Oeuvres, II: Prose by Octave Crémazie (review)

482 LETTERS IN CANADA 1976 Ces demieres, des plus precieuses pour Ie chercheur, recensent aussi bien les bibliographies existantes que les recueils, anthologies, etudes generales et particulieres, portant sur les theatres, troupes et comediens. Sont enfin rnentionnees, SOllS I'entree de I'auteur, les pieces jouees et/ou publiees depuis Ie XVII' (non exhaustivement pour les parutions en revues). Un choix d'etudes sur l'ecrivain suit la plupart des notices bibliographiques. Face a la somme considerable d'energies investies dans eet ouvrage, on hesite a reciamer encore un index-de permettant d'acceder rapidement aux informations concernant les troupes et artisans contemporains. Quant aI'aspect plus litteraire que theatral de cette samme, on respectera Ie choix des organisateurs en attendant qU'une nouvelle equipe retablisse I'equilibre et entreprenne dans l'autre sens pareille experience, accordant cette fois plus d'importance au travail collectif des jeunes troupes qui n'entraient pas de fait dans Ie schemes d'analyse du present ouvrage. (BERNARD ANDRllS) Octave Cremazie. Oeuvres, II: Prose. Texte etabli, annote et presente par Odette Condemine. Editions de I'Universite d'Ottawa. 438 Professor Condemine has now completed her '972 critical edition of the poetry of French Canada's first noteworthy poet, Octave Cremazie (1827-79), by a parallel volume devoted to Cremazie's correspondence and miscellaneous prose writings. The only previous edition of Cremazie's works, the Oeuvres completes published in 1882, contained thirty-eight letters, some of them abridged. The present edition includes 111 letters, forty-one of which appear in print for the first time. There are sixty-five letters written to Cremazie's family in Quebec during his business trips to France and throughout the long exile which followed his bankruptcy in 1862; a dozen letters are addressed to his literary contemporary, Abbe Henri-Raymond Casgrain, and almost as many to other friends in Quebec. The largest single section of the volume is made up of the 'Journal du siege de Paris' (pp '3'-24')' in which the poet kept a daily record of events, rumours, and living conditions during the Prussian siege of Paris in 1870-1, when correspondence with the outside world was impossible except by the occasional balloon. Condemine not only gives us here a much more complete and authoritative text of Cremazie's prose writings than has hitherto been available, but she also provides an extensive critical apparatus that illuminates every aspect of the text. Certain elements of this apparatus (the long biographical introduction and the exhaustive bibliography of primary sources and secondary studies), included in the 1972 volume, are, of course; not reproduced here, but the presentation of variants and the detailed literary and historical notes appended to the letters and the HUMANITIES 483 Journal maintain the impeccable standard established in the earlier volume , and make the whole work unique among editions of nineteenthcentury French Canadian authors. The editor's years of patient searching in nearly thirty archival collections in Canada, the United States, and France have yielded such a mass of previously unknown information about Cnimazie's life and writings that her edition renders most previous work on Cremazie obsolete. So painstaking has been the preparation of this edition that its hundreds of pages are virtually free of typographical or other errors. I noted only one misprint (p 243) and one incorrect page reference ('p 361' on P 374 should read 'p 119')· Indeed one is hard pressed to suggest improvements of any kind, but I shall hazard a few. It would have been helpful to have the day of the week inserted before the date of each letter, so that statements such as 'Si tu re~ois mes lettres Ie dimanche, je continue a recevoirles tiennes Ie mardi soir' (p 287) can be interpreted . A chronological listing of Cremazie's addresses and moves during his seventeen years in exile would have been useful , as would a dated table of letters classified by recipient. The notes are models of clarity and precision, and very few allusions are left unexplained: 'M.S: (p 73), 'poste it patto' (p 103), 'Le Petit Journal' - what were its polities? (pp 72, 243, 268), 'Mme Nault' (p 110; identified in the index as Mme...