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"The Mass of Florent L
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Louis Dantin Translated by Sheila Fischman THE MASS OF FLORENT LETOURMEAU Eugene Sears (who wrote under the pseudonyme Louis Dantin) was born in the village of Beauharnois in 1865. He attended the College de Montreal and later the Seminaire de Montreal, and studied to become a priest at the Congregation des Peres du Tres-Saint-Sacrement in 1883. In 1884, he began work on a Ph.D. in philosophy in Rome, and took his vows in Brusselsin 1887. From there he moved to Paris, where he was ordained in 1888, but he soon suffered a crisis of faith and returned to Montreal in 1894. In Montreal he discovered and became a friend of the poet Emile Nelligan. He also began writing poetry of his own, and in 1900—the year after Nelligan became insane—published Franges d'autel in collaboration with Nelligan and a number of other poets, including Lucien Rainier, Arthur de Bussieres, and Amedee Gelinas. He lived from hand to mouth for the next three years, editing his order's religious newsletter, Petit messager du Tres-SaintSacrement , and attending sessions of the Ecole litteraire de Montreal. In 1903 he edited Nelligan's first book of poems—declaring in the preface that art and poetry were far removed from ordinary morality, that art could and indeed must exist without religion. That same year Dantin left the priesthood; in fact, he left Canada and moved to Boston, where he worked for many years at Harvard University Press. Dantin has been cited as Quebec's first literary critic (for his discovery and defence of Nelligan as well as for such books as Poetes de VAmerique frangais, 1928 and Closes critiques, 1931). He published a book of poems, Le Coffret de Crusoe, in 1932; one novel, Les Enfances de Fanny (1951); and a book of short stories, La Vieen reve, in 1930. THE MASS OF FLORENT LETOURNEAU 111 The literary historian Samuel Baillargeonhas noted that Dantin's life was "a lamentable tragedy," but added that "it would be unhealthy curiosity to go into details." The story included here, "La messe de Florent Letourneau," translated by Sheila Fischman, is a fine example of Dantin's classical mind. It first appeared in the periodical UAvenir du Nord on December 14, 1926, and was included in La Vieen reve. "Beauty," he wrote in one of his critical essays, "often strikes you in guises that go against the rules." Dantin died in exile in the United States in 1945. "The Mass of Florent Letourneau"is a translation of "La messe de Florent Letourneau"published in La Vie en reve, contes(Montreal: Librairie d'action canadienne-frangaise Itee, 1930); first appeared in L 'Avenir du Nord, December24, 1926. 112 Louis DANTIN [54.225.1.66] Project MUSE (2024-03-19 08:45 GMT) y grandfather shook his pipe and said again: "They're lucky, those folks in Saint-Jovite. "Fine land, good roads, mail delivery every day, carts, why they've even got automobiles to take themselves into town. In my day all that was woods. Before you got to the new lands you had thirty-five miles of dense woods; and some ways away, by gum, you could go all the way to the North Pole and not see a single clearing. In the winter it wasn't uncommon that you'd open the door and standing there would be a bear seven foot tall rooting around on the gallery; those animals, they'd use their snouts to unlock the barns and they'd make off with whole quarters of beef. And we logged, we stumped, we drove logs down the river, and we sweated, let me tell you. There was misery, and I don't know what would have become of us without the good Lord and Cure Labelle. "Now I wouldn't claim we were saints; there was amix of us like there is in any other place. We were mostly good people, but there were some in the bunch who weren't worth much: folks who'd come from far away, some of them, for wicked reasons. In my case, my neighbours were David Latdur and Philemon Secette; we always worked things out, aside from that one time I took David to court on account of a ditch he'd dug across my line. At the other end of the concession road, though, there was a fellow from Quebec City by the name of Florent Letourneau and he had a heck of a...