 1960s.

Le Survenant is a Proustian novel, a remembrance of things past. We are in a small village, le Chenal du Moine, near Sorel, now Sorel-Tracy and Guèvremont makes us hear the birds and she takes us down the river in a row-boat: no motor! Her characters speak the French they brought to New France, they gather in huge kitchens, close to their cast iron stove. You should have seen my grandmother’s, not to mention her house.

A Roman de la Terre

Le Survenant is considered a roman de la terre, but it is not Claude-Henri Grignon‘s Un Homme et son péché, featuring real-life characters advocating colonisation. Moreover if the Beauchemin family members are “crushed, never to rise again” Britannica, quoted below), it is not so much that they are running out of land. It is, quite simply that they are entering a new world, but Guèvremont remembers.

Allow me to quote The Encyclopædia Britannica’s entry on Germaine Guèvremont.

“Germaine Guèvremont, née Marianne-Germaine Grignon (born Apr. 16, 1893, Saint-Jérôme, Que., Can.—died Aug. 21, 1968, Montreal), was a French-Canadian novelist who skillfully recreated the enclosed world of the Quebec peasant family.

Grignon, educated in Quebec and at Loretto Abbey, Toronto, married Hyacinthe Guèvremont, a Sorel, Que., druggist; they had a son and three daughters. She worked on Le Courrier de Sorel and as correspondent for the Montreal Gazette before moving to Montreal in 1935. In Montreal, Guèvremont contributed sketches of rural life to the monthly magazine Paysana. En Pleine Terre (1942), a collection of her realistic stories of rural French Canada, was followed by the related novels Le Survenant (1945), which inspired a French-Canadian television series, and its sequel, Marie-Didace (1947). The two novels show a family crushed, never to rise again, after a season of hope. The two novels were translated and combined as The Outlander (1950) in the United States and Canada and as Monk’s Reach (1950) in the United Kingdom.”[ii]

_________________________

[i]  The Royal 22nd Regiment, Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_22nd_Regiment

[ii] “Germaine Guèvremont.” Encyclopædia Britannica. Encyclopædia Britannica Online. Encyclopædia Britannica Inc., 2012. Web. 24 Jun. 2012. <http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/248407/Germaine-Guevremont>.

theme: Le Survenant (Greensleeves/Mantovani)
theme: Un Homme et son péché , Les Belles Histoires des pays d’en haut (Nostalgie [Glazunov])

Alexander Glazunov‘s Petit Adagio was the musical theme of the television series based on Le Survenant. (The Seasons, Autumn Op. 67)

 
 
images
© Micheline Walker
24 June 2012
WordPress
 
updated
13 January 2014
 
 
 
 
 

Claude-Henri Grignon: Notre culture sera paysanne, ou ne sera pas

17 Sunday Jun 2012

Posted by in Art, Canada, French-Canadian Literature, Regionalism

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North of Forestville (Au nord de Forestville), René Richard R.C.A. (1895-1982)
(with permission from La Galerie Klinckhoff, Montréal)
 

René Richard ‘s House in Baie-Saint-Paul (Charlevoix) 

In the article I posted on 16 June 2012, I stated that Claude-Henri Grignon’s Un Homme et son péché  was not altogether a roman de la terre, or novel of the land.  In this regard, I must be more specific.

To make my text a little clearer, I have added a sentence underscoring the presence in Grignon’s novel of real-life characters such as François-Xavier-Antoine Labelle (24 November  1833 – 4 January 1891) le curé Labelle and Arthur Buies. Le curé Labelle and Arthur Buies were advocates of colonisation, making land (faire de la terre), the patriotic choice.  Claude-Henri Grignon would not have inserted these characters in his novel for decorative purposes.

The Shrinking Thirty Acres: une Peau de chagrin [ii] 

You are already familiar with this story.  Québécois had run out of land to cultivate.  By the middle of the 19th century, the thirty acres of land allotted them in the seventeenth century, when the SEIGNEURIAL system was put into place (1627), could no longer be divided and French-speaking inhabitants of Quebec were not ready to move to cities as they had not been raised to be merchants and industrialists.

Therefore, although it is a satire of rural life, Les Belles Histoires des pays d’en haut, or Séraphin, un homme et son péché (1933), belongs, at least indirectly, to the roman de la terre, or roman du terroir.  If Canadiens wanted to remain in the Province of Quebec, their only option was “making land,” Antoine Labelle‘s and Arthur Buies‘s nationalistic option. But was it a realistic option?

The Lack of Professions

We know that the land was shrinking, but compounding the problem was the lack of professions.  In Pierre-Joseph-Olivier Chauveau‘s Charles Guérin, upon completion of their études classiques taught in a Petit Séminaire, a private institution, and the one course of studies allowing admission to a university , Charles and his brother Pierre realized that the only professions French-Canadians could enter were the priesthood, law and medicine.  French-speaking Quebecers could also be teachers, which was the preserve of religious orders.

Containing the « exode »

Consequently, not only were Québécois cultivateurs increasingly landless, but lawyers were also facing unemployment.  Therefore, preventing French-speaking Canadians from moving to the New England states was well-nigh impossible.  There were factories in the Eastern Townships, an area settled by United Empire Loyalists, but by and large Quebec had very few factories.

As for going north to “make land” (colonisation), it made sense.  However, just how much land could one make?  Furthermore, just how many French Canadians wanted to be like Samuel Chapdelaine?

Grignon’s letter to André Laurendeau

Claude-Henri Grignon had the highest regard for the land: le sol.  In a public letter[ii] to Joseph-Edmond-André Laurendeau (21 March 1912 in Montreal – 1st June 1968 in Ottawa), published in L’Action nationale (June 1941), Grignon wrote that if he accepted the word culture in the “broad and particular” meaning Laurendeau gave it, he believed that there was a French-Canadian culture and that it was a culture of the land, i.e. agrarian: « Notre culture sera paysanne ou ne sera pas. » (We will be farmers or we will not be [we will cease to exist]: that is our culture).  My translation is not a literal translation, but it is accurate.

It should be pointed out, however, that in his letter or article, Grignon expressed reservations.  He had this warning for the very prominent André Laurendeau: “But be careful, we will end up losing it in the same manner we have suffered other losses, because of our indifference, our timidity and, [let’s call a spade a spade], because of our “avachissement” (total spinelessness: we’re cows).” This is again my own accurate, but not literal translation.

Let’s continue reading:

“As I have often written, and will repeat,” writes Grignon, “our survival remains inextricably linked to the land, i.e. le sol.  The word « sol » (three letters) contains the entire past, all of our traditions, our customs and values (mœurs), our faith and our language. If you take away sol from our social life, our economy, our political life, there is no French-Canadian culture.”

« Je l’ai écrit souvent et je le répète: notre survivance reste intimement liée au sol.  Le mot ‹ sol › (trois lettres) contient tout le passé, toutes nos traditions, nos moeurs, notre foi et notre langue.  Retranchez le sol de notre vie sociale, économique, politique et il n’est point de culture canadienne-française. »  (p. 315)

 

A “Mystique” of the Land

Grignon goes on to write, that what French Canadians lack, and lack sorely, is a mystique [ideology] of the land.  “Nothing is more durable, sturdier and healthier.  There are nations of industrialists, nations of merchants, and agrarian nations.”  In other words, Grignon was banking on the land: where there is land there is bread (« là où est la terre, là est le pain »).  And he wrote that if anyone spoke to the contrary, he would ask that person the following question: “Why is it that our English gentlemen are rushing to purchase the land?” (for the original French, see the very end of the following quotation)

« Ce qui nous manque, ce qui fait douloureusement défaut dans les racines les plus profondes de notre peuple, c’est le sens d’une mystique véritable, d’une mystique paysanne, d’une mystique de la terre dans ce qu’elle suppose de plus durable, de plus fort, de plus sain.  Il y a des peuples industriels, des peuples commerçants, des peuples agricoles.  Pourquoi ne pas continuer les traditions de la vieille France par un attachement plus intime à la terre qui demeure selon les économistes les plus avertis, la seule richesse qui ne peut périr, même aux heures les plus difficiles, les plus angoissantes.  Inutile de nous le cacher : là où est la terre, là est le pain. » (pp. 315-316)

« Comment se fait-il  qu’au moment où j’écris ces lignes, messieurs les Anglais, gens pratiques, par excellence, se ruent vers nos terres et s’agitent de toutes façons pour s’en procurer ? » (p. 316)

 

The Great Depression

We must take into account that Grignon wrote the above article, in 1941, as North America was recovering from the Great Depression.  During the Great Depression, the only asset that remained valuable was land.  There is something artificial about money, but land is real estate, including the small city lot on which your house is located, if you have a house.  According to Grignon, the English knew this, but the French-speaking Québécois did not.

Comments

Grignon was both right and wrong.  Of course, one holds on to the land, but Quebec also needed its merchants, its industrialists, its engineers, its architects, its economists.

Moreover, Grignon stringed together land, language and religion.  For him, the three were inseparable.  In this regard, I believe Grignon faced an obstacle, at least where French Canadians living outside Quebec were concerned.  Outside Quebec, there was a separation of Church and State.  A Catholic school was a private school and that was not about to change.

—ooo—

I will close by repeating that although Un Homme et son péché is not a mainstream roman du terroir, or novel of the land. It features three real-life characters who were advocates of colonisation.  But we have now seen that Claude-Henri Grignon himself was a proponent of an economic system based on agriculture.  He realized that land was “real” estate.

However, those who went to the United States did so because they had to put bread on the table that very day.  Where food is concerned, one does not have the luxury to wait.  They were not traitors.  They were victims.

Didn’t anyone have the foresight to prevent the worst tragedy ever to befall French-speaking Canadians?  It seems to me that no one was minding the store.

_________________________

[i] For a list of novels that would be romans du terroir, it may be good to look at Marianopolis College, L’Histoire de la littérature canadienne-française 
[ii] From a novel, its very title, by Honoré de Balzac.
[iii] Claude-Henri Grignon, « Notre culture sera paysanne, ou ne sera pas»,
L’Action nationale (Montréal, vol. XVII, nº 6, juin 1941), pp. 538-543,  in Gilles Marcotte, dir. Anthologie de la littérature québécoise, vol 3 (Montréal: L’Hexagone, 1994), pp. 315-316.
 
 
 
© Micheline Walker
18 June 2012
WordPress 
 
Bord de la mer, Cap-aux-oies, René Richard
 

Menaud, maître-draveur: a Metaphysical Land

14 Thursday Jun 2012

Posted by in Canadian History, French-Canadian Literature, Regionalism

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Village de Baie-Saint-Paul en hiver (Charlevoix), Clarence Gagnon

Maison à Baie-Saint-Paul, 1924, Clarence Gagnon (La Galerie Walter Klinkhoff)

In 2005, Félix-Antoine Savard‘s 1937’s Menaud, maître-draveur[i] (Master of the River) was selected as one of Canada‘s ‘100 Most Important Books’ by The Literary Review of Canada. The popularity of Savard’s novel is increasing.

Unless otherwise indicated, the artwork featured in this post is used by permission of La Galerie Walter Klinkhoff.
 

Yet, both Maria Chadpelaine and Félix-Antoine Savard’s Menaud, 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 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 has defined this voice as l’appel du Nord, the call of the north.[ii]  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 out to make 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 de vivre 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, OC MSRC (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.  He had been a parish priest, but was transformed into an academic and a very productive poet and novelist.  You may wish to 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 (farmers), who tilled tirelessly, an inhospitable cultivateurs (farmers).  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.

A Distinct Novel of the Land

Menaud, maître-draveur differs from Patrice Lacombe‘s La Terre paternelle and  Pierre-Joseph-Olivier Chauveau‘s Charles Guérin.

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 Chapdelaine 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 akin to 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 issues.  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)

Conclusion

I will close my post by quoting the most nationalistic statement contained in Maria Chapdelaine quoting the most nationalistic statement contained in Maria Chapdelaine and repeated in Menaud, maître-draveur.  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 the house in which we were brought up.  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.)

—ooo—

[i] Félix-Antoine Savard, Menaud maître-draveur, (Québec: Librairie Garneau, 1937).  The novel has been translated by Alan Sullivan as Boss/ Master of the River (Toronto, Ryerson Press, 1947).

[ii] Jack Warwick, L’Appel du Nord dans la littérature canadienne-française : essai (Montréal : Hurtubise/HMH, 1972).

[iii] “Canadian literature.” Encyclopædia Britannica. Encyclopædia Britannica Online. Encyclopædia Britannica Inc., 2014. Web. 14 Jan. 2014.             <http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/91950/Canadian-literature>.

[iv] “As early as 1760, Scottish noblemen Malcolm Fraser and John Nairn hosted visitors at their manors.  For much of its history, Charlevoix was home to a thriving summer colony of wealthy Americans, including President William Howard Taft.” (Wikipedia)

[v] All my quotations are from Félix-Antoine Savard, Menaud, maître-draveur (Montréal & Paris: Fides, 1973[1937]).                           

[vi] Louis Hémon, Maria Chapdelaine (Montréal, Bibliothèque québécoise et Fides, 1990 [1914]).

 
 
 
 
Menaud_1937 
© Micheline Walker
June 14, 2012
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revised
January 14, 2014
 

Regionalism in Québec Fiction: Maria Chapdelaine

07 Thursday Jun 2012

Posted by in Art, French-Canadian Literature, Quebec, Regionalism

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Péribonka

Maria Chapdelaine is the next step in examining regionalism in Quebec literature. I have published a short post on Maria Chapdelaine, a novel by Louis Hémon (October 12, 1880 – July 8, 1913), a Frenchman born in Brest. After studying law and oriental languages at the Sorbonne, Hémon moved to London and, in 1911, to Quebec. 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 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. He was killed in a train accident on July 8, 1913, in 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 four movies.

The plot is simple, but although Maria Chapdelaine is a roman du terroir, it differs substantially from Patrice Lacombe’s Terre paternelle and Pierre-Joseph-Olivier Chauveau’s Charles Guérin. Louis Hémon’s Samuel Chapdelaine does not feel dispossessed of his ancestral land and betrayed. Moreover, Louis Hémon’s novel, Maria Chapdelaine, does not feature an ethnic conflict.  

The artwork featured in this post is 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 (November 24, 1833 – January 4, 1891) advocated, and were “making land” (faire de la terre).[i] Father Labelle preached “colonisation,” which was the “patriotic” choice. Leaving for the United States wasn’t.

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. In traditional Quebec society, happiness was viewed not only as impossible but as dangerous. François dies in a snowstorm, which was to be expected. Lorenzo Surprenant has come north to find a wife and take her 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 is surprising, and Gagnon’s name is close to the French verb gagner: to win.

Maria Chapdelaine also differs from Patrice Lacombe’s La Terre paternelle and Chauveau’s 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 succeed. I believe this is the reason why Lacombe views cities as unhealthy.  

—ooo—

Our next regionalist 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.  

To view more illustrations of Maria Chapdelaine, by Marc-Aurèle de Foy Suzor-Coté, 
please click on the link below: http://www.archiv.umontreal.ca/exposition/louis_hemon/oeuvre/oeuvre_page2-3.html 
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[i] 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 popular serialised radio and television drama and made into a movie three times. The second movie is entitled Séraphin: Heart of Stone (2003). Séraphin is a miser, and he is cruel to his wife Donalda.

The White Horse, by Clarence Gagnon 
 
 
 
thedayafterthestorm300© Micheline Walker
7 June 2012
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Related Posts:
Maria Chapdelaine 
Patrice Lacombe’s La Terre paternelle
Pierre-Joseph-Olivier Chauveau’s Charles Guérin
 
 

Pierre-Joseph-Olivier Chauveau’s Charles Guérin

05 Tuesday Jun 2012

Posted by in French-Canadian Literature, Quebec, Regionalism

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Boutique à Crémazie

Boutique à Crémazie (Crémazie’s Bookstore)

Pierre-Joseph-Olivier Chauveau’s Charles Guérin 


RELATED ARTICLES

Pierre-Joseph-Olivier Chauveau: Biographical Notes
Regionalism in Quebec Fiction: Patrice Lacombe
La Capricieuse & Crémazie’s Old Soldier
Maria Chapdelaine
The Canadian & his Terroir                      
 

This blog is a continuation of my blog on Patrice Lacombe’s Terre paternelle. It also deals with regionalism in Quebec literature. However, the author of the novel we will peruse, Charles Guérin (online text, in French) was is a prominent Canadian who helped lead Canada into confederation and was Quebec’s first Premier, among other achievements listed in Pierre-Joseph-Olivier Chauveau: Biographical Notes. His novel is well written, but it reflects a facet of its author’s imagination that suggests a divided man. This novel is the expression of the subconcious mind. In other words, there was a public Pierre-Joseph-Oliver Chauveau, but Charles Guérin is the portrait of the very private author of Charles Guérin.

Charles Guérin is a roman du terroir, a regionalistic novel, published the same year as Patrice Lacombe’s Terre paternelle. However, with Chauveau, the plot of our story of regionalism takes on new dimensions. Although it is a roman du terroir, Charles Guérin is nevertheless the work of a major public figure and a leader. However, the subconscious has its dictates that may be at odds with the dictates of the conscious self and I doubt very much that we can draw too wide a line between our public self and our innermost private self. We are the sum total of our private and public selves.

Charles Guérin (French entry for Chauveau) was first published, in 1846 in L’Album littéraire et musical de la Revue canadienne, a periodical. Its first venue is therefore the same as Patrice Lacombe’s La Terre paternelle except that it was published as a book in 1853, sooner than Lacombe’s Terre paternelle.

Summary of the plot

We are in the 1830s. Charles Guérin is the story of two brothers, Charles and Pierre, who, having completed their études classiques, realize that there are very few careers French-Canadians can enter. Students pursued their études  classiques in a Petit Séminaire, a private teaching establishment. Only the études classiques gave access to University studies. The études classiques have now been replaced by a two-year tuition-free programme taught in a CEGEP (Collège d’enseignement général et professionnel). Students enter a Cegep after grade eleven and upon completion of the two-year programme, they can then enroll in a university.

Two Brothers: a Dilemma 

Realizing that their choices are the priesthood (le Grand Séminaire), law, and medicine, one brother, Pierre Guérin, who has thought of becoming a businessman leaves for France. As for Charles, he decides to study Law. In Quebec City, Charles falls in love with Marichette,[i] a peasant’s daughter. However, during a study break he goes home and meets Clorinde, an Englishman’s daughter and his mother’s tenant, Mr Wagnaër. Madame Guérin is a widow who needs to rent part of her SEIGNEURIE in order to pay for her son’s education.

Charles meets Clorinde 

During a break, Charles meets Clorinde and is smitten. He falls in love with her and acts as though he does not already have a lady friend, Marichette. Wagnaër would like to own the SEIGNEURIE, located on the south side of the St Lawrence river. At first, he hopes to woo Madame Guerin, but she will not marry him.

Charles loses the ancestral Seigneurie

However, given that Charles is in love with his daughter, Wagnaër sees and seizes the opportunity he needed. He has an accomplice in Henri Voisin, a disloyal friend. A plot is hatched. Wagnaër manages to make our love-stricken Charles sign lettres de créance (letters of credit), making Charles his debtor. Charles loses the ancestral SEIGNEURIE, his inheritance.

Charles’s salvation: Agriculture

As in La Terre Paternelle, the second son returns. Pierre has become a priest and cannot help his brother financially, but they are at least reunited. Charles is also reunited with Marichette. They inherit land from Charles’ employer, Monsieur Dumont, and live there with friends who do not want to leave Canada. So, once again, all is well that ends well. A farmer is not a SEIGNEUR but, in the Quebec of Chauveau’s youth, or the Bas-Canada of the 1830s, one could not do better than till the land, as had been Richelieu‘s wish. Québécois are depicted as hereditary cultivateurs: farmers.

“Agriculture : Cette grande et noble occupation, seule base de la prospérité des peuples, est suivie par la très grande majorité des habitants du Canada.” (p. 676) (Farming: this grand and noble occupation, on which is altogether founded the prosperity of nations, is the one the majority of the inhabitants of Canada [Quebec] choose.)

The Shrinking 30 Acres

However, the habitant’s 30 acres are shrinking, so the time has come for the habitant‘s son to move to the city. That was nightmarish for the inhabitants of the Province of Quebec. The Canadien was unskilled and those who tried to become businessmen usually lost their business. Moreover, there were very few factories in Quebec.

As a politician, Pierre-Joseph-Olivier Chauveau sold farming land at very low prices because French-Canadians had started moving to the United States, where there were factories. Consequently, nearly a million French-Canadians and Acadians left the Dominion of Canada. They could not find work.

Those among you who have read Louis Hémon’s Maria Chapdelaine or my post on Maria Chapdelaine,[ii] know that Maria makes the “patriotic” choice, although unknowingly, when she chooses to marry Eutrope Gagnon, who is a “cultivateur.”  She could have married Lorenzo Surprenant and lived an easier life in the United States. 

Quebec is a large province, but only part of its vast territory can be used as farmland. Making land (faire de la terre), as the Curé Labelle advocated, was to a large extent an unrealistic proposition. How does one turn rock into arable land, which is what Maria Chapdelaine’s father has chosen to do?

At that time in history, the birthrate in Quebec was very high, but as soon as they had reached adulthood, men had to go where they could make a living: the United States, even if this choice was deemed unpatriotic.

Let us listen to Charles Guérin. Just outside the Church, where parishioners gather, Charles preaches to those who will not hear that there is cowardice (lâcheté) in leaving one’s country, that one may lose one’s faith (perdre sa foi) and traditional values [moral values and customs, or les mœurs] in a foreign land (à l’étranger).

Charles rassembla à la porte de l’église tous les fugitifs et il leur fit un magnifique sermon en trois points sur la lâcheté qu’il y avait  d’abandonner son pays, sur les dangers que l’on courait de perdre sa foi et ses mœurs à l’étranger, sur l’avantage et le patriotisme de fonder de nouveaux établissements sur les terres fertiles de notre propre pays. (pp. 608-609)

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Here again, as in La Terre Paternelle, farming is the preferred occupation for patriotic Québécois. So, despite losing the ancestral SEIGNEURIE, Charles and Marichette are fortunate. They inherit land and Marichette is an early portrait of Maria Chapdelaine. The dominant ideology is one occupation: farming; one language: French; and one religion: Catholicism. It resembles French absolute monarchy: one language, one religion, except that the monarch is a farmer.

However, the cast of this novel includes an Englishman to whom Charles loses the ancestral land. So, although there was only a treaty, the Treaty of Paris (1763), not altogether a “conquest,” Charles reenacts the loss of his land to the British and the Englishman happens to be an “ugly” Englishman. Losing one’s land becomes the national plight and in Chauveau’s Charles Guérin the land is lost to a conniving Englishman. They therefore re-lives the Battle of the Plains of Abraham down to the ethnicity of the “conqueror.” 

In a letter his mother does not read until after he has left, Pierre Guérin writes that he would like to be a businessman, but not a Wagnaër, as Mr Wagnaër and people of his ilk destroy the forests as though there were no tomorrow. The forest is the land. Once the foreigner conquers the land, he destroys it.  

Moreover, Charles Guérin, in discussions with his friends, says that he fears the Canadien will lose his language, a language he cannot dissociate from the Canadien‘s religion.  

Pierre-Joseph-Olivier Chauveau was a brilliant and enormously successful man. He was as accomplished as an individual can be. So I will end by saying that the author of Charles Guérin is and is not Pierre-Joseph-Olivier Chauveau. Chauveau’s novel reveals a dispossessed innermost self: the fictitious Charles. Yet, the author or public Charles was the Honourable Pierre-Joseph-Olivier Chauveau, the first premier of the Province of Quebec.   

Unfortunately, I have not been able to identify the artist whose art work I have used. These are lovely works of art. Chauveau was a member of the École littéraire de Québec and members, including historian François-Xavier Garneau, a close friend, met at Crémazie’s Bookstore, la Boutique à Crémazie Chauveau was born in Charlesbourg near Quebec City. There were years he had to spend in Ottawa, but he lived in Quebec City and Quebec City is where he died.

________________________
 
[i] Not to be confused with Marichette, the pen name for Acadian author Émilie C. LeBlanc (1863-1935).
[ii] Maria Chapdelaine can be read online in either English or French: 
Maria Chapdelaine  http://www.gutenberg.org/files/4383/4383-h/4383-h.htm EN
Maria Chapdelaine  http://www.gutenberg.org/files/13525/13525-h/13525-h.htm
 

—ooo—

 
© Micheline Walker
5 June 2012
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Patrice Lacombe’s La Terre Paternelle

03 Sunday Jun 2012

Posted by in French-Canadian Literature, Quebec, Regionalism

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log-hauling

Log Hauling by Suzor-Coté

The Relevance of Early Unsophisticated Fiction

These regionalistic forerunners are not masterpieces, but they are not to be dismissed or trivialized as they provide valuable insights into the life and times of their authors, times to which, as Northrop Frye writes, we cannot return historically, but can return psychologically:

“Quebec in particular has gone through an exhilarating and, for the most part, emancipating social revolution. Separatism is the reactionary side of this revolution: what it really aims at is a return to the introverted malaise in which it began, when Quebec’s motto was je me souviens and its symbols were those of the habitant rooted to his land with his mother church over his head, and all the rest of the blood-and-soil bit. One cannot go back to the past historically, but the squalid neo-fascism of the FLQ terrorists indicates that one can always do so psychologically.” (The Bush Garden, Preface, about ten paragraphs down)

Now, psychologically, a return to the past is often best achieved by reading the above-mentioned unsophisticated literary forerunners.  In fact, Frye also writes that “the question of Canadian identity, so far as it affects the creative imagination, is not a ‘Canadian’ question at all, but a regional question.”  (The Bush Garden, third paragraph).[i]So let us glimpse at French Canada’s first regionalistic novel, Patrice Lacombe’s Terre paternelle (The Ancestral Land). So let us glimpse at French Canada’s first regionalistic novel, Patrice Lacombe’s Terre paternelle (The Ancestral Land).

Patrice Lacombe’s Terre paternelle  (1846)

La Terre paternelle was first published, anonymously, in 1846 in L’Album littéraire et musical de la Revue canadienne, a periodical. In the 19th century, it was not uncommon to serialize a novel. Readers waited for the next issue of the journal.

In 1848, it was also included in James Huston’s (French entry) Répertoire national, a collection of works by French-speaking Canadian authors. But Patrice Lacombe’s Terre paternelle was not published as a book until 1871. It tells the story of Jean Chauvin and his family who live on their ancestral land, near Rivière-des-Prairies.

Summary of the Plot

One day, the younger of Jean Chauvin’s two sons, Charles, meets voyageurs in an inn. He hears them speak of the pays d’en haut, the countries “above,” and decides to seek employment with the Northwest Company as a voyageur. Charles ‘s father is disappointed and in order not to lose his older son, he lets him have the family farm in exchange for a pension or rente “viagère,” or “for life.” Jean Guérin’s oldest son is not interested in farming and Jean must return to his farm five years later.

In the meantime, however, Jean Chauvin, who has enjoyed a leisurely life for a few years, gets tired of farming, sells the farm and buys a business. He is so deprived of business acumen tht he loses everything. The family lives in abject poverty.

Fortunately, the second son returns from the “countries above” and is able to purchase the farm his father sold. So all is well that ends well. However, what we have seen is the Canadien‘s incompetence as a businessman, at a point in history when the Canadien had to leave the farm and move to the city, despite a lack of qualifications. Jean Chauvin’s failure as a businessman is humiliating, even if Lacombe presents cities as corrupt.

—ooo—

I will pause here but will post the continuation of this drama in my next blog. All the artwork featured in this blog is from artist Marc-Aurèle de Foy Suzor-Coté.

RELATED ARTICLES:

 

Sources and Resources

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[i]  The Bush Garden Wikipedia Entry http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Bush_Garden:_Essays_on_the_Canadian_Imagination
 
 
© Micheline Walker
3 June 2012
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Maria Chapdelaine

26 Thursday Jan 2012

Posted by in Art, French-Canadian Literature, Quebec, Regionalism

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The Chapdelaine Farm, by Clarence Gagnon

The Chapdelaine Farm by Clarence Gagnon

Louis Hémon[i]

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

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 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 blackflies, 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. This novel is a jewel. 

Film Adaptations

The novel was an instant, international success. In 1934, Julien Duvivier directed a film adaptation of Maria Chapdelaine starring Madeleine Renaud and Jean Gabin. A second film, entitled Naked Heart, was produced in 1950 by Marc Allégret, starring Michèle Morgan. In 1983, a third adaptation, entitled Maria Chapdelaine, was produced by Quebec filmmaker Gilles Carle, starring Carole Laure.

pu-logo

Folklore: À la claire fontaine, Université de Moncton, Male Choir

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
Canadian literature: The Montreal School, 1895–1935
First serialized in Le Temps (1914) (Paris)
Published in book form in 1916
Translated into English in 1921 (W. H. Blake)
Translated in all the major languages
 
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[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), pp. 16-23.
 
Johannes Brahms: Drei Intermezzi, Op 117 No 2

The White Horse, by Clarence Gagnon

The White Horse by Clarence Gagnon

© Micheline Walker
26 January 2012
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