French-Canadian Letters

LETTERS IN CANADA: J937 Edited by A. S. P. WOODHOUSE PART II: FRENCH-CANADIAN AND NEW-CANADIAN LETTERS V. FRENCH-CANADIAN LETTERS FELIX, WALTER It is perhaps not inappropriate that a survey of the literature of French Canada during 1937 should make some reference at the outset to the loss which that literature has sustained in the death of Olivar Asselin. He was not only the dean of French-Canadian journalists) a brilliant and incisive writer, a critic of current events· equipped with a broad cultural background, he was over and above these things a man of great courage and independence of mind, who was never afraid to defy his own followers and imperil his popularity. The,same man who protested Canada's participation in the Boer War, raised a French-Canadian regiment in 1916 and faced a bitterly hostile audience in Montreal to justify his conduct. Asselin was the severest' critic of Laurier and of his imperialistic entanglements, but when Laurier died i~ was Asselin who wrote the finest and fairest tribute to the dead statesman. He was a faithful son of his church, but he chose to suspend the publication of his weekly paper L'Ordre rather than give up his fight for a radical reform of education in his native province. It was his last gesture and a characteristic one. Shortly before his death last April, Asselin selected from the accumulation of a Jifetime of active journalism some twenty articles which he was willing to have preserved in volume form . A young friend, Gerard Dagenais, took over the task of editing Pense, jranr;aiJe, which is the title the collection bears, and he has done his work well. A little later Dr. Joseph Gauvreau, a schoolmate of Asselin's at the seminary.at Rimouski, published a 'short but interesting biography of the late . Nationalist leader. The only criticism one can offer of these two books is that they are inadequate. Asselin deserves more than a slender volume of reprints and a fifty-page biography. 552 LETTERS lN CANADA: 1937 With Asselin gone the great Nationalist movement of 1904 ,passes into history. Of all the paladins of that day only Bourassa survives, and the young French-Canadian Nationalists of to-day have precious little use for Bourassa. Their nationalism, the new nationaiism of French Canada, is harsher and cruder, more fanatical and mystical, i,nfinitely narrower and more parochial. Jules Fournier's irony is replaced by the torrential abuse of Valdombre, Armand Lavergne's reasoned eloquence by the tribal incantations of the abbe Groulx. No wonder English Canadians are troubled by the new spirit that is abroad in Quebec, but they are at least partly to blame for its very existence, and it is necessary that they try to understand it, particularly if they wish to grasp the significance of current French-Canadian literature. At least two outstanding events lent themselves to the new stream and stimulated literary efforts which will be exami'ned later in this survey. These were the second Congres de la Langue fran- ~aise, held in Quebec City last June (the first Congres took place in 1912), and the centenary of the Rebellion of 1837. What has been the effect of all this stir and political ferment on the so-called be/leJ-lell"es? As in 1936, there has been a slackenirig of production in this field, and FrenchcCanadian critics themselves aTe beginning to express concern. Says Fran~ois Hertel in llLa Crise des createurs, au la Trahison de nos cleccs" (Le Mauricien, oct.): "Ces dernieres ann~es, la litterature canadienne-fran~aise, deja si pauvre, accuse un recul alarmant. Nos ecrivains se de,. touenent de la creation pour se perdre dans raction au l'enseignement . .. pourtant une litterature digne de ce nom est avant tout une littera~ure d'imagination, une Jitterature creatrice. Seule vit et survit la litterature pure." Then. the critic goes on to point out that poetry, novel, and drama should try to make use of the new political and racial ideals as the stuff of inspiration and thus awake to a new life. Both M Hertel's fears and his hopes have been realized in part in the...