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330 THE UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO QUARTERLY IV. FRENCH-CANADIAN, LETTERS W. E. COLLIN Section I of this essay deals with books on Religion, Philosophy, Sociology, Edu'cation, Arts and Crafts in French Canada, and French~Canadian Culture. Section II is a review of Literary Criticism appearing during the year. Sections 111 -and IV are concerned with Poetry and Drama respectively, and Section 'V with Fiction and Narrative Sketches.' Section VI contains' notes on Historical and Biographical books, and Section VII note~ on miscellaneous works. The divisions in the Lists correspond to those in the essay. I After surveying the literature published in 1942 we have one dominant impression: the themes which have lately occupied French-Canadian ~ntellectuals-survival, political and economic emancipation, "refrancisation"-are giving ground before a solicitude of a more intimate and spiritual cast. As Fran~ois Hertel puts it, "a purely political nationalism has brought us to nothing. ' The economic conquest in which ,we are engaged at present will ,in -, its turn be sterile if it is not grafted to a spiritual resuscitation. Men pass; ideas are eternaLt) Directed by Churchmen aware of what is ha:ppening in the world today, this spiritual awakening manifests itself in a will to bring certain advancing currents of thought into the broad stre~m of Thomist doctrine, to interpret popular social aspirations in the light of Papal encyclicals, and it expresses itself in slogans borrowed from Maritain, Maulnier, Daniel-Rops, Berdyaev,and others. .The. special Canadia~ notes in its voice are: "The mystic Body of Christ," "return to the good earth." There is a decided cult of the Catholic writers,of,France, especially Claudel, Peguy, Bloy, Maritain. French-Canadian publishing houses have begun to re-issue editions o(French authors. P€!guy is' regarded as a rallying name from Vichy to Brazzaville. The December number of La Nouvelle Releve contained six articles written by various hands in homage to Maritain. It is to be ex- , pected that those. French intellectuals wh~ happen to be on this continent will make a substantial contribution to the Canadian renajssance. Gustave Cohen is at' Yale, Baldensperger at the University of California, Bernanos writes from Brazil. , In view of possible developments in , Canada, Yves Simon's article on "La LETTERS IN CANADA: 1942 331 philosophie .dans la foiU ! is important because it underlines the influe~ce of Bergson and Blondel on recent Christian thought. Since 1879, when Pope Leo XIII decided on the restoration of Thomism, centres of Thomist studies have been established all over the Catholic world. In 1930 the Academie canadienne SaintThomas d'Aquin was opened in Canada. One Catholic writer has coined the word thomismiser to describe that activity which consists in adapting thought and teaching to the exigencies ofThomism. In the latest account of the sessions of the Academie two examples of this process are a paper on "The Antigonish Movement" and a paper entitled "Autour 'du racisme." Cardinal Villeneuve's two tracts, Le Sacrement de fa Penitence and Le Sacrement de rEucharistic , contain instructions on these ,sacraments in the light of Scripture , the Council of Trent, and Thomist doctrine. .But the most imposing , illustration of the process is Fran~ois Hertel's metaphysical treatise Pour un Ordre personna/isle. Hertel's work may be looked upon as an attempt to bring existential philosophy to terms 'with Maritain's integral Christian humanism. Existenz, from which the term existential is derived, was based 'upon ~ conception of "choice of oneself as freedom," separating 'oneself as a responsible person from the rest of one's world. One's whole personality is bound up in the decision, one 'obeys an inner impulse to realize oneself whic'h is beyond objective cntlclsm. Heidegger translated choice of oneself into choice of . one's race. Scheler erected,a hierarchy of "superior personalities": sOclety, nation, State, God. In this way personalism develops into impersonalism, an expression of the crowd's will to glory and power. We trust that Heidegger's example may be a warning to any philosopher who employs the concept of superior personalities. It is Berdyaev whom Hertel cites, and there are many ideas in Berdyaev that a French-Canadian thinker can welcome.' But the clarity and...

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