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"Fleur-de-Mai" 1945
- University of Ottawa Press
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Alain Grandbois Translated byMatt Cohen FlEUR-DE-MAI Alain Grandbois was born in Saint-Casimir de Portneuf on May 25, 1900, and was educated at the College de Montreal and the Seminaire de Quebec, and later at Saint Dunstan University in Charlottetown. He took a law degree at Universite Laval in 1921. An inheritance allowed him to travel and, using Paris as a base—he lived in Montparnasse at the same time as Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Morley Callaghan, and other celebrated exiles—he travelled in Italy, Spain (where he fought in the RepublicanArmy), Austria, and Germany, as well as China, Japan, southeast Asia, the former Soviet Union, and Africa, returning to Canada just before the Second World War, in 1939. His first book, Ne a Quebec (Born in Quebec), a work of creative nonfiction about the life of the explorer Louis Jolliet, was published in Paris in 1933; it was followed in 1934 by Poemes, the first edition of which was printed in China and lost in its entirety in a shipwreck. His next book, Les Voyages deMarco Polo, in part inspired by Grandbois's own peripatetic existence, was awarded the Prix David in 1941. Grandbois won the Prix David in 1947 and in 1970, the year his Poemes choisis was published in Montreal. One of the founding members of the Academic canadiennefranc ,aise, Grandbois has also received the Prix Duvernay (1950), the Lome Pierce Prize for poetry (1954), the Prix France-Canada (for Poemes, published in 1963), and the prestigious Medaille d'or de PAcademie canadiennefran5aise for his life's work. Long considered one of Quebec's most important poets—a special issue of the literary magazineLiberte vfzs devoted to his work in 1960—Grandbois also distinguished himself as a writer of short stories. Avant le chaos, published in 1945, is widely regarded as one of the first hints of FLEUR-DE-MAI 161 Quebec's emergence into the harsh, realistic light of the modern. "Fleur-de-Mai," translated here byMatt Cohen, has been taken from that collection, and was also included in Adrien Therio's influential anthology Conteurs canadiensfranqais (1965). A work of great poetic intensity and psychological insight, it is one Grandbois's most original and exotic works. Grandbois died in March 1975. A book of his unpublished works, Delivrance dujour et autres inedits, illustrated with drawings by the author, waspublished posthumously in 1980. "Fleur-de-Mai" is a translation of "Fleur-de-Mai" published in Avant le chaos suivi de quatre nouvelles inedites (Montreal: Editions H.M.H., 1964). 162 ALAIN GRANDBOIS [18.208.203.36] Project MUSE (2024-03-19 09:30 GMT) he boy's gong was truly and excessively loud. When he came into the small salon for the first-class passengers, where for the tenth time I was trying to light a cigarette limp with humidity, he redoubled his infernal clanging. I was alone. The room might have been twelve feet square. Perhaps fifteen. The boy stayed in the doorway, his torso naked, legs bare, beating his metallic disc as though he wanted to smash it in. I signalled him to stop but that only made him bang louder. Then I shouted at him—a few offensive and energetic insults—no success. Finally I got up, grabbed him by the shoulders, turned him around and quickly gave him a few kicks somewhere, but gentry, gently, because I am not an uncivilized brute. He ran out to the gangway and said to me: "Me love gong. Me love gong." Then, with a laugh, he disappeared—meanwhile continuing to make his awful racket. The captain's table was decorated with giant, fleshy orchids. The captain was laughing. Everyone laughed in East Asia. Except old men and children. The captain said to me: "It seems you don't particularly care for the sound of the gong." "On the contrary, I like it a lot," I replied. "But this gong boy seems to be trying to compete with the trumpets ofjericho." "You're in a bad mood." "Perhaps. I also have a bit of a fever." "Sothat's it..." We each drank a whisky, strong and with ice. It's not the best medicine for malaria but it's an excellent way to take care of the symptoms. For a while. The captain and I were old friends. We had just spent a few days together isolated like rats on the island of Shameen, in the very heart of Canton. All around the island...