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Tag Archives: French-Canadian literature

Menaud, maître-draveur: a Metaphysical Land

14 Tuesday Jan 2014

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

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1937, Clarence Gagnon artist, Félix-Antoine Savard, French-Canadian literature, Menaud maître draveur, Regionalism, Saguenay River, Saguenay-Lac-Saint-Jean

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 with permission from La Galerie Walter Klinkhoff.

 
 

Yet, both Maria Chadpelaine Félix-Antoine and  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 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 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.  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.

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 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.)

—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 
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14 June 2012
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The Regionalist Novel in Quebec: Survival

27 Wednesday Jun 2012

Posted by michelinewalker in Canada, Literature

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Claude-Henri Grignon, Félix-Antoine Savard, French-Canadian literature, Germaine Guèvremont, Louis Hémon, Maria Chapdelaine, Philippe Panneton, Regionalism

Mild Spring by Claude A. Simard, R.C.A. (2010)

(Claude A. Simard is featured with permission from La Galerie Walter Klinkhoff, Montreal)

Today, I will start and perhaps finish writing about our last Regionalist Novel in Quebec: Ringuet‘s Trente Arpents. If you are interested in French-Canadian literature and use my posts as further information on both Canadian literature and history, you may wish to keep the list below. There are other romans de la terre or romans du terroir, or novels of the land (regionalism), but the works listed below are fine representatives of this school, and some are classics. The theme underlying these novels is survival, as in Margaret Atwood‘s Survival.

Classification: The Canadien runs out of Land

I do not want to put these novels into little boxes, but a moderate degree of classification is necessary. Maria Chapdelaine, by Louis-Hémon, a Frenchman, tells the entire story. However, it does not convey the despair of those French-Canadians who had to leave Canada because they the thirty acres allotted their ancestors in the seventeenth century had shrunk. The exodus was a tragic and quasi-genocidal episode. Quebec could not afford to lose close to a million inhabitants.

The finest depiction of the Exodus is Ringuet’s (Dr Philippe Panneton)  Trente Arpents or Thirty Acres.

Ideological Texts

1. In La Terre paternelle, French-Canadians are told that it is better to stay on the land. The same advice is given in Charles Guérin, were it not that Charles Guérin, Pierre-Joseph-Olivier Chauveau‘s novel, also brings up the thorny matter of the lack of professions available to French-Canadians living in Quebec.

2. Un Homme et son péché (Les Belles histoires des pays d’en haut), by Claude-Henri Grignon, is about a séraphin, a miser. But it features real-life who advocate colonisation: faire de la terre (making land). “Notre culture sera paysanne… ” supports that ideology.

Poetical

1.  In Menaud, maître-draveur, Félix-Antoine Savard‘s novel, no explicit ideology is expressed, but Englishmen will be renting the mountain so they can harvest its riches. Menaud feels dépossédé (disowned). A French-Canadian no longer “tied” (lié) to the land, le Délié, will be pocketing the rental money. Savard’s novel is a masterpiece. It is a poetical, evocative, and “green” novel. Do not abuse nature.

2.  Le Survenant (and its sequel: Marie-Didace), Germaine Guèvremont‘s novel is also very poetical. It has a bucolic and, at times, spell-binding quality. The land is rich and it still feeds French-Canadians. In The Outlander (Le Survenant), the central character, is both liked and feared.

Patrie Littéraire (after Lord Durham’s Report)

La Terre paternelle and Charles Guérin are Patrie littéraire novels. They were written in the wake of Lord Durham’s report, who described French-Canadians as having no history or literature.

Radio and Television serials

Un Homme et son péché* (Radio and TV) and Le Survenant* (TV) were serialized and extremely popular.

The “Bad” Englishman and the “Vendu” (sold)

The “bad” Englishman is Wagnaër in Charles Guérin and the “vendu,” le Délié in Menaud, maître-draveur.    

  • La Terre paternelle, Patrice Lacombe (1846) ←
  • Charles Guérin, Pierre-Joseph-Olivier Chauveau (1846)
  • Maria Chapdelaine, Louis-Hémon (1914)
  • Un Homme et son péché, Claude Henri Grignon (1933)*
  • Notre culture sera paysanne ou elle ne sera pas (We will be peasants or we will not be), Public letter to André Laurendeau, an article published in L’Action nationale, n° 6, juin 1941, pp. 538-543. 
  • Menaud, maître-draveur, Félix Antoine Savard (1937)
  • Trente Arpents, Ringuet (Dr Philippe Panneton) (1938)
  • Le Survenant, Germaine Guèvremont (1945)*
  • The Canadian & his “Terroir”

I will be writing about Laurendeau, l’Action nationale, Refus global, etc.

 —ooo—

Gilles Vigneault sings Gilles Vigneault: Mon Pays

© Micheline Walker
17 June 2012
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45.408358 -71.934658

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Germaine Guèvremont’s Le Survenant

24 Sunday Jun 2012

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

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Canada, Claude-Henri Grignon, French-Canadian literature, Germaine Guèvremont, Regionalism, Television Series

le_survenant_by_mister_dragonspit-d6gen3e

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
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updated
13 January 2014
 
 
 
 
 
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Menaud, maître-draveur: a Metaphysical Land

14 Thursday Jun 2012

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

≈ 7 Comments

Tags

Clarence Gagnon artist, Félix-Antoine Savard, French-Canadian literature, Menaud maître draveur, Regionalism, Saguenay River, Saguenay-Lac-Saint-Jean

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]).

 
 
 
 
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Gabrielle Roy’s The Tin Flute

30 Monday Jan 2012

Posted by michelinewalker in Canada

≈ 370 Comments

Tags

Bonheur d'occasion, French-Canadian literature, Gabrielle Roy, irony, poverty, Saint-Henri, the Great Depression, war as salvation

Gabrielle Roy by Yousuf Karsh

Yousuf Karsh (1908-2002)

Bonheur d’occasion (1945) is one of the finest novels written in Canada.  Its author, Gabrielle Roy, is often referred to as “la grande dame” of Canadian Literature in French. In 1947, Bonheur d’occasion was first translated into English by Hanna Josephson.  Josephson’s The Tin Flute is a slightly abridged version of Bonheur d’occasion.  In 1980, Roy’s novel was re-translated by Alan Brown, again in a slightly abridged version.  It was then made into a film in 1983, the year Roy died.

Gabrielle Roy CC [Companion of the Order of Canada], FRSC [Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada] (22 March 1909 – 13 July 1983) was born in Saint-Boniface, a French-Canadian community that is now part of Winnipeg.  First, she worked as a school teacher and has written fine short stories about her teaching days.

Le Restaurant Philibert by Miyuki Tanobe (1983)

Miyuki Tanobe
Galerie Valentin

Bonheur d’occasion (FR), literally second-hand happiness was published in 1945, but it takes the reader back to the last days of Great Depression and the beginning of World War II.  By 1945, Roy had moved from Manitoba to Montreal and worked as a journalist.  Moreover, the last roman du terroir, regionalism, Ringuet’s Trente Arpents, had been published.

The Tin Flute (EN), a novel, is about a family living in Saint-Henri, in slums, on the wrong side of the track.  On the other side of the track, one goes up a hill to Westmount.  Given its nearness to the very centre of Montreal, Saint-Henri is now being gentrified.  It was a very poor area of Montreal.

Rose-Anna

Rose-Anna is the main figure.  She is married to Azarius Lacasse and is the mother of several children one of whom, Daniel, she carries in a little sleigh all the way up to a clinic.  He is dying of leukemia and is sent to a hospital.

Ironically, Daniel spends the last days of his vanishing life in a comfortable bed and a warm room, cared for by doctors and nurses who speak very little French but whom he just loves.  In fact, that episode, or those episodes, Daniel’s last days, epitomize the novel in that they constitute a fine example of Roy’s chief tool as the author of Bonheur d’occasion: irony.  One is happy when one is about to die.  Death is the solution.

Florentine

But let us walk back down the hill to Saint-Henri.  Rose-Anna has an adult daughter, Florentine, who works as a waitress at the restaurant counter of a dime store: le Quinze-Cents or the Fifteen Cents.  Florentine is a little thin, but she is very attractive. The money she earns helps the impoverished Lacasse family and her father has a job.  When Rose-Anna walks into the Quinze-Cents, Florentine is surprised to see her but treats her to a meal.  Before leaving the store, Rose-Anne buys a tin flute for Daniel.  So now we know why the novel was translated as The Tin Flute.

The Trip to the cabane à sucre (maple syrup)

However, everything goes wrong when, one day, Azarius tells Rose-Anna that they may borrow his employer’s truck and go visit her family who live in the country.  It’s maple sugar season.  Azarius had not been allowed to use the truck, so he loses his job.

Florentine and Jean Lévesque

In the meantime, Florentine has fallen in love with Jean Lévesque who has a profession and is employed.  She starts to dream.  During a visit to the Quinze-Cents, Jean tells Florentine to join him at the movie house, which she does, but he stands her up.  Later he comes to visit her at the family’s home and seduces her.

Ironically, Florentine gets pregnant not long after telling her pregnant mother that this must end.  They can’t afford more babies.  Rose-Anna says:  “What do you want, in life one does not do as one wants, one does as one can.”

Qu’est-ce que tu veux, Florentine, on ne fait comme on veut dans la vie; on fait comme on peut.[i]

Azarius unemployed

As for Azarius, he now spends the day with the “boys,” in a restaurant.  It’s their meeting-place and, together, they talk as though they could save the world, so they think.

La belle maison du coin triangulaire by Miyuki Tanobe

Florentine and Emmanuel Létourneau

Florentine is being courted by another man: Emmanuel Létourneau.  He comes from an upper middle-class family and wants to marry Florentine.  She loves Jean Lévesque, but Emmanuel is now her only salvation.  Although he is about to leave for Europe, as are his friends, they marry.  She will get money every month and will live in a nice apartment.

Azarius’s salvation

One day, after they have moved into a humbler home—the Lacasse move every year to avoid the raise in rent or possible eviction—Azarius comes home wearing a military uniform.  Like his son Eugène, Azarius has enlisted.  The family now lives next to the railway tracks.  When she sees her husband, Rose-Anna screams, but the deafening din of a train that seems headed for their house muffles her voice.

War kills. It is perdition.  But it ‘saves’ Azarius and some of the boys.  Rose-Anna will receive a pension cheque every month.   Let me quote Michèle Lacombe who writes that “[t]he inhabitants greet the war as a source of salvation, rescuing them from unemployment.”

Lorne Pierce Medal

Bonheur d’occasion is an extremely compelling novel.  Roy has managed to convey to the reader the degree of despair, and sometimes hope, of her characters.  Roy has also managed to reveal to her readers the compassion she feels for her characters.  I have seldom read so masterfully, yet subtly ironic a novel. However, Rose-Anna is not a mater dolorosa. On the contrary, few characters in Canadian Literature in French are as lucid and combative as she is. But what can she do?

Bonheur d’occasion, The Tin Flute earned Gabrielle Roy a major French literary prize, the Femina (France).  It also earned her the 1947 Governor General’s Award for fiction as well as the Royal Society of Canada’s Lorne Pierce Medal.  It sold more than three-quarters of a million copies.  In 1947, the Literary Guild of America made The Tin Flute its book of the month.  Madame Roy could barely believe the reception given the novel.  She had to leave for Manitoba to avoid the attention.

In short, if Canada is still looking for its great novel, it may have been written 1945.

—ooo—

Eric Satie, 18 Première Gymnopédie Gn. 
(please click on title to hear music)

___________________________

[i] Gabrielle Roy, Bonheur d’occasion (Montréal: Boréal, 1998[1945]), p. 89.

[ii] Michèle Lacombe, “Bonheur d’occasion”                             <http://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.com/articles/bonheur-doccasion>.

[iii] David M. Hayne and Kathleen Kellett-Betsos, “Canadian literature.” Encyclopædia Britannica. Encyclopædia Britannica Online. Encyclopædia Britannica Inc., 2012. Web. 29 Jan. 2012.
http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/91950/Canadian-literature>.

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The Canadien’s Terroir

27 Friday Jan 2012

Posted by michelinewalker in Art, French-Canadian Literature

≈ 318 Comments

Tags

Battle of the Plains of Abraham, Champlain, classification, Curé Labelle, farming, French-Canadian literature, Henri-Raymond Casgrain, Maria Chapdelaine, roman du terroir

La Rivière Magog by Marc-Aurèle de Foy Suzor-Coté*

Marc-Aurèle de Foy Suzor-Coté (1869 – 1937)
NB. The terroir is the Canadien‘s land. 

Classification of Canadian Literature in French

Until recently, Canadian Literature in French was divided into four periods.  This has changed.

  • The Literary Homeland (1837-1865): Un Pèlerinage au pays d’Évangéline, 1855

A few years ago, the period of French-Canadian literature during which l’abbé Casgrain’s books were published was called  la “Patrie littéraire” or the “Literary Homeland” and it took us from 1760 (the battle of the Plains of Abraham)[i] to 1895.

That period is still called the “Literary Homeland,” but it begins in 1837 and ends in 1865.  It has been shortened by seventy-seven (77) years now labelled “Canadian Origins” (1760-1836).

  • The “Messianic Survival” (1866-1895)

Henri-Raymond Casgrain‘s Pèlerinage au pays d’Évangéline was published in 1855.  It was therefore written eleven years before the start of the next period currentled called: “Messianic Survival” (1866-1895).  However, Un Pèlerinage au pays d’Évangéline does underline the importance of the priest as leader in the organisation of a territory, in our case, Acadie under l’abbé Sigogne and other French émigrés priests sent by England to the seminary in Quebec city (Lower Canana).

  • Exile and the Establishment of Roots (1896-1938): Maria Chapdelaine, 1914

As for Maria Chapdelaine, it is now classified in a period of French-Canadian literature called “Exile and the Establishment of Roots (1896-1938).” Where Maria Chapdelaine (1916) is concerned this classification is accurate, but only to the extent that classifications can be correct.  Formerly it was included in a period called: “Vaisseau d’or [the title of a poem] et Croix du chemin [road side crosses]” (1895-1938)

What may be good to remember about Maria Chapdelaine is

  • that Maria’s choice is the choice of a patriot, and
  • that her choice is also the choice the Church advocates.

Not that Maria is a nationalist.  The poor girl would not know anything about nationalism or any “ism,” but she nevertheless makes the patriotic choice in deciding to marry a settler.  Colonisation was a way of keeping French Canadians in their province, in their parish, and farming.

Curé Labelle

Priests feared that once a French Canadian settled in the United States, he and members of his family would cease to be good Catholics and would no longer speak French.  In all likelihood, this is what motivated the colourful Curé Labelle (November 24, 1833 – January 4, 1891) to urge people to go north and to create land: faire de la terre, faire du pays.

—ooo—

New France: farming as a priority

I should note moreover that even in the earliest days of New France, France saw its colony as a colony of farmers.  Pierre Dugua de Mons or Champlain had managed to convince Henri IV, le bon roi Henri, to move the colony from Port-Royal in Acadie (in the current Nova Scotia) to what is now the province of Quebec.  As well, Champlain explored the great lakes.  Moreover, he engaged in fur trading, but Louis XIII, no doubt acting on the advice of Richelieu and Marie de Médicis, Henri IV’s widow, ordered Champlain to stop exploring and to govern instead.  So Champlain was Governor of New France and New France was a nation of farmers.

In short, Maria Chapdelaine, 1916, is a “roman du terroir,” a regionalist novel, extolling the virtues of farming.  There would be other such novels, the last of which was published in 1938:  Ringuet’s Trente Arpents.

Conclusion

So far, we have examined works belonging to two periods of Canadian Literature in French:

1. The Literary Homeland or Patrie Littéraire (1837-1865): Un pèlerinage au pays d’Évangéline (1855) and

2. Exile and the Establishment of Roots (1896-1938): Maria Chapdelaine, 1913.  During this period French-speaking Canadians were either leaving Canada or settling in new areas, the North mainly.  For instance some sons became voyageurs. The family farm could no longer be divided, so they had to find other means of making a living.  Yet farming remained the mission of French-speaking Canadians and his only means of earning a living.

3. But, I have also touched on a third period: The Messianic Survival (1866-1895).  Priests are organizing a new Acadie.

But, for the time being, our plate is full.  We pause.  I am including an Ave Maria because as Maria Chapdelaine senses her François is in danger, she recites a thousand Ave Marias.

This is not a new post, but it is a clearer one. I cannot presume you already knew about the mythic, yet very real Évangéline, or Maria Chapdelaine.

________________________

[i] The Battle of the Plains of Abraham, 1759, opposed the French, under the Marquis de Montcalm and the English, under General Wolfe.  The English won and four years later, in 1763, Nouvelle-France became a British colony.

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